December 7, 1941, was my father’s 28th birthday. My parents would celebrate their second anniversary later in December. I wasn’t born for another six years.
Of course, December 7, 1941, was also the day Japanese warplanes attacked Pearl Harbor and other military sites in Hawaii.
On the afternoon of December 6, my parents attended a Univerity of Hawaii football game at the old Honolulu Stadium in Moiliili.
The game was between the University of Hawaii and Willamette University (Salem, Oregon) in the Shrine Classic, and was apparently a big deal, as the Advertiser reported a crowd of 24,400 packed into the old Honolulu Stadium in Moiliili. UH won 20-6.
That was 9.5% of Oahu’s total population at the time! Compared to the population, that would be like a crowd of 97,593 today.
A lifetime later, I looked up the Honolulu Advertiser’s December 7 edition. It was the morning newspaper, so copies were already on the street when the Japanese attack began around 8 a.m.
After the game, my parents had partied into the evening. They were still in bed early on Sunday morning, December 7, when my grandmother phoned from Waipahu with word of what they first thought were very realistic maneuvers taking place. It didn’t take long, though, to figure out this was the real deal.
Later, my mother started a letter to her sister describing what was happening that morning in Kahala, a neighborhood on the east side of Oahu, quite a ways from Pearl Harbor.
I found the letter among her papers after her death in January 2013.
Handwritten letter about at… by Ian Lind
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On the morning of Dec 7, 1941 my mom was 17 years old. Living on Gulick Avenue (Kalihi) she recalls hearing loud airplanes flying low over her neighborhood. She ran outside and looked up and saw the Japanese aircraft flying Ewa toward Pearl Harbor. That was 83 years ago. On August 14, 2024 we celebrated her 100th birthday.
My mom is still on the move. Doesn’t miss a thing. Still remembers that fateful day.
Poignant slices of life from a time 83 years ago when the world was so different and on the brink of momentous change. It’s incredible to consider how much the world, and Hawaii especially, has changed since then.
I could personalize my reply by noting that I was born slightly more than 10 months after the Pearl Harbor attack, so perhaps that event stimulated my childless parents to create me. Thanks be to the gods!
We Americans are very parochial in our knowledge of history. We think Japan’s December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor was focused solely or primarily on Hawaii or U.S.A. Some history lessons say it was primarily a response to American policy of squeezing Japan’s economy by forbidding the export of oil to Japan. But in fact Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor was only one small part of a vast well-planned two-day Empire-building attack on many nations and territories throughout the Pacific. The well-known deceptive diplomacy whereby Japan dragged out negotiations in Washington for a couple of weeks, holding out hopes for peaceful settlement of the oil embargo even while Japan’s war machine was already secretly launching the attack, was only a small piece of a much larger Pacific-wide plan. President Roosevelt’s speech to Congress on December 8 calling for a declaration of war was only 6 minutes long, but is well worth reading. It’s at
https://www.loc.gov/resource/afc1986022.afc1986022_ms2201/?st=text
“… the attack was deliberately planned many days or even weeks ago. During the intervening time the Japanese Government has deliberately sought to deceive the United States by false statements and expressions of hope for continued peace. … Yesterday the Japanese Government also launched an attack against Malaya. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong: Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam. Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. And this morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. Japan has, therefore, undertaken a surprise offensive extending throughout the Pacific area. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. …”
Today’s pacifist isolationists would like us to downplay as irrelevant to us, the activities in Israel and Gaza of Russia, North Korea, Iran, and the Palestinian Authority; and the activities of China throughout the Pacific and even U.S. mainland (spy balloons, drones, TikTok) regarding Taiwan, Philippines, and exacerbating America’s naivete and internal social divisiveness. Deterrence, and peace through strength, are important today, just as their absence was important in 1941. Our military and industrial readiness have declined woefully in recent years, and will need major attention as we “make America great again.”
I wish your mother would have written a letter every day for the next 3 years 8 months.
FYI, maybe it’s just my system Ian; when I clicked on the likn to the letter, it said the letter has been removed from Scribd… I look forward to reading it if you can make it available to me.
A hui hou – ‘Becca