PEARL HARBOR AFTER SIXTY-SIX YEARS AND WORLD WAR II INTHE PTO (PACIFIC THEATER OF OPERATIONS).

(1) © [All Rights Reserved.] Placed on the World Wide Web on 6 December 2007, for a presentation (with visuals) at the Anthropology Forum at California State University, Chico, this date. Please remember that "today" in the United States of America it is Thursday December 6, 2007 but across the International Dateline "today" is "tomorrow" and it is December 7, 2007: the 66th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawai'i.

This web page is designed to direct individuals to other web pagesthat deal with World War II in the PTO (Pacific Theater ofOperations). I have been a "Destination Lecturer" for seven cruisesthroughout the Pacific Ocean (from Los Angeles to Sydney and fromSydney to Japan) and have provided information on two cruisesspecifically designed around World War II battle islands. (For a listof the cruises and various Pacific references, please see http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/PacificReferences.html.)

Some background information, entitled "Prelude to Pearl Harbor:Operation Hawai'i" (presented at an Anthropology Forum on December 5,1991) is available at http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/OperationHawaii.pdfand provides you with information leading up to December 7, 1941(and also see http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Forum/Dec1991.html).

An item entitled "World War II Ends!" is available at http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/WorldWarIIEnds2005.html(and also presented at an Anthropology Forum on September 1, 2005)and in it I wrote the following:

"It has been calculated that there were approximately 1,364 days between the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 (December 8 in Japan) and the instrument-of-surrender signing in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Over those 1,364 days approximately 1,555,308 Japanese Army and Navy personnel died: or roughly 1,140 deaths per day! Approximately 107,903 Americans were killed over the same period of time, or roughly 79 individuals from the United States Navy, Army, and Marine Corps died every day in the Pacific War. The only word which truly describes the War in the Pacific is horrific. The agony, pain, and suffering on all sides (by military personnel and civilians at their home locations) was tremendous and the repercussions are still being felt to this day!"

I still stand by those words and I will also repeat the followingfrom the 2005 presentation:

"Shortly after World War II had ended, American intelligence in the Pacific received a shocking report: The Japanese, just prior to their surrender, had developed and successfully test-fired an atomic bomb. The project had been housed in or near Konan (Japanese name for Hungnam), Korea, in the peninsula's North. The war had ended before the weapon could be used, and the plant where it had been made was now in Russian hands [stress added]." Robert K. Wilcox, 1985, Japan's Secret War (NY: William Morrow and Company, Inc.), page 15. # # #

Copyright © 2007; all rights reserved by Charles F. Urbanowicz

6 December 2007 by cfu