To the Editor:
There is a large generation who know Pearl Harbor Day only as a holiday, a day off from school, sales with discounts, and banks are closed.
But there is also a rapidly declining number in my generation who know where they were when they heard Pearl Harbor had been attacked. It struck home with me, since I had an older U.S. Navy friend who lost his life that day at Pearl.
I recall the Sunday was a bright, warm, sunny afternoon and I was studying on the lawn at The Pennsylvania State Forest School at Mont Alto, Penn. The war didn’t mean much to us at first, at least that was until gas and sugar rationing came into being and we soon noticed our meals were “getting thin.”
Life went on for me until that Christmas vacation when I worked for the post office delivering mail. In the section of town where I delivered, I knew many girls and delivered many soldier’s letters. One of the girls had a boy friend in the U.S. Marines in the South Pacific. When I delivered her letter, several days after she had word her boyfriend had been killed, I wasn’t prepared to hold a screaming, sobbing girl in my arms.
In June 1942, I enlisted in the U.S. Army and spent four years in the army, all overseas in Africa, Italy, France, Germany and Austria.
Back at Penn State, the “GI Bill”, was the single greatest thing our government could have done for returning veterans. As a result, my generation is probably better educated than those before and we guided our nation into a period of prosperity.
The sneak attack that Sunday, created many problems, but a resilient nation soon prevailed under good leadership. Now, I wonder and am deeply concerned, if our nation and current leadership, would be up to that daunting task today.
