As the years pass rapidly by, more and more Americans forget what happened and the impact World War II had on those who lived it, our families and our nation. When I was a child in the sixties and even as a young adult in the eighties, the affect of the war had on America was keenly felt. Although we had fought in two major conflicts since, World War II still washed over us in continuous waves. Now, it seems to be a just ripple of a forgotten past, growing fainter with each passing generation. Yet, those ripples are still felt, even when we're not consciously aware of them.
For me, the war was two generations ago. My father was a small boy and my mother just a toddler when the Japanese bomber Pearl Harbor. My grandfather was in his early thirties with three young children. His youngest, my uncle, was born in December 1941. Grandpa was born in Minnesota and remembered being a young boy traveling with his family in a horse drawn wagon to homestead in North Dakota. He rode the rails during the Great Depression to find work. He ended up in the Finn Settlement area in western Washington, working as a lumberjack, where he met my grandmother. Grandpa and Grandma were both first generation Americans, their families having come to America from Finland, fleeing Russian tyranny.
Around 1940, Grandpa moved to from Washington to California to attend a trade school to learn aircraft sheetmetal and take advantage of new opportunities opening up in the fast growing aviation industries Los Angles and the surrounding areas. LAter, he sent for his wife and infant child. My mother and my uncle were born in California. When Grandpa graduated, he had a job waiting for him at the Douglas Santa Monica plant. When the US declared war, he was building C-47s for service in the United States Army Air Corp. Grandpa hated US government for giving Finland a raw deal after the war. When I asked him if he ever tried to join the US military to fight in World War II, he said "Why should I die for those traitorous bastards?" Years after his death, I told this to Grandma and she chuckled. I was shocked when she told me he did try to sign up. "But of course, they turned him down because he worked at a critical job."
Mr. Olsen, who lived with his family across the street from my grandparents, was a taxi cab driver for longer than I'd been alive. During the war years, he worked at the same plant as my grandfather. He worked to get the cranky hydraulics system for the landing gear of the Dauntless dive bomber to work long enough for the Navy to take delivery. The landing gear system was a complicated affair that had to twist the wheels as the gear folded back on retraction.
My Great-Uncle Urho, my grandmother's brother, joined the Army and was there for D-Day and helped liberate Paris. He dropped a grenade down the hatch of a German tank, killing the entire crew. He took a Broomhandle Mauser off the dead tank commander and brought it home as a war trophy. We think it was a commercial variant the the tank commander's personal sidearm brought from home. Uncle Urho died before I was born. I'm not certain, but I think he had some kind of stomach problem and died of slow starvation under the care of a VA hospital.
My father's Uncle John fought at the Battle of the Bulge as a "cannon cocker". It was hard for me to imagine that affable, five foot nothing, bandy legged bachelor raining death and destruction on anyone, fighting for his life against countless Nazis on a frozen battleground. I didn't get a chance to know him very well. We didn't stay in touch and was saddened to hear he'd passed away. I didn't find out about his death until some years after he died.
These influences had a profound effect on my family and myself personally. I realized that great sacrifices were made that I could enjoy the rights and freedoms I was blessed with. I grew up loving America and chose to serve in the US Air Force. Not to fight for my freedoms. My freedoms were fought for by my father's generation and my father's freedoms by my grandfather's generation. I joined to defend the freedoms of my children and they in their turn, serve to defend the freedoms of the next generation to follow.
I asked the same questions of my co-workers and got some interesting answers. One friend had five uncles serve in World War II, all in the Army. His father, too young to serve in WWII, served in Korea as gunner on a bomber. He became one of the first boom operators for air-to-air refueling. His grandfather had served in the British Army during World War I. He was twice a prisoner of war at the hands of the Germans. He joined at the tender age of 14! My friend is in his sixties and is retired from the US Air Force. Many that could point directly to someone who lived during the war years who supported the war effort back home or in the service all had one thing in common- They have a deep appreciation of our freedoms.
How many generations back is World War II for you and your family? Who was alive and what did they do? How has it affected you and your family? Are they alive today? Have you ever met them? How has it shaped you and your family in the years since?