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70
Years Ago- Dec. 7, 1941- "A date that will live in infamy
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The
Commercial Record Announces We Are At War
DEC. 7, 1941---WHERE WERE YOU?
Certain historical events etch themselves
indelibly in your mind. Dec. 7th will mark the 70th anniversary of the attack
on Pearl Harbor. For those of you (or members
of your families) on the "sunny side" of 75, you may recall where you
were and what were you doing when you learned that the Japanese had attacked America. I'm
collecting memories from our members, their families and other local folks
which can be assembled, put on the web, and shared at the approach to this
anniversary later this year.
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Mel Hershaw
recalls Tripp's Drugs Store (formerly Bird Drug Store, and now Landsharks) as a place where young people loved to
assemble. Its owners were much more amenable to youth than the older and more
staid folk at Parrish's. Mel was "hanging out" in front of Tripp's,
when someone came out to share that the news of the attack had just come across
the radio.
Mel Hershaw, Dale
Vanleeuwen,
and Maurice ("Horsey") Van Os, c1941
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Bud Sewers In his
1928 Ford Roadster------------------- Bud in Uniform
Bud
Sewers, "I was at the Oval Beech when I heard." He had a $45 car, but
no radio--"that was a luxury I couldn't afford…. Someone had a radio. The
guy who used to own the car, Dale VanLeeuwen, he saw
me coming and jumped out and flagged me down and said 'The Japs
just bombed Pearl Harbor'. I
said Oh oh --- Oh oh,
that's you and me who are going to go." (and they
both did).
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Yvonne
(Mokma) Koppenaal was in the kitchen of her parent's home in
Holland, when her mother told her that the
Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. She thinks she had just gotten home from
school, so it much have been Monday after the Sunday
attack. They learned later that one of her neighbors several houses up the
street, Robert Falcon, was in the Army and on-base in Hawaii, and spent the
attack on top of a roof with a machine gun, firing at the enemy aircraft.
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Jane Bird VanDis- "The winter that the war began, my
Dad was working in Battle Creek.
We had gone there for the weekend and we were in my father's car on the way to
my uncle John Bird's house when it came over the
radio. What a shock. From then on it was war and more war, and we had to learn
to live with it. I was in college at Western, and we were traveling between Kalamazoo and Battle
Creek. "
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Al
Pshea was in
the service at the Naval Station in Newport, Rhode Island and " we
had just gone through training and we were waiting for assignment in different
positions. I had enlisted at Kakamazoo in October.
Mainly I decided to go into the Navy because I knew I'd have my bed with me,
I'd have a warm meal with me, and I'd have my medical care with me, and I'd
always been interested in the sea. My great grandfather had been a whaler and I
had been in the Sea Scouts. I joined the Galliniper
in 1936 and was with her until I went into the service in 1941. Charlie Gilman
was the skipper and I ended up being First Mate, and Cliff Dengler
was second mate, Bob Peel was one of the crew members." (In the early
1950s, Al was to be one of the managers of the Douglas Root Beer Barrel!).
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Mary Olendorf
remembers that
when the attack occurred on Pearl Harbor, she was a junior in a private girl's
school in Albany, New York:
"I was just petrified, it really
jarred my life. This was the first time anything had broken my bubble. I was a
"day hopper", a day student. We just lived five miles from the
school. The teacher came in and announced it. And then within a year the boys I
had known were all going to war and being killed. It was another life I had
never seen. After that we were rolling bandages and planting Victory Gardens
and all that. I was a war bride too. Bill was in the Navy and he was headed for
Japan
when the Atomic bomb was dropped, and they got half
way over and then the ships were all turned around".
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Tom and Dorothy Otto Remember Pearl Harbor
Dorothy Reddy Otto-I was ironing clothes
when I heard the news in my parent's home in East Lansing (and I was ironing when I heard
that President Kennedy had been shotand I don't iron
that often). It was just unbelievable that anything like that would happen. The
radio was on and I was the first to tell everyone in the family, and they
didn't believe me. I was fourteen, and momma had just taught me to iron and I
wasn't very good, but I could do handkerchiefs real good. I remember telling
momma that I had just finished the handkerchiefs but the Japanese had just
ruined Pearl Harbor. I remember Daddy sitting
us down and telling us what this all meant. I had an older sister who was
married later to a B-17 pilot, Fran Ferguson. He was shot down and spent time
in the German Camp at Buchenwald. He always
contributed to the Red Cross, because the Red Cross taught him how to knit, and
he said had he not been able to knit himself socks, he would never have made it
when they marched them between camps.
Tom Otto- I was up in my bedroom in East Lansing. We had a PA
system in the house. We had six bedrooms, and my dad announced on the PA system
that we had been attacked by the Japanese. I was ten years old. I had four
older brothers and they all went into the service and they all made it back.
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Ginger
O'Leary- "I was originally from Flint,
Michigan, and that morning we had
gone to church and come home and grabbed sandwiches
for lunch. My grandmother had a cousin who lived in Detroit and would come over to visit on
weekends. That day after lunch my mother, my sister, my grandmother all loaded
up the car and started off to take the cousin back to Detroit. My mother was driving -- my sister
and I were both teenagers and weren't driving yet. We had the car radio on, and
were probably about as far as Pontiac,
when the news came across the radio. The news was hard to grasp - it was a big
shock. The Japanese were in Washington,
DC then talking about NOT going
to war and we knew about it. Everyone's reaction was to ask 'what can we
do", you know?' There was a gas station about a block from our house and
right away they were taking old tires down there and piling them up and
anything that was metal, they were taking to the stations. It effected people very early."
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