Remembering The Good War: Minnesota's Greatest Generation

War’s Beginning: Memories of and Reactions to 7 December 1941

Military conflicts dominated world events in the five years before —a civil war in Spain; the Italian attack on Ethiopia ; the Japanese invasion of China; the German conquest of much of Europe. But a strong sense of isolationism contributed to the United States’ officially neutral stance, even though relations with Germany and Japan were increasingly strained. Tensions between the United States and Japan, especially, continued to escalate throughout the summer and fall of , but few publicly predicted that war was imminent. Thus the Japanese attack on the American military installations at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on  December  came as a surprise. Two waves of carrier-based aircraft, launched from ships steaming approximately  miles north of Hawaii, struck the sprawling Pearl Harbor facilities beginning at : that Sunday morning. Within two hours, six battleships and ten smaller vessels had been sunk, hundreds of aircraft were destroyed or damaged, and more than , servicemen and civilians were dead. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the nation and, speaking of the “day which will live in infamy,” asked Congress for a declaration of war against Japan. The 3 War’s Beginning Memories of and Reactions to 7 December 1941 [1] American public, shocked by the nature of the attack and the extent of the damage, was galvanized into action. The first reports on the destruction at Pearl Harbor reached the American Midwest in the early afternoon. Many Minnesotans recalled where they were and what they were doing when they heard the news. But many did not: fully a quarter of those interviewed either could not remember hearing the news or had no specific reaction to the events at Pearl Harbor. The people whose memories fill the following pages are largely the generation born between  and ; thus, with few exceptions they were aged sixteen to twenty-six in the year . While a sense of youth is evident in their responses and concerns, their reactions to the attack—and the declaration of war that followed—differ widely: some remember thinking of family members and loved ones; others, particularly young men of draft age, considered what impact war would have on their lives. Another group viewed the war as far away, as nothing to worry about, as something that would not affect them personally—the geographic location of Minnesota, far from the coasts, is telling in this regard. And among men of military age, there were several who remember rushing out to enlist, or wanting to. ✦ ✦ ✦ Gloria Johnson of Minneapolis was a high school student in December 1941. She remembers the details of that day. Everybody remembers that I think, if they lived then. My mother and I were avid movie fans, mostly because my father was a motion picture projectionist. So we would go to the theater, not his theater especially, but to other theaters, neighborhood theaters, two or three times a week. And this was a Sunday, and we had decided to go to a movie. We stopped at my cousin’s house so my aunt could go with us. They had the radio on, and that’s when we heard it. You know, we didn’t have radios on all the time because we didn’t have news that often in those days. Obviously we didn’t have television. I think my initial reaction was probably anger, because you didn’t want to think of this happening. I was trying to remember if we were R e m e m b e r i n g t h e G o o d W a r 4 aware, or how much we were aware, of the involvement of the United States previous to this, and I don’t think most of the people were. It probably didn’t penetrate at that point, you know, what was obviously , what was going to be entailed. At least I don’t remember; being in high school you’ve got other things on your mind. [laughs] Lester Marshall (b. 1921) of Cloquet was a skilled machinist, employed at the Navy Yard in Washington, DC. He is animated as he describes the events of 7 December 1941 and the effects at work. Iwas sitting with my father in the living room, listening to the Washington Redskins whop the daylights out of the Chicago Bears. The announcer came on and said, “Whoops, folks, we’ve got to break this up. This is just come through; it’s...