Chapter 2: Surprise Attack!

In our kitchen on Sunday afternoon, the nightmare began! The day was December 7, 1941.  Alfred Agostinelli and I had just returned from the movies, to my home at Ten Glen Avenue    My mother was at the door and hit us with a bombshell! “Alberto, Listen to the radio!” “Cominciare a guerra, no?” And then in her English, “Someplace a war has started si?” I can still remember her concerned voice and see the expression on her face. “A War?”. We talked about the war in Europe which was raging since 1939. She asked me to listen and tell her what was happening. We were listening on our small radio above the kitchen sink, where she often listened the   Arthur Godfrey morning show.                               

Indeed, there was some trouble.  I heard the announcer repeat, “Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the Naval Base at Hawaii.” It belonged to us, an island in the Pacific Ocean, thousands of miles away, he explained! There were so many questions that needed answered. I had trouble with “Pearl Harbor.” Who owned that habor so far away? Would we have to go to war for something that happened so far away from the United States?   

Where is Pearl Harbor? My world was beginning to grow.  We didn’t own a car. We walked everywhere. I didn't  understand what was meant by "The Battleship Row” as they were now repeating the little known facts.  How far is Pearl Harbor from the USA? And how far is 7,500 miles?  The Seventh of December nineteen forty one! Now, more questions than answers, began to fill my head, and I was bent on understanding everything. 

I knew when I went to bed that night, I was filled with anxiety. Yes! We would be safe here in Ellwood City, Pennsylvania. I heard someone on the radio speculate that we Americans living on the East Coast would be safer than the Americans on the West Coast as Japan attacked us! Thank God, Pearl Harbor was many, many miles from Ellwood City, Penna. At the same time, 3,400 miles separated us from Europe to the east, where the Nazi-led war was escalating daily! I also recall a warm feeling that told me that tonight would be okay, just as yesterday was, but what about tomorrow and the next day?

I devised my way of evaluating how dangerous this war was becoming, and I was thinking of the kind of threat we would be facing now and in the days and  months ahead! I wrote in my scrapbook, “Never again should we be unprepared as we were in Hawaii" with hundreds killed while they slept and others were attending early church services.