Memories Of Pearl Harbor Don’t Fade Away for Marshall County Woman
MOUNDSVILLE — Despite the 75 years that have passed since the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on Pearl Harbor, the memories of that morning and the months that followed stayed with those alive on that fateful morning.
Martha Carpenter, who was finishing her final year of high school in 1941, recalls the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian naval base and the call of duty it inspired among her generation. Carpenter saw her education through to the end, while many of her classmates could not. Many students called away would later receive their diplomas while in training or after their return.
“The boys of Marshall County were the best you’d find anywhere,” Carpenter said. “They were so patriotic. As soon as the call came, they looked, saw they had the credits to graduate and off they went.”
Carpenter went on to work at the Marshall County draft board for 15 years, during which time she saw many of her neighbors and friends shipped off to fight in the Korean War. For both wars, Carpenter said the reality of the situation was apparent even as they set off for basic training.
“You could see it in the faces, when they were getting on the bus, that this was the real thing — and there were those who wouldn’t come back,” she said.
“You can see these people, and something in them’s changed. They weren’t boys anymore.”
Louise Adams, 90, was also in high school at the time of the attack, and said she felt the call to duty herself.
She answered by joining the Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service, through which she served the Navy in the payroll department in Pensacola, Fla.
“When those big ships would come in for rest and relaxation, they’d send the things for payroll so we could get them all out,” Adams said.
“They’d get their payroll on the ship, so they don’t have to fool around waiting to get paid — they could just go. They had an outlying field down there, and there were a bunch of young (illiterate) people — they couldn’t read or write, so we’d fill out their paychecks and they’d just sign with the ‘X.'”
Only 15 at the time of the attacks, the patriotic fervor nonetheless stirred Adams to enlist, serving from 1944 to 1946.
Her husband, Blaine Adams, also enlisted in the Air Force and was among those who enlisted before receiving his diploma.
“I couldn’t go into the Navy when it happened. I was too young,” Louise Adams said.
“Seeing all of our West Virginia boys going down in the ship, I thought it was terrible.”
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