"AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NO DRILL"

On December 7, 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. Across the country, Americans were stunned by the radio broadcasts. America's Pacific Fleet was almost destroyed. The isolationism that much of the nation had tried to hold onto was yanked away at that moment.

Soon American troops in the Philippines were under attack and could not be reinforced nor rescued. They hung on for about five months after Pearl Harbor, throwing everything they had at the Japanese onslaught. But even dedicated, determined fighters can no longer resist when ammunition, food, and medicine run out. Their surrender was the single largest in American military history. A similar fate occurred to the small Marine garrison on Wake Island, west of Hawaii. The treatment of prisoners, particularly along the "Bataan Death March", wouldn't receive full disclosure until the end of the war. However, enough word did reach the rest of America to fill it with vengeance. Japanese Admiral Yamamoto's prophetic words, "I fear all we have done is to wake a sleeping giant, and fill him with a terrible resolve," was going to come true.

At a time when so many Americans were just beginning to enjoy life again and plan for the future, they had to put it all on an uncertain hold. Almost overnight, those Army-trained CCC men traded in their spruce green uniforms for olive drab, navy blue, and forest green. Many became sergeants or petty officers within months, finding themselves quickly promoted in order to make room for the flood of further enlistees.