Pumpkin Center Charlie’s Girl: Reflections given on the Pearl Harbor attack

“December 7, 1941 – a date which will live in infamy … No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people will, through their righteous might, win through to absolute victory.”

President Franklin D. Roosevelt

As I pen this column, it is the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and while I, obviously, cannot share from first hand experience, I do have some thoughts about the momentous event.

From a family note, I can share about my dad, Charles Espey. Dad would have been 23 years young when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was a farmer and a purebred cattle jockey. No, he didn’t ride cows. But, he was a professional cattle showman. He worked with several herds of purebred bovines.

On December 7, 1941, he was with the CD Bellows Shorthorn herd at the Chicago International Livestock Exposition. Because there was no Twitter or instant news, fake or real, he and his associates were not aware of the attack by the Japanese until the following day. He noted to me, decades later, with a tear in his eye and his voice cracking, that the show was nearly closed down because of the sadness and the real threat that the invasion posed. He tried to explain to his only child the change that event made to his life and his family, actually to the entire country and world.

He had just been offered a crackerjack job traveling with an even more prestigious herd from Sni-Bar Ranch, east Kansas City. The next show of the circuit was Fort Worth and to this farm boy of Nodaway County, the trip to Texas during winter was heaven on earth.

But he called home on the eighth, which was no small feat at that time, and his father, my Grandpa Earl, said “come home.” Dad told me his father was sure of the danger the attack threatened on the homeland. So, he came home and waited.

Grandpa Earl did not serve during WWI, however, he realized the horribleness of war. He also knew that his oldest son would be a prime soldier candidate. So they, the whole family, waited for the mailman to deliver his papers. They arrived in late February 1942.

Dad proudly served his country in the Army Air Force. He was schooled at Casey Jones Aeronautical School to work on the new fighter plane, the P-51 Mustang. His squadron included Chuck Yeager, one of many known pilots. They were stationed along the cliffs of England and many of the fighter planes returned from escorting bombers in terrible conditions. Dad was friends with Yeager and during many air corp reunions, I can remember Yeager giving Dad, another “Chuck,” a hug as if they were brothers.

Dad came home near the end of the war during Thanksgiving 1945, on the Queen Mary cruise ship, which carried thousands of soldiers from the US to Europe.

While he was always quick to say he wouldn’t have traded his experience as a soldier serving in a foreign land, I know he witnessed the horrors that only war provides.