Day of Infamy

December 7th was this past Wednesday marking the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. It has been a significant day in my life because it marked America's entrance into WW II.

I was speaking with my uncle Lloyd Wednesday night. He winters in Hawaii and said there was a lot going on there at the time. He told me how he was ten years old at the time of the attack and remembered it like it was yesterday. He said it was fast Sunday and after church he had ridden his bike down to the blacksmith's shop in Arimo, Idaho and was watching the smith do the cool things smiths do, when the guy's wife came from the house and told them Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

When I was a kid WW II was our "play" war. When we weren't playing cowboys and Indians we were shooting down Japanese Zeroes or Throwing grenades(dirt clods) and machine-gunning the Krauts. I don't know if my boys played war or if their boys do, or who they fought or fight.

For me WW II was huge. Eight of my uncles served during that war from Pearl Harbor to Iwo Jima, Battle of the Bulge to bombing missions over Germany. One served in Burma and another spent the whole war in Canada. All of them came home safe.

My mom's brother Francis, was in the Navy and was at Pearl Harbor for the attack. I never heard him speak about it or his other experiences during the war but I do know he was on survivor's leave three different times. That means he was on three ships that were sunk but he managed to get off in time. He told his brother Arthur, who was a machine-gunner in the Army, that he should join the Navy because that gunner job was too dangerous. Francis was killed years after the war while driving a water truck in California.

My father-in-law, Ernie Parkin was also assigned to Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack but he was in Massachusetts attending his brother's funeral. His brother, Joe had gone down when the Ruben James was sunk.

Ernie died 36 years later, on December 7th.