Lorain Journal Pearl Harbor Front Page

Well, today is December 7th – National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day – and a good day to look back at how the attack on Pearl Harbor played out in The Lorain Journal. Above is the front page of the paper from Monday, December 8th.

Click on the image for a larger, readable (if you have your glasses on, that is) version.

Scanning the various articles, you can get a taste of the anxiety and hysteria sweeping the nation as the United States found itself at war again.

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Although it didn't have anything to do with the Pearl Harbor attack, the article at the bottom of the page about Lieutenant Sidney Muhart – the ex-Lorainite who was in the Royal Air Force of Britain – is kind of interesting.

According to the article, Lieut. Muhart was in an air battle with two German Messerschmitts, and his British Hurricane fighter plane sustained a cannon shot in its gas tank. He managed to land his plane, but was burned about the face and hands.

Of course, I wanted to find out more, so I looked him up in the Lorain City Directories. In the 1937 directory (the only listing I could find), Sidney N. Muhart resided at 1218 W. 20th Street, and worked as a glazier at Lorain Glass Company.

But how did he end up in the British Air Force? According to this online account, he had gone to Canada along with a buddy (Lance Wade) in the first year of the war and enlisted in the air force there.

Sadly, Lieut. Muhart was later killed in air action over Africa. (There are several online links that mention him, including this listing in a book called The Foreign Burial of American War Dead: A History. He's also mentioned on another website about the exploits of his friend Flight Lieutenant Lance Wade, as well as in the 1943 Lorain High School Scimitar.

Lieut. Muhart is buried in Heliopolis War Cemetery in Egypt – an unusual resting place for another of Lorain's unsung war heroes.