On Tuesday Dec.7, Mount Diablo’s Beacon will be re-lit by survivors of Pearl Harbor.
The Beacon on Mount Diablo was originally installed and illuminated in 1928 to aid in trans-continental aviation.
It is one of the four guiding beacons installed along the west coast by Standard Oil of CA and is the only one known to still be operational.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Beacon’s light was extinguished during the West Coast Blackout, for fear it may enable an attack on California. It stayed dark until Pearl Harbor Day 1964, when Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz, Commander in Chief of Pacific Forces during World War II, relit the Beacon in a commemorative ceremony and suggested it be illuminated every December 7th to honor those who served and sacrificed.
Since that day, Pearl Harbor Veterans and their families have gathered every Dec.7 to see the beacon light shine once again.
The beacon will be shut off before sunrise on Dec.8.
Great tradition!
As ex RN, I remember Nimitz was held in huge regard and nothing for me sums up the might of the USA more than the sight of a Nimitz class CVN! Still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!
Great tradition!
As ex RN, I remember Nimitz was held in huge regard and nothing for me sums up the might of the USA more than the sight of a Nimitz class CVN! Still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!
Won’t be able to see the light tonight because of the fog and/or possible light rain…
Maybe tomorrow night Wave. I hope so.
Well, I was wrong….the rain came early this morning and is not here now….I went outside about 30 minutes and could see the beacon light about 15 minutes a0.t
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The Japanese started the US war in the Pacific on December 7, 1941.
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We eventually persuaded the Japanese empire to surrender unconditionally by dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which instantly killed more than 120,000 Japanese residents.
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Truman made a tough decision… either landing the home Japanese Islands at the cost of the estimated deaths of at least one million Allied soldiers or, short term, more than 250,000 Japanese citizens (resultant deaths from radiation effects).
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Historians says Truman chose the lesser of two evils and made the correct decision.
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From what I understand, the program was so secret that Truman did not know about it. So, at some point after he became president, some advisor must have requested a meeting and told him about this big bomb thingy. That must have been priceless. Too bad it wasn’t taped.
Bro I spent my entire Junior history class being browbeat by a teacher with a Japanese wife who was just kvetching the whole time about we should have never dropped the nukes and the Japanese were so innocent, wah wah wah wah. Of course he had a Japanese American wife, no doubt him telling him he wouldn’t get any nookie without telling us how evil America was.
Of course when I brought up Japanese atrocities he would get real, REAL nervous!
Yes, and I believe the bomber was Gay
There is an exhibit at Cal state East Bay that will by open prior to the lighting check it out
Martinezmike, I think you were inferring the bomber was the enola gay. You sly rascal….
You can take the Gay off of the bomber, but you can’t take the bomber off of the Gay.
There is a great article on the Hoover Institute news feed about the mistakes the Japanese made at Pearl Harbor. What no one talks about is that Japanese imperialism dates back to 1895, the island hopping strategy was developed by the Navy under Teddy Roosevelt, and the daily death toll of Japanese soldiers stranded behind our lines was staggering. And the Japanese were still killing, raping and torturing civilians where they still held sway.
The bottom line is that the atomic bombs saved the lives of civilians and soldiers on both sides of the conflict. Not that the WOKE crowd would ever understand that.
My dad’s ship, the USS Curtiss (AV-4), was tied up in Pearl Harbor 80 years ago. She was hit hard during the attack. Pop was a signalman aboard the Curtiss. He never talked about the war, except to say that when they were in Shanghai, there were bodies floating everywhere down the Yangtze River.
On August 6, 1945, at 9:15 AM Tokyo time, a B-29 plane, the “Enola Gay” piloted by Paul W. Tibbets, dropped a uranium atomic bomb, code named “Little Boy” on Hiroshima, Japan’s seventh largest city. In minutes, half of the city vanished. According to U.S. estimates, 60,000 to 70,000 people were killed or missing, 140,000 were injured many more were made homeless as a result of the bomb. Deadly radiation reached over 100,000. In the blast, thousands died instantly. The city was unbelievably devastated. Of its 90,000 buildings, over 60,000 were demolished.
The second atomic bomb, named “Fat Man,” was dropped on Nagasaki, by Bockscar.
Bockscar is the name of the U. S. Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that dropped the the atomic bomb, “Fat Man,” on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. The name, which is painted on the aircraft is a pun on “boxcar,” after the name of the aircraft’s commander, Captain Frederick C. Bock. For this mission, however, it was Major Charles Sweeney who flew Bockscar.
I appreciate this tradition, as a somber reminder of this day in history. My former father-in-law was on the USS Tennessee during the attack. My wife’s father served in Europe during the war. My uncle was in the 1st Marines at Guadalcanal. My Dad graduated from High School just after the War and joined the Navy. If not for the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they all would have been involved in the invasion of Japan.
How many of us are here today because our parents and grandparents survived the war? Light the lamp!
Today December 7th the Ladies First Choir from Concord High school will be preforming at pearl harbor representing California by invitation in honor of the 80th anniversary.
There have been many well-researched and written books about this particular event, but my favorite one was entitled: I Could Never be so Lucky Again, by Colonel Jimmy Doolittle.