Pearl Harbor

My parents got married almost six months before the attack on Pearl Harbor. One family story I never heard is where they were when they heard the news. I have a vague memory of reading about it in a letter or some other written format, primarily because I remember reading that they knew immediately that Dad would be drafted sooner or later. Mom's dad had died that fall, and her brothers were much older than her (in their mid- to late-30s), so when Dad left, it would leave her alone, but not completely alone; her family would be nearby, none of her brothers would be called up.

In the event, he wasn't drafted for several months; I think being married helped delay his call. He went to Texas for Basic...in August. He went to OCS in Denver, which was fortunate since it meant that he and Mom could see each other at least through the fence. He was eventually stationed in Lake Charles, LA, where he was supposed to be trained as a pilot/gunner. Luckily, the first time he went up in a fighter, the cabin didn't pressurize right and his already weak ears imploded--well, one of them did. At age 23, he'd lost half his hearing, so the Army Air Corps didn't want him to fly anymore. Most of the guys he trained with were killed in action. He stayed in Lake Charles, working on Bomb-Sight Maintenance.

While all this was going on, he did manage the occasional days off, and when he went back to Lake Charles, my mother accompanied him...with my oldest sister, Marie, who was born in August 1943. They lived in the front room of a house. The owner, an older woman, rented out each room separately; all the tenants shared the bathroom with each other. The woman in the other front room of the house had a lot of late-night male visitors, men who frequently got confused about which window they were supposed to knock on to announce their presence.

Dad hated the Army. He never liked being told what to do, and had a healthy mistrust of authority. Those years marked him: he never worked well in the employ of others (for long), and he never would eat lamb or rice, because it was served so often in the mess. It also made him extremely wary of leaders who went rushing off to war. By the time the U.S. was bogged down in Vietnam, he had a son of eminently-draftable age. I don't recall him ever saying anything about that whole undeclared war (I was, after all, barely 11 when the fall of Saigon occurred), but I'm pretty sure he was "agin it."

So, thanks Dad.
Thanks to all your pals who didn't come back from bombing runs.
And thanks to the men and women who are doing their best to stay alive in difficult situations today.