Florida Shooters Network

My mother was in the hospital in NYC, on December 7, 1941. She told me (this was long before I was born) people were listening to a Giants football game on the radio in the day room. Then an announcement, the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Many people scoffed at it, thinking it was another fiction broadcast like the “War of the Worlds” of a few years earlier. Then, more networks broadcast the same thing. What seemed like a normal Sunday was a marker that life had changed forever, and many would make the ultimate sacrifice.

Remember. Even if for no other reason than the knowledge it can happen again, any time, while we are engaging in normal activity. The soldiers and sailors at Pearl were just having breakfast.

My mother was seven months out of High School, working as a new switchboard operator at the Pentagon on December 7th, 1941.
She took one of the first, if not the first call into the Pentagon, informing the big brass about the attack, it was about 12:30 pm local time, lunch time, when the call came in.
She told be many years later about it when I was about 8 years old, in the late 1950's; she remembered the entire Pentagon literally waking up, with Generals and Admirals coming in all afternoon.
The place turned from a sleepy Sunday into a total madhouse in about an hours time.

My father was 30 and stationed on a little gunboat the USS Sacramento the second ship in from the point across from Battleship Row

He was shaving and hearing airplanes thought it was the Army Aircorps buzzing the fleet so he looked out the porthole and saw an aircraft with what he described as a "Meatball" on the side and knew it was a Jap attack.
The explosions began seconds later.
As close as he was to the epicenter the crappy little ships were not targets and they were nearly unarmed so the guys mostly watched the game until fishing guys out of the water became their task.
After he passed in 1971 the navy put a second grave marker noting his Pearl Harbor Day service

I never listened much to his war stories and he did not speak of the war often anyway.
Now I wish I had sat him down and tape recorded every detail he could remember

I do remember him saying he was at Darwin when the Japs attacked and he admired the skill of the Val dive bombers and some of the funny stuff later when he was in reality very much like McCale wheeling and dealing in New Caledonia on a floating drydock

He commonly used the term "Jap" but not disrespectfully. They just abbreviated Japanese and the notion it was like the "N" word is preposterous.
When old timers meant hate they used an adjective in front of Jap or after depending and their tone was different than simply referring to them

My father picked up my mother (who was just17, dad was 29) from Nocatee Florida and they eloped in August of 1941. In late September her mother and my Uncle Earnest showed up at my father's laundry with a milk cow in the back of a model T truck. At that time that was quite the trip, even without the cow. She walked in and said Dave, I brung ya a cow, you take care of my baby daughter. He was kind of taken aback but he led the cow back home. Little did he know how valuable that cow would be to the family he was going to have over the next 4+ years.