OR&L and World War II
World War II was arguably the OR&L's most important period, but would prove to be the company's undoing. After the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, the OR&L became a major player in wartime transportation. The railroad carried out its regular freight operations as well as handling massive amounts of military-related traffic. The OR&L became the chief transporter of civilian base workers, sailors, soldiers, airmen and marines, both from Honolulu to their bases, or from those bases back to Honolulu for coveted R&R. In 1944 and 1945 the OR&L carried nearly two million riders.
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Famous quotes containing the words world and/or war:
“A strange age of the world this, when empires, kingdoms, and republics come a-begging to a private man’s door, and utter their complaints at his elbow! I cannot take up a newspaper but I find that some wretched government or other, hard pushed and on its last legs, is interceding with me, the reader, to vote for it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.”
—Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962)