Sleepy Clinton Co. Sunday … until it wasn’t

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WILMINGTON — Clinton Countians were quietly going about their business on the homefront the weekend of Dec. 7, 1941.

Saturday was filled with farm chores and the usual bevy of activity in downtown Wilmington. Albers advertised Stokley’s tomatoes for 11 1/2 cents a can. Kroger offered sliced bread for 9 cents a loaf and a special — one large box of Oxydol with two bars of soap all for 22 cents.

For entertainment, “One Foot in Heaven” starring Fredric March and Martha Scott was playing at the Murphy Theatre. The Clinton Theatre featured “Hold Back the Dawn” with Charles Boyer and Olivia de Havilland and the Lamax was showing “Birth of the Blues” with Bing Crosby and Mary Martin.

For a meal out, local boarders might have gone to the Amble Inn at East Main and Railroad with “all meals home-cooked by Mrs. Frank Cowgill.”

Sunday was a day to attend church and to be with family. Clinton Countians might have looked forward to gathering by the family radio that evening to listen to The Great Gildersleeve, Gene Autry, Mrs. Roosevelt, Jack Benny, Captain Flagg & Sergeant Quirt, Walter Winchell and Dinah Shore.

News broke on American mainland radio mid-afternoon Sunday. The first Associated Press bulletin went out at 2:22 p.m. EST and national networks confirmed the news with the US government.

“In New York City, station WOR broke into the local broadcast of the Giants and Dodgers game while CBS informed listeners of the attack at 2:25 p.m. EST,” according to the Modesto Radio Museum. “NBC broadcast their first bulletin nearly 4 minutes later at 2:29:50 p.m. Within minutes the CBS radio network broke into normal programming with more information read by announcer John Daly.”

The day after

The huge headline at the top of Page 1 of the Monday, Dec. 8, 1941 Wilmington News Journal stated: “U.S. DECLARES WAR” and under that “HAWAIIAN CASUALTIES 3,000.”

Other Page 1 headlines included: “Japanese Claim Sea Supremacy Already Won”; “Two American Warships Lost President Says”; “Anti-Sabotage Precautions In State Started”; and “Ohio Moves Swiftly To Aid In All-Out Fight Against Japan.”

Another headline read, “Number Of Clinton Countians In Danger Area As War Begins.” The article mentioned US Navy Ensign Philip Kelsey of Wilmington, assigned to flagship USS Argonne as communications officer; Army 1st Lt. Charles Taylor of Wilmington, who was stationed at Wheeler Field in Honolulu and “in charge of machine guns and firing apparatus of approximately 40 airplanes in the squadron.

Also mentioned were former local residents Paul Hodson, a seven-year Hawaii resident who worked for a pineapple firm, as well as St. Clair Bailey Sayres.

Sayres, born in 1869 in Wilmington and a WHS alumnus, according to one account “introduced the Irwin Auger Bit throughout West and Pacific coast states” and later served as general manager of the Honolulu Brewing and Malting Company.

By Tom Barr

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