Thirteen/WNET New York WLIW 21
New York War Stories : Your Memories. Your Words.

Untitled

Submitted by: Bert Katz

A Memory of December 7th 1941 at 1180 Pelham Parkway in the Bronx

For the first few hours it was a usual Sunday at Pelham Parkway South. Soon, as usual the family would arrive, Uncle Peter, Aunt Rose, Uncle Paul and Jessie and my aunts. Later in the afternoon, my mother, grandmother and Lizzie, our faithful housekeeper, joined forces and prepared the usual 7 course meal. This would occur before the cigars appeared to douse our commodious 10 room childhood home with a stench, which for me, later in life, became a rather pleasant reminder of the past.

The Gin Rummy card game was planned before dessert was finished. However, it would not be played on the large screened porch off the 'dinette' in back of the house, for it was too cold. it was winter in December. December 7th to be exact!

Since the war had already begun in Europe, the radio was usually turned on for the news just before dinner. The big Stromberg Carlson console was tuned to WEAF AM.

In those days, we listened to the six o-clock news & read the PM newspaper, which later became the Bronx Home News ad then the NY Post. For me, as a child and Florence, my older sister, the radio and to a lesser extent the 'funnies' and cartoons in the newspaper, were the big entertainment vehicles of the day. After all, The Shadow radio show was one of our favorites. For laughs we loved Fibber McGee and Molly, not to mention Bob Hope and Jack Benny, among others. But this was to be another kind of day. For the large speaker on the Stromberg Carlson, sitting comfortably in an entire corner of the dining room, broke the tranquility of a usual Sunday in the then 'suburban,' north east borough of the Bronx.

'We interrupt this program to bring you an important bulletin...' the radio said: 'The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in the Hawaiian Islands. The attack etc. etc. etc.

In an instant, Sundays at Pelham Parkway had changed. The immediate reaction of the family was encapsulated in two questions asked by my father, uncle Paul, uncle Jessie and seconded by uncle Peter, all at once: 'Where's the Atlas? How far away (from the Bronx) is Pearl Harbor? Then the orders: Where's the Atlas Get the Atlas. Florence and I quickly found the atlas and with some difficulty located Pearl Harbor and the Hawaiian Islands. All agreed, with great anxiety and some geographical miscalculation, it was seriously close a place we knew, Hollywood in California.