Coincidental? Today, being the 66th Anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, which destroyed the majority of our Battleship Fleet assigned to the Pacific Fleet by the Japanese Imperial Navy on December 7, 1941. Fortunately, the aircraft carriers deployed to the 6th Fleet were not in port and carried the war to the Japanese Navy. On April 18, 1942, the U.S.S. Hornet, equipped with Army aircraft trained by Jimmy Doolittle moved into the range of the Japanese Islands and launched an attack on Tokyo. This mission had been kept a secret, although not a devastating blow it demonstrated to the Japanese defences that they were vulnerable.

At the same time, it spurred a spark of patriotism throughout the United States. When President Roosevelt was asked by the news corps where the aircraft came from, he replied, "From Shangri-La, I guess" the mystical utopia of James Hilton in his book, "Lost Horizon". The daring raid created a spark of patriotism to build a great aircraft carrier to be named Shangri-La. The Shangri-La fund drive needed to raise $130 million dollars to build the new carrier. The fund was successful in raising $900 million dollars. The Shangri-La was commissioned by the wife of General James Doolittle on February 24, 1944 with author, James Hilton and 100,000 other Americans in the audience.

On April 25, 1945 the U.S.S. Shangri-La joined the Pacific Fleet. The words spoken in jest by President Roosevelt were fulfilled. On July 10, 1944, planes did take off from "Shangri-La" to make the first strike against Tokyo just as Jimmy Doolittle's band of B-25's had done in 1942. This strike earned her the nickname of "The Tokyo Express", a name she carried with pride until her decommission. I very proudly served on the last of the "wooden decks" when I served onboard the U.S.S. Shangri-La from May 1964 to October 1967. Now, the question is was it "coincidental that I just happened to come across a picture of this poster today as I was cruising the Internet? Might also want to consider a couple of the dates on this time in history, are these also "coincidental"?