ChicagoSunTimes: Stanley Swiontek played the clarinet, and it might have cost him his life.
The Chicagoan was a cook on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor which, like many ships, had a band. On Dec. 6, 1941, there was a contest, and the Arizona band came in second, earning Swiontek the right to sleep in on Sunday morning.
So when the Japanese surprise attack came, and a bomb hit the Arizona, sinking the battleship in nine minutes, Swiontek, instead of being at work and perhaps safe, was in his bunk, deep below decks.
Or maybe it wouldn’t have mattered. Five out of six sailors aboard the Arizona died that day. Swiontek’s family never learned what happened to their Stanley. His body was never recovered — it is still entombed with 947 shipmates aboard the sunken Arizona, now a national shrine.
Franklin D. Roosevelt famously dubbed Dec. 7 “a day which will live in infamy.” And it has. But 75 years is a long time. Even infamy fades. The remaining Pearl Harbor survivors — a few thousand — are in their 90s. The smallest child to hear the shock of that Sunday afternoon radio bulletin is at least 80 now.
And a mere 15 years ago, America was attacked and we lost more people than we did 75 years ago. The difference is that 75 years ago, we went to war to win it, and in 4 years we had won it. It’s been 15 year since 9-11-01, and we are still at war with no end in sight. IMHO, it’s because our weak assed leaders are not committed to winning this particular war, they make rules of engagement that hamstring our soldiers, while treating enemy combatants with kid gloves, and shit themselves whenever the MSM reports something not kosher because it ‘wasn’t fair’. Now that we finally have someone with a set of balls in command, maybe things will change for the better, and our war fighters will be allowed to kill the enemy wherever they find them, and this shit will finally end.
I wonder if Madonna is ashamed of these Americans?
God bless the memory of Stanley Swiontek, one of the miliions of people who have made me grateful to be an American. Japan is one of the luckiest nations in the world to have been defeated by the United States. There were no reprisals, no massacres, no permanent appropriation of territory; instead, Americans worked with the Japanese to rebuild that nation. Honest Japanese, and I believe there are many, realized that by God’s grace they had lucked out since the Chinese enemy they had oppressed and massacred and later feared did not become the occupiers.
And Obama says these people should let go of their bitterness (I guess like the bitter clingers). The thing they don’t like is people with memories, who remember infamy, who remember that climate always changes with no help from us, who remember Socialism has never worked, etc.
MM – I’m ashamed of Madonna. The troll bitch. ‘Nuff said.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Our Sea, Land, Sky and Space
September or December
Active and Veteran
The True >%1’er
Hyland is 93
Eternal Vigilance our due debt
333 AMPM 366
Peace Through Strength
PPP
Sky Dog One
USS Arizona, Dec 7th
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