Memories of Macedonio and Pearl Harbor
Dec. 7, 2023, was the 82nd anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor may be forgotten by many, but for me Pearl Harbor is always important. Let me tell you about my mother’s cousin, Macedonio, a sailor in the U.S. Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor in December 1941.
In the late 1940s, when I was 7 years old and my older brother Henry was 9, we met Macedonio. Mother had invited him for coffee and pan dulce (Mexican pastry), and before Macedonio’s arrival, Mother told us a few things about him.
“My poor cousin is innocent (mentally challenged). Don’t be frightened if he does or says strange things. He was hurt in the war, and he hasn’t been the same ever since. And, whatever you do, don’t make sudden loud noises.”
Macedonio arrived wearing a white suit and a white Panama hat. I’d never seen a man in a white suit, but if that was as odd as it was going to get, I didn’t understand why Mother thought we might be frightened. There seemed to be nothing frightening about Macedonio. He spoke normally like other adults in the family. As we sat around the kitchen table drinking coffee and eating pan dulce, Mother and Macedonio talked about our family and other relatives. Henry and I sat enjoying ourselves and eyeing the plate of pan dulce in the middle of the table. As I sat there, I began to hear the hum of an airplane in the distance.
As the sound of the airplane got closer, Macedonio suddenly jumped up, knocking his chair over and screaming, “The planes! Get under the table, get under the table. Hide! Hide! Get under the table. The bombs! The bullets will kill us. Hide!”
He got under the table screaming his warning. Our mother, in a calm, but firm voice, kept saying: “It’s all right. We are fine. Nothing is going to happen to you now. You are home. Todo está bien, primo.”
I stood frozen, trying to make sense of why a grown man would be frightened of the sound of an airplane flying overhead.
Mother got under the table to hug Macedonio and to reassure him he was safe. When Mother got Macedonio out from under the table, she gave him some sugar water to calm his nerves. Once he calmed down she took him to our grandmother’s house so someone could take him home.
Later, Mother told us what happened to Macedonio at Pearl Harbor.
He had attended early Mass and was walking back to the barracks. He was in the middle of a baseball field when the airplanes arrived. He dropped to the ground and rolled himself into a ball because there was no place to hide. Bombs fell around him and waves of airplanes strafed the area. The experience and the physical injuries to his body and head left Macedonio “innocent.” Macedonio never recovered. His mental health disability left him unemployable. If it were not for our large extended family who took care of him, Macedonio would have become another homeless war veteran sleeping in the park.
I have never forgotten meeting Macedonio and learning what happened to him at Pearl Harbor. Consequently, I remember all our relatives, including Mother’s brother and several cousins who served during World War II. They were all children of Mexican immigrants.
At the end of the war when my mother talked about her brother and her cousins, she would say: “By the grace of God, they all got home safe.” She also told us that if there ever was another war, Henry and I were to serve our country. “This is your country. You are the future of this country. You will make things better for everyone. God willing.”