Remembrances of December 7th, 1941.

 By Donna Cole

 Today being 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack, it inspired me to call my stepfather Ed. He is 86 and a World War II, Navy veteran, but he did not serve in the Pacific, nor was he at Pearl Harbor. So, I called just to ask him what it was like then, on the date that will live in infamy.

 Ed grew up in the rural south. He didn't come from a family of means, so on Sunday afternoons he would walk a couple of miles over to a friend's house to listen to the radio, a battery radio. They would listen to country music shows like the Grand Ole Opry and I imagine there were some young ladies there too. Then the news broke in the country show, as Ed put it, "Pearl Harbor had been hit, I didn't even know where in hell Pearl Harbor was !"

 They listened to the radio a while longer, then he walked home. Ed told his mother, "It sounds like we are at war." She said to him, "They will snatch you up quick." She meant being drafted, Ed was 16. But they were not drafting under 17 and because Ed had good grades, he was allowed to finish school.

 As Ed told it to me,"I finished school on a Friday, the next Monday I took an Oath and was in the Navy." He joined the Navy with his cousin Charlie, they were best friends, served on the same ship together and remained close until Charlie's passing a few years ago. I had the honor to know Charlie.

 The battleship USS Nevada was in Pearl Harbor the day of the attack, she was commissioned in 1916 and served in World War I. During the Japanese attack, she was damaged and beached, but then repaired and refitted.

 Oddly enough, a couple years later and half way around the world, the Nevada was part of the D-Day invasion. Ed was on a destroyer escort, DE695  USS Rich, they were one of the ships that rendezvous with the Nevada off Portsmouth England, to escort her across the English Channel before the invasion. The Rich was later sunk by a mine.

 Even more odd, after the war in 1946, the Nevada was back in the Pacific Ocean and used as a target for a nuclear bomb test. She didn't sink. She was used for a second nuclear test and still didn't sink. Then she was used as a target for naval gunnery practice and still she refused to go down.

 So, finally in 1948, she was sunk by airplanes doing torpedo practice. Ed told me that story, he added that he was upset by the way that ship was treated after the war. To say they don't build them like that anymore would be a serious understatement.

 It came to me during this conversation that my mother was alive then, she was ten, so I asked her how she remembered that day. She also lived in a rural southern area, not far really from where Ed lived. She remembered that her family had gone to church in the morning and returned home, took off their church clothes and the kids were goofing around.

 Her father had the radio turned low and was sitting close beside it to hear, in order to not overuse the battery. He was listening to a news program, so the kids were not paying any attention. When the news of the attack broke, her father turned up the radio and the family gathered around to listen. She remembered her brother saying he was going to join up. Two of her older brothers went on to serve in the war. I had the honor of knowing them both well before they passed away.

 Mom's story made me remember her father, my Grandpa. I remember when I was young, Grandpa showed me how to get chicken eggs out of the coup and do all sorts of farm things. I also remember Mom told me that Grandpa was a different kind of Republican.

 As I got older, I understood what this meant. He had been in World War I, in France, a dough boy. My mother told me that after that war, only God knows what he saw and what he went through over there, he hated Democrats, he was an anti-war, isolationist Republican. I wonder what was going through his mind on that chilly Sunday afternoon in 1941.

 I had the honor of knowing him well too, Grandpa passed away many years ago at age 96. If he left any legacy to me, it is that nearly one hundred years after the fact, World War I, I share many of his same political beliefs.

 Ed told me tonight that one of the things he remembered was how different it was before the war and after. Before the war, Ed said that he thought about his world as small. All the roads were mostly dirt or gravel, hardly anybody had a car and things like electricity in a home was not common. He said that he never really thought much about moving very far from home or having a lot of big aspirations in life.

 After the war, Ed told me it was like everything had changed. Everybody had new cars, radios, the roads were paved, every home had electricity, people were positive, there was a sense of optimism that winning the war brought about. If America can win a world war, and you survived that war, then there is nothing we can't do.

 He said back during those times, after the war, everybody knew someone who had been at Pearl Harbor. But most all young men had been in the war. He also told me he knew a couple men who committed suicide, because of the war. Folks said one had been at Pearl, then in the Pacific and he couldn't handle it anymore. Ed has been to Hawaii, France, and other places, several times and laid wreaths for his brothers who didn't make it.

 At an event honoring veterans this past Memorial Day, Ed told me that there was one Pearl Harbor vet there and he was in his nineties. But, as Ed said about all World War II vets at this event, "There were not many of us there at all."