Remembering Pearl Harbor.....
Here’s a memory jog for older readers: Where were you on December 7?
Specifically it was the one date that will live in infamy, as President Roosevelt labeled it the next day in 1941, following Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that launched America’s involvement in World War II.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., six-year-old Tom Kenavan watched in awe as his family’s older members reacted with rage in their home over the radio’s terrible news of the devastation. The very next day, he says, his dad and uncles all went and enlisted in the military. Years later, in 1952, Kenavan would also enlist. He subsequently served in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas before finally becoming a permanent Staffordian.
In pre-war Stafford, hometown boy Joe Duffey, having been uprooted when his family had to relocate because of the Quantico Marine Corps expansion westward in the county before the war, was working on the post as a power plant operator when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Then, facing the draft in 1944 he joined the Navy. On a mine-sweeper, the USS Prince AM 279, Duffey says his crew’s hazards extended beyond the surrender of Japan in 1945 in trying to free up shipping lanes. He took some shrapnel in one mine’s explosion, he recalls. The ship’s service ranged from Okinawa and Formosa to mainland Japan and beyond, he says.
One longtime resident of Stafford’s Aquia Harbour, the late Bill Carpenter, saw first-hand what happened on that fateful day. A newly commissioned Ensign out of the Naval Academy, Carpenter had secretly married—contrary to rules at the time—and had spent the night of Dec. 6 with his wife in Honolulu. He rushed back to Pearl Harbor the next morning to see his ship, Battleship Oklahoma, lying devastated at port from the surprise attacks.
Another North Stafford resident, Gunter Buhrdorf, remembers those days quite differently. As a teenager, he and his family had been regularly bombed in Bremen, Germany, by Britain’s Royal Air Force. He enlisted in the German navy just before the Pearl Harbor attack a world away. He enlisted to avoid being sent as a soldier to the Russian front. Gunter’s unit then surrendered at war’s end in Europe. He emigrated to America, joined the U.S. army and served as a forward observer in combat in the Korean War. And for the whole time, on three continents, he “never got a scratch,” he says.
In Texas, a national guardsman too old to mobilize with his unit was driving home on that Sunday from his farm listening to the car radio's terrible news (with his uncle, Eb Compere, and me). His unit, the 131st Field Artillery of the 36th Infantry Division, was heading to Java to help ward off Japanese incursions in the area. Later known as the Lost Battalion, the men would soon be captured and spend the rest of World War II in death marches and prison camps. Meanwhile, Roscoe Blankenship would head the local draft board and lead civil defense effort and fundraising drives in his hometown of Abilene.
Ken Burns, in his PBS television series, The War, noted many great moments of memorable battles, but no date endures like December 7, 1941, which launched America’s decisive entry and victorious conclusion less than four years later.
Specifically it was the one date that will live in infamy, as President Roosevelt labeled it the next day in 1941, following Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that launched America’s involvement in World War II.
In Brooklyn, N.Y., six-year-old Tom Kenavan watched in awe as his family’s older members reacted with rage in their home over the radio’s terrible news of the devastation. The very next day, he says, his dad and uncles all went and enlisted in the military. Years later, in 1952, Kenavan would also enlist. He subsequently served in Vietnam and elsewhere overseas before finally becoming a permanent Staffordian.
In pre-war Stafford, hometown boy Joe Duffey, having been uprooted when his family had to relocate because of the Quantico Marine Corps expansion westward in the county before the war, was working on the post as a power plant operator when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Then, facing the draft in 1944 he joined the Navy. On a mine-sweeper, the USS Prince AM 279, Duffey says his crew’s hazards extended beyond the surrender of Japan in 1945 in trying to free up shipping lanes. He took some shrapnel in one mine’s explosion, he recalls. The ship’s service ranged from Okinawa and Formosa to mainland Japan and beyond, he says.
One longtime resident of Stafford’s Aquia Harbour, the late Bill Carpenter, saw first-hand what happened on that fateful day. A newly commissioned Ensign out of the Naval Academy, Carpenter had secretly married—contrary to rules at the time—and had spent the night of Dec. 6 with his wife in Honolulu. He rushed back to Pearl Harbor the next morning to see his ship, Battleship Oklahoma, lying devastated at port from the surprise attacks.
Another North Stafford resident, Gunter Buhrdorf, remembers those days quite differently. As a teenager, he and his family had been regularly bombed in Bremen, Germany, by Britain’s Royal Air Force. He enlisted in the German navy just before the Pearl Harbor attack a world away. He enlisted to avoid being sent as a soldier to the Russian front. Gunter’s unit then surrendered at war’s end in Europe. He emigrated to America, joined the U.S. army and served as a forward observer in combat in the Korean War. And for the whole time, on three continents, he “never got a scratch,” he says.
In Texas, a national guardsman too old to mobilize with his unit was driving home on that Sunday from his farm listening to the car radio's terrible news (with his uncle, Eb Compere, and me). His unit, the 131st Field Artillery of the 36th Infantry Division, was heading to Java to help ward off Japanese incursions in the area. Later known as the Lost Battalion, the men would soon be captured and spend the rest of World War II in death marches and prison camps. Meanwhile, Roscoe Blankenship would head the local draft board and lead civil defense effort and fundraising drives in his hometown of Abilene.
Ken Burns, in his PBS television series, The War, noted many great moments of memorable battles, but no date endures like December 7, 1941, which launched America’s decisive entry and victorious conclusion less than four years later.
posted by Ben Blankenship at
10:20 AM
