Bill Vaughan describes Pearl Harbor day. 1941
(Editor's note: The following article was written by columnist Pill Vaughan for The Kansas City Star five days after the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941. We reprint it here as a vivid, timely and masterful account of that Sunday 25 years ago.)
This is for your scrapbook, and for the curious citizen of the future who will want to know what it was like in Kansas City in 1941 when the war came. How did it feel to sit down to a pleasant Sunday dinner in a world where war was a headline and push back your chair at the end in a world, whether you knew it or not, in which the dive bombers were killing your neighbors' sons? Your children's children will want to know that.
December 7 dawned to clouds.
It was a day for sleeping late,
If you went to church, it was
under a dappled sky.
IN YOUR NEWSPAPER that morning you read that Japan was massing troops in an apparent threat against a place called Thailand, that Franklin D. Roosevelt our President, had sent a note to Emperor Hirohito in an effort to save the peace in the Pacific. The article was full of grave portents, but the Japanese emissaries were still conferring with the State Department in Washington. There had been so much diplomatic seesawing, so many changes in position, the final plunge into war had been skirted so often, that although you shook your head, you really were not alarmed.
Besides, in two years of war in Europe, you had come to accept cities bombed with your grapefruit, grave conferences of foreign ministers with your luncheon and destroyers sunk with your after-dinner coffee. The picture of a lost child on the front page really was more interesting, and your casual talk that quiet morning was as likely to be of the Missouri Tigers' chances against Fordham in the Sugar bowl as of the course of the empire in the Far East. (Note to future historians: If you don't get that part about the Sugar bowl, just skip it.)
YOUR COUNTRY had passed more than a year of intensive preparation including the compulsory training of its young men, yet here in the Middle West it had not touched you very deeply. You knew many men in the Army or the Navy, but their problems seemed to be one of morale—whether they were getting enough table tennis equipment and magazines—rather than anything that struck you as very vital.
Defense industries were expanding, you knew, but booms, housing problems and vaulting prices were things which affected you less than they would have if you had lived elsewhere. You were against strikes in defense industries, you were against Hitler and you had a "V for Victory" sticker on your car to show your approval of the desperate protest of the oppressed peoples of Europe—or because it was fashionable. You applauded such slogans as "Keep 'Em Flyin'," but it all seemed a little remote, a confusing picture you read about, but which had little bearing on your own daily business as usual.
IT WAS WITH a good feeling that you set down to dinner with your family at 1 o'clock. Sunday dinner, a tradition all the years of your life, seemed a firm and stable thing, a million miles away from men who died in snow and sand.
But by the time you were starting on your dessert and the children were squirming to get out of doors, a copy editor of The Star, shuffling through a stack of news reports in the nearly deserted office, stifled a yawn as he reached for a ringing telephone. It was the office of the Associated Press on the third floor of The Star building calling.
"Japan has bombed Hawaii!" an excited A.P. man cried. "The flash is in the tube."
BEFORE THE Star man could understand fully, he heard one of the leather cylinders which carried the news through a pneumatic tube hit the desk beside him. He unsnaped the flap, and pulled out the slip of thin, white paper. That was at 1:22 p.m.
"FLASH — WHITE HOUSE SAYS JAPS ATTACK PEARL HARBOR."
AFTER A QUICK call to the managing editor at his home, the telegraph desk man sprinted up a flight of stairs to the studio of station WDAF and handed the paper to an announcer.
At 1:33 o'clock WDAF broke in on the University of Chicago Round Table, a program in which various pundits were discussing "Canada, Neighbor at War." The interruption apparently was Kansas City's first news of the almost unbelievable events in the East, although the other radio stations carried it within a few minutes.
And what today?
To many in today's college generation, the events of that fateful Sunday in 1941 are much more than history. Most of us did not live through them, yet for 25 years we have lived with them.
Pearl Harbor is somehow a part of us, something that cannot be escaped. It is the door that led to a complete alteration of our country's course, that thrust the United States into the strongest position of world leadership in an age of muted world terror.
We read of the ghastly story of Pearl Harbor and the disasterous war that surrounded it. We see the pictures of sunken battleship tombs and bodies washed up on Hawaiian beaches. We cannot help reliving the terror.
It is as though Pearl Harbor represents that senseless blot upon human history that was World War II, that it stands for the man against crazed man situation that forced the war.
Pearl Harbor has meaning today. It speaks of the tragedy and senselessness of human conflict. Yet it speaks in an amazingly hushed voice; man is still constantly at odds with himself.
The real message of Pearl Harbor and of the war it represents lies somewhere in the strained fiber that knits men together, that makes them men. Until this fiber can be uncovered and strengthened, any message that can be derived from the Pearl Harbor incident is necessarily disappointing and inconclusive.
The ultimate lesson of December 7 lies somewhere beneath the eternal conflicts that mankind manufactures. It lies in the very essence and spirit of man and in the recognition that human life is precious, that every man is responsible for the preservation of the dignity of the human race.
—E. M.
If you were paying strict attention to your dinner, however, the chances are you did not hear that bulletin. It may have been during the New York Philharmonic broadcast that you first heard what was happening, the news flashes breaking in as a macabre counterpoint to Brahms.
OR PERHAPS you were out for a drive or taking a nap and didn't know that Japan had declared war on the United States until The Star's first extra hit the streets at 6:12 o'clock.
These editions were the result of quick, exacting work by a staff hastily organized to quicken the pulse of the newspaper plant, which had slowed to its customary Sunday afternoon beat—slowest of the week.
"GOTTA WHIP those Japs!" the strong-lunged newsboys bawled. At the doors of theaters, men and women emerging from the unreality within, from "Swamp Water" and Fibber McGee in "Look Who's Laughing," or from seeing Sally Rand dance with her fan and bubble at the Tower, saw the big, black headlines and rushed to buy a paper. At Loew's Midland, the manager, John McManus, seizing an opportunity in the middle of a B picture (Have they forgotten B pictures, lucky historian?) called "Niagara Falls," when the action was scenic rather than dramatic, spoke the shocking news briefly through the screen's loud-speaker.
In the lobbies of theaters and hotels and in restaurants, radios were going. Men took the news differently, of course, according to their several natures. There was surprise and indignation, covered often by a rough humor. There even seemed to be some of that strange relief, the feeling of "Well, here it is at last," which had been reported from nation after nation as the war of arms replaced the war of nerves.
TO OTHERS, HOWEVER, the news struck too deep even for the appearance of levity. From the time of the first flash until 7 o'clock that night the switch-board of The Star's city desk handled a steady flow of calls. Mothers, many of them in tears, asked for word of their sons at Manila or on the U.S.S. Oklahoma, reported struck by bombs. Others wondered if their boys would be home for long-anticipated Christmas furloughs.
If you were like many Kansas Citians the coming war upset you rather less than you might have expected. As you listened to the bulletins and read the extras, however, you had the urge to get out and see and talk to people. You may have taken the family for a drive through the downtown district which, strangely, was not changed from the way it had been in peace. You smiled at the irony of the signs which said, "It's Christmastime," as you drove by the gay windows full of holiday presents, and you tooted the horn of your car, not exactly knowing why you did it.
At 9:12, according to the weather bureau, the moon came up. It was a bomber's moon, bright and only four days past full. The stars were out and in the Country Club Plaza the colored lights picked out the skeleton lines of shops and restaurants, familiar, cheerful and reassuring in the night on which you went to war.
At other schools...
The IOWA STATE DAILY reports that a Fort Collins, Colo., store owner charged that some members of the ISU football team, in Fort Collins for their final game of the season, had taken approximately $100 worth of merchandise from his store without paying for it. The store is located next to the motel the team occupied during the football weekend.
All items were either returned or paid for, and no charges were filed. The director of athletics at ISU said that three players, at most, were involved in the incident.
The DAILY REVEILLE of Louisiana State University says the AWS is going to sponsor a "scientific investigation" of whether or not university women should be allowed to visit men's apartments. The investigation is described as scientific because it will be conducted with procedures used by the school's sociology department in its studies.
The DAILY NEBRASKAN of the University of Nebraska reports that the system of allowing students to take courses outside their major on a pass-fail basis may be scrapped because of the refusal of many "major" departments to allow pass-fail courses. The pass-fail system was recommended under guidelines set up last year by the faculty senate.
The DAILY NEBRASKAN also reports that a student government committee has approved the first draft of a proposed "student bill of rights." The proposed bill attempts to guarantee to students "those conditions indispensable to the achievement of the objective of total education in a free democratic society."
Provisions of the bill include that the university write a statement of all existing rules, that students have the right to choose their own living quarters and that students be provided a channel by which they could appeal for changes in university policy.
The MICHIGAN STATE NEWS offers a fascinating bit of information: the campus laundry service does more than 130,000 pounds of washing per week. Included are some 50,000 bath towels, 40,000 sheets and 20,000 pillow cases.
THE UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON DAILY tells us that one of their residence halls, McMahon Hall, has opened a coffee house on the north side of the dining room. It is called "The Beat Room."
Decorations in the room include low tables and seats made from barrel halves, dim lighting and a colorful mural on one wall.
The report adds that another similar installation is under construction in another dorm complex, and will be larger and resemble a cafe.
Beats the heck out of overpriced vending machines. . .
The people say...
To the editors:
I read your editorial, "The New Germany." I am a German. I can understand very well that many people in the world don't like Germans; it does not surprise me that the world looks upon our country with scepticism and sometimes suspicion.
In many respects, by the way, this is essentially like young Germans look upon their father generation. Things have been done in the name of this country that go beyond human understanding.
Thus I can accept your editorial as an emotional outburst provoked unfortunately by gross misinformation and misunderstanding about the government change in Bonn. The disadvantage of the article is that it could give the appearance of a political analysis, at least to some simple minds that are impressed by Mr. Austin's extraordinary vocabulary.
Shouldn't all of us that are interested in good international relations be a little more careful and quite a bit better informed when writing about foreign countries?
—Friedrich Heckmann
College dream
One can learn a great deal about society's morals and values from the advertising copywriter. Advertisers look deeply into people's motivations and attitudes in order to get their message across.
RECENTLY, an ad for a certain car model appeared in the student newspaper of Central Michigan University. It appeared in the form of a "Dear Abby" letter from an artist with girl problems and was signed "Color Me Blue."
"I'm a regular Renoir on the canvas." Mr. Blue begins, "but on campus I just don't seem to make the scene. There was one campus cutie that used to admire my paintings," he continues, "but now she's too busy admiring some guy's new (name of car model)."
"WHAT CAN I do?" Mr. Elue asks in anguish.
Naturally, he is advised to give up painting and get a (name of car model).
Advertising can teach one a lot about society's values.
The State News
Michigan State University
2
Daily Kansan Wednesday, December 7.1966
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