December 7, 2008 marks 67 years since Pearl Harbor was attacked. We honor the memory of all those lost on that day.
That Sunday I was a month away from my 18th birthday, visiting my father in his tenement apartment on 9th Street off Ave. C on New York’s lower East Side, listening to radioStation WOR broadcasting the N. Y. Giant football game when the announcement came on telling everyone we had been attacked.
Here is a Timeline of a few events I have selected from the Authentic History Center Website to give you a flavor of the day:
1:23 p.m. EST (7:53 a.m. in Hawaii): the first Japanese bombs fall on Pearl Harbor.
1:28 p.m. EST (7:58 a.m. in Hawaii): from Ford Island on Oahu, this message is relayed to Mare Island Naval station in San Francisco Bay: “Air Raid Pearl Harbor. This is no Drill.”
2:00 p.m. EST (8:30 a.m. in Hawaii): NBC Blue begins broadcast of Great Play. NBC Red begins broadcast of Sammy Kaye’s Sunday Serenade. CBS begins broadcast of Spirit of ’41.
The kickoff starts the football game between the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers at the Polo Grounds being broadcast by WOR in New York.
2:26 p.m. (8:56 a.m. in Hawaii): WOR interrupts their coverage of the New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers football game at approximately this time.(How many people recall that this game had a sell-out crowd of 56,000 when the announcement was made for all military personnel to report to their base?)
10:30 p.m. EST NBC Red: Sherlock Holmes: Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce star in “The Mystery of Mrs. Warren’s Lodger.” The program is interrupted at 10:39 p.m. to announce that President Roosevelt will address a joint session of Congress tomorrow.