Remembering Pearl Harbor: You don't know Jack

As dusk takes its last breath, the sun settles beneath a line of crooked pitch pine trees, guarding each side of a darkened two-lane road. With the impending darkness, whitetail deer emerge from the woods and clop across Route 530 in search of grazing areas while battalions of bloodsucking greenhead flies plunge between the scant number of vehicles on the road. The few local businesses still open at 8 o'clock in the evening-the witching hour in Whiting, New Jersey-are quiet and underpopulated, due in part to the town's high concentration of retirement communities. Welcome to the Pinelands. For the younger generation, the Pinelands, or Pine Barrens, is widely known as the birthplace of the legendary New Jersey Devil and the depository of "whacked" remains for Tony Soprano's crew. The truth is, the Pinelands has been in the munitions business long before the mafia- its 1.1 million acres were mined for bog ore that was used to construct weapons for both the American Revolution and the War of 1812. It is also the final resting place of an engineering marvel, the German airship the Hindenburg, which was engulfed by fire and crashed at Lakehurst Naval Air Station on 6 May 1937. Two years later, German aggression set World War II into motion and on 7 December 1941 with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the fray.