Day of Infamy
By: Walter Lord / Narrated By: Grover Gardner
Length: 6 hrs and 50 mins
If you want heavy-duty history, look elsewhere. Aaaah, but if you want Living History? Here it is!!!
Nope, don’t expect some vast treatise on the mega-history or the historical ramifications of Pearl Harbor. All that is to be found elsewhere. No, the riveting Day of Infamy was published in 1957, so DO expect that author Walter Lord had access to people, living people who survived the attack, who knew what it was like to be at that place, Pearl Harbor, at that time. Expect excerpts from diaries, remembered conversations, memories of the inane, memories of that which will haunt for the rest of a person’s life.
My mother-in-law was a little girl on the Islands, and her memory of that day is of being all dressed up for church before all Hell broke loose. To say she felt terror is a complete understatement, and tho’ she was much older, years in between then and now, when she spoke of that day, she was a little girl again, deafened from noise, her dress dirtied as she ran to hide from strafing. I’d already heard quite a bit about that day from my Military History loving Dad, but listening to her? Her eyes went far away. Her eyes became taut with fear.
That fear is brought to life with this book, even though it starts the evening before, with sailors and soldiers spending a good ol’ Saturday night, with one young party girl making a phone call—Hey, where ya at? Come join us. Many are off the ships, some even miss their launch back and have to spend the night hunkering down. There’s joy; there’s a sense of light.
Nobody was expecting it, even tho’ we’re told that all knew talks with Japan were souring and attack could happen at anytime. And then we get just how MANY things happened which could’ve given the men a chance. From a small sub being spotted—with guns fired, to major blips on the radar which were dismissed as American planes that were due back. Information was slow to pass, or it was dismissed at many spots along the way.
And then we get to the reality of the situation, where nobody could believe it: Is this REALLY happening? For some, reality didn’t strike until the person standing next to them was shot through by strafing planes, crumpling, bloody, dead. Until then, the persistent question was: Why are OUR planes bombing us? And why do OUR planes have big round red paint on them?
Hindsight, History, is always 20-20, is it not? So understand that of COURSE I was groaning, gritting my teeth, wishing for imMEDiate action of people who should’ve been given more information, more warning. But aren’t we all always lulled by peace? Besides, when these individuals woke up, they sprang into brave and unswerving action.
And that’s what makes this particular work so engaging, so compelling. It’s told from people in the thick of it, putting us right there with them. And it’s the details! details! details! From a sailor wondering how to handle his gun melting from the constant firing of it (“Keep shooting!”) to the vision of one man, his firing crew slumped and dead surrounding him, firing, firing, firing, even as flames come to engulf him.
The book encompasses the entirety of the experience at Pearl Harbor, and we’re given what it was like for little boys fishing off the rocks, soon to fall to the ground as they were fair game as targets also; a chaplain finishing services to open doors and see the chaos and carnage—Report to your posts, and God bless; a message boy of Japanese descent, stopped as he rides his bike, trying to do his job. Then it winds up with just what a very long and traumatic night followed, with American fliers trying to land planes but shot into oblivion instead as all on the island expected imminent invasion.
Tho’ I’ve come to like Grover Gardner from previous narrations, I’ve gotta say that he is, perhaps, the weakest link in this production. His pacing is stellar, no complaints there; but I kinda think his delivery was lacking in enthusiasm and/or drama. Sometimes it felt as though he was just reading off a list, and when one has a work so heavily reliant on details, this can come off as a taaaaaad monotonous… which is MOST unfortunate. That said, however, I’m not going to say his was a bad performance, but it was instead maybe not his best performance (And I’ll shed a bit of a tear here as I wallow in Wah Wah Wah—I Wanted To Cry…).
If you’re looking for a grand treatise on Pearl Harbor, you might want to go elsewhere. But if you’re looking to gain a more immediate sense of what happened, along with little known details (The Japanese used a small complement of 2-man mini-subs to work as suicide squads), do indeed check out this audiobook by Walter Lord. He was made famous when he compiled a riveting account of The Titanic, which I wanna get around to listening to. But really?
I’m quiiiiiiite happy with this work right here!
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.