Saturday, October 4, 2025

Navy logbook that recounted Pearl Harbor recovered after 84 years

 Founders Code

 "Interestingly, the pages for Dec. 6 and 7, and into the 8th, have brown stains splattered across their sheets.  “That’s another question that we’ve been wondering” about, Yockelson said during the unveiling. “We like to think that maybe … somebody was so agitated at what went on that he spilled his thermos.' ”


"One man’s trash is the National Archives’ treasure.

After more than 80 years, an old logbook containing the initial descriptions of U.S. vessels after the Japanese attack on Navy Yard Pearl Harbor in 1941 was recovered, the National Archives recently announced. The logbook covers the 16 months before and after the attack that was the catalyst for the U.S. entry into World War II.

'Its whereabouts can be traced back to the moment it was plucked from a trash bin in the 1970s at the old Norton Air Force Base in San Bernardino, California, by Oretta Kanady, The Washington Post first reported.

'In an interview with the Post, Kanady’s son, Michael William Bonds, said she found it in the bin while working as a civilian employee and thought it looked interesting. She asked if she could have it, and it remained in her possession until her death in 2000. Bonds then inherited it.

“In the last few years, I’ve moved here, moved there, it’s just been in a box,” Bond’s told The Post. “I hadn’t really looked at it.”

'The book is in good condition, and while it may not alter the basic understanding of the events of Pearl Harbor, where more than 2,400 sailors, Marines, soldiers and civilians were killed after Japanese war planes attacked U.S. military installations near Honolulu, it helps to verify the story of the day that lives in infamy." . . .More here...


A fully digitized copy of the logbook is available online.

Click to enlarge:
"It also shows the Pearl Harbor yard’s essential work in repairing Navy warships after the Japanese attack, putting cruisers and destroyers back in the fight after severe damage. Within six months, the yard had taken in and redelivered the damaged battleships Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Tennessee; cruisers HonoluluHelena, and Raleigh; destroyers Helm and Shaw; and three auxiliaries, all fully repaired or patched up for transit for permanent repairs."    More here. 

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