Dateline: December 13, 2001

Where were you when Japan bombed U.S.?   

Roger Estlack, Clarendon Enterprise

People alive when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor know exactly where they were when they heard the news, and Clarendon’s Mutt Graham is no different. He was working in Caraway’s Cafe when a fellow named Mr. Price came in with the news: “Well, I guess we’re in it now. The Japs just bombed us.”

Last Friday, December 7, he returned to the exact spot – now a part of the Herring National Bank building – where he first heard the news in 1941.

Returning to that same spot was something he did spontaneously Friday. The thought just occurred to him while he was driving downtown.

“I just went in the bank and told them, ‘I just want to stand here for a minute,’” he said.

Graham said no one believed Price, who used to work for Homer Mulkey at the theater, but then other people started coming in to the restaurant telling the same story.

People in the restaurant all gathered around a world map hanging on the wall to find out where Japan was, and Graham says he distinctly remembers one man saying, “We’ll whip them in six months.”

Of course, the war took many years instead of a few months.

Among the other people in the restaurant that day were Ode Caraway and Clem Caraway. The later was a veteran of World War I, Graham said.

Graham was later drafted and served nearly three years in World War II as a cook on board the aircraft carrier USS Langley.

“We were right in the middle of it,” he said of his action in the Pacific Theater of the war. “We served three meals a day to 1,300 men.”

The nuclear aircraft carriers of today are much bigger than his ship, but it was still like a little city of its own, he said.

In August 1945, Graham said he was onboard the Langley in Pearl Harbor, where they were loading new airplanes preparing to strike Tokyo when Japan surrendered to the United States.