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Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute
Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute is the powerful new history and true story of the devastating Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Oahu's airfields, and other targets of opportunity; the attack's 24-hour and succeeding 24-day aftermath, including the first two troop ship convoys to leave the West Coast to reinforce the American Army's Pacific garrisons on Oahu and further south; the extensive follow-on attacks of Japanese submarines supporting their Combined Fleet's Hawaiian operation; the seaborne evacuation of thousands from Hawaii - and the devotion of a Marine officer’s daughter to a young Navy ensign - a crew member on the battleship USS Tennessee - their love, marriage, and determination to remain near one another amid the turmoil and bloody chaos of war.
Blending excerpts from personal diaries, letters, heretofore classified official records and correspondence; martial law records, messages, texts of presidential addresses, unit histories, wartime plans; war journals, and orders of battle; ships’ deck logs, war diaries and action reports; histories of Naval combatants, luxury liners, Army, and Army Air Force units; maps, photographs, and sketches; interviews of eyewitnesses and participants, excerpts from previously recorded accounts of the attack on Pearl Harbor; the written and spoken words of the men, women and children who lived its life and death events; combined with the author’s background as a fighter-bomber pilot with combat experience, years of study and knowledge of tactical and strategic air, sea, and ground warfare; and firsthand knowledge of the pain of comrades lost and impacts upon their families – the author provides a meticulously-researched narrative for all audiences, high school through retirement years, which will pull readers into a story told in crisp, clear, emotion-packed, laymen’s terms.
Excerpts from the Book's Foreword
Sunday in Hell: Pearl Harbor Minute by Minute, is a fresh, new, meticulously-researched history that takes us through America’s first fierce and most disastrous battle of World War II. Set in the historical context of the preceding ten years of the Great Depression, we see clearly our nation’s steadfast hold on isolationism, and the rise of the 20th Century’s new totalitarians, leading to the shattering Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Told by the people who lived its events, the attack abruptly thrusts us into the midst of war and all its powerful cross-currents of emotion.
Then comes the bitter aftermath, and America’s first dark days of struggle in the great, wide Pacific, where the fury began and as Admiral Nimitz related, “uncommon valor became a common virtue,” inspiring a nation. In reading this history we learn anew why the words sacrifice, love, faith, patriotism, and “Remember Pearl Harbor,” will forever reverberate through American history…
Thomas B. Fargo
Admiral, USN (Ret)
Former Commander,
U.S. Pacific Command
(2002-2005)
Praise for Sunday in Hell
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a profoundly bitter surprise for an unprepared America. It was an earth-shaking event in a chain of devastating events perpetrated by the twentieth century’s new totalitarians—the Axis powers of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and militarist Japan. This work revitalizes the cry, 'Remember Pearl Harbor!' and records anew America’s entry into World War II, the deadly, never-to-be-ignored lessons totalitarians leave in the archives of history’s darkest hours.
Gordon R. Sullivan
General, US Army, Retired
32nd Chief of Staff
Bill McWilliams delivers a most readable history that immerses us in the depths of our Nation’s darkest hour. Feel the shock and anger, the humiliation and devastation that roused the 'Sleeping Giant' and inspired the greatest mobilization of spirit, and pride our nation has ever seen. This is the story of real people whose shattered lives became the stuff of the 'Greatest Generation.'"
General John P. Jumper
US Air Force (Ret)
Chief of Staff 2001-05
A memorable history should read like an exciting true story, create clear visual images, and cause readers to feel they are among the people living the events. This work does. Bill McWilliams pulls us into the story, where we experience the sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of war, while feeling the powerful crosscurrents of emotion war provokes.
General Thomas R. Morgan
USMC (Retired)
Assistant Commandant
Marine Corps, 1986-88
Masterfully told; a powerful true story of the devastating events surrounding the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that propelled America into the most destructive war in human history. McWilliams’ third major work after A RETURN TO GLORY and ON HALLOWED GROUND wrings inspiration and remembrance from sacrifice, valor and tragedy. Reading like an action-packed novel, this is truly history at its best.
Colin Burgess
Award-winning Australian military and spaceflight historian and author
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Five-part series newspaper article published in the Elko Daily Free Press, Elko, NV, beginning November 5, through November 11, 2004.
Based on the book On Hallowed Ground, The Last Battle for Pork Chop Hill, and additional research completed after the book was published, the article tells the tragic but inspiring true story of the only Nevada soldier killed in action on Pork Chop Hill, during the 6-11 July 1953 final battle for the outpost. Gerald Whiterock was an 18-year old Western Shoshone Indian from the Duck Valley Indian Reservation, astride the Nevada-Idaho border, northeast of Elko. He enlisted in the Army one day after his 18th birthday in October 1952, and was killed in action on Pork Chop Hill the morning of 9 July, less than three weeks prior to the Korean War armistice. A member of I Company, 3d Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, he was in a two-company counterattack intended to drive the Chinese from commanding positions they had held on the crest of the hill for three days.
Football History, Two-part serial article, Assembly Magazine
Drawing on research for A Return to Glory, this article is filled with true stories and warm vignettes from Vince Lombardi’s tumultuous five seasons under the head coach Vince most admired and whom Vince credited as his greatest gridiron teacher, Army’s Earl H. “Red” Blaik. The piece spans Army’s difficult 1951-53 seasons, when the Academy, Blaik, his coaches, and team were rebuilding following the disastrous 1951 cheating scandal – which wiped out Army’s greatly admired, nationally ranked team after a ten-year run to football glory, with possibly a fourth national championship in 1951. Five-part series newspaper article published weekly in the Los Alamos Monitor, Los Alamos, NM, beginning September 5, through October 1, 2004.
Tells the delightful, inspiring, true story of the first three seasons of interscholastic competition, 1946-48, at Los Alamos High School, as the home of the World War II Manhattan Project – Project Y - was coming out from under its tightly-held cloak of secrecy. Project Y gave birth to the small high school, which graduated only two students in August 1944, three in June 1945, and seven in 1946, and the high school fielded their first football team in September of that year, 14 months following the test of the first atomic bomb at White Sands, NM on 16 July 1945. In their first season they went 8-0, with a graduating class of 20 young men and women. At the end of their first season, they had established a winning tradition and statewide recognition in New Mexico, and ended their first three seasons with a total 19-2-2 record. Military history article published in VFW magazine, Jun/Jul 2003 issue
Based on the book, On Hallowed Ground, The Last Battle for Pork Chop Hill, the piece details the initial assault on Pork Chop Hill the night of 6 July 1953 by units of the 200th Regiment, Chinese Communist 67th Division, against A Company, 1st Battalion, 17th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division, to begin the five day battle for the outpost – which resulted in 243 Americans killed in action and 916 wounded, with the Chinese suffering an estimated 6,050 total killed and wounded. Investigative History. A two-part serial article published in Assembly magazine, Nov/Dec 2001-Jan/Feb 2002, about a 1951 man-made institutional crisis at West Point involving honor, ethics and truth telling.
Using research material from A Return to Glory, the piece summarizes the never-publicly-told story of behind the scenes events associated with the 1951 honor incident at West Point, and responds to an error-filled article, “Code Breakers,” written by well-known sports writer Frank Deford and published in Sports Illustrated magazine’s 13 November 2000 issue. The cadets involved in organized cheating were participating in far more serious activities than were ever made known to the Corps of Cadets, Academy graduates, and the public. Examples were conspiracy to cheat, to lie about the existence of cheating if ever confronted with evidence, 22 of 83 found guilty of cheating lied under oath when they first appeared for sworn testimony, intimidation of witnesses, attempting to discredit the board of officers investigating the incident, deliberately planning and successfully electing two company honor committee representatives who were involved in cheating, and threatening cadets who volounteered to go under cover to expose the cheating. Military History Article Published in Assembly magazine, Jan/Feb 2004.
Based on the book, On Hallowed Ground, The Last Battle for Pork Chop Hill, the article summarizes the events leading to the final, bloody 6-11 July 1953 battle for the outpost, and centers on the roles numerous Academy graduates from different classes played in the battle, all the way from the Commander in Chief, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, class of 1915, down to infantry and engineer platoon leaders, from the class of 1952. Military History, A two-part serial article in Assembly Magazine
A true story from the West Point class of 1950’s baptism in battle early in the Korean War. Centered on Lt. David R. Hughes, who like many of his classmates, was ordered to report as a platoon leader in front line units – without benefit of up-to-date infantry branch school training – the narrative follows Lt Hughes in King Company, 3rd Battalion, 7th Cavalry Regiment, several members of his class and other classes, in the bitter first year of the war, in which the historic 7th Cavalry Regiment of George Armstrong Custer fame, sees victory at hand by Christmas 1950, then suffers great loss and retreat when the Chinese intervene massively across the Yalu River in late October of that year. Lt Hughes progresses from platoon leader to company commander in the year of the “yo yo war”, and, with the 1st Cavalry Division and all its regiments is pulled off the line in November 1951, from a position on the crest of Hill 347 – which looks down to the northeast on Outpost Pork Chop. Football History, Two-part serial article in Assembly magazine, Jan/Feb and Mar/Apr 1998
The inspiring, true story of the Army football team’s turnaround game in the turnaround season of 1953. In two grueling football seasons following the disastrous honor incident announced 3 August 1951, Army went 2-7 and 4-4-1, equaling the total losses under Coach Earl H. “Red” Blaik in his previous ten seasons. In the fourth game of the 1953 season, the unranked cadets, sporting a 2-1 record on the year, upset the number-seven-ranked, 4-0, Duke University Blue Devils, 14-13, in New York City’s Polo Grounds. Called by many sports writers “the college game of the year,” the victory set Army’s team and the Corps of Cadets afire, inspiring them to remain undefeated the remainder of a 7-1-1 season, and a return to the national rankings.
Text of a Talk Given to the Cadet Honor Committee on 3 December 2001 and Published in Assembly magazine, May/Jun 2002 issue.
Using research material from A Return to Glory and other sources, the piece is the text of a talk given to the Cadet Honor Committee at West Point on 3 December 2001 based on the facts and circumstances of the 1951 honor incident. The author explains the purposes and practical value of officer candidates taking action when violations of the cadet honor code are observed, and relates the cadet honor code to the officer code and leadership.
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