MDU's Knife River Acquires Viesko Redi-Mix, Inc. -- March 4, 2019

Press release here.

Viesko, which does business as Viesko Quality Concrete, is based in Wheatland, Oregon, about 12 miles north of Salem and 40 miles southwest of Portland. The acquisition complements Knife River's existing Oregon operations and provides expansion for Knife River into the growing north Willamette Valley and Portland Metro markets.

Financial details not released.

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Pearl Harbor

The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Richard Rhodes, c. 1986.

Two US Army privates, radar operators, picked up the attacking Japanese on their radar at 7:00 a.m. on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The Japanese were 132 miles out. The radar operators estimated the number of planes to be about 50 but did not know the "source" of the airplanes. They radioed their observation to the "information center" at the other end of the island (Oahu). The receiving lieutenant told them not to worry about it. He did not know but surmised the aircraft were US B-17s being ferried to Hawaii.

The Japanese arrived -- a complete surprise.

The 43 fighters, 49 high-level bombers, 51 dive-bombers, and 40 torpedo planes had flown from six carriers holding station 200 miles to the north, carriers formidably escorted by battleships, heavy cruisers, destroyers, and submarines that had left Hitokappu Bay on the northern Japanese island of Etorofu on November 25 and sailed blacked out in radio silence across the stormy but empty northern Pacific for almost two weeks to achieve this stunning rendezvous. 

The torpedo bombers divided into groups of twos and threes and dived. The aircrews had prepared themselves to ram the battleships if necessary, but nothing restrained their attack. 

At 0758 the Ford Island command center radioed its frantic message to the world: AIR RAID PEARL HARBOR. THIS IS NOT A DRILL. 

Admiral Kimmel [Commander in Chief of the US Pacific Fleet] saw the attack begin from a neighbor's lawn -- "in utter disbelief and completely stunned," the neighbor remembers, "as white as the uniform he wore." 

..... three torpedoes into the California; two more into West Virginia; a fourth into Oklahoma that bounded the big ship and rolled it over bottom up; Arizone taking a bomb that detonated its forward explosive stores, ripped the ship apart, killed at least a thousand men and blew high into the air a grisly rain of bodies, hands, legs and heads; a torpedo tearing out Nevada's port bow....

... an hour later a second wave of 167 more attack aircraft deployed to further destruction...

eight battleships, three light cruisers, three destroyers, and four other ships sunk, capsized or damaged and 292 aircraft damaged or wrecked, including 117 bombers. And 2,403 Americans, military and civilians, killed, 1,178 wounded, in unprovoked assaults that lasted only minutes.

The following afternoon, Franklin Roosevelt, addressing Congress in joint session, requested and won a declaration of war against not only Japan but Germany and Italy as well.

Of course, the definitive narrative, At Dawn We Slept: The Untold Story of Pearl Harbor, Gordon Prange, c. 1981.

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Alphabet Jumping