General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDo you remember what you were doing when you heard the news about Pearl Harbor?
Maybe a few Du'ers here do.
HereSince1628
(36,063 posts)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
(40,416 posts)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
(99,711 posts)raccoon
(31,120 posts)Travis_0004
(5,417 posts)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
(33,615 posts)I never asked my parents.
Unfortunately they are both gone now.
I wish I asked.
Renew Deal
(81,871 posts)Downwinder
(12,869 posts)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
(5,528 posts)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
(14,350 posts)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
(41,861 posts)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
(13,614 posts)yuiyoshida
(41,861 posts)My wish my computer had spell check.
hunter
(38,327 posts)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
(41,861 posts)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
(38,327 posts)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
(37,457 posts)Seriously, it would be lovely to hear from DU'ers on this.
Are_grits_groceries
(17,111 posts)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
(330 posts)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
(2,955 posts)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
(50,303 posts)She was in the Navy during the time, as was my father. Both now gone.
stevenleser
(32,886 posts)... he was 13. My mother was 3 years old.
It gives one a sense of perspective.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)it personally.
pipi_k
(21,020 posts)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
(34,137 posts)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
(4,879 posts)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
(30,947 posts)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
(10,005 posts)monmouth4
(9,709 posts)I think the news came over the radio, they gave me a bottle of milk and I slept in my carriage....
MrMickeysMom
(20,453 posts)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
(11,076 posts)peace13
(11,076 posts): )
Freddie
(9,273 posts)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
(15,806 posts)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
(4,713 posts)Kaleva
(36,343 posts)treestar
(82,383 posts)Original, at least!
Lionel Mandrake
(4,076 posts)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" (19521953) and "The World at War" (19731974 ).
Lugnut
(9,791 posts)My parents talked about it often.
kwassa
(23,340 posts)My dad was drafted out of college to fight in Europe in WWII.
Enrique
(27,461 posts)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.