Birmingham Memories

DECEMBER 7, 1941: This Day in Pittsburgh Everyone alive on this day would remember what they were doing when hearing the news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Just as future generations would remember where they were on November 22, 1963, and September 11, 2001. The Japanese Attack On this Sunday morning, Japanese bombers under the command of Mitsuo Fuchida were approaching Hawaii’s Hickam Field, a few miles from Pearl Harbor and heading directly for “Battleship Row”. At 0753 hours, in the skies over Hawaii (1:23PM Pittsburgh) Fuchida sang out, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” - Code words which told the entire Japanese Navy that they caught the United States Pacific Fleet unaware. At 1:47PM that afternoon Navy Secretary Frank Knox calls and informs President Roosevelt of the ongoing attack. At 2:05PM President Roosevelt calls Secretary of State Cordell Hull and tells him not to say anything about Pearl Harbor when he receives the Japanese envoys, Nomura and Kurusu, who were to ...

THE BIRMINGHAMS: A FAMILY HISTORY (1809 - 2013) documents the immigration of my paternal great grandparents, Daniel Birmingham and Ellen Collins, from Ireland to Baltimore Maryland in the 1830's and eventually to Cumberland Maryland where they raised their eight children, including my grandfather, Daniel Collins Birmingham. Around 1895 Daniel Collins would move to Pittsburgh Pennsylvania where he would meet his wife, Mary Rodgers. They would eventually settle in the Mt. Washington section of the city where they would raise my father, Daniel James and his sister Mary Rodgers. In 1887 Louis Buchner and his wife Thekla would leave Bavaria Germany for the United States. After a few years in Boston they would also move to Pittsburgh and make their home in Mt. Washington and raise their four surviving children, including my maternal grandfather, Andrew Buchner. In 1913 Andrew would marry Nellie Miller and they would raise their three children, including my mother Helen Marie, in Mt. Wash...