{"id":153,"date":"2014-12-07T20:26:49","date_gmt":"2014-12-08T01:26:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mo4d.wordpress.com\/?p=153"},"modified":"2021-12-07T11:21:29","modified_gmt":"2021-12-07T16:21:29","slug":"pearl-harbor-in-the-words-of-my-mother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/?p=153","title":{"rendered":"Pearl Harbor: In the Words of My Mother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 My mother who was twelve years old at the time and her family were on the island of Lanai during the attack.\u00a0 Twenty-seven years ago I interviewed my mother for a Women’s History class in college which included asking her about that day and the ensuing days, weeks, and months following the attack.\u00a0 Below is an excerpt from the paper I wrote for that class.<\/strong><\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Socorro and her family had no knowledge of the bombing when they came home from church that day.\u00a0 They returned home and her mother turned on the radio, but nobody seemed to notice that there was no broadcast.\u00a0 The radio stations had been silenced to keep Japanese planes from homing in on the islands.<\/p>\n

The local authorities on Lanai rounded up the leaders of the various communities.\u00a0 Since Socorro’s father was a store owner and thus considered one of the neighborhood leaders, he was asked to attend a special meeting where he was informed of the Japanese invasion.\u00a0 He returned home and told the family that the U.S. was at war with Japan.\u00a0 Socorro remembered her reaction to the news:<\/p>\n

It was a horrible feeling.\u00a0 This fear that literally clutches at your stomach\u2026\u00a0 We didn\u2019t have very much protection on the little island of Lanai\u2026\u00a0 The few men in the National Guard were whisked off immediately to Honolulu.\u00a0 And what was left to protect us?\u00a0 One Sea Scout troop and one Boy Scout troop\u2026 They would patrol the streets to make sure the blackout laws were followed.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Girl Scouts, in which Socorro was involved, also played an important role on the island.\u00a0 A Junior Scout at the time, Socorro learned and passed the Red Cross First Aid Course and the Home Nursing Course to prepare for invasion.\u00a0 The Senior Scouts carried messages by foot to huts in the sugarcane fields and made sure no lamps were left burning during blackouts (after sundown, no lights whatsoever were allowed to be seen outdoors in order to prevent being spotted at night by enemy planes flying over the island).\u00a0 Islanders began community gardens should food shipments be cut off and began stocking up on food should there be a shortage.\u00a0 Gasoline and food was rationed and ration cards were issued to the residents while storekeepers made sure no one went past their allotted limit.<\/p>\n

\"Family

Family photo (Socorro, back row, on left)<\/p><\/div>\n

All residents of the islands were issued gas masks that were from World War I.\u00a0 Everyone was required to carry their gas masks everywhere they went.\u00a0 They also all had to be registered, finger printed, and immunized. \u00a0U.S. Government money was withdrawn and special money was printed with \u201cHAWAII\u201d stamped across the bills.\u00a0 Socorro said the reason for the money switch was that in the event\u00a0Hawaii was invaded and taken over, the government treasury could disavow the \u201cHAWAII\u201d money.\u00a0 She believed that the U.S. government was willing to give up the Hawaiian Islands if they were invaded again,<\/p>\n

For a very, very long time after Pearl Harbor, there was still the fear and the possible danger of the islands being invaded.\u00a0 And the islands were written off immediately.\u00a0 If the Japanese invaded they were to be allowed to fall, because in order to allow the government to retrench along the West Coast, we were to be expendable\u2026 It\u2019s really amazing that the Japanese didn\u2019t follow through because if they\u2019d followed through, the islands would have fallen before the end of December, I\u2019m sure, because we didn\u2019t have what was necessary to hold them off.\u00a0 If their fleet would have come through we would have fallen.\u00a0 We were expendable.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Government-issued

Government-issued identification (side one)<\/p><\/div>\n

The beaches were barb-wired and for a long time no one was allowed on the beaches.\u00a0 Many families were distressed by this restriction because they depended on fishing for their food supply.\u00a0 Almost a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, people were allowed to go on the beach if they had permits.\u00a0 The beaches were under close surveillance by the military:<\/p>\n

One time our family went down to the beach for a Sunday picnic.\u00a0 And I brought along my drawing pad and my drawing pencils and I was sitting on the beach trying to draw this sand dune; and all of a sudden there was this military reconnaissance plane buzzing the beach!\u00a0 It came down once!\u00a0 It came down twice, quite low!\u00a0 Then all of a sudden my father realized what was happening.\u00a0 They saw me drawing on the beach.\u00a0 You know, this great fear of spies.\u00a0 He was buzzing to try to get close to see what I was doing.\u00a0 So my father said, \u201cPut that away!\u201d\u2026 Then the Signal Corps sends this jeep down the road and my father went and talked with them and brings my drawing pad and says, \u201cNo, she\u2019s not a spy, she thinks she\u2019s an artist.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Government-issued

Government-issued identification (side two)<\/p><\/div>\n

Because of the state of emergency, schools were closed until early January.\u00a0 While in school, students were required to engage in gas mask drills (\u201cwhich usually happened after you forgot to clean out the dust from your gas mask\u201d<\/em>).\u00a0 Socorro learned about blackouts and memorized facts such as the number of miles away a lit cigarette could be seen in the dark.\u00a0 The students also dug trenches along the front of the school to go to for protection in case of attack.\u00a0 Trenches were also dug at all the residents\u2019 homes.<\/p>\n

By the time the schools reopened, Socorro had befriended many of the neighborhood children who were Japanese-Americans.\u00a0 On her first day back in school, Socorro witnessed the newly arisen prejudice against the Japanese students:<\/p>\n

I walked into my homeroom and all the Japanese kids were on one side of the room.\u00a0 And on the other side of the room were the Filipino kids and the Korean kids and the Chinese, except one Filipino boy was sitting with the Japanese boys.\u00a0 And I walked into the room toward the Japanese girls whom I was close to and a Filipina girl says, \u201cHey, don\u2019t go with them, you know, they\u2019re Japs! Come over here!\u201d\u00a0 And I remember, Helen Tamura says, \u201cIt\u2019s not our fault.\u201d\u00a0 And then Jaime, the Filipino boy who was sitting with his friends who were Japanese\u2026 he says, \u201cYes, it\u2019s not their fault.\u00a0 They didn\u2019t bomb Pearl Harbor!\u201d\u00a0 And at that point, the class went back to normal.\u00a0 We mixed and suddenly there wasn\u2019t this empty space in the middle of the classroom.\u00a0 And to my knowledge throughout all that time, that was the only time that I remember that there was a disparity there.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Although Socorro perceived the prejudice against the Japanese in Hawaii as less severe than that on the mainland, she realized that many Japanese were being arrested on the islands and taken to the mainland.\u00a0 One was the father of Francis Imura, a close friend of hers.\u00a0 He was sent to a high security camp in Montana where he stayed until 1946.\u00a0 While he was incarcerated, his eldest son had volunteered for the U.S. armed forces and was killed in Italy.\u00a0 He returned to Hawaii a completely changed and broken man.\u00a0 Socorro remarked that Mr. Imura\u2019s treatment \u201cwas the most unjust thing I\u2019ve ever witnessed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today is the 73rd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 My mother who was twelve years old at the time and her family were on the island of Lanai during the attack.\u00a0 Twenty-seven years ago I interviewed my mother for a Women’s History class in college which included asking her about that day and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1166,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[53,58,69,95,96,127,136],"class_list":["post-153","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-family","tag-hawaii","tag-japanese-internment","tag-pearl-harbor","tag-pearl-harbor-remembrance-day","tag-us-history","tag-wwii"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/doghairlife.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/moms-family-scaled.jpg?fit=2560%2C1920&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=153"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1248,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153\/revisions\/1248"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=153"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=153"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/doghairlife.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=153"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}