But as people begin to get ready for the performance, radio broadcasts carry the first bulletins of a Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. And 2,000 people crowd into the church to find comfort in the promises of the Christmas music. Each year, on the Sunday closest to Pearl Harbor Day, the performance will be repeated until it becomes one of the city's oldest Christmas traditions. With war in Europe and in Asia, a former Civilian Conservation Corps facility on U.S. 60 East becomes Camp Cary, a Coast Guard boot camp, in the spring of 1942. A temporary camp is set up at the old airport on Pleasant Valley Road.
New cars disappear from the market.
And sugar, meat, fat and butter soon join the list of items rationed. Mary Josephine Oberst of Owensboro, a U.S. Army nurse in the Philippines, is among 70 female soldiers taken prisoner by the Japanese after the fall of Corregidor on May 6, 1942. She will spend the next 33 months in a prisoner of war camp. Camp Breckenridge in Union County becomes an infantry training center. Mose Rager of Drakesboro becomes a professional country musician, working with Grandpa Jones and others on the Grand Ole Opry in 1943.