As we prepare to observe Memorial Day, I am thinking about wars. Growing up, I always thought of World War II as "The War". That was the war that affected my parents' generation as well as their parents and grandparents. My father served in the army, stationed in Hawaii. My grandfather was interned in a Japanese Civilian Internment Camp in the Philippines.
I didn't hear first-hand stories of World War I although some great-uncles went "over there". One, my Great-Uncle Jack Cariello, is the only relative who was killed in a war. He was a singing waiter and a tailor. He arrived in France in June, 1918, Private First Class, Medical Detachment, 361st Infantry. He was killed September 27, 1918, when he was decapitated by a shell. He was buried in American Cemetery, Epinonville, Meuse, France.
My grandfather started "over there" but became deathly ill during basic training. I don't know the nature of his illness, but my great-grandmother had to hastily take a train from Montana to somewhere on the east coast. She bustled into the camp hospital and told my grandfather that she wasn't going to put up with him dying so he eventually recovered. And that was the end of his army experience.
Memorial Day is a federal holiday in the United States for honoring and mourning those who died in the performance of their military duties while serving in the United States Armed Forces. Great Uncle Jack, as you can tell, isn't the only family member I remember on Memorial Day - even if he is the only one to officially qualify for remembrance. I think about my father although his war experience was positively pleasant. Lolling around on the beach of Waikiki, his only war wound was caused by a moray eel.
I think of my grandfather - the same one who only got as far as the East Coast of the United States during World War I. When Pearl Harbor and Manila Bay were bombed, my grandfather was tying up some loose ends with his business before returning to the States. He left it too long and ended up being interned first at Santo Tomas in Manila and then Los Banos. Escape from Los Banos: The Most Daring Prison Camp Raid of World War II by Bruce Henderson tells the story of what the internees endured. The author featured a few people's stories, and two of the stories were about my mother's cousin, Margaret Whitaker, and her future husband, Martin Squires. Septimus Thomas Bodley Whitaker, my grandfather, is listed at the end of the book among the approximately 2100 internees at Los Banos.
Going home was hard for my grandfather. He had lost his house and business in Manila. He had lost his money. His family (my grandmother, mother, and aunt) had come back to Seattle to put my mother through her senior year in high school and then settle her at the university before returning to the Philippine Islands. War broke out, and they never went back so my grandfather didn't lose his family, but five years later, everyone had changed. Everyone told him "you're home now. Forget about what happened." But he couldn't forget. The only people who could understand what my grandfather was feeling were other internees. I found this letter he wrote to an old friend who stayed in Manila - it was returned as undeliverable. "July 29, 1945 - Dear Roy, Have thought about writing to you many times but have had one thing or another to do since coming home - A few days ago I met Bob Humphries on the street -- he is running a dry cleaning outfit and doing fairly well - Looks fine and hopes someday to go back to P.I. - Had a visit from Herb, he has gained 60 pounds. I still have some beri beri and need new teeth -- have made no money yet but have done a lot of work around the place and am really feeling more like my old self every day. I have thought of all the nice food your Mrs sent in to us when we were together [in the internment camp]. Please let me know what she might like me to mail over from here and I'll do it. I can send 11 lbs by parcel post. Anything like - Cosmetics - Canned goods - Candy - etc etc."
Grandpa never really felt like his old self. He didn't regain his health. All of his plans to start a new business state-side failed. Now we would say that he suffered from PTSD. He died in 1955, aged 62 years, 4 days.
My friend Clarice's father never wanted to talk about his war experiences either. After her parents' deaths, Clarice found a box of letters in their attic written by her father, a doctor with the 116th Evacuation Hospital, who was present at Dachau immediately after the liberation. In her book, Letters from Dachau: A father's witness of war, a daughter's dream of peace, she shares some of the letters he wrote home to her mother. "Emily, we are 'sweating, stinking, existing' in The Hell-on-Earth Dachau...The atrocity reports are true - and more!" He told his wife to tell the world what happened. "All I ask is that you 'instill' it into as many thousands of others as you can - till maybe we can get millions to see it." In the event, Clarice's parents didn't tell the world. They didn't even tell their family - or just as little as possible. It was too hard to talk about. Now Clarice is telling the world through her book and as a speaker with Seattle's Holocaust Center for Humanity.
Judy Bentley has just published 25 Sugarland Road : letters of love and war, 1943-1945. Like Clarice, Judy came across a pack of letters - more than 200 - written by her parents and other family members while her father was serving in Europe. Exerts from a memoir that her father had written filled in what the censors would have blacked out. Like my grandfather and Clarice's father, Judy said in an interview (the blog at Indiana Historical Society Press):
"They talked very little about the wartime experiences, especially my father. He did not glorify war, nor did he brag about his wartime service. The two stories they both repeated were of kindness. At the time of giving birth, my mother was living with a sister’s family, and her brother-in-law just dropped her off, alone, at the door of the hospital. A very kind nurse kept her company during the birth, and she never forgot that.
The other experience Dad talked about was a brutal basic training episode in Tennessee when the soldiers were tired, wet, cold, pushed beyond their limits in a rainstorm, and they were told to take shelter wherever they could find it. A farm woman welcomed them into her home, with warm food, blankets, and shelter. Dad never forgot that kindness; his mother wrote to the woman, thanking her for her care.
So, the wartime experiences they talked about were of kindness. Only in reading my father’s memoirs did I find out what he had left out of his letters home."
One of the things that I really enjoyed when reading Judy's book, was the "voice" of the letter writers. That is what inspired her to gather them into her book.
"The voices in these letters were so strong—my father’s cockiness, my grandmother’s down-home diction, my mother’s weariness as a young mother separated for more than a year from her husband. My father had also written his memoirs, and they filled in a lot of the gaps in his military experience that he could not write in the letters, so that offered a narrative background.
I knew, too, that they got married on a three-day leave with a week’s planning, and they were very young when they got married, so I wanted to capture that drama. My father’s experiences as a paratrooper, medic, and in the occupation forces seemed noteworthy.
For me, it’s also a reclaiming of my Indiana heritage. I was sometimes embarrassed by my paternal grandmother and grandfather’s lack of education, by their humble origins, their speech patterns, their hardscrabble lives, and I was aware of the near-poverty my mother grew up in, a family of eight children. Their lives were much harder than mine has ever been, and I wanted to acknowledge that but show their resilience."
Rescue at Los Baños : the most daring prison camp raid of World War II / Henderson, Bruce B., 940.53 HEN
Letters from Dachau: A father's witness of war, a daughter's dream of peace/Wilsey, Clarice. 940.54 WIL
25 Sugarland Road : letters of love and war, 1943-1945 /Bentley, Judith McBride. 940.54 BEN