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Photo by Jim Craven George "Bud" Jess' copy of the San Francisco Chronicle from Dec. 8, 1941, frames family photos: clockwise from left, Bud and his brother, Bill, in their Navy dress uniforms in 1944; Bud in 1943; and Bud with his parents, Mary and George Jess, in 1943. Pearl changed family forever News collection serves as reminder By PAUL FATTIG EAGLE POINT -- George "Bud" Jess recalled that his anxious mom met him and his brother at the door when they arrived home from church that day. "She said, `The Japanese have just bombed Pearl Harbor,"' he said. "My brother Bill went on active duty right then. "My dad -- he was with the telephone company -- he had to go to work right then to protect the service," he added. "That day really changed all our lives." That day was Dec. 7, 1941, the day Japanese warplanes bombed Pearl Harbor. When the smoke cleared in Pearl Harbor, an estimated 2,500 American servicemen were dead, including 1,102 sailors aboard the battleship USS Arizona. The attack plunged the United States into war. And the Jesses, a middle-class family living in the San Francisco Bay area, were never the same. Bud Jess, now 74 and an Eagle Point rancher, saved a collection of newspapers as a reminder of that distant day. "U.S. AT WAR!" screamed the headline in San Francisco Chronicle on Dec. 8, 1941. The newspaper collection, now yellow with age, chronicled the hectic days that followed. "ARMY WARNING: CITY IS IN DANGER!" cried a headline in The San Francisco News the next day. That edition also instructed residents what to do during an air raid alarm, including extinguishing all lights. Meanwhile, Bill Jess, six years older than his only sibling, had already graduated from Stanford University. The Navy reserve officer was activated. The older brother, who died in 1995 at 77, was one of the founders of the Rogue Basin Association that formed in 1956 and spearheaded the building of Lost Creek Dam on the upper Rogue River. The dam is officially known as the William L. Jess Dam and Intake Structure. He served in the U.S. Navy as a radio censor in San Francisco and later as a port director in Cristobal, Canal Zone. He retired as lieutenant commander from the Naval Reserve. He and his brother moved to the Rogue Valley in 1952, starting a cattle ranch that the younger brother still operates. Bud Jess wasn't about to be left behind that December when the nation went to war. Although still a senior at Palo Alto (Calif.) High School, having just turned 18, he marched down to the Marine Corps recruiting office to enlist. "They asked me if I got hay fever and I said, `Yes,"' he said. "They said the couldn't take me." He turned on his heels and headed for the nearby Navy office. "When they asked me if I got hay fever, I said, `No!"' he said. He was accepted in a Navy college program at Stanford, and stayed at home. "I remember going out on dates during blackouts," he said. "You couldn't drive with your headlights on. So you had two little lights on the front bumpers, just little slits. They couldn't be seen from the air." West Coast residents were concerned about the potential of air strikes. "FOE SHELLS OREGON!" shouts The San Francisco News on June 22, 1942. It referred to a submarine attack which had lobbed nine 5-inch explosive shells near Astoria, apparently without much damage. But plenty of damage was done to Japanese Americans in Jess' neighborhood. "One friend of mine, whose family raised celery, just disappeared one day," he said. "He was taken to a camp. It was horrible.'' He was referring to what were euphemistically called "relocation camps." "It was very unfair," he said. "But that was the panic of the time -- people were scared to death. They felt that enemy forces could be landing at the beach any time." Bud Jess would finish his Navy training at Stanford, followed by another Navy program at UCLA and finally at Columbia University. Early spring of 1945 found him in the Pacific as chief executive officer of an LST, otherwise known as a Landing Ship Tank. "It was also called a `large slow target,"' he added of the 327-foot-long ship that carried 120 men and chugged along at 11 knots. The ship was chugging along, heading toward the Philippines, when American forces dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, ending the war late in the summer of 1945. "We were so keyed up, so indoctrinated, that we were disappointed," Jess recalled. "We had trained for the game and we didn't get to play. "It was a stupid outlook, but I was still a kid," he added. "I didn't realize until later how lucky I was." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1998, Medford, Oregon USA