MEMORIAL DAY -- THEN and NOW

MEMORIAL CEMETERY, ANZIO, ITALY

Weird!  I sit here listening to Mariachi music from Mexico and writing about Memorial Day 25 miles north of the doorway to Latin America.  
This has been a very interesting Memorial Day for a Massachusetts guy.  At church this morning we sang America the Beautiful and it felt very strange doing that in California.  I don't know why.  It just felt so far away from my cultural roots.  Then I came back to the house and PBS was replaying the entire series of Ken Burns dedicated to World War II.  So I spent a lot of time in front of the tube.  I couldn't break away.  It was a roller coaster of emotions.  The parts of the Italian campaign really got to me.  I lived in Italy for four years and I feel as connected to that people as I do to you all.  It was not an easy segment for me.  The hardest part of it was when the historic fact featuring the Japanese Americans as heroes in the conquest of the Italian peninsula.  Oh No!  How cruel history can be.  No wonder politicians lie about it all the time,  
I remember my visit to Anzio.  I was about 25 years old.  I went through at least one handkerchief that day.  You are looking at a place where, there, under the grass, lay Italian Americans, Japanese Americans, French  Canadian Americans, Irish Americans, American Indians, African Americans and who knows how many more hyphenated Americans, including descendants from the Pilgrims.  I saw it all there in Anzio that day.  
Here's an interesting fact about that visit.  At that time, I did not even know the true story about the internment camps where the Japanese residents of the United States, many of them citizens, were imprisoned.  When I first heard it, I was at least 50.  I didn't believe it.  I actually went to the library to check it out.  I am still shaking my head in disbelief at it.  It has remained one of my favorite history stories.  What really gets me is the depth of the insult to the children of the prisoners.  Make them fight the battles of the very government that imprisoned them despite their perfect innocence.  And they went.  And they distiguished themselves with great valor in battle.  That certainly takes the shine off my FDR Half-dollar!

After the European war was in the bag, some of the Japanese Americans found themselves involved in Asia.  There is a museum of Japanese American History in San Jose, California.  Belle and I visited it one time, shortly after it's opening.  It is there that I saw one of the most moving pictures that I have ever laid eyes on.  It shows a Japanese American US soldier guarding some Japanese Nationals in a war camp.  They are talking and the Japanese American has his fingers through the chain-link fence, reaching for brotherly contact.  I have requested a copy for you all.
I know that I could go on for a few thousand words about war, but I will spare you.  I will only make a final comment about one of the thoughts that I have been carrying around for as few months now.
It is connected to governing and politics.  
It has to do with mercenaries who are hired to fight in wars.  It also has to do with the construction companies who carpet bag their way into the economics of war.  It also has to do with the vested interests that the politicians have with these war mongering interests.  I suppose that a defensive war could perhaps approach being almost moral.  But there is no doubt in my mind that even then the immorality of profiteering from war is never morally correct.  And this on many levels.  I will spare you the few hundred, [thousands?] words that I have about that.


To close let me just make a comment about that ran through my head when the part of the Bataan Death March came on during the Ken Burns documentary.  
I was quite old [late 50's] when I first learned of the death march of the Cherokee Nation from Georgia to Oklahoma, Louisiana and other parts.  I, like most of us, knew, and know, of the senseless, racism fueled slaughter of the Plains Indians.  We rarely hear of the forced displacement of the peace-loving, agriculturally settled Cherokee Nation of Southeast North America.
Don't try denying it.  I have living friends who descend from the very people who suffered  it.  


It makes me wonder if we will ever learn.

FORT ROSECRANS, SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

IS IT NEWS? IS IT TRUE? WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

I have to talk about this because it is both humorous and serious.  I actually think about this rather often.  When the war ended in Europe, there was no big hoopla because we were still slugging it out against the Japanese.  Oh, we talked about it, but we were just little kids, I was only 8.  I remember I was at Dicky's house (Beauregard) on Smith Street and of course we were not talking politics or anything like that.  But we did get the news but it didn't stir us.  I do remember that it made me feel good because I had several uncles in Belgium and England and I had the feeling that they would be safer now.  When my father came home from work that night, he too was feeling better because his brothers would now be safer than before.

Something greater than that as far as causing an impact on my feelings was the death of FDR.  The picture on the right is a fair representation of the one that appeared in the local Holyoke Daily Transcript Telegram.  The picture of the president was transparent and the honor roll (Holyoke's honor roll, of course) was legible through the picture.  Like I said, I was only eight, but somehow this man's death impressed me.  I guess it could only be that he is the first president that I came to know growing up.  The other thing is that I was living in the middle of a community of dyed-in-the-wool democrats.  I didn't know what that meant either.  I know now, but it was still a mystery then.  I do remember that there was a somber mood all around me for a while, but it didn't really disturb me.  Not anywhere near as much as the death of my aunt Cécile a couple of years earlier.  But that is another story...the two Céciles in my life...and the Basilica in my favorite part of Rome.  Oh, boy!

Anyway, that's the thought until now.  So forward to the final point.

So now I am eight.  It is August.  My father and I go fishing very early in the morning.  It was an hour that my father always said was for crazy people.  So it was early.  We put the canoe on the car and drove off into the early morning dark, heading for a small lake where we knew there would be fish.  It was secluded, so it was nice.  We drifted and fished.  He for pickerel, I for pan fish.  He caught a couple of very nice ones.  He threw back at least three "small" ones. He was too proud to bring home anything less than 18 inches.  These two were all of that and more.  I had some pretty good sized pan fish too.  We had those for breakfast after sun-up.  We cleaned the breakfast site, packed the gear in the car and went back for a couple of hours of drifting, knowing that as the day wore on, we were out there purely for the relaxation of it.  Oh, we fished, but we knew that fish don't eat after 8:00 AM
It was therefore about noon or so when we put the canoe up and got on the road for the one hour trip back to the house.  A little after we got underway we went through a small residential area and there were people all over their yards and in the street, talking, laughing.  My father made a smart Aleck comment that I don't remember and he turned on the car radio.  It was but a few seconds before it became clear what had happened.  The Japanese had surrendered.  The war was over.  No wonder people were dancing in the streets.
The dancing in the streets became more intense as we approached more densely populated areas.  When we got to our town, the streets were full of adults and children beating on pots and pans, yelling, shouting and generally letting the Japanese know what had happened to them in no uncertain terms.  Those of you who have attained a "certain age" will notice that I am caving in to the proprieties of 21st century language when I talk about the J...'s!  There are those who know that in those days there were two "N" words.  You bet!
Anyway, that was quite a day, and of course, I will never forget it.  What I will never forget is what happened about one week later.  As the news of the wars slowly faded from the front pages of the newspaper, I announced to my father, "I don't think we will have any newspaper in September now that the wars are over."
My father looked at me and simply said, "Oh, I think they'll find something to write about."  I was amazed, but I trusted him.  He was right. Many times I wish that he had not been right.  Many times I think that we would be better off without the "papers."  We don't even need them to wrap fish any more, what with the plastics and all.  So now all I have to say is, we kicked their ass with guns and bombs, but they are kicking our ass in so many other ways.  They melted all their "Zeroes" into cars that have been sinking ours for years.  Turn about is fair play.  Hai'! Dozo...