And thus it began…
Imagine, going along, minding your own business, like my parents were doing, (They were still a couple) and the radio comes on with the shocking news of the attack on Pearl Harbor. What a life-altering day for most Americans. Most had no idea, even as they heard the news, just how much the upcoming war would alter their lives.
I am always saddened on this day, but remarkably glad that Americans haven’t pushed it to the backs of their minds–that date which shall live in infamy.
Many of those who would go to war after that day are no longer with us. Most are in their late 80’s or 90’s. If you know people from that time, find out as much as you can from them.
One of ours, a coxswain, went down with the USS Arizona and still lies in the harbor deep. Another was manning the guns on the USS Nevada as she got underway, until, hit several times by aerial bombs and in flames, the ship was ordered to turn away from an attempt to escape through the channel and to be grounded in the harbor. Even after she ran aground in a cloud of flame and smoke, her gunners kept firing and knocked down several more enemy planes before the battle finally ceased. That second one of ours was a Pearl Harbor survivor — just barely — and died in his own bed at a ripe old age.
Oh how I remember this day. I was 8-1/2 years old, a kid in a small town in Oklahoma. My younger brother and I were sitting on the floor in the living room and I was reading him the Sunday comics. Some program was playing on our floor model Philco radio when the program was interrupted to tell us that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I not certain that it really meant much to me at the time but it was the next day when we heard President Franklin D. Roosevelt mae his famous, “a date to be remembered” address to Congress and the Nation. Athough it has been 72 years ago, it many ways it seems like only a short time ago. Just a little more than 10 years later, I was serving in Korea with a Navy Hospital Corpsman who had been at Pearl Harbor and many of the other folks I had served with in this early part of my career served during WWII. I remember rationing, scrap metal drives, War Bonds,blackouts, the British pilots we trained at our little airport and coffiins at the railroad depot.
Until I draw my last breath, I will remember this date–President Roosevelt said we and the world should.
Thank you both for sharing your memories. @ George and Wolverine
My mother, in the last years of her life, wrote her personal memories of the war. She and my father married 6 months after Pearl Harbor and didn’t spend much time together after my father enlisted Dec. 7, 1942, a year to the day after Pearl Harbor. He was trying to beat New Jersey drafting him. At any rate, I do have a birds eye glimpse of my parents during that time as well as letters they exchanged. It is just one of those things I consider priceless.