Throwback Thursday: December 7

News from around Johnson County as reported on Dec. 7 in the pages of the Daily Journal and the Franklin Evening Star from the last 111 years.

On this day in 2013, one of the stories on the front page of the Daily Journal was about a Pearl Harbor survivor remembering the day of the attack.

“The 19-year-old sailor was too inexperienced and too far from the battle carnage to be afraid when the Japanese attacked,” the story began.

Richard Pauls still remembered that day 72 years later. He was aboard his ship, the USS Medusa, at Pearl Harbor when the bombs fell and torpedoes were fired, and he manned a 3-caliber machine gun as hundreds of Japanese aircraft sank American ships nearby.

No bombs hit the Medusa, and most of the injuries and deaths happened more than a half-mile away, he said.

“We were concerned, but we didn’t really have any fear. The noise and seeing casualties, that’s what creates fear,” he said.

Pauls was brushing his teeth in a ship bathroom the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when he heard the first explosion. He’d enlisted in the Navy about five months earlier and was sent to Hawaii after training at Naval Station Great Lakes in Illinois.

Besides Pearl Harbor, he saw combat at the port of Safi at French Morocco, the island of Guadalcanal, the island of Bougainville, the Philippines and Okinawa, Japan.

But Pauls couldn’t forget what happened on that December day. For decades after, Pauls and other survivors revisited Pearl Harbor and remembered not only those who died there but also the veterans of the attack who had died since then.

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Other memorable Johnson County stories from this day

1993

The Whiteland Town Council approved the building of a $1.3 million amusement facility featuring go-karts on U.S. 31.

1963

The Johnson County Board of Zoning Appeals rejected plans for an eight-unit mobile home court on State Road 144 in Union Township.

1943

A seven-person committee was named to develop plans for a county hospital.