The next day, America was at war.

Two years later, Greenman would be on a military ship, heading to the South Pacific as a member of the U.S. Army.

Seventy years ago today, the bombing at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii — an event many remember as one of the most traumatic in American history — pitched the United States into World War II.

And, as the country took an unexpected turn that day, so did Michigan State College, or MSC, and its student body.

Between 1942 and 1945, the college hosted 6,000-10,000 servicemen; at some points, more than 50 percent of the student body was made up of military students.

“It certainly had a big effect on the youth of America,” military history professor Roger Rosentreter said. “A whole country is going to mobilize for this effort.”

Professors left regularly to join war efforts, making it hard to keep a consistent staff, according to MSU records. Graduate student enrollment plummeted as men left for war, the records also state.

After hearing then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s famous “day that will live in infamy” speech, a 9-year-old Clarice Thompson didn’t know what to think.

“I went outside and sat on the curb of the driveway, thinking, ‘Everything is over,’” said Thompson, who still lives in East Lansing and works as the secretary of the East Lansing Historical Society. “I remember wondering if life as we knew it was over, if soldiers would be walking down the street every day. … I had a huge sense that everything had changed drastically and we weren’t safe anymore.”

Thompson was 13 years old when the war ended. The whole country took it as a sign that freedom won — nothing like modern-day conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, Thompson said.

For Greenman, entering a world war was full of uncertainties.

Greenman didn’t know where he was headed after being pulled from MSC for war in 1943.

“We figured (when our ship left) New Brunswick, we were going to Europe,” Greenman said. “Then all of a sudden, we were in warm water and realized we were going the other way.”

Although he never saw any fighting, Greenman lagged behind the men on the front lines, working his way up the Pacific Islands in a team that planned recreation activities for the men in combat.

During his service, he got an unexpected letter from his wife — the college sweetheart he was with at the movies the night of the bombing — saying she was pregnant. Greenman didn’t meet his first child until Christmas Eve of 1945, when he returned home for good. His child was 16 months old.

After more than half a century, it still bothers Greenman when people call him a hero — his service wasn’t rooted in patriotism, he said, rather a sense of duty to do what he was told.

“Ninety percent of us never saw any real fighting,” Greenman said. “We were there because we were told to.”