Author Topic: Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th  (Read 2176 times)

Offline David

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Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th
« on: December 06, 2006, 12:13:56 pm »
Tomorrow is the 45th Anniversary of the Attack on Pearl Harbor.     Earlier this month when I was working the TSA baggage area at the Airport, a very old man slowly walked over to me with his well worn suitecase.   He placed it in front of me and said: "Take care of it for me, this is my last trip".    I asked why.

He replied :"I'm flying to Pearl Harbor to say goodbye to my buddies for the last time.  We are not having anymore reunions after this.   We are too few and too old to do this anymore".

I shook his hand and thanked him for his Service to the country.   I think we both had a tear in our eyes as he walked away.


This is from the Online USAToday

Survivors return to Pearl Harbor for final reunion    
 By Ronen G. Zilberman for USA TODAY


 
Lee Soucy stands on the beach in Waikiki. Soucy, was a pharmacist's mate on the USS Utah during the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor.
 

 

By Oren Dorell, USA TODAY
For decades after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, survivors returned to retell their stories and recite their mantra: "Remember Pearl Harbor."
Now the people who survived the surprise attack that killed more than 2,400 people and led to America's entry into World War II are in their 80s or older. Dying or too frail to travel, they say this week's reunion will be their last official gathering at the sacred site.

"We're getting to be fewer and fewer in numbers," says Lee Soucy, 87, of Plainview, Texas. Soucy recalled treating injured sailors who jumped from flaming ships during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He was in Hawaii this week for the last time.

"Some of us are dying off and some of us are getting incapacitated," he says.

They have been meeting and swapping stories all week, and will observe an official memorial Thursday. The last reunion at Pearl Harbor was in 2001. About 650 veterans were there. This year, the number dropped to about 450, says George Sullivan, director of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund and chairman of the Arizona Memorial Museum Association.

"They're doing this because they're aging and the travel is difficult," Sullivan says.

Their deeds and recollections will not be forgotten. The fund was created to raise $50 million for a new museum where oral history about the battle will be preserved for younger generations. Recordings and written histories are being collected at this week's reunion and over the Internet.

With the attack now 65 years in the past, even local chapters of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association are folding, says Norman Lancaster, 92, treasurer of the Arlington, Va., chapter. "We feel that we'll come to a point where there's not enough people."

Some survivors feel that sharing stories about the attack is a good way to ward off another sneak attack.

"We got caught with our pants down," Soucy says. "We thought we were invincible, the most powerful nation on Earth … and that's what worries me now."

The Japanese struck at 7:45 a.m. In less than two hours, nearly the entire U.S. Navy fleet in the Pacific — about 80 ships — was destroyed or disabled. Two waves of 353 Japanese aircraft took off from aircraft carriers that had arrived undetected. They hammered the military installation with torpedoes and bombs.

"The significance of this battle is that it was really the birth of the aircraft carrier being the lead ship in the Navy today," Sullivan says. "It was no longer a surface battle from ship to ship. It now was a battle where the aircraft became the main weapon."

Jack Evans, now 82 and living in Corcoran, Calif., had a great view of incoming enemy aircraft from his observation post in a crow's-nest on the battleship USS Tennessee.

A torpedo plane crossed the USS West Virginia and the Tennessee's bow, at the same height as Evans.

"As he went by, the rear seat gunner looked at me and I looked at him. He was so close I could see his eyes, and I could see his teeth, and it was just like being next door to each other," Evans says.

He watched as the battleship West Virginia sank to the bottom of the harbor and the battleship USS Oklahoma capsized. A bomb struck one of the Tennessee's turrets and shot shrapnel into Evans' legs. Smoke from the burning fuel oil was so thick he had to breathe through his shirt.

Lancaster, who was directing anti-aircraft fire on the USS Phoenix, said he saw many men trying to get away from the smoke and the heat of burning fuel and exploding ammunition.

"They were trying to jump from that crow's-nest into the burning water," he said. "The battleships were quite broad, and quite a few of them didn't make it."

Soucy, a pharmacist's mate on the disarmed target ship USS Utah, swam to nearby Ford Island after torpedoes hit the Utah and calls rang out to abandon ship. He spent the rest of the day treating the wounded. Many of the injured servicemembers were burn and bullet victims who had been pulled from the harbor.

"Most had swum through oil, some through burning oil," he said. "They swallowed oil and dirty water, and they were vomiting and gasping for air."

The following day, the United States declared war and embarked on a conflict that would span two oceans, cost a half-million American lives and end in the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany.

"Strategically, the Japanese made a fatal error," Lancaster said.

 

Offline TexRob

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Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th
« Reply #1 on: December 06, 2006, 09:57:28 pm »
I would like to extend a word of gratitude to the gay Americans who fought in the armed forces in World War II as well.  A book on the subject of gays and World War II, Coming Out Under Fire, was an eye-opener for me.

Offline dot-matrix

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Re: Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th
« Reply #2 on: December 07, 2006, 12:13:48 am »
My Daddy was in the Pacific during WWII, not in Pearl Harbor on this terrible day but he was with the forces that liberated the Phillippines.  God Bless all our veterans and those serving today to protect our way of life.  War is ugly and I don't condone it, but I support our service men and women 110%.  Do you realize that over 18,000 brave service men and women have been injured in the war in Iraq, and over 2,600 have lost their lives. Many of the wounded veterans face a lifetime of rehabilitation and enduring physical and mental disabilities. My Uncle was held captive in a Japanese prisoner of war camp for 2 years.  He was never the same again and was almost completely disabled for the rest of his life. Today's military people are no different.   Regardless how you feel about the war in Iraq, we all need to recognize the need to aid and to remember ALL our military personnel throughout the years  who put their lives on the line to protect our country. The tragedy is that we live in a nation with a government that doesn’t take better care of their armed forces who are, in my opinion, heroes in every sense of the word.



from the December 07, 2006 edition of the Christian Science Monitor

Pearl Harbor, 65 years later
In the end, the Japanese attack led to some positive effects in the US.
By Pat M. Holt

ARLINGTON, VA. – On this day in 1941, the United States naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, was attacked. The bombing killed 2,388 Americans, put much of the Pacific fleet out of commission, and came while the Japanese ambassador in Washington was preparing for a diplomatic appointment at the State Department. Among the losses was the battleship Arizona, which went down with nearly all hands on board. It is still there as a national shrine.
In President Roosevelt's speech to Congress the next day asking for a declaration of war, he called Dec. 7 "a date which will live in infamy." Congress responded promptly with a declaration of war against Japan. It followed up on Dec. 11 with retaliatory declarations of war against Germany and Italy. World War II was the last time the United States has declared war, though it has fought three major wars (Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan-Iraq) and numerous minor ones. Not many Americans are old enough to remember the events of 65 years ago. So it seems worthwhile to reflect on some of their consequences.
 
The Pearl Harbor attack unified a country that had been divided over the war in Europe, but it also terrified the country. This was much the same reaction as followed the attacks of 9/11. Just as 9/11 led to unjustified imprisonment of some Muslims living in the United States, so Pearl Harbor produced persecution of Japanese-American citizens. Most of them lived in California; they were rounded up and interned in remote camps in Wyoming and other inland Western states. Although the Japanese were not tortured, their treatment was as morally bad as what's happened under Bush's watch in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib, and other prisons. Critics of President Bush (including this one) should take note. In 1988, Congress developed pangs of conscience and formally apologized to the interned Japanese. It also provided payments of $20,000 to each surviving internee.

Those who say that Mr. Bush's campaign for global democracy is overreaching (again, including this writer) should also note that democ- ratization is a thread that runs through American history. One of President Wilson's goals in World War I was to make the world safe for democracy. That is not quite the same thing as making it democratic, but it's a big step. Even before Pearl Harbor, in the State of the Union message in January, 1941, President Roosevelt proclaimed a goal of ensuring "four essential human freedoms." They were freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. He wanted to see all of these everywhere in the world.

The attack on Pearl Harbor put the US on the road to becoming a world power. It did not end the debate over America's role in the world, but it did end the debate over whether the US has a role - it does.

It helped end the Great Depression that had begun in 1929, something that all the New Deal programs of the 1930s could not do, though they did ameliorate it. In this process, itchanged American society. With 14 million men in the armed forces, women entered the labor force in unprecedented numbers. Their granddaughters are still there.

It marked the faint beginnings of the civil rights movement. After black Americans had served honorably, in many cases heroically, in the armed forces, the injustice of forcing them back into a segregated society was intolerable. President Truman used an executive order to integrate the armed forces after the war. Other steps followed.

The United Nations was born out of the resolve not to allow a repetition of World War II. The Senate, which refused to approve America's membership in the League of Nations after World War I, overwhelmingly approved US membership in the UN after World War II.

Perhaps the most awesome consequence of Pearl Harbor was the development of nuclear weapons. Two of these were used to end the war against Japan. Revisionist historians have argued that these should not have been used, that Japan could have been driven to surrender by conventional bombing. True enough, but at what cost? Both Japanese and American casualties would have been far greater, and the war would have been prolonged.

During a visit to Harvard University after he had been president, Harry S. Truman was asked what he was most proud of. His answer was that after America crushed its enemies, it embraced them and turned them into allies.

A final irony: Japanese investors now own much of the island their grandfathers once tried to destroy, and are tolerated by the country they once tried to conquer.

• Pat M. Holt is former chief of staff of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
 
« Last Edit: December 07, 2006, 06:42:58 am by dot-matrix »
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Offline David In Indy

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Re: Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th
« Reply #3 on: December 08, 2006, 02:08:08 am »
I have 5 uncles who served in WWII. I thanked one of them today.

My father served in Korea in 1950. He was wounded twice and has two purple hearts.

Thanks for posting this, David. It is an important reminder for all of us.  :)
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Offline delalluvia

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Re: Thank a WWII Veteran on Dec 7th
« Reply #4 on: December 08, 2006, 02:13:30 am »
That is so sad that they will no longer meet.   :'( :'( :'( :'(

I knew this day would someday come.  We are going to outlive all those who took place in that war.  Soon, very soon, it will be nothing but history in books instead of living history.

I don't really know any WWII vets.  Those in my family are already dead.  But I am grateful to all those who fought for the Allies in that war.