Winter Fundraiser, Day 8

Another $50 came in after I posted yesterday on the fundraiser's progress, so that brings things to $1,261.26 raised so far, leaving $1,738.74 to go before the fundraiser's $3,000 goal is met around Dec. 15. That puts the fundraiser at about 42 percent of goal and with another week to go I hope you'll all help it get there.

Thanks to the 42 readers who've contributed so far. If you'd like to join them, the PayPal button is on the right or send me an email and I'll send you my mailing address.

I mentioned yesterday that Dec. 7 is always a tricky day for me and a few readers wrote to ask what Dec. 7 was and why it bugs me.

Dec. 7 is Pearl Harbor Day. My grandfather, a Lt. Commander and naval aviator, was stationed on Ford Island, which sits in the middle of the harbor right off of what's now known as Battleship Row. With him were my grandmother, mother (aged 6) and aunt (aged 9). They were on their way to church at 7:50 a.m., when my aunt saw the first of the Japanese planes coming in and said, "Daddy, what are those funny planes?"

My grandfather told my grandmother to get herself and their kids to a bomb shelter and then sped off in the family's car and was the first officer to show up at Luke Field, a combined Army Air Corps/Navy air base on the island. He got strafed by the Japanese, got to the base and got people to work on saving fighter planes from spreading fires, putting out fires and tending to wounded and shell-shocked personnel. There may be more to it than that. I don't know. He was killed six months later.

What I do know is that I talked to my mother last night and she told me how their bomb shelter was turned into a triage unit for the wounded and how my grandmother worked to clean wounded military personnel while the kids watched. My mom says she's still stunned that in the midst of all this, injured fliers and ground crew and sailors would come over to her and her sister and ask how they were doing.

There were about 2,400 deaths that day, 9 ships sunk, 20 damaged beyond repair, and hundreds of airplanes were lost. It was America's worst military loss and the next day the US declared war on Japan and, then, Germany and Italy. It's always been a source of pride mixed with anguish that my family is so tightly tied to one of those moments that changed the world. (In an unrelated irony, my grandmother was a young girl in San Francisco on the day of the great earthquake there.)

There's much more to it, but I'll leave it at that.