Locals recall where they were on December 7, 1941
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JANESVILLE — Frank Douglas was in a movie theater.
Jack Prater was on his grandparents' farm.
Ken Holliday was 10 and gathering bits of aluminum in his little red wagon.
Evelyn Thompson was returning home from her mother's home. Her son would be born later that day.
Carmen Bartlett was living and working in Chicago.
Everyone ran into the streets when they heard the terrible news.
Pearl Harbor is the kind of seminal event that makes people remember where they were, what they were doing and how they felt.
It was an early Sunday afternoon 70 years ago today. Douglas, a high school junior, was enjoying a Sunday matinee in the Jeffris Theater.
The audience barely was into the cartoon when the lights came on. The manager walked on stage amid boos and catcalls.
He told the group he had a serious announcement.
It was 8 a.m. in Honolulu, he said.
"Right at this very moment, the Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor," he told the crowd.
"All of a sudden, it was just silence," Douglas said.
Many adults left. The kids sat through the movies and Monday went to school.
"But, quite frankly, it was never the same again," Douglas said. "Ever again. Our lives changed drastically all of a sudden."
Residents went on night patrols and downtown lights were extinguished for a time. The government imposed rationing and sold Liberty bonds. School hours changed to save fuel.
Janesville bore an additional burden. Relatives and friends were stationed in the Philippines, and many would be killed or captured and forced on the Bataan Death March.
A year later, the school superintendent called Douglas and other boys to his office.
He said, "Well, men," Douglas recalled. "He didn't say boys."
He called them men because he knew they'd been drafted.
"From what happened
in the movie theater, all of a sudden, they're talking about me, not the other guy," Douglas said. "That young, we didn't quite grasp how this was going to affect us personally.
"And the rest is history," said Douglas, who survived D-Day. "To this day, I don't know why I am still alive."
The youngest
Jack Prater, 74, was a young boy living on his grandparents' farm near Newville.
"It came on the radio, and my grandma got all excited," he said.
"I think she said something like, 'Maybe the youngest son didn't have to go,'" he recalled.
But Earl, his uncle, did go to war. Prater remembers the stamps: the gas stamps, the rubber stamps, the sugar stamps, the clothing stamps.
Earl fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Prater still chokes up when he tells of his uncle's return home.
'A terrible shock'
Norm Bohlman, 94, recalls that he returned home from shopping, and his landlady told him the "terrible news."
"It was a terrible shock," he said.
"The next day, all over the country, there were guys lining up to enlist," he said.
Everyone united in the war effort.
He, too, noted the special burden for Janesville, with its hometown boys in the Philippines.
Bohlman eventually joined the Navy and was serving on a PT boat when the war ended.
'Just aghast'
Evelyn Thompson, 91, remembers the day and how everyone was "just aghast," unbelieving, astonished.
"A lot of people had to wait and check to make sure they'd heard right," she said.
"And to think, we'd been helping them (the Japanese), and then they turned around and (did) that to us," Thompson said.
'Totally surprised'
Bill Eberhardt, 89, then living in Manitowoc, had just returned home to the farm from church when his family heard the news on the radio.
He went on to serve in the Air Transport Command in India to support China.
"We were just so totally surprised—aghast—that the Japanese would be so audacious to attack us," Eberhardt said.
Dec 9, 2011 at 3:24 a.m.
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truth:
Indeed the war ended the Depression, but that's stating a result after the fact. If you tried to make a case to the American people to strike Japan 1st, and the case that by doing so would end the depression, it would have NEVER been believed, or got any mass public support (the public was very much against getting involved in Europe back then after Germany rolled over most all of it).
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If you ever read the greatest book ever written on war strategy, and winning..That being; The "Art of War"; written by Sun Tzu over 3000 years ago, you become well aware that one of the absolute most essential components in achieving victory in war, is having public support. Without it, you are all but lost, if a war drags out. Something that still seems to fall on deaf ears to this age, even though the Art of War is required reading for all west point, and naval academy cadets. Vietnam is the the best recent example of war that is totally lost with no public backing, even though you have overwhelming force. In the case of Japan in the 30's we did not even have the overwhelming force let alone public support. It was the attack on Pearl Harbor that really awoke a sleeping giant. Many in the Japanese hierarchy strongly opposed the Pearl Harbor attack, because they knew that once the potential the US had been unleashed, their attack albeit successful, would just lead to an ultimate defeat in the end.
Dec 8, 2011 at 2:29 p.m.
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I had the pleasure of meeting a former rear gunner on a Grumman Avenger torpedo plane this summer while traveling for work. I was lucky enough to have the old timer sit next to me and when he said "This plane sure is a lot differnt than the one I flew in back in WWII" He had my undivided attention for the entire flight listening to his stories. It was definately my pleasure to meet him!
Lets just not get away from what this article is really about! Over the history of our country many brave men and women have given their lives to protect our freedoms so we may sit on a website talking about would have/should have happened then and now for pretty much everything. If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, Thank a Soldier! Because with out them, our main language might have been German or Japanese!
Dec 8, 2011 at 1:58 p.m.
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Truly the Greatest Generation that has ever graced the Earth!
I don't know about Janesville and the surrounding area, but in Beloit there are at least two Pearl Harbor survivors still living.
Has anyone at the Gazette tried to research that interesting fact?
Dec 8, 2011 at 8:49 a.m.
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kiowa:
Yes, I'm fully aware of all that but it was the war that ended the depression, it wasn't the depression that kept us from waging war...The same COULD have been done in the 30's.......I guess Americans were not a bit better back then than they are now since they could only see fit to muster up resolve when they finally got attacked and could just ignore the plight of the Chinese...Same thing now as it was back then, military men suffer for an uncaring "civilian" population............SHAME.
Dec 8, 2011 at 4:41 a.m.
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truth:
The US was not a huge military power in the 30's. It was the middle of a depression, and the last thing people wanted was war. If we would have launched a war against the VERY POWERFUL Imperial Japanese empire, it's likely we would have lost. Japan had not lost a war in 3000 years.. It's FAR different fighting a preemptive war that the public would have been vastly AGAINST, then fighting one where you have UNPRECEDENTED public support, after being attacked with no warning, or decoration of war. We were only able to win because of the unbelievable public outcry following Pearl harbor, and subsequent backing of almost every citizen of our country (Both brave fighting soldiers, and those on the home front working to supply them) who sacrificed unlike anything ever seen in history, in the war effort.
Dec 8, 2011 at 1:18 a.m.
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December 7, 1941 was, indeed, a date no one living at that time will forget...
As is September 11, 2001.
We need a constant vigilance against our enemies, for we are never sure when or where they may attempt another strike.
Semper Fi
Dec 7, 2011 at 11:47 p.m.
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Well truth1 all we can do is hope that we learned from what happened on December 7, 1941 and hope we never make the same mistake again and that is appeasement makes the aggressor more aggressive. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the worst thing that could have happened because a smart enemy will hit you where you least expect it. We need to be sure that this kind of attack will never happen again. This means that our enemies we are always on alert and ready to respond at a moment’s notice of any aggression against this nation to protect America’s interest at home and abroad. This is the lesson I hope we learned from December 7, 1941.
Dec 7, 2011 at 9:36 p.m.
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I heard a good piece on NPR this morning; a doctor who was there talking about that day. Very moving and informative.
Dec 7, 2011 at 4:41 p.m.
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With the Japanese army committing horrendous atrocities on a huge scale to the Chinese, I never understood why the USA didn't attack and try to stop the Japs in the late 30's.. We ended up attacked by them ANYWAY.
A VERY poor decision on our part.
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