Category Archives: 40s

Day Of Infamy A La Thailand

December 7, 2023 – 1:44 am

Eighty-one years ago Japanese aircraft attacked the US Pacific Fleet. Nearly every capital ship in Pearl Harbor was sunk or severely damaged by bombs or torpedoes and the Pacific Ocean became a Japanese lake until the BattleMidway. The next day President Roosevelt declared before Congress, “December 7th shall live forever as a day of infamy.” […]

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TORA TORA TORA 2023

December 7, 2023 – 1:24 am

Like JFK’s assassination everyone of a certain age remembered where they were during the announcement of the Japanese attack on the US Pacific Fleet in Pearl Harbor. Many had to ask, “Where’s Pearl Harbor?” This morning to commemorate their ignorance I posed the same question to younger people on the streets of Manhattan. Few of […]

By Peter | Also posted in history, War | Tagged , | Comments (0)

A FLYING DIME by Peter Nolan Smith

November 2, 2021 – 11:55 am

On an June evening in 1939 my uncle and three of his teenage friends exited from Portland’s State Theater’s western matinee of STAGECOACH and JESSE JAMES. The gunfights in the cowboy double bill had had a funny effect on their blood, for while America was still peace, the threat of war loomed across the Atlantic. […]

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Nagasaki Plus One Month 1945

August 6, 2021 – 1:05 pm

This rare photo of the Hiroshima mushroom cloud was taken on August 6, 1945. The Hiroshima bombing claimed approximately 120,000 lives and the subsequent leveling of Nagasaki annihilated 80,000. The US military strategists have long held that these two attacks saved over a million US troops by forcing the Japanese Empire to surrender to the […]

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ON THE ROAD / Kerouac’s Map 1947

July 31, 2018 – 6:21 pm

Click on map to enlarge. This map from Jack Kerouac’s diary detailed his hitchhiking across the USA in 1947. His itinerary includes more stops than the classic hit ROUTE 66 sung originally by Nat King Cole. New York City, Chicago, Davenport Des Moines, North Platte, Cheyenne, Denver, Laramie, Salt Lake, Reno, San Francisco, Madera, Fresno, […]

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