Seventy years ago today, I was playing with toy cars in the living room of our upstairs apartment in Tallahassee, Florida. just two days earlier, my stepfather, a staff sergeant in the US Army Air Corps, had returned from several weeks at the Carolina Maneuvers. Earlier in the summer, he had been away at the Louisiana maneuvers. My little brother, born in Yazoo City, Mississippi during that absence, was in his play pen.
Suddenly there was a loud knock at the door and landlord announced: "the Japs have bombed Pearl Harbor."
The only thing I didn't understand about his announcement was, what was Pearl Harbor.
The other part of the landlord's announcement was that all military personnel were recalled to their bases. My stepfather put on his uniform and left. We didn't see him for a couple of days. When he returned, it was to pack his foot locker and take it to the barracks.
Not long afterward, we moved into base housing and stayed there until my stepfather received orders to a unit in Mobile, Alabama, to prepare for overseas movement.
None of this was a great surprise. Those who write about the period often emphasize that America was unprepared for war. Not exactly.
Even at the age of four and a half, I understood that we were getting ready for a war. I had seen the evidence with my own eyes. And heard it with my own ears, as we lived next to newly constructed airbases. On our way to Tallahassee from Mississippi, we had traveled along two-lane highways through small towns filled with the moving vehicles of vast convoys. Maybe people in the interior of the country didn't understand what was going on, but it was obvious to those of us in the South.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment