OT: 83rd anniversary of Pearl Harbor American Heros

My mother never forgive Japan for pearl harbor or the atrocities they committed. She was 14 when pearl harbor was attacked.
Visiting the USS Arizona memorial was very moving experience for me.

 

My dad fought in the Pacific with the 11 th Airborne Division. Made several amphibious landings. He was one of 100 men who jumped into Japan on a classified mission to map the beach head for the Allied invasion. They took off for that mission and were airborne under radio silence and made the jump not knowing we had dropped the atomic bombs When they completed their initial operation and established radio contact they learned about the bombs and that a truce had been declared. He never revealed this until a physician at MD Anderson about to administer chemotherapy and asked him if he was frightened. He responded , I stopped being frightened about things I can’t control on August 6 1945. “ The doc asked what happened that day and I heard the story for the first time. He was two months shy of his 21 st birthday when he made that jump.

 

My Mother had 3 older brothers and all 3 joined the military after Pearl Harbor. 1 Army 1 Navy and 1 Marine. The oldest was the Marine and out of bootcamp he was selected to train for doing air recon. He was so good at it that they made him stay in Kansas to train others to do it.
My Uncle in the army was the youngest and enlisted for the duration. By the time he finished boot camp the war in Europe ended and he was soon released. The Middle brother in the Navy was a coxswain and drove one of the many landing crafts at Normandy. He was shot thru the foot.
He went to a Hospital in England and after a month or so came home and never mentioned it to the family. They found out a month or so later when his purple heart came in the mail. My grandfather, their Dad, knew what the little package was as he had fought in France in WWI

 

My father was a navigator in the Army Air Corps over the Pacific during the war. Less than 10 years after the war ended, he was a major in the Air Force and transferred to Japan. We lived there for 2 1/2 years and seemed to be treated very well. When we were out in the city of Nagoya, Japanese marveled at three kids with light blond hair. We had Japanese help in the house, who cried when we left. And when we settled back in Florida, there was no shortage of Japanese furniture, artwork and dishes.

we also brought brought back a case of Kikkoman soy sauce because it wasn’t available in the US yet

 

My Dad was stationed in Attlebridge England with the 466th Bomb Squadron. He served as a radio man in the B24 Liberator.

I only heard Dad tell one story from his service days and, although sad, it was not combat related. He said one of the guys in his barracks got up in the middle of the night, walked to the tarmac and into the turning prop blades of one of the bombers. Dad said they never knew if he was sleepwalking, confused or if he committed suicide.

My uncle served in the Marines and was part of the landing troops at Okinawa. He was shot in the shoulder during the invasion. A medic gave him morphine on the beach, but forgot to tag him. He said as they were transporting him to the ship a second medic gave him another injection, unaware of the first one. He said once he got to the ship they inquired about pain and he told them he felt great and asked for more of that stuff. That's the only story he ever told and it seemed to amuse him as he would say he was glad he was conscious otherwise they may have killed him by morphine overdose.
In all, my Dad and 6 uncles served during WWII in either the Army, Army Air Force, Navy, Marines and Merchant Marine. Two of them lied about their ages in order to serve. Fortunately all came home safely but I never heard many stories about the war.

 

I served in Saudi Arabia during the first Gulf War and then at Kuwait airport the day after the Marines liberated it. I was deployed to Jordan, Shaheed Mwfuaqq AB, for the start of the second Gulf War and then deployed 11 months later to Balad AB/Camp Anaconda, Iraq. I put my retirement papers in after they asked me to deploy back to Iraq 4 months after returning from Iraq. If not Iraq I could go to Afghanistan instead. They promised I would make E-8 if I did. I pointed out to the squadron chief that many unit E7s were granted favors not to deploy because of school, babies, and marital issues. Many of those folks had no deployments at all. Some guys were in it for themselves and weren't ashamed of it. Some bragged they never deployed. Those are people I loathe to this day.

I've two divorces under my belt from the stresses of and related to constant deployments. I received the proverbial Dear John letter during the first Gulf War. The constant deployments wear on you. The stress is unbelievable. Getting rocketed, mortared, or sniped at is not for the faint of heart. Self-harm and suicide are the unheard ugly by-products of war. Many people harmed themselves by figuring out ways to break bones, cut off toes/fingers, crush injuries, self-inflicted gunshot wounds, etc., or have a mental breakdown. We loaded/unloaded cargo missions, often running from the aircraft when rounds were incoming. Exposed on the flightline and being around a potential fireball added to the stress. For those not working missions, we volunteered to assist in loading medevacs as stretcher-bearers and aiding the ambulatory up the ramp of medevac C141s. You knew who was who and what happened to them. Medical people in combat zones are truly angels. We didn't look down on those people medevaced to escape the combat zone. Everyone has a breaking point. I don't know if WW2 tracked those things but I know they are tracked now. I've lost 6 friends to suicide that I served with. I wouldn't wish to go to war on anyone.

 

Thank you for your service. Sorry for the loss of your friends.

There are indeed many casualties of war that aren't "counted" in the official records. I worked with several Viet Nam vets and many of them had an "angry at the world" demeanor at times. A couple were good friends but I knew when to give them space. I never heard any of them talk about the war itself and I didn't ask.

My Mom's boss served in a commissary not far from where my Dad was stationed. He used to tell stories about his time in the commissary and the town. He talked like it was a good experience to look back on.

My Dad would get so irritated with him and would tell us (after the boss left) the guys who actually saw the real horrors of war rarely had "good" experiences to talk about and didn't want to talk about the things they saw and did. We were told not to ask.

 

I have my Grandfather, My Dad's and My own.. all of our ribbons, metals etc shadowboxed and hanging in my living room. My Grandpa always would say I was a cook. He passed when I was 23 and when I turned about 40 I asked for his awarded, metals and the descriptions of how they were awarded. 12 cook's were ambushed by 82 Japanese soldiers and 1 cook passed and only 3 of the others got shot or hurt. He was such a small man 5'5" 120 I never understood what he went through as a child. I am retired myself and have just under 7 years of total deployment time. I will get his paperwork down and post his verbatim. It's an amazing story. All 3 of us are purple hearted and I have those shadowboxed together as well.

 

My grandfather was a bomb sight technician in the Army Air Corps in Midland, TX when he married my grandmother in 1943. He was discharged at the end of the war in 1945 and my dad was born in November of that same year. Sadly, my grandpa passed away in 1982, the year before I was born, so I never knew him.

 

My Dad was stationed at Hickam Field in 1939-40. He was transferred to Ft Monroe Virginia in 1940 where he met my mom. He was stationed at Ft Eustis Virginia in the Coast Artillery Corps as a First Seargeant, during the Second World War. He helped train troops. He was considered too old for combat I suppose as he was in his 40's then. I was 3 months old when the Japs bombed Pearl.

 

Lucky for me, Dad didn’t turn 18 until Sept 1946. He liked to say he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, but was discharged by the Air Force. Dad served in the occupation Army in Japan. He was always a mechanical genius, so he was made Crew Chief on a squadron of P-80’s, the first jets deployed. He said that was pretty heady stuff for a 19 year old.

He didn’t see combat, so Dad had some good stories to tell: the 6 weeks on a troop ship it took him to get there, catching rides hanging off the exterior of trains, learning some of the language and interacting with the locals. Dad always wanted to go back and see Japan years later; so he, my sister and I all went in 2018.

Dad was the oldest of 4 boys and they all served in different branches of the service. Next in line, George, served in the marines in Korea. Tom (Army Corps of Engineers) and Steve (Navy) served in Nam. Thankfully they all came home safe, although Tom was the most badly affected by his experiences. You know at a concert when they play the songs for all the military branches and ask people to stand for their family’s branch? I’m proud to stand and sing all four.

Dad passed this past Friday, Dec 6 at age 96.

 

My father was a Marine in WWII and was in the battle on Iwo Jima.
But, I didn't know my father.
Never met him until I was an adult (long story).
Met him a couple of times...each time was very brief.
Turns out he was also in Korea and Vietnam.
He was also crew chief on Marine One.
Stellar military career.
Very decorated man, complicated man, but his personal life was not so great.
I have a box of his momentos in my attic and I have his Bible that he carried with him.

 

On a more positive note than my last post, my Gator Nation membership is tied in with my dad's military experience. He said he had a lucky birthday, 1935, so he was in the Army/National Guard from 1953-1963 and never left the States, squarely in the period between two wars. On his papers his specialty is listed as typist, yet he said he didn't spend a single day typing in all ten years. He was an MP, a prison guard, a sharpshooter, and a forward observer for a mortar platoon. He said the scariest moment was when they all decided to do some impromptu and very illegal parachute "training" out of the back of a C-119 over Alabama. When they would fly from Fort Bragg to whatever the base is in Alabama, they were given parachutes with very basic instructions but no training. So they talked the pilot into going low and slow over the training area and just jumped!

After ten, his GI Bill paid for him to go to school and he wound up at UF (he was on the Rifle team back when we had one), where he met my mother who worked at Shands. Fast forward, and even though he told me absolutely NOT to sign up, I went to MEPPS anyway, and they didn't want me. Physical turned up a heart condition which no other doctor has ever seen. So I applied to UF instead, and Voila!

 

The man who piloted the Enola Gay that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima used to eat at a Bob Evans in Casselberry, FL. An old man I used to have coffee with ran into Paul Tibbets a few times. Evidently Tibbets wasn't aa fan of the Japanese and had zero regrets.

Tibbets got his BA from UF and wanted to go to med school. UF didn't have a medical school so he went to an Ohio school and eventually decided to sign up with the military.

 

I ran across this quote in the NYT obit for Lance Morrow, who as a longtime reporter and essayist for Time. He's writing about 9/11, but it's worth reading here.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/business/media/lance-morrow-dead.html

 

Amazing how things have changed. They're probably our No. 1 ally at this point, manufacturing firmly planted on our soil with more to come (if certain stupid people would approve the Nippon Steel purchase of the dinosaur known as US Steel).

On a side note. I heard Trump whining about the lack of foreign investment (threatening tariffs if they don't spend at least 1B on domestic manufacturing) then saying he won't approve the deal. Which, BTW, would represent a direct 17B in investment in the US Steel industry. Stupid is as stupid does.

 

My Grandfather was a Seabee on Green Island in the Solomons. Not much action, but it did give a boy from Indiana a taste for tropical weather. Once he was sent home, he told my grandmother, "Pack you bags. We're going to Jacksonville and we're never going to deal with snow again!"

Ran a dragline there, then moved to St. Pete where he worked for George Hunt construction and eventually became a civil engineer and project manager. They built most of Countryside, Countryside Mall, Pinellas Square Mall and large parts of US 19.

 

My uncle Rodney died in WW2. He was the tail gunner on his last flight, though he was trained to pilot the plane.
SGT Rodney Richard Schubring (1924-1945) - Find a...

I have read the official AAR of his last mission. It tells that after the bomber he flew in had been shot to hell, parachutes dropped (to no avail off the coast of freezing Hokkaido), the bomber appeared to come under some level of control and proceed to ram a Japanese Zero. I choose to believe he took control of that plane, knowing he was dead either way... but he was at least going to take one of the enemy out with him.