December 7, 1941

            The weather in Dayton was typical for early December; the temperature was just above freezing, the sky was hazy most of the day, the air was damp.  It was a good day to stay at home, to read the Sunday newspaper and to listen to music on the radio. 

            Daytonians were not in agreement with each other as they discussed a story in the newspaper that morning. President Roosevelt had dispatched a message to Emperor Hirohito of Japan on his dissatisfaction of the explanation for Japanese troop concentrations in French Indo-China.  Though some believed that war was imminent, others remembered the bombing of the American gunboat Panay by the Japanese in Chinese waters in 1937.  That had been smoothed over, and so would the troubles now.

            Suddenly, the radio was silent.  Then a voice...

            “The White House has just announced that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor.”

            It was shortly after 2:22 p.m. when the citizens of Dayton received the news. 

            The next day, President Roosevelt asked for a declaration of war against Japan.

            “Yesterday, December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy...” his address began.  The United States was at war with Japan.

            A state of emergency was immediately declared.  Col. M. G. Estabrook Jr., commanding officer at Patterson Field and Col. Lester T. Miller, commanding officer at Wright Field, released a request through the local newspapers and radio stations that “all citizens of Dayton and surrounding territory give full cooperation for the protection of Wright and Patterson Fields and the furtherance of the vital work which must be carried on uninterruptedly at these two important military bases.”

            Both fields had been operating for some time under greatly augmented precautionary measures before the attack.  Upon the declaration of war by Japan, however, Washington sent orders for the establishment of aerial defense as well as additional ground reinforcements for both fields.  The orders also called for stronger protective measures at all manufacturing plants in the area that produced equipment for the air corps.  Laboratories at the fields that hadn’t already been operating 24 hours a day began to do so. 

            Additional ground reinforcements were brought in to protect the bases from sabotage.  The Civil Aeronautics Administration issued an order that grounded all private planes.  Armed aircraft were stationed at both Wright and Patterson Fields.  Military leaves were withheld until further notice.

            Reports of what happened at Pearl Harbor and other American posts trickled in over the next few days.

            At approximately 7:55 Sunday morning, Hawaiian time, December 7, 1941 a wave of Japanese dive-bombers and torpedo planes struck an American naval base at Pearl Harbor, located on the Hawaiian island of Oahu. It was there that the U.S. Pacific fleet was located.  Soon after, a second wave of planes joined in.  In less than three hours the attack was over.  The Japanese planes flew back to their aircraft carriers, leaving behind 2,403 dead Americans and a battle fleet nearly destroyed or put out of commission.  Eighteen ships had been sunk or seriously damaged, and about 350 planes were lost.

            Daytonian James Grady, stationed at Pearl Harbor at the time, later discussed his experience on that fateful day.

            Seaman Grady had seen duty on submarine tenders, cruisers and supply boats until early December of 1941, when he went to divers’ school at Pearl Harbor.  On December 7, he and his friends were lounging about in their training school barracks on a slow Sunday morning.  Neither they, nor a sailor who was standing at the door, paid any particular attention to a flight of low-flying planes which were winging their way toward the landing field as if returning after a routine patrol.  But when the planes kept coming toward the harbor, the sailor at the door realized that it was no regular patrol and began “to wonder what the score was.” 

            His doubts disappeared when he saw the first plane drop a bomb on the battleship Arizona.  After a few minutes of stunned confusion Grady and about ten others grabbed light machine guns and made their way to the roof of the barracks.  There they fired away at the low-flying planes, whose pilots were so intent upon reaching the ships in the harbor that they didn’t take time to strafe the seamen.  In fact, there was more danger from falling American shrapnel, Grady said.

            Everything was happening so fast that when Grady made a direct hit on a torpedo bomber and saw it catch fire in midair, he couldn’t stop to watch it go down, he recalled. 

            After the fighting was over Grady was pressed into service as a diver in the salvaging of damaged and sunken ships and in reclaiming Japanese planes that lay on the bottom of the harbor. 

            Hundreds of soldiers, sailors, pilots and civilians from the Dayton and Miami Valley area were in Hawaii and the Far East war zones when the attack occurred.  Local newspapers and radio stations began receiving calls from concerned relatives in regards to any reports of casualty lists. 

            The first Daytonian to be reported missing after the attack on Pearl Harbor was William F. Timmerman, son of Velda Wellbaum.  Timmerman had been so eager to help protect the United States that he left junior high school to enter a military academy.  After three years, Private Timmerman, still only 16 years old, enlisted in the United States Army.  He died five months later at Pearl Harbor. 

            On December 22, 1941 word was received that a second Daytonian had also died in the attack.  Calvin W. Joyce, son of Clinton and Mary Joyce, had been in the Navy for the past four years.  Calvin’s fiancée, Dorothy McMichael, had received a letter from him the day before she received the news of his death.  They were to be married in June of 1942.

            Four days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany and Italy declared war on the U.S.  Within a little over a month, Japan had attacked Malaya, Thailand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Guam, Wake, Manila and Corregidor.   World War II had begun.

Sidebar text:

Orville Wright took the time to reflect on the irony which had arisen from the use of the airplane he and his brother Wilbur had invented when he received numerous congratulations on the 38th anniversary of his flight on the sand dunes of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on December 17, 1903. 

            “Wilbur and I believed that the first use to which the airplane would be put would be for military purposes and by employing it war would be so terrible that there would be no more wars.”  Orville stated in an interview at his laboratory on North Broadway.  

            He wasn’t alone in that belief.  In fact, he and his brother were awarded the International Peace prize in 1908, with the thought that they had helped eliminate future wars.

            “The misuse of the airplane furnishes an illustration of how a good thing can be used for bad purposes.” Orville continued.  “If we had gotten into the thing earlier by taking a hand in the arising international situation, we would not be in the emergency in which we find ourselves today, because Hitler would not have got started.”  Instead, he reflected, “the hands of America were tied by foolish legislation.”

            Orville stated that he was looking forward to the day when peacetime counterparts of the modern war devices would knit the nations of the world more closely together than they had ever been before.

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