Pearl Harbor

JUDITH P. VLADECK, 83, Labor lawyer, rights advocate The prominent labor lawyer and ardent advocate of women's rights in the workplace, particularly on college campuses, died Monday in New York City. Mrs. Vladeck brought a combination of showmanship and detailed analysis of salary histories and job performance to her cases. She took on potent opponents like major Wall Street investment firms, Union Carbide Corp. and the City University of New York - and usually won, or settled for millions.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- Pearl Harbor is 4,000 miles away and its day of infamy nearly 60 years past. But this year's festive buildup to the Kentucky Derby will include, amid the traditional steamboat races and free concerts, a fiery re-enactment of that American military disaster.That has rankled some locals, who find the event out of place in a day set aside for family fun.Especially perplexed are representatives of a flourishing Asian population lured here as part of the state's decade-old strategy to attract Japanese investment.

WASHINGTON -- The first attack came at two minutes before 8 a.m., with ear-splitting explosions aboard the USS West Virginia and USS Oklahoma, nestled along Battleship Row in Pearl Harbor.Waves of Japanese dive and torpedo bombers descended from the skies, swarming around the warships and nearby Hickam Field. American sailors desperately manned the ships' guns or scrambled for cover amid the rising plumes of acrid smoke.Now, 58 years later, there is a growing debate about whether the sneak attack from the heavens was coupled with another from beneath the harbor's waves: Did a Japanese midget submarine fire its two torpedoes at the West Virginia and the Oklahoma?

It's been more than half a century since squadrons of Japanese bombers destroyed 2,400 lives and the Navy's unsuspecting fleet of ships moored in a Hawaiian port on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning.But debate still rages over which Americans are to blame for the nation's most painful military defeat.As with the assassination of President Kennedy, the theorizing behind Pearl Harbor might never die, possibly because the real story seems destined to forever remain a mystery. It has inspired scores of books and extensive investigations by the Navy and Congress.

Frank O. Cordeiro Jr.,73, who took photographs of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Gen. Douglas MacArthur signing the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri, died Monday in Trail, Ore.

EYES FILLED with tears, voice trembling, Hugh M. Roper read aloud from a Western Union telegram sent 58 years ago: "Am safe. Unharmed." And below that message in his mother's handwriting: "Thank God for this.""I'm sorry," Roper, 78, said to 13-year-old Chris Tucker. "This is extremely emotional for me. This is the first notice they had, five days after the attack."Dated Dec. 12, 1941, the telegram was sent by Roper from Hawaii to his family in Baltimore to tell them that he had survived the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

"Riding the East Wind: A Novel of War and Peace," by O. Kaga. Kodansha International. 520 pages. $28."Riding the East Wind," a powerful Japanese novel of social realism and historical documentary by Otohiko Kaga, was a 1982 best seller in Japan. Now being translated into English for the first time, Kaga is a professor of criminal psychology turned novelist. Set during World War II, his novel centers on the Kurushima family. Saburo, a diplomat, is based on the real-life Japanese ambassador who signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy, yet fought valiantly behind the scenes to avert the Pacific War.His wife, Alice, is an American; their children suffer the confusions of mixed loyalties and textured identities.

HONOLULU -- The USS Arizona -- sitting solitary, silent and hallowed on Battleship Row for almost 60 years -- is not alone any more.The battered ship, resting on the bottom of Pearl Harbor, has become a national symbol, the sunken memorial to the Americans who died during the Japanese attack on Oahu and Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. It is the most sacred U.S. Navy monument on Earth, the final grave for the 1,177 sailors and Marines who perished aboard during the attack.Now, anchored near the Arizona is the USS Missouri, the second most-famous battleship of World War II, official designation BB-63.

WASHINGTON -- Nearly 58 years after Japanese raiders caught U.S. forces by surprise at Pearl Harbor, a dispute over blame for the disaster is still raging.Now, President Clinton is being asked to intervene.Seven retired senior officers, backed by a majority of the Senate, want Clinton to excuse Pearl Harbor's top commanders for the base's unpreparedness and posthumously promote them."The time is long overdue to correct this gross injustice," the retired officers, including four past chiefs of naval operations and a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote Clinton last month.

Retired Capt. Joseph Taussig Jr., a Navy hero who lost a leg at Pearl Harbor and later became a top Pentagon official, died of an embolism Tuesday at Anne Arundel Medical Center. He was 79.An Annapolis resident and third-generation Naval Academy graduate, Captain Taussig helped developed the Navy helicopter unit's emergency air supply system in 1987. Called an "emergency egress device," Navy officials credit it with saving 140 pilots.He was born in Newport, R.I., in 1920 and graduated from Western High School in Washington in 1937.

The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor takes place only near the end of "From Here to Eternity" (1953). But it's an ideal selection for the Maryland Historical Society's series, "Patriotic Hollywood: World War II in Film." Stephen Ambrose once wrote, "What held [American GIs] together was not country and flag, but unit cohesion." "From Here to Eternity" is about the pain of building that unit cohesion and the rewards it gives to all who join it, be they selfless, selfish or damaged.

Charles William Winkler Jr., a retired Baltimore County employee who witnessed the bombing of Pearl Harbor while serving as a crewman aboard a Navy tugboat, died of Alzheimer's disease Tuesday at Good Samaritan Nursing Center. The Cub Hill resident was 93. Born in Baltimore and raised in Reservoir Hill and Gardenville, he attended Baltimore parochial schools. He joined the Navy at age 18 in 1934 and served aboard the USS Lexington, Chicago and Bobolink. In early December 1941, he was given the choice of remaining in Hawaii, where he was stationed at Maui, or returning to the mainland.

I still think about Saipan because it was the worst one," recalled Samuel A. Culotta, a Baltimore lawyer and frequent Republican candidate, who spent World War II in the Pacific as a Navy corpsman. Culotta, 84, was a veteran of nine island landings that stretched from Makin Atoll to Kwaajalein, Eniwetok, Okinawa and the Philippines. The hellish memories of five days on Saipan in the Mariana Islands are as fresh as they were 65 years ago, Culotta said. He likened the June 15, 1944, invasion, to an almost "forgotten D-Day," with 3,500 Americans killed and thousands wounded.

On previous December Sevenths, Thomas Talbott marked the anniversary alongside a group of men who also survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yesterday - 67 years after what President Franklin D. Roosevelt called "a date which will live in infamy" - Talbott, 87, was one of just two survivors who made it to a ceremony aboard the Coast Guard cutter Taney in Baltimore's Inner Harbor. As he waited for the program to begin, he sat next to Warren Coligny, also 87. Coligny, who was bundled up and sitting in a wheelchair, has Alzheimer's disease.

Honolulu, on Hawaii's island of Oahu, is a city rich in both history and beauty. Sixty-seven years ago today, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, killing nearly 2,400 people and wounding more than 1,000. Jan. 17 will mark the 115th anniversary of the bloodless coup in which American colonists overthrew the Hawaiian monarchy. And on Jan. 20, more history will be made: The Honolulu-born Barack Obama will be sworn in as the 44th U.S. president. If you want to experience some of Honolulu's beauty, head to Waikiki Beach for white sand and cerulean ocean.

Boy, 11, missing; failed to return from school An 11-year-old boy was reported missing after he did not return home after leaving Golden Ring Middle School on Friday, Baltimore County police said. Mezcal Donta Davis of the 6000 block of Nahant Road in Rosedale is black with a medium complexion, brown eyes and shoulder-length brown hair. He was last seen wearing a gray hooded sweat shirt and tan pants. He stands 4 feet 6 inches tall and weighs about 100 pounds. Anyone with information about the boy is asked to call police at 410-887-5000.

The entrance of the United States into World War II was not unexpected. But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was stunning news. It was late afternoon on that Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941, via radio when people in Harford County first heard about the deadly attack in Hawaii. There were men from Harford County stationed there at the time, and the hours and days were long indeed until those loved ones were reported alive and well. Everyone recalls exactly what he or she was doing that afternoon.

Timothy J. Hynes Jr., a Pearl Harbor survivor and World War II gunnery officer who later was chief of the Maryland Transit Authority Police, died Aug. 17 of a cardiac arrest at his Mays Chapel home. He was 89. Mr. Hynes was born and raised in New York City. After earning a bachelor's degree in business administration from Fordham University in 1941, he was commissioned an officer in the Navy. Mr. Hynes was stationed at Pearl Harbor and was an eyewitness to the Japanese attack on Dec. 7, 1941.

M.F.K. Fisher, who would have turned 100 earlier this month, was one of the first food writers to untangle all that's bound up in eating: the pleasure, the sentiment, the anxiety. Her best-remembered stories describe the magic of tangerines drying on radiators or the fuzz skimmed from her grandmother's strawberry jam. But those are stories for better times. In How to Cook a Wolf - the book she wrote just after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 - the focus was on surviving with "grace and gusto."

Michael K. Yuhas Sr. would occasionally tell his children about his desire to return to Pearl Harbor, expressing regret over missing an earlier opportunity to go. Talking to his daughter in March, the 89-year-old Army veteran and Howard County resident brought it up again. "He said, 'Now it's too late,' " Michele Neugent said. The look on his face caught Neugent off-guard - she thought he had given up on the idea of ever making the trip. "It's not too late," she recalled thinking. On a whim, she visited a Web site she'd recently heard about, where people post their wants and needs, and started typing.