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The surprise Japanese bombing attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, destroyed the U.S. Naval fleet on December 7, 1941, and propelled the entry of the United States into World War II.
Four years ago, a list of World War II veterans in Decatur County was compiled and printed by The Post-Searchlight in commemoration of Veterans Day. While the number of surviving veterans has diminished somewhat, contact has been made with a few who were asked where they were on that fateful day that changed the world for ever.
Some of the biggest changes came about in the role that women played in society.
Pauline Brock recalls she was 20 and living in Bethlehem, Pa., on December 7, 1941. She and her family had been out for the day, having a good time. When they returned home and turned on the radio, President Franklin D. Roosevelt was announcing the attack. “We were all terribly shocked” – she recalls.
“I was working at that time as a switch board operator at Roller Smith Co., a manufacturing company” – she said. “The company went into production of wartime materials right away, and everything changed.”
She remembers everything was rationed, and that when all the men went to war the women had to take over their jobs. She moved to Michigan and worked for the Hudson Motor Car Co., which had ceased auto production to produce machines for the war.
Several women she knew there joined the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service), and when they came back in their uniforms she was inspired to join them. She enlisted in the WAVES in 1944 and served in Washington, D.C., in the business office of medicine and surgery. While there she met her husband, Gus Brock from Bainbridge, a Marine who served in the South Pacific.

Pearl Harbor.

It was a beautiful Sunday morning. The tropical breeze was warm as it wafted around the ships of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Many of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen from the fleet and the bases around the island of Oahu nursed hangovers from the revels of Saturday night. Others were coming home from church or preparing to go there. Some donned their Class-A uniforms, primping for another lazy day on the town.
On the stern of one of the battleships, members of the ship’s band were getting ready to play.
They and America were at peace, even as other nations writhed in the agony of World War II.
Yet this was no ordinary Sunday.
It was December 7, 1941, and disaster was on the way.
At exactly 7:55 a.m., 70 years ago today, waves of torpedo planes, dive-bombers and fighter planes from six aircraft carriers of the Imperial Japanese Navy attacked Pearl Harbor, shattering forever the peace and isolation of an unready America.
When the bombing and strafing stopped about three hours later, 2.335 U.S. servicemen were dead, 18 American warships had been sunk or badly damaged and more than 200 U.S. planes were smoldering wrecks.
Most of the casualties occurred minutes into the attack when Japanese bombs caused the battleship USS Arizona to explode, killing 1.177 sailors.
By contrast, the Japanese had lost just 29 planes, a few midget submarines and fewer than 100 men. They had, however, sown the seeds of their own destruction.
Even so, for America it would be a long road to victory.
That much was evident to five young midstaters (Joseph Lockard, Ned Shanaman, Henry Heim, Lynn Kisner and Ralph Tierno Jr.) who were there that fateful day when their nation was plunged into the greatest conflict in history.

For more than half a century, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association gathered here every December 7 to commemorate the attack by the Japanese that drew the United States into World War II. Others stayed closer to home for more intimate regional chapter ceremonies, sharing memories of a day they still remember in searing detail.
But no more. The 70th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack will be the last one marked by the survivors’ association. With a concession to the reality of time — of age, of deteriorating health and death — the association will disband on December 31.
“We had no choice” – said William H. Eckel (89) who was once the director of the Fourth Division of the survivors’ association, interviewed by telephone from Texas. “Wives and family members have been trying to keep it operating, but they just can’t do it. People are winding up in nursing homes and intensive care places.”
Harry R. Kerr, the director of the Southeast chapter, said there weren’t enough survivors left to keep the organization running. “We just ran out of gas, that’s what it amounted to” – he said from his home in Atlanta, after deciding not to come this year. “We felt we ran a good course for 70 years. Fought a good fight. We have no place to recruit people anymore – December 7 only happened on one day in 1941.”
The fact that this moment was inevitable has made this no less a difficult year for the survivors, some of whom are concerned that the event that defined their lives will soon be just another chapter in a history book, with no one left to go to schools and Rotary Club luncheons to offer a firsthand testimony of that day. As it is, speaking engagements by survivors like Mr. Kerr — who said he would miss church services on Sunday to commemorate the attack — can be discouraging affairs.
“I was talking in a school two years ago, and I was being introduced by a male teacher, and he said: ‘Mr. Kerr will be talking about Pearl Harbor’ ” – said Mr. Kerr. “And one of these little girls said: ‘Pearl Harbor? Who is she?’
“Can you imagine?” he said.
The formal announcement of the disbanding will come in the ceremony that will begin here at 7:40 a.m. on Wednesday, with a moment of silence at 7:55 a.m. (12:55 p.m. Eastern time), 70 years to the minute from when the Japanese attack began. Nearly 3,000 people are expected to attend the commemoration at the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center, overlooking the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial.
William H. Muehleib, the national president of the association, made it here from his home in Virginia Beach for the ceremony and the announcement. He said he hoped many other survivors would come as well, but, he said, those who came, came on their own.
No group meetings or social events are on the schedule. “The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association doesn’t have anything planned” – he said.