Word: dawn
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...What a majestic sight," he said to himself as he counted the vessels lined up in Battleship Row in the dawn's early light. He pulled the trigger on his flare gun. That was supposed to signal the slow-moving torpedo bombers to take advantage of the surprise and strike first. But Fuchida's fighter pilots missed his signal to provide cover, so he fired again for the dive bombers to begin, and then the Japanese all attacked at once. Even when they made mistakes, it seemed that nothing could go wrong...
...academy, combat ace over China, leader of a daredevil stunt team called Genda's Flying Circus. Genda contributed several key ideas: that every available Japanese carrier should be assigned to the attack, that it should combine dive-bombing, high-level bombing and torpedoes, that the attackers should strike at dawn...
...took Nagumo's fleet five days to reach the rendezvous point at Hitokappu Bay in the Kuriles just north of Japan's main islands. Fog swirled over the desolate outpost, and snow fell intermittently as the fleet steamed eastward at dawn...
...first actual loss of U.S. territory was a small but symbolic one. Some 400 Japanese naval troops swarmed onto Guam at dawn on Dec. 10 and soon swept into the capital of Agana. After half an hour of gunfire, Guam's Governor, U.S. Navy Captain George McMillin, learned that an additional 5,000 Japanese were landing. He sounded three blasts on an auto horn to signal surrender. McMillin attempted negotiations in sign language, but he and his men finally had to strip to their undershorts and stand in embarrassed silence while the Rising Sun replaced the Stars and Stripes atop...
More heroic but no less doomed was Wake Island, a tiny atoll between Hawaii and Guam. A Japanese fleet closed in to start landing troops at dawn on Dec. 11. U.S. Marines under Major James Devereux scored four direct hits on the flagship Yubari and sank two destroyers. The force withdrew -- the first small U.S. victory in World War II and the only time in the war that defenders beat back an invasion fleet. In reporting this small triumph to Pearl Harbor, according to a story that may be apocryphal, one of Devereux's men added a bit of bravado...