Today marks the 70th anniversary of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor.

It would also have been my dad’s 98th birthday. He missed it by a year and a couple of weeks.

I was interested to see that we aren’t the only place observing this 70th anniversary.

Willamette University, in Salem, Oregon, also has a direct connection to December 7 because its football team was in Hawaii and was stranded here in the aftermath of the attack, along with the team from San Jose

From the Eugene Register-Guard:

Even now, Ken Jacobson recalls with vivid clarity the moment the world turned upside down.

On a brilliant Hawaiian morning, he was standing with teammates outside the Moana Hotel, waiting to catch a bus. A picnic was scheduled on the other side of the island with cheerleaders from the University of Hawaii. It was going to be another great day in paradise for the boys from Willamette University.

But the bus never arrived. As they waited, they watched dozens of fighter planes in the distance — “like silver specks” buzzing everywhere, Jacobson recalls. They marveled at how astonishingly realistic the military maneuvers seemed, complete with water spouts, puffs of smoke and faint sounds of explosions.

Then someone turned on a radio in the hotel lobby.

On Dec. 7, 1941, when Americans everywhere tuned in to learn of the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, Jacobson and his teammates were there. The Bearcats — mostly, a bunch of boys from small-town Oregon — had traveled to Hawaii to play two football games. It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime.

And it was.

Here’s a video and accompanying article published by Willamette’s athletic department on the 65th anniversary.

There are also a couple of excellent entries in the Women of WWII Hawaii Blog (Part I, and Part II).

And there’s an article by the Oregon State Archives as well.