Remember Pearl Harbor

The news, like the attack, came out of the blue. So did an email I got relaying an old-timer's memories of that day, a day that would live in infamy. His daughter up in Connecticut was kind enough to relay them to me down here in Arkansas.

Why me? Because, she explained, "I recently came across your 2011 article about remembering Pearl Harbor. The article prompted a discussion with my father, who related his memory of December 7th. Thanks to your article, our family has the following first-hand account of the day." And thanks to her and her father, Robert Cunningham, I can share his memories with you, Gentle Reader, on the 72nd anniversary of that fateful day:

"I was a newspaper delivery boy for the Hartford Courant during the fall of 1941. During that time, the Courant was holding a subscription drive. Each paperboy who signed up a new subscriber was invited to a banquet dinner at the Bond Hotel in Hartford. The award dinner for hundreds of delivery boys was held late in the afternoon of December 7, 1941. In addition to the dinner, the Courant arranged entertainment for us. There were clowns, juggling and local sports heroes.

"In the midst of the festivities there was a lot of commotion on the stage. Eventually someone came on stage and announced that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Many of us had no idea where Pearl Harbor was located. The speaker explained the importance of the naval base at Pearl Harbor. Being paperboys, we were also informed that the Hartford Courant would be publishing an evening Extra edition that would be published as additional information was received. We were asked to report to our normal newspaper delivery location to wait for the special edition.

"I took the bus back to my usual delivery location in West Hartford and waited and waited. When the Extra edition did not arrive, I joined other young paperboys and took the bus back to the Hartford Courant at State Street in Hartford to wait for the edition to come off the press. When we arrived at the Courant building, there were stacks and stacks of papers waiting to be delivered. At that point we took the papers and ran into the streets of Hartford delivering papers to a city eager for news of Pearl Harbor.

"The demand for news was so intense that we stayed out in the streets until late into the night selling papers. As the demand for papers in the city of Hartford subsided, we went back to our local neighborhoods and our established routes to deliver the news to our neighbors. These are just the memories of a 13-year-old paperboy who barely understood the significance of a Day That Will Live in Infamy."

To those who lived through that time, and still remember the Americans who didn't, that day and that war still lives. Seared into memory. Not enough of us today will think of those Americans who gave their lives in the jungles of the Pacific or in the skies above Europe, who fought in North Africa or on the beaches of Sicily and Normandy or wherever they were sent to defend not only their country but the cause of freedom around the world. Cut down before their time, they never grew old. Still young in their fresh soldier boy's uniforms or coats of Navy blue, their pictures still stand somewhere almost lost among all the others atop crowded mantles and chifferobes across the country, their gazes fixed on us from the past. If we would only look. And learn.

The now aged veterans who survived that terrible conflict might have been with Jimmy Doolittle for 30 minutes over Tokyo, a daring raid that revived American spirits in the midst of initial defeat after defeat and retreat after retreat. Or they might have made it to the victorious end aboard the battleship Missouri, where the unconditional surrender was signed after those blinding flashes that destroyed the populations of whole cities. Wherever they are, they will remember this day -- as we should remember them.

The country would experience another Day That Will Live in Infamy on September 11, 2001, and once again resolve to see the struggle through to the inevitable victory, so help us God. Yet the memory of that day, too, like the country's resolve, already fades. Appeasement comes back into fashion if by more polite names. Once again Western statesmen draft diplomatic deals and issue press releases proclaiming peace in our time. Once again, defense budgets are cut as America withdraws from the world stage. With the usual results: Aggression goes unchecked, a bloody civil war rages in Syria as it once did in Spain, fanaticism prospers, and the next Day of Infamy is invited while America sleeps.

Today the memories indelibly etched in a young paperboy's mind on December 7th, 1941, and now part of his family's heritage, come back strong, if only for a passing day. Those memories need to be kept alive, powerful and vivid, from generation to generation, and their lesson remembered.

There are many other Robert Cunninghams in this still great country, this sleeping giant more than one vainglorious aggressor has made the mistake of awakening, and their stories need to be told and preserved, too. Which is another reason why the veterans of that terrible war, the diminishing number of them we still have with us, should record their memories for posterity. Because they're all part of your heritage, America.

From an Email I received....

Six Boys And Thirteen Hands...
Each year I am hired to go to Washington , DC , with the eighth grade class from Clinton , WI. where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation’s capital, and each year I take some special memories back with me. This fall’s trip was especially memorable.

On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history —
that of the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima , Japan , during WW II.

Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, ‘Where are you guys from?’

I told him that we were from Wisconsin . ‘Hey, I’m a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.’

(It was James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington , DC , to speak at the memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington , DC , but it is quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.)

When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that night.)

‘My name is James Bradley and I’m from Antigo, Wisconsin . My dad is on that statue, and I just wrote a book called ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ which is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see behind me.

‘Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another type of game. A game called ‘War.’ But it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I don’t say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.

(He pointed to the statue) ‘You see this next guy? That’s Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph...a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima . Boys. Not old men.

‘The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank.. Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the ‘old man’ because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say, ‘Let’s go kill some Japanese’ or ‘Let’s die for our country.’ He knew he was talking to little boys.. Instead he would say, ‘You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers.’

‘The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona .. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima . He went into the White House with my dad. President Truman told him, ‘You’re a hero’ He told reporters, ‘How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’

So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).

‘The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky . A fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, ‘Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.’ Yes, he was a fun-lovin’ hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.

‘The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin , where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite’s producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say ‘No, I’m sorry, sir, my dad’s not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don’t know when he is coming back.’ My dad never fished or even went to Canada . Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell ‘s soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn’t want to talk to the press.

‘You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, ‘cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima , they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.

‘When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, ‘I want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back. Did NOT come back.’

‘So that’s the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima , and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.’

Suddenly, the monument wasn’t just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.

We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice

Let us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our freedom...please pray for our troops.

Remember to pray praises for this great country of ours and also ...please pray for our troops still in murderous places around the world.

STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to someone else’s sacrifice.

God Bless You and God Bless America ..

REMINDER: Every day that you can wake up free, it’s going to be a great day.

One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is . . that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of ‘hands’ raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.