Posted at 8:02 a.m., Monday, June 18, 2007
Author of wartime Hawai'i memoir to sign books July 16
Advertiser Staff
Virginia Melville Cowart was a student at Roosevelt High School when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. In 1942 she temporarily left school to work in the U.S. Navy Registered Publications Issuing Office at Pearl Harbor, where she was responsible for correcting Secret, Restricted and Confidential coded publications that were distributed to U.S. and British Pacific ships and stations. (Her father was a shipfitter at Pearl Harbor and was injured in the attack.)"I was exposed to two worlds in a wartime atmosphere," she says.
She relates her experiences in "Gas Masks and Palm Trees: My Wartime Hawaii" (Trafford Publishing, $15.99) and will sign books at the Arizona Memorial Bookstore from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on July 16.
