The afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941, my mother, Hazel Arnold, had taken my sister Narita and I to the movies at the Thornton Theater. When we arrived home, we found my father, Edgar Arnold, pacing around the kitchen nervously, waiting for us to arrive to tell us the terrible news that the United States had been attacked at Pearl Harbor by the Japanese and that President Roosevelt had announced the news by radio to all the nation.
At the time although I was only 8 years old, I have never forgotten that day and all that happened in the next years as our lives were changed forever. My dad worked at the Goodrich Rubber Co. and so he had a busy time those years. Rationing of many products became a fact of life, including shoes, sugar and others that apparently weren’t as bothersome to me because I can’t call them to mind.
My dad became a neighborhood watchman. We hung thick dark-colored green or black window shades at sundown so the lights of a city with three tire factories couldn’t be seen from the air, and did without a lot of things.
When my older sister Lois’ husband was leaving to join the Army, our family all went to the train station to see him off. At the time, I was the only one in the family smiling and proud but too young to see the dangers. Blue stars for living and gold stars for deceased were hung in the windows, to honor the men who went to the war.
It was during those years of war that we all learned to cherish the steady somber words of the president’s radio “chats.”
Dorothy L. Alexander
Akron
Andy Danik was my dad’s best friend. Andy died while on the USS Arizona. George Deme Jr. (my dad) and Andy were boyhood friends from South Akron, Firestone Park. Andy’s name is on the Pearl Harbor memorial wall. It was very touching and sad to see his name.
Andy sent a letter to George, dated March 13, 1941, “somewhere in the Pacific,” on USS Arizona letterhead. Among the questions about what’s going on back at home, and speculation that the Indians would win the pennant, Andy wrote the following:
“So I hear that you got a job, man that’s bad business, and just between me and you I wouldn’t take any job in Akron because I’m satisfied right here where I am. Not a worry in the world but till the next time payday comes.”
Cassie Fortunato
North Canton
Our family returned to our home at 968 Bellevue Ave., Akron, at about 4 p.m. on Dec. 7, 1941. We had seen a movie at the old Liberty Theater. Dad turned on the radio and the announcer kept repeating that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and we were going to war!
Dad looked stunned. Mom immediately began crying because she knew right then that our brother, Alan, age 19, would have to serve. (He enlisted in the U.S. Army on Dec. 7, 1942, and said he saw the B-29, Enola Gay, return to Tinian Island after dropping the first atomic bomb on Japan.) I asked my dad who the Japanese were and where was Pearl Harbor, which he tried to explain with a very sad voice.
After 75 years, these memories are still vivid, even though I was just shy of my seventh birthday on that day of infamy.
C. David Post
Copley Township
I was 7 years old and lived in Firestone Park. We shared a driveway with the Coudriet family.
That Sunday afternoon, Bob and Bernie were throwing a baseball back and forth in the driveway just like they did all the time. Bob was a pretty darn good baseball player. Their sisters Betty, Jewel, Marcella and I sat on the side doorsteps and watched. The weather was not too bad and everything was so normal.
Then Mrs. Coudriet came to the door and said they would have to stop because their father, Paul, had to go to work. The ball-throwing stopped and we got up off the steps. Even Oscar the dog moved.
Mr. Coudriet came out, never said a word as I remember, backed the car out and off he went to work. The ball-throwing resumed for a very short time and then Mrs. Coudriet asked us to get up again because she wanted to go talk to Mrs. Harroun, my mom. We all wondered what was going on.
When she came out of our house, she told her kids to come inside. My mom called me in also and I was told about Pearl Harbor.
The reason Mr. Coudriet went to work on a Sunday afternoon? He was employed by the Akron Beacon Journal and was a circulation manager. There was going to be a special edition.
Bob Coudriet went on to be a medic stationed in Hawaii.
Sandy Harroun DiMascio
New Franklin
My day, Dec. 7, 1941. I was 7, almost 8, and was with my parents, little sister Rita and my aunt and uncle at their house. My parents and aunt and uncle would play cards one Sunday each month and Dec. 7 was the Sunday.
The adults were listening to the radio when President Roosevelt began to speak. They stopped playing cards and stared at the radio. The president had an unusual speaking delivery and even I listened. I heard words like “bombing, attack, death, war.”
I looked at their faces and noticed a different look from the looks when they were playing and yelling about the cards and points. The look was of fear and uncertainty. They stopped playing cards, talked for a while about this event and we went home.
On the way home, I asked questions and my parents answered the best they could. One word the president said stayed with me, that was the word “infamy.”
The next day at St. Hedwig’s School, the class talked about this event, too. The nuns also had an uncertain, concerned look on their faces.
We had air-raid drills in school and in our neighborhood. We were to have no lights showing and no radios and to stay indoors. Well, a few of us young guys would sneak out and hide because there were people walking around checking on the neighborhood. We too were there to protect the neighbors.
We also had our military equipment and we made a camp by the railroad across the Cuyahoga River and camped on a hill and made sure that part of the railroad was protected by us. I remember talking about this protection years later with a few of those young soldiers and we agreed we did a good job because no one damaged that part of the railroad. Of course, we could only protect during the day because we had to be home when it got dark.
I would like to go back there some day but the famous swing bridge is gone and that’s how we got there, plus most likely I can’t climb that “big” hill at 81 years of age.
Stanley Sipka
Cuyahoga Falls
I was 13 years old, leaving the Nixon Theater matinee to hear a newspaper boy shouting “Japs bomb Pearl Harbor.”
I ran the four or five blocks home to find Grandma, my aunt and dad huddled around the Philco floor model radio, listening to the horrible news. You see, my brother Bud was serving aboard the USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, stationed at Pearl.
The next weeks, four cousins signed up to serve.
The irony of this day was my brother wrote a letter dated the second of November, telling Dad he “would be hearing rumors about war with Japan. Not true.” Little did he know. His enlistment was up Dec. 2, and many others before that.
The “Big E” had been kept out to sea for a long while, even being refueled by tankers. The morale was so bad that one night while showing a movie on deck, when the captain came up, they booed him. Unheard of!
When they headed back to Pearl their planes were sent on ahead as was customary. When they entered the harbor they witnessed the carnage the Japanese had wrought. Servicemen and civilians helped restock the ship so it could slip out to sea before daylight, fearing the Japanese would be back.
The Big E went on to fight in almost all the major Pacific battles and became the most decorated ship of the war.
Janice Roderick Lloyd
Cuyahoga Falls
I was 17 years old and a junior attending Tennessee Military Institute in Sweetwater, Tenn. We had just assembled for breakfast when we were ordered to assemble in the study hall.
The headmaster had a TV set up of all to see. We were then informed of the raid on Pearl Harbor. Of course, all the first classmen knew that they would be enlisted into the Army as second lieutenants.
We were then told to march to breakfast. The rest of the day was pretty much the talk about who would be ordered into the Army and, if so, would they be able to finish out the year.
Since it was a Sunday, each platoon went to their assigned church as usual, but there seemed to be much more interest in how we would react. That experience was thought provoking.
The only photo I have is one taken shortly after my induction, showing me as an Army private who ended up in the European Theater and my older brother who was an ensign in the Navy and ended up in the Pacific Theater. We both survived.
Donald Harrod
Copley
Memories come flooding back about the war years. First, the shock of Pearl Harbor being attacked by the Japanese. It was unbelievable. Here I was a 16-year-old girl, living a very sheltered life near a small town, where life was pretty much arranged.
Like many people of my parents’ and my generation, we believed that World War I was the war to end all wars. Mother’s brother, Frank, died in that war, so that there would never be another war, or so I believed. Another brother, Roy, was disabled from it. Mother consoled herself with the belief that her brother had not died in vain.
Once a teacher of mine did say the next war America would get into would probably be with Japan. What did she know? We never got into discussing World War I in history class. We read as far as the Spanish American War and suddenly it was nearing our summer recess and we would rush through all those pages telling about World War I, the League of Nations, the stock market crash of 1929, the Depression and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, our president.
Dec. 7, 1941, was a cold day, but I went to church as usual, came home, ate dinner with the rest of the family, helped clear away the table and wash and dry dishes for the 10 people who sat around our table: my father, two brothers and four sisters, my grandfather and myself. A married sister lived in Ohio and was not present. Then I went to my room, did my homework and took a nap.
My sister Kathleen’s voice came through the fog, of sleep. “Libby, Libby, wake up. The Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. It just came over the radio.” I quickly followed her down to the back living room, where Father sat with his head bowed down, listening to the radio. Mother stood close by.
Americans dead. The entire Pacific Fleet destroyed in a sneak attack early this morning. The flagship Arizona sank, the Missouri sank, and Clark and Hickam Field bombed. On and on it went, and we listened in shocked silence.
As usual, I helped Mother with supper. She said, “This means your brothers will go to war.” She cried then and I was miserable knowing I could not console her. At home, Mother was the only one allowed to be seen crying. For us children, it was a sign of weakness. I tried to kid Mother when I saw she was carrying the coleslaw with potholders, but joking was to no avail and my heart was not in it anyway.
That Monday, the president was to speak over the radio. Dec. 7 was the “Day of Infamy.” He asked Congress to declare war on Japan. Germany declared war on us, so this meant that we were really into it. For some time, British children were being evacuated from the large cities. Many European countries were being overtaken by Adolf Hitler’s followers.
At school, the boys were talking of volunteering. I looked at the morning paper and saw a list of the dead from yesterday’s events. A friend’s brother, Henry, was in the Army at Pearl Harbor and was one of those killed.
I could not get it out of my mind that more than 1,000 American servicemen were entombed in the Arizona. When we moved to the small town, I recall having seen a sign that listed the population as being just under 1,000. It was as though the entire town could have been destroyed.
The voices of American servicemen were broadcast from places in the Pacific. Men, who were without the proper equipment to defend themselves. They felt deserted. There was a saying that came through later.
We are the battling bastards of Bataan.
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam,
No aunts, no uncles no cousins, no nieces,
No rifles, no planes, or artillery pieces.
And nobody gives a damn.
Gradually, my friends and I began writing to servicemen.
Soon we would have shortages in buying many products, which we took for granted. “Don’t you know there is a war on?” was a response heard over and over again in the shops. Sugar seemed to be about the first item to become scarce. People raced to the stores and bought up all there was.
One person who missed out hurriedly bought 5 or 10 pounds of pepper. This provided a lot of people with a good laugh. After all, how much pepper does the average person use? Mother refused to get involved in hoarding or any of the black market activities that evolved in the war years.
Mother listened in disbelief to one of her friends who told her that she smashed all her Japanese Christmas ornaments to pieces. Why destroy what was good about a country? This was what Mother thought.
After some time in college, I moved to Ohio to stay with my sister. Wanting to help with the war effort, I got a job with Goodyear Aircraft where they were building planes. I worked in the payroll department.
When the war was over, I returned to my studies at the University of Akron while living at the YWCA and later met an Air Force major who would later become my husband.
Elizabeth Fisher Seuffert
Akron
Growing up as a Marine Corps brat, I thought everyone’s father flew airplanes. We were a nomadic but regimented tribe, on the move at a moment’s notice. Both of my parents, Desmond and Marie Canavan, had become used to this way of life as a matter of course, 10 years before they ever laid eyes on me.
My father, 1st Lt. Desmond Canavan, Naval Aviator No. 5159, had shipped out on the USS Lexington in January 1941, to be part of a build-up of military forces in the Territory of Hawaii. My mother, Marie Canavan, remained in Seattle to give birth to a baby daughter, Susan, on the very day, Jan. 22, 1941, that my father, Des, disembarked on Oahu. The next month, Marie and baby Susan left for Hawaii.
By the end of February 1941, Ewa Field was rapidly becoming a full Marine Corps Air Station encampment with a tent city, hangars, an assortment of planes and pilots, many of whom, including my father, had trained together since 1936. Ewa Mooring Mast Field had originally been designed to receive the airships Akron and Los Angeles.
Sadly, my sister, the infant Susan, died in mid-November 1941, choking on food. Years before the Heimlich maneuver would be invented, my parents were distraught.
Des’ last log entry for November 1941 was a three-hour local familiarization in the trusty R3D2: Bu.No. 1905. After Dec. 7, 1941, it would be the only aircraft from Marine Air Group-21 to survive the blitz.
My father returned to duty on Dec. 4, flying two hours on Thursday in a Grumman Duck and three hours on Friday, Dec. 5, in the Sikorsky JRS-1. Dec. 6 was his day off.
The morning of Dec. 7, 1941, was sparkling clear as my father drove to the field. Interviewed 45 years ago for the Granite State Gazette, he said, “We topped a rise en route and there was Pearl Harbor spread out in front of us.”
Just before 8 a.m., 1st Lieutenant Canavan was coming on duty as Officer of the Day for Marine Air Group-21 (MAG-21) at Ewa Field on Oahu, while Captain Leonard Ashwell, also from VMJ-252, was just finishing the early morning shift, having breakfast before going off duty. The Japanese struck just before the duty change at 7:55 a.m., hitting several targets at once, including Ewa Field.
My father recalled, “The first attack at Ewa was a nine-plane formation. They came in quite low against the mountains, in echelon. We were expecting some planes back from a carrier so we weren’t surprised to see them coming from that direction.” As soon as the Japanese started firing their guns, the Marines knew they had a problem. “They went right after the two squadrons of planes on the ground. We had no revetments on the field and the planes were pretty much sitting ducks. We never got a plane in the air.” The first strike was followed by a second at 9:30 a.m.
“It was evident to us at Ewa that the Japanese aviators were having a pretty good time. They were coming in quite low and waving to us. Although a few persons were injured and a few killed at Ewa, it was pretty evident that the primary concern of the attackers was to damage the aircraft.”
Bob Galer, a University of Washington and Aviation Cadet classmate of my father’s, was headed for a round of golf that Sunday morning. Bloody Mary in hand, he could see the attack on Pearl Harbor from his home in Waikiki. Never finishing his drink, he commandeered a taxi and arrived at Ewa Field just in time for the second attack.
Galer was later interviewed by 2005 Yellow Sheet newsletter. He reported he was given a rifle and told to go jump in a hole where a swimming pool was being built. Galer saw Captain Milo Haines jump behind a tractor to dodge bullets from a Zero, when Haines received small injuries and a severed necktie just below his chin. The commanding officer of MAG-21 was Lt. Col. Claude “Sheriff” Larkin. Larkin was shot at by a Zero several times while trying to drive his old car to the air station. Once he arrived, he jumped into a ditch, leaving his Plymouth’s motor running.
Des recalled as beautiful as the morning had been coming into work that day, “a few hours later the sun was absolutely obscured by a pall of smoke … The first feeling was one of shock. And then it became one of enormous frustration, not being able to fight back.”
It didn’t take too long to assess the damages. All but one of the 48 aircraft were destroyed by the Japanese at Ewa. The transport R3D-2: Bu.No:1905 escaped because it had been sent to Ford Island for repairs and wasn’t on the field. Four men were killed, 13 wounded but the field itself was in good enough shape to assist the Army and Navy aircraft unable to reach their own fields. However, Larkin reported to Kimmel that Ewa was without radio communication and power.
By afternoon, a new apprehension surfaced throughout the Oahu. ... What if the plan was to follow up air attacks with an invasion? Once the fires were put out, it was time to protect the perimeter.
Meanwhile, my mother, who had been lounging in her robe that morning, assumed the first attack was another war game exercise being thoughtlessly played on a Sunday morning. After learning of the attack, Marie spent the night up in the hills with other friends.
“We were terrified. A friend [Eleanor Brown] whose Navy father had taught her to handle guns, slept in the same room with me and a pistol under her pillow.”
Marie wrote her family back in Seattle a reassuring letter on Dec. 10.
“Dear Family — Just a short note to let you know we are all O.K. We did have an attack Sunday a.m. much to everyone’s amazement. Most of us thought it was just a war game. — I, for one, didn’t even look out the window until it was practically all over.
“Des had the duty [Officer of the Day] — so I was all alone, but now I have Lee Graves (her baby is due in February), Eleanor Brown (she has a darling 2-month-old baby boy) with me. A navy wife and her two children were with us until this morning. Des has to remain at the field, so we have plenty of room. “Also we have pooled our food, blankets, etc. & we are all very comfortable.
Of course, we are still having black-outs, but last night we had a rubber of bridge by candlelight. We feel very safe here now. Everything is under control — our home guard is on the job & the army & navy & “Marine Corps are really ready for the little bastards.
“I hope you received my cable — Don’t believe all the horrible things that are coming over the radio and newspaper. We get the coast broadcasts here, and it ain’t all true!
“Des is alright, too. I saw him yesterday — we will either drive out there again today or tomorrow — am awaiting a call from him now.
“So again, I say — don’t worry: we have food, clothing, protection — and after all, I guess we’ll just have to be fatalists.
“I’m enclosing the negatives of Susan’s pictures and some of the recent trip to Hawaii we made. Please keep them for me.
“Please call Mrs. Canavan & tell her everything is under control.
“Love to you all, Marie
P.S.: the pictures of Susan are in order – 5 weeks-9 months.
33 Uluwehi– Wahiawa, Oahu”
What Marie didn’t know when she wrote this letter was that Lee Graves’ husband, 1st Lt. George Graves had died on Dec. 8 only four days after landing on Wake Island. I can only speculate that when Marie received her expected phone call from Des, he may have had the bad news.
It was Dec. 8 on Wake when VMF-211 pilots first learned of the attack on Hawaii. The Japanese attack on Wake came almost simultaneously. Because aviators were on patrol and airborne at the time, four of their planes were spared damage, but the spare parts of the eight others would sustain the pilots until they were forced to surrender two weeks later.
The very first strike killed 23 and wounded 11 men. Among the VMF-211 pilots, Frank Holden and Robert Conderman were shot before they could reach their planes. Lee Graves’ husband George scrambled to his plane, but as he got into his cockpit, but before he could get underway was killed by a direct hit from a Japanese bomb. My father’s friend, George, with his lopsided grin and talent for goggle-fishing for lobster and spear-fishing, wouldn’t be bringing home dinner for the barbecue any more.
The men on Wake Atoll who were healthy enough to be taken prisoner spent their war as POWs in China. My father was able to survive his war as a flight test pilot at NAS Anacostia & NAS Patuxent River. He returned to the Pacific in early 1945 and was on Guam when his old friends were finally released from POW Camps. The reunion dinner was a bittersweet event for MAG-21.
Nancy Canavan Heslop
Akron
I was born and raised on the east side of Cuyahoga Falls in 1924.
I was in the 12th grade at Cuyahoga Falls High School, 17 when Pearl Harbor occurred. I turned 18 June 1, 1942, and was drafted into the U.S. Army Feb. 23, 1943.
I was in the 34th Infantry Division, 135th Infantry Company Mortar Squad, as a gunner. We embarked just south of Naples. By Oct. 1 we had occupied Naples. On Oct. 6th, Germans booby-trapped the large bank in Naples and blew it up and part of downtown Naples. We shelled and shelled the town of Cassino — there received the Bronze Star — then on to the large mountain where the Abbey of Monte Cassino sat, a German lookout position. We were bogged down for 30 days, hardly any water to drink, or rations (some were dropped by airplane). I was hit here and wounded in left shoulder with a splinter fragment from an 88 screaming mimi.
President Roosevelt would not give the order to bomb the monastery because the Germans were holding 700 monks prisoner seven stories below ground. Finally, January 1944, Roosevelt gave the orders to bomb the monastery. On that day, my buddy Ray Wants of Massillon saw the sky darkened [as] the droves of planes came overhead. After the battle, we were sent to a rest area. I came down with yellow jaundice, my buddy Ray went onto Anzio. I was sent back to the USA in July 1944.
Medals received: Purple Heart, Bronze Star with 2 clusters, European Theater Combat, Good Conduct, Marksman Medals, Infantry Combat Badge.
Randall A. Weitzell
Cuyahoga Falls
My uncle James L. Ritchie of Cuyahoga Falls was stationed in Hawaii. He called to wish me a happy birthday April 12, 1941. I was 7. He was on the Breakfast with Brenneman radio show. He sent pictures of himself having fun and ready to go swimming.
Uncle Jimmy was in charge of getting the planes off the ground. When the Japanese planes came, he did just that until his chin was blown off by the blasts. They did a good job of mending him, but soon sent him into another war zone and the Battle of the Bulge.
He was MIA, missing in action, for a few months. After a time, he was found. He was taken in a French farmhouse for protection. Though quite young, I knew about war and I’ll never forget.
Patricia Doolittle
Barberton
I did not move to Akron until 1952, however my memories of that day are as follows:
I woke up to the sound of loud sirens going on all over our little town of Williamson, W.Va., on that fateful day of Dec. 7, 1941. I was two days shy of my 13th birthday and had never heard that sound before.
Mom and Dad had the radio on, listening to the very sketchy reports of an attack by Japan on some place called Pearl Harbor. My first thought was that our local newspaper might put out a special edition and it would be an opportunity for me to make some money. They did and I ran all over town selling the “Specials” for 5 cents a copy. I earned 2 cents for each copy I sold.
Eugene D. Looney
Akron
I was born in Pennsborg, W.Va., on Feb. 9, 1938. I was a young 3 year old, knowing nothing about war or politics or government.
When Pearl Harbor was bombed, the neighbors living below us yelled up at dad, saying it had happened, “turn on your radio.” I do not remember having one then. But I do remember Mom asking Dad what is going on, Pearl Harbor is not one of our states, why such a fuss?
Dad and mom then walked up the hill to the landlord’s farm house and they had a radio. It was full of the news.
As time passed, we traveled to Mom’s parents’ farm. As we visited that weekend, in came from Ohio my mother’s brothers, Uncle Mike and Uncle Pat, both to go into the Army. Mike was working for Bell Telephone, and Pat was with Firestone. Mike was sent to Sicily, and Pat stayed in stateside duties.
Mike called us for a camera. We had an old Kodak Box Brownie that Mom sent him and he took photos of Italy. When the war ended, he came to us with a souvenir from Germany. I have it yet. It was shell casings made into shot cups, a brass howitzer ring as handle to a flat piece of brass with six holes in it to hold the shot cups. And he brought the camera. I have it yet, and photos. He was at the hanging upside down of Mussolini, shot by the local citizens.
I remember being taken to my grandparents’ farm, left to help during the war, and when a plane flew over (very rare) and usually a mail plane by wing type, Grandpa hated them so low, to scare the farm livestock and scatter them all over.
I grew up learning more of the war, for many of my older relatives were in it.
Larry G. Williams
Munroe Falls
