Rememberances of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

Collection of celebrity letters relive Pearl Harbor news

December 7, 2009

GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

BURLINGTON, Vt. - In 1968, history buff Clifford Barrett wrote a fan letter to a famous neighbor in New York City.

World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker responded, thanking Barrett and sharing his memory of Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Thus began Barrett's 23-year project to ask famous Americans - politicians, military men, sports heroes, movie stars - to recall how they heard the news of Pearl Harbor.

"Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra didn't answer me," the 83-year-old retired printer said last week as he shared his collection four days before the 68th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Monday.

But as he turned the pages of two white notebooks, it seemed as though almost every other celebrity did respond.

Famous signatures leapt from the plastic-protected pages of his notebook as he read names in a thin, soft voice: former President George H.W. Bush, golf legend Arnold Palmer, author Norman Mailer, the late CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, William F. Buckley Jr. and actors Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Cagney and Gene Kelly.

The collection of 66 letters brings vividly alive a moment in time, a moment as memorable to those who lived it as the Sept. 11 attack 60 years later would be for their children and grandchildren.

"I was out with a friend, richer than I was, who had just bought a new maroon Mercury convertible and we were deciding which girls in Wilmington, N.C., we would favor with our company," the late newsman David Brinkley recalled for Barrett in 1980.

The Japanese attack began at 8 a.m. Hawaii time, on a quiet Sunday morning. On the East Coast, it was 2 p.m. People were finishing Sunday dinner, listening to the radio, visiting with friends.

Although Europe had been at war for two years, and U.S.-Japanese relations were at a critical stage, the attack surprised a nation that had felt invulnerable.

"If memory serves me correctly, Spencer Tracy and I were sitting in a car outside his home at Newport Beach, Calif., when the news came," actor Cagney wrote to Barrett. "It was a rude awakening for a lot of people."

2:26 p.m., Dec. 7, 1941

The news first broke at 2:26 p.m., in a series of radio bulletins.

In Mitchell, S. D., a young George McGovern, later to run for president in 1972, heard the news when CBS interrupted a broadcast of a New York Philharmonic concert.

Half a continent away, newsman Daniel Schorr attended that concert in Carnegie Hall and heard the news out on the street as he headed home afterward.

Three others of Barrett's correspondents learned about Pearl Harbor at the Polo Grounds, during a football game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. They variously remember - perhaps not accurately - the stadium loudspeaker paging then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, spy service chief William "Wild Bill" Donovan, and all soldiers in the stands.

At home, comic actor Walter Matthau, then 21, was tuned in, too.

"I was listening to a football game and I thought it was very presumptuous of them to tell us about Pearl Harbor while this important game was going on.

"I have since changed my mind."

As in many of Barrett's letters, the writer's voice fairly vibrates from in the brief paragraphs. Matthau is dryly ironic. The late-Sen. Hubert Humphrey's letter radiates warmth; conservative congressman Hamilton Fish's, grumpiness.

Characteristically, Arnold Palmer, then 12, heard the news while caddying a round of golf. The famously cultured William F. Buckley Jr., 16, was on his way home from a concert by the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. Paul Tibbets, the U.S. pilot who would drop the first atomic bomb, was aloft, flying a plane from North Carolina to Georgia.

"The personality of the people comes through," Barrett said. "Every time you read them, you see something new."

Memories of Dachau

Barrett has his own memories of Dec. 7, 1941. He, too, was listening to the Giants-Dodgers football game on the radio at home in Queens. He was 15.

Before the war ended he would be drafted and serve as an infantryman in the 42nd "Rainbow" Division. He would fight in France and Germany and was among the troops who liberated Dachau, the German concentration camp near Munich. It was six hours he will never forget.

"The people would come up and shake your hand and fall over dead," he said.

Collecting memories of Pearl Harbor was a less harrowing way to remember the war.

He collected the letters between 1968 and 1991, working his way through two books of addresses of well-known people.

He picked and chose, writing to celebrities he liked or men and women whose names were in the news at the time.

In some cases, that fame has faded: Lew Ayres, a movie star of the 1930s and 40s, whose letter to Barrett hints that he would refuse to fight; or Gen. Mark Clark, future Allied commander in Italy, who remembered hearing the Dec. 7 news while walking in the woods "after a heavy dinner;" and former New York congressman Mario Biaggi, who wrote from prison where he was serving a two-year term for corruption.

Barrett's 21-year-old nephew, Chris, a student at St. Michael's College, listened to his uncle's stories last week but said he had never heard of many of the letters' authors.

Rep. Lyndon Johnson gets the news

Does Barrett have a favorite letter? Yes he does: a warm, detailed response from Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, in 1980.

"That is the most beautiful letter," Barrett said in a husky whisper.

She wrote of hearing the news while in a tiny town in Alabama. Her husband was then a congressman and member of the Naval Affairs Committee. Unlike most Americans, who learned few details that Sunday of the destruction at Pearl Harbor, Lyndon Johnson knew how hard the blow had been.

Lady Bird Johnson talked by telephone to her husband that day:

"This is one of the few times I heard Lyndon in a situation where he did not know what to do next. There was probably the most excitement I've ever heard in his voice when he said, "The Japanese have sunk our fleet in Pearl Harbor," she wrote.

Barrett has declined to sell the letters - David Brinkley once offered money for them. The collection has never been appraised.

"I didn't do this for the money," Barrett said. He and his niece would like to see the letters published, but are not sure how to go about it.

For now, he enjoys rereading them. While many of his correspondents drew lessons from Pearl Harbor to apply to contemporary issues of national security, Barrett does not.

Does he think Pearl Harbor has relevance to the United States today?

"I hope not," he said.

My Dad's brother, Uncle Louie was at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th, as he was a naval aviator (radio operator) he was not stationed on a ship at the time. In order to not worry his Mom, he told her he had been at an all night movie house when the attack occurred. He later went on to fly in TBF Avengers and was shot down once, spending a couple of days on a raft in the Pacific before a PBY Catalina found them and rescued them.

TBF Avenger (Torpedo Bomber)



PBY Catalina (Flying Boat)