The Easter Sunday Raid
St. Luke's Church was packed on Easter Sunday morning (5 April) 1942 when Admiral Chuichi Nagumo and the Japanese Imperial Navy attacked the city of Colombo, Ceylon, during World War II. Among the congregation attending the Easter Sunday service were British and Ceylonese military personnel. The zero fighters and bombers were led by Captain Mitsuo Fuchida, who also led the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The attack commenced around 7.30 a.m. Canon Ivan Corea was preaching at the time, when according to the parishioners of St. Luke's, the RAF Hawker Hurricanes swooped over the church to engage the Japanese Zero fighters in dogfights above the skies of Borella.
Read more about this topic: Ivan Corea
Famous quotes containing the words easter, sunday and/or raid:
“Why wont they let a year die without bringing in a new one on the instant, cant they use birth control on time? I want an interregnum. The stupid years patter on with unrelenting feet, never stopping—rising to little monotonous peaks in our imaginations at festivals like New Year’s and Easter and Christmas—But, goodness, why need they do it?”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“Rats!
They fought the dogs and killed the cats,
And bit the babies in the cradles,
And ate the cheeses out of the vats,
And licked the soup from the cooks’ own ladles,
Split open the kegs of salted sprats,
Made nests inside men’s Sunday hats,
And even spoiled the women’s chats
By drowning their speaking
With shrieking and squeaking
In fifty different sharps and flats.”
—Robert Browning (1812–1889)
“Each venture
Is a new beginning, a raid on the inarticulate
With shabby equipment always deteriorating
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)