Every December 7 every one of my eight blogs devote themselves to this day. I am not forgetting.
From then December 6, 2020, Go Erie (Ohio) by Audrey McAvoy, AP.
U.S. Navy sailor Mickey Ganitch was getting ready to play a football game in Pearl Harbor that day. Instead of football, he spent the day scanning the skies for Japanese planes-- still wearing his padding and brown football uniform shirt.
Now, 79 years later, the 101-year-old Ganitch and other survivors of the battle will not be attending the ceremonies there because of the virus. He has attended them most years since the mid-2000s.
Nearly 80 years ago, his USS Pennsylvania football team was scheduled to face the team from the USS Arizona. They had donned their uniforms aboard their ships since there was nowhere to change near the football field.
The pigskin showdown never happened.
The USS Pennsylvania was in drydock when the attack took place so none of the torpedoes which did so much damage to other ships were able to hit them. The ship was one of the first to return fire. Even so, the ship lost 31 men. Ganitch said a 500-pound bomb missed him by about 45 feet.
--Pearl Harbor
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