Eagle Feathers #293 –Four Score and Two

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

Eighty- two years ago, on December 7, 1941, America was suddenly launched into a two-front war with Japan and Germany that would change our country and the world forever.

Early on that Sunday morning, Japanese aircraft crippled Battleship Row at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii. This was the eight-battleship pride of the American Navy’s Pacific Fleet.

While over 350 warplanes were striking our Naval and Army installations, Japanese envoys were in Washington ostensibly engaging in peace talks. The riveting reality of this and the attack horrified our nation.

President Franklin Roosevelt proclaimed the event for evermore as a “Day of Infamy,” while on December 8th the American Congress declared war on the Empire of Japan. On December 9th, Congress also declared war on Germany.

Suddenly, America had to retool from her peaceful pursuits into an all-out war industry. Businesses and factories turned to war production overnight. Like every city and town across the country, Somerville’s war-time industry exploded. Workloads intensified to three shifts, 24-hours a day, seven days a week. Working men and woman from all over New England and Northern New York came to aid in greater Boston’s shipyards and factories. A roof over their head, a warm meal, a place to sleep between work shifts and victory was all they wanted.

Somerville housed its share. In some of our homes, brass hammock hooks still adorn many of their hallways and large closets. Exhausting times were experienced and rationing sacrifices were made by all. In 1942, the city was too preoccupied in the war effort to celebrate its own 100th birthday. Somerville’s factories, foundries, and mills were gearing up to produce universal tanks, glider airplanes and army trench helmets for example. In 1943 her own mayor, the Honorable John M. Lynch, resigned to join the service to become a Naval officer.

Pearl Harbor Day is memorialized not only in Hawaii but across the globe with white crosses arranged row on row in military cemeteries. It was because of the Pearl Harbor treachery that our nation’s greatest and now fading generation dug in and saved America and the world. It is a day that will remain in infamy. God bless them!