Amsterdam goes to war

By Bob Cudmore, Focus on History for Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder

     The movie "South of Tahiti" was playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam, when interrupted as the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.

Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building. A soldier from Amsterdam was among the 2390 Americans killed in the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. was from a family of nine on Northampton Road.

Hasenfuss had flown planes at an airfield in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939. According to research done by the late Bob Going, some 176 Amsterdamians were killed in World War II. Hasenfuss died when Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.

His mother Frieda, Amsterdam's first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam in 1944 at Newport News, Virginia. About twenty relatives and friends of the Hasenfuss family were at the ceremony along with Mayor Wilbur H. Lynch..

Mrs. Hasenfuss was overcome with emotion when shipyard workers gave her a diamond-studded wristwatch. Lynch said Amsterdam is “a splendid city” just as “the cruiser Amsterdam is a splendid ship.” "I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle." she said as the vessel slid into the James River.

USS Amsterdam was among the American ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered in 1945. A model of USS Amsterdam was made by the late Albert M. Swager of Pennsylvania, a former crewman, who donated it to Amsterdam's Walter Elwood Museum.

George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family's James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard news about the attack on the radio.  At first Tralka thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska. Tralka’s parents went ahead with plans to go out that day and to have Tralka watch his younger sisters.  The next day as Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt's "day of infamy" speech on the radio when at Reid Hill Pharmacy.

"It was a solemn moment in the drug store," Tralka wrote in his memoir, "Diary of a Replacement Soldier." As his senior year in high school drew to a close, Tralka enlisted in an Army training program.  His notice to report came a few days before his senior prom and he was so busy getting ready to go that he failed to notify his date that he couldn’t attend the prom.

Later his brother accepted Tralka’s high school diploma. Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.

James V. Hogg from Amsterdam was on a Navy ship somewhere in the Pacific when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. His niece Karen terHaar said, "In the months after Pearl Harbor, many ships in the area were ordered to maintain radio silence. The families of crew members did not know if their fathers, sons or brothers were dead or alive."

Hogg's parents, Frank and Mildred Hogg, were living on Grant Avenue in Amsterdam.

TerHaar wrote, "About four months after Pearl Harbor, Mom was sitting on the front porch when she heard the postman's voice. She saw him running down the sidewalk. He was waving a letter and yelling, 'Jimmy's alive! Jimmy's alive!'"

James Hogg became a Lieutenant Commander in the Navy and married a woman from Australia. He later lived in California. Mitsuo Fuchida was the Japanese pilot who led the first warplanes in the attack on Pearl Harbor. After the war Fuchida converted to Christianity and spent many years living in America, although he died in Japan at age 73.

Bob Cudmore is a freelance writer.

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