Saturday, May 30, 2015

My Dad In The War: The Japanese (Part Three)

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 soldiers should they invade. An invasion wouldn't just be to the last man, it would be to the last man, woman, and child.
     General Hirohito and the military felt they could inflict so much pain to the invading armies, that the Allied forces would be forced to negotiate, letting them keep some of their conquests. Meanwhile, as observed by Lt. Zamperini, the Japanese were preparing for the possible invasion by teaching their civilians to fight, and preparing defenses they developed in the war.
     They had hundreds, perhaps thousands, of kamikaze planes hidden in caves or forests. They had kamikaze power boats loaded with explosives, ready to hit the American fleet. If you remember what happened to the USS Cole in the 90's, then you know what a small boat with explosives can do to a battleship. They had men train with backpacks filled with explosives, prepared to crawl under American tanks.
     For the Japanese, to surrender under American terms would be a humiliation, so they were indeed prepared to fight to the last man. For the Japanese military, who were all pledged to die for their Emperor, they were prepared to even sacrifice their whole nation to preserve their personal honor.
     But, every day, the Japanese were starving or killing American POWs. Mainly, flyers who went down over Japan. In the island of Palawan alone, the Japanese, to prevent their rescue by Allied forces, herded over 150 POWs into an air raid shelter and incinerated all but nine of them.
     Thousands of civilians in Japanese occupied territories in Asia and the offshore islands were dying every day because of Japanese mistreatment. So America and the Allied forces knew the war had to come to an end, one way or another, preferably sooner rather than later.
     But even after President Harry Truman ordered the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Japanese would only surrender under the condition that nothing happen to their Emperor. Had Allied leaders--Churchill, Stalin, and Truman--not agreed to that one condition--a guarantee for the Emperor's safety--the Japanese would not have surrendered. They wanted to be assured that their Emperor would not be arrested, tried, executed, and would remain their leader.
     To this day, when the Japanese teach their children about World War Two, their explanation goes something like this: "One day, for no reason we can understand, the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on us."
     The atrocities the Japanese committed to the civilians of each country they invaded remain ignored and unapologized for. When they invaded the lower portion of China, they would take babies from their cribs or their mother's arms, and, swinging them by their feet, smash their tiny heads against the walls.
     To the victims, no apologies, no reparations, no acceptance of responsibility. To the enemy soldiers who were captured in Bataan and were tortured and used as slave labor, they also received no apologies, no reparations, and no acceptance of responsibility.
     Once, when my Dad was telling me these stories, I said to him, "Wow, the Japanese were like animals."
     "No," my father corrected me, and then explained, "Animals kill for food. The Japanese killed for fun."
 
 
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My Dad In The War: The Japanese (Part Two)

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 defeated man to man, and that would be no easy task.
     Many soldiers who had seen the pre-invasion bombing of those islands had said to each other, "nothing could live through that," only to find that their enemy was still alive. It was an enemy who was willing to suffer any sacrifice, including the ultimate one. Living in caves and tunnels, the Japanese were reduced to licking each other's sweat to stay hydrated, eating raw insects for sustenance... but they'd still come out fighting.
     But, as General George Patton once said, you don't win a war by dying for your country, you win a war by making sure the enemy dies for his country. Still, these victories weren't without their adversity.
     Japanese soldiers would often emerge from a cave with his hands up--naked, except for a loincloth--and when his enemy (American soldiers) came close, they would reach under their loincloth, snatch out a grenade, pull the pin, and throw it at them.
     In Europe, medics generally weren't shot at while performing their duty. In the Pacific, a corpsman quickly learned to get rid of his Red Cross armbands and insignia because the Japanese made them prime targets. Going back to the ingenuity of the American soldier, they soon began painting only a green cross with no white circle to camouflage the fact that they were medics. For the same reason, ranking soldiers learned to not wear their stripes or bars on their uniforms.
     In the end, what made the difference was what the competing armies fought for. While the Japanese fought for their Emperor, the Americans fought for each other and for their families back home.
 
 
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My Dad In The War: The Japanese (Part One)

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 Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941 and went beyond the Atomic bombing of the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. This hatred was fed to civilians and the military and nurtured by our very own governments. It's easier to kill an enemy you hate, and the differences in physical appearance, language, and culture combined with the propaganda and misinformation sanctioned from above, made the Japanese (and Americans) an enemy to be hated.
     And also to be feared.
     The only enemy easier to kill than the one you hate, is the one you fear.
     In the Pacific theater of the war, almost no infantryman became a POW on either side. If the Japanese ever captured a live soldier, which almost never happened, they would torture him to death.
     Other armies of other countries, when they ran out of ammunition, would surrender, but not the Japanese. They'd continue to fight with their bayonets, their shovels, sticks and rocks, and even their teeth. They'd fight to the very end, with the aim to kill ten Americans before they could be killed themselves.
     The atrocities the Japanese would commit included cutting off an enemies private parts and stuffing them into the dead enemy's mouth, extracting gold teeth from dead soldiers, and urinating into the open mouth of a dead soldier. This kind of behavior wasn't forbidden or frowned upon, but rather encouraged, and the Japanese--not all of them, to be fair--reveled in it.
     That's not to say the Americans didn't commit their own atrocities (see Halloween chapter), neither army's hands were clean, but the American's atrocities were spontaneous, brought on by the heat of the moment. With the Japanese it was policy. Only hate and racism could have caused that.
     The Japanese were called Lice, Vermin, Monkeys, Cockroaches, or Little Yellow Bastards by the Americans, and the Japanese called us names that were just as vile. All this may have degraded both sides as men, but it made them fierce soldiers.
     On a technical side, American soldiers far exceeded the Japanese, who were trained to do what they were trained to do and discouraged from doing anything more. The Japanese had a fierce class system, with every Japanese civilian or soldier expected to stay within that class. Where you were born was where you stayed, so, if a jeep were to break down, in the American military whoever could fix it would fix it, but in the Japanese military they had to wait for a mechanic because 1) they weren't supposed to fix it, and 2) they wouldn't know how to fix it.
     In the same way, if the Commanding Officer of a platoon was killed in battle, in the American military even the lowliest Private could step up to the plate and lead his brothers-in-arms into battle, but in the Japanese military they would be without a leader to tell them what to do.
     This was most apparent during the first part of World War Two, when it was thought by the Japanese that one's willingness to die for one's Emperor made them the superior soldier, but, in truth, it only made them better targets. For every American soldier who died fighting the Japanese during World War Two, nine Japanese soldiers died.
     So, after too many Japanese soldiers were lost in suicidal kamikaze attacks, the Japanese changed gears and learned how to hide behind bushes or in caves or in underground tunnels, and from there they could inflict the most damage.
     The Japanese did many things well, even superbly, but one thing they could never learn was tactics. For example, the Japanese can take a radio or an automobile and make it smaller, but they could never invent said radio or automobile, in the first place.
     In any army, at any other point in time, it was always policy to examine what you did, study what the enemy did, and then try to come up with a way to correct your mistakes and do better next time. From the beginning of the war until the end, the Japanese always believed in and never abandoned their code of "never surrender" as a way to win the war.
 
 
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Friday, May 29, 2015

My Dad In The War: Paradise

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, and brothels where the soldiers could spend their time and energy. Where, for less than a dollar, a soldier could buy enough gin and San Miguel beer to drink themselves senseless. But this was before the Japanese invaded and took over the small country, and before General Douglas "I shall return!" McArthur took it back.
     When Dad was stationed there, it was still paradise, but gone were the days where the officers lived like aristocracy, and they could play polo, tennis, and golf at their men's club on the shore across Manila Bay. Dad and his comrades in arms never had the opportunity to visit the fabled Army & Navy Club that looked like a mansion surrounded by palm trees, flame trees, and flowers. Where parties were hosted, women danced with their escorts, and officers toasted one another over centerpieces of yellow trumpet flowers and white cadena de amor.
     The Philippines, during our Dad's time there, was still a paradise, but, after two military invasions, it was on a more primitive level. The jungle was lush and beautiful. Thick and green and amazing to someone who was raised in the desert.
     Dad and his fellow soldiers slept in tents, while the natives lived in little bamboo shacks. Some natives had little horses the size of large dogs and some had oxen or caribou that they hitched to old wooden-wheeled carts.
     However, paradise had its annoyances. The soaking summer monsoons. The suffocating heat of the hot season. The incessant insects and the choking dust. Dad never thought he'd get used to it, but he did.
     It didn't just rain in the Philippines during the monsoon season.... it poured. The rain poured down from above, from the sides, and Dad would swear that the rain even came at him from the ground up.
     "When you stood in the rain," my father once told me, "you might as well have been standing in a waterfall."
     The natives, thick as bees, were always trying to sell you something. The children would beg for food, and the older ones would run from one soldier to another trying to get a job shining their shoes, making their beds, or cleaning their sleeping quarters.
     The soldiers had to have mosquito nets over their bunks so that they could sleep without being eaten alive. Not only were there a lot of mosquitoes, but they were as big as hummingbirds. Or maybe they just seemed that way.
     The main annoyance, however, was Santa Muerta. Saint Death, who could easily take your life with a bullet or with a bite from a black mamba snake. It didn't matter to her.
     To Dad, it seemed like in the jungles of the Philippines, everything was trying to kill you.
 
(A tip of the hat to Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman, who wrote
Tears In The Darkness.
A book about the Bataan Death March and its aftermath.)
   
 
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Wednesday, May 27, 2015

My Dad In The War (Part Fifteen)

  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:
 
     1) Dad's dress greens that he wore when he returned home after the war.  When Dad made it back home, he was still recovering from the malaria he caught in the Philippines, so the yellow skin color the disease gave him matched nicely with the Army green of his uniform.
 
     2) The Medic Helmet, ammo belt, and gas mask belonged to Dad. He never had to use the gas mask, except in training where his platoon had to enter a room where tear gas was released.
     The idea was, they entered the room wearing their gas masks, tear gas was released, they then had to REMOVE their gas masks and stay in the room for a FULL minute. A minute doesn't seem like a long time, but try holding your breath for 60 seconds and see just how long it is. After that minute they could exit.
     They came out coughing and crying and throwing up. Some kind of liquid coming out of every hole in their head, except their ears.
     If anybody left the room before that minute was up, they had to go through the training drill all over again, until they got it right, for as many times as it required.
     Dad didn't have to do it again.
 
     3) Dad carried the M-1 during his tour in the Philippines during World War II. Dad used the rifle numerous times during battle and the gun killed it's share of Japanese soldiers. The binder My Dad In The War that I mailed a while back has a picture of Dad holding the same rifle as he stands in front of a Jeep.
 
     4) There are two foreign rifles, a Japanese Arisaka Model 99 and a Chinese SKS. These rifles are known as battle rifles because they were taken after a fire fight. The Japanese soliders who had been shooting  at Dad with theses rifles were killed. They were taken after two different gun battles. These stories are also told in My Dad In The War.
 
     5) The Medic Helmet was given to Jim. Jim loaned it to me to add to my collection. Jim also loaned me the Army shovel Dad was issued
  .
     When Dad became a Medic--or, as he liked to call it, "an instant doctor"--he received six weeks of training and then he was officially able to pronounce people dead.
     The Army did not issue factory-painted Medic Helmets. All Medic Helmets were painted by the Medics themselves. Dad painted his before he left Hawaii for his war tour in the Philippines. It seemed like a good idea at the time. He was told that according to the Geneva Convention no one was allowed to shoot, or otherwise injure or kill, Medics. But then he found out that the enemy wasn't up on the Geneva Convention. The lifespan of the average hospital corpsman, from the time his foot hit the water to the time his foot hit the beach, was 7 seconds. The harsh truth was, there were two main targets in battle: Officers and Medics. The big red cross Dad had painted on both sides of his helmet only gave the enemy soldiers a target to aim for.
     "You want to buy a helmet with a red cross on it?" Dad asked his best friend, Bennett. I don't remember Bennett's full name, but I do remember Dad saying that he and
Bennett became closer than brothers. It was a strong bond they had, one that could only be forged by soldiers in war whose lives depended on one another. Still, strong as that bond was, Bennett declined to buy Dad's helmet.
     One interesting story of Dad's time as a medic was when his platoon was under attack by the Japanese. Everybody was in their foxholes. The shovel that in its later years was used to pick up dog poops in Jim's backyard, had dug the hole that saved our father's life that day.
     One soldier was in the wrong foxhole, and he wanted to jump out of the one he was safely in and run over to the one where his buddies were. Dad warned him to stay where he was. The soldier said he was going. Dad told him again to stay where he was. The soldier scrambled out and made a dash for his foxhole like it was the popular table in the high school lunch room.
     BAM! The soldier got shot, fell to the ground, and what was the first thing he did?
     "Medic!" he cried out.
     Dad peeked out of his foxhole and saw the soldier laying some distance away. He wasn't shot too bad. It looked like a leg wound. He took a bullet to the upper thigh.
     "You should have stayed in the foxhole!" Dad yelled, and ducked back out of harm's way. Dad didn't make house calls. Especially when people were shooting at him.
     After the battle was over, and everybody was able to finally come out of their foxholes, Dad went over to finally give the soldier some medical attention. Miraculously, he hadn't been shot again.
     "You'll be okay," Dad told him.
     "I should have stayed in the foxhole," the soldier said.
 
  (a tip of the hat to the great and cranky comedian Bill Cosby who also served as
an Army medic)
   
   
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My Dad In The War (Part Fourteen)

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.  It was tough going, my Dad’s always been one tough hombre, but they were finally able to subdue him. 
They had him on the ground, and he fought hard to get free.  Finally, from all the exertion, he passed out.  His brothers got him, and, I guess, all of us, home.  They placed him on the floor in the living room, where he slept until the next day.  When he woke up he couldn’t remember a thing.
Years after it ended, Dad was still fighting the war.
 
 
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My Dad In the War (Part Thirteen)

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 their death. You could say it gave them an added incentive to fight.
     Earlier that day, my father had found a can of Japanese C-rations when he was on patrol. And that night, in his foxhole, my father was a combination of bored and hungry, so he ate it.
     "How bad could it be?" he reasoned.
     Well, it was very bad, and my father got a severe case of diarrhea.
     Unfortunately, it was an extremely dark night. At night, even under a full moon, no one left their foxholes for fear of being mistaken for an enemy soldier. It wouldn't be the first time someone got killed because one of their fellow soldiers wasn't able to tell who was sneaking around in the darkness.
     But my father had to go, so he used the empty C-ration can as a makeshift toilet. I'm sure whoever was in the foxhole with him was appreciative of his ingenuity. When he was done, my father tossed the freshly filled C-ration can over the cliff he was near.
     "Shit going in, shit going out," my father told his friend, who was busy holding his nose.
     It just so happened that there was a platoon of Japanese soldiers at the bottom of that cliff, and Dad and his friend laughed when they heard excited Japanese soldiers curse in surprise when his "shit-bomb" hit the bottom and "exploded."
     "What happened, Longball?" another soldier in another foxhole wanted to know. "Longball" was the nickname my father's buddies gave him, for reasons that aren't appropriate for a family blog.
     When my father explained what happened, everybody got a good laugh. My father and his buddy laughed even harder the second time around.
     As it turned out, it wasn't the only container of diarrhea my father threw over the cliff that night, and it soon became a game with the platoon. Every time someone needed to go to the bathroom, they would take an empty C-ration can, fill it, and then toss it over the cliff. The angry Japanese response never failed to make them laugh. Somehow the response seemed even funnier in Japanese.
     Why didn't the Japanese soldiers simply move?
     Probably because that's where they were ordered to stay, and no one there had the authority to override that command.
     The next morning, when my father was asked why he ate the Japanese C-ration that gave him the diarrhea, he simply answered, "Because I was hungry."
     Food was sometimes scarce for American soldiers stationed in the Philippines, and it was scarce for the enemy as well. One Japanese soldier was so hungry he foolhardedly showed up at my Dad's camp in an Army uniform and got in the chow line with the other American soldiers. He was immediately recognized and wrestled to the ground. Everybody wanted to take a shot at him, because they understood the significance of where he got the uniform he was wearing.
     Eventually, the Captain showed up and took the hungry Japanese soldier into custody, and the hungry Japanese P.O.W. finally got what he risked his life for.
     Something to eat.
 
 
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Tuesday, May 26, 2015

My Dad In The War (Part Twelve)

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 one of the dead Japanese soldiers against most everybody’s wishes. The G.I. said he wanted the head as a souvenir.
            Later in the day, they found a safe place to set camp. Much to the dismay of Dad and some of the other soldiers, the G.I. who had taken the head took it to his tent and began cleaning it. Polishing it. Looking it over.
            Proud of his work, he showed it to others. Some looked. Ost didn’t. Some considered it bad luck. It was just a creepy thing to have done. The G.I. didn’t care. He lay back in his bunk, smoked a cigarette, and admired his handiwork.
            Night came, and everybody went to sleep. Hours later Dad—and everybody else—was awakened by someone screaming. The screams sounded as if they came from the depths of Hell, my Dad remembered. They were the sczriest screams he had ever heard. One of his fellow soldiers was screaming, yelling for help. Begging to be left alone. Don’t hurt me, please! Yelling for someone to help him. Yelling that he was sorry.
            Dad said that no one moved. Everyone stayed where they were, afraid to go help. It was pitch black in the jungle, so they couldn’t see what was going on. Even the guys who were on watch didn’t move or say anything. There was nothing they could do. It may have been a trap by the Japanese. You torture one soldier, and you kill anybody who comes to help.
            For hours everybody just sat still and listened to the screams. Dad didn’t make a sound. He just held onto his carbine, ready for an attack that never came. No one slept that night. The yelling and screaming never stopped.
            When the sun finally came up, they went over to where the screaming had been coming from. They found the soldier who had taken and cleaned the head of the dead Japanese soldier. He was in the fetal position, crying and begging everyone not to let the headless Japanese soldier hurt him.
            The dead soldier had come back for his head.
            The soldier was sent to the hospital and Dad never saw him again. Dad said that the soldier had been having a nightmare.
            Maybe he had.
   
   
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My Dad In The War (Part Eleven)

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 slowed his walk, and made sure he didn’t make any noise.
As he inched around a bend he suddenly came face to face with two human figures.  They all froze in surprise when they saw each other.  Dad said his senses became perfectly tuned.  It had been a dark, moonless night, but his eyesight was suddenly perfect.  His hearing shut out every sound except the movements of the two other men.  He could smell the plants all around him. 
He had been holding his military carbine with both hands, and had it pointed towards the ground.  The two men also had their weapons—rifles of some kind—pointed to the ground.  It seemed like they stood there looking at each other for hours, but it was actually only a few seconds, if that. 
Dad yelled out, “Stop and identify yourselves!”
No one moved or spoke.  Dad yelled again.
“Identify yourselves!”
Still no one moved.  By then, Dad’s eyesight had adjusted to the shadows and he could now see their faces.  They were Japanese soldiers. 
Then, all of a sudden, the two figures brought up their rifles very fast, but to Dad it looked like they were moving in slow motion.  With lightning speed, Dad also lifted his weapon, and opened up on them.  Lead was flying all over the place.  Dad could see the flashes from their rifles, and, at the same time, he could smell the burnt gun powder from his own rifle.
He fired round after round at the two soldiers, and, when his magazine emptied, without thinking he reloaded with lightning speed and continued firing.
Then, quick as it started, everything stopped.  Dead silence.  Smoke covered the area.  There were three men.  But there was only one left standing.  Fortunately for me, that last man standing was my father.
The two Japanese soldiers were lying on the ground, arms and legs at odd angles.  They weren’t moving.  Whatever advantage they had, they squandered, and now were dead as a result.  It reminds me of a line in Sergio Leone’s classic western movie The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly.  “If you’re going to shoot, shoot.  Don’t talk.”  They had squandered their chance to shoot, and now were dead.
Dad checked himself to make sure he had not been hit.  He hadn’t.  He stood there for a while.  Quiet.  Not moving.  Listening. Trying to hear if there were any more of them around.  Making sure that the two dead soldiers didn't have any backup.
What Dad heard was one of the soldiers moaning.  He wasn’t quite dead yet.  After several minutes my father slowly walked up to him, all the while keeping his carbine ready and pointed at them, and, at the same time, looking around for others.  As he got near them, he saw the soldier who was moaning lying on his side.  He was looking right at my Dad.  He was saying something to him.  Dad could swear that the soldier was calling for his mother.
“Mom…  mom…  mom…” 
The dying man started to reach into his jacket.  Dad pointed his carbine at him, and yelled at him to stop.  The soldier had the look of a person pleading, shaking his head to say that he no longer meant any harm.  He kept saying, “Mom…  mom…” 
Dad let the dying man reach into his jacket.  He brought out a white, folded sheet.  The soldier held it out toward Dad. 
“…mom…” 
Dad reached out slowly, and took it.  He stuffed it inside the front of his shirt.
The man kept calling for his mom until he died.
Dad stood there watching them for a while before he finally checked them for vital signs, but there were none.  They were both dead. 
Dad slowly backed away until he felt safe.  He lost the urge to visit his girlfriend, and walked back to camp.  Once there, he pulled out what the dying man had given him.  It was a Japanese flag with Japanese writing on it.  Almost all Japanese soldiers carried one.
That was the dead man’s last gift for his mom.
The next day, Dad and some of his buddies went out to check the area where the gun battle took place.  The bodies were gone.
It was a common practice for Japanese soldiers to be given Japanese flags from their friends or family.  Their friends and family members would sign it, and it was supposed to give them good luck and a safe return from the war.  The Japanese soldiers usually kept the flags inside their shirts, next to their hearts.
When my father married my mother, he told her the same story, with one exception. He said that he was on guard duty when he came upon those Japanese soldiers. He felt that mom would be jealous if she knew that this all happened because he was on his way to see an old girlfriend.
“I’m not jealous,” she told me. “That was your Dad’s past.”
But the past has a way of staying with you. Dad told me that, after all the years that have passed, he still thought of those two soldiers he had to kill.  He could remember their faces.  He could remember that one soldier, in particular, who was calling for his mother.  All sons love their mothers, even our enemies.
That flag has a lot of history.  I have the flag hanging on the wall in my house.  Every time I see it, it reminds me of my father.  My father is always here with me.  The flag represents my father’s life as a warrior in the jungles of the Philippines.  The battles.  The killings.  It’s all there in that one piece of cloth.
My father’s generation is known as The Greatest Generation.
Just before my father was honorably discharged from the Army, he caught malaria in the jungles of the Philippines.  An illness that not only almost cost him his life, but would make a return visit every few decades or so and try to finish the job.
When the war ended, and Dad was sent home, his skin was still a yellowish color from the malaria.  His family must have been surprised at the way he looked when he showed up at their doorstep.
 
 
Raising My Father
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jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
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My Dad In The War (Part Ten)

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 kitchen to begin making dinner, satisfied that she had made her point.
Why it took my Mom so long to get jealous, only she knows. My Dad did get pretty angry, though, but even he had to admit he wondered why it took her so long to do it.
Dad’s Philippine girlfriend was a sweet girl. She was with him for 3½ years, and followed him from town to town whenever and wherever he was transferred. She also used to do his laundry. But—and this was a big but-- she was always pestering him to marry her. Dad told her he would, but there was always a stipulation.
“Let me make Sergeant first, and then we’ll get married,” he promised, but when he made Sergeant he only came up with some other condition to postpone the ceremony.  Dad liked her, maybe he even loved her…
…but he didn’t want to marry her.
“After the war,” he told her, “I’ll come back for you and take you back to the United States with me.”
Eventually, Dad received his discharge papers, and he left, not letting the door hit him where the good Lord split him.  He didn’t even tell her good-bye.  Years later, he’d acknowledge that he treated her poorly, and he felt bad about it, especially about not keeping his promise—my Dad was a man of his word, after all--but what could he do about it?  What’s past is past.
In Spanish, Dad told me it was a shitty thing he had done to her, not keeping his promise, and I believe Dad did feel remorse about it. The look on his face, his mannerisms when he spoke about it, told me as much. I’m sure he was also thinking about her as a girl in her twenties, and here he was in his eighties. It’s the same with me, whenever I think about the girls I used to date in high school, I still think about them as the 17 or 18 year-olds they were back then, not the women they are now.
Calina used to sing “Sweetheart, Sweetheart” to my Dad when he was in the audience during her act, and perhaps even in private. Years later, when my parents would argue or Mom would be mad at him for one reason or another, he would sing “Sweetheart, Sweetheart” just to bug her.
After my Dad passed away, my Mom asked me if I had any pictures of Dad’s girlfriend from the Philippines. I told her no, that I didn’t have one, nor had I ever seen one of her or any of Dad’s girlfriends. There was no reason to tell her that I did. She would want to see the pictures, and what she would see was photographs of a very young Asian girl. Sometimes, it’s better not to open a can of worms.
On the back of that picture, his girlfriend wrote:
 
04-19-45
To my Darling Henry,
With much love and care,
Calina
 
In the picture, Calina is—was—very pretty, with a bright smile, good teeth, and wearing red lipstick. Every man’s favorite. Today, she’s either in her early nineties, or dead. Time. Life’s cruel joke.
Whenever I’m with my wife, and we see a Philippine woman, I’ll always tell her, “That’s my cousin,” regardless of the girl’s age. She usually responds with, “She’s young enough to be your great-grand-cousin. But I digress…
During this time, Dad opened up a bar in camp.  He never said where he got his liquor, but I’m sure he had some kind of connection through his girlfriend. 
When he was transferred, he left everything behind.
Although leaving his girlfriend behind in the Philippines might seem a bit callous of Dad, I’m sure he had his reasons. One of those reasons might have been a girl back home. Her name was Estella, and she was a very pretty girl with green eyes, which, for a Hispanic, is very rare. She was supposed to marry Dad, but she ended up marrying someone who didn’t go to war.
Many years later, after my Dad had married and raised a family with my mom, he was in the hospital. As my mother was waiting for the elevator to go up to my Dad’s room, Estela happened to be standing right next to her. She asked if she could visit my Dad, and my Mom didn’t know what to say, so she said yes.
They took the elevator up together, not really talking. It was an awkward few minutes, to say the least.
When they got to my Dad’s room, my mother said, “Honey, look who came to see you.”
Dad took one look at his old fiancé and immediately began cussing her out. She ran from the doorway crying, and they never saw her again.
“Why did you bring her here?” my Dad asked my mother, still upset.
“She wanted to see you,” my Mom told him, but, to tell the truth, she really didn’t know why.
She said that Dad was very mad at her for bringing by his old fiancé.
After telling you that story, this is a good place to tell you this story:
One day Dad’s platoon was at camp taking a break. They had all just got their mail, and one guy started crying and yelling. He was swearing at his girlfriend back home, calling her every name in the book.
He had just received a “Dear John” letter.
Dad, trying to give him some support and make him feel better, told him, “She’s a whore. You’re better off without her.” Or words to that effect.
His brother-in-arm’s eyes grew wide, and before he knew it Dad was facing the wrong end of the soldier’s U.S. carbine. It’s a literary cliché to say that an angry man’s nostrils flared and his teeth were bared, but that’s exactly how the soldier looked. Dad had pissed him off, and the man was going to kill him for saying what he did about his ex-girlfriend.
The soldier kept yelling at Dad that he could call his girlfriend a whore, but no one else could. Dad told me that he had never talked so fast and so carefully in his life. He apologized. He explained his point. Maybe he even told him about what happened with Estella. Whatever he said, it worked. The soldier finally put his rifle down. And he went off. Maybe to cry some more. Meanwhile, it was a learning experience for Dad.
He learned the value of carefully choosing your words, especially when you’re talking to a man holding a gun.
Which brings me to this story:
Dad and a buddy of his were on a boat in the ocean, not too far from shore. His buddy, who was a great swimmer, jumped into the clear, blue water.
“Hey,” he told my Dad, “jump in. It’s not too deep.”
He looked as if he was standing on the sandy bottom, when, in fact, he was actually treading water. That’s how good a swimmer he was.
My Dad, being no fool, looked over the side of the boat. The water was so clear that the bottom did indeed look to be only a few feet away, so my Dad jumped over the side of the boat, and immediately sank into ten feet or more of water.
Not being a strong swimmer, he began to panic, and came up splashing and sputtering.
“What’s the matter?” his friend laughed.
My Dad probably had a few choice words to say to his buddy.
Dad swam back to shore, grabbed his carbine, and took a couple of shots at his buddy. My father wasn’t trying to kill him, or even hit him. He was just trying to make a point.
You don’t play practical jokes on anybody with a gun.
 
 
Raising My Father
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jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
     

Monday, May 25, 2015

My Dad In The War (Part Nine)

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 song. It must have been bittersweet for him to listen to that song so far from home.
     On another Christmas, this one even further from home, Dad and his platoon were in camp in the Philippines.  It had been raining for weeks, and the heat and humidity and mosquitoes were making everybody’s life miserable. Dad had never seen such big mosquitoes in his life.
     Dad was just resting when mail call was announced.  This was a big event for them.  Everybody gathered around, hoping to hear from love ones.  Dad was one of the lucky ones this time.  Not only did he receive mail, but he also received a Christmas package from his mom.  He knew it probably contained his favorite, a homemade date nut cake.
     All his friends gathered around him as he opened the package, everybody was hoping to benefit from Dad’s good fortune, but when he opened the package they were all disappointed.  It was a cake all right, but there was no telling what kind it was.  It was completely covered in mold.
     Dad, like the medic he was, slowly worked on the cake.  It was green, dry, and hard as a brick, but he dissected it.  Slowly. Carefully.  He was determined to find one tiny piece to eat, but it was useless.  The whole cake was moldy, inside and out.  There was nothing for him to do but throw it away.
     Food in the Philippines always came with its unique set of problems. Besides Army food not being good, Dad said that he and his fellow soldiers couldn’t even eat it in peace.  When they were served their meals, all the hungry Philippine children would gather around staring at them, begging for food. 
     Dad would sometimes just put his plate down for them to eat and walk away, still hungry.
   
   
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  jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
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My Dad In The War (Part Eight)

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. His buddies also moved forward a little from their original postilions, creating a human triangle, of sorts. This would keep them from getting into a cross-fire.
     The point of all this maneuvering was so, when they started firing on their enemy, their fire would come from three different directions, instead of just one. This would confuse the enemy, make them think that there were more soldiers shooting at them than there actually were. It would give Dad and his buddies an advantage, and hopefully keep them alive.
     Dad held his position. He carefully aimed his carbine at the leader of the patrol. When the Japanese soldiers all got within the kill zone, Dad fired the first shot. The leader of the patrol's head snapped back, half of it blown away. Sometimes it doesn't pay to be the guy in front. The body dropped straight to the ground like a bag of flour. The man was dead, but no one told his legs. They started to move like they were in a race, kicking back and forth, back and forth. Taking him nowhere.
     Just then, the other Japanese soldiers returned fire. They opened up on my Dad, and he had to take cover for a few seconds. He lost sight of the running dead man.
     Dad's buddies then opened up and started firing back at the Japanese soldiers. Dad looked up and saw several other enemy soldiers fall to the ground. Dad joined in the fun, and opened up with his carbine. He emptied a clip. Reloaded. And continued firing. Not aiming at anyone in particular, just firing. Sweeping his carbine in the direction of the Japanese soldiers.
     The Japanese were being hit from three different angles. Confused, they didn't know where to shoot or who was shooting at them.
     Dad ran out of ammo again. Again he reloaded. And again he continued blasting away. He couldn't even see who he was shooting at any more, because of all the smoke and sweat in his eyes. But he kept blasting away.
     Better to be safe than sorry.
     After several seconds of not receiving any return fire, he yelled at the other guys to stop firing. They did. For a long time he listened. It was dead quiet. Not even the animals or the birds made a sound. Unlike the Japanese soldiers, they knew when to keep their mouths shut.
     He saw numerous bodies on the ground. They looked dead, but, still, he didn't move. He only listened and watched. He and his buddies knew that Japanese soldiers would pretend to be dead, and, when an enemy came close enough, they'd pull the pin on a grenade, killing themselves and any enemy close by.
     Dad and his buddies had no choice. They carefully took aim, and then systematically shot each body on the ground. They were dead, but the smart thing to do was to make sure they were dead.
     After being as sure as they could be, his buddies made their way back to their original positions, so they could cover each other's back, in case there are any additional Japanese soldiers who might try to outflank them. After a long time, and not seeing or hearing anything, they circled to the back of where the Japanese lay dead. They walked up to check the damage.
     In total, there were seven dead Japanese soldiers.
     If there were any survivors... well, let's just say that when the going got tough, the tough got going...
     ...the Hell out of there!
 
 
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jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
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My Dad In The War (Part Seven)

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 grateful, and I'm sure the Philippine women they visited whenever the opportunity presented itself were grateful.
     When Dad first told me this story, I thought perhaps that he was exaggerating for the benefit of his son, but after he died I came across an old WWII photograph of him standing next to his invention. He posed for the picture looking mighty pleased with himself.
     And clean.
     It was because of his natural mechanical ability that Dad eventually requested a transfer. He went from being a medic to being an automotive mechanic. It was a better fit for him. He enjoyed working with his hands, taking things apart and putting them back together. Plus, I'm sure he preferred working on broken down jeeps, rather than on dying soldiers. If you can't fix a jeep, you can always turn it into a washing machine. If you can't fix a human, you break a lot of hearts when you send them home in a body bag.
     Later, Dad became a truck driver (light). He drove a 2 1/2 ton truck, and hauled personnel and supplies. He also hauled infantry replacement troops from the rear guard area to front line duty. I'm sure he enjoyed his new position. He no longer had to get his hands dirty repairing any vehicles, and he now had a sweet ride into town to visit his girlfriend.
     Not a bad deal.
     Considering.
 
 
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jimduchene.BlogSpot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
     

Sunday, May 24, 2015

My Dad In The War (Part Six)

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 swords from a couple of dead Japanese soldiers as souvenirs. When the war ended, Dad received his discharge. As he was packing them to bring them back to the United States, a captain saw him, and told my father that he couldn't take them with him. Dad had to hand them over.
     Grudgingly, he did.
     The captain took them, and Dad was sure they ended up decorating his office or home. While it's true that to the victor goes the spoils, it's also true that rank has its privileges.
     Over fifty years later, and Dad was still pissed off at the captain for taking the swords away from him.
 
 
Raising My Father
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jimduchene.blogspot.com  Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
  

My Dad In The War (Part Five)

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 could, so the okay was given, and they cautiously walked up to the creek, all the time warily looking around. If there was a good place for an ambush by the enemy, this was it.
     Once they were at the creek, however, their thirst took over. They drank to their heart's content, gulping the water down. Some splashed the water on their faces, and a few of the jokers splashed water on the unfortunate soldiers next to them. Someone--maybe the C.O.--told them to slow down, not to drink the water so fast, but his words were mostly ignored.
     When they were done, they filled their canteens. Some of the soldiers sat and rested a bit. Others laid on their backs and tried to nap as best they could.
     And then they had to continue patrolling, they always did. There were groans and complaints as they got up, but got up they did. They changed the direction they were heading, and followed the creek upstream..
     They walked no more than forty or fifty yards, when they came across five or six dead Japanese soldiers lying in the creek, their bodies extremely bloated. What happened? Who knows? They looked like they had been dead for days, but maybe that was just the result of lying and decomposing in the water.
     The skin of the dead soldiers was off-white in color, a kind of lifeless ivory. They were so bloated the only thing that seemed to keep them exploding was their uniforms.
     What stood out in my dad's memory the most was how their eyes had been eaten away. By birds? By some other kind of animal? What was the point of even thinking about it? There was no way they were going to ever find out.
     The dead tell no tales.
     Every soldier there thought the same thing, but no one said a word. The dead Japanese soldiers were lying in the water. The same water they had just filled their bellies and canteens with. What could they do?
     They continued marching.
   
   
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@JimDuchene