Yesterday was December 7 — a date, President Franklin Roosevelt promised, that will “live in infamy.”
Joey Karmanosky had graduated 6 months earlier from Staples High School, where he was sports editor of the Inklings newspaper.
In his diary, he wrote: “We got home late from Church today. Mom had to stop for some errands and the car wouldn’t start. It is old and I know Pops will not get another one.
“We walked home in the cold. We got home about 2:00 or so and the house was cold too. A few neighbors were there and the radio was on full blast. I think it was a CBS channel from the city because it was all crackling and I could barely hear anything. Two neighbors were over too. Listening.
“‘The Japs bombed us,'” one neighbor said to my mother. She went straight to the bedroom.
“I sat on the floor next to Pops. His hand was twitching. ‘What does this mean, Pops?’ I asked.
“‘We are at war,’ he said with no emotion. I got up after awhile and walked out on our street down toward the beach (Burying Hill) and figured I would have to join up to fight. What else could I do?”
According to Carl Addison Swanson, who sent along the chilling diary excerpt, Joey enlisted in the Army right after new year’s, in 1942. He served in the Pacific theater (New Guinea).
He returned to Westport in April 1944, “thin as a rail.” He discontinued his diary shortly after enlisting.
Carl says that Joey served as a Westport mail carrier for decades. He died in 2006.
Joey Karmanosky
