Jill Biden tweet: 79 years ago today, our nation met tragedy with courage and resilience. My father

[no matrix]

39. I understand that you feel this way, but

sadly, there are so few WWII veterans and families left to tell their history. I know my father suffered from many jungle diseases from being "left" by Gen.MacArthur on those horrible islands, starving,
sickly, trying to survive, for the invasion of Japan. He never mentioned the horror, until the day my brother's number came up to be drafted to Viet Nam.

"This country has taken enough from this family. I will not let my son be left to die in another jungle."

I asked my Mom, because Dad never talked about the war. She told me after he died at 63, that he never really came back. The didn't know about PTSD then.

He was a sharp shooter, spent most of 4 years in the Pacific Theater. He came home weighing a skeletal 80 pounds. My Mom flew out to CA. where the wounded arrived. They felt he would not survive. They stuffed my Dad's sunken cheeks, added makeup & uniform for their "wedding picture" at the hospital, then IMMEDIATELY off to a year long recovery. He had relapses throughout his life from Malaria, and reliving in inhumanity of gorilla warfare. I often saw my Dad, staring off into the distance, unaware of my presence, even though I was talking to him. We often took walks in the woods, and he always carried his rifle. Like movie the "Deer Hunter", he never shot it again.
They wrote every day. These beautiful love letters, of longing. They had a love for each that inspired my own marriage of 45 years next month.

The best place to get a real feel of the U.S.
A documentary film by Ken Burns, called "The War" will explain exactly where the US stood after the events of Pearl Harbor.




https://kenburns.com/films/war/