At Dawn We Slept

From an actual US Navy communication sent on December 7, 1941:

OOOO

7 DEC 41

NSS NR 977 Z 0F2 1830 0F3 1F0 O

AIRRAID ON PEARL HARBOR X THIS IS NOT
DRILL

COPY TO: A
B
O
COMMO FILE

CINCPAC
CINCLANT
CINCASIATIC
OPNAV

At 0753 local time, the Japanese attack on US Forces at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere in the Hawaiian Islands began. 2,403 American servicemen and civilians gave their lives in defense of our country that day. Fifteen were awarded the Medal of Honor. In that "Day of Infamy", it was their finest hour.

Japanese admiral Isoroku Yamamoto - the architect of the Pearl Harbor raid - commented after the attack, "I feel that all we have done is to awake a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve." He had that right.

The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt in his address to the Congress said:

But always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against
us. No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated
invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to
absolute victory...we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will
make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger
us...With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of
our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.

Oh, would today's Democrats sound like that...

Finally, from Francis Scott Key:

Oh! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved homes and the war’s desolation,
Blest with vict’ry and peace, may the Heav’n-rescued land
Praise the Pow’r that hath made and preserved us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto—“In God is our trust.”
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

It is 65 years today since the Pearl Harbor attack. It is just over five years since 9/11. Are we sleeping again?

Never forget. Ever.