December 8, 1941

I realize that yesterday was a special remembrance day for many veterans in our nation, even though it's been 67 years since the event, and "a lot of water has gone under the bridge," as they say. However, I don't remember anything special that happened to me on that day. It's the day afterwards, December 8, about which I now write.

I was a "big girl," having turned 7 years old in the previous September. Our family was living in Las Vegas, NM; at least most of us, Mama and we four kids. Daddy was home only on weekends, his job at the CCC camp in the mountains keeping him away all through the week.

Daddy was granted some leave/vacation time for the second full week in December. On this particular morning, he and Mama headed for Santa Fe for a week of together time, leaving us in the capable hands of "Grandpa and Grandma" Carrington, who owned the house within which we had an apartment. Since there was no radio in the 1937 Chevy, they had also taken Daddy's portable short-wave battery-operated radio .

I had just arrived home from school for lunch (we did that, in those days) when suddenly Mama and Daddy were back at home. What happened? What happened?

What happened was the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. On the way to Santa Fe, they were listening to the radio and heard President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's address to the joint session of Congress: "Yesterday, December 7, 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."

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signs Declaration of War against Japan. December 8, 1941 (Wikipedia)

I don't recall much else about the remainder of that day except sitting on the stairs to our apartment, listening to that little radio and hearing a lot of information I didn't fully understand but which I realized, even at 7 years of age, would change our lives.

The upshot was that Daddy had to report back to his CCC camp on the double. I don't remember any of the activity that took place afterwards, but it was only a few days until Daddy had gone to Grand Junction, Colorado, now being a 55-year old civilian employee of the United States Army. He was employed to teach automotive mechanics at the Army facility at Grand Junction. He would later be transferred to Ft. Lewis, Washington to do the same sort of training, and would not be home again except for emergencies (another post) until after VE Day in 1945.