Attack+on+Pearl+Harbor

Attack of Pearl Harbor Anthony Cuadrado 10/20/08   Scrapbook entry #1 As I looked out of my bedroom window on a beautiful Sunday, the light of the early morning sun drenched our front yard with rays of orange and yellow light. The birds were singing, and the early morning dew on the grass was slowly burning off. I got out of bed, putting on my robe and slippers. I walked quietly to the kitchen, trying my best not to wake my two young children, as they would be upset if I did. I entered the kitchen, and opened a cabinet, getting a coffee mug and placing it on the counter. After pouring myself a cup of coffee, I went out to the patio and sat down. Our front yard has the best view anybody could possibly ask for, overlooking Pearl Harbor. It never gets boring to simply sit their and watch all that goes on, about five hundred feet below where our home was. Since it was a Sunday, not much concerned with the military was going on down below. However, the navy was having their weekly worship as they do every Sunday morning. As I sat there drinking my coffee and taking in the view, I saw a formation of airplanes in the distance, coming towards the harbor. I thought nothing of it, since the bombers come in from the mainland all the time. As they got closer though, my thoughts changed. They were coming in very low and very fast, and they looked a lot smaller than bombers, as I could see them better now. I knew for a fact that the military did not do any type of training on Sundays, and I saw everyone on the battleships below stop and stare at the incoming airplanes as their engines could now be heard. I was then able to make out that one airplane was far ahead of the huge formation, and in seconds the leading airplane flew very low over the harbor (Danzer 555), pulling up into a steep angle after passing. Only a few more seconds passed before the swarm of airplanes started descending to an extremely low altitude. I stood up and just then, an airplane dropped a bomb on the harbor, then flew not more than 200 feet directly above our house. A split second later, the bomb hit the water and made the water around it shoot straight into the air. As more bombs fell onto the harbor, commands to soldiers to man battle stations were being yelled on every warship (“Pearl Harbor Attack” 2). Throughout the course of the attack, which lasted for about 90 minutes with very little opposition from guns or other fighters (Danzer 555), my family and I watched the whole thing without a single sentence out of any of our mouths. The one moment all of us will never forget happened at about 8:35 am, about forty minutes into the attack. A Japanese fighter plane passed us about sixty or seventy feet away, so close we were able to see the face of the pilot. As he passed, he stared at us the whole time, and we did the same to him. That was the most emotional moment of my life. http://www.commemorativeairforce.org/gallery/acgallery/fullsize/ToraZeros_fs.jpg

At long last, the last airplane disappeared out in the distance at about 9:30, and the entire harbor was devastated (Danzer 555). A while after the attack, I learned all of the grim facts about the losses in the attack. In the harbor, more than twenty ships were damaged or sunk (Monk 190), and at least 150 airplanes were destroyed on the ground. The worst part was that more than two thousand Americans were killed in the attack, many of them being young men in the navy, (“Pearl Harbor Attack” 2). December 7th, 1941 was a day I will never forget, and it is a day when anybody who saw it or heard about it would never forget. The United States could not have been more unprepared. http://www.kenrosenberg.com/images01/PearlHarbor.jpg ** http://www.sheppardsoftware.com/images/Europe/factfile/USSArizonaPearlHarbor.jpg

Works Cited ** Danzer, Gerald A., et al. __The Americans; Reconstruction to the 21st Century.__ Evanston, Boston: McDougal Littell Inc., 2003. “Pearl Harbor Attack.” __American History.__ 2008. ABC-CLIO. 20 Oct. 2008 <[|http://www.americanhistory.abc-clio.com]>. Young, Stephen Bower. “Abandon Ship! Abandon Ship!” __Ordinary Americans.__ Ed. Linda R. Monk. Alexandria, VA: Close Up Publishing, 1994. 190-1.