Bob Cudmore in print This Weekend and The Historians this Sunday

The Daily Gazette and Amsterdam Recorder-Focus on History-Some of Pearl Harbor attack’s local effects

Thursday

Amsterdam changes after Pearl Harbor attack

By Bob Cudmore

   The movie “South of Tahiti” playing at the Strand Theatre on East Main Street in Amsterdam was interrupted Sunday afternoon December 7, 1941 when the news broke that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor.  Radio coverage was piped into the theater and dazed patrons left the building.

   The Amsterdam Clubs Association met later that day at St. Michael’s Club on Reid Street.  According to the late Robert Going’s book on World War II, “Where Do We Find Such Men,” attorney Frederick Partyka urged “member groups to be devoted to true Americanism.”

   George A. Tralka, 15, was at his family’s James Street home in Amsterdam when he heard about the attack on the radio.  Tralka at first thought Pearl Harbor was in Alaska.

   Tralka’s parents, Joseph and Martha, went ahead with their plans to go out that Sunday and to have George watch his younger sisters. 

   The next day as young Tralka delivered the Schenectady Gazette he heard President Roosevelt’s “day of infamy” speech on the radio when making his delivery to Reid Hill Pharmacy.

   “It was a solemn moment in the drug store,” Tralka wrote in his memoir, “Diary of a Replacement Soldier.”  Tralka survived the war and became a physician in the Washington, D.C. area.   

   An Amsterdam soldier died in the Japanese attack.  William E. Hasenfuss, Jr. came from a family of nine children who lived on Northampton Road.

   Hasenfuss had flown planes at an air field in Perth before enlisting in the Army in 1939.  He died at Hickam Air Field in Hawaii.  Japanese airplanes shot up the B-24 bomber Hasenfuss and his ground crew were working on.  Every member of the crew was hit.  News of Hasenfuss’s death reached Amsterdam December 10.

   His mother, Frieda, Amsterdam’s first World War II Gold Star Mother, christened the light cruiser U.S.S. Amsterdam on April 25, 1944 at Newport News, Virginia.

   “I was thinking of William when I smashed that bottle.” she said as the vessel slid into the James River.

   The Amsterdam was one of the ships in Tokyo Bay when the Japanese surrendered.  Serving onboard was Steve Fitz of Schenectady who became a popular radio talk show host back home.

   Two days after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor the sports pages of the Amsterdam Recorder ran a column which wondered how long local basketball would last as the war went on.

   Bowling was still going strong in December 1941.  My uncle Percy Cudmore was leading the City League with a 192 bowling average. 

   Cudmore enlisted in the Army, overcoming initial objections to his age, he was 36, and blood pressure.  During his time overseas, he was able to visit family members then living in Pontypridd, Wales.  When he saw his Aunt Emma Copp Vodden, he said she looked like Cudmore’s mother Elizabeth who had died in 1934.  While visiting the Voddens he played ball with his cousin Ethel.

   Cudmore’s eldest son, Roger, said his father was in the artillery and blamed that for hearing problems later in life.  He fought in North Africa against German General Erwin Rommel’s forces and possibly in Italy.

   An Amsterdam newspaper article from 1943 quoted Corporal Cudmore expressing concern for a lackluster performance by his old bowling team.   The sports reporter wrote, “As for Cudmore himself, you can bet all the family heirlooms that he will be bowling as soon as he gets back to the good old USA.”

   Cudmore was back in Amsterdam in 1945.  He started bowling again, rolling a 269 single in November, near the date that he and school teacher Pansy Keller married.  She too was a good bowler.

Friday, December 8, 2023-Episode 502-Jack Kelly is author of God Save Benedict Arnold.  Arnold committed treason.  Yet he was more than a turncoat—Kelly argues Arnold’s achievements during the early years of the Revolutionary War defined him as the most successful soldier of the era.

Mohawk Valley Weather, Thursday, December 7, 2023

18 degrees in The City of Amsterdam at 4:49AM