arch/ive/ief (2000 - 2005)
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Sub proves US fired first at Pearl Harbor by JAYMES SONG (posted by guido) Friday August 30, 2002 at 08:07 AM |
Discovery of the 78ft boat could provide the first physical evidence to back United States military assertions that it fired first against Japan in the Second World War and inflicted the first casualties.
Discovery of the 78ft boat could provide the first physical evidence to back United States military assertions that it fired first against Japan in the Second World War and inflicted the first casualties.
The submarine was sunk by a US navy destroyer on 7 December, 1941. The remains of two Japanese crewmen are believed to be still inside.
"It's the shot that started [the war] between the Americans and the Japanese," said John Wiltshire, associate director of the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory, which found the submarine.Until the submarine was found, a historian, Daniel Martinez, said eyewitness accounts were unconfirmed. Mr Martinez, a historian for the USS Arizona Memorial, has interviewed members of the crew who fired the first shot, and a pilot who saw the submarine sink. "What they saw and what they felt was their recollection - now the proof has been found," he said.