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:
“In your Easter bonnet, with all the frills upon it,
You’ll be the grandest lady in the Easter parade.”
—Irving Berlin (1888–1989)
“Do you know anything that in all its innocence is more humiliating than the funny pages of a Sunday newspaper in America?”
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“John Brown and Giuseppe Garibaldi were contemporaries not solely in the matter of time; their endeavors as liberators link their names where other likeness is absent; and the peaks of their careers were reached almost simultaneously: the Harper’s Ferry Raid occurred in 1859, the raid on Sicily in the following year. Both events, however differing in character, were equally quixotic.”
—John Cournos (1881–1956)