Foo - What were you doing on Dec. 7th, 1941?

Personally I was stuck in a horrible time warp. For days I had been feverishly emailing Roosevelt warning him of impending doom. Sadly he never replied.

I was flying around in my Mitsubishi A6M, and this whole big group of them came out of nowhere! Curious of what they were up to, I followed them...

Personally I was stuck in a horrible time warp. For days I had been feverishly emailing Roosevelt warning him of impending doom. Sadly he never replied.

I was in a time warp as well, but I was inhabiting Roosevelt's body and I was thwarting your attempts to change history and cause a time paradox. I mean if the invasion didn't happen then you wouldn't know about it to come back and warn them would you? Simple linear thinkers.

i was making 42 quail jerky pies.

I was on the Nimitz... and something really weird happened.....

I was stationed on the USS Nimitz with Michael Douglas's father, Kirk, Tom Cruise, and Val Kilmer. A couple of Zeros were strafing a private pleasure craft off of the coast of Ohau, so we spalshed 'em.

We were wondering why we were on a ship named for the current CINCPAC, thinking that Nimitz had a hell of a lot of chutzpa to name a ship after himself. Then I figured, he has five stars, and he's from Texas, and he looks a hell of a lot like Henry Fonda, so he was probably deserving of the honor.

i was making 42 quail jerky pies.

If this was on Dec. 8th, and you were on one of the islands, I'd have to question if it was truly quail jerky.

i was twinkling in my fathers 3 1/2 month old eyes.

I was running around with Kate Beckinsale.

I was acting as an unobserved wave function in probability.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Ya think??

i was twinkling in my fathers 3 1/2 month old eyes.

+1

I was a twinkling in my fathers 13 month old eyes.

I was gleem in my great grandmothers eye

chasing other souls around in the Guff waiting for my turn down here.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto



AKA the A-bomb.

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Ya think??

That was a line from movie "Tora Tora Tora".

Working as a speech writer for FDR. I remember having to look up the word "infamy" in the dictionary for some reason...

I was gleem in my great grandmothers eye

Gleem hadn't been invented until the early 50s.

That was a line from movie "Tora Tora Tora".

The reason why it was a line in "Tora, Tora, Tora" is because Yamamoto actually said it.

It was his reaction to finding out that the Japanese diplomats in Washington were unable to finish typing up what they were supposed to hand to Secretary of State Cordell Hull (only a minor little thing like s declaration of war, in effect) on time, and thus it was not handed over until well after the attack on Pearl Harbor had begun and was known in Washington.

Yamamoto had studied and worked in the US for a number of years, and as such had a much better understanding of the American mind and psyche than did just about anyone else in the Japanese High Command. He understood that the average American would be righteously p.o.'d about a sneak attack without a war declaration, this being back in the day when such niceties still mattered to people.

I was stationed on the USS Nimitz with Michael Douglas's father, Kirk, Tom Cruise, and Val Kilmer. A couple of Zeros were strafing a private pleasure craft off of the coast of Ohau, so we spalshed 'em.

We were wondering why we were on a ship named for the future CINCPAC, thinking that Nimitz had a hell of a lot of chutzpa to name a ship after himself. Then I figured, he was going to end up with five stars, and he's from Texas, and Henry Fonda was going to play him in a pretty crappy movie in about 30 years even though the two looked nothing alike, so he was probably deserving of the honor.

Fixed it for you.

+1

I was a twinkling in my fathers 13 month old eyes.

In my Dad's 16 year old eyes. Mom was 7. :eek:

The next day (44 years later), I got married, about 30 miles away from there.

Fixed it for you.

Excellent!! Thanks...

Personally I was stuck in a horrible time warp. For days I had been feverishly emailing Roosevelt warning him of impending doom. Sadly he never replied.

so you were in the final countdown i thought i recognized you.

My sperm hadn't been produced, but the donor was already enlisted and at war, unlike those yankee-come-latelys. My ovum was in high school in Winnipeg.

My sperm hadn't been produced, but the donor was already enlisted and at war, unlike those yankee-come-latelys. My ovum was in high school in Winnipeg.

Ah, but we were at war...with the Lend-Lease program the USA was sending war supplies to the Mother Country to help out Winston; it is just that Roosevelt wanted to appear neutral in the eyes of Hitler, so we were not actually at war until the Japanese attacked us. However, our lads joined the RAF and were being shot at, and our cargo vessels were being sunk and our merchant marines were being killed. While it was not official (and what in war is "official"?), the USA was indeed "at war".

At that point my grandpa wasn't even a grandpa yet. Or a father for that matter.

The reason why it was a line in "Tora, Tora, Tora" is because Yamamoto actually said it.

It was his reaction to finding out that the Japanese diplomats in Washington were unable to finish typing up what they were supposed to hand to Secretary of State Cordell Hull (only a minor little thing like s declaration of war, in effect) on time, and thus it was not handed over until well after the attack on Pearl Harbor had begun and was known in Washington.

Yamamoto had studied and worked in the US for a number of years, and as such had a much better understanding of the American mind and psyche than did just about anyone else in the Japanese High Command. He understood that the average American would be righteously p.o.'d about a sneak attack without a war declaration, this being back in the day when such niceties still mattered to people.

Also, as I understand it, the goal was to deal a death blow to the US Pacific fleet, sinking the carriers as well as the battleships. Unfortunately for the Japanese, the carriers were out on some exercise and thus nowhere to be found and sunk. Without destroying the carriers, there was no decisive victory that might force the US to negotiate peace in the Pacific on Japanese terms.

As for where I was, neither of my parents were born yet. My grandmother was probably just about to head to Japan for college. (I don't know when exactly she went to Japan--then the ruler of Taiwan--for college, but I know it overlapped with WWII.) She and her classmates wrote letters to Japanese Navy personnel as their way of supporting their troops. Turns out one of her letters was picked up by a really high ranking Navy officer (possibly an admiral... difficulties in communicating such precise terms with her make it hard for me to nail down details of the story) whose daughter was in my grandmother's class, and she and the officer's daughter became really good friends.