This Wee

Day Of Infamy

Sixty years after the attack on Pearl Harbor,
the memories are still fresh.

GEORGE DILA

Special to the Jewish News

D

Top: Iry Marshall shows o j5
a Japanese samurai sword
from World War II.

Above: Larry Stern displays
a commemorative medal

12/7
2001

14

ecember 7, 1941. As the empire of Japan
launched the unprovoked, hellish, two-
hour attack on the United States at a
place idyllically named Pearl Harbor in
the paradise that was Hawaii, much of the world
was already afire in armed conflict.
In the Pacific, a full-scale war had erupted four
years earlier between Japan and China, and Japan
was threatening other Asian neighbors.
In Europe, Hitler's armies had overrun France,
Greece, Holland, Belgium, Romania, Poland,
Yugoslavia and parts of Russia. England was under
attack by the German Luftwaffe and the British had
counterattacked against the German and Italian
armies in North Africa.
The Nazis had established the concentration
camps at Dachau and Buchenwald eight years
before. Kristallnacht was history. German Jews had
been sent to Auschwitz for almost two years, and the
planning had already begun for the "final solution."
All of this occurred before the United States was
provoked into active participation on both the
Pacific and European fronts by the sneak attack on
Pearl Harbor, the incident that almost immediately
became known as the "day of infamy."
The attack at Pearl Harbor, where the better part of
the U.S. Pacific Fleet was berthed, caught the
American military completely by surprise. They had
expected Japan to attack the Philippines. But under
cover of darkness, an armada of 33 Japanese ships had
moved to a position just 230 miles north of Oahu
from which they launched a strike force of 353 aircraft.
U.S. battleships, cruisers and destroyers were
anchored in the harbor; and at nearby Hickam Field,
scores of American bombers and fighters were on the
ground. The first Japanese bomb was dropped at
about 7:55 a.m. on that otherwise ordinary Sunday
morning. By 10 a.m. the attack was over, leaving 21
American ships and 300 planes destroyed or dam-
aged, nearly 2,400 people killed and 2,000 wounded.
The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt spoke
to a joint session of Congress with what might be the
most famous address to the nation in our history.
The country was stunned, shocked. Within 24
hours, war had been declared against Japan; and
within a week, we were officially at war with the
Axis powers in Europe.
We can only speculate on the course of history, for
Europe and for Asia, and for the Jews, had not the
sleeping giant that was America been aroused to
action by the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The massive mobilization and commitment of
American troops and weaponry to the Allied cause

finally brought about the surrender of Japan, the
defeat of the Axis powers in Europe and the end of
the Holocaust.
Pearl Harbor was the turning point — the
moment that everything changed for America.
Following the Dec. 7 attack, American Jewish
men and women responded with their countrymen
in enormous numbers. According to Jewish Heroes In
America author Sy Brody, about 550,000 Jewish
men and women served in the U.S. armed forces
during World War II. About 11,000 were killed and
more than 40,000 wounded.
Jewish service men and women collected more
than 50,000 decorations, citations and awards.
Sy Goldfarb, a Florida resident who is past presi-
dent of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association, esti-
mates that about 2,000 Jewish service men and
women were at Pearl Harbor at the time of the attack.
"During the High Holy Days in September, just
three months before the attack, services were held at
a high school in Honolulu," Goldfarb recalls. "The
place was packed."
One Jewish serviceman at Pearl Harbor was
Maurice "Larry" Stern, now of West Bloomfield.

War Fever

Larry Stern joined the Army in 1939 at age 18. He
describes what he calls the "war fever" of the time.
"Being Jewish and hearing what Hitler was doing
gave me extra incentive," he says. "I figured that, if I
had a gun in my hands, at least I could defend myself"
But Stern, then of Pennsylvania, ended up on the
other side of the world, in a motor transport outfit at
Schofield Barracks in Hawaii, far from any hostilities.
He'd been on a weekend pass to the nearby town
of Wiahua, had returned to the barracks about 6
a.m. and had crawled into bed.
A loud bang at about 8 a.m. woke everybody up.'
They ran to the windows and saw planes flying low
over Wheeler Field, but they assumed it was a rou-
tine training mission and went back to bed.
But now there were more explosions, and everyone
ran outside. Stern looked up and saw Japanese planes
flying overhead, headed for the Schofield fuel tanks.
His memories are vivid.
"They couldn't have been more than 100 feet off
the ground," he recalls. "I could see the red circle
on their wings. We got our guns and ran towards
the field to defend it. We spent the whole time of
the attack shooting up at the Japanese planes."
Some of his buddies were wounded. Stern sur-
vived unharmed.
When war was declared, Stern, who loved air-
planes, transferred to the 372nd Bomb Squadron of
the 307th Bomb Group. He became a mechanic

