My mother (who was 20 and attending Boston Teachers College) was sitting by a radiator reading a book in her home in Roxbury MA. My grandmother was in the kitchen cooking Sunday dinner. My mother's sister Patsy was in the living room, teaching their nephew Fran to dance the jitterbug - when the news came over the radio that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.
My father had been drafted in Jan 1941 and had just returned to Camp Edwards the day before (Dec 6th) from the Carolina Maneuvers. He was in the 26th Infantry "Yankee Division" which consisted of about 30,000 draftees from New England and New York. The Division was preparing to muster out and go home for Christmas, my father's paperwork was completed and he expected to be released the next day (Dec8th) along with all the "older men" who were over the age of 28 (Dad was an "old" man of 29). Within hours after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the War Dept placed the YD & Dad's 181st infantry regiment under the 1st Coastal Artillery District and they were sent to locations along the East Coast to guard against potential saboteurs and spies. The YD's 182nd Infantry regiment was re-assigned to "task Force 6814" ,which also included National Guard Units from Illinois & North Dakota,
and deployed to the Pacific Theater in Jan 1942. My father said goodbye to many of his pals from the 182nd on the day they left Camp Edwards. Task Force 6814 eventually was renamed the "Americal Division" and was the first Army division to enter combat in the war, landing on Guadalcanal in October 1942. The rest of the YD would enter the war as part of General Patton's Third Army, arriving in France in Sept 1944. These were the men that my father knew & trained with for most of 1941, into 1942. His 206th MP company was attached to VI Corps in 1942 and deployed overseas to North Africa March 1943.