My entrance onto the stage was a good year away. My parents had been camping in Arizona out of contact with radios, etc. They were en route back to Los Angeles and were amazed to find army troops manning a checkpoint on the Colorado river at Needles, with machine guns and searchlights and all.
My father was forty-one at the time and was never in danger of being drafted. In fact he had just missed bering shipped out to France in the First World War.
It never occurred to me to ask Dad what the army was doing in Needles. Maybe they were afraid Japanese submarines would cruise up the Colorado River and torpedo Hoover Dam.
My father is gone now but told me he first heard the news when he was outside my grandparents’ house in a small wood-shed that he used for playing around with primitive radios. He had wire antennas strung all over the shed, something that irritated the hell out of my grandfather, and was listening to a crystal-radio set that he had built as the family didn’t own an actual, vacuum-tube based radio. This was in western Kentucky, not far from Paducah.
His parents didn’t believe him initially and when they did find out from distant neighbors, the outrage was that it was a sneak attack and that it was done on a Sunday when people were in church.
My father was 16 and it took a few days to wear his parents down so they would sign the papers and allow him to enlist in the Marines early. He wound up in the Pacific.
My Grandmother, who died in the late '80s was a very proper and starchy old lady, cursed the Japanese until the day she died. For her, the Japanese were always “the damn japs.”
I talked to a few neighbors in my old place about it. They were excited because the glory of empire was going to be seen by the world. Those were the good days of the war, when nothing was going wrong.
It went downhill from there and the terrible hardships when the tides turned were still to come.
I was born in Jan. of '39, so I’m a youngster, compare to a few other dopers. I have no memories of any specific event during WWII, just general memories of life at that time and how it affected me and my family. I would point out that research has determined that human memory rarely goes back beyond the age of about 3.5 years and even that tends to fade w/ age.
While it was a very notable event, you need to consider that the world seemed much larger, to the average American, in those times and it was probably several months, after we became heavily involved in both fronts, before the typical person perceived the threat for what it was, the possiblity that war could come to mainland America.
You might find this link useful. It has thousands of vintage radio shows, including news reports from 12-7 and 12-8-41. (click Vintage Newscasts). It also has at least one entertainment broadcast from 12-7 (Jack Benny), complete with news bulletin interruptions about the attack.
Fascinating stuff. Apparently, no one then had heard of Oahu, given the mispronunciations of the name.
According to the site, these broadcasts are out-of-copyright.
Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take up space on this thread because Pearl Harbor happened a decade before I was born, but three men I’ve known and loved many, many years have died this past year, and all three were WWII vets. I know their stories well.
My father-in-law was coming out of Mass when someone drove up to the church shouting news of the attack. He knew it was a shocking, important piece of news, but because he was a farmer he didn’t think it would have anything to do with him. Less than a year later he was drafted and spent the war slogging across Europe.
My uncle (Mom’s older brother) was a trucker and was eating lunch in a cafe in Chicago when he heard the news on the radio. He said there was just stunned silence in the cafe. At first he thought the announcer was exaggerating the amount of destruction; it wasn’t until he saw newsreel footage later that he realized how bad it was. At any rate, he didn’t wait to be drafted; he delivered his load, left the truck sitting and went to enlist in the Army. He landed at Omaha Beach a corporal and walked into Berlin with a field commission and captain’s bars. He would retire after 25 years in the Army as a colonel
The editor of the local newspaper was literally a cub reporter who was watching the wires that Sunday morning and saw the news flashes on AP and UPI. He called his editor and by 5 p.m. they had an extra on the street. He was drafted a few months later, went into the Marine Corps and fought at Guadalcanal and Bouganville (I don’t know if that’s spelled right.)
An odd coincidence: The former editor, who has been retired for years, commanded the honor guard at my father-in-law’s funeral a few weeks ago. Last weekend, he passed away. I’ll go to his funeral on Thursday.
You probably have more than enough posts, but as I was 14 then, will add a bit. Lived in a small town in upstate New York. It was Sunday, and we did happen to be listening to the radio when the announcement came on. As was the case with most people, my first reactions was “Where the heck was Pearl Harbor,” as not many people had ever heard of it.
Oddly enough, the announcer must not have known, as it was late in the day before they began to explain that it was in Hawaii.
As a poster noted, our town did have air raid wardens and frequent air raid drills. Everybody put black cloth over the windows and the wardens walked around looking for any slight light leaking out. I always felt it was rather unlikely that the German luftwaft would come and bomb that town, but as we had some paper and linen mills, they may have felt that was a bit danger to them. Fortunately, we were never bombed.
As well as I can recall, we did not hear FDR’s speech in school the next day, but saw it on a newsreel in the movies soon after (tickets cost 25 cents).
Many kids started drawing characteratures of Japanese faces. None of our history or geography (yeah, they taught those things back then) really had much information about Japan.
Everybody was a bit dazed, as the propaganda mills pretty much had most people believing the Japanese could not see well enough to fly aircraft and any ships they had would probably turn over and sink in battle.
In Florida, listening to her own radio (a recent Bday gift). Announcer came on, but Mom didn’t know what “bombed” meant. She went to ask her step-mother and father. They poo-pooed her question, told her that the announcement was part of her program. It kept coming on, though and finally her father went into listen. When he heard it, he said, “I’ll be Goddamned.” She found out what “bombed” meant the next day at school. My mom was 9.
My Dad was in Washington DC, listening to the Redskins football game when the announcement came. My grandfather worked for the US Forestry Service. He said that this meant war. My Dad was 11.
Hope that helps. I had just asked them these stories due to the Ken Burns series, The War.
He’s referring to Lousiville, Kentucky. I had forgotten that his parents never included their children in ‘grownup’ discussions. I hope that little bit helps.
My grandmother was making Sunday dinner. Every Sunday, my grandparents’ sisters and brothers would all meet at one of their houses for dinner, and it was my grandparents’ turn that Sunday. She had just put a roast in the oven when a neighbor came by with the news.
My mom is gone now, but from the time I was very small, she ALWAYS had the radio on from the time she got up until she went to bed. It wasn’t always a news station, mostly it was music or the Dodger game.
I asked her about it when I got older and she said that she was afraid of another " Pearl Harbor". She passed away before 9/11 so her fear never materialized for her.
Actually, they still live in Winsted (BTW, my dad grew up on Torringford Street) and my sister lives in Torrington. They lived right on Highland Lake in 1955. Yikes, talk about a teeny tiny world…
My dad talked about this. Seems he was working at the Boeing Plant in WA, and he (and a lot of other workers) went straight to sign up. My Dad hoped to be a Pilot, as he had flying experince (even in an early B-17), but his eyes weren’t good enough. The Air Corps wanted himanyway, but he was sent over to the 10th Mtn as soon as it was learned he had been a “musher” in AK. His Military MOS was one of the rarest: Dog Sled Driver.
So, he was working on an aircraft assembly line when the news hit. Of course he and his buddies likely could have been exempt from the Draft, but few thought that way back then.
Do you know if she still lived here when the huge flood happened in 1955? [/OT]
Fortunately, we were never bombed.