JFK HEARS ANNOUNCEMENT OF PEARL HARBOR ATTACK AFTER TOUCH FOOTBALL GAME
Washington, D.C. (JFK+50) On Sunday, December 7, 1941, 24 year old John F. Kennedy was playing touch football on the mall here in the Nation's Capital with his friend Lem Billings.
After the game, as they were returning to JFK's apartment on 16th Street they heard the announcement over the car radio of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii*.
Nigel Hamilton writes...
"Lem...was 'terribly excited' (as) thick, billowing smoke rose above the Japanese embassy on Massachusetts Avenue as guilty diplomats burned their papers."
That evening, First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt delivered her scheduled weekly radio broadcast. She said that although the U.S. had been reluctant to enter the war...
"whatever is asked (of America) we shall accomplish it; we are the free and unconquerable people of the USA."
JFK+50 NOTE
JFK entered the U.S. Navy in September 1941 & was assigned to the Office of Naval Intelligence in Washington, D.C. During the war, he commanded PT109 in the South Pacific. JFK's older brother, Joe Jr., was killed in service of the air corps in Great Britain in 1944.
*According to the Miller Center, Americans on the East Coast first learned of the attack at 2:30 p.m. The Japanese surprise attack lasted from 7:55 to 9:00 a.m. Hawaiian time.
SOURCES
"FDR reacts to news of Pearl Harbor," This Day In History," www.history.com/
"JFK Heard News of Pearl Harbor Attack on the Radio," JFK+50, December 7, 2013, www.jfk50.blogspot.com/
"JFK, Reckless Youth," by Nigel Hamilton, Random House, New York, 1992.
"The Sounds of Pearl Harbor," UVA, Miller Center, www.millercenter.org/
