September 6, 2021 – “Personal Impact of Pearl Harbor!

It was a peaceful Sunday afternoon.  My parents napped, and my brothers napped in their bedroom in the basement.  Being twelve years old, I didn’t nap any more. I sat in the living room embroidering my latest project and listened to a radio program.  I remember the peace of the day, more than anything else.

         We went to Sunday School that morning and listened to the sermon about Jesus Christ and His saving grace. Mom made a delicious lunch, it all seemed perfect.

         December 7, 1941, and suddenly an announcer broke into the program with an emergency announcement.  What could be so important to interrupt my program?  “The Japanese soldiers just attacked Pearl Harbor and the ships in the harbor!  War has been declared!” 

         I wasn’t sure where Pearl Harbor was located. Why would those soldiers attack our ships and the men on the island? It all seemed strange for a girl in Oklahoma. Little did I know how it would change my life!         

         We enjoyed sitting cross-legged in the grass in the evenings for a pow-wow, while snacking on homemade fudge, popcorn, and lemonade. We listened to the latest family news. These came to an end.  Soon there was no cocoa available and no sugar either.  We learned about Rationing Books in our lives.  When Sugar was rationed according to coupons in the book. Home Fudge was simply a dream from far away.

         The cans of Hershey syrup a friend of Dad gave him as he delivered mail was more than appreciated. We made friends with two service men…and they often came to church and spent the afternoon with us, a bit of home.

         My Dad, the original ‘can-do’ man, found Sugar Cane seed.  After he planted sugar cane in the vacant lot down the alley from our house. We could taste more of Mom’s Custard Pie (aya pei) When the sugar cane ripened, Dad harvested it. Mom used her ingenuity and the wringers of the Maytag washing machine to squeeze the juice from it. She boiled it down to corn sugar syrup and canned it.

         We cut stalks of sugar cane to take like a candy bar to chew on when we went to swimming. The other kids watched us lay our chewed-up stalks on the side of the pool and wondered what it could be.

         The horror of death of so many American soldiers on this island was not a reality to me, until one day I wondered who God wanted me to marry.  He may have died in WW II. Forward ten years and I met Frank.

         After I met and married my husband, he never talked about those days. He spent three hours writing about the horrors of being in the Army Air Ford. His cousin, Ernie Frazier, included the story of Edgar Frank Combs’ time in his book, Boothill Coffee Club Volume I.      

“We few 21 missions bombing Japan.  Usually, we bombed shipyards and other heavy industries. Yokohama was a big industrial aria so we would bomb that a lot. We dropped a variety of bombs, sometimes they were 1,000 pounders and other times, we let them have it with cluster bombs or firebombs that would spread apart and cover a wide area. I don’t think a bullet ever hit us, since we pretty well kept enemy fighter planes away from us. Flak was another matter. On our turret gunners almost got it when a piece of flak hit the turret a few inches from the little bubble he sat in, just barely missing his head.

         Our plane had a huge tail and it wound up with lots of holes in it. Flak would come up no matter where we were. The Japanese had some sophisticated equipment on the ground – maybe they got it from the Germans. They could put a searchlight on our plane and synchronize it with their flak guns. We were really scared of the lights. I flew gun gunner one night on one wing and started to slide down. I was getting nervous.

         Nobody said anything, so I asked, “Is anybody up there?” I didn’t get an answer, so I prepared to pop open the window and parachute out.  About that time the plane leveled out, slid over a bit, and revved up the engines up again.

         The pilot called out “is something the matter with you back there, Combs?” I said, “Yes, sir, I didn’t think anyone was here but me.”  He said, “Well, we wanted to get out of that spotlight. We didn’t want it zeroed in on us, so we dropped down and got out there as fast as we could.”

         It was close to the time for the atomic bomb attack and our whole island was under security. Saipan was only ten miles from where we were, and we knew something big was up.

         No one told us anything about the bombing until the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shortly after, our government wanted to get the word out to Japan that we were going into an all-out effort to win the war so they ordered up all the aircraft and ships they could find from the Navy, Air Force, and Marines.”

         I couldn’t see at twelve years old what lay before me.  What seemed horrific at the time created the faith of the man I spent sixty-six years with this man who almost parachuted to his death.  God heard my prayer at fourteen, for the man He had chosen to marry me.  His gentleness and love now lives on in his four children. This is truly a blessing for me to see his faith alive and well in my children and their children.