I awoke early this morning – the clock read 7:00.

A few minutes later, I was drinking coffee as I relished the fact that I had no plans for the day. I thought happily that I could be as lazy as I wished on this chilly, grey morning in Arkansas.

However, when I realized that today was December 7 and remembered the impact that day had on my father, my family, the citizens of the United States and the world community, I reassessed my plans.

By then, it was nearly 7:55 a.m. and I realized that was the time, in Hawaii 84 years ago, that the first wave of Japanese bombers reached Pearl Harbor. A second wave of bombers arrived at 8:50 that morning, and those 350-plus enemy aircraft resulted in the loss of 2,403 American lives and the destruction of the USS Arizona in the harbor. Five of eight battleships, three destroyers, and seven other ships in the area were either sunk or “rendered  useless,” and more than 200 aircraft were destroyed. Three American aircraft carriers, however, were at sea and survived the attack. More than 1,100 military and civilian injuries were reported, and approximately 100 civilians also died or suffered severe injuries.

It was a Sunday, just as today.

Less than 24 hours later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed a joint session of Congress.

 “Yesterday, December 7, 1941,” he began, “— a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

The Senate unanimously approved a resolution recognizing that a “state of war” existed between the United States and Japan. The House of Representatives also approved the resolution with a single dissenting vote.

Three days later, Germany and Italy declared war against the U.S.  World War II was officially underway, and during the succeeding three and a half years, more than 400,000 American servicemen were killed or later died from injuries suffered on battlefields across the globe.

My father and two uncles served in distant lands during those years; they all returned from the war changed by their experiences but alive.

I have written about December 7 in the past.

This morning, I reread those past remembrances.

I include just a portion of each one here, “lest I forget.” 

The first, posted on my blog, Right Off Main, in early December 2020, is not about Pearl Harbor, but about the pandemic which had just been declared by the World Health Organization. It seems pertinent, in more ways than one:  

I wrote then:

“If there is any good lesson to be learned from a pandemic, it is simply this:

Life goes on.”

. . .

“It is confirmation, come crashing into our consciousness, that — as my grandmother might have said — “We’re not so smart, after all!”

But, life goes on.

That was confirmed in another way, quite unexpectedly, earlier this year (in 2020). I received a friend request through Facebook, from a person I did not know. I am leery of accepting new friends, preferring only a small circle of social media acquaintances. But, I was intrigued when I went to her home page and recognized the family name of some of my forebears among her friends.

Yes, you guessed it; I pushed the accept button.

Then I received a personal message — from Norway — from a person whose name I had never heard, living in a place I did not know from family records. She sent a photocopy of a letter written some 72 years ago by my grandmother in Montana to her cousin in Norway. And that letter brought tears to my eyes.

The long-ago correspondence proved, once again, that across the ages, through good times and bad, life does indeed go on. People go about their business, raise families, worry about the future, and hold on to hopes, dreams and memories of the past.

I’ll share just a snippet of that letter, written December 6, 1948: 

My dear Cousin Kari,

Oh, how many times I have thought of you and asked God to bless you! I hope you are well and happy. We are especially happy the last two years since all our boys are back from Europe, Panama, and China & India after the war closed. Glenn was the last one to come [home] July 2, 1946. They all came home without any scar or hurt but they had seen and mentally suffered a lot. Glenn was in India & China and he was as poor as a stick when he returned. Clifford was with the 8th Air Force in England and Lloyd with the Navy on a mine sweeper in Panama. I pray God will save us from having to fight the world again — but I have two little grandsons so I fear they will come in for a world fight when they reach the age.”

                *Note: Both of those grandsons went on to serve during the Vietnam era, one in the Coast Guard and the other in the Air Force.

This second excerpt was first posted on December 7, 2015. Today, 10 years later, it still seems pertinent.

“Somewhere in the middle of the Pacific seventy-four years ago, a ship received a radio message to alter its course. The captain of the vessel complied.

That vessel and its “cargo” of American servicemen steamed into a port on the West Coast of the United States some days later and found a world very different from the one they had left just a few days earlier. It was a world at war.

Among those troops was my father.

A little more than two years later, he was at an airbase in England, fighting on another front. And he was not to return to the shores of this country until battles on both sides of the world were over.

Lucky for me.

Had that ship in 1941 sailed a few days earlier, made better time, or perhaps been closer to the Philippines (its intended destination), on December 7, 1941, the man who was to become my father might not have returned at all. Through a twist of fate, he and the others on board that lone grey ship were saved the fate of so many others on that day.

My father was born into a world at war. He served in World War II. Then in Korea. And then, because his chosen career was as a military man, he was still in service during Vietnam, although he was not called to that conflict. His skills were needed in other parts of the world.”

My father subsequently spent nearly five years, still on active Army duty, attached to the U.S. Embassy in Paris, France before his retirement

A third post about Pearl Harbor Day seems no less poignant.  I posted the following on my blog three years ago on December 7:

                “On a whim, as I thought about the events of Pearl Harbor those many years ago, I checked to see what else had occurred in history on December 7. It was on this date, also in 1941, that Adolf Hitler authorized the secretive “Night and Fog” campaign, aimed to arrest and execute citizens in territories occupied by Nazi Germany.

I was more than surprised to learn that, on December 7, 1917, the U.S. Congress approved a resolution which led to a declaration of war against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Senate later approved the resolution 74-0, and the U.S. was officially a player in the “war to end all wars.” That’s a date in history I was never required to memorize in school.

It was also on this date — in 1972 — when NASA launched the last manned flight to the moon, carrying a crew of three — Command Module Pilot Ronald Evans, Lunar Module Pilot Harrison Schmitt, and Commander Eugene Cernan. Schmitt and Cernan landed on the surface on December 11. The crew returned safely to earth December 19, with Schmitt and Cernan still the last human beings to have walked on the moon. That’s an event I cannot forget, although that mission was 50 years ago!”

. . .

“Several years ago, I was privileged to attend a ceremony at the small Veterans Memorial Plaza in Burleson, Texas. It was a moving tribute to those who served in World War II. The speaker was Don Graves, then a 93-year-old Marine Corps veteran who fought at the Battle of Iwo Jima, and was present at the ceremonial flag-raising on Mount Surabachi.

He was lucky. He survived. He noted that he would never forget the words of President Franklin Roosevelt the day following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. He was 16 at the time. He could not enlist for another six months, until he turned 17. “We were just kids,” he said, adding that he and his buddies signed up to fight for their country without thinking of the future or the consequences. “It was just the way we were brought up,” he said.

Now, that’s something to think about, isn’t it?”