Tag Archives: pearl harbor

Time to Enlist

We’re continuing our series remembering the life of Eileen Horner Blakely, who died December 30th at the age of 96.

Eileen remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor while she was at a church meeting.  It was shortly after this infamous attack that her uncles and brother joined the Navy.

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“We knew it was serious, but I don’t think any of us realized how serious, because we were teenagers, you know. So… see, I graduated in June of 1941. That first year, a lot of my classmates were killed… in that first onslaught of the war.”

The fact that the Navy WAVES uniforms were fashionable was a big hit with the women who enlisted.

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“Well, look at khaki. I mean, who looks good in khaki? Or even, you know, that drab green the Marines have. But there was something more exciting about the Navy, and sea, and ships and so forth.”  – Eileen Blakely

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“I would look good in blue, and after all, my uniform was a dress designer: Mainbocher. … My eyes are blue so they matched.  Blue is my color.  ” – Eileen Blakely

War

Three thousand miles of widely varied terrain – from mountains to deserts, swamps to farmland. Another three thousand miles or so across the Pacific Ocean. That’s the distance that separates Pearl Harbor from Washington, DC.

WACs operate a teletype machine during World War II.

While today communication across the world is nearly instantaneous, in 1941 there were some challenges. Starting with the time difference. When the attack began in Pearl Harbor at 8am local time, it was 1pm on the east coast – it ended close to 3pm. And forget the immediacy of the internet: news was spread by telephone, morse code or telegraph machines, which transmitted news stories via a cable. In this case, a cable stretched for miles underneath the Pacific Ocean.


The initial reports about the attack spread on December 7th, through breaking news updates on local radio stations (remember these were the days before television). And the next day, December 8th, President Franklin Roosevelt announced that the United States was at war.

70 Years Ago….

It was in the just-past-dawn hours of a quiet Sunday morning at an exotic base for U.S. military personnel. The ships were anchored in the port, lined up like sailors at attention waiting for an inspection. A routine day.

And just after 6am, the first wave of Japanese planes launched from Japanese carriers in the Pacific. Two hours later, the planes reached their targets. Pearl Harbor.

More than 90 ships were docked in the harbor, including eight battleships. The USS Pennsylvania was in dry dock on one side of the harbor. The rest sat in battleship row:  the USS Oklahoma, the USS West Virginia, the USS California, the USS Maryland, the USS Tennessee, the USS Nevada and the USS Arizona. Five of the ships received some damage in the raid. The USS Oklahoma flipped upside down (“turned turtle” in Navy parlance) and sank. The West Virginia also sank. But a sinking ship can be a slow-moving process and for the most part men were able to escape those ships.

That wasn’t the case for the crew of the USS Arizona. At just after 8am, the ship was hit by an armorpiercing bomb that ignited some of the ammunition aboard the ship. It exploded. And 1,177 men were killed – the largest number of men lost on any ship that day and about half of the total casualties of the attack.

And then came the second wave of Japanese fighters.

By 10am, the attack was over.  Two-thousand and three Americans were dead. Twenty-one ships were sunk or damaged. One-hundred and eighty-eight aircraft were destroyed and another 159 damaged.  Most planes were hit on the tarmac.

The news would gradually trickle back to the mainland that Sunday afternoon. And the world would forever change.

We remember Pearl Harbor.

Time to Enlist

Eileen remembers hearing about Pearl Harbor while she was at a church meeting.  It was shortly after this infamous attack that her uncles and brother joined the Navy.

Photobucket

“We knew it was serious, but I don’t think any of us realized how serious, because we were teenagers, you know. So… see, I graduated in June of 1941. That first year, a lot of my classmates were killed… in that first onslaught of the war.”

The fact that the Navy WAVES uniforms were fashionable was a big hit with the women who enlisted.

Photobucket
“Well, look at khaki. I mean, who looks good in khaki? Or even, you know, that drab green the Marines have. But there was something more exciting about the Navy, and sea, and ships and so forth.”  – Eileen Blakely

Photobucket


“I would look good in blue, and after all, my uniform was a dress designer: Mainbocher. … My eyes are blue so they matched.  Blue is my color.  ” – Eileen Blakely