And Charles R. Hook, then president of Armco Steel, called for “loyal support of our national chief.”
When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941 — 68 years ago today — every resident in every city in the United States was impacted, as another headline read: “Middletonians Confused By Suddeness of Jap Attack.”
City of steel
Armco and its work force were impacted the most by Pearl Harbor and the World War II that followed.
The steelmaker — the forerunner of AK Steel Corp. — set production records even while up to 30 percent of its work force was serving in the military.
The void was filled by senior citizens, women and, during the summer, high school students.
Local children held scrap collection drives to make up for the shortage of vital raw materials in the melt shop furnaces.
In a letter dated April 6, 1942, George M. Verity, company founder, wrote that Armco was “ready, able, and at work at all times.”
He wrote that in 1941 we were “suddenly awakened to the realization that our way of life was seriously menaced and that sooner or later it would be up to us to take an active part in this great world struggle.”
Hit ‘in the back’
On Dec. 7, 1941, Howard Newcomb, then a sophomore at Middletown High School, and his family were driving to Hamilton to have supper with his father’s boss when a radio broadcast announced the bombing on Pearl Harbor.
At first, Newcomb recalled, they thought the bombing occurred at Bar Harbor in Alaska.
“We soon learned we were wrong,” he said.
Newcomb said in the days, weeks and months that followed there was “extreme hate” for the Japanese because they “hit us in the back.”
At high school, Newcomb described the atmosphere as “hectic, and by no means normal.”
Two years later, Newcomb, realizing he “wasn’t doing anything here and I might be some help,” enlisted in the U.S. Navy. Newcomb, 84, served on the U.S.S. Franklin. The aircraft carrier is the most decorated ship in U.S. history.
‘Our futures were decided’
Dick Slagle, a junior in high school in 1941, was standing outside Purity — a Piqua ice cream parlor — when he heard the news that changed the world forever.
Someone near the shop apparently listening to the radio opened their apartment window and announced: “We’ve been bombed!”
Slagle called the attack “a surprise,” but said, because of the nation’s involvement in shipping military supplies to England, a war was inevitable.
Pearl Harbor, he said, meant “our futures were decided” because young men either enlisted or were drafted into the military.
Slagle, 84, said he enlisted in the U.S. Air Force on April 7, 1943, and served through March 1946.
‘Another day in the week’
Walter Evans, a student at Penn State in State College, Pa., was with Nellie Evans, his girlfriend who became his wife, on Dec. 7, 1941.
“It was just another day in the week,” said Evans, 92.
That all changed when news of the bombing spread around Pennsylvania and the world.
“The war was all the buzz, all the talk,” he said. “But when you’re younger it doesn’t impact you like when you’re older.”
Evans enlisted in the Army in 1942 and served until Jan. 6, 1946. He served in Iran for 18 months and 13 months in the Pacific.
‘Shocked’ by attack
Mary Lord, a 1941 Middletown High School graduate and attorney, was a freshman at Otterbein College in Westerville, Ohio, in December 1941.
Lord said she was “shocked” by the Pearl Harbor bombing. A few years later, when some Japanese students arrived on campus, they were “shunned” in the town, she said.
Lord said she was depressed that “so many of our boys had to go off to war.”
Lord said she remembers the rationing that came with World War II.
Four years later, when Lord graduated, victory in Europe was declared.
“We all jumped up and down and sang the Star Spangled Banner or something like that,” she said.
Contact this reporter at (513) 705-2842 or rmccrabb@coxohio.com.
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