A Date Which Will Live in Infamy

I have published this picture of my father before, apologies to those of you have read this story before, but it is deeply ingrained in our family's history and this date never rolls around  that I don't think about it. Not just what I know, but especially what I don't know.

The date was December 7, 1941,  the day surprise Japanese kamikaze attacks on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor killed 2,403 U.S. personnel including 68 civilians and destroyed or damaged 19 U.S. Navy ships, including 8 battleships. The following day, President Franklin Roosevelt addressed Congress saying, Yesterday, Dec 7, 1941--a date that will live in infamy--the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by the naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. I ask that Congress declare that...a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese Empire.

My mother and my father were both there. It is really mother's story, for my father never talked about it much. My father commanded a net tender which tended and controlled the submarine nets that stretched across the entrance to the Pearl Harbor. It was a Sunday morning and my mother was driving into the base to pick him up when he came off duty. As she entered the gates, a sailor on duty there told her that they were about to have target practice over the bay if she cared to pull over and watch.

It wasn't submarines entering the harbor, and it wasn't target practice but Japanese kamikaze planes flying over it dropping bombs on the American fleet which was utterly and totally unprepared for the attack.  As she watched, a car came around the corner 'on two wheels' as my mother put it and a sailer said, 'Lady, we're under attack, you'd better get out of here'. It must have been surreal and even unbelievable and my mother continued on into the base in search of my father. When she arrived there, 'all hell had broken loose'  and she sat under the bucket of a steam shovel with another navy wife for hours until they were given permission to leave. She drove to the nearest Civil Defense office where she volunteered her services. Mom didn't know if  Dad was dead or alive for three days....

So that was my mother's story. My brother and I heard it often. In fact we were inclined to roll our eyes whenever we heard her telling it again. It wasn't until many, many, years later when my parents were no longer around to ask, that a neighbor, who was also in the Navy, left a book* on the doorstep filled with photos taken on the day of the attack along with a timeline and a description. 

I sat down and started leafing through the book and wound up spending the entire afternoon looking at those pictures, totally immersed in the full horror of that day and the realization that I had never really paid much attention to my parent's eyewitness experience.  

I don't know if they would ever have answered my questions, but I didn't ask them, and now I will never know....

*Our Call to Arms: The Attack on Pearl Harbor
Time/Life Books