UPDATED: Dec. 7, 2011 at 1:41 p.m.

On the afternoon of Dec. 7, 1941, Ellie Ludwig was in her sorority house at Syracuse University when startling news came on the radio.

‘I remember we were all scared to death,’ she said, recalling the moment she first heard of the attacks on Pearl Harbor. ‘We couldn’t imagine what was happening.’

Wednesday marks the 70th anniversary of the attacks, which claimed the lives of about 2,400 Americans, destroyed three battleships and a significant number of other vessels and airplanes. The Imperial Japanese Navy Air Force initiated U.S. involvement in World War II when it attacked Pearl Harbor, Hickam Field and the surrounding area, all in the Hawaiian Islands.

Ludwig recalls receiving a phone call from her parents, who were concerned by the news, and also felt nervous throughout the day because she knew a number of military personnel at Pearl Harbor.

Although the overall mood on campus was not detectably different, the demographics of students changed drastically, she said. When calls from the government for men to enlist amped up, SU’s student population became increasingly female-dominated, she said.

‘People began to think that maybe there were other things to life than just going to college,’ Ludwig said.

Reports of the attacks dominated that week’s coverage of virtually all newspapers across the nation, including The Post-Standard and The Daily Orange.

The Dec. 9, 1941, edition of The Daily Orange, the first issue published after the attacks, prominently displayed a cartoon of Uncle Sam bearing the title ‘It’s our fight now.’ It also featured a story covering an announcement by then-Chancellor William P. Graham, who urged students to ‘keep on with their work without undue concern for eventualities.’

Another article reported an overwhelming support of the war by the SU student body. One included a prediction by Spencer Parratt, then-professor of political science at SU, who said that ‘the West Coast will be bombed within the next hours, and New York City will receive similar treatment within two months.’

David Bennett, a Meredith Professor of history, said that while it is important to remember the human toll of Pearl Harbor, it is equally crucial to understand the immeasurable effect that the event had on the nation economically and ideologically.

‘It was a terrible moment militarily, but it awakened an enormous economic power,’ he said.

Before the attacks, the consensus among the American people was to stay out of another European squabble, he said. Even though the United States under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt actively supplied the British with materials and destroyers under the lend-lease program, Congress was still very isolationist, he said.

The attacks changed all of this, and the cry of ‘Remember Pearl Harbor’ gave the United States a justifiable reason to enter World War II.

‘It was the perfect intersection of national interest and morality,’ Bennett said. But the magnitude and the events that transpired at Pearl Harbor are sometimes distorted and misrepresented in popular culture, he said. In other cases, many Americans are just simply unaware of the facts of something so critical to the country’s history.

Irma Kalish, who was a freshman at SU when the news of the attacks broke, vividly recalls the unusual manner in which she found out.

‘I remember I was downstairs on the first floor, and one of the sorority girls excitedly told me that Pearl Harbor in the Philippines had been bombed,’ she said.

Kalish said the magnitude of the attacks took a while to hit her because she had to argue with the sorority sister that Pearl Harbor was in Hawaii, not the Philippines, for more than 10 minutes.

There were no formal announcements or ceremonies held on campus as far as she remembers. But many students, including her future husband, immediately enlisted in the military, she said.

Pearl Harbor is an event that is often overshadowed by the media. Though there is not a clear solution to this, stressing the importance of the event in school could help, she said.

Paul Britton, a sophomore at the time of the bombings, recalls listening to the radio at his home for most of the day. For him, it was startling because he had recently read that the Japanese ambassador to the United States was in Washington, D.C., negotiating with the State Department at the time. The entire situation was just unsettling, he said.

Britton remained a student, but a close friend who attended the New York State College of Forestry at SU joined the U.S. Army Air Corp promptly after the semester ended. He also knew many others who enlisted or were drafted into the war.

Besides taking time to remember the lives of men lost in attacks, there are other key points to keep in mind today related to Pearl Harbor, he said.

Said Britton: ‘We’re a pretty remarkable country, and I’d say long let it live.’

dmsegelb@syr.edu

Published on December 6, 2011 at 12:00 pm

Contact Dylan: dmsegelb@syr.edu | @dylan_segelbaum