Here’s an interesting story where a notebook makes a cameo.

Sgt. Richard G. “Dick” Schimmel was at Fort Shafter, near Pearl Harbor, when the attack happened. He worked as a switchboard operator, alternating shifts with Private Joseph McDonald. McDonald was on duty when a warning of the attack was radioed in– he wrote down a message with the details and relayed it to his superior officer, but it wasn’t taken seriously. Soon after, Sgt. Schimmel was woken up with the news that the attack was about to happen, and took over at the switchboard.

[Schimmel recalled] “…Once the bombing started, everyone was called back to the Information Station. That’s when I found the message Joe had taken over the phone from Elliott, balled up in a trash can.”

McDonald’s hand-written message would eventually be secured and packed away to Washington, D.C. But not before Schimmel copied it word-for-word in a spiral-bound notebook. Schimmel showed us the yellowed notebook, with the date “December 7, 1941” clearly visible in blue fountain ink. Also clearly visible were the words, “a great number of planes coming in from the north.”

Read more at: Pearl Harbor survivor recalls nixed warning on ‘Day of Infamy’ – Baltimore Post-Examiner