December 7 commemorates the day on which the U.S. Navy's Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and the U.S. Army's nearby airfields were attacked by the Japanese air force. A memo sent earlier in 1941 from the Japanese Foreign Ministry to its embassy in Washington, DC, had stated Japan's reason for moving toward war: ". . . our Empire, to save its very life, must take measures to secure the raw materials [especially oil and scrap metal] of the South Seas." American's, however, experienced the assault as a "day that will live in infamy." The appalling war that followed consumed approximately 2,300,000 American and Japanese lives.

Yoeman, Second Class, Jack H. Good, was aboard the repair ship U.S.S. Vestal, tethered to the battleship U.S.S. Arizona, when the attack began at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, at 7:55 a.m. on December 7, 1941.

"... a third class bossin ... he grabbed a fire ax and cut lines [to the U.S.S. Arizona] ... They always said it took an hour and a half to get under away ... but we were under way in seven minutes ... Everybody was putting up anti-aircraft fire. It just looked like somebody drawed a big black line across the sky ... if they went into that they weren't going any where. The planes that were over us ... before they started to strafe, they were so low (the top of our mast was 123 feet above the water) they had to go up to go over it. And there were times you could actually see the pilot's expression on his face. Now that's low! Later on when they ... fished a few [Japanese pilots] out of the water, of course they were dead, but you'd find University of California college rings, University of Oregon, University of Washington, and that amazed me. It still does ... The year after Pearl Harbor I averaged 3 1/2 hours sleep ..."

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