JFK SAYS WE CAN'T TURN BACK TO THE DAYS BEFORE PEARL HARBOR
Nigel Hamilton writes...
"(Lem) Billings was 'terribly excited.' Thick, billowing smoke rose above the Japanese embassy on Massachusetts Avenue as guilty diplomats burned their papers. Hundreds began to assemble outside the White House...wanting to know what would be the president's reaction."
"A Hero For Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years," by Ralph G. Martin, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1983.
"Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero," by Chris Matthews, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2011.
"JFK, Reckless Youth," by Nigel Hamilton, Random House, New York, 1992.
Miami, Florida (JFK+50) On the 20th anniversary of the Japanese attack on the United States at Pearl Harbor, President John F. Kennedy spoke about the event at the AFL-CIO Convention held here in Miami.
The President, who had been a 24 year old Navy officer working at the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington on the day of the attack, said...
"The memory of that day, so immediate...a memory that should serve us well...to reaffirm our more ancient conviction that history belongs to the free, and the free must be ever vigilant.
We cannot turn back to the days before Pearl Harbor when we believed our destiny was in our own hands, without regard to the fate and ambitions of others. We can't turn back to the days when a surprise attack was only the prelude to a long struggle...when there was always time to rearm...to retool...protected by two oceans.
The world is very different now."
Ralph G. Martin writes that as a young sailor John F. Kennedy "saw (Pearl Harbor) as an event of shattering waste and horror." On that day, JFK was playing touch football on the Mall close to the Washington Monument with his friend Lem Billings. As they were returning to Jack's apartment on 16th Street, news of the attack was broadcast over the car radio.
Nigel Hamilton writes...
"(Lem) Billings was 'terribly excited.' Thick, billowing smoke rose above the Japanese embassy on Massachusetts Avenue as guilty diplomats burned their papers. Hundreds began to assemble outside the White House...wanting to know what would be the president's reaction."
JFK+50
I have been talking with a fellow patient at heart rehab who was living in Honolulu on Dec 7, 1941. Wally was 10 years old living with his mother & sister just outside the city. He tells me that he and his sister were looking forward to going to pick up the Sunday paper to read the comic strips when they heard the planes overhead.
He said that they had no idea what was going on. In the aftermath of the attack, martial law was declared and he & his family were moved into the city where they remained for several days before being allowed to return to their home.
Wally left Hawaii at the age of 15 & went to school in California. He served in the U.S. Army in the early 1950s and went to work for the USPS. He is now retired & living here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We have talked many times about his experiences in Hawaii, but talking to him again this morning on the anniversary of the event was very meaningful.
SOURCES
"A Hero For Our Time: An Intimate Story of the Kennedy Years," by Ralph G. Martin, Macmillan Publishing Company, New York, 1983.
"Excerpts of Remarks by the President at the Fourth Convention of the AFL-CIO, Miami Beach, Florida, December 7, 1941," JFK on This Day, www.twitter.com/
"Jack Kennedy, Elusive Hero," by Chris Matthews, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2011.
"JFK, Reckless Youth," by Nigel Hamilton, Random House, New York, 1992.
U.S. Propaganda Poster (1942)
U.S. National Archives
