“Yesterday, December 7th, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
“The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with its government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific.
“Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in the American island of Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleague delivered to our Secretary of State a formal reply to a recent American message. And while this reply stated that it seemed useless to continue the existing diplomatic negotiations, it contained no threat or hint of war or of armed attack…” — President Franklin Roosevelt’s speech to Congress, Dec. 8, 1941
WILMINGTON — Several residents of the Ohio Living Cape May Retirement Village recently gathered there to reminisce about the war and their memories of Pearl Harbor.
“I was a senior in high school in Altoona, Pennsylvania,” said Jane Rollo, 94. “I had a boyfriend who was also a senior. I remember we were coming over a mountain driving back from dinner at his aunt and uncle’s house” when they heard the news over the radio. “We new right then he’d be leaving soon.”
She said all the boys in her class were drafted; come graduation time, the parents picked up their sons’ diplomas.
That boyfriend, who later became her husband, served in the Army infantry, then later the Army Air Corps.
“He got both his driver’s license and his pilot’s license at the same time when he was 16,” she said. “He ended up flying bombing missions over Japan.”
Eugene Williams, 94, was 16 and walking across town in Wapakoneta, Ohio to care for some livestock when he heard the news. ” I talked with my dad and my stepmom about it; I don’t I we realized what a big deal it was at the time.
Williams later served his country during the war in the Philippines.
Muriel Hiatt, 94, was a sophomore at Oberlin College in December 1941, far from her home in Brooklyn, New York.
“My roommate turned on the radio to listen to a program she liked,” Hiatt said. “They came on the radio and interrupted the program to make the announcement.
“We felt a sense of excitement; I don’t think we knew enough about it to be scared. We had no idea af the destruction.”
She said by the next semester all the male students were gone to war.
