Japanese second wave of the attack flying into a hornet’s nest of fleet anti-aircraft fire. The large, black column of smoke in the center is the USS Arizona. (Library of Congress.)
By Stephen Enzweiler
Special to NKyTribune
The morning of Sunday, December 7, 1941 began in Cincinnati like most in early December. The weather was fair and cold, with a light breeze out of the west and highs reaching only into the upper 30’s. In Florence, Harry and Julia Taylor, owners of Taylor’s Restaurant, were just heading off for Sunday church. Roger Dudley, the assistant telegraph editor at the Cincinnati Enquirer, had been up most of the night with his pregnant wife, Opal, who was just in the beginning stages of labor. And on Herschel Avenue in Hyde Park, Louise Cook, wife of the late Dr. Henry Cook, was just sitting down to write a letter to her son, Captain Walter R. Cook, a surgeon at Tripler Hospital in Hawaii.
A rare photo taken by a Japanese pilot in the first minutes of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The first bombs may be seen falling on Battleship Row. (U.S. Navy photo.)
As the day progressed, most residents of the Queen City were settling in to what they thought would be a lazy, sunlit afternoon. In many homes across town, kitchens smelled of pot roast and chicken cooking on the stove. Children lay sprawled across living room floors pouring over the adventures of Superman and the Katzenjammer Kids. Radios were tuned into programs like WKRC’s “Face the Music” or WCKY’s Sunday afternoon music show.
Then, at 2:28 p.m., a special bulletin interrupted the airwaves with an urgent announcement: “The Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by air, President Roosevelt has just announced.” The voice was that of John Daley, host of “World Today,” a CBS news program from New York. Then more bulletins began to pepper the airwaves over every station in town, announcing an almost unbelievable event happening on the island of Oahu. The bulletins were short at first; but as the afternoon wore on, more grim details emerged, and the war that everyone hoped would never come seemed to be finally upon them.
The idea of involvement in a war with Japan had been looming for years. Throughout the 1930s, Japan had been engaged in systematic expansion of its territories, invading countries such as Manchuria and French Indochina. By 1941, with negotiations for peace at an impasse, President Roosevelt moved the entire Pacific Fleet from its previous base in San Diego to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii in the hope it would discourage further aggression in the Far East. It didn’t.
Stationed at Fort Shafter near Pearl Harbor was army Private George E. Taylor, son of Harry and Julia Taylor of Florence and the nephew of Robert Spanton of the Covington Police Department. The 18-year old Taylor had joined the army earlier that spring and was assigned to Battery M, 64th Coast Artillery. On this particular Sunday, he was making his way to morning church with some buddies, when he saw a Japanese plane fly overhead. Within minutes it circled, and the little group came under fire as bombs and bullets rained down upon them. A massive explosion behind the chapel rocked the earth as Taylor and his comrades scrambled for cover. Realizing the situation, they resolved to fight back, struggling to mount .50 caliber machine guns to several vehicles. But as the Japanese plane came in for another strafing run, a deadly hail of bullets peppered the ground around them. Taylor and at least a half dozen of the others fell wounded.
Captain Walter R. Cook in uniform about the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. (U.S. Army photo)
Another Cincinnatian there that day was Capt. Walter R. Cook of the Army Medical Corps, assigned to Fort Shafter’s Tripler Hospital. A 1934 graduate of the University of Cincinnati Medical College, he was the son of Mrs. Louisa Cook and the late Dr. Henry Cook of Hyde Park. He joined the army in 1936 and spent four years at Fort Benjamin Harrison in Indiana before being assigned to Hawaii. He had been at Tripler only ten months when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
On the morning of December 7, Cook was at home in Honolulu when a phone call delivered the sudden news. Rushing to the hospital, he found doctors and nurses overwhelmed by the volume of casualties being brought in from Hickam Field and Pearl Harbor. Burn victims comprised the majority of patients. Among the wounded Cook treated at Tripler that morning was Pvt. George Taylor.
Back in Cincinnati, the initial shock of the attack was slowly settling in on the population. Radio reports fueled rumors and suspicions of sabotage. Local radio stations switched to emergency broadcasting operations, remaining on the air around the clock for the duration of the emergency. Staff members at WLW, WSAI, and shortwave WLWO radio denied visitors from entering their studios and put guards on the big Mason, Ohio transmitter.
Cincinnati Police Chief Eugene T. Weatherly ordered his men to give special attention to protecting industrial plants, particularly those operating on defense orders, the gas and electric company, the waterworks and its stations, and to ammunition dumps. Hamilton County Sherriff Fred Sperber likewise issued an order to keep under surveillance all power plants, airports and defense installations. This measure, he explained, was “in line with the general policy of increasing watch over places vital to the nation’s defense.”
Tripler General Hospital as it appeared in 1941. (U.S. Army photo)
By evening, detailed reports of the devastation dominated radio broadcasts. Newspapers were snapped up quickly on downtown streets. Ann Tracy, Director of the Women’s Volunteer Corps of the USO at Union Terminal, was “swamped” with telephone calls from service men “wanting to know the train schedules so they might return to their service units.”
For Roger Dudley at the Enquirer, news of the attack dominated his workday. Earlier that afternoon, he had checked his wife into Good Samaritan Hospital before heading off to the paper. Several times he phoned the hospital in search of some word about his wife’s condition. Then at 11:30 p.m., as he sat wearily at his desk up to his chin in war news, a flash came over the telephone wire from Good Samaritan which was piped over the room’s loudspeaker: “Twins have just been born to Opal Dudley!”
It was the best news anyone had heard all day. Dudley’s coworkers crowded around the happy father, slapping his back and wringing his hands in endless congratulations. In the same room, Dudley’s younger brother Jack broke out a box of cigars and gleefully handed them out to everyone.
The USS Shaw explodes from a direct hit. (Library of Congress)
But the night of December 7 became a sleepless one across the Cincinnati area. Concerns grew over the hundreds of Cincinnati area fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sweethearts and friends in military and civilian capacities still missing in the affected war areas. No word had been received of the fate of Professor Leonora Neuffer and the dozens of University of Cincinnati graduates and professors traveling on Oahu and in the Philippines. Also missing was Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Evans, head of the Military Intelligence Bureau in Manilla and son of Mrs. Blanche Evans, a teacher at Woodward High School. Nor was anything heard of the safety of nearly 50 priests and nuns, especially the Rev. Siegfried Schneider, a Catholic priest from Price Hill traveling aboard the S.S. President Harrison, which the Japanese claimed to have captured.
By the next morning, residents all across the Cincinnati area awoke to the grim reality that war had come. For the next four years, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” would be the battle cry to unite a nation and help to fuel the prosecution of the war to its successful conclusion. In the end, the war would change everyone.
Pvt. George Taylor recovered from his injuries and served out the rest of the war in the 64th Coast Artillery defending the Hawaiian Islands. In March 1944, he was decorated for bravery after he attacked and disabled an enemy submarine while patrolling the waters off Oahu. Capt. Walter Cook made a career as an army surgeon, serving in the European Theater and earning the Bronze Star and the Croix de Guerre. He later served in Korea, was promoted to Colonel, and became a pioneer in modern combat field medicine at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas. Roger and Opal Dudley had two more children; Roger continued to work for the Enquirer, becoming its news editor and was president of the Associated Press Society in Ohio until his retirement in 1964.
Stephen Enzweiler is a writer and journalist. He has been a columnist for the Kentucky Enquirer, the Oxford Citizen, and was a senior editor at Y’all Magazine. He is the author of “Oxford in the Civil War: Battle for a Vanquished Land (2010).
Photo snapped of a Japanese Navy Type 99 carrier dive bomber (Val) in action during attack. (National Archives)
My husband’s grandpa Carl Vocke, of lakeside park, just turned 95. He was a marine during the time of Pearl Harbor. He doesn’t like to talk about that day:(
I love to read these type of old history stories 🙂
Thank you for sharing this story!