Many people can remember exactly where they were and what they were doing on 9/11, the day Kennedy was shot and of course, when Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese.
Barbara Youngs, now 76, shared her memory of the attack Monday with Barbara Johnston’s fourth-grade class at Oxford Elementary School. Johnston is Youngs? daughter.
Youngs, a St. Clair Shores resident who was 11 years old at the time of the attack, remembered she was making breakfast at her family’s home in Hawaii when all of a sudden she heard the ‘far away thundering? sounds of the bombs.
‘The planes looked like a bunch of bumble bees,? she told the students.
Youngs family lived beside a mountain south of Pearl Harbor and knew many people who perished or were injured during the attack.
She spoke to the children about how they were given gas masks to wear and how some of the bombs dropped left craters ‘the size of a basketball court.?
Youngs has spoken to a few veterans about her experiences, but doesn’t consider herself heroic like the soldiers who actually fought in the war. She prefers to speak to younger children about her experiences because of her point of view at the time of the attack.