My parent's 9-11

Joe Lockard monitors the radar screen (below), and all decked out (at top)....

The day that will live in infamy happened 68 years ago today.

Japanese war planes bombed the Naval Base on Oahu on Dec. 7, 1941, signaling the U.S. entry into the Big One.

All of this is well-known history, but what isn’t so well-known to non-historians is that my second cousin, Joe Lockard, played an instrumental role in the moments leading up to the attack.

Twenty-year-old Joe was working with another private, George Elliot, at 7 a.m. at the Opana Point Radar Station when he saw something very unusual:

“It was the largest group I had ever seen on the oscilloscope,” said Joe. “It looked, as I said, like a main pulse and that is why I was confused, at first, as to whether it was a flight or not. I had never seen one...it produced the largest echo on the screen that I had ever seen.”

Unable to tell whether the incoming planes were friendly or enemy, Elliott plotted the data. The two men determined the "blip" was about 132 miles off Kauku Point, traveling at about 3 miles a minute. The two men reported their findings to Lieutenant Kermit Tyler, who thought the blip was from an American B-17 from the base. Tyler essentially said, “don’t worry about it.”

Thirty minutes later Pearl Harbor was worrying about it, and soon thereafter the whole country and the rest of the world were worrying about it too. Including my family back in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania.

As they say, the rest is history.

Here is more about the event in Joe’s own words.

Many of the people that were there and remember the event are now gone, and those brave folks who witnessed and were part of history should not be forgotten.

Here’s to Joe Lockard, now nearly 90 and living in Harrisburg, PA. And one of the nicest guys you could ever meet.