We were born in Hawaii.
'nuff said!
From everything I’ve read and seen, Guadalcanal was one of the worst hellholes of the Pacific campaign.
I have a lot of questions for some of the generals and brass, well, “in general,” about some of the decisions that were made about which islands to take and which to bypass.
I particularly have questions for “Dugout” Douglas MacArthur, who was apparently almost universally despised by everyone under his command.
But yeah, I can only imagine the looks on the Marines’ faces after they landed and the entire US Navy proceeded to sail away.
They’re denying quite a lot. I just typed up a long list, but I don’t want to invite a flame war, so I’ll confine myself to the most egregious examples: They assert that the thousands of Korean, Asian and yes, European women that were forced to work in military brothels (Comfort women) were legally hired and well paid . . . they deny that Unit 731 ever existed, they deny that the Nanjing Massacre, that is estimated by some historians to have cost up to 300,000 Chinese lives in a matter of weeks ever happened.
Of course, a lot of modern Japanese wouldn’t deny anything, just because they aren’t even aware of any of this, because of course, they haven’t been told.
My God. A hero still lives! My dad lasted to 86. he would have been 93 next April 11 . . .
Thanks Kamakiri. I already started a separate thread about this.
Reminds me of that memorable scene in Band of Brothers where one of the Airborne guys stumbles on a German POW who’s actually American . . . but was forced to move back to Germany at the beginning of the war by his family. In the next scene . . . well, I won’t spoil it for you.
Yeah, I wasn’t sure quite how far to take this . . . I can see how some people might . . . um . . . disagree. I’ll check out your thread!!
I was born in 1946 and I calculate that my parents decided it was OK to conceive another child on or about the time The Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. (My mom was apparently super-fertile and could conceive at will.) I dimly recall my folks being glad they could buy stuff without rationing, like a tricycle for me, and shoes.
I have a patient who jumped in with the 101st on D day. He still lives by himself and works on heavy equipment daily. He’s awesome!
I first went to Japan in the early 80s as a Mormon mission, (obviously back when I was still LDS). I moved there again in 1990 and worked for or owned several businesses until two years ago when our family moved to Taiwan.
Depending on how Japan would have been without the war, my life as an adult would be completely different.
The war’s Spanish prologue and its subsequent isolation are the main reason my parents’ generation is generally in worse health than their parents: children of the war, malnutrition was pervasive. The levels of stress I imagine can’t have been good, and it wasn’t only those who’d been “in the front” who were traumatized by war. Families were broken; there’s graves whose occupants still haven’t been identified and people who are still wondering what happened to some of their relatives, both in the Spanish war and in WWII (many people had fled Spain for France or Belgium).
It also led to that generation growing in a much more restrictive environment than those born in the previous 40-50 years; not just because of the dictatorship, but because of, again, restrictions on what goods were available.
And it produced an influx of “exotic” lastnames, refugees from the war. Most of them were on their way to somewhere else, but quite a few stayed.
My father grew up in Belgium durin WWII during his formative years. Due to malnutrition it changed his DNA . His teeth were mess. So we’re mine and my sister’s.
My grandparents remained locked into that wartime ‘scrimp-and-save, make-do-and-mend’ mindset, as did my parents generation to an extent, and me (somewhat less).
My grandfather and his family, (mostly) ethnic Italians, were kicked off their farm in what became Yugoslavia after WWII. My grandfather then worked as a cook on a big American base in Trieste.
The family subsequently moved to the U.S. My dad was able to go to university and I was raised in the U.S middle class.
I don’t know if any of that would have happened without WWII.
I also lost relatives, but no one I knew of course–I’ve been told one of my father’s uncles was taken away by partisans and never seen again.
I owe my existence to WWII. My Grandfather met Jim when they served in the army together, and that’s how he came to be at Jim’s wedding to Lil, and that’s how he met Lil’s sister, Rose - my Grandmother.
Malnutrition can’t change DNA, to the best of my knowledge, and depending on what “mess” means, that mess may or may not have a genetic component.
I have a crooked left top eyetooth; so does my mother; so did her father; so did his father (none the corresponding spouses does). My brother’s sunk palate, on the other hand (and corresponding pileup of teeth), doesn’t affect any other known relatives.
Although my father hardly ever talked about the war, we always watched war shows on television when they aired.
My siblings and I are the recipients of my father’s PTSD. Yeah…it affected my life even though I wasn’t born until after the war.
Because of his untreated/self-medicated PTSD, and both of us being a bit crazy, I didn’t have a good relationship with my father until a Vietnam-era VA doctor told him, “I know what you have. You guys thought you were too tough for it.”
I remember during WWII I knocked out Adolf Hitler over 200 times! 
Musing about our plight as children…I decided that they must have not had a treatment for “shell shock” back in that day. I don’t want to think that my father wanted to tough it out although he appeared to be tough and all the neighborhood kids were afraid of him like we were.