Pearl Harbor + 80 years

On December 19, 1941, Oregon State's 34 players had finished practice and hopped in cars to drive to Albany to hop on the Beaver Express from Albany, Oregon to Durham, North Carolina.  They had to switch trains in Portland, Oregon.  Quentin Greenough had the flu and had to be carried in a stretcher.  Chiaki "Jack" Yoshihara had to stay behind at Portland because of FDR's Executive Order, restricting individuals born in Japan to travel no more than 35 miles from "home."  No exception was made for Jack Yoshihara.

December 20, 1941, was Oregon State's first full day of travel.  The Beaver Express stopped in Hood River to give Alfred Dethman (Bob's dad) time to say goodbye and leave two boxes of apples, Marvin Markman's family was there at The Dalles to see Marvin off.  Choc Shelton, suffering from laryngitis, was up before dawn to meet his father in LaGrande.  George Bain and Martin Chaves' families saw them off in Baker.  Lon Stiner had every member of the team that was able run sprints up and down the platform in Boise.  The 11 seniors selected Martin Chaves to be the team captain for the 1942 Rose Bowl near Glenns Ferry, Idaho.  Chaves was the only junior to be named team captain for a game.  Chaves was also the first member of the team to be drafted, having to report to the Army Air Corps on January 24, 1942.  The team made it somewhere between Pocatello and Grand Island by the end of the day.  Oregon State would not arrive in Chicago for another two days; would not arrive in Washington, DC , for another three days; and would not complete the trip to Durham, North Carolina, for another four days.

Elsewhere in the world, the Soviets had beat off the first thrust of Operation Barbarossa.  The Soviet Union generally found success beginning about December 6, 1941.  However, the tide would turn in Germany's favor by April 1942.

I-17, who had patrolled North of Oahu, during Pearl Harbor, attacked the tanker, the S.S. Emidio off of Cape Mendocino.  After October 1941, Emidio was the only General Petroleum tanker still in operation on the West Coast, generally running oil from California to Seattle.  I-17 hit Emidio six times, causing the boat to begin to sink.  Five crewmembers of the Emidio died, three drowned in the first lifeboat and an additional two were killed by a torpedo hit.  31 others succeeded in abandoning into the two remaining lifeboats.  One of the lifeboats was too overloaded, and Louis George Finch volunteered to swim next to the boat for an hour-and-a-half before the second lighter lifeboat could collect Louis Finch.  Louis Finch received the Merchant marine Distinguished Service Medal from Admiral Emory S. Land.  After uniting, the crew rowed for 16 hours before being rescued by the Shawnee and taken to Eureka. 

Although it was sinking, Emidio did not immediately sink but instead continued on without a crew until January before finally crashing into the rocks off of Crescent City, California.  Emidio split in two, the bow drifting into the harbor, where it laid until scrapped in 1959.  The remainder of the hull is still where it originally crashed and is a California Historical Landmark.

I-17 returned to Japan and returned and bombarded Ellwood (10 miles west of Santa Barbara), helping to precipitate the hysteria that was to culminate the following day in the Battle of Los Angeles.  I-17 also took part in the opening stages of the Aleutian Islands campaign in 1942.  In 1943, I-17 rescued 155 Japanese troops, who were in the water after the disastrous Battle of the Bismark Sea.  

In the Atlantic, Operation Paukenschlag, the beginning of the Second Happy Time, began on December 18, when the first of five submarines left France for the United States.  The five Operation Paukenschlag submarines ultimately destroyed 23 ships between Canada and North Carolina by the beginning of February, largely due to the East Coast's failure to implement an effective East Coast blackout.

In the Pacific, Japan was in the process of successfully invading Borneo, Hong Kong, Malaya, the Philippines and Wake Island simultaneously.

In North Africa, British Eighth Army in Operation Crusader was pushing Erwin "The Desert Fox" Rommel and Afrika Korps West from Tobruk toward Benghazi.  Eighth Army would succeed in pushing Rommel all the way to El Agheila by New Years' Eave before Afrika Korps would be able to dig in.  Three weeks later, Rommel and Afrika Korps would counterattack the overextended Eighth Army and drive into Egypt.

I thought that the I-17 part was interesting.

You always hear about I-25's first, third and fourth patrols to the Northwest in 1941 and 1942. 

In its first patrol, I-25 was East of I-17, during Pearl harbor.  It then went to the Mouth of the Columbia River and torpedoed the tanker, the S.S. Connecticut, forcing it to run aground at Cape Disappointment (the Washington side of the mouth of the Columbia River).

I-25's third and fourth patrol may be the most famous in the Northwest.  In its third patrol, I-25 participated in reconnaissance before Operation AL (the invasion of the Aleutian Islands).  After that, I-25 torpedoed the Canadian freighter, the S.S. Fort Camosun (loaded with zinc, lead and plywood bound for England) off of the coast of Washington.  On June 21, 1942, I-25 very famously shelled Fort Stevens (the Northwestern-most part of Oregon), which guarded the mouth of the Columbia River, from more than 10 miles offshore.  Because it was more than 10 miles offshore, Fort Stevens had no guns that could return fire.  Instead Fort Stevens imposed a blackout and called for assistance from a nearby A-29 Hudson bomber.  I-25's shots mostly hit a nearby baseball field, a nearby golf course and some telephone poles, before the A-29 arrived to scare off I-25.  The Bombardment of Fort Stevens was the only time that a military base was attacked by the Axis Powers during World War II inside the Continental United States.

In I-25's fourth patrol, I-25 carried a collapsible "Glen" plane.  The plan was to use the Glen to bomb Oregon to try and start forest fires.  However, the submarine arrived at Port Orford Heads on September 7, 1942, after the real threat of forest fires had passed for the year.  Nevertheless, I-25's crew assembled the Glen and bombed Mount Emily with two incendiary bombs on September 9, 1942.  The bombs started one fire, which was contained by two men before being extinguished by a fire crew the next day.  On September 29, 1942, the Glen used the Cape Blanco lighthouse as a guide to bomb an area East of Port Orford.  A fire is started but was extinguished by the wet conditions, which existed after September 9, 1942.  I-25's crew disassembled and stowed the Glen.  On October 4, I-25 then hit the tanker, the S.S. Camden full of 76,000 barrels of gasoline and oil, which was being repaired outside of Coos Bay.  The steward jumped overboard and drowned.  The rest of the crew were rescued by the Swedish motorship, the Kookaburra.  The Camden sank six days later after a fire started as it was being towed off the coast of Washington.  On October 5, I-25 attacked the tanker S.S. Larry Doheny, carrying 66,000 barrels of oil.  Six sailors died.  The rest of the crew were saved by the U.S.S. Coos Bay and taken to Port Orford.  While returning to Japan, I-25 accidentally attacked L-15 and L-16 and sank L-16 (a Soviet minelayer), killing 55 Soviets and American interpreter/liaison officer Sergey A. V. Mikhailoff (USNR).

I-25's attacks cause the upgrading of defenses at Fort Stevens and further militarization of the Oregon Coast.  This includes the construction of Naval Air Station Tillamook.  Because of wartime restrictions, Naval Air Station Tillamook was built almost entirely with wood.  Hangar A and Hangar B were large enough to house at least 12 blimps, but I do not know that any more than eight were ever there.  The blimps at Naval Air Station Tillamook were used as a stopgap to help spot Japanese boats off the coast before sufficient planes were built to take over for the blimps.  Hangar B at Naval Air Station Tillamook is the largest standing clear-span wooden structure in the world and is now the site of the Tillamook Air Museum.