Time to Speak Out

(What follows is a departure from my regular format for these blogs. I feel strongly about the coming election and want to express my opinion.  I invite you to read an essay that may present some historical facts that may not be familiar to you. I was assisted in writing the introduction by a professional writer who shares my views.)

As early voting is about to start for the 2024 Presidential election, which will be the most pivotal one in more than half a century, I started thinking about the role of the federal government and our freedoms.

I’ve been a moderate Republican for most of my life – and even voted for Trump in 2016.  I now realize that he’s a craven, wannabe dictator who will dismantle our entire democracy if elected in order to seize absolute power and destroy his enemies, rather than make our lives better in any tangible way. (Unless you’re his ultra-rich friends who support him solely for his tax cut benefits.)

It’s a known fact that Trump is a big fan of Putin (sending him personal Covid tests – really?) But what’s perhaps not as well-known is that he’s also a big admirer of none other than Adolf Hitler. And as Trump ramps up his anti-immigrant lies, racist attacks, and threatens our personal liberties and democratic way of life, I thought it would be a good time revisit an essay that I wrote many moons ago for some kids in the neighborhood who wanted to know more about WW2 – the last time that our freedoms were so clearly under attack – and how our government, mobilizing the population, stopped Hitler and saved our democracy on the battlefield.

While the fighting will now instead take place on our own shores and at the ballot box, the stakes will be just as high for our futures.  I thought that, rather than have fun with another classic car blog, it would be worthwhile as a “call to arms” (so to speak) to reprint my WW2 essay as a reminder of the sacrifices that we’ve made in the past – and use them as a rallying cry for the present – so that people all over the country band together to ensure that our precious democracy is not lost forever.

 

My Experience During World War II

World War II (or WWII as it is abbreviated) started in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. I was six years old and in the first grade at school. The USA entered the war on December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. I was eight years old and in the third grade living in the small rural village of East Worcester, New York. I can remember hearing the broadcast of the raid on the radio and remember that my mother seemed upset. My father was not there as he was in a hospital with a serious mental problem. Television did not exist then, so all the news was by radio. The next day in school, I listened to President Roosevelt declare war on Japan, Germany, and Italy, who became known as the “Axis.” From that moment on, everything changed very rapidly in the United States.

You asked me about friends and family, and if they fought in the war. To answer your question, I will focus on Clark family members and people in my community. Vicky (my daughter) can tell you about the German relatives of her husband Jurgen Maier. It is an interesting story and very different than mine. My brother, who is three years older than me, and I were far too young to be soldiers and, of course, all my playmates and school friends were too young.

With the start of the war, most all the young men 18 and over were subject to the draft. The draft was a lottery where you got a number, and when your number was called, you had to report for military duty unless you were medically unqualified. This meant that most all the young men were put into the Army unless they volunteered for the Navy, Marines, or Coast Guard. Some men, who for religious reasons would not agree to fight the enemy, would declare themselves to be “contentious objectors.”  They were not liked by most people who thought they might just be cowards and afraid to fight. Many of them became medical corpsmen and did some very brave things to save lives of wounded soldiers. Our family was very small and did not have anyone in the military.

Our family was all Protestant, and I was baptized in the Methodist church. In our area of New York State, most families were farm families that came from Italy, Germany, Poland, Ireland, England, and the Balkan states of Europe. That meant they were either Catholic or Protestant with very few Jews. There were also very few blacks or “Negros” as they were called then. One of my school buddies was the only black kid in our small school, and we had fun looking at our different colored skin. Racial discrimination was very active in the country at that time, and it even extended into the military.

You asked about hiding and concentration camps. I will tell you an interesting true story. My wife Sara, who you knew and loved, came from the Philippines. She was the youngest of ten children. Her brother Johnny was a young officer in the Philippine army when the country was invaded by the Japanese. At that time in history, the Philippines were under the control of the United States so the Philippine and American soldiers fought together in a losing battle in the Bataan Peninsula. They were overwhelmed by the huge Japanese army and had to surrender and be taken prisoner. Of the 16,000 Filipinos taken prisoner, over 10,000 died by being forced to march to a train station 69 miles away. The Japanese were very cruel and killed them if they were sick and could not walk. It is known in history as the Bataan Death March.

Johnny was lucky – when a Japanese officer asked if he could drive, he got to drive a jeep and did not get killed. The captured soldiers were put in prison camps, one of which was near Johnny’s home village of San Isidro, where Sara was living as a young girl. She can remember Japanese officers playing a piano in her house. One evening Johnny drove some Japanese soldiers from the prison camp in Cabanatuan to San Isidro to eat in a restaurant. It was a short distance drive. When they went in to eat, he just got out of the jeep and walked home thus escaping from the Japanese. He then joined a guerrilla band of soldiers, and the family – including Sara – fled to the hills where the Japanese could not find them. She remembers Johnny burying machine guns in the ground to hide them. Johnny was a real war hero. He became a Lt. Colonel in the army after the war. I got to meet him when he moved to the U.S. and liked him very much.

WWII lasted from 1941 to 1945; I was eight years old in the third grade at the start of the war, and 12 years old and in the seventh grade when it ended. At the start of the war, my mother who had a Phi Beta Kappa degree (that means that she was a very smart student) in Latin studies could only find a job as a teacher in a one room country school house where she was paid $500 a year.

The whole country was poor as a result of the Great Depression that started in 1929. As kids we had to take care of ourselves. In the winter,  she went on snowshoes to the schoolhouse, which was way out in the country above the village. Very few people had cars – Mother took a bus to work – and none of the kids had bicycles as they were too expensive. Some of the houses did not have electricity, and some still only had outdoor toilets. We had indoor toilets and electricity, but to save money, the house was heated by a potbellied stove in the living room. The bedrooms upstairs got heat by covered holes in the floor called registers. In the winter, ice would form on the inside of the windows near my bed. I would lick it with my tongue. We took a bath once a week in the living room near the stove. We sat in a big tub that Mother filled with hot water that she heated on the stove in the kitchen.

The war and all the jobs that it created ended the Depression. My mother got a good job in the small city of Oneonta, New York, and we moved there when I was in the fourth grade. The city had a Teachers College, and I went to a school that was used to train teachers. It was a special school called the Percy I. Bugbee School; we were called the “Bugbee Brats” because we had special attention and got to do things other school kids could not do. I joined the Cub Scouts and later became a Boy Scout.

WWII had a noticeable impact on all families including ours. Because the country needed to feed a huge army plus help feed people in other countries, particularly England, it became necessary to ration food to keep people from hoarding food and forcing others to go hungry. To do this, the government issued ration cards that limited the amount of food that you could buy. Items that were rationed included sugar, meat, gas, and butter.

All the car factories were converted to building weapons for the military, including tanks, ships, trucks and airplanes. This meant that after early 1942, they could not build cars and no new cars were sold. In addition, they rationed tires and gas. If you had a car, you were given a sticker to put in the windshield that told how much gas you could buy. Unless you were a doctor or other special person, most everyone got an “A” card and could only buy very little gas. You only drove the car when you absolutely had to.

To get more metal to build war machines, everyone was asked to collect metal that was not being actively used. As a Cub Scout, we would help with “scrap drives” to pick up metal such as old pots and pans that people would put out on the curb. All the old cars not being used were turned into scrap metal. We also collected paper and grease.

What we are going through today cannot begin to compare with what happened during the war. We had lots of contagious diseases, including whooping cough, mumps, measles, smallpox, chicken pox, rabies, influenza and worst of all, scarlet fever and polio. If you got sick, you just got well on your own. If there was scarlet fever, the house was “quarantined,” and no one could go out or come in. After it was over, the entire house was decontaminated by a special vapor. If you were really unlucky and got polio, you ended up in an “iron lung,” where only your head stuck out of the machine, to help you breathe. Our President had polio and could not walk. Lots of kids died. Those of us that survived had really good immune systems because of all the bugs that we had to kill in our bodies. Now you get vaccinated for these diseases to prevent getting them. I cannot believe how stupid some people are that do not want to get vaccinated. This new disease will also need a vaccine, but until we have one, we have to get well on our own just like when I was young during the war.

Every family was involved in some way during the war. Many families had men that were in the Army. If you had someone in the military, you put a small flag with a blue star for each person in your window. If a family member got killed, and a lot of men got killed, you put a gold star in the window. They became known as “gold star” families.

Since the majority of the men were in the army, it became necessary for women to do the work at home that used to be done by the men. Women built airplanes, fixed cars, drove buses and worked many other jobs. It used to be that women stayed home and took care of the family, and only the men worked. WWII changed that, and now women work in all kinds of jobs.

Some of the things that were done then seem funny now. Oneonta was a railway repair hub for steam locomotives that carried coal from Pennsylvania to the factories in New England. They were the biggest steam locomotives that were ever made. I would go down to the little railroad station and put a penny on the railroad track for the locomotive to run over. It would be spread out like butter on bread. It was feared that the Germans would bomb the rail yard and destroy the locomotives. We learned to identify the German airplanes so we could report if they flew over. This was silly because Germany had no planes that could fly to the United States.

The way that we learned about the war was by reading newspapers, listening to news broadcasts on the radio, watching “newsreels” at the movies, and reading magazines. One magazine, LIFE Magazine, was the best. It had great pictures and articles with a lot of illustrations about the battles in the war. After looking at the pictures and reading about them, I could identify all the military aircraft that were used during the war. (I can still identify them!) As a young cadet, I got to fly in some of them after the war was over.

What I felt about the war as a young boy was excitement about all that was going on. I wanted to learn about it. The war seem more like a game that a brutal fight. Because we were young, we were sheltered from the harsh realities and tragedy that abounded all around us. We just knew that some men who went away did not return. The adults did not share their grief with us.

What you need to know about WWII was that it was a terrible time of death and destruction. Millions and upon millions of people were killed by bombs, bullets, and disease. A lot of very brave men fought and died so that we can live free. You cannot live free by ignoring what happens in our government. There are always people that are ready to take away your freedom and have you do what they dictate. You must educate yourself about how we are to be governed and actively vote for people that will fight for your freedom. Not voting and not learning about government will almost guarantee that you will lose your freedom and have to live as others tell you how they want you to live.

There can never be another war like WWII. As an officer in the Air Force, I worked on jet bombers. I helped load atomic bombs, one of which would totally destroy Denver. Now these bombs are even more powerful and can be delivered by rockets that cannot be shot down. This means that if there is another war like WWII everything will be destroyed. Since any enemy knows that they would be destroyed if they attacked us, they dare not do it. It is this fear of mutual destruction that keeps a major war from occurring. Instead of a major war, we now have many small wars that are fought like WWII, but on a small scale.

Our best hope is to work together and help each other live a good life so that the causes of war can be eliminated, and we can all live in peace and freedom.

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