Oahu was rife with rumors that transports packed with Japanese troops were about to round Diamond Head.
Gradually, anything seemed possible that day.
Seventy-three years, seems like only yesterday.
I recall the day quite sharply in my memory, as I was 3, nearly 4, at the time. In a rather oddly set of circumstances, my father had just purchased a brand new 1942 Ford Tudor sedan, one of the very few allocated to the rural county in which we lived. They only sold it to him on condition that he make it available for ambulance service whenever called upon. The sale was concluded on December 6, 1941, for the OPA-dictated price of $1,048. My father drove it back to the farm, and on the way, he decided to check on one of the road fences as the base of the hill where we lived. He stopped it at an angle and on the slope of the road ditch, pulling on the parking brake, and leaving it idling in neutral (break-in period, you know, that was standard for the first 500 miles or so). He left me in the car, while he walked along the spring branch to check the fence. Being a curious sort of lad, I saw how he had applied the parking brake, so I crawled down and released it, thinking I could “pretend” drive. The car, parked on the slope angled down toward that spring branch that ran down the road ditch, lurched forward, and was most fortuitously stopped by an old oak fence post.
Some periods in a person’s life are just seared in one’s memory. I was sort of hyper-alert for several days after, and I clearly remember hearing FDR making the declaration of war on the radio.
When in college, a former teacher of mine became acquainted with a student from Hawaii. At the time, “frosting” was just coming into some vogue. In response to his compliment about how her hair style complemented her native Hawaiian complexion, she said it was a “natural” frosting. Present during the December 7th attack, she was so frightened that her natural hair took on an abundance of permanent grey streaks.