This article was underwritten in part by the Mickey Flacks Journalism Fund for Social Justice, a proud, innovative supporter of local news. To make a contribution go to sbcan.org/journalism_fund.
As a journalist, sometimes stories appear unexpectedly. I met Shyama Osborne on her front patio to talk about housing this spring. There, while I sipped tea, I got to hear an eyewitness account of the “day that will live in infamy,” the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
“It was Sunday morning, and like most Sundays, we were in my parents’ bedroom,” Osborne told me. “My father was reading the funnies to us.”
Osborne was about three months shy of six years old in December 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawai’i. Her father was a newly minted lieutenant. The family ― Osborne, her parents and her two younger sisters ― lived in officer housing next to the nearby Hickam Air Force Base…