RaisingDad

Part Three         In 1945, the Japanese were all but defeated, but they still wouldn't surrender. America knew that an invasion would be costly. It was estimated that Allied casualties would be over 800,000 men. This was because the higher-ups in the Japanese military, who had all sworn an oath to fight for the Emperor to the last man, would rather become extinct than to lose their honor by surrendering to the Americans.      Additionally, the Japanese felt that if they could make the cost of victory for the Allied forces so painful in the form of casualties and deaths, the Allieds would be willing to negotiate a settlement much more beneficial to the Japanese than the terms they would receive under an unconditional surrender.      In the book "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand, POW Louis Zamperini talks about seeing old women and children being trained with sharpened bamboo sticks to fight off American ...

Part Two        In addition to this, all through the war the Japanese had no plan on how to defend the empire it had so recently conquered. The Philippines were taken over by the Japanese from the Americans, and then lost it back to Allied (American) forces.      If they had any strategy at all, it was to make the price of victory so high, the Americans would tire of the war and seek to negotiate instead, leaving them with many of their conquests. And although Americans were getting tired of the war, they were still determined to fight until the very end, and so they went forward with their plan to invade the Japanese homeland.      America felt Japan could be successfully invaded and defeated, but they knew it would be at a great cost. Like in the islands of Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima and Okinawa, the war would have to won foxhole by foxhole, tunnel by tunnel, and cave by cave. The Japanese would have to be defe...

Here's where I lose my Japanese fans. Before you read this, let me just tell you that these just aren't just my father's recollections or opinions. I also referred to the following non-fiction books to back up my Dad's version of what happened in World War Two. If I didn't have at least one verification of an event or an opinion that my father offered, then I didn't include it.   A tip of the hat to Stephen E. Ambrose who wrote "To America / Personal Reflections of an Historian."   A tip of the hat to Laura Hillenbrand who wrote "Unbroken."   and   A tip of the hat to Richard B. Frank who wrote "MacArthur."   Part One          During World War Two, the hatred Japan had for the United States went long and hard and deep, and was probably stronger than its hatred for any other country, including China. As for the Americans, they hated the Japanese just as much.      This began with the bombing of ...

Paradise   The Philippines would have been paradise, if the Japanese weren't always trying to kill Dad. The fact that they were also trying to kill every other American soldier there wasn't a comfort.      Manila was known as The Pearl of the Orient, especially in the precincts where the Americans and the Europeans lived and worked. Along the boulevards, the trees were always trimmed and ringed with flowers.      For decades the Philippines had been a backwater post. A collecting pool for those on the way up, young officers eager to get their tickets punched for promotion, and those on their way out, the deadwood, the drunks, those disappointed over being passed over for rank, all of whom waiting to put in their papers and end their Army lives so that they could begin their civilian ones.      But it was a gorgeous backwater, where white orchids grew in coconut husks. There were beaches, ball fields, ...

  I sent all my brothers and sisters a binder with copies of pictures of our Dad in the war, along with stories of his adventures. I'm sure the gratitude will be pouring my way any day now like a tsunami of appreciation. This is a sample page:   All items on the attached sheets were given to me by our father over four decades ago. Dad gave them to me with the agreement that I would not show them to anyone or talk about them with anyone until after he was dead. He did not want to answer any questions about the rifles or about his experiences in the war.      If you want to know the details about how Dad acquired the rifles, they are in the stories told in the binder I sent you titled: My Dad In The War.      I had planned never to show them, but Jim talked me into adding them to Dad's binders. Dad's history is our history, after all.      The attached sheets include:   ...

Years later, my Mom told me that Dad had been mentally affected by the war.   Asleep at night, alone with his subconscious, he had many nightmares about the war and about the Japanese soldiers.   Those he killed and those who tried to kill him. I don’t remember this incident, but she said that once, when we were young but already living on Cuba Drive, we were over his brother George’s house celebrating someone’s birthday.   All the men were together, drinking shot glasses of tequila , which was the norm in those days, and the Duchene brother’s alcohol of choice. This time the tequila took Dad back to a darkness in his soul, and he had a war flashback.   He started yelling that the Japanese were attacking, and for everybody to take cover.   He hallucinated that two men who were at the party were Japanese soldiers, and that they were attacking. He tried to go after them, yelling that they had to be stopped.   He was held back by several of his brothers....

Fighting the Japanese wasn't always done with bullets or bombs.      My Dad remembers that the Japanese had learned to call out "Corpsman!" so they could shoot the medic when he showed up to help. Later in the war, soldiers were instructed to shout, "Tallulah!" if they needed medical attention. Tallulah was the first name of the Hollywood movie star Tallulah Bankhead, and it was chosen because of the difficulty the Japanese had in pronouncing the letter L.      In his own way, my father got his revenge without firing a shot.      I don't understand the logistics of how the foxholes were laid out, but they were near a cliff. I can understand the logic of that. With the cliff behind them, they only had to worry about the enemy attacking them from one direction. Unfortunately, that also meant if they were overrun, they had no way to escape, unless they wanted to jump off the cliff to thei...

One day Dad’s platoon was attacked by a group of Japanese soldiers. There was gunfire all over the place. Smoke, soldiers being hit. Soldiers yelling for help.             From out of nowhere, with no rhyme or reason, a platoon of Japanese soldiers ran out of the jungle and straight at them. They were firing their weapons in a kind of suicide attack. Dad’s platoon opened up with all they had and took them out like ducks in a penny arcade.             My father said that the Japanese soldiers were like wild animals, and, like wild animals, they were put out of their misery. After the battle was over, Dad’s platoon went out to check the area to see if there were any more enemy soldiers waiting to attack. There weren’t.             While his platoon was out checking the kills, one of Dad’s fellow soldiers claimed the head of...

Dad had a Japanese flag he brought home from the Philippines.   It was torn in some places, and had some blood stains on it.   As a kid I hung it up with thumbtacks on the wall of my room.   This is the story of how my father got that flag. One night he felt like he had to go out for a walk alone.   He decided to walk to the town of St. Fernando, where he had a girlfriend.   He knew it was dangerous to be away from camp, especially alone and at night, because the enemy was all around, but he went anyway.   There are some things worth risking your life for, and, at that age, a few minutes alone with your girlfriend is one of them. Would I have risked my life in the war in search for the physical solace a woman provides? I’m a Duchene. The answer is yes. Most men would. He was walking along a road, but not on the road itself.   He walked a few feet to the side.   He was several hundred yards from camp when he heard someone talking.   He s...

My father didn’t squander his time between battles with the Japanese.   In town he had a girlfriend.   Her name was Calina, and she was a pretty little Philippine girl who was a singer at one of the town’s bars. An 8x10 signed picture of her was one of the few things he brought back with him from the war.   He had other pictures of her, some of them even came into my possession, but that one was his favorite. He kept that picture until he was in his 80’s, but, after over 50 years of marriage, my mother finally tore it up and threw it away.   "Why'd you throw away her picture?" my Dad demanded to know. "Why were you keeping her picture?" my Mom demanded to know. Since neither had a good enough reason for doing what they did, the argument kind of fizzled out. My Dad went into the den and sat down in his favorite chair, probably remembering back to a time when he was young and strong and the secret behind a young singer's smile, and my Mom went into the k...

Christmas was a sentimental time for everybody.   Everybody was homesick, and Dad said that even listening to Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas” would make most of the soldiers tear up, and some of them even cry.      In 1941, on what would have been my father’s first Christmas away from his family, his father, Emilio Duchene, wrote to the commanding officer of the Medical Battalion, and asked if his son could receive a furlough for Christmas. I don’t have a copy of the letter my grandfather sent, but it must have been especially heartfelt, because Captain Robert J. Lanning wrote back on December 24th, “(I) am quite capable of appreciating your feelings.” The answer, however, was no. The Captain ended the letter assuring my grandfather that, “(Henry) will be perfectly all right during the Christmas Holidays (sic).”      It rarely snows in El Paso, Texas, but my father must have understood perfectly the sentiment in Bing Crosby’s classic ...

Dad was on patrol with two other guys. They were checking the area for Japanese soldiers. They were taking a break and were sitting in the jungle, hidden by all the growth. They had been there for awhile when they heard voices coming from somewhere close by.      Dad's eyes got real big. He could hear the voices, but couldn't see anyone. His buddies also heard the talking, but they, too, couldn't see anyone. They didn't move or make any noise for several minutes. They just stayed where they were. Silent, listening as the voices got closer.      Finally, a group of ten or more Japanese soldiers came into view. The enemy soldiers were walking toward them. Dad looked at his buddies, and, whether by training or by instinct, they knew exactly what they had to do.      Dad stayed in the middle, while the other two worked themselves outward toward the left and the right., maybe ten to fifteen yards to each side....

My Dad was always good with his hands. There wasn't anything he couldn't do, anything he couldn't build, or anything he couldn't fix.      He was also vain.      I don't mean that in a bad way, he just had the vanity of a good-looking man. He didn't only want to be handsome, he wanted to look handsome. So it must have bothered him to have to wear the same Army uniform day in and day out, and not be able to wash it.      I tell my kids, "See the problem, solve the problem." I probably got that from my Dad. In fact, I know I did. And solve the problem my Dad did. By hand, and with what little materials available to him, he designed and built a washing machine.      The design was pretty simple. Basically, it was just an empty metal barrel attached to the front-wheel drive tires of a jeep, but it did the job. Thanks to my Dad, his platoon was able to wash their uniforms without any fuss or muss. They were g...

After one of the battles with the Japanese, Dad found a .45 on the battlefield. He didn't know who lost it, or if that person was even still alive. All he knew was that it was a nice-looking gun.      So nice, in fact, that one of his commanding officers asked him if he could borrow it. He told Dad that he didn't have his sidearm with him, and he felt out of uniform with it. He told Dad to let him borrow it, and, when he was able to retrieve his own gun, he'd give it back. Reluctantly, my father lent him the gun, and...      He never saw that .45 again.      There's a picture of my father standing in front of a jeep. He's holding up his carbine, shirt torn, and a cigarette dangling rakishly from his mouth. He's wearing his helmet tilted at a jaunty angle. If you look on his hip, you'll see the .45 in its holster.      In a similar story, after one battle with the Japanese, Dad took two samurai ...

Dad's platoon had been marching all day in the jungle.      Sometimes it seemed like all they ever did was march. The heat and the humidity were extremely harsh. Most of the guys had run out of water, and the ones that had water had very little. Dad remembers being very thirsty.      Finally, they came upon a small creek. Thirsty or not, they still had to check out the area to make sure the coast was clear. A couple of soldiers were "volunteered" to walk to the creek and start drinking. If there were any enemy soldiers around, they would be the first to find out. The rest of the platoon stayed back, hiding in the thick brush. They were covering the guys at the creek.      They looked. Nothing. They listened. Nothing. They listened some more. Still nothing. A few of the soldiers circled around, checking out the immediate area. It looked okay. There was no way to determine if it was 100% safe, but they did the best job they co...