Japanese Attack

Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, dawned clear and chilly as Baltimoreans went off to church or gathered later in the day for family dinners.Others busied themselves working on Christmas gardens or window shopping in downtown department stores.Moviegoers at the Hippodrome could take in "The Men In Her Life," which starred Loretta Young and Dean Jagger, while Keith's Theater was showing the Abbott and Costello comedy "Keep 'Em Flying."The Sun that morning, however, carried a disturbing front-page bulletin:"New York, Dec. 6 -- The British radio reported tonight that "two large and heavily escorted Japanese convoys were seen steaming toward the Gulf of Siam this morning.

Cannons were fired from one well-known ship and a wreath was dropped from another yesterday in an afternoon of homecoming and remembrance at Baltimore's Inner Harbor.Returning from a nine-month tour of Europe and the Caribbean in full, regal sail, the Pride of Baltimore II fired a fusillade of shots from the 4-pound cannons mounted on its sides.The shots, which echoed across the harbor, coincided with the dropping of a red, white and blue wreath by three survivors of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor from the stern of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Taney.

Bethesda. -- At 3 a.m. on December 7, 1941, Lt. Cmdr. Kenjiro Ono was listening to Bing Crosby sing ''Sweet Leilani.'' Ono was in the radio room of the Japanese aircraft carrier Okagi, the command ship of a task force headed for Pearl Harbor. He was not really a fan of Der Bingle. He was listening to the all-night music program from KGMB in Honolulu, primarily for the weather report. When he heard it -- ''partly cloudy, ceiling 3.500 feet, visibility good'' -- he knew the weather was perfect for what the task force planned to do.In 125 minutes the Japanese destroyed or damaged 18 ships and 188 planes, and killed 2,400 American sailors and soldiers.

LONDON -- The British government has begun releasing documents from Winston Churchill's secret wartime intelligence archive, but the papers have shed no light on one of the war's greatest mysteries: whether Churchill knew in advance of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.One document, dated Dec. 4, three days before the attack, is a record of a message that had been sent Dec. 2 from the Japanese foreign minister in Tokyo to the Japanese ambassador in Washington ordering him to destroy secret documents, codes and related materials.

From The Sun Jan. 19-25, 1842JAN. 20: Robert Wilson, formerly a member of the Temperance Society, kicked his pledge to the "moles and bats," on Tuesday night last, and as a consequence abused F. Bayley, and beat his mother-in-law, for which outrageous conduct, he was committed jail.JAN. 21: Randolph's Will -- This has been decided and the slaves are free. It is reported that they are to go either to Canada or Liberia.From The Sun Jan. 19-25, 1892JAN. 19: The population of the United States increases by 1,000,000 persons yearly.

Total victory for the Japanese at Pearl Harbor slips away at 8:10 a.m. The aircraft carrier Lexington eases out of Hawaii at that hour, the last of the three aircraft carriers based there to leave port.For all the carnage and destruction the Japanese would wreak on Pearl Harbor in two more days, it is the aircraft carriers they are after. The attack on Pearl Harbor is not so much an attempt to defeat the United States as to cripple the Americans long enough for Japan to seize and hold the Western Pacific and Indochina.

On Dec. 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor -- an obscure U.S. naval base in the territory of Hawaii -- was ravaged by a Japanese attack.The devastating surprise assault propelled the United States into World War II, forever changing the face of the globe.Today through next Sunday, The Sun will publish recollections of the week that led up to Pearl Harbor, and recall the lives and times of Marylanders on the eve of cataclysm.

LONG DAY'S JOURNEY INTO WAR:DECEMBER 7, 1941.Stanley Weintraub.Dutton.706 pages. $26.95.Orson Welles was downing a drink in the lobby of the Blackstone Hotel in Chicago. CBS correspondent Ed Murrow was on the fourth hole of a golf game. Ensign John F. Kennedy was attending the final football game of the season at Washington's Griffith Stadium. Adlai Stevenson had just returned from a family picnic and Charles Lindbergh got the news when he casually turned on the radio at his home on Martha's Vineyard.

The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came out of the blue, right?Well, not exactly. There was abundant evidence 50 years ago of an imminent assault. Relations with the country were quickly souring. Intercepted Japanese communications hinted strongly -- even giving the time -- of a raid. And an imperial submarine was sunk near Pearl Harbor only hours before the attack on Dec. 7, 1941.But of all the unheeded warnings, perhaps the most frustrating was that received by Joseph Lockard, then a 19-year-old Army private.

Last month, PBS got the drop on the celebration of the 500th anniversary of Columbus setting foot on the Americas with a six-hour production. Tonight, public stations help begin next month's commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor."