December 7, 1941 Seventy-three years ago today, on Sunday, December 7, 1941, everything in my life changed. I was a girl of 10 and very sick with Chickenpox in Sioux City, Iowa, the day the news flash came over the big Stewart-Warner radio. The Japanese had attacked the American Naval Base in Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. The next day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt delivered the famous day that will live in infamy speech to the Congress, and a formal declaration of war passed unanimously. World War II had begun. I had never heard the word before, and had to ask my mother what WAR meant. Within a week my dad left Sioux City with two of his friends for Southern California where good jobs were suddenly available in defense plants rapidly ramping up production of materials of war. Left behind with little money, my mother and I left our apartment and lived in a rented room across the street from a roller rink. My mother worked to keep us housed and fed, but I remember always being hungry. We existed on a diet of ten-cent White Castle hamburgers, cokes, and hope, waiting to hear that my father had found a job to support us. That was a dreary winter in Sioux City. We couldnt afford for me to stay in school, so I sat in the rented room watching the roller rink sign blink across the street, trying to control my fear of an uncertain future. At last, between the money my father sent and the little my mother scraped together, we bought train tickets to Los Angeles. I remember staring in awe at the big map in the train station as my mother pointed to where we were going, thinking of how unbelievably far away it seemed. We were crowded into a cramped train car, sleeping in our seats for days. Our meager money ran out, and, with nothing to eat, we relied on the generosity of a porter who sneaked sandwiches to us from the dining car. Our train was shunted on to side tracks several times to make way for troop trains carrying newly drafted soldiers and sailors racing toward California. And I remember our fear when we finally arrived at Union Station in Los Angeles, that somehow my father wouldnt come for us. And our tearful relief when he emerged from the crowds and swept us into his arms. The beginning of WWII was the beginning of a new world for me, as it was for countless others. The snows of Iowa and South Dakota were behind me, replaced by palm trees and warm sunshine. There would be hard times ahead of us for sure, but the stars had realigned. In a scant ten years, the little girl I had been would grow up and Joanie Olander would become Mamie Van Doren.
Posted on: Sun, 07 Dec 2014 19:44:55 +0000
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