“A date which will live in infamy — that is the way President Franklin D. Roosevelt described the Japanese attack on U.S. military bases on the Pacific Ocean island of Pearl Harbor 80 years ago.
Roosevelt spoke those words in a Dec. 8, 1941 address to Congress in which he asked for a declaration of war against Japan. Often overlooked in his address is the list of other places Japan attacked within two days around the Pacific: Hong Kong, Philippine Islands, Wake Island.
The Pearl Harbor attack’s official death toll was 2,403.
The following are snippets, including casualty reports provided by the military to The Daily Evening Item and other newspapers around the country, illustrating how Pearl Harbor hit home for Lynn areas residents:
The late Emery Arsenault of Lynn recalled in a 2006 Daily Item interview how he watched the attack unfold from his vantage point at a radar station in the Hawaiian hills early on the morning of Dec. 7.
“Six or seven of us were on a 2 a.m. to 8 a.m. shift. We were getting ready to shut down. All of a sudden, the screen lit up from one end to the other. Shortly after that, Japanese torpedo planes flew over the treetops. We could see the pilots and the co-pilots. They started strafing our position and all we had for defense were our rifles with about five rounds,” Arsenault recalled.
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“Joseph Pace, a Navy seaman from Saugus, died Dec. 20 from wounds inflicted during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor two weeks earlier.
Dean V. Burdett from Swampscott stationed with the 9th Signal Service at Fort Shafter during the Pearl Harbor attack. Robert F. Allen of Saugus stationed at Schofield barracks at Pearl Harbor “reported safe” following the attack.”
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“Herbert Weiner of Lynn stationed with the Army Air Corps in Hawaii. Chester Wheeler of Saugus present at the attack on Pearl Harbor. Howard O. Wysong of Lynn stationed at Wheeler Field during the Japanese attack.”
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“Andrew L. Comeau of Lynn, a pharmacist’s mate aboard the USS Tennessee attacked at Pearl Harbor. Leo E.A. Gagne of Lynn killed at Hickam Field during the Pearl Harbor attack.”
“I was shaving,” Comeau recalled in an Item article. “I heard machine guns then looked out the porthole and saw the planes … I was trying to tell my friends that we were under attack, but they said not to worry, that it was only a drill.”
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“Frank W. Humphries of Swampscott, Herbert G. Hunt Jr. of Lynn and Gordon Landry of Peabody reported “safe and well” following the Pearl Harbor attack.”
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Assigned to Battery E, 64th Coastal Artillery, Arsenault and his comrades jammed their rifles’ butts into the ground as the Japanese attack struck airfields and sunk ships. They started firing at the planes roaring overhead and wondered if the attack was a prelude to an amphibious invasion.
“I don’t know if we hit anything,” he said, adding, “We were there three days.”
