The Pearl Harbor Problem

The Pearl Harbor Problem

Ottawa, Canada’s capital, a hot summer day in July, 1961. Along with my parents and two siblings, I had just returned from Zweibrücken Germany, where my RCAF officer father had completed a four-year posting at the Canadian fighter base there. We had recently returned to the family home on Cunningham Avenue, in the tranqil suburb of Alta Vista, in Ottawa, Canada.

Young boy as I was, I had no warning that I was about to be brushed by what could only be said to be a black-winged creature from the past, the Japanese attack of Pearl Harbor of the 7th of December, 1941. For the United States, the beginning of the War in the Pacific and entrance to the War in Europe. Wars that would take twenty, thirty, perhaps as many as fourty million lives.  The worst war in human history.

Of course,  I that day in Ottawa, innocent boy that I was, I had no idea that I was about to be introduced to the true story of Pearl Harbor, and  its beginning,  a mystery of which even now, decades later, the world has no knowledge.

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