Originally posted by Ack-Ack
I always feel strange working for a Japanese company on this day. We're the only building without our flag at half mast.
ack-ack
I felt the same way ten years ago when I had an opportunity to go to work for Mitsubishi. My dad talked me out of what I was feeling at the time. He told me to get over it. He had. My dad's a veteran of the war in the Pacific. He volunteered in '40. This is a tribute to he and my mother - both still with us. I spent some time with them today.
My dad grew up in Kansas and joined the U.S. Navy, as I said, in 1940. My mom comes from Raleigh, N.C. When she graduated college she went to work as a teacher. Both knew, as did a large part of the nation, that we would be inexorably drawn into war. Mom was then, is now and will go to her grave a pacifist. But when Pearl Harbor was attacked she shortly thereafter got a job in an Army message center in Washington to do her part.
My dad first got orders for duty aboard a minesweeper patrolling the Gulf of Mexico. He and his shipmates patrolled for mines and any signs of u-boat activity. He was shortly reassigned to the Pacific theater and spent the rest of the war there up to and after VJ Day.
Both speak of those days now as if they were the most important days of their lives, most especially my dad. I see him on family occasions talking to my niece and nephew, both in their early twenties. My dad at some point starts to relate something that happened, usually some day to day life aboard ship kinda thing from the period. I see either my niece or nephew's interaction with him. They're polite - but they don't really understand. I fear they really don't have the knowledge, understanding or patience to really listen to or appreciate these things that so forged my father's life and made those four years out of his eighty five years the most important and memorable days of his life.
My mom was sworn to secrecy concerning the message traffic she worked during the war. Those secrets will leave this earth with her. Pacifist that she was, is and will always be not withstanding - when time came to do her bit she stood up and did it and kept the faith. She keeps it still. She will never divulge the secrets she was sworn to keep. She'll be eighty five a week from today.
My brother and I have seen a fair amount of watermelon in our time. But neither he nor I have or will ever see what my parents, each in their own way, saw. They and and our entire nation stood together in a way that we haven't since.
My brother and I recently took my dad to see Flags of Fathers. My dad was there at Iwo Jima. We knew my dad wanted to see it. He and I pointed out the little historical inaccuracies when they occurred but they were few. But I could see that my dad was transported back to those days. He was twenty three again and doing again the most important work he would ever do. He stifled a cry here and there. But when he did it was always some scene of the homefront - a mother noified of her son's sacrifice or whatnot - not his own. I felt a sadness that such were the times of his life that those days became the most important days of his entire life. A sadness that the current generation and even more so the coming generations will not appreciate what my mom and dad and those like them gave of themselves.
I went and spent some time with my parents today. Beforehand I mounted the Stars and Stripes on the front porch as I do every December 7th. My dad and mom are getting a little physically feeble. When I was in their house today, the house I grew up in, my father asked if I would like to have the flag he used to always fly on such days. "Sure", I said. No other words were required by either of us. Next December 7th THAT flag will fly from my front porch. I hope mom and dad are still around. I hope they and their generation are long remembered and appreciated for what they did.
Sorry if this was overly long. I owe it to them.
Mom and Dad - I salute you and all those you served alongside, those still with us, those since gone, those still on patrol.
