Among my most valued colleagues is Stephen Hunter, Pulitzer Prize movie reviewer for The Washington Post. In summarizing Saving Private Ryan (1998) he wrote, “This movie is about a generation that put its heart on the shelf, dialed its minds down into a small, cold, tunnel, and fought with its brains.”
In newspaper terms, I cannot think of a more fitting “lead” for the current blog.
With the VJ Day 75th anniversary this month I'm reminded that we've all grown up with The War as a huge influence upon our parents and ourselves. Here's a short personal compendium.
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My parents’ generation seldom referred to “World War II.” Mostly it was “The War” and everybody knew which one. It was an all-consuming endeavor that defined the era for millions. We boomers grew up knowing our parents were involved at least to some extent. My father was trained as a naval aviator but saw no combat. My mother worked in a shipyard; her cousin was in the Women’s Army Corps. An uncle was a Marine Corps officer in the Philippines.
My wife’s father was a teenaged sailor awaiting the invasion of Japan in 1945. Her uncle, a Princeton PhD, worked on the Manhattan Project; her aunt was an army nurse on a hospital ship.
My parents’ family doctor, whom my mother credited with saving us when I was born, was a Jewish immigrant from Lithuania. Sixteen years later he signed my student pilot's medical certificate. As an army flight surgeon he had been decorated for rescuing crewmen from a crashed bomber in the Gilbert Islands.
My Oregon hometown (1940 population 513) lost two young men: a marine at Tarawa and an army flier in North Africa. The American Legion Post still bears their names.
My county seat had the army airfield where the Doolittle Raiders were recruited.
My father’s childhood best friend bailed out of a P-38 near Paris just after D-Day, captured by the Luftwaffe. Two of Dad’s flight school room mates died: one disappeared on a Catalina flying boat in the Aleutians; the Hellcat fighter pilot was killed by nervous U.S. gunners off Japan. One of my flight instructors earned a Navy Cross and Purple Heart flying Corsairs off the same carrier.
My best friend’s grandfather was the general who ran clandestine operations in China and oversaw disposition of U.S. assets at war’s end. When he returned home he took the one man he most trusted--his enlisted driver--and turned him into a millionaire. My friend and I had a mutual pal whose father commanded a tug at Pearl Harbor.
A schoolmate’s father swam away from a sinking destroyer in 1942. Another’s father was caught by the Luftwaffe trying to escape Occupied Europe after his B-17 was shot down in 1943.
One of my college professors had been a “wrench bender” on B-29 Superfortresses in the Mariana Islands.
As a deferred student, a future aviation colleague worked on the proximity antiaircraft fuse at Cal Tech, under pain of “death or worse” for revealing it.
A history colleague lost an uncle in Italy, fighting with the First Special Service Force, better known as the Devil’s Brigade. (The William Holden movie repeats frequently on cable.)
All are gone now yet we still feel their presence....
Reflections from some friends.
From a navy and army veteran:
Rick's and my parents were nine and eight at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack. Dad's father was a steamfitter/welder, he spent the war at the Mare Island Navy Yard.
His brother, our great-uncle, was a forward observer/artillery spotter with the 45th Infantry Division, KIA at Anzio.
My ex-wife's great-uncle was a sailor in USS Barton (DD-599). He went down with the ship during the First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942, following hits by two Long Lance torpedoes fired by the IJN destroyer Amatsukaze.
The father of one of my best friends at University of New Mexico NROTC flew FM-2s with VC-10 off the escort carrier Gambier Bay and another CVE during the Battle off Samar (fighter ace Joe McGraw).
From a Vietnam War naval aviator:
Personal count:
Dad and his brother wounded in Italy. Uncle KIA 8th Air Force. Another Navy uncle campaigned through the Pacific. Developed a bad drinking habit and, I understand, was killed in a car wreck within a year of coming home. Only a couple of pix of him and buds on an R&R beach remain as evidence.
From a Vietnam War army vet:
My dad had already been admitted to medical school before the draft began, and thus was exempted. However, due to a BB gun mishap as a boy he was functionally blind in one eye and would have been 4-F in any case. But, upon receiving his MD, he became acceptable for the doctors draft and was commissioned a first lieutenant. After being processed he was assigned to an army field hospital scheduled to participate in the first wave of the Japanese invasion. As chance had it, his locker was deployed on ahead, but his own travel was stopped by the big you-know-what. My dad never had a bad word to say about that bomb.
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The same pattern seen here can apply to any war, any event, any era. The difference is that today we’re where we were in 1940, seventy-five years after the Civil War. So please folks, if you have the opportunity to record someone’s experiences:
Do
It
Now.
