The AM Forum

 A special salute to those who serve us every day by putting their lives on the line. All gave some, some gave all.

RSWL..............

My dad, W1OW, who is no longer with us, was at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th as an 18 year-old Navy Seaman. He was on Ford Island just getting off the midnight shift when the attack started. He was an amateur photographer at the time and took dozens of pictures. I have all the negatives in a folder that I plan to digitalize some day. I understand there are only about 200 living Pearl Harbor survivors left.

Rich K1ETP

I was four months old when Pearl harbor was attacked.

I also remember the end of the war when I asked my grandmother why are all the church bells ringing in town? Just then two of my uncles were coming through the front door still in Army uniforms and before my grandmother could explain, they with big smiles on their faces were shouting, THE WAR IS OVER, THE WAR IS OVER. I was too young to realize what it was all about?

Rich, that would be great to copy those negatives and perhaps share them? Did you ever see them all?

My grandfather fought in the Pacific.   I tip my hat to him,  his shipmates,  and everyone else who fought to free the world.

A day that will live in infamy.   When I got to work,  I asked everyone in the group (they have to wait at the door for me,  I have the keys)  what was significant about December Seventh.

Not ONE of six people had a clue.

--Shane
KD6VXI

  My father was in the Massachusetts National Guard, he was repairing the radio in his car, turned the radio on to test and heard that Pearl Harbor had been attacked. He went to the Armory in Boston, they were sending everyone home and telling them to wait for orders.

  When I first went to the West Coast in the 70's I remember talking to people who were my father's generation, there was a very real fear of attack from Japan on the West Coast. I heard this from people here in the Bay Area and when I was up in Seattle. When I was going to school in the mid 70's I worked as a night custodian at a school, the school had been built in the early 40's, they still had a hand cranked air raid siren.

My father spent the war on a merchant ship, Mormacsea, in Army service. Merchant Marine ships crew, Navy Armed Guard gun crews and Army personal. Troops out from San Francisco through the south Pacific to Australia and wounded back to the US.