Today is National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day – and the 82nd Anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Hopefully we'll never forget to pause and reflect on what happened that day, just as we solemnly acknowledge the attack on 9/11/2001 each year.
I've posted the front page of the Lorain Journal of Monday, December 8, 1941 before on this blog. This time, though, I thought it would be interesting to include the day before the attack – to get a snapshot of an unsuspecting nation – as well as several days after, to see the mobilization and jitters of a country suddenly plunged into war.
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I remember as a kid pumping my parents for information about WWII. That and the Great Depression were the defining events of their lives, and I wanted to know how they felt about them.
Dad didn't want to talk about his time in the Army too much. When I asked him if he ever killed an enemy soldier, he said something like, "Well, when you're shooting at an enemy you can't see, it's hard to know." He maintained a pretty tight-lipped silence about his Army life. He was away from Lorain and his loved ones from 1942 to 1945, and he preferred to put it out of his mind, I guess.
Fortunately, Dad came home with a lot of photos – places in France where he'd been and photos of him and his Army pals. Mom was smart enough to make him label them all.
As for Mom, I asked her about what it was like to be a teenager during the War. She said it was kind of scary in the early months, because our victory wasn't a sure thing.
Of course, Admiral Ernest J. King had no doubt about a successful outcome of the War. When asked in August 1942 for a prediction, he stated, "We're going on to victory, of course. We will win this war."