Today is Sunday, Dec. 7, 2003. On another Sunday many years ago, I was reading the funnies. My mother was listening to the radio in the kitchen. She came into the living room and told my father that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, and we all went to the kitchen to listen to the reports. I was eight years old. We lived in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky, and I had no idea where Pearl Harbor was. My mother explained that it was in Hawaii, out in the Pacific Ocean. One report was that a battleship had been sunk and an airfield was bombed. Another said that the West Coast was preparing for an attack. They said the president was going to make a speech. I went outside to play.
In the following weeks and months, the war came to Kentucky in the form of newsreels at the movies and pictures in the paper. The radio was full of war news, and big black headlines about the war were on every newspaper.
I can't believe that was 62 years ago. I can't believe how little things have changed.
Howard