A Child Remembers Pearl Harbor

Alice lay in bed listening to the horn blaring steadily in the empty field next to their third floor walk up flat. The noise did change pitch ever so slightly and she tried to anticipate the moment of the pitch change. Just then her older brother Henry came into the room also allowing their black and white springer pup inside. The pup, named Gus jumped from the door to the bed and almost made it, if it was not for him being distracted at the last moment by the sound of the horn. He tried to change direction in mid air and landed half on the bed and half on the open window sill.

Henry and Alice began to laugh and Gus decided that something special happened so he joined in by running around the room knocking down anything which was not secured by a stevedore. Henry caught Gus and calmed him down while Alice got out of bed and went to the window to see whose horn was making such a racket.

When she looked out into the empty field, she saw their family Chevy with her father's feet sticking out of the engine compartment. His legs were parallel to the ground and his head was buried deep inside that blaring chamber. Alice thought he would not be able to hear for months.

The two children and one dog walked into the kitchen and greeted their mother. She was listening to Don McNeill and the Breakfast Club on the radio. Helen always had the radio on. She greeted her kids and dog and told them to sit down for breakfast.

Helen scooped out some grease from the rendering pan on the back burner and slapped it into the fry pan which never left her stove. When the grease was melted, she added several slices of bacon. While the bacon was contributing yet more grease to the fry pan, she filled up Gus's food bowl with Purina Dog Chow. She pulled the bacon out of the pan and placed it on a plate. Poured off a small amount of the bacon and rendered fat into the dog food and put the fry pan back on the stove. She next took four eggs and cracked them into the grease, using it to poach the eggs. A few minutes before the eggs were done, she would put the bacon back into the pan to warm up before serving the breakfast to us.

There were variations on this breakfast but always the process took on a similar mode. French toast was fried in the grease, pancakes were likewise deep fried, only the toast escaped the fry pan.

We were chatting with our mom and trying to catch our eggs which were sliding in about a half inch of grease on our plates. Dad's horn continued to blare steadily in the lot next door. Mom was angry. She said that Ike the mechanic would fix the horn for $3.00 but dad said it was too much and would do it himself. So far my father had spent more than $5.00 and still the horn was blaring. The Breakfast Club played in the background and Gus was eagerly slurping up the grease at the bottom of his bowl.

Henry had just finished his breakfast and announced he was going down to help dad. Mom said he had to put cotton in his ears and went into the bathroom to get him some cotton and Henry followed her. Just then the radio crackled and a new very serious voice came on saying: " We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin. The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor by air, President Roosevelt has just announced. They have also attacked all military and naval facilities on the island of Oahu."

I yelled for my mom to come back to the kitchen right away. She was startled thinking I had hurt myself but I told her what I heard. She said I must have heard wrong and would listen for another announcement. It came immediately. A man came on saying that this was an act of war and will have to be met with a counter attack. And then he said, "Ladies and gentleman we are now at war." Mom was crying.

She leaned out the window and tried to yell for my father to come up to the apartment. She kept yelling, Lee, Lee, Lee. She would not let either Henry or myself go down there. The horn just kept up its steady tone and she kept yelling, Lee, Lee, Lee. Her tears stained the curtains she was holding tight to her face and she kept on yelling for her husband.

Then the horn stopped and we looked out to see my Grandpa Clarence standing with my father. My father was wiping the grease from his hands but his face held an expression I had never seen before. He just kept wiping his hands even though there was no grease left anywhere. Grandpa Clarence turned to walk up to our flat. Mom was making a pot of coffee. Dad was slow to come up but he did.

Soon there was little room to move in our kitchen. My mom's Cousin Bill and Barb were there along with their children, John and Jane. Doris and Howard, Eleanor and Bill, Ardis, Pam and Joyce, Sid and Betty, Howie and Jenny, Kent and Fran, Florence and Leroy, Ruth and Don, Bud and Ollie, and some I had never seen before. The entire conclave of relatives and close friends within a block or two of our flat in Chicago was assembled in our kitchen.

My mom told us kids to take Gus into the bedroom and we could not go outside. All we knew is what our parents had told us and that was not much. I at least had heard the newscast. The kids crowded around me as I repeated what I heard on the radio. I was bubbling with excitement when I told them we were at war. Although I really did not fully understand what that meant.

Sam said the Japanese were coming to attack Chicago and that was why we could not go outside. He claimed to have heard someone say this. That was enough authority for most of us and we began to talk about the imminent attack. David volunteered to be the lookout at the window. I passed out blankets to everyone while we practiced our air raid skills which we learned at school.

The grown ups talked for several hours. The coffee turned to beer which gave way to wine and eventually to whiskey. We kids grew tired of being ready for the air raid attack so we went out and started to annoy the grownups. The strange thing is that no one wanted to leave that night. Food appeared and we all ate. Several of the grownups sat around the radio but most of them just sat and quietly talked in small groups.

The next day most of the men went downtown together. When my dad got home, he told us he had enlisted in the navy. My mom was cried out and she hugged my dad. Henry and I did so too. Then I asked my dad what it meant to enlist in the navy.

He told me he would be going away for a while to protect our country against the Japanese and the Germans. I asked him why he could not stay here since Sam said the Japanese were going to attack Chicago. He assured me that no such attack would ever happen and I believed my dad. Henry said he wanted to enlist too. But dad said he had to be eighteen and the war would be over by then.

The men started to leave our building and block on Irving Park, soon it was just women and kids who inhabited our little world. We would get letters from dad almost every day, then they stopped. Mom became very worried and tried to keep busy with her job as a stenographer. It was almost three months before we received another letter from dad. He was sent on some special assignment and could not write to us.

Other wives stopped getting letters and then they got a Western Union telegram. Everyone knew it was bad news when the telegram boy arrived at the building. After he left, the women would gather in that apartment and try and comfort the wife who would never see her husband again. Several of my friends lost their dads in the war and I would lay awake at night trying to imagine what it would be like if my dad did not come home.

Henry turned eighteen and the war was still going on. He enlisted in the navy just like dad. On the day he left I had him promise to me that he would come back. He broke that promise. Henry was killed in action, four months after he enlisted.

Now it was mom, Gus and I. We still had dad's old Chevy and used our gas ration coupons carefully so we could take a take a ride in the country with Grandpa Clarence. A funny thing is that dad never got around to fixing that horn before he left, he just disconnected it. It did not matter though, there was no one we wanted to hurry out of our way. If someone cut mom off, she understood we were all in this together and now was not the time to go honking a horn at someone.