My column this week was going to be about a political issue until I noticed the date Wednesday morning.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My calendar lists Dec. 7 as \u201cRemember Pearl Harbor\u201d day.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I have a number of memories about my grandmother and the effects of World War II on her and my mother.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Grandma\u2019s son, Elmer Johnson, my mom\u2019s bother, was killed in action during the war.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He was tail gunner on the B-17, Idiot\u2019s Delight, and was shot down over Germany during a daylight raid.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He was 19.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I remember grandma telling me how excited Elmer was when he heard the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
A 16-year-old boy saw danger, adventure and life out of Enumclaw.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Grandpa told my grandma there would be no way to stop the boy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He would find a way to go, no matter what they did.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
For some reason Wednesday morning the memory that came to me when I read the words about remembering Pearl Harbor was a scene from when I was about 7 years old.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My brother David had joined the Air Force. It was about 1961.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He was the first of us to leave the farm.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
He had gone through basic training and radar school. He had probably been in the service about two years of a four-year hitch. He received orders to go to Germany.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The day he was to leave we were all loaded in the car, or probably a couple of them, and headed for Tacoma to take him to train.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t remember why he left on the train.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
I do remember I was hoping someone would feel sympathy for me and buy me large amounts of ice cream.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
What I remember next I have never forgotten.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My brother got on the train, mom was crying and my grandma had this look on her face I had never seen.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
As the train pulled away she started talking to my mom, calling her sister.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
They called mom that when she was a little girl.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
And then grandma said something about Elmer was waiting. \u2026waiting at the train.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
That we needed to go back.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
She kept saying we needed to go back.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
My dad stood with her for a while, then walked her to the car and helped her in.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
After a while, grandma had my dad stop and she bought me ice cream. We never talked about that day again.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My column this week was going to be about a political issue until I noticed the date Wednesday morning.
\nMy calendar lists Dec. 7 as \u201cRemember Pearl Harbor\u201d day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":215,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3437"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/215"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3437\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3437"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}