are remembering

Oral historians are remembering Pearl Harbor

Oral history is enjoying a boom at present. In many ways it is becoming the common man’s key to the understanding of great moments in history. The oral historian concedes that he re cords accounts which may suffer from the respondent’s pre judices, lapses of memory, or attempts to elaborate on or em broider the role played by the individual concerned in the par ticular event. However, the bringing together of a series of oral histories does fill out the canvas of historical events.

I recently read two of the many books spawned by the De cember 1941 Japanese attack up

on Pearl Habor which served to bring home to me the great im pact it is possible for oral history to have. My first encounter was with Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept and I ploughed through all of its 873 pages and marvelled at the plethora of in formation, both significant and trivial, it contained. This book contains so much personal infor mation about the participants that I was left pondering how one man could have met so many people and conducted so many interviews. Perhaps, I thought, imagination and fiction enter this account at times. Certainly it was a book worth the effort of read

ing through. But I was left want ing to be assured about the aut henticity of the characters so intimately recorded.

My second foray into this sub ject provided the answer. Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! came to my aid. Here was oral history par excellence. The accounts were compiled almost 40 years after the event. Most of the respon dents had retired, many had risen from humble rank at the time of the attack to become senior offic ers. Many remain the “ordinary men and women’’ of Pearl Harbor.

Prange tells us of the bombing of the USS Nevada and tells of Ensign Joseph K. Taussig, Jr “refusing all efforts to take him to a battle dressing station’’ and “insisting on continuing his con trol of the AA battery and the continuation of fire on enemy aircraft.’’ Writing in Air Raid: Pearl Harbor! Captain Taussig, now retired, remembers the inci

dent in different terms. “My shipmates carried me into the sky control structure between the two anti-aircraft directors and laid me on the deck. Eventually a phar macist’s mate arrived with a bas ket stretcher, administered a shot of morphine and got me into the stretcher. The rest of the morning was spent ‘observing’ the Battle of Pearl Harbor through the eyes of the enlisted personnel who remained with me.’’

I suggest to those with an avid interest in the saga of the attack on Pearl Harbor that a reading of the 47 personal accounts in this book will be a richly rewarding

experience.

W. G. Coppell.

The 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor has been de scribed as the most devastating surprise strike in military his tory. Shown here are some of the carrier-based aircraft pre paring for the attack, and part of the stricken U.S. fleet. - U.S.

Navy and Robert Hunt Library pictures.