Gunner’s Mate Third Class Lambert Ray Tapp was aboard the USS Arizona on Dec. 7, 1941. (National Archives)
L.A. and Gertrude Tapp knew their son was serving aboard the USS Arizona when they heard the big battleship had sunk in the surprise Japanese air attack that plunged the United States into World War II.
But for two agonizing weeks, the owners of Shakertown Fruit Farm in Mercer County didn’t know if 23-year-old Gunner’s Mate Third Class Lambert Ray Tapp was dead or alive.
The age of cell phones and instant communication was decades away on Dec. 7, 1941, the date President Franklin D. Roosevelt predicted “will live in infamy.” Thus, the Tapps—and other stateside families with loved ones in uniform in Hawaii—suffered agonizing uncertainty for days…