Long time readers of this blog will remember that my abortive career as an historian was based on Japanese-American interactions in the interwar period up to and including Pearl Harbor.
I recently read a book called Resurrection, by Daniel Madsen. The subtitle is “Salvaging the Battle Fleet at Pearl Harbor.” Madsen takes us from the attack on 7 December 1941 through the final dive on Utah on 15 March 1944 and explains in a fair amount of detail how the fleet was salvaged. He draws on official records and a few interviews with key personnel and tells a pretty good sea story, if you’re interested in this sort of minutiae.
We tend to forget that quite a few of the ships that sank or were damaged at Pearl ended up back in service long before the war really got hot in the Pacific.
Here’s to those who died at Pearl, and to those who fought and died with the words “Remember Pearl Harbor” on their lips.
A "surly curmudgeon[], suspicious and lacking in altruism." (Robert A. Heinlein)