That's Who We Were.

Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941

It is fitting for me on to pause this 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  It was the day I learned about the world as my parents explained what was happening with our Earth globe.  Meanwhile, Admiral Yamamoto, said he feared they had awakened a sleeping giant as his attack fleet steamed away from the scene of the crime of the 20th century, the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor.

I was five and one-half on that day. My music teacher father had the best radio in Jeffersonville, Indiana as he wanted to hear the Sunday Opera from Chicago and the big band remote broadcasts from Chicago where he was also a union musician and a regular side man for several big bands. The radio had short wave which I learned to operate. 

My RKO contract dancer mother's friends from Europe stayed with us when they were doing shows in Louisville, KY across the Ohio River.  The studios had very strict size standards for dancers as their leading men were all short.  They searched the world for small lady dancers.  I would carefully tune the radio for them looking for something in thier languages.  The best was BBC where I often heard Vera Lynn sing "We'll Meet Again," her original, signature song ending USO dances in London, England.  She was 16 and too young to be in the dance halls so they made her up to look 21 for the duration. Everyone knew, but that's who we were...

My father went to join the army the next day, but was rejected by Dr. Bruner, President of the Clark County Draft Board and President of the Jeffersonville School Board saying, "I am not going to lose my band directer to this Goddamn war!"  But, he had a good excuse as my dad was an asthmatic and actually "4F," but that is who we were.

Two years later, in 1943, with the war going strong, I was in second grade, "Miss Johnson's room," having my first feelings of love for a woman other than my mother.  She was a tall, willowy brunette who often wore "jumper" style dresses, moved very gracefully, but not as a dancer like my mother; naturally in her own way.  

Just before Thanksgiving a young man in uniform came to the school and sat in the back of the room for an hour.  He got up mouthing to her, silently, "I have to go..." She met him at the door and kissed him! The boys all went, "Yuk!" and groaned while the girls were all "a-twitter."  We soon settled down and continued...

In the spring on a Monday morning I arrived at school and the hall was filled with the mothers of our class.  One, a former teacher, was sitting at Miss Johnson's desk.  We were told to take our seats and the lady at the desk said, "Children, I have some bad news.  Miss Johnson's young man was shot down over Germany and was killed." The room fell down, every kid burst into tears and we all thought of the day he was there.  It was like we knew him.  The lady at the desk got us through the day because that's who we were.

The next day Miss Johnson came to school and continued, not as if nothing had happened, but because that's who we were. 

The next fall, on returning to school we found Miss Johnson had not returned!  She had joined the WACs and we were told she was in England.  The months went by and Spring came.  On another day we were told Miss Johnson had been killed in a air raid and this time the whole school collapsed, but we recovered and went on because in 1943 that's who we were.

Adrian Vance