Pearl Harbor

Coles, S. L., DeFelice, R. C., Eldredge, L. G., and Carlton, J. T. (1997). Biodiversity of marine communities in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii with observations on introduced exotic species. Bishop Museum Technical Report No. 10, Honolulu, Hawaii. 

At the time of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, no other plant existed in the U.S. capable of making anything larger than small arms ammunition. There was no knowledge elsewhere there were no detailed plans for whole industries elsewhere. Without the industrial know-how developed at Picatinny, the rapid conversion of commercial concerns to mass ammunition manufacture would have been impossible... 

Henrietta M. Larson, Evelyn H. Knowlton, and Charles S. Popple. History of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey) New Horizons 1927-1950. New York Harper Row, 1971. Source for aviation s need for antiknock and TEL added after Pearl Harbor... 

But there was no proof acceptable in a United States court. Just before Pearl Harbor, the Treasury Department used its emergency powers and at last cut off the millions of dollars from General Aniline sales which I.G. Chemie had been relaying to I.G. Farben. 

I. G. Farben had been almost exclusively responsible for America s frightening shortages of vital Army supplies after our country went to war with Japan. By the time of Pearl Harbor, for example, Farben had succeeded in gathering, through its United States connections, 80 per cent of all magnesium production in the Western Hemisphere. 

Only after Pearl Harbor did the United States government discover how Farben had also stopped the flow of crucial war materials from America to its lend-lease allies. Magnesium was the best example. The arrangement between Farben, the Aluminum Company of America, and the Dow Chemical Company not only had limited production within the United States but had fixed it so that all quantity exports from the United States went only to Germany. Thus Great Britain and the rest of Europe became completely dependent on Farben for magnesium. 

Minskoff and Von Halle worked hard to "understand" Braus. Under any supervision but that of Buetefisch and Schneider, he would have been a leading chemist. In the 1930 s, his light had been hidden under their bushel then he had spent the two years before Pearl Harbor in Japan, building a nitrogen plant for the... 

By August of 1941, evidently because the United States was by now irrevocably committed to all steps short of open war against the Axis, and because "everything will be scrutinized by the censors," Edsel Ford hesitated. Something decided him to go on corresponding anyway. Pearl Harbor made no difference. Two months after Peart Harbor, Dollfus was reporting net profits for 1941 of 58,000,000 francs. He wrote ... 

Shortly after Japan s December 7,1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. became more driven to expedite its timetable for developing the first fission weapon because of fear that the U.S. lagged behind Nazi Germany in efforts to create the first atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942 at 3 49 p.m., Enrico Fermi and Samuel K. Allison achieved the world s first controlled, self-sustained nuclear chain reaction in an experimental reactor using natural uranium and graphite. 

As World War II loomed with America pushed into the war by the Pearl Harbor attack, the need for an independent rubber supply was critical. The government instituted several nationwide efforts including the Manhattan and Synthetic Rubber Projects. Carl Speed Marvel was one of the chemists involved in the Synthetic Rubber Project. 

One type, the magnesium bomb, was copied after European designs, while the other three types were developed, after Pearl Harbor, entirely by American scientists... 

But with Einstein s advocacy the Manhattan Project began, under the leadership of Oppenheimer. Named for the New York office of the Army Corps of Engineers, it was given almost a blank cheque when America entered the war after the attack on Pearl Harbor. The bomb was pursued on two fronts. One involved developing physical and chemical techniques for separating the isotopes of uranium, milligram by milligram. 

Erik Goldstein and John Maurer (eds.) The Washington Conference, 1921—22 Naval Rivalry, East Asian Stability and the Road to Pearl Harbor (Ilford Frank Cass, 1994). 

In the 1930s, more than 90 percent of the natural rubber used in the United States came from Malaysia. In the days after Pearl Harbor was attacked in December 1941 and the United States entered World War II, however, Japan captured Malaysia. As a result, the United States—the land with plenty of everything, except rubber—faced its first natural resource crisis. The military implications were devastating because without rubber for tires, military airplanes and jeeps were useless. Petroleum-based synthetic rubber had been developed in 1930 by DuPont chemist Wallace Carothers but was not widely used because it was much more expensive than natural rubber. With Malaysian rubber impossible to get and a war on, however, cost was no longer an issue. Synthetic rubber factories were constructed across the nation, and within a few years, the annual production of synthetic rubber rose from 2000 tons to about 800,000 tons. 

That case would require a fleet of aircraft twenty times larger than the attack on Pearl Harbor to kill half the people in Los Angeles with phosgene. Such a major effort, he said, would have a bigger pay-off if explosives were used. ... 

The raid on Pearl Harbor wasn t altogether unexpected. 

Japan attacks Pearl Harbor. The U.S. enters World War II. 

Barbiturates are also known to be dangerous. At Pearl Harbor, American casualties undergoing surgery were given barbiturates as general anaesthetics. However, because of a poor understanding about how barbiturates are stored in the body, many patients received sudden and fatal overdoses. In fact, it is reputed that more casualties died at the hands of the anaesthetists at Pearl Harbor than died of their wounds. 

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