<Begin Segment 15>

JB: Joe, you were just two months away from completing your one year of military service at the time of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So, where were you on that day, and can you tell us about your reactions to that, the news of the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

JF: Well, yeah. One of the, one of my friends, Floyd Couch, had made arrangements with the Post photographer to come down and have his portrait taken so he could send it back to his wife. And we were both buck sergeants. And we were walking down the street at Fort Knox, and we went by the, it was a huge old PX called the Pool Hall PX, and we said, "Well, what do you say we go in and get a beer? Fortify yourself for the photographer?" He says, "Okay." So we were hardly in the door when we saw this, well, it must have been twenty-five, thirty GIs all standing around this radio. And we said, "What's going on on a Sunday morning? Why are you guys here?" And they said, "The Japanese just attacked Pearl Harbor, and a whole bunch of guys have been killed already." Says, "I guess we're at war." And man, that didn't sound right. He says, "Listen." So we, they kept saying on the radio, "This is not a, this is a real thing," in other words, they were saying, "This actually happened. This is live news. Japanese Air Force just attacked Pearl Harbor." Well, where the hell is Pearl Harbor? Nobody knew of it, never heard of it. Well, we found out that it was around Honolulu, and most of us knew where the Hawaiian Islands were.

And then we knew that we were at war, whether we wanted to be or not. And then it was just incredible, the feeling that that gave us, of hatred for anybody who would backstab us like this, because we were hoping that the Japanese, who were in Washington talking peace at the time, would work at this whole thing out and... so the, you could cut the amount of hate that was in that room, you could cut it with a dull knife. I have never had any such feeling as that since, before or since. It was just unbelievable how high off the floor I felt. And Couch was the same way, all of us. So we, we never did have a beer. We just walked outside in kind of a trance and went down and had a photograph taken. And the cameram-, photographer says, "Why are you guys so damn glum?" Said, "You haven't heard the news?" And we told him, and he was worse off than we were. That was something I'll never forget. And then, the next morning we all met in the mess hall. The company met in the mess hall, and President Roosevelt gave his speech. And afterwards they played the national anthem. And I'll never forget that. We, we were all standing like iron statues. I've never heard it with such emotion before or since. And then we knew, we were at war, officially. But we, everything was, was thrown aside, and time, time was nothing anymore.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.