I had just turned 10-years-old when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and plunged America into World War II.

Rather is anchoring a major historical rupture—the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941—in the intimate measure of personal age and memory. By noting he had “just turned 10,” he signals how formative national crises can be for a child, shaping a lifelong sense of civic awareness, patriotism, and the gravity of world events. The phrasing also reflects a common rhetorical move in memoir and oral history: linking private chronology to public history to establish credibility (“I was there, I remember”) and to convey how suddenly the United States’ perceived security gave way to global war.