Do you remember what you were doing when you heard the news about Pearl Harbor?

[raccoon]

Maybe a few Du'ers here do.

[HereSince1628]

1. Sort of...I remember watching Walter Cronkite's "The Big Picture"

documentary series in the mid to late 1950's. Sponsored by Prudential Insurance. That series is mostly where I learned about things called WWII and the Korean Conflict, and the result is I can't think of Diamond Head without being reminded of the 'Rock of Gibraltar'

[longship]

29. I remember it as "The Twentieth Century"

The music during the lead in remains an ear worm for me. Fortunately, it is not an evil one. And yup. There was a lot of WWII history on that program. And yup. The Rock of Gibraltar was prominent.

Thanks for the look back to a fave of my youth.

[DemocratSinceBirth]

2. They would probably be in their late seventies, early eighties to have a recollection of the event.

[raccoon]

21. Right. I thought there might be a few here. nt

[Travis_0004]

3. My grandpa got married one day before pearl harbor

He was Navy Intelligence so they were getting ready to head out for their honeymoon, but the honeymoon was cancelled and he had to wait a few years. He survived the war, and they were happily married until his death in 2009.

[edhopper]

4. You know,

I never asked my parents.
Unfortunately they are both gone now.
I wish I asked.

[Renew Deal]

5. Yes. I was in fifth grade and the teacher told us all about it.

[Downwinder]

6. No. At 10 mos. I was probably asleep.

Last edited Sun Dec 7, 2014, 01:26 PM - Edit history (1)

But I do remember the Navy Hospital in Corona three years later.

[rickford66]

7. My Dad told me this.

My parents weren't married yet. My Dad was 4F because of a bad eye. When they heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio, my Dad told my mother he'd be in the Army in a couple weeks. And so he was. Since he knew some electronics, he ended up flying bombardier on B24's. Working on the new fangled RADAR systems and new bombsights and was going to the South Pacific when the atomic bomb was dropped.

[knitter4democracy]

8. My dad was there.

I remember hearing his story when I was young, maybe 6 years old, probably younger.

My dad was a Navy brat, six years old, and living in Navy housing. He and his sisters were playing outside. It was Sunday, and rule #1 in his house growing up was never to wake up his stepmom, Nana. So, they were outside when they saw planes fly over they didn't recognize. Dad remembered seeing the pilots' faces and not knowing them. Then, black things started falling out of the sky while he and his sister watched. Their neighbor ran over to get the kids inside, and his stepmom slept through the whole thing was how Dad always told it. I have a hard time believing she slept, though, since he talked about how low the bombs and explosions were.

His uncle was on one of the ships in the harbor (he dove into the water and survived, showing up at their house hours later covered in oil and worse so that they didn't recognize him), and his dad was chief of the USS Minneapolis with the fleet to the south. Another uncle was on the USS Enterprise and helped sink the Akagi at the Battle of Midway, though he was shot down and died on the second day. Of my great-grandmother's 8 sons, every one served in the war, and we only lost Great Uncle Ernie at the Battle of Midway.

In my dad's family, this is a day of remembrance.

[yuiyoshida]

9. My grand parents who were living in Hawaii at the time

Last edited Sun Dec 7, 2014, 01:27 PM - Edit history (1)

refuse to talk about it. My parents won't tell me either why my grandparents will not talk about it. Having just read an article about Hawaii during World War II, the island was under strict martial law and some 2,000 Japanese were sent to internment camps from Hawaii. This was out of a larger population that did not go for some reason.

http://www.law.berkeley.edu/10983.htm

[PSPS]

18. Please! It's "internment" not "interment" (unless they were being literally buried in a camp.)

[yuiyoshida]

19. okay thanks...I will correct it..

My wish my computer had spell check.

[hunter]

35. My Army Air Force grandfather would sometimes uncharacteristically speak of "Japs."

He was already an officer when the war started. It struck me as such an odd thing when I was a kid. He got along with everyone professionally, tolerated anyone as neighbors, but I think that's the keyword, "tolerated." Not good enough. He was very upset when I chose to marry, in his words, "a Mexican Girl." Something not done in "white" California society. To his credit, he got over that.

My other grandfather, a hardcore religious pacifist and conscientious objector during World War II got beat up by the police protesting the internment. The only reason he escaped prison was his welding skills, building Liberty and Victory ships. He refused to take up arms.

[yuiyoshida]

36. I have heard younger people on line

refer to us, (meaning, friends of mine and myself) as "Japs"... they tell me they were being lazy and didn't want to spell out Japanese. I told them to use JPN or simply JP. "Jap" is still a very derogatory term even today.

[hunter]

42. My father-in-law witnessed Atomic Bombs up close in the Nevada desert.

Marching across ground zero when things were still on fire. He was used as a guinea pig.

Then the Navy sent him to Japan in support of data collection.

My father-in-law is a pacifist. Deciding to be an unarmed U.S. Navy medic was better than the alternative. He escaped hot war in Korea by dumb luck.

As mostly Native American in Japan, he passed on initial appearance as Japanese, and a wartime Japanese widow "adopted" him as her own son.

Stories not mine to tell.

[steve2470]

10. I was -17, somewhere in the cosmos :)

Seriously, it would be lovely to hear from DU'ers on this.

[Are_grits_groceries]

11. My Mama was teaching in a small town in SC.

She had rented a room in a woman's house. She said she stood up on the bed and just stared at the wall in shock.
I never asked my Daddy. He probably knew he was going to fight which he did.

[ballabosh]

12. -26 years old

My dad was 2 years, 4 months. But I was a big WWII buff in my youth. I love hearing the experiences of people who were there. Too bad we're losing them. Someday people will be asking us about 9/11.

[SiobhanClancy]

13. I had breakfast with my 94 year old mother today...

It being December 7, we talked a bit about Pearl Harbor. She was a senior in college and had been out to lunch and a movie with some friends...she even remembers the movie was an Abbott and Costello,which she didn't care for. Back in the dorm,they turned on the radio for some dance music and the first thing they heard was an announcement that all military personnel were to report to their commanding officers,although they didn't say why. Shortly thereafter,they heard about the attack. She remembers that one of her friends said they were surprised it happened,because it was well known that Japanese people had weak eyesight(!) Mom said the general feeling was one of anger more than fear.....living in New England,far from Hawaii and the west coast, probably accounts for that.

[Vinca]

14. Hmmm - guess not. I was an egg in my mama's ovary.

She was in the Navy during the time, as was my father. Both now gone.

[stevenleser]

15. My father had been transported with his family to concentration camp in Riga a few months before...

... he was 13. My mother was 3 years old.

[kwassa]

38. wow.

It gives one a sense of perspective.

[jwirr]

16. I was 3 months old and my parents had taken me to a movie with them. I do not of course remember

it personally.

[pipi_k]

17. This is the mind of

a very weird child...

I was -11 years old.

When I was a kid, way before finding out where babies came from, I imagined that people came from chicken eggs. How we got there, I never knew, and never thought to ask. We just got there.

Then the people who would be our parents found us on the ground and took us home.

So anyway, before I was born/hatched, I was living in a chicken egg on the ground, and I could see through the shell.

I saw an airplane go overhead. Maybe it was a Japanese bomber, who knows...



PS...I just realized that 11 years is a mighty long time to be in a chicken egg on the ground.

[csziggy]

20. I wasn't thought of yet but my Dad was in his first year of college

At Michigan Tech. He and some of his classmates immediately went to enlist. The recruiters turned them away and told them the country would need engineers if the war lasted so they should finish college. Dad dropped out the next year, enlisted in the Navy and spent a year in Washington DC drawing torpedoes until they sent him to Officer's Training School at Columbia University, then on to Submarine School in Key West. He did three war time tours on a sub in the Pacific, going back to Pearl for refits and leaves.

Mom had finished at Montgomery School of Nursing and had signed up as a Navy Nurse but had not been called to go through her physical at the time of Pearl Harbor so she was working as a nurse (I think in New Orleans or maybe for a railroad) on Dec. 7, 1942. January 1942 she was called up, trained at Virginia Beach, was in the first group of nurses sent to open the Naval Hospital when Camp Pendleton was being built. From there, she was sent to Hawaii and served there until the end of the war.

They met in Hawaii after the end of the war and married in San Francisco in 1946.

[malokvale77]

22. My father...

was doing guard duty on Governors Island.

He saw the lights go out on the Statue of Liberty. He knew we had entered the War.

I was not born yet.

[RebelOne]

23. I was almost 3 years old at the time.

My parents told me that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I remember saying, "Poor Pearl" because I thought they were talking about a little girl.

[CK_John]

24. Was 18mo old but I'm sure I had an opinion.

[monmouth4]

25. I was a year and a half old and my parents took me with them to their favorite watering hole, truly.

I think the news came over the radio, they gave me a bottle of milk and I slept in my carriage....

[MrMickeysMom]

26. Not surprising, few DUers would have remembered actually hearing the news of this day...

I still wonder why remembrance of Pearl Harbor gets an above the fold front page, and JFK's assassination gets a mention inside under "this day in history". We should have more reason to remember JFK's unanswered "why" unsolved conspiracy, than the Pearl Harbor that served as an idea to a "new Pearl Harbor" in that PNAC document.

[peace13]

28. +100. nt

[peace13]

27. Just an egg in my mother's ovary.

: )

[Freddie]

30. My dad and his brother enlisted

Dad was 20, living at home, working and taking classes at a local business college. Because he knew typing and shorthand, he was sent to India as a quartermasters clerk and never saw fighting. Mom was a 9th-grader, some of her older classmates enlisted as well. After the war Dad went to teachers college on the GI Bill, where he met Mom. 14 years after Pearl Harbor I was an infant.

[madamesilverspurs]

31. Mom says --

She had just turned 22 and was with friends listening to the radio when the news broke. One of those friends had brothers aboard ships in Pearl Harbor, and the girl started screaming and screaming. It was days before it was confirmed that the brothers had not survived.

[giftedgirl77]

32. Nope, my parents weren't even born yet....

[Kaleva]

33. I was sitting at my desk at school. 1967.

[treestar]

40. pretty funny

Original, at least!

[Lionel Mandrake]

34. I was two years old in 1941, and I don't remember hearing the news.

My parents heard it when a neighbor came over and told them that the "Japs" (sorry, but that's how people talked back then) had just bombed Pearl Harbor. Another neighbor was in the Navy. He left home soon after the attack and didn't return for many years. I remember lots of women in the neighborhood had to take care of their kids by themselves, since Daddy was far away and wouldn't be back any time soon.

For background on the attack and its aftermath, I recommend the movie "Tora, Tora, Tora" (1970) and the TV series "Victory at Sea" (1952–1953) and "The World at War" (1973–1974 ).

[Lugnut]

37. I wasn't born until 1945.

My parents talked about it often.

[kwassa]

39. This was my previous life, but I have no memory of it.

My dad was drafted out of college to fight in Europe in WWII.

[Enrique]

41. my Dad says he thought about deserting when he heard about the attack

he was in the Marine reserves, he joined not expecting to be called for active duty. He ended up staying and made it through without seeing any combat.