Author Unknown
I was six years old in 1941. My parents had divorced and my mother was trying to provide housing for my two teenaged sisters and me in San Diego. There was nothing to rent as the city was bulging with military.
That Sunday we (the four of us) were busy converting my Grandpa's old chicken house into a house for us. My job was straightening the used nails for reuse via hammer and a big flat stone.
We had put a classified ad in the newspaper to sell my piano so we could buy a used tin sink and four glass windows at the dump. When a man came to buy the piano, he said, "Isn't it terrible about Pearl Harbor?"
We spent the rest of the day huddled around the radio. It was our lifeline to the world. I had no idea then that I would later grow up to have a father-in-law and a husband who were there.
My father-in-law was stationed on the Shaw, which was in dry dock at the time. He had just made chief and was carrying his belongings from the bow (where First Class were bunked, to the other end of the ship where the CPOs were billeted. A Japanese bomb took the bow off the ship and Frank ended up in the water. He was blind.
While flailing about he could hear another Navy man screaming that he couldn't swim. Frank could swim, but he couldn't see. The other guy held on to Frank's shoulders and guided him to the shore where Frank passed out. When he came to his vision had returned.
His "eyes"--the man who had saved him--lay beside him, dead. Both of his legs had been blown off in the explosion and he had bled to death.
Frank served throughout the duration but was subject to terrible periodic headaches. He wouldn't go out on a disability until after the war was over.
My (second) husband was an 18-year-old in a dance band unit in the Army. It was a National Guard unit which had been called up in 1940.
After training, the unit had been sent to Hawaii where one of their major duties was to play on Saturday nights in the Officers' Club at Scofield Barracks. They played Dec. 6. By the end of the next day, Gene had gone from being a base fiddle player to being a Sergeant leading gun patrols.
His unit spent the next five years island hopping across the Pacific--Green Island, Fiji, the Solomons, you name it. Only a third of the guys in the band made it home.
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Life In America.
I grew up in Cleveland OHIO during WW II... I remember air raid wardens - light out test - CD people who walked the neighborhood and sirens that rang at night.
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Live Radio Broadcast
I remember the sound of machine guns and bombs coming over the radio. My Mom was ironing and she explained what had happened to me.
The war effort from this small mid-western town in Indiana to the aircraft plant in Seattle Washington provided me with an overview that I will never forget.
Not that any American is more patriot than another, but I think that that seven years of war and recovery instilled in me the motivation to be proud of my country more so than any generation since. There were no burning of the Flag demonstrations during that era.
Americans responded to their call 100% and were proud. The ones that gave the ultimate for our Country I think would be proud also to where we have come today.
Toner King
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Show of Soldarity
I was playing in our yard in Osceola, Iowa the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked. Everything in everyone's lives was immediately and automatically switched to the " win the war" attitude. Little did I know at the time we heard it over an old Crosley 1 two-tube radio, that I would be drafted into the Navy late in the war.
But I went to Pearl Harbor, and on to the Caroline Islands and was assigned to the USS Wisconsin (BB 64) where I gladly served my country and was there in the Philippines, Okinawa, and later in Toyko Bay when the atom bombs were dropped and surrender was signed.
No, I wasn't a hero, but I served with guys who were! WW II was the greatest show of solidarity that will ever exist by the American people. God bless the United States.
Walt Hoskins,
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Published in U S Legacies October 2002
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