Noxon resident shares Pearl Harbor memories with students

Remembering Pearl Harbor is something that Noxon resident Jo Webley does well. Grandma Jo, to the community, has been visiting with students at the Noxon school for 18 years. She celebrated her 88th birthday on December fourth.

"I started out doing one class a year, then two and now I talk to three classes a year about Pearl Harbor and World War II," Webley said between class visits last week. Webley was born in 1935 in Lewistown, Montana. Her family had a homestead there but moved to the Seattle area when she was very young. When Pearl Harbor was attacked Webley had just turned six years old. She remembers a lot about it because her mother, Dorthy Johnson, worked for Boeing Aircraft, called Rosie the Riveter, building planes for the war. She built B-29s, among other planes. Her stepfather, Richard S. Johnson, and uncles went to war.

"When Pearl Harbor was hit on December 7, 1941, it was early in the morning so people were not prepared. The first bomb hit on Sunday morning at 7:45. The second attack came soon after," Webley recalls. The third attack didn't happen, she said, because the Japanese Admiral said that they had "awakened the sleeping giant." Webley retells this story from her own experiences and from information gathered from books and family.

"When I was very young there were air raid sirens that went off every day during school, for training. Then one day my teacher told us to run home and not stop until we got there. The Japanese had launched balloons toward the west coast of Alaska, Tacoma, and San Bernardino," Webley recalls. Fortunately, the jet stream took them away before they exploded.

"That was scary to hear about the Japanese attacking the west coast," said fifth grader Ryder Prichard.

Webley shared her recipe of war cake that she bakes for the students while she talks about the rations that were instilled during the war. The cake is baked without eggs, milk, butter or white sugar. Instead it has brown sugar which was not as easy to ship overseas, and shortening (also called oleo) that was invented as a butter substitute. They were only allowed three pounds of meat a week per family and six gallons of gas weekly. Other rationed items were shoes. "If we got a hole in our shoes we would patch it with cardboard," Webley said.

Webley recalled that tires were rationed so people were careful about not wearing the tread off from them. The rations were for the troops overseas. There were air raid wardens to make sure the lights were out at night to keep from being seen by the enemy and to conserve energy.

Other memories Webley has are of her father and uncles who served in World War II. Her stepfather was sent to Europe where he had to travel on skis. "My father knew that they were praying for him every day. He said that is what brought him home," Webley stated

Webley showed students the fliers that were dropped to warn Japanese civilians prior to the atomic bomb being dropped on August 6, 1945, at Hiroshima.

A photo was shown of the USS Missouri when Japan signed an instrument of surrender in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945. Sailors gathered to watch the event on Admiral Halsey's flagship, named for President Truman's home state. The official peace treaty wasn't signed until September 8, 1951, in San Francisco.