REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR December 7, 2001 Every year at this time I post this message although I continue to edit it. It's a story that I wrote many years ago that was to be included in the book I was writing about my own personal memories of WWII in Niagara Falls, NY. It's a story based on my personal memories of Dec. 7, 1941. In the story I was "Ginny," my older sister (Norma) was "Mary Ellen" and our older brother "Charlie" was fictitious. Actually our younger brother Johnny was just a baby. Our father's name was Charles and our mother's name was Verna. But in my book I named our parents Dan and Millie. In spite of the fiction involved in the story, this is pretty much how many families felt on Sunday, December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor Day. REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR! Sunday, December 7, 1941 "Ginny, I'm telling you for the last time." It was my mother yelling up at me from the bottom of the stairs. "It's 2:30 in the afternoon and you haven't even changed out of your Sunday dress yet." I reluctantly pulled my dress over my head. It wasn't that I especially liked to wear that particular dress, it was just that I was too lazy to change into something else. I grabbed an old skirt and sweater and put them on in a hit-or-miss fashion. I was just plain bored. My older sister Mary Ellen came into the bedroom that the two of us shared and sat down on the bench in front of the dressing table. I stood behind her and watched her in the mirror as she fussed with her long hair, trying to coax it into the latest style. "You look plain dumb," I told her after watching her for a while. "You'd look better if you stuck a paper bag over your head," I taunted. "Go mind your own business," Mary Ellen replied. "If you don't have anything better to do, go do it somewhere else." "I don't have to. This is just as much my bedroom as yours. So there!" I stuck my tongue out at her to make my point. Well, that was the end of Mary Ellen's patience with her little sister. She jumped up from the dressing table, knocking over the bench in the process, and chased me out of the room and down the stairs. I was only a step ahead of her. We burst into the living room, trading insults at the top of our voices. "Be quiet!" shouted Daddy. We could see in his face that something was definitely wrong and that we weren't the cause of it. Mother and Daddy were sitting in front of the radio set listening intently to what was being said by the announcer, and our older brother Charlie was pacing up and down the room, beating his fist angrily into the palm of his hand. Solemnly, Daddy told us the news. "The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor this morning." The way he said it, sounded like he was reporting that the world had just come to an end. "Where's Pearl Harbor?" I asked. I had never heard of it. "It's in Hawaii, Dummy," Mary Ellen answered up smartly. "Enough of that, both of you! Don't you realize what has happened?" Daddy was so agitated that he stood up and faced both of us. "Japan has attacked the United States! It means that we are at WAR!" Hearing that, Mary Ellen and I stood in shocked silence, thinking our own thoughts about what he had just said. Charlie continued to pace the floor in anger. "I'll get those dirty Japs for this. They won't get away with it," he said as he ran his fingers angrily through his hair. Then it dawned on both of us just exactly what being at war meant. It was obvious that Charlie was going to enlist in the service to fight in the war and there was no way that anyone could stop him. I felt a bit numb at the thought and I just stood there feeling as if I had just walked into the middle of a movie set. Surely, the players weren't real. They were just actors in a movie-a scary movie. I watched as my mother rocked back and forth in despair in the large upholstered chair. "Oh dear God, Oh dear God," she cried softly over and over again. "What are we going to do?" I had never seen Mother that upset. It was almost as if she had gone a little bit crazy. I saw that Charlie was as concerned for our mother as I was. He had stopped his pacing and I watched as he bent down and lovingly put his arm around her shoulders, placing his head against hers. "Don't worry, Mother. It's going to be OK." he said. I could see that Daddy was worried about Mother, too. I watched him sit down again in his chair across from her. He leaned over and patted her hand tenderly. "There, there, Millie. We'll manage. You'll see." That, too, was unusual. I couldn't remember ever seeing him display any particular signs of affection for her. At least not in front of me. Mother looked up at him with a tear-stained face. "Oh, Dan, I know you're right, but I can't stand the thought of Charlie going off to war. He's still just a boy." And she burst into tears again. I didn't like this scary movie. I wasn't going to watch it any more. And so I just walked out in the middle of it and went upstairs to my room. I flopped down on my bed, not wanting to even think about it. Mary Ellen found me there a while later. "What are you doing?" "I'm counting the roses on the wall paper," I replied listlessly. "Why?" "Oh, nothing," Mary Ellen said as she stretched out on her own bed. "How are things going downstairs?" I asked. "A lot better than the last time you were down there," she replied. Charlie wants to go down and join the Navy the first thing tomorrow morning but Mother and Daddy persuaded him to wait until after Christmas." "I'm glad they did. How's Mother doing?" "OK, I guess. She's in the kitchen starting dinner. Daddy's still in the living room with Charlie listening to the radio and discussing the war." "Now that we're at war, do you think we'll get bombed?" "I don't know. I hope not." Later that evening, things were back to normal, or as normal as they ever would be again. Mother and Daddy, Charlie, Mary Ellen and I did what we always did on a Sunday evening. We sat in the living room and listened to our favorite radio programs, Jack Benny, and then Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. And we all laughed. It was a relief to be able to laugh again. The clouds of war had lifted for a moment-but only for a moment.