"'The Koreans have attacked Pearl Harbor! Attacked in great strength!'"
-SM Stirling, The Sea Peoples (New York, 2017), Chapter Nine, p. 153.
"'We will avenge this infamy.'"
-op. cit., p. 154.
Respect for the global cultural influence of British humor prompts us also to quote the line:
"Infamy! Infamy! They've all got it in for me!" See here.
For me, the word "infamy" instantly connected these quotes although I realize that humor might be considered inappropriate. What does anyone else think?
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Of course the use of "infamy" in this context will immediately remind any historically literate American of Pres. Roosevelt's speech of Dec. 8, 1941 asking Congress for a formal declaration of war against Japan following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor the previous day.
And I don't object to the humorous use of the word "infamy."
Sean
Removed previous comment due to spelling error. Corrected text follows.
Paul:
As that great humanitarian David Birr never said before just now, "If you can't laugh about thousands of people being killed, what can you laugh about?"
To put it less sarcastically, "And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
'T is that I may not weep."
— Byron, Don Juan
Stirling, by the way, is fond of history repeating itself in his stories. I'm not really criticizing — I enjoy it as a spot-the-historical-reference game — but moments like an admiral light-years and more than a millennium from 1898 Manila Harbor not only saying, "You may fire when ready," but to a subordinate with the same name as in the historical predecessor, are a touch improbable.
David,
Thank you.
Paul.
Harry Turtledove starts his "Great War" series with an American sneak attack on a (British-held) Pearl Harbor... 8-).
For the record (I think I may have mentioned this here before):
The U.S. Navy did launch a sneak attack on Pearl Harbor ... in February 1932, as part of a war game. It was planned by an aviation-minded admiral, Harry Yarnell, and thus conducted by planes launched from the aircraft carriers Saratoga and Lexington, coming from northeast of Hawaii. Thanks to using a near-constant cloud bank over the Koolau Range of mountains as a "smoke screen," the attack achieved complete surprise and, had it been armed with real bombs and bullets, would've done massive damage.
It was Sunday morning ... the 7th.
Most of the Navy brass dismissed this as a fluke, and continued to base their plans around battleships. Not quite ten years later, another, larger force of planes came from the northeast and out of that same cloud bank early on Sunday the 7th. This time the weapons were quite real.
Given that the Japanese were certainly spying on us in '32, it seems likely that someone in their high command said, in effect, "This is a great battle plan the Americans have shown us. Let's use it!"
In 1911, Theodore Roosevelt predicted that there wouldn't be war between the US and Japan for another twenty years, that it would be very dangerous if Germany and Japan ever allied (at the time Japan was in an alliance with the UK) and that if there was such a conflict, it would start with a sudden no-warning naval attack on Pearl Harbor.
Very astute man.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and DAVID!
Mr. Stirling: If I recall right, the US attack on a British held Pearl Harbor in Turtledove's GREAT WAR series was part of an ongoing war of the US, Germany, Austria-Hungary against France, the UK, and a Confederacy which had broken away from the US. So it was not exactly a sneak attack during peace time.
David: IF I may trust the film I saw about the Pearl Harbor attack (was it TORA, TORA, TORA?), the Japanese plan called for a SECOND wave of bombers and fighters to complete and worsen the damage done by the first wave. There was no second wave because the Japanese admiral in command apparently lost his nerve and went back home. Possibly because no American carriers were at Pearl Harbor. And I can see the irony in the Japanese being inspired by an AMERICAN test attack!
Sean
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