[caption id="attachment_68284" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="USS Arizona burns in Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941."]
December 7, 2011, marks the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that ushered America into World War Two. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, now a punchline for punitive politicians seeking to eradicate all remnants of the New Deal, called it "a date which will live in infamy."
In thinking about that date, I recalled the tenth, or last, part of "The Pacific," the 2010 HBO miniseries about fighting the Japanese during WWII. I was disappointed with the first nine installments, striking me as almost anticlimactic after "Band of Brothers," the 2001, ten-part, HBO miniseries concentrating on the 101st Airborne Division's "Easy Company" fighting the Germans in Europe during the same war.
V-J (Victory over Japan) Day was August 15, 1945, in Japan but announced in the U.S. on August 14 because of time zone differences. That was more than three months after V-E (Victory in Europe) Day, May 8, 1945.
Consequently, far less fanfare greeted many of the GI's returning home later from the Pacific, even though Alfred Eisenstaedt's photograph of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square on August 14, 1945, perfectly captured America's euphoric reaction to the good news out of Japan. Eisenstaedt's photo landed on the front page of Life magazine on August 27, 1945, and was forever enshrined in the memories of all who saw it back then and since.
My father was one of the GI's who returned without confetti ceremony from the war in the Pacific. Deepening his distress was missing Christmas 1945. Even with the official surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945, he had been held back in order to type up courts-martial for GI's facing dishonorable discharge for theft or other offenses. My father's ability to touch-type cost him a speedier return home. He hated that end to what seemed an endless war to him. My father wasn't allowed to come home until February 1946.
In 1942, he had enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps and eventually became a top-turret armor gunner on a B-25 bomber that, during one mission, was crippled by anti-aircraft ground fire and had to limp home with just one of two engines operating.
Yet he never volunteered his more private thoughts and experiences about the war unless prodded by one of his own sons.
I remember stumbling upon an old, musty chest in the crawlspace of our home in Whitfield, Pennsylvania, and discovering inside it several artifacts of the war he had been in, a war known to me through books and movies and TV, all of which made it less real, less a horror. I remember being impressed by it all, for to a young boy growing up in the early 1960s, it was like finding treasure hidden in your own home. Only when I saw a faded, creased photograph--showing American prisoners of war who had been set afire, then machine-gunned as they tried to escape--did I have any insight into why my father remained mostly quiet about what really happened then.
The last, long leg of my father's return home from World War Two was by train, heading from San Diego to 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. He never described with any detail that cross-country train ride. I thought of the GI's returning home by train in the tenth part of "The Pacific." I imagined some of their dialogue being my father's: What now? Get a job? Get married? Take time off? Dread of death and no choices suddenly gave way to uneasiness about the future and perhaps too many choices.
My grandfather, a WWI veteran, met his only son at the train station in Philly and drove him home. My father quickly got a job, and on June 15, 1946, he married my mother, who had waited for him. Their first child, me, came along in 1951. During the interim, my father attended Wharton Evening School at the University of Pennsylvania on the GI Bill. He firmly believed in the value of a formal education.
And I firmly believe my father, who died at age 83 on November 1, 2004, would be dumbstruck by the America of today. When, as a teenager, I had impudently asked him what he had fought for during World War Two, he said, "Not for the American Dream. A dream isn't real, so it's easy for a politician to sell something that's not real. But the American way of life is real. That's what I fought for. That's what a lot of us fought for."
Is the American way of life still real?
Christmas comes closest. My dad loved Christmas and doted on family visits and gatherings, blinking outdoor lights, toy trains and trestles, and wrapped smiles waiting under a cut spruce. During WWII, he missed four Christmases in a row with his family. How do you put a price on that? More importantly, how did he?
My father equally enjoyed Christmas music, especially a song many GI's heard for the first time over Armed Forces Radio during WWII, "White Christmas," sung by Bing Crosby. It's easy to take potshots at Crosby for his creamy crooning, but back then, most GI's ardently embraced the sentiment expressed in Irving Berlin's lyrics. I always try to hear that Crosby-sung song with my father's ears.
Was my father's generation the greatest? I don't know. But I know this: December 7 and December 25 mean a lot to me because they meant so much more to him.
Carols and tunes to celebrate the season
One of the most enjoyable holiday albums I've heard in several years is "An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration" (IAC/NYC), featuring Mick Moloney, Billy McComiskey, Athena Tergis, Brendan Dolan, Liz Hanley, Grace Nono, Rhys Jones, and the Washington Square Harp and Shamrock Orchestra. It was recorded live at Manhattan's Irish Arts Center and is a total treat from first through 15th track. Among the highlights is Moloney's recitation of Terence Winch's poem "Celebration," about Christmas within what Winch describes as "the entire supernatural infrastructure of Bronx Irish culture."
The album will be sold at performances of "An Irish Christmas: A Musical Solstice Celebration" during Dec. 7-18, Wednesday to Sunday, at 8 p.m., with an additional Saturday show at 2 p.m., and an additional Sunday show at 3 p.m. Call 866-811-4111 for tickets. The Irish Arts Center is at 553 W. 51st St., New York, NY 10019, www.irish artscenter.org, 212-757-3318.
Musical chestnuts still roasting on that open fire include "Dylan Thomas Reads A Child's Christmas in Wales" (1994 CD of 1952 LP; read along with the 2007 New Directions paperback), "The Best of Celtic Christmas" (2-CD set from 2002), and Handel's "Messiah" (1966 version by the London Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Sir Colin Davis). Don't forget Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" to commemorate Dec. 7 and 25 together.
