I was a wartime baby, having been born in 1940 during WW2 in what was then Greater Germany (now the Czech Republic). Looking back on it, I didn't choose the most auspicious time to be born. These were hard times for millions, and catastrophic to lethal for millions more, but in spite of hardship my family survived intact, eventually settling into a new life in the USA. Although I remember bits and pieces from these war years, I was a little kid, so none of the anxiety and responsibility fell on my tiny little shoulders. But growing up, The War was always a background to the history of our family, and for that matter, to that of all my German friends. It was just there, always lurking, surfacing every once in a while, in offhand comments, stories of hardships, joys, longing, relief, survival or loss, and it shaped attitudes and imaginations, inevitably including mine. For many of us German wartime children, The War seeped in to occupy some, perhaps unacknowledged, corner of our personas.
I got an emailed comment from Lynn Rogers and asked if I could share it. So, here it is.
Interesting story and description of Okinawa.
I was named after my uncle, Lynn Hunter, who was a Marine off Okinawa waiting to land on the beach at the southeast shore. One morning they were given a good breakfast and then they climbed down and loaded into their landing craft. As they approached the shore, they could see Corsair fighter planes strafing the shore line and dropping bombs to create smoke. He said you could see the Corsairs shudder as they fired their machine guns and see them slow down from the recoil. He kept getting closer and closer to the beach and then all of a sudden they were told to turn back. They didn’t understand what was going on. No one told them and the next day the same thing happened again. They approached the beach and then were told to turn around and come back. The third day this happened again. Then, with no explanation, they were sent back to Saipan. He found out years later that this was all a fake attack in hopes of pulling the Japanese away from the actual attack area. In late August 1945, at the age of 19, he was sent to Nagasaki to serve as an MP for a couple of months. This was just a few weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped there. He lived to the age of 92 with no apparent effects from radiation.
Walter, good research on the Battle of Okinawa. It was, like so many of the island battles "Hell on earth". I had an uncle who fought with the army on Guadalcanal and and another who was with the Marines and was wounded in the first assault wave. The real tragedy is not so much those battles, as tragic as they were, but the lamentable fact that we have learned nothing in the last 90 years.
Very poignant essay as only a child of the war could have written. The contrast of the quiet, beautiful vine growing above the foaming sea and the utter horrors of the earlier war, I find both sad and very poignant. A Japanese poet wrote a famous haiku about the quiet waving grass present now at a famous earlier battlefield where thousands had perished. I think there were poets who said similar things about the current peace at some sanguinary battlefields of WW I.
I got an emailed comment from Lynn Rogers and asked if I could share it. So, here it is.
Interesting story and description of Okinawa.
I was named after my uncle, Lynn Hunter, who was a Marine off Okinawa waiting to land on the beach at the southeast shore. One morning they were given a good breakfast and then they climbed down and loaded into their landing craft. As they approached the shore, they could see Corsair fighter planes strafing the shore line and dropping bombs to create smoke. He said you could see the Corsairs shudder as they fired their machine guns and see them slow down from the recoil. He kept getting closer and closer to the beach and then all of a sudden they were told to turn back. They didn’t understand what was going on. No one told them and the next day the same thing happened again. They approached the beach and then were told to turn around and come back. The third day this happened again. Then, with no explanation, they were sent back to Saipan. He found out years later that this was all a fake attack in hopes of pulling the Japanese away from the actual attack area. In late August 1945, at the age of 19, he was sent to Nagasaki to serve as an MP for a couple of months. This was just a few weeks after the atomic bomb was dropped there. He lived to the age of 92 with no apparent effects from radiation.
Lynn Hunter Rogers
Walter, good research on the Battle of Okinawa. It was, like so many of the island battles "Hell on earth". I had an uncle who fought with the army on Guadalcanal and and another who was with the Marines and was wounded in the first assault wave. The real tragedy is not so much those battles, as tragic as they were, but the lamentable fact that we have learned nothing in the last 90 years.
Steve
Such a story and life you have lived Dr T… wish we had the opportunity to chat about it all. So glad to have crossed your path!
Very poignant essay as only a child of the war could have written. The contrast of the quiet, beautiful vine growing above the foaming sea and the utter horrors of the earlier war, I find both sad and very poignant. A Japanese poet wrote a famous haiku about the quiet waving grass present now at a famous earlier battlefield where thousands had perished. I think there were poets who said similar things about the current peace at some sanguinary battlefields of WW I.