I was playing with toys in the kitchen while my mother ironed. She was listening to the radio that morning, Dec. 7, 1941. Even though I was only 3 years old, the attack had such a traumatic effect on my parents and grandmother that I remember all the details of that day.
My father was a precision machinist. He was deemed an essential worker and worked at the Stockton, Calif., Army Air Base making needed parts. One cold, foggy day I went to work with him. One of the highlights of that visit was watching the planes landing and taking off. Even more was taking a ride across the base in a tank.
Everyone was doing their part. We saved everything for the war effort. I cleaned and flatened toothpaste tubes that were made from zinc. Periodically the Italian rags, bottles and sacks man would drive his cart, pulled by a mule, through the neighborhood to collect.
We had an ice box. My mother did laundry by hand. We wore mended clothes. We didn’t complain. We were all Americans doing our part.

Lynn Rimer Lorenson