BORN IN THE USA, Part 1

I was born 2 years after Dad returned home, after serving in the US Navy. He enlisted after high school graduation. A first generation Italian-American he was un-hireable. He hitch-hiked to the Great Lakes Naval Station with a nickel in his pocket and enlisted. Dad was a brilliant man, one of the first electronics experts. While his ship the USS South Dakota ( the most decorated battleship of WWII) was in dry-dock for repairs after being towed back to New Jersey from the South Pacific, dead in the water after a fierce battle with the Japanese, he taught electronics at Yale. Once the ship was seaworthy, he returned to battle.  

At the Harry Truman Museum a replica of his sister ship, the USS Missouri, is on display as it is the ship where the Japanese surrendered. Dad showed me his firing position inside the cramped and overheated turret. As he continued his explanations his stories drew a crowd, asking more questions. I watched my Dad enthrall over one hundred visitors for more than two hours, offering them a true account of why war is always hell.

Dad first escorted munitions to Great Britain as The US lend-lease effort. Many in the United States did not see the need to oppose Hitler and aid Europe. There was no NATO, nor United Nations yet.They soon learned the short-sightedness of such America First policy when Pearl Harbor was attacked. Dad was there, but the South Dakota was out on training maneuvers when the Japanese strike on Pearl Harbor occurred, one of two ships not damaged nor destroyed that day. Within hours those two ships headed out to the Pacific to engage the Japanese.

As an infant I sat on Dad’s lap as Mom served food and drink to his fellow servicemen returned from war. As I become a toddler, I sat silently at his feet, listening to their stories, feeling their angst, learning their wisdom. As a young girl, I sat quietly listening in the next room. Some Had fought on land, others at sea or in the air. One freed a concentration camp. Others fought the jungle and suicidal enemy soldiers. Dad explained that when the kamikaze pilots attacked by diving onto the ship it was not a single plane but as many as 9 or 10 planes hurtling to the deck during a single battle. He felt like he was on fire inside the turret, as sailors put out fires caused by the crashed planes.

I watched as they placed mementos of their war experience on the table, each with a story.  I recall Nazi helmets, German Lugars, even a Samurai sword. I still have a “lion dog” one soldier was given by a Japanese family who housed him during the American occupation of Japan following the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They treated him like a son of the family as they came to know one another. So many lessons learned through these artifacts.

These warriors appreciated that bomb and I struggled to understand how after hearing them describe the destructive force and damage caused by the nuclear blast ( far less powerful than the nuclear bombs we now have ready). They explained that there could have been no surrender without it. They said many more would have died and suffered if the war had continued on. When Americans built underground bomb shelters in case we were attacked by Russia, my Dad said it would be better to die in the attack than survive and suffer the results of nuclear exposure. My Dad told his little girl this. He told me war is always hell. He did not want his children to suffer hell on earth; better that they died immediately.

Such are the difficult decisions made during war. Every single man at our kitchen table agreed there should never be another war. In fact, WWII was billed as “The war to end all wars.” If only, Soon my godfather would be sent to Korea. Later my brother would be involved in the Viet-Nam War. Next a nephew fought in Iraq. Afghanistan after 9/11.  Now, a great-nephew has been sent to The Border in Brownsville, Texas. Other soldiers are being prepared to make war in Minneapolis.  My country has made war on VenezuelaIa.  It threatens war against Mexico, Greenland and Canada. Remember that there was a Japanese delegation in Washington D.C. protesting American tariffs and a trade war between our nations when Pearl Harbor was bombed in a sneak attack. 

It seems I have only ever known war. Yet, I have never known war. War has been visited upon others in my name. Until now. War is now showing its face, if not its full vengeance, in American cities. The Civil War happened before my family emigrated to the United States. I was so relieved my family had never participated in enslaving others. Later, I understood I was participating as policies underlying enslavement continued within institutional racism. There is no escaping racism. It is akin to being an alcoholic in a 12 step program. We Americans, even those with the strongest will and opposition to racism, must fight it one day at time, one step at a time; always alert to the impulse which drives us to use it. Like alcoholism, a drink may be an immediate solution; but only leads to more misery. And such misery continues to be visited upon people of color. The murder of Ms. Good and Mr. Pretti may have finally alerted white Americans to the misery visited upon all of us, when visited upon any one of us.

After Dad’s war buddies left I would question my Dad. I asked if it was hard to kill someone. Watching the war documentaries in between the Saturday double-features at the Midland Theater I could not understand how people could do such evil to one another, especially the death camps throughout Europe. Much later, I learned of the Japanese internment camps in my own country. The mother and father of a friend had been interred in such a camp and described the suffering and loss they had endured, sobbing out stories with great grief. Dad explained how such evil can happen. He told me that it is incomprehensible to a sane person to kill. The method used is to dehumanize the enemy so one no longer sees the person as a fellow human being; not merely someone different, but someone less than human. A German becomes a Kraut. A Japanese becomes a Jap.  A Vietnamese becomes a gook. An Iraqi becomes a towel-head. A Jew becomes a K..e. An African-American becomes a N…..r. An immigrant, asylum seeker or refugee becomes the worst of the worst criminal rapist and murderer. Not just different but less. Now, we have our own concentration camps after our WWII soldiers fought to free concentration camps in Europe. I know what the men at our kitchen table would say. They understood the propaganda that white men are not only superior, and all others are less. The men at our table knew better.

I asked why it took Pearl Harbor for the USA to join the war effort. He explained the appeasement of “old man”Kennedy and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain failed to assess the true danger posed by Hitler and Mussolini. Kennedy lost a daughter and son to the war; and a second son injured during a heroic effort. I wonder if later he could see his folly. I wonder if Heritage Foundation appeasers can see theirs. I wonder if voters will admit their folly in electing people ready to put their Superior policies into action.