"Advocate staffers remember Pearl Harbor Day" from the December 7, 1976 Door County Advocate
[I censored one word as “Xxxx”; the archive link at the bottom has the original, uncensored version.]
Advocate staffers remember Pearl Harbor Day
Some moments — like still camera shots — are captured and held forever. Such moments remain firmly entrenched in memory and although time may blur the edges or obscure certain details, the basic image remains. Such a moment occurred 35 years ago today on Sunday morning in 1941.
Who among us, over the age of 45, can forget Pearl Harbor?
KETA STEEBS
I had the car that day. My sister, my cousins and I had looked forward all week long to a Sunday afternoon at Bordeaux's roller rink. Getting dad's 1937 Plymouth was no easy task but I finally talked him into it. This car, unlike the '33 Ford he had traded in, had a radio.
We all piled in. Ben, Ray, Dolores, Doris, Olive and I on our way to spend a blissful Sunday skating to the tune of "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles." War was the last thing we thought of that quiet Sunday afternoon although in Friday's civics class, just two days before, Miss Hofer solemnly warned us that our class, the class of '42, stood an excellent chance of exchanging graduation gowns for uniforms.
The news broke as we rounded the corner by the Free Church. We listened astounded as a rattled announcer told of a "sneak bombing attack" on a place none of us had ever heard of. While we were asking each other "where's Pearl Harbor" we instinctively knew we would never ask that question again. Pearl Harbor was to become the Alamo of the 20th century.
"What's it to us?" asked 15-year-old Ray, the youngest in the car that day.
"You'll find out," his older brother warned. "Here's your chance to get off the farm."
Two years later Ray was in the navy and most of my other male cousins in the army.
We still roller skated that day, we still laughed and joked and flirted and had fun but I have never been able to listen to "I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles" again without thinking of Pearl Harbor Day — the day America again went to war.
JIM ROBERTSON
It was a Sunday like so many Sundays in the days of one car families. One teenager wangled the car out of his folks, the rest of his neighborhood pals piled in.
So it was the Sunday afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941. I don't even remember who had the car or who was along but we were riding down main street and passing Mitch LaPlant's window when we saw the news scrawled on a big sheet of paper in Mitch's handwriting.
The Xxxx had attacked Pearl Harbor.
However, as a 15-year-old teenager I can't remember the news having any real impact on me. Hitler had been on the march since I was in grade school, Sturgeon Bay was geared in a "defense" effort and Sergeant York with Gary Cooper in the lead role had just completed a four-day run at the Door Theater. I had seen the movie.
It wasn't until I reached home late in the afternoon that the news hit me. Johnny Wodack, who had spent his high school years on our farm and had become like a big brother to me, had just come home on furlough from the air force. Now the radio was saying all servicemen home on leave or furlough should return to their bases immediately.
At the supper table that night, Johnny said how we'd burn their paper houses and lick the Xxxx in a couple of weeks. Little did we know it would take almost four long years.
Johnny left the next day. It was like saying goodbye to a big brother going off to war. Pearl Harbor was now very real.
CHAN HARRIS
I had turned 13 four days before the attack on Pearl Harbor. On that "day that will live in infamy" I was with my father, clearing brush for the new Potawatomi park winter sports center. I could think of a lot of things I'd rather be doing but my dad said I'd be skiing there so I could darn well work. I don't know exactly how the news of the attack came but I do recall that I was at the ski hill when we all learned that war was upon us.
At first a lot of people thought we'd mop up the "Xxxx" in short order but my mother, who followed current history closely, knew better. She fully expected me to see action before it was over. She was almost right. I was four months from my 17th birthday when the Japanese surrendered.
The days of World War II are vividly etched upon my memory. I was young, impressionable and lived in a house where news was a way of life. We listened to every possible broadcast, from the clipped phrases of H.V. Kaltenborn to Murrow's sonorous "This...is London."
Those were intense times, and intensity heightens memory. Today's younger adults can tell you exactly what they were doing when they heard the news of Pres. Kennedy's assassination. The older among us also Remember Pearl Harbor.
GENE SCHRAM
I was playing touch football behind Joe Zak's barn with the Zak, Orsted and Hanson boys and probably a couple of my brothers. There was no snow but the ground was frozen. Stanley Zak came out of the house that Sunday afternoon and said, "The Xxxx have bombed Pearl Harbor."
I said to myself, "Where's Pearl Harbor?"
ELEANOR SERRAHN
I was at home with my mother on a Sunday morning when the news came over the radio that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. We were very thankful that a cousin of mine, Donald Burr, had just arrived in California from Hickam Field in Hawaii where he had been stationed with the air force.
I was 16 years old at the time.
HOD PARK
I found out by reading the Sunday paper. The Rhinelander newspaper got an extra edition cut that day. Our radio wasn't too good.
BOB HUNSADER
I know I was working at the shipyard that day but I can't remember the exact time I heard the news.
GEORGE JENSEN
I was only six years old.
Courtesy of the Door County Library Newspaper Archive
Articles relating to Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day: https://doorcounty.substack.com/t/pearl-harbor-remembrance-day