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Look Back: Pearl Harbor, 1941
Date: 12/5/2011 Album ID: 1373724
Photos by Post-Dispatch staff photographers
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by Tim O'Neil --- The front pages of Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, gave little hint of a surprise attack upon Pearl Harbor that radio broadcasters would report breathlessly at 1:31 p.m. local time. Next morning, hundreds of civilians mobbed recruiting stations downtown. More than 400 applied for the Navy, 40 times the daily average. Outside the federal Custom House (Old Post Office), crowds gathered around a temporary loudspeaker at Eighth and Olive streets to hear President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s war speech to Congress.
Volunteers crowd the U.S. Navy recruiting office downtown on Monday, Dec. 8, 1941, the day after the Japanese surprise attack upon Pearl Harbor and other installations on Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam and other Pacific islands. More than 400 St. Louisans went to the Navy office, the most popular recruiting station that day because of the pounding the fleet had taken at Pearl. About 130 men wanted to join the naval air service. Another 350 showed up at the Army recruiting office. Recruiters said many of the enthusiastic volunteers were too young or too old, and several had served in World War II. (Post-Dispatch)
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Downtown workers gather around a loudspeaker on Dec. 8, 1941, at Eighth and Olive streets, outside the federal Custom House (now the Old Post Office), to hear a live broadcast of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's war speech to a joint session of Congress. Congress quickly ratified the declaration of war. (Post-Dispatch)
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The front page of the Post-Dispatch on Dec. 8, 1941. The government didn't confirm the destruction of the USS Arizona for another week. (Post-Dispatch
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Soldiers from Jefferson Barracks in south St. Louis County grab a meal on Dec. 8, 1941, near the east approach to the U.S. Highway 40 (Daniel Boone) bridge over the Missouri River, near the village of Gumbo in St. Louis County. The Army ordered soldiers to guard bridges, power plants, airfields and other key locations. The guards carried rifles with bayonets attached. (Post-Dispatch)
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Traffic backs up on westbound Highway 40 approaching the Daniel Boone bridge on Dec. 8, 1941. The Army posted guards at the bridge approaches, and spot checks slowed the flow of cars and trucks. Many of these drivers are headed to work at the government explosives plant at Weldon Spring, across the river in St. Charles County. (Post-Dispatch)
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An honor guard fires a salute on Dec. 7, 1947, at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery during an observance of the anniversary of the attack. During World War II, the national government discouraged observances. In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt vetoed a congressional resolution naming the date Armed Services Honor Day. Given what happened on Dec. 7, 1941, Roosevelt said, commemoration was singularly inappropriate. (Post-Dispatch)
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Members of the Honor Guard of Missouri Amvets commemorate Pearl Harbor Day in 1954 at the World War II Memorial at Market and 14th streets downtown. Among them are, from left, the Rev. E.S. Filipiak, Amvets chaplain; Melvin Herbig (left of wreath), St. Louis district council commander; William Lupkey (right of wreath), Amvets national service director; and bugler Andy Sgroi. (Post-Dispatch)
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Farrel Shelton, commander of Amvets Post 13, places a wreath into the Mississippi River near the Gateway Arch on Dec. 7, 1968, from the stern of a U.S. Coast Guard boat. For many years, veterans floated wreaths in the river downtown on Pearl Harbor Day, (Floyd Bowser/Post-Dispatch)
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Frank Scott, a member of an Amvets honor guard, takes part in a ceremony at Soldiers Memorial downtown on Dec. 7, 1973. (Michael A. Baldridge/Post-Dispatch)
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Farrel Shelton, commander of Amvets Post 13, places a wreath into the Mississippi River near the Gateway Arch on Dec. 7, 1968, from the stern of a U.S. Coast Guard boat. For many years, veterans floated wreaths in the river downtown on Pearl Harbor Day, (Floyd Bowser/Post-Dispatch)
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George T. Sakaguchi of Crestwood, a native of California who spent more than a year in an internment camp during World War II, shows a copy of the decree ordering Japanese-Americans into detention. Sakaguchi was interviewed in February 1987 on the effort of former detainees to win reparations from Congress. At the time, he was 62 and retired from the U.S. mapping agency in St. Louis. His family worked a farm near Lemoore, Calif., when they were sent to the camps. (Wayne Crosslin/Post-Dispatch)
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Members of the local chapter of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association watch a wreath drift from the stern of the USS Inaugural at the riverfront downtown Dec. 7, 1987. The association held its gatherings for several years on the Inaugural, a former minesweeper turned into a tourist attraction. The Inaugural broke free during the Great Flood of 1993, and sank on Sept. 23, 1993, while moored south of the riverfront . (Robert LaRouche/Post-Dispatch)
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Pearl Harbor veterans (from left) Elmer Luckett, 90; Earl Myers, 88; Jim Parker, 89; and Henry Metzler, 91, salute during a ceremony Dec. 7, 2011, at American Legion Post 213 in Maryland Heights. The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association had stopped holding its own ceremonies because so many of its members had died. (Erik M. Lunsford/Post-Dispatch)
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