I was 11 years old on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
I had no idea where Pearl Harbor was. Most Americans didn’t. My father knew it was a Navy base on an island in the middle of the Pacific, but not much else.
We had just sat down to our traditional Sunday dinner at midday. There were just four of us: my parents, my grandmother and me. In the center of the table was a roasted chicken stuffed with Pepperidge Farm bread. It smelled good enough to eat, which is what it was intended to do. In smaller serving dishes were mashed potatoes, carrots, string beans and gravy. My grandmother had done the cooking. There wasn’t a better cook on the face of the planet!
We kept a small table model radio in the kitchen to listen to background music while we ate. The music in those days was very calm, slow, and easy-to-listen-to.
“We interrupt this program,” a voice said from the radio, “to bring you this news bulletin. Pearl Harbor has been attacked. Japanese planes have staged a raid on the Naval Base at Pearl Harbor. We repeat, Pearl Harbor has been attacked. As soon as we have more news we’ll be back. Now we are returning you to your regularly scheduled broadcast.”
“That’s impossible!” my father announced. “Pearl Harbor is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles from Japan. It’s the most-heavily protected American military base in the world. No one would dare attack it!”
My father switched stations, still believing it was a fictitious announcement, probably another one of Orson Welles’ radio dramas similar to the one on Hallowe’en night in 1938 about Martians landing in Grover’s Falls, New Jersey which frightened half of America.
Additional bulletins kept being announced all that Sunday afternoon. My father switched stations to see if there were other newscasters saying the same thing, but he couldn’t find any. When he found the New York Giants football game being broadcast he stopped searching and we listened to the game. The Giants were playing the Brooklyn Dodgers that Sunday in the Polo Grounds.
One of the football announcers confirmed that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and announcements were being made over the loudspeakers in the Polo Grounds that “All military personnel are to report to their bases immediately.” Thousands of people were exiting the stadium, most of them young men.
When you’re only 11, like I was, news doesn’t have the same impact that it does on adults, but I could tell that my father was having a hard time believing it. “What does it mean?” my mother asked him.
“It means we’re at war,” he told her. “We can’t allow another nation to attack us without responding. But I still can’t believe it. Planes can’t fly that far, not from Japan to Pearl Harbor. Do you know how large the Pacific Ocean is? They’re thousands of miles apart.”
Later that afternoon I went to the usual Sunday afternoon basketball game at the Church I attended. The gym was packed with spectators. I sat with some friends, preparing to root for our Church’s team. At halftime an official addressed us on the loud speaker system. He confirmed that the news about Japan bombing Pearl Harbor was true, and that much of the Naval Base was on fire and some of our warships had been sunk or were sinking. There were many casualties. He asked us all to rise, take off our hats, and stand while the National Anthem was played to honor those killed or wounded. It may have been the first time “The Star Spangled Banner” was played at a sporting event. That was 70 years ago, and they’re still doing it today.
