开云体育

?????????

?????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????
?????????????????????????????
????? Pearl
Harbor
-

-

?

???????????????????
Really interesting, and I never knew this little bit of
history:

?

At Pearl Harbor tour boats ferry people out to the USS
Arizona Memorial in Hawaii every thirty minutes.? We just
missed a ferry and had to wait
thirty minutes.? I went into
a small gift shop to kill
time.

In the gift shop, I purchased a small book entitled,
"Reflections on Pearl Harbor " by Admiral Chester
Nimitz.?

Sunday, December 7th, 1941--Admiral Chester Nimitz
was attending a concert in Washington D.C.?? He was paged
and told there was a phone call for him.? When he answered the
phone, it was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the
phone.? He told Admiral Nimitz that he (Nimitz) would now be
the Commander of the Pacific Fleet.?

Admiral Nimitz flew to Hawaii to assume command of
the Pacific Fleet.? He landed at Pearl Harbor on Christmas Eve,
1941.
??
There was such a spirit of despair, dejection and
defeat--you would have thought the Japanese had already won the
war.

?

On Christmas Day, 1941, Adm. Nimitz was given a boat tour
of the destruction wrought on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese.?
Big sunken battleships and navy vessels cluttered the waters every
where you looked.?

As the tour boat returned to dock, the young
helmsman of the boat asked, "Well Admiral,
what do you think
after seeing all this destruction?"? Admiral Nimitz's reply
shocked everyone within the sound of his
voice.

Admiral Nimitz said, "The Japanese made three
of the biggest mistakes an attack force could ever make, or God was
taking care of America .? Which do you think it
was?"?

Shocked and surprised, the young helmsman asked,
"What do mean by saying the Japanese made the three biggest mistakes
an attack force ever made?" Nimitz explained:?

Mistake number one?: the Japanese attacked on
Sunday morning. Nine out
of??every ten crewmen of those ships were ashore on
leave. If those same ships had been lured to sea and been sunk--we
would have lost 38,000 men instead of
3,800.

?

Mistake number two?: when the Japanese saw all those battleships lined in a
row, they got so carried away sinking those battleships, they never
once bombed our dry docks opposite those ships.? If they had
destroyed our dry docks, we would have had to tow every one of those
ships to America to be
repaired.

?

? As it is now, the ships are in shallow water and can be
raised. One tug can pull them over to the dry docks, and we can have
them repaired and at sea by the time we could have towed them to
America .? And I already have crews??ashore anxious to man those
ships.

?

Mistake number three: Every drop of fuel in the Pacific
theater of war is in top of the ground storage tanks five miles away
over that hill.? One attack plane could have strafed those
tanks and destroyed our fuel
supply.

?

That's why I say the Japanese made three of the biggest
mistakes an attack force could make?or God was taking care of America
.

?

I've never forgotten what I read in that little
book.? It is still an inspiration as I reflect upon it.?
In jest, I might suggest that because Admiral Nimitz was a Texan,
born and raised in Fredricksburg , Texas -- he was a born
optimist.? But anyway you look at it--Admiral Nimitz was able
to see a silver lining in a situation and circumstance where
everyone else saw only despair and
defeatism.

?

?

President Roosevelt had chosen the right man for the
right job. We desperately needed a leader that could see silver
linings in the midst of the clouds of dejection, despair and
defeat?.

There is a reason that our national motto
is,??IN GOD WE TRUST.??

?

??