Americans got the word about Pearl Harbor mighty quick by radio… almost while the attack was under way. On the following day President Roosevelt announced that damage had been “severe,” and that “very many American lives” had been lost.
*But it would be a long time before anxious families heard from their loved ones. A river of telegrams started bringing bad news, and that river kept flowing for four years. If families were lucky, instead of a telegram they finally got a post card, on which servicemen and -women had not been allowed to write a message. All they could do was check off pre-printed information, from “I am fine” to “I am in the hospital,” and various choices in between.
*Steve Carassas, a naval musician from Hammondsport, was blown off his ship in Pearl Harbor while playing the National Anthem. He would later be cast into the sea at the Battle of Kula Gulf, and spend the night in the water as a great sea battle raged around and above him. He survived the war but not by much, and his untimely death was presumably driven by his war experiences.
*He wasn’t the only one. Corporal Reuben Shettler of Pulteney died in a Japanese prison camp in 1942, shortly after the Bataan Death March and the surrender of the Philippines. Army nurse Eunice Young was captured on Corregidor, and remained a P.O.W. for almost three years. China missionary Bessie Hille of Bath spent most of 1943 interned as an enemy civilian until exchanged with the help of neutral Sweden.
*Manufacturing of consumer goods almost evaporated. There were no new cars. Tires, shoes, gas, and sugar were rationed. Rural electrification, just getting under way in Steuben, immediately stalled.
*Manufacturing for war, on the other hand, boomed. Mercury Aircraft jumped from two employees to 850, making components for Curtiss military aircraft. Women, elderly people, African Americans, Latin Americans, and underage kids found new employment opportunities. Sixteen million Americans went into uniform, and the civilian work force still grew. Haverling School raised salaries across the board. At least one man from Bath worked on the “Manhattan Project” to build the atomic bomb.
*Hammondsport graduated 14 students in 1939, but a wartime yearbook listed 90 alumni and faculty in the service (14 of them died). George Haley of Bath went from Syracuse University into the Tuskegee Airmen and the first of three wars he would fight in… opportunities he would have been denied a year or two earlier.
*Rochester Business Institute taught military office management, Civilian Pilot Training, and aviation ground school instructor courses… for men and women. Hammondsport opened a Defense Training School to teach the skills needed in war factories.
*Hornell High School became an air-raid warden’s post. Aircraft spotters watched the skies over Hammondsport, and over Arkport Dam. An air-raid warden in Corning was issued a large noisy rattle, specifically for signaling gas attacks.
*Over a hundred Nakajima dive bombers took part in the Pearl Harbor attack — Lieutenant Nakajima had come to Hammondsport in 1911, to learn to fly. Glenn Curtiss was long dead, but the very few American airplanes that got into the air were mostly Curtiss P-40 Warhawks and Curtiss P-36 Mohawks. Seaplane tender USS Glenn H. Curtiss was one of the few American vessels to get into motion, shooting down two airplanes and helping sink a midget submarine, while suffering 19 dead. New vessels in the expanded navy included USS Hammondsport (an airplane transport), USS Chemung, USS Cohocton, and USS Canisteo (all oilers).
*Every month the county draft contingent was sworn in at the courthouse in Bath, then marched (no doubt very badly) to the DL&W depot. The Old-Timers Band performed for each contingent, their numbers padded out by a few callow youths waiting for their own turn.
*President Roosevelt developed the G.I. Bill of Rights to reward the men and women in uniform, but also because it was a massive social engineering program designed to give millions of Americans college educations, and turn them into homeowners — dreams out of reach for most Americans until then.
*The end came with explosive rejoicing, but also left many empty spaces behind. Millions lived the rest of their lives with physical or emotional wounds… and so did those who were close to them. And, of course, America was now deeply and permanently engaged with the rest of the world… something nobody would have predicted on December 6, 1941.