Residents recall their fear and uncertainty on Dec. 7, 1941

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — Next Wednesday, Dec. 7, is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The surprise attack on American naval and military forces was undertaken by Japan. The next day, President Franklin Roosevelt, reacting to what he described as “a date that will live in infamy,” asked Congress for a declaration of war. With this approval, America became a combatant in World War II. The surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, which killed 2,300 U.S. service members, was for America at that time what the Sept. 11, 2001, attack on the Twin Towers was for our time. But perhaps the news of Pearl Harbor was more of a shock. Not only did the attack force an entire nation into war footing, but many Americans at the time had never even heard of Pearl Harbor. All they knew from the radio broadcasts was that the attack meant war, for everyone. There are a dwindling number of Bloomfield residents who still remember that day of infamy, Dec. 7, 1941, a Sunday.For the following story, we spoke to a few of them. There is a five hour time difference between Hawaii and the eastern seaboard. The attack occurred at 7:55 a.m., Pacific Time.

Isabell Mortellite, 88, and a resident of Kinder Towers, had traveled from Deal to Newark with her family on that day. She was going to visit her grandmother. She said the family car pulled up to the curb on Hawthorne Avenue where her grandmother lived.

“I heard this woman screaming,” she said. “When we got out of the car, we heard why. Her son was in Pearl Harbor. Thank God, he didn’t die. I just remember that one woman screaming. She lived in the corner house and she had come out. Everybody was coming out. I guess it was the hysteria.”

Bloomfield residents, and husband and wife David and Dorothy Johnson, said they heard the news of the attack Sunday evening on the radio. The next day at their respective schools, they were brought into the auditorium to hear the president address the nation and ask Congress to declare war. David, 14 at the time of the attack, is a veteran of World War II, having served 1945 and ‘46 during the occupation following the war.

Bloomfield resident Fred Branch, 91, remembers quite a bit from that day. It began with a trip to an uncle’s home for dinner.

“We were invited to my uncle’s house,” Branch said. “He lived in Chatham. We had to take the train.”

Branch and his family went from Bloomfield to Brick Church and boarded the train to Chatham.

“It was bitter cold,” he said. “Absolutely horrible.”
According to a web search, the high temperature for that day in New York City was 34 degrees.

“And we had to walk from the station to his house,” Branch said. “It was a little over a mile. By the time we got there, we were frozen stiff and it was getting dark.”
Although news of the attack had been on the radio, Branch said he and his family did not know anything since there were no radios on the train.

“Traveling in those days was rough if you didn’t have a car, and we didn’t,” he said.
But he found out about the attack as soon as his uncle opened the front door.
“The air was blue,” Branch said, explaining that this expression meant someone was using profanities, really cursing up a storm.

“I wish I wrote it down,” Branch said. “He was in World War I.”
After supper, they all listened to the radio for news about the attack.
“It was ‘flash, flash, flash.’ But they had told us all they knew,” he said. “Once you got to the Japanese and Pearl Harbor, that’s all you heard.”

Branch said he had never heard of Pearl Harbor.
“I didn’t know where it was,” he said.

Japan had been making war gestures leading up to the surprise attack, he said.
“They attacked an American gunboat,” Branch said. “It was the Panay. They were itching for war. They wanted us out of the Pacific. The sinking of the Panay was an act of war but we forgave them.”

The Panay was strafed by Japanese bombers on Dec. 12, 1937. An American naval officer was killed in the surprise attack.

Branch said he heard Roosevelt’s “Date of Infamy” speech, at home, the next day.
“A week later, I saw a newsreel of it at the Royal Theater,” he said.

With Bloomfield residents being inducted into the military, memorials sprang up all over town with the names of the residents who were serving. Branch said most of those memorials were at elementary schools. If it were learned that a resident had been killed, the name was put in gold lettering.

“There would also be a gold star in the family home,” he said. “If he had two brothers that lived, two blue stars with a gold one in the middle. I knew some of the names. After the war, people talked about preserving the memorials but they let them fall apart. People didn’t want to hear about the war anymore.”
Bloomfield residents were required to black out their windows in the event of another surprise attack, Branch said.

“We had all these industries,” he said. “We had General Electric making fuses for bombs and Westinghouse was working on the atom bomb.”
His sister Helen worked for G.E. at the time.

“Her supervisor got the group together and asked if they were buying war bonds,” he said. “They all said yes. Then he told them they were going to do more.
“‘You’re going to work six days from now on,’” Branch said he told them. “‘One day for the government and you’ll be paid for five days for a six-day workweek.’”

Today, bronze tablets with the names of Bloomfield residents who died in the war begun by the attack on Pearl Harbor are located in the Town Hall lobby.