Tehachapi News

“Legally Blonde” is one of my favorite films. I only wish the powers running Harvard were as smart as the film portrays. But alas, Elle getting into Harvard and the really feel good ending to the story remains a fairy tale. Life doesn’t usually work that way and not every girl is a very intelligent, beautiful and talented Elle from a doting and wealthy family.

However, while recently watching the film again I was reminded there was a time in America when we had hope of fairy tales coming true in our lives, when the children of my era were raised to believe in fairy tales because America held so much promise of such fairy tales coming true. The Attack on Pearl Harbor changed all that.

There aren’t many of us who recall inkwells in our school desks, of having to use those pens with their black wooden handles of so many years past. But some may have read stories of little boys that would mischievously dip the pigtails of some little girl into an inkwell who had the misfortune to be sitting in front of such a boy.

This memory of long ago came to me as I sit here at my desk writing with the morning sunlight streaming in through the windows. The wonder of it is that at my age I still find wonder and magic in the sunlight, in so many things of Nature that remain since childhood so full of wonder and magic. That such memories are tinged by thoughts of little boys dipping a little girl’s pigtails into their inkwells seems a perverse twist of the way our minds work. No sooner does a pleasant memory come to mind but some other less pleasant or at odd intrudes.

Among the treasures I possess is a scrapbook my mother began keeping in 1939, in which are many artifacts and photos from this date through the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor (mom being there during the attack) and for some time thereafter. When my mother passed away, I unexpectedly found myself the remaining “patriarch” of our family and the scrapbook became mine.

The memorabilia in the scrapbook of my mother’s time in Hawaii includes a matchbook cover featuring the U. S. S. Medusa. My stepfather Joe Brown was a machinist aboard this ship. He made the two beautiful lamps in the shape of lighthouses that are also now in my possession. There are many items of historical interest in the book, things like the daily paper put out to the passengers aboard the S. S. President Taft, the ship in which my mother returned to the states following the attack on Pearl.

The paper’s masthead reads: “Matson Line Wireless. Matson Navigation Company. The Oceanic Steamship Company.” The paper is quite comprehensive, covering the daily reports of the war and includes a warning to passengers not to throw it overboard after reading since to do so might result in being picked up by Japanese submarines. The threat of submarine attack was all too real, and another cause for worry to those awaiting the return of loved ones from Hawaii. To go through my mother’s scrapbook of this era of American history is not only a journey back in time, it is a historical document of the greatest importance, a personal window into that period of enormous upheaval for America and a world suddenly finding itself at war.

For example, there are the many items having to do with the actual attack on Pearl including photos. Mom had also kept a photo album of pictures she took while living in Hawaii, some of beautiful buildings and parks, some showing her with various friends while traveling about the Island. The photos following the attack showed the stark change; there are photos of bomb shelters hurriedly erected and mom and some friends wearing gas masks, a stark and chilling contrast to the previous pictures of an enchanted island suddenly finding itself gripped by fear, the terror of the deadly sneak attack made obvious in the pictures.

I have the RCA Radiogram mom saved in her scrapbook sent by my grandparents with the stark words “Let us know at once if you are safe.” But following the attack America was suddenly in “Lockdown” nationwide with little personal information about loved ones or conditions in Hawaii, and because of the numerous emergency requirements and procedures instituted immediately following the attack my grandparents could not even send the radiogram until December 16. This meant we did not know for many days following the attack if mom was even alive. I well recall how worried we all were until mom was able to send a reply, all the while we were listening intently to every radio broadcast and reading everything possible about the conditions surrounding Hawaii immediately following the attack.

Then there is the “Questionnaire To Be Completed By Evacuees” my mother had to fill out before being assigned transport back to the states. Being a Navy Wife, the questionnaire required particular information of my mother not required of those who were not attached in some way to the military. But among the many things in mom’s scrapbook there are those that tell of a period in American history when the future was bright and full of dreams and hopes for a very beautiful young woman, a wife and mother with a limitless horizon of such dreams and hopes of a future. Then in a violently abrupt instant all these were thrown into the maelstrom of the infamous sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, a shell actually exploding in mom’s kitchen injuring her. Suddenly and unexpectedly hopes and dreams were blasted by that infamous instant of time that threw America into a world war for which neither mom nor any of us were prepared.

As I write, mom’s scrapbook is open here on my desk before me. I look at these bits and pieces of my mother’s life, the many items and photos so important to her, that she believed significant enough to include, though precious to me on a personal level I realize how very important this actual history is. Her scrapbook is something of great historical significance, so much so that it belongs in a proper place housing the artifacts of actual American history ever as much as those of any other. Mom’s scrapbook is worthy of a book being written about it.

However, the keeping of a scrapbook is one of those things like inkwells in school desks and the pressing of flowers in a book that belong to a bygone era. Few children or young people today keep a scrapbook, and I believe this to be most unfortunate. You see, a scrapbook is kept for the sake of memories of family, something one expects to be meaningful to others as well as yourself. But such a thing presumes there is a family to which the scrapbook will become part of a legacy.

It seems at times that, like Ishmael of Moby Dick, I alone am left to tell the tale of my mother’s America, of the America I knew as a child that held so much promise of a future for our nation filled with the hope of fairy tales coming true. And mom’s scrapbook containing the hopes and dreams of a young woman living in an enchanted land called “Hawaii” before December 7, 1941 prove how justified we were in believing in an America my mother and I once knew, an America that used to be. But also proving how in an instant of time everything can change; and I wonder if there will be any scrapbooks like my mother’s to pass on to those like me to tell the tale?