Dec. 7, 1941: ‘A day of infamy’ and a long-time Oswego resident was there

Editor’s note: Today, Dec. 7 marks the 80th anniversary of the Japanese sneak attack on the U.S. Naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. A total of 2,335 U.S. military personnel were killed in the attack. In an address to Congress and a shocked nation the next day, President Franklin Roosevelt said that Dec. 7, 1941 would go down in history as a “day of infamy.” Among those U.S. Servicemen who survived the attack was a young man from Aurora, Geoffrey Cooper, who after the war made Oswego his home. Here is an excerpt from an article that was originally published in the Ledger-Sentinel upon Cooper’s death in 2004. We are republishing it today to honor and remember Cooper and all those who were serving with him on this fateful day eight decades ago:

A native of Aurora’s historic Pigeon Hill neighborhood on the city’s near northeast side, Geoffrey Cooper was 17 years-old when he and some friends enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1941.

After completing basic training, Cooper was assigned to a patrol plane squadron as an aviation radioman-gunner based out of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.

On the 50th anniversary of the Japanese’ sneak attack on the Pearl Harbor naval base in 1991, Cooper recounted how he was awakened in his barracks by machine gun fire on the morning of Dec. 7.

“I sat up and I saw two torpedo planes heading for the (battleship USS) Oklahoma and the (battleship USS) Maryland. They came in, dropped their torpedoes, and flew right over our barracks real close, just treetop level.

“We got up and got dressed as much as we could and ran down a road to the (airplane) hangars,” Cooper recalled. “There were 15 or 20 of us and we were being strafed the whole way. Three men fell right along side of me, but we just kept on running. Fortunately, they weren’t killed, but just wounded.”

Upon reaching the hangars, continued heavy strafing by the Japanese fighters prevented Cooper and the other sailors from setting up their .50 caliber machine guns.

“So we want back to the hangar and I remember looking back and seeing the (battleship) Arizona explode on Battleship Row. That was really something. It was a mess,” Cooper said.

By the time a second wave of Japanese planes descended on Pearl Harbor, Cooper said he and his fellow sailors had set up water-cooled machine guns and were able to return fire.

After Pearl Harbor, Cooper went to Perth, Australia where he was assigned to VP-101, the “Black Cat Squadron.” The squadron operated air patrol missions over the Solomon Sea, Bismark-Archipelago, and New Guinea area during the early days of the war. He later made flights on several other South Pacific Japanese strongholds.

Cooper was twice on planes that were shot down. In the first crash, over Shark’s Bay off the west coast of Australia, Cooper was injured and three of his fellow servicemen killed.

After the war, Cooper came home to Aurora and worked for the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad. He later moved to Oswego in the 1950s where he worked as a letter carrier for the U.S. Postal Service.

Cooper was a member of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association and active in the Oswego community until ill health forced him to slow down. In the mid-1990s, he served on an ad hoc village committee that studied alternatives to leaf burning in the village and, more recently, was a member of the committee that planned the installation of the Veterans Memorial Plaza that was dedicated in 2002 in front of the Oswego Public Library.

During a village board meeting in October 2001, then Village President Craig Weber presented Cooper with a certificate honoring him as an extraordinary resident of the village.

At that time, Weber noted that Cooper had come to know virtually everyone in the village while working as a letter carrier.

While accepting the honor, Cooper told the board that he was both surprised and honored to receive the award.

Cooper also asked the board and the community to remember other Pearl Harbor survivors from the area that had died, including Dick Walper of Oswego and Nick Moisa of Yorkville.