As Tristate residents struggled to comprehend Tuesday's attacks, historians and war veterans pondered how the shocking, chaotic day of horror compared to our nation's previous experiences.

        “The first draft of history, Day One of the Attack on America, is that this is the most horrific attack ever on American shores,” said Douglas Brinkley, a historian who heads the Eisenhower Center at the University of New Orleans.

        While the death toll of Tuesday's attacks and crashes was unknown, Mr. Brinkley said it seemed certain to top that of Pearl Harbor, where U.S. losses totaled 2,390 dead.

        “It's a horrible thing,” said an outraged Jack Rininger, 81, a Miami Township resident who survived the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor nearly 60 years ago. “I am very angry.”

        Mr. Rininger was aboard the USS Vestal on Dec. 7, 1941, and watched ships go down. A bomb went through the deck near where he stood, he recalled Tuesday, and exploded four decks down.

        “It is a shock to the people who witness it,” Mr. Rininger said.

        Tom Mara of Green Township was in the Navy aboard a ship steaming up the Chesapeake when word came of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

        “But the sailors and soldiers sort of expected something like that to happen eventually. And they reacted,” Mr. Mara said. “But this has got to be worse. This is worse than Pearl Harbor.”

        Roger Daniels, Charles Phelps Taft professor of history at the University of Cincinnati, noted: “With Pearl Harbor, you knew exactly who the enemy was. You knew exactly what you were going to do. This is ambiguous.”

        Mr. Brinkley added that Hawaii wasn't yet a state when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

        “This brings terrorism into our own back yard. We all know somebody in New York City. The Pentagon was a symbol of our impenetrability,” he said.

        Mr. Brinkley recalled the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, “where everyone remembers where you were. I think this eclipses even the Kennedy assassination.”

        UC history professor Elizabeth Frierson cited the Kennedy assassination as well as two more-recent disasters: the space shuttle Challenger explosion and the Oklahoma City bombing.

        “This is the moment when ... terrorism came home to America,” she said.

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