“A day that will live in infamy” was a day that would transform lives in Barton County – and across the world – for generations to come.
When the Dec. 8, 1941, Great Bend Tribune hit the porches Monday evening, news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii the day before was already well known. Bold headlines across the top of the then-evening paper told readers of the country’s swift response: “U.S. Declares War On Japan.”
Students at Great Bend Senior High School were dismissed early that morning by the superintendent, according to the paper, to listen to President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Monday morning address officially declaring war on Japan. The article said students were released early because the school did not have adequate facilities to for all of its 700 students to listen to the broadcast at once.
The entirety of the president’s speech ran on the front page of that evening’s paper.
The response of residents in the Golden Belt, according to headlines in the following days, was swift and bold, but tinged with heavy fear and uncertainty.
Immediate response
At the Missouri Pacific Railroad station in Hoisington, which the paper described as the top industrial center in the county, fears of sabotage of domestic industrial railway lines prompted extra guards and patrols to be posted at the station and visitors began being refused at the station’s shops.
Discussions also began about how to protect oilfields in the county against similar acts of sabotage and attack.
In that vein, Kansas Governor Payne Ratner organized defense councils immediately in communities across the state for the purposes of “protecting all plants and facilities vital to national defense.” The Guard unit stationed in Great Bend was officially mobilized the afternoon of Dec. 9.
Also on Dec. 9, the local U.S. Navy recruiting office reported record requests for enlistment into the Armed Forces, as orders came down from Washington, D.C., easing enlistment qualifications by allowing for enlistees with “minor physical defects,” as the nation began to transition from peace time to war time.
Ads also appeared in the paper from Great Bend Iron and Metal Co., advertising for the collection of defense materials, including scrap iron, newspapers, tires, magazines, other types of scrap metal, scarp auto bodies, and oilfield junk cables.
As news came Thursday of the U.S. declaration of war on Germany and Italy, the American Red Cross made a local appeal to raise $2,500 as part of larger national campaign for the war effort.
“Both nationally and locally, we face vast and definite responsibilities for services to our armed forces, and for relief to distressed civilians,” read a telegram from national Red Cross Chairman Norman H. Davis.
First Barton County casualty
For some Golden Belt residents, though, the headlines hit far too tragically close to home. Further down on the page, on Dec. 8, headlines announced, “Barton Man Is Killed In Jap Raid.”
Thirty-four year old Hoisington resident, Cpl. John Gordon “Red” Mitchell, died of what the Tribune later reported as “machine gun and shrapnel wounds” in the attack at around 10 a.m. central time on the morning of Dec. 7.
Mitchell’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. John Mitchell of Hoisington, received word of their son’s death about 10:30 Sunday evening, making him the first casualty of the war in Barton County.
According to records, Mitchell had enlisted in the Army in October 1939, and had been assigned to Pearl Harbor in Hawaii almost exactly one year prior, in December 1940. He served with the 15th Pursuit Squad and was posthumously awarded the Purple Heart. He was not married at the time of his death.
In addition, Cpl. Mitchell was listed in the article as a nephew of Great Bend residents Will and Nellie (Mitchell) Hammond. Both branches of the family had several members living in Barton County at the time of Mitchell’s passing.
Records from the Kansas State Historical Society indicate Cpl. Mitchell’s military service roots ran deep.
Nellie and John Mitchell’s father, George Mitchell, who was Cpl. Mitchell’s grandfather, had served as a Union soldier in the Civil War with a Pennsylvania regiment, prior to settling in central Kansas and working for many years as a house carpenter and contractor.
Reports later in the week noted Kansas Governor Payne Ratner attended the Dec. 14 memorial service for the fallen soldier.
‘I never saw so much TNT...’
Cpl. Mitchell’s story was not the only one to come out of the Sunday attack, though.
Later in the week, on the front page of the Thursday, Dec. 12 edition, readers were offered the accounts of R.S. and J.A. Stone, sons of Mr. and Mrs. A.M. Stone of Great Bend.
The Stone brothers, according to the report, were electricians for Morrison-Knudsen Construction Co. of Boise, Idaho, stationed in Honolulu, constructing airplane hangars at the time of the attacks on Pearl Harbor.
The two men were not injured in the attack, but in phone conversations with a brother back home later in the week, they described to family back home the chaos that ensued after being startled awake the morning of the attack.
“I never saw so much TNT together in my life,” R.S. Stone told his brother about witnessing the attack.
The account goes on to say the brothers felt lucky to get out uninjured. “Concussions from bombs flung them around like leaves.” The brothers described seeing multiple killed by explosions that fateful morning but were able to provide few other details by phone. The family, the article said, would be wiring them money to return home from Hawaii as soon as possible.
A Wikipedia search of the company indicates about 1,200 contract workers for the company were captured by Japanese forces while working at Midway and Wake Islands in late 1941.
A lasting transformation to the Golden Belt
As lives would be changed over the coming days, months and years, the war effort also gave rise to one lasting change to the Golden Belt landscape – the Great Bend Army Air Field.
Planning for the base, originally intended to be a satellite base to Salina’s Smoky Hill Army Air Field, began in 1942. A site was chosen in July, and was described as a collaborative effort between public and private organizations, including the Army, the Great Bend Chamber of Commerce and private citizens.
Three 8,000-foot runways were constructed to support massive B-29 Superfortress bombers, and the first enlisted units were officially transferred to the air base in February 1943. The site was mainly responsible for processing bomber units, but some training was done there as well.
At its largest, the base contained over 200 buildings, a water storage and distribution system, sewage system and treatment plant, and electric transmission lines. These were followed in time by facilities for recreation and services. During the summer and fall of 1943, a service club, theater and bowling alley were completed, according to Kansas Historical Quarterly.
Throughout its active life in World War II, records from the 1959 Kansas Historical Quarterly indicate more that 6,400 personnel were stationed at the airbase through the end of January 1945.
Though many of the buildings were dismantled following the base’s deactivation in early 1946, the main structures, as well as two of the runways, would remain intact and serve as the genesis for the later establishment of Great Bend Municipal Airport. A third runway on the north side now serves as the SRCA Drag Strip.
Recently painted murals of both the B-29’s and drag strip, as well as veterans memorials across the county, now serve as vibrant and lasting reminders of how that day changed lives and landscape in Barton County.
Thus, the legacy of the “day that will live in infamy” lives on in the lives and memories of so many men and women whose lives were changed forever on a December Sunday morning in 1941.
