"Where Were Your Loved Ones During Pearl Harbor, 1941?" Topic

My Dad was in the Army Air Force at the time and was in the process of going to Hickam Field, Pearl Harbor on board a ship which had left from San Francisco.

When they heard about Pearl Harbor being attacked, they were ordered to turn around and go back to California. He said the captain of the ship was so scared that he ordered men to patrol the deck of the ship even at night with rifles. Which he and the other servicemen found funny. Supposedly it was to defend against submarine attack. Good luck that!

He never did get to Pearl Harbor but served in the Aleutians for his part in the war.

I presume they were both, as children, looking forward to another austerity Christmas in Liverpool UK.

Dad had his Gran come to live with them – she'd been bombed out.

Mum's Dad was a fireman who had spent a fortnight fighting fires down on the docks during the Liverpool Blitz. No respite apart from a few hour's sleep underneath the fire engine.

One of my grandfathers was fighting Germans near Moscow. Another one was spending his term in Gulag near Vorkuta. My mother wasn't born yet, and my father had to run and hide as there was a chance that he will also be put to Gulag.
It wasn't an easy time for sure…

My grandmother was somewhere in Russia in a labour camp after being 'relocated' from Eastern Poland. She never saw her father again.

My grandfather was a military policeman in East Africa.

Blutarski edit -
USS Lardner was DD487, not DD473.
Nimitz's flagship was USS South Dakota, not USS Wisconsin.

….. must be either advancing years or intellectual laziness.

B

Legion 4, when I was in the National Guard we spent quite a few weekends at that Ravenna Arsenal. This was in the 80's,and the buildings were still there,as it was open up through the time of the Vietnam War. It still is government property. As to my parents,my mother was 11 years old and remembers sitting on the piano bench in my Gr-Grandmothers parlor listening to President Roosevelt on the radio. I have no idea what my dad was doing.

Wow ! That is interesting ! Thanks for sharing that. I know when I drive near by I can still see the instillation border fence. I've had people tell me that they have been there too in the past, during the Vietnam era, etc. AFAIK it's still a fully functioning post. For NG and RES, and I've been told there are large warehouse filled will equipment, supplies, etc.

Mom was 7, just got back from church, her mah and dah were German, they were very very upset. They locked the doors and listened to the radio all day and all night

I had a conversation with a black gentleman giving me a shoeshine on this topic. He played saxophone in an army band. He told me he was in a house in Kansas City and found out about the attack when the Military Police came to collect him. Don't know if i believed him but it sure made for a memorable story.

I think that my mom was back in southern Finland then, after having been evacuated to the north during the Winter War.

My father was in the US Merchant Marine. He had crossed the Atlantic several times in 1940 and '41; his ship was once attacked by Royal Air Force, luckily with no one killed or injured before the error was cleared up. He ended up spending almost the entire war in the Pacific.

My parents were little kids. My mom was maybe 6 and my dad was 2. My grandpa was a foreman at the Goodyear plant in Decatur. He tried to enlist but he was too old (early 30's) and was pretty fraile. My Pawpaw was an older fellow, mid 30's, and was a farmer. He would be working the fields throughout the war. My aunts and uncles were just teens in school and my grandma's were stay at homes or teaching in school.

WWII just hit between them. However my uncle Charlie would catch Korea.

I had twin Uncles on the Arizona. One died there the other just died last year and managed to get the law changed so his ashes could be interned with his shipmates. His ashes were placed in the Arizona last summer.

Fighting Nazis and Italian fascists in North Africa \ Palestine.

My mother and her brother were home for the holidays from their respective colleges and were listing to a football game on the radio when it was interrupted by a report of the attack.

My father worked at a warehouse for a local department store at the time and, given that the attack occurred on a Sunday, he was probably at home with his parents.

Both my father and my uncle enlisted early in 1941. My father spent the entire was in the Navy's Y-12 program, which put him through college and medical school at Georgetown University, from which he didn't graduate until 1946. My uncle was accepted for flight school but washed out and spent the rest of the war in the Army Air Corps but on the ground. My mother graduated from college in 1943 and went to work for the USO in Washington DC, which is how she met my father.

LT

None were active military yet. One or two were in the CCC. Several were in school still. Some worked lumberjacking and others on the railroad.
Eight served that were uncles plus a large number of second cousins or great uncles.
Two killed, one wounded twice and one who lost an arm and both legs died soon after the war.

rhacelt I remember the story as I noticed the The brothers where from NM and I am from El Paso (westen neighbors).

My family in OK where going home from church and heard it over the car radio. The decussion was if it would effect my Uncle who was 15 at the time. It did, he served in the Navy.

My grandfather was a mechanic and truck driver for a sawmill and crate company in Detroit. When Poland was invaded in '39 he tried to cross into Canada to enlist with them and go fight (my great-grandparents had immigrated from outside Wrocław in 1910) but his mother caught him at the border and had to talk him out of it.

He tried enlisting in the US just after Pearl, but was initially turned down because he was the primary breadwinner of the household (dropped out of school at 13 to find work due to the Depression and his father having been maimed in an industrial accident), but was drafted into the Army in 1942.