The radio announcement interrupted a bread commercial that went:

“Homer! Get Homestead bread instead!”

I used to hate that commercial, and I had just jumped up to turn to another frequency when all at once the woman’s voice was cut off. Naturally I noticed that; I didn’t have to think twice to be aware that something was up. Here I had my German colonies stamps—those that show the Kaiser’s yacht the Hohenzollern—spread out only a little way from the sunlight, and I had to get them mounted before anything happened to them. But I stood in the middle of my room doing absolutely nothing except respiring, and, of course, keeping other normal processes going. Maintaining my physical side while my mind was focussed on the radio.

My sister and mother and father, naturally, had gone away for the afternoon, so there was nobody to tell. That made me livid with rage. After the news about the Jap planes dropping bombs on us, I ran around and around, trying to think who to call up. Finally I ran downstairs to the living room and phoned Hermann Hauck, who I went around with at Seville High and who sat next to me in Physics 2A. I told him the news, and he came right over on his bicycle. We sat around listening for further word, discussing the situation.

While discussing, we lit up a couple of Camels.

“This means Germany and Italy’ll get right in,” I told Hauck. “This means war with the Axis, not just the Japs. Of course, we’ll have to lick the Japs first, then turn our attention to Europe.”

“I’m sure glad to see our chance to clobber those Japs,” Hauck said. We both agreed with that. “I’m itching to get in,” he said. We both paced around my room, smoking and keeping our ears on the radio. “Those crummy little yellow-bellies,” Hermann said. “You know, they have no culture of their own. Their whole civilization, they stole it from the Chinese. You know, they’re actually descended more from apes; they’re not actually human beings. It’s not like fighting real humans.”