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Have any of you ever done anything to ensure that family war heroes will be remembered in future generations?


HDBRbuilder

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Have any of you been a part of ensuring that wartime heroes in your family/extended family are remembered by future generations?  How did you do it?  Do any of you want to share how you accomplished being ABLE to do it?

 

Here is how I recently did it:

 

My wife's maternal grandfather ("LOLO" Clarinan) and I were very close from the very first time I talked to him.  Before I even met him for the first time in 2005, he had already found out that I was in the Army at the time, and that I had been in the Army for a number of years.  My intent on Marriage to his favorite grand-daughter was what he was interested in talking to me about, FIRST, but he quickly got around to my military service, and in the process of that part of the conversation, began opening up a bit about his own military service time!  And over time, every now and then he would volunteer a bit more information about his war-time service during WWIi while we chatted.  Eventually, I had acquired enough details to see him as a REAL family wartime hero...just one of so many who really were!  My wife and I married in 2007.  Her maternal grandfather passed away in 2010.  Her mother, who was born during early WWII, passed away the next year.  She had been her own father's first-born child, followed by many siblings over the years.  I was able to glean from her some of her earliest war-time memories as a small child, prior to her death.  Over time, I began to realize that very few of "LOLO" Clarinan's surviving descendants knew very much about his war-time military service, other than that "he had fought the Japanese during the war"....so I made plans to ENSURE that they ALL would know what I had found out, even though it was really just a "drop on the bucket" of what he had done...but "how would I do it?"...and "when would I have the time to do it??" so that they ALL would know?

 

I recently went into total retirement, just a few months ago...one of the things I had promised myself was "to make this happen" upon retirement...so I set about to do so...First by writing down all my memories of what he had told me...and what my mother-in-law had told me, and I made sure that all of them got written down!  Then I arranged them in chronological order according to when they had happened, and verified the order according to war-time history in that particular area where he fought.  I wanted the story to show the emotions he had when relating any particular parts of his story to me,  and some of them were EMOTIONALLY SEVERE...so I had to figure out how to include the emotions involved, while at the same time leaving out any of the gore!

 

His descendants had already established a face-book site about the time of his death,  where they could announce things out to the entire clan, no matter wherever the clan members were...that was a HUGE PLUS in being able to get his story out to them all!

 

When I finally posted it to that site, just a week or so ago, I included a request for them all to add-in things that were missing, to include anything about his post-war life-story, and his pre-war life-story!  AND, I requested that they ensure that all of his descendants now living, and his as-yet-unborn descendants would KNOW HIS STORY!...because this was "my gift to them ALL!"

 

WITHIN MINUTES of first posting his story to that facebook site, replies of all kinds started coming in from all over the world!  Over the past week or so, they have continually been adding in things that they remembered about him, and amazingly, they have all locked-arms together to get the entire story of his life put together and passed down!!  WOW!!

 

Am I proud of starting this?  HELL YES!!!!

 

How does reading all the posts affect me?  I cry ALOT!  ALMOST as much as I cried when writing his WWII story to begin with!  It is actually a swirl of emotions, though!

 

What happens, if I remember a few more things he told me, which I forgot to put in the original story?  I just add them to it!

 

Is his WWII story unique?...or Is it really much different than other WWII stories?  To ME, it is!  Although there were many others who were involved in doing the same things that he did!

 

What did he do that was "special"?  Short synopsis: He was Filipino cavalry scout on Luzon when the Japanese invaded the Philippines on the same SOLAR morning that the Pearl Harbor attack occurred, and fought at Bataan, after the surrender he managed to escape and immediately became a guerilla fighter, participated in continual clandestine guerilla operations in the Visayas region, assisted in the success of the Leyte landings, was put back into uniform and fought until the Philippines was completely liberated!

 

What about some of the emotional parts of what he told, and what did you write?  The entire war was emotional to him!  Think about it!  Whenever he got emotional, I would change the subject...I think he appreciated that!  I certainly would, if in his shoes!  Here is an excerpt from what I wrote...referring to after the surrender of Bataan....and then Corregidor...and  what happened to the villages in Bohol Province when the Japanese retaliated against the guerilla operations there, and elsewhere in the Philippines, after they had conquered it:

 

…..He explained that VERY MANY Filipino soldiers were able to avoid being captured as the Japanese conquered the Philippines, because they could just melt into the forests...and change into civilian clothes. But he said the Americans could not get away with that...and his eyes teared up...as he gripped the arms of his chair tightly...and his voice shuddered as he said...."but those Americans...what the Japanese DID TO THEM!!!...I can NEVER forgive that!...and all the Filipinos...entire villages....everyone murdered...villages destroyed....many of the villages disappeared forever...nobody ever re-built them.....I can never forgive that, either!"..... 

 

This is "LOLO" Clarinan, in 2006, enjoying having just a few of his very many great-grand-children laughing and playing in his yard in front of his porch!  On this very same day, shortly after this pic was taken, my niece showed up with her new baby to receive his blessing for his very first great-great-grand-child! MY, how happy he was!  Whenever I look at the pictures of him surrounded by laughing and playing children in his yard, I think about how very nice it just had to be for him to live through the war to see this again...something he told me he NEVER SAW from Dec 8, 1941 until just before the end of WWII, as the Philippines was being liberated!:

LOLO w  GGGkids.jpg

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I have done plenty.  And no, I don't want to share.  "The loud mouth warrior is not the one to fear."

My family military history dates back to the Napoleon army.

A lot are buried in military cemeteries, including one of my aunts.  Many are not but were still warriors.  LOLO sounds like a great guy.

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Very nice story HDBR. I think a lot of the older guys just didn't say much about their time in the wars, and the next generations weren't aware of what went on.

 

My Dad's brother Pete was in the 82nd Airborne in WWll. He was 15 and lied about his age just to join. He was married at 18. At his funeral 2 years ago I noticed all the medals he had, and a Bloomington Indiana newspaper article talking about their local war hero, and all his jumps across Europe. Pete worked for my Dad's construction company for 10 years, and I worked with him a lot as a teenager back in the 70s. He was a great guy but I never heard anyone ever talking about WWll. I only knew he jumped out of airplanes. I made the comment to his wife at his funeral about all his jumps across Europe, and I didn't realize he was such a hero. She made the comment that he never considered himself a hero, he made all those high risk jumps because they paid a little extra and they needed the money. She also said his nasty limp was from a bad ankle injury from a jump, but that never stopped him from jumping.

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On 4/18/2019 at 7:07 PM, oldtimer said:

I have done plenty.  And no, I don't want to share.  "The loud mouth warrior is not the one to fear."

My family military history dates back to the Napoleon army.

A lot are buried in military cemeteries, including one of my aunts.  Many are not but were still warriors.  LOLO sounds like a great guy.

Yes, he certainly was!

I consider myself honored to have heard from his own mouth, in bits and pieces about some of what he had experienced. He clearly seemed to have held things in for far too long! I don't really understand about why it was me who he felt he could do that with, other than he knew that I had served in the Army.  It clearly seems that he likely never told anybody else about it before.  As far as I know, his only descendant to have ever served in the military was my wife's oldest brother...and even he never really knew anything about what LOLO had really done or experienced!  What prompted me to get on the stick on finishing what I had started about LOLO's story was the recent announcement by Chinese media that "the Philippines belongs to China"!  The first thing that crossed my mind was the Japanese "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere"..and LOLO, of course!  So I finished it up!  Before I posted it to the clan page, I contacted some of my wife's extended family members and asked what they thought about me doing it!...they all told me to do it, because LOLO's story needed to be told, and they assured me that all of his descendants would feel the same way!  I had photo-copies of his military records...at least what little ever actually existed!  LOLO had also introduced me to a few of the still-living Filipinos nearby who he served with during that undocumented time of his military service. They were very obviously all still "very close to each other",  and the way they all acted in his presence, led me to believe he was once their leader, but LOLO never really told me enough, himself, for me to determine about whether he was ever a war-time guerilla LEADER or not!  He did, however, get honorably-discharged at the end of the war with the rank of Corporal! 

 

Of all the provinces in the Philippines, BOHOL historically stands highest in so many ways!  People of Bohol are EXTREMELY PROUD of their history!  At first, when the Spanish first landed in the Philippines, they made the mistake of landing on Bohol, and the Boholanos made mince-meat out of those who came ashore!  Because the Boholanos thought they were the Portuguese, who had been raiding Bohol's coast, enslaving its people, and ransacking its coastal villages!  Then the Spanish wised-up and took a captured Portuguese Jesuit priest, who could understand and somewhat communicate with the Boholanos, and just dropped him off on the shore.  The Boholanos did not attack him because he seemed to be no threat, but they curiously approached him, and tried to find out why he was just dropped off all alone.  When he explained that the people on the ship were not Portuguese, but Spanish. and that they also hated the Portuguese, then they backed off and watched as the Spanish returned to shore to pick him up!  So things snow-balled after that, with the Datu of Bohol ending up signing the first of many blood-compacts made with the Spanish throughout the Philippines, to become allies against the Portuguese!  The Boholanos were the first to welcome Christianity, too.  But they soon realized as the Portuguese threat subsided, that they had made a jump from the frying pan into the fire with the Spanish!  So they actively rebelled against the Spanish rule in a continuous rebellion that lasted for over for over 300 years!...until  near the end of the Spanish-American War!  When they welcomed the Americans to help them against the Spanish, they did so  in order to completely gain their freedom!  But after the Spanish fleet was destroyed up in Manila Bay, and the Americans saw no need for the Filipinos' help anymore, and the USA reneged on the original deal of freedom for the Philippines, they rebelled against American rule in what WE call the Philippine Insurrection!  They lost a huge amount of their people during that time, so they finally gave-in...and actually learned to love the Americans, anyway!  All thru Philippine history, they were considered the most war-like, but freedom-loving people in all of the Philippines archipelago! And they were renowned as the most vicious of fighters whenever their freedom was threatened!  The Japanese learned that the hard way!  They never really were able to come close to totally subjugating the Boholanos, so they killed thousands of them in retaliation!...mostly women and children...and the elderly men who were unable to fight back!  Doing that just made those who WERE able to fight back kill even more Japanese!  EVEN TODAY Boholanos can be your very best friends, until you cross them!  Then, watch out! 

 

The day before my wife and I were married, with her relatives all around her and myself at her parent's house, she stood up and told me there was a very old custom for a Boholana to perform with her intended groom the day before marriage!  All of her family started laughing!  She then asked her Papa for his "huge knife"...he gave it to her as her youngest brother climbed the coconut tree right beside the house and returned down the tree, with a very large fresh coconut.  She said, "We will have buku juice (fresh coconut milk) together, now...but first I must tell you something as I prepare the coconut.  I love you with all my heart, and I know you love me the same way! Tomorrow we will be married, and I will be committed to you and ONLY you for the rest of my life!  I hope you will be the same way for me!"  She then balanced the coconut in her left hand, with her Papa's "huge knife" in her right hand, and said " I will always remain faithful to ONLY you!..." then in the blink of an eye she swung the "huge knife" to the coconut and in two extremely rapid blows on each side of the top of the coconut, a very large wedge-shaped piece flew through the air to the ground, as she finished speaking with "....and I expect you to always remain faithful to me"...then she handed the "huge knife" back to her Papa who was in tears with laughter!  Every member of her family was laughing loudly and yelling "that can be your head!"..."that can be your head!"  Then she said, "Let's have our buku juice now, unless you have changed your mind about marrying me tomorrow!"  Some Bohol customs can really get your attention!  I told her, "No dear, I have NOT changed my mind about tomorrow!!"  Everybody cheered!...and with one straw apiece, my intended bride and I shared the coconut's buku juice together!...thereby sealing my fate!

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4 hours ago, Ceptorman said:

Very nice story HDBR. I think a lot of the older guys just didn't say much about their time in the wars, and the next generations weren't aware of what went on.

 

My Dad's brother Pete was in the 82nd Airborne in WWll. He was 15 and lied about his age just to join. He was married at 18. At his funeral 2 years ago I noticed all the medals he had, and a Bloomington Indiana newspaper article talking about their local war hero, and all his jumps across Europe. Pete worked for my Dad's construction company for 10 years, and I worked with him a lot as a teenager back in the 70s. He was a great guy but I never heard anyone ever talking about WWll. I only knew he jumped out of airplanes. I made the comment to his wife at his funeral about all his jumps across Europe, and I didn't realize he was such a hero. She made the comment that he never considered himself a hero, he made all those high risk jumps because they paid a little extra and they needed the money. She also said his nasty limp was from a bad ankle injury from a jump, but that never stopped him from jumping.

1.&2. That's generally the standard thing that happens when combat vets come home, because nobody at home can really understand what they really had been through, but when with old war-time buddies they will talk about it...because they understand!  Even then the conversation tends to be mostly about anecdotal remembrances..." do you remember that crazy guy who...what was his name, I don't remember...what ever happened to him?"

 

3. & 4.Heroes are the ones who never made it home.  Jump pay for an Army private in WWII, more than doubled their take-home pay each month...that is why so many went Airborne, plus they thought that jumping out of airplanes might actually be fun!(and it is fun, except on combat jumps!)

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7 hours ago, Schu said:

Awesome story...

 

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6756877445_2a1cb105c5_o.jpg

 

I need to do something also. I'd like to be able to get all my father's medals... 

If you're going to the Pilgrimage, get with me out at Rodney's, and I can give you some info on how you can get his records and also about the medals!

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I recently collected my father’s things and put this together:

1c4829de1e50f0ae46404245d8892933.jpg

Poor photo, I know.

His mother died when he was not quite 2 and his father died when he was 9. He got shuffled around foster families until the war broke out. He lied about his age and joined the Navy. He was in WWII in the Pacific and then was in the Korean conflict too.

Came back more or less in one piece, became a machinist, chased my mother until she relented, built a house in the country and raised 5 of us. Died at 83 in the house he built. Interesting life for sure.

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What a great story! My uncle Joe (Mom's closest brother) was Army, he died in the Philippines in 1943 and is buried in Manila.

I wish I knew more about him, unfortunately Mom is 94 as of today (yup it's her birthday 4/19) and has Alzheimer's.

She  was the youngest of 6 children and the only still surviving.

She's late stage now and unable to communicate, hindsight is 20/20 but if only I had learned more when I was younger. <sigh>

 

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2 hours ago, y2keglide said:

What a great story! My uncle Joe (Mom's closest brother) was Army, he died in the Philippines in 1943 and is buried in Manila.

I wish I knew more about him, unfortunately Mom is 94 as of today (yup it's her birthday 4/19) and has Alzheimer's.

She  was the youngest of 6 children and the only still surviving.

She's late stage now and unable to communicate, hindsight is 20/20 but if only I had learned more when I was younger. <sigh>

 

Happy Birthday Mom!

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3 hours ago, boom3 said:

Yes. I donated my fathers South Dakota National Guard 1938 yearbook to the SD Historical Society. 

My father had a footlocker full of all kinds of things from his time in the153rd Infantry (Arkansas National Guard) in Alaska during WWII. The pics covered the entire time from the call-up in Springtime 1940, thru their stay at Camp Robinson, AR, and their training in Tenn...their departure from Seattle on ferries and their arrival in Alaska and time in Alaska thru the end of the war.

 

I took all of the pics he had and scanned them into my laptop back in the early 2000's...then a few years later I arranged them according to what happened when, labelled them, arranged them on pages using power-point, and saved them digitally.  I also included scans of paper items he had, like ration books and theater tickets and such.

 

Later I printed them all out using an ink-jet printer onto acid-free paper, and made up a scrapbook and gave it to 39th INF BDE HQ for archiving....they gave it to the museum on Camp Robinson.  I stopped by the museum one day, asking to see it...they said it was not on display.  I asked them why, and they told me that there was no real way to display it because it had too many pages.  But they also told me that they intended to put in some interactive computer stations so that visitors could access that kind of stuff.  So I got the info I needed, including e-mail addresses and sent a digital copy of the entire scrapbook to them...it sure as hell can be seen by visitors NOW!!😉

 

Often times, some of the very best pics from wartime are the silly ones, usually involving a large amount of alcohol consumption just prior to the pic being taken!  My Father had one which he actually had enlarged and hand-COLORIZED shortly after it was taken in Alaska!  I ran across a similar pic of the FIRST U.S. paratrooper to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor (CPL Paul Huff) that parodied the one my father was in, in which my father and a buddy (who made the ultimate sacrifice later in the war) were pretty plastered and had made up "hula skirts" out of skunk cabbage leaves! ,  CSM Huff and my father had a history of doing some funny things during the war, some of which today would have gotten them kicked out of the Army!  CSM Huff didn't ever shy away from letting everybody know about his shenanigans, the first of which made him famous on the convoy which carried him to Europe:  He had trouble getting to sleep one night on the ship...so he went topside and loaded up one of the Bofors guns that the paratroopers had the additional duty to man in case of an attack on the convoy.  Then he cut loose on an imaginary target to get some practice in....within a very few minutes, spotlights from every ship in the convoy were on his imaginary target and they all were shooting at it, believing it was a surface attack by a U-boat!  CSM Huff is one of my heroes!...both as a Soldier Hero, and as a human being unafraid to let the world know that he always had a lighter side to him!

 

I like to think that both my father and CSM (RET) Paul Huff could easily have had a great time together drinking a few beers!😀

Dad in Alaska WWII.jpg

Huff in drawers.jpg

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Andy,

This past December, while attending a huge Christmas party with Filipinos, my wife and I sat across from a Filipino couple, both retired doctors. The husband told me his father had been captured and on the Bataan Death March. He managed to escape and got back to his village, and eventually married. My doctor friend said when he went to high school and the teacher asked his name he told them it was Arthur. Turned out many of his classmates were also named Arthur, after Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

 

Bruce

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3 hours ago, Marvel said:

Andy,

This past December, while attending a huge Christmas party with Filipinos, my wife and I sat across from a Filipino couple, both retired doctors. The husband told me his father had been captured and on the Bataan Death March. He managed to escape and got back to his village, and eventually married. My doctor friend said when he went to high school and the teacher asked his name he told them it was Arthur. Turned out many of his classmates were also named Arthur, after Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

 

Bruce

GENERAL OF THE ARMIES Douglas MacArthur is EVEN TODAY revered as a Philippines hero!  Most people HERE know about him escaping the Philippines and returning, as he promised he would.  But they have no idea that he was totally retired as a 4-star general prior to the beginning of the war.  He had accepted the job to become in charge of the organization, training and equipping of a Philippines defensive force shortly after his retirement as Army Chief of Staff...and was residing in the Phils many years prior to the invasion, living in Baguio, the famous mild-weather area with the mountainside terraced fields...where the Phils equivalent of our West Point is.   As a young officer he had been assigned in the Phils and had fallen in love with a Filipina who he desired to marry...when his tour was over he took her stateside to meet his mother...who told him that marriage was out of the question, and would surely limit his advancement in the Army.  So he did not marry her, but he still loved the people of the Phils...and they all knew  it!  Filipinos had heard promises from us before, and due to them being seldom kept, they really didn't put much stock into them any more.  But they TRUSTED MacArthur...even occasionally when one Filipino would doubt his word to another Filipino, those around him told him he WILL be back!  The military STRATEGIC plan for ending the war in the Pacific did NOT have re-taking the Phils involved in it! Because it simply was NOT along the route to Japan in that plan.  It was deemed too costly for the Pacific war effort in personnel and equipment! And the strategic attitude was that the Phils would  just return to a Commonwealth at the end of the war when the defeated Japanese had left it!  But MacArthur INSISTED it happen!  And began to scrape together enough resources to make it happen, while at the same time the main effort bypassed the Phils towards Japan.  When he walked ashore at Leyte, the Filipinos were VERY proud of him, for doing so!  He was already a hero to them, but THAT wade he made ashore, put him into their history books FOREVER!  His likeness on the NEW post-war Philippines silver half peso coin of the following year, had his face on its face side, and it remained on it for around two decades or more...until the devalued currency  ended up not even having a half peso anymore!  But his likeness has been on MANY other Philippines coins and paper money over the years!...AND STAMPS!  MacArthur is a bit misunderstood in the effort to re-take the Phils.  He knew well the political need to do so.  The Philippines had been scheduled for conversion from a Commonwealth of the USA to an independent sovereign nation, prior to the invasion, but the invasion  by the Japanese, along with the overall strategic plan for the Pacific theater, leaving out the re-taking of the Phils would have delayed the original scheduled date of the conversion from Commonwealth to independent nation by at least a year or more!  His goal was not for PERSONAL GLORY, as many have claimed...it was REALLY for the people of the Philippines, who had so often seen American promises un-kept, and MacArthur was NOT about to let that happen again for their independence day!  AND IT DID NOT HAPPEN AGAIN!  Independence happened just as scheduled years before the Japanese invasion!!  Not only had he kept his own word to return, but he had kept the word of the USA to grant independence to the Phils!  Filipinos understand all of this!  Many Americans simply don't!

 

Mac Arthur foresaw things in the Asian sphere, that so many others just did not see coming!  He was just there and paid attention to everything going on WHILE he was there in Asia, before, during, and after the war!  He KNEW that the US presence would be required more-so than ever in the Asian sphere after the war!  And he KNEW that our nation would NEED the confidence in our keeping our word in post-war Asia!  What he did was to RE-ESTABLISH that confidence in the promises given by the USA when dealing with Asia!  What better display in keeping our promises in Asia could possibly have happened when the Philippines actually were granted their full independence on the very day it had been promised by US YEARS BEFORE to happen for THEM?...ESPECIALLY when they had been occupied by the Japanese for so long until very close to the date promised for their independence?? If the removal of Japanese forces from the Phils had not happened when it DID happen, then there simply would NOT have been enough time prior to their scheduled Independence Day for the Filipinos to ENJOY the massive celebrations nation-wide on that day! They needed the extra time the re-taking provided for in order to get out of the "occupation mentality" so that they could get into the "independence mentality" again prior to the scheduled date for it!  And that just does NOT happen very quickly!  Think about it!

 

As for the firing of MacArthur, I understand it from a president-general point of view, and it WAS justified.  But I ALSO understand how things led up to it and all the sneaky political D.C. backstabbing that was involved to get rid of him!  I truly believe he just DID NOT HAVE THE TIME to run back and forth to D.C to explain what he was actually doing in Asia, simply because he had so many irons in the fire in Asia and was WAY too busy there!  His legacy has two sides to it like always!  But, like always, there are lots of grey areas involved that are often overlooked!

 

For Filipinos, however, there are NO grey areas in his legacy!  ABSOLUTELY NONE!  He is THEIR hero!  PERIOD!  Too bad he isn't seen that way here!

 

Mac peso gold.jpg

Mac 3.jpg

Mac 2500 peso.jpg

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 My father was a tail gunner on a Martin Marauder B-26 bomber during WW2. He was shot down on his 21st mission while over Italy. He never said much about his combat experiences, limiting his stories to funny occurences etc. When asked how he was awarded 2 Purple Hearts, his answer was, I got shot and I took some shrapnel. His medals he arranged in a frame prior to his death and my brother allowed me to take them and display them in our house. A few years back I put them in a new frame and they look great again.

 

 My brother wisely gathered all of the papers concerning our father's military service and had them reproduced on acid free paper and gave me a copy. He also forwarded a copy to the National WW2 Museum in New Orleans. They contained all of his Red Cross correspondance while he was a POW, letters to his folks etc. We found out through his records that he weighed 96 pounds when he was liberated by the British Army in May of '45. American POWs were not immediatly repatriated back to the States, as the military did not want their families to see them until they had put on some weight. According to dad POWs kept their long hair so that folks would know to give them some extra food from the little bit they had.

 

 When Americans were captured their names would be read over the German radio. A fellow soldier in England heard my father's name and recognized it from their neighborhood in Brooklyn. He wrote his folks and his mother knocked on my grandparents door to tell them their son had been captured. Up until that time they had only been informed that his plane had been shot down.

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One of my favorite authors, William Manchester, wrote an excellent and very balanced biography of MacArthur, "American Caesar". Also, he wrote the best book on the individual experiences of a man at war, "Goodbye Darkness" in which he interweaves his story of being a Marine in the Pacific theatre with his dealing with PTSD after the war.

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On 4/25/2019 at 4:50 PM, RT FAN said:

My father was a tail gunner on a Martin Marauder B-26 bomber during WW2.

 

My dad flew as a gunner on those as well, but up top. He was stationed in England.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I can't remember if I posted anything about this yet, so forgive me if I have.

 

In the 80's, my dad gave me a drafting set he said was Japanese and from WWII.  I asked him where he got it and he said from a cave.  Since he was in the Navy, I couldn't see how he could possibly get this from a cave.  He was serious, and I secretly doubted his story.

 

IMG-1264.png

 

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It is a beautiful set, with what I believe are ivory handles on the inkers.  I kept it in its box and never used it.

 

He's gone now, and I was reading a book about his ship, the U.S.S. Colahan, called "The Original Tomcat".  I was intrigued when I read that after the peace treaty was signed, they got shore leave:

 

"Meanwhile, Colahan sailors explored well-stocked caves in surrounding hills. Quartermaster striker Leslie Anderson selected four bayonets from a big pile and kept them forever as souvenirs of a memorable time in his life. 'One lad found a machine gun,' said Anderson, 'and he stowed it in his locker. The captain got wind of it and made him get rid of it.' "

 

and this from a sailor on the Colahan…

 

"Sep 3 45: Entered Tokyo Bay. Anchored off Yokohama. Went into Yokosuka and tied up to Piedmont until September 19.  Went to Confession on Sept. 14, Holy Communion on Sept. 16, on PIEDMONT. The chaplain was real nice. We had liberty in Yokosuka. I didn’t go. I walked around the navy yard here. Everything is wrecked except the big cranes and the dry docks. Lots of caves here, with lathes and all kinds of other machinery around. I have a few souvenirs in my scrapbook. Guys went into the caves and brought back rope galore, knives, guns, blocks, everything, even sail needles and electric light bulbs. The **** really stocked up in these caves. The town of Yokosuka is a real dump. It stinks, and I mean just that. You have to have a gas mask when you go through the streets, so the guys tell me. I didn’t go." 

 

So now I believe that his story was entirely true, and I regret that I doubted it.

 
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