On this date 84 years ago, December 7, 1941, folks in Northwestern Pennsylvania woke up to cold temperatures… a low of 27 degrees with no rain or snow in sight.  High temperatures that day only rose to 33.

Most houses of worship at that time held Sunday services in the evening, along about 7 p.m.  So, families on that morning had a loose schedule… dad would read the paper while mom got breakfast and began working on dinner, often held on Sundays in the noon hour.  The children may have been getting ready for Sunday School or busy writing their Christmas wish list to Santa.  There was probably a radio show in the area that featured Santa’s helper who read those letters on the air.

Times were troubling.  Europe had been at war for two years and in the Pacific Zone Japan was causing much concern.  Would Americans be drawn into another fight as it had been in World War I?  Our President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, believed we would.

That morning, more than 4,600 miles west of Fairview, on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu, the weather was expected to be warm and sunny, with clear skies all day.  As the folks here sat down to Sunday dinner at noon, it was just 7 a.m. in Hawaii. Just about dawn.

Overhead the skies suddenly filled with Japanese attack planes. They were coming from their fleet, which was anchored about 275 miles to the north.  Those planes were on a mission to destroy the U.S. Pacific Fleet moored on Oahu at Pearl Harbor. They flew in low over the Waianae Mountain Range and released their torpedoes, bombs, and torrents of machine gun fire. At 8:30 a.m. a second wave flew in. The damage was horrendous. 

Folks in Fairview and across the nation did not hear about the surprise attack until hours later.  The news made all the radio stations and a special edition of many newspapers: this likely meant war. A second world war.

After the Japanese ships and their planes returned to their base in Japan, the military commander of the Japanese Navy, Admiral Yamamoto, is said to have commented that the Japanese forces had just “awakened a sleeping giant.”  And so, they had.

Let us remember Pearl Harbor and those who died there, December 7, 1941.