'I LIVED THROUGH THE GREAT DEPRESSION'
Today, it's almost a religious thing with old people to say "I lived through the Great Depression," or "I lived through World War II."
Truth of the matter is, while some people starved in the Thirties and some people died or were badly wounded in the war, for many people in the United States at the time, neither the depression nor the war were much more than a minor inconvenience.
In the depression, the rich got richer, and in the war, the rich got richer.
If you had money, the Thirties were great years to buy up real estate and failing businesses, and then ~ if you weren't drafted ~ profiteering and the black market eased the inconveniences of the war years.
A lot of old people now seem to want some kind of Victory Medal just for being alive back then.
Rationing was one of the minor inconveniences
of World War II
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DODGING THE DRAFT BOARD
If a boy preferred any other service to the U.S. Army in WWII, he had to "enlist" before he turned 18 and became the property of the draft board.
I waited as long as I could, but finally had to join up about the same time that Hitler shot himself and the Germans caved in. That still left a problem with the Japs, however, and from all reports at the time, they were mean as heck.
I had selected the Navy, and shortly after I went to boot camp, the reports started coming in about "kamikazes." They were the suicide pilots who were sinking so many U.S. ships in the Pacific. Not being much of a swimmer and having a pretty good knowledge of the gigantic geographical expanse of the Pacific, I began to feel I'd made a mistake by choosing boats.
So when a notice was posted that the Seabees needed volunteers, I decided to take advantage of the opportunity. The officer at the desk said I was a fool; that if I stayed with the Navy they would send me to radio school or some other cushy place where they used the brainy ones. He said that if I went to the Seabees, all they would do for me was hand me a hammer and a shovel and a wheelbarrow. I told him I kind of felt like that was just about my speed.
~~~
Joe Cafaro and Jim Pearce
in the dirt branch of the Navy
Seabees, Port Hueneme CA, 1945
PROPERTY OF THE USA
Not long after I went to boot camp in Bainbridge, Md., I was playing a game of baseball on the recreation field there. I was a catcher.
An ambulance roared up and a guy with a lot of stripes and stuff on his arm jumped out and called my name. He took me to the hospital, where I was told that one of the many examinations I had gone through had turned up a right inguinal hernia, and if I was going to be any good to the Navy, it was going to have to be fixed.
Great, I said, I would keep the hernia. I preferred a discharge to an operation.
"Buddy," said the surgeon (holding the rank of commander), "your butt belongs to the U.S. government, and you have no say in the matter. You'll be operated on at 9 a.m. tomorrow."
(Today a hernia operation is relatively nothing. They have you walking the next day. For some reason, in 1945 it was a big deal, requiring a week of post-operation bed rest and three weeks idle time.)
The doctor was as good as his word, and I wound up in a hospital ward for the next four weeks.
There were 54 surgical patients on the ward. Fifty-two of them were genuine war heroes, U.S. Marines and Seabees from Guadalcanal, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. There was one other shaved-head recruit, a boy who had been hurt in firefighting school, and me, with my hernia.
I kept a low profile.
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UNSUNG HERO
In the Bainbridge hospital ward, there were a lot of young boys who were terribly wounded.
Some were practically insane with pain, and some had wounds that couldn't be fixed, but there were some who were going to recover physically.
One of those was Patrick Morano, but we wondered at times if he was going to be okay mentally.
Morano claimed to have been one of the men who raised the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Everybody had seen the famous picture, and everybody was certain Morano wasn't in it.
He insisted that that didn't matter, that there had been an earlier flag-raising and he was one of the fellows who put it up.
Some of the fellows went along and said, "Yeah, yeah, Pat," but some were a little cruel and poked fun at him even to the extent of composing and singing a little ditty about "When Morano Raised the Stars and Stripes on Iwo Jima Isle."
Later, we began to hear rumors that there really had been an earlier flag-raising and we began to wonder if maybe Pat was going to be vindicated.
After some time, the first flag-raising was confirmed in the newspapers and the names of the men involved were published.
Sadly, we couldn't find Patrick Morano's name on either list.
Maybe there were three flag-raisings on Iwo Jima.
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PURPLE HEART, SCARRED SOUL
Nick was hurt really bad. He had weighed 170 pounds when he went onto the beach at Guadalcanal. He weighed 90 pounds when they put him on a hospital ship for home.
Months later he still was unable to walk, though he could stand at times for as long as five minutes, with help.
He had a five-inch wound in the middle of his back where the machine-gun rounds went in, and a 15-inch wound in the middle of his front where the bullets came out.
He would live, but his intestines were ruined and his bowels moved through the opening in his stomach as he lay in bed.
Everybody on the ward knew when his bowels moved, because he started screaming as soon as they did and wouldn't stop until he was cleaned by a corpsman.
He cursed constantly, directing epithets at God, the Japs, the United States, the president, the U.S. Marines, the doctors, and most of all the hospital corpsmen.
The only time he ever stopped cursing and lay quietly was on Sunday afternoon, when his mother and father from New Jersey came and spent a couple of hours by his bedside.
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