Quotessence
Home / Topics / Pearl Harbor Quotes

Pearl Harbor Quotes

Browse 10 quotes about Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor Quotes

“My parents didn't settle for the lives their parents lived. They stepped out and up, my father lying his way into the Navy when he was too young to enlist, my mother marrying this fugitive from the mills when she was too young for marriage. A smart guy, he took every course the Navy offered, aced them all, becoming the youngest chief warrant officer in the service. After Pearl Harbor the Navy needed line officers fast and my dad was suddenly wearing gold stripes. My mother watched and learned, getting good at the ways of this new world. She dressed beautifully. Our quarters were always handsomely fitted out. She and Dad were gracious, well-spoken. They were far from rich, but there were books and there was music and sometimes conversations about the world. We even listened to the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays. Still, when I finished high school, their attitudes and the times said that there was little point in further educating a girl. I would take a clerical job until I could find the right junior officer to marry and pursue his career, as helpmeet. If I picked well and worked hard, I might someday be an admiral's wife.”

EducationMarriageClassWifeMilitaryNavyWwiiPearl Harbor
Author:Ann Medlock
Create image

“Farewell, Timothy Riley’s Bar," Lane said softly. "Home of the nickel beer. Snooker emporium. Repository of Bluebird records, three for a dime. We honor you and your passing. Farewell. Farewell, Timothy Riley—and terraplanes and rumbleseats and saddle shoes and Helen Forrest and the Triple-C camps and Andy Hardy and Lum ‘n’ Abner and the world-champion New York Yankees! Rest in peace, you age of innocence—you beautiful, serene, carefree, pre-Pearl Harbor, long summer night. We’ll never see your likes again.”

SummerNostalgiaBeerPearl Harbor
Book:Rod Serling's Night Gallery
Create image

“The Covid-19 pandemic is going to be much worse than Pearl Harbor. It's going to be nationwide, in every city in every state. And it's going to last for months, not hours. It's going to be an elephant compared to an ant.”

ComparisonCovid 19TwitterCovid19Twitter QuotesCoronavirus QuotesCovid19 QuotesTwitter Size QuotesCovid 19 QuotesPearl Harbor
Book:American Fascism: A German Writer's Urgent Warning To America
Create image

“Some read to remember the home they had left behind, others to forget the hell that surrounded them. Books uplifted their weary souls and energized their minds…books had the power to sooth an aching heart, renew hope for the future, and provide a respite when there was no other escape.”

World War IiThe Great GatsbyBanned BooksOkinawaBook BurningNormandyGisFranklin Delano RooseveltIwo JimaPearl HarborGuadalcanalSaipanGi BillArmed Services EditionsBetty SmithOperation TorchVictory Books Campaign
Author:Molly Guptill Manning
Create image

“In the years that followed, William would become obsessed with the question of what went wrong. He analyzed thousands of pages of Pearl Harbor documents and wrote a three-volume report that boiled down to this: MAGIC had strongly indicated an attack on December 7, but the decrypts had gotten bottled up through a series of farcical missteps in the dissemination stage of the process, and U.S. leaders weren't alerted to the danger in time to take action. It was nuanced: The crucial MAGIC decrypts had been slow to arrive in Pearl Harbor partly because the military hadn't given the Pearl Harbor commanders a Purple machine of their own, a direct tap into the MAGIC fire hose. This decision had been made out of a reasonable desire to limit the distribution of Purple machines in order to minimize the chances of the Japanese learning about the MAGIC secret. It was a prime example of the brutal choices that codebreakers must live with. Do you take risks to keep a secret that may save hundreds of thousands of future lives, or do you expose the secret to save a small number of lives right now? William once referred to this broad dilemma as "cryptologic schizophrenia,”

IntelligenceWorld War IiWwiiWw2Pearl Harbor
Book:The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies
Create image

“The codebreakers had known for days, if not weeks, that a large Japanese attack was coming. William and the rest of his team had seen the MAGIC intercepts. It was obvious from MAGIC that Japan had been poised to strike; the only mystery was where. What surprised William on December 7 was not the attack itself but the location. He thought it would happen in Manila, not Pearl Harbor. next few days, more than one codebreaker wrote his In the years that followed, William would become obsessed with the question of what went wrong. He analyzed thousands of pages of Pearl Harbor documents and wrote a three-volume report that boiled down to this: MAGIC had strongly indicated an attack on December 7, but the decrypts had gotten bottled up through a series of farcical missteps in the dissemination stage of the process, and U.S. leaders weren't alerted to the danger in time to take action. It was nuanced: The crucial MAGIC decrypts had been slow to arrive in Pearl Harbor partly because the military hadn't given the Pearl Harbor commanders a Purple machine of their own, a direct tap into the MAGIC fire hose. This decision had been made out of a reasonable desire to limit the distribution of Purple machines in order to minimize the chances of the Japanese learning about the MAGIC secret. It was a prime example of the brutal choices that codebreakers must live with. Do you take risks to keep a secret that may save hundreds of thousands of future lives, or do you expose the secret to save a small number of lives right now? William once referred to this broad dilemma as "cryptologic schizophrenia," adding, "What to do? Thus far, no real psychiatric or psychoanalytic”

IntelligenceWwiiPearl Harbor
Book:The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies
Create image