This Is our Village

Thursday, December 6, 2018

DECEMBER 7, 1941 - A DAY THAT WILL LIVE IN INFAMY - LET US NOT FORGET

-Image result for pearl harbor
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Dave Israel
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1 comment:

  1. Lanny HoweDecember 10, 2018 at 1:56 AM

    I remember December 7, 1941, a "Day of Infamy,"our dad said, quoting President Franklin D. Roosevelt. I had turned five the day before. Everything changed then, for now America entered the war with Germany. The war in Europe had been in all the news. America had been helping in the war effort, helping Great Britain by sending ships with munitions and food and doing whatever else we could short of sending our own troops to fight. Now suddenly there was this "sneak attack"—but by Japan not Germany—and on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, a US territory in the Pacific. It crippled the US fleet, but it hardly crippled the nation or our will. Instead, it was the galvanizing agent for our entry into the Second World War. Japan, Germany and Italy, referred to as the Axis powers, were united by a pact, so it meant war on two fronts for us. The US declared war on the three aligned nations within two days.

    My cousin David was ten years older than I. A couple of years into the war, at 17 or 18, he signed up for duty on a minesweeper in the Pacific. It was dangerous work, as a mine could blow up the ship, but he came home from the war unscathed—AND with a war bride from Hawaii named Beverly! I remember seeing him in his trim sailor's uniform, pretty proud of this girl on his arm. Today he and Beverly are in their nineties, live in a Boston suburb, and are in good health for their age.

    Some of our oldest CV residents fought in World War II. How much we owe to those who fought in wars for us.

    During the war, one combatant, who just recently passed away, was piloting a plane in the Pacific. He was the youngest US pilot in the Pacific theater. His plane aflame, he parachuted and was rescued by US forces. Who could have known then that this youngest pilot, plucked out of enemy waters, would one day become the 41st president of our country, beloved by his countrymen?

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