A manufacturing base that had languished through the Depression with acres of tired, dead factories would be resurrected by millions of dollars in defense spending.
Philadelphia would turn out light tanks and bazookas, radio equipment and gun turrets, and bullets by the billions. Seven shipyards on both sides of the Delaware would labor overtime. So many workers would be needed, boardinghouses would rent rooms by the shift.
Philadelphians would also fight and die abroad.
When the war was over, Mayor Bernard Samuel would speak of the work and sacrifice in these terms:
"The city of Philadelphia has paid a heavy price for victory. More than 5,000 of our servicemen and women have given their all in defense of American ideals. Nearly 30,000 have suffered wounds on the battlefield. Homes have been broken up and family life disrupted. Great financial sacrifices have been made."
All that was yet to unfold on the war's first afternoon, when The Inquirer dispatched reporters to do man-on-the-street interviews.
Cab driver Herman Einhorn, 31, of Porter Street, spoke for many when he said: "Japan got in the first blow. Now we should make every effort to defeat them quickly."
Al Schmid's heroism
Eight months after Pearl Harbor, Marine Corps Pvt. Al Schmid, of Tulip and Hellerman Streets, was squatting in a machine-gun pit on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal.
American troops had surrendered in the Philippines. German subs were sinking merchant ships off New Jersey. The Marines on Guadalcanal were the first U.S. troops to have invaded any foreign shore during the war.
America desperately needed heroes, and Schmid was soon to become one.
The former factory worker was 21 and had never been far from Philadelphia before.
Now, on Aug. 20, 1942, Schmid was waiting for the Japanese to begin an assault across the Tenaru River.
