Dec. 7, 1941– the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor – occurred as the Sunday front page of the News Tribune/Tacoma Ledger featured news of “Tacoma’s biggest grid game.”

An estimated 25,000 people had filled Tacoma Stadium (now Stadium Bowl) the afternoon before to watch the Washington State Cougars take on Texas A&M in the Tacoma Evergreen Bowl. (The Cougars lost, 7-0, but the game put Tacoma on the national sports map.)

“Thousands walked downtown or to their homes after that game, breathing deeply of the salubrious air, neither worried nor wearied,” wrote former News Tribune writer and editor Paul W. Harvey in “Tacoma Headlines,” a history of Tacoma news and newspapers from 1873 to 1962.

The same front page included prophetic news that negotiations between the United States and Japan for peace instead of war in the Pacific were deteriorating if not dead.

But football was in the air for a while.

“Dec. 7 dawned just as bright and promising,” Harvey continued, “but before it had half expired, it had turned into one of the darkest, gloomiest days the nation has had to endure.”

Pearl Harbor was attacked; 2,403 people would die. The day “which would live in infamy” shocked Tacomans as it did Americans in every town and city.

Radio brought the first news of the attack.

A quick look at microfilm files of The News Tribune gives the impression that the next day’s newspaper virtually ignored the Sunday attack. The Dec. 8 newspaper on microfilm still headlined a brewing war.

The Dec. 9 microfilmed front page of the then-afternoon paper finally led with “Congress Votes War on Japan; U.S. Admits Big Naval Losses.” An air attack on Manila, Philippines, was the main story, which mentioned “The Japanese attack on Hawaii,” where, according to the White House, an “old battleship” capsized, a destroyer was “blown up” and “several small ships were seriously hit.”

What happened to Pearl Harbor? Had The News Tribune dropped the ball?

Hardly, though finding a public record of that news day is hard to come by.

In fact, according to Harvey’s book and a 2001 column by News Tribune columnist Peter Callaghan, the newspaper’s staff put out two extra editions Sunday that newsboys sold on the street. Copies also were sent “to nearby points,” Harvey wrote.

“JAPS ATTACK U.S.” and “HONOLULU BOMBED” screamed 3-inch-high front-page headlines on the “Second War Extra.” It included a map of the Pacific islands and a photograph.

A copy of the first extra edition couldn’t be found. Copies of neither extra edition are in the bound editions of yellowed newspapers in the Northwest Room at the main Tacoma Public Library. What is there is the Dec. 8 edition that’s dated Dec. 9 on microfilm files.

The date confusion, Callaghan discovered, had to do with News Tribune editions that usually were sent out ahead of their publication dates to rural areas and Olympia, where the state library is located. The Dec. 8 rural edition was sent out Dec. 6 before the attack and microfilmed for posterity.

There was no confusion in Pierce County that second week in December about what the attack on Pearl Harbor meant. By Thursday, the United States had declared war on Germany and Italy.

The papers that week chronicled the Pacific Coast rising to the war emergency, from Alaska to the Panama Canal. In the wake of the attack, all private aviation was grounded. Soldiers, sailors and Marines were recalled to their posts. Fort Lewis went on a war footing.

At a football game between two Army units in Chehalis, the referee called a timeout in the third quarter and said, “Boys, this is all.” The blare of a loudspeaker ordering all Fort Lewis soldiers to return to the post had prompted the timeout. Not another play was called.

The first war blackout in Tacoma – a precaution in case of Japanese air attacks on the West Coast – occurred between 12:30 a.m. Monday and 8 a.m. Tuesday.

“Most motorists crawled through the darkness of Tuesday morning without lights,” the newspaper reported.

Pierce County poultrymen pointed out that the blackouts hurt them doubly because they use artificial light to maintain egg production. But they said they could live with the blackouts.

The week also marked the beginning of the interning of more than 120,000 Japanese nationals and Japanese Americans on the West Coast in guarded camps for the duration of the war. Federal authorities began rounding up Japanese nationals living in Tacoma and elsewhere in the Puget Sound area on Sunday, the newspaper reported.

On Monday, Kiyoshi Okada, a Japanese American senior at Sumner High School, told fellow students at an assembly that he and other Japanese American students were loyal to America because it was their country, too.

He then led the students in the flag salute.

In Tacoma, Mayor Harry P. Cain urged residents not to surrender reason to racial intolerance against Japanese-born Americans.

Readers had been knowledgeable about Europe thanks to the Nazis. Slowly they began to learn about new geographic spots, from Guam and Wake Island to Midway and New Guinea. They would know those islands well by 1945.

The “Greatest Generation” was at war.

Mike Archbold: 253-597-8692