A look at the P. Harbor memories of celebrities - Marine Corps News, news from Afghanistan - Marine Corps Times

A look at the P. Harbor memories of celebrities

BURLINGTON, Vt. — In 1968, history buff Clifford Barrett wrote a fan letter to a famous neighbor in New York City.

World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker responded, thanking Barrett and sharing his memory of Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

Thus began Barrett’s 23-year project to ask famous Americans — politicians, military men, sports heroes, movie stars — to recall how they heard the news of Pearl Harbor.

“Bob Hope and Frank Sinatra didn’t answer me,” the 83-year-old retired printer said last week as he shared his collection four days before the 68th anniversary of Pearl Harbor on Monday.

But as he turned the pages of two white notebooks, it seemed as though almost every other celebrity did respond.

Famous signatures leapt from the plastic-protected pages of his notebook as he read names in a thin, soft voice: former President George H.W. Bush, golf legend Arnold Palmer, author Norman Mailer, the late CBS newsman Walter Cronkite, William F. Buckley Jr. and actors Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Cagney and Gene Kelly.

The collection of 66 letters brings vividly alive a moment in time, a moment as memorable to those who lived it as the Sept. 11 attack 60 years later would be for their children and grandchildren.

“I was out with a friend, richer than I was, who had just bought a new maroon Mercury convertible and we were deciding which girls in Wilmington, N.C., we would favor with our company,” the late newsman David Brinkley recalled for Barrett in 1980.

The Japanese attack began at 8 a.m. Hawaii time, on a quiet Sunday morning. On the East Coast, it was 2 p.m. People were finishing Sunday dinner, listening to the radio, visiting with friends.

Although Europe had been at war for two years, and U.S.-Japanese relations were at a critical stage, the attack surprised a nation that had felt invulnerable.

“If memory serves me correctly, Spencer Tracy and I were sitting in a car outside his home at Newport Beach, Calif., when the news came,” actor Cagney wrote to Barrett. “It was a rude awakening for a lot of people.”

2:26 p.m., Dec. 7, 1941@ The news first broke at 2:26 p.m., in a series of radio bulletins.

In Mitchell, S. D., a young George McGovern, later to run for president in 1972, heard the news when CBS interrupted a broadcast of a New York Philharmonic concert.

Half a continent away, newsman Daniel Schorr attended that concert in Carnegie Hall and heard the news out on the street as he headed home afterward.

Three others of Barrett’s correspondents learned about Pearl Harbor at the Polo Grounds, during a football game between the New York Giants and Brooklyn Dodgers. They variously remember — perhaps not accurately — the stadium loudspeaker paging then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, spy service chief William “Wild Bill” Donovan, and all soldiers in the stands.

At home, comic actor Walter Matthau, then 21, was tuned in, too.

“I was listening to a football game and I thought it was very presumptuous of them to tell us about Pearl Harbor while this important game was going on.

“I have since changed my mind.”

As in many of Barrett’s letters, the writer’s voice fairly vibrates from in the brief paragraphs. Matthau is dryly ironic. The late-Sen. Hubert Humphrey’s letter radiates warmth; conservative congressman Hamilton Fish’s, grumpiness.

Characteristically, Arnold Palmer, then 12, heard the news while caddying a round of golf. The famously cultured William F. Buckley Jr., 16, was on his way home from a concert by the pianist Sergei Rachmaninoff. Paul Tibbets, the U.S. pilot who would drop the first atomic bomb, was aloft, flying a plane from North Carolina to Georgia.

“The personality of the people comes through,” Barrett said. “Every time you read them, you see something new.”

Memories of Dachau

Barrett has his own memories of Dec. 7, 1941. He, too, was listening to the Giants-Dodgers football game on the radio at home in Queens. He was 15.

Before the war ended he would be drafted and serve as an infantryman in the 42nd “Rainbow” Division. He would fight in France and Germany and was among the troops who liberated Dachau, the German concentration camp near Munich. It was six hours he will never forget.

“The people would come up and shake your hand and fall over dead,” he said.

Collecting memories of Pearl Harbor was a less harrowing way to remember the war.

He collected the letters between 1968 and 1991, working his way through two books of addresses of well-known people.

He picked and chose, writing to celebrities he liked or men and women whose names were in the news at the time.

In some cases, that fame has faded: Lew Ayres, a movie star of the 1930s and 40s, whose letter to Barrett hints that he would refuse to fight; or Gen. Mark Clark, future Allied commander in Italy, who remembered hearing the Dec. 7 news while walking in the woods “after a heavy dinner;” and former New York congressman Mario Biaggi, who wrote from prison where he was serving a two-year term for corruption.

Barrett’s 21-year-old nephew, Chris, a student at St. Michael’s College, listened to his uncle’s stories last week but said he had never heard of many of the letters’ authors.

Rep. Lyndon Johnson gets the news

Does Barrett have a favorite letter? Yes he does: a warm, detailed response from Lady Bird Johnson, wife of President Lyndon Johnson, in 1980.

“That is the most beautiful letter,” Barrett said in a husky whisper.

She wrote of hearing the news while in a tiny town in Alabama. Her husband was then a congressman and member of the Naval Affairs Committee. Unlike most Americans, who learned few details that Sunday of the destruction at Pearl Harbor, Lyndon Johnson knew how hard the blow had been.

Lady Bird Johnson talked by telephone to her husband that day: “This is one of the few times I heard Lyndon in a situation where he did not know what to do next. There was probably the most excitement I’ve ever heard in his voice when he said, “The Japanese have sunk our fleet in Pearl Harbor,” she wrote.

Barrett has declined to sell the letters — David Brinkley once offered money for them. The collection has never been appraised.

“I didn’t do this for the money,” Barrett said. He and his niece would like to see the letters published, but are not sure how to go about it.

For now, he enjoys rereading them. While many of his correspondents drew lessons from Pearl Harbor to apply to contemporary issues of national security, Barrett does not.

Does he think Pearl Harbor has relevance to the United States today? “I hope not,” he said.

A glimpse of famous Pearl Harbor memories

Gene Kelly, dancer and movie actor:

“I remember that Dec. 7 so clearly. My wife and I were riding down Sunset Boulevard in Beverly Hills towards Hollywood. It was a beautiful day and we had the top down on our Plymouth Convertible, enjoying the light sunshine and little breeze that in those days made California such a paradise for living. We reached the corner where the famed Schwab’s Drugstore was ... We began to notice people acting strangely and talking loudly. A newspaper boy ran across the street in front of us and the headlines blared, “Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor.”

We were flabbergasted! We turned on the news station on the car’s radio, that’s all they were talking about. Yes, it was true and the lives of all Americans changed radically.”

Former President George H.W. Bush:

“I remember very well when I heard about Pearl Harbor. I was walking across the campus at Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass., with a close friend on that unforgettable Sunday. My reaction was one of shock and almost disbelief, and then I guess that was followed by the typical American reaction that we had better do something about all of this. I remember the country’s instant coming together for common purpose, and my own gut feeling was the same as that of many young Americans: that we wanted to fight for our country. I went on to do that — no regrets.”

William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the National Review:

“I cannot add anything exciting to your collection. I learned of the attack while returning from Poughkeepsie with my mother where we had attended a concert by Rachmaninoff. I was driving back to my boarding school in Millbrook, New York. I had little sense of the magnitude of the event, which is probably not an excuse since I was 16 years old.”

Walter Cronkite, World War II correspondent and longtime anchor of the CBS Evening News:

“I was an editor at the United Press in Kansas City on the day of Pearl Harbor and was working. The flash came over the wires and I learned the terrible news in that, almost, first hand manner.”

Laurence Murphy, former president, Seton Hall University:

“Dear Cliff, I was attached to the carrier Enterprise (the old one) and we had been delivering planes to Midway. We were returning to Pearl when the attack took place and we arrived off the base more than 24 hours later.

As usual, we sent our planes in to land ashore and in the confusion some of the planes were fired upon by American gunners. As I recall, two were shot down.

When we did enter the harbor, the scene of devastation was terrible — fires still burning and destruction everywhere! We knew that many of our classmates, friends and shipmates were dead or wounded, and I suppose that anyone who experienced those days will never be able to forget them. I hope not to see the like again in my lifetime.”

Lowell Thomas, broadcaster and world traveler:

“Dear Clifford Barrett, Wish I could give you a simple answer. For someone like me who has usually had exciting developments almost hourly it’s difficult to pin point any event.”

William Randolph Hearst Jr., publisher of the New York Journal-American

“Thanks for including me in the list of people to whom you have written. ... I’d be willing to give long odds that nobody wrote back and said he didn’t remember what he had been doing.

As for me, I was attending a New York Giants professional football game up in the old Polo Grounds in New York City.

I was in a box with Mervyn LeRoy, the well-known producer and director of movies, and Louella Parsons, our famous Hollywood movie critic...

The announcement came over the loudspeaker while play was in progress. Because it was so dramatic they didn’t wait for a break in the game.

Mervyn and I took a cab from way up in Harlem all the way down to South Street to the Journal-American building as I wanted to participate in writing the headlines and handling the story. ...

At that time we were the only paper in New York City that had facilities to print color in our daily news section, so I ordered and we ran two little American flags in the upper corners of Page 1. I remember my father was very pleased with this action of mine and believe ordered all the other papers to do likewise....”

Charlton Heston, actor:

“I’m afraid I can make no significant contribution to your collection of reminiscences of Pearl Harbor that would compare to those you’ve quoted. I was a school boy at the time, and was sitting in my room doing my homework.”

Norman Mailer, author:

“I recollect I was then in my junior year at Harvard and had gone away for the weekend to visit at the home of a classmate in New Bedford, Mass. (or perhaps it was Fall River). At any rate, his sister had been happy all weekend, because her husband was going to be discharged from the Army in the next month. Then the news came over the radio on Sunday. I remember being personally excited that a war had begun and would change my life but the sister was in gloom — it had changed her life already, and for the worse.”

Harrison Salisbury, journalist:

“I was at Yankee Stadium watching a Giants-Chicago Redskins football game. There were several announcements calling J. Edgar Hoover and other important people to the phone. I didn’t catch on. I went to a friends house after the game for a drink. We turned on the radio and there it was: the big news. I put down my drink and dashed for the UPI office where I then worked as fast as I could and then to Washington and didn’t surface for several weeks, writing the story. Day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.”

Former New York Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson, who hit the “Shot Heard Round the World” to win the National League pennant in 1951:

“Pearl Harbor was a sad time in our home. I had just lost my Dad and the news about the Japs attacking Pearl Harbor just added to the blow. I was a young man in high school and I believe a friend who had come to pay his respects to my Dad advised us of the news.”