One morning when my neighbor and I were having tea, the wailing siren interrupted our casual chatting. She is a Chinese woman who lived most of her life in the Philippines. After the alarm ended, she remarked, “I can’t believe that they play this same alarm so regularly! If my Ahmah hears this, she would have a heart attack!” This was no exaggeration. I chuckled sadly in sympathy. “Hearing this same alarm,” my mother had told me, “would make my grandma’s knees wobble, lips quiver.” We quietly sipped our tea and resumed watching her toddlers play, under the same siren our grandmothers frantically collected their children and entered the darkness of bomb shelters, thinking only to survive that short distance, those few seconds. In silence we remembered our grandmothers and thanked the American pilots who ended the bombings. This is a special tribute to World War II as we approach Pearl Harbor Day, Dec. 7th.
Photo taken at EAA Aviation Museum.
