 This week's issue of the newspaper is dated Dec. 7, 2005. For most of us it is just another day in early December. For another generation the date embodies memories of a four-year conflict that would end in the death of more than 3 percent of the world's population.
On this day 64 years ago, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. It was the catalyst for bringing the United States out of its isolationism and into the Second World War.
Until this week, my knowledge of World War II was limited in scope. I was familiar primarily with stories about Adolph Hitler and his extermination of six million Jews. I knew buzz words associated with the war--Battle of the Bulge, D-Day, VJ Day, greatest generation. But that's all this was to me: words on paper, documentaries on television, movies on the big screen.
My understanding deepened over the last two weeks, after interviewing three World War II veterans--Alice Wygant, Charles Manley and Everett Bass.
I listened to the recounting of their lives from 1941 through 1945. I looked at scrapbooks of personal photographs weathered and yellowed by time. I read newspaper clippings about friends and family, clippings so stiff with age that just unfolding them could tear those years apart.
These were stories about life, death and war heroes. About men and women not seeing their families for three years. About fighting on islands in the South Pacific where disease at times trumped war. About medical care that was still in its infancy. About those who struggled to administer proper treatment. In Wygant's case it translated to one nurse for every 70 wounded.
This war was about an astronomical number of soldiers lost in battle. Manley said his battalion lost 1,000 men every time it went out to fight. It was also about the threat of the unknown. Bass was attached to the chemical warfare unit, hauling 50 gallon drums of mustard gas through the battlefields as a retaliatory measure in case the Germans released their own arsenal of poisons.
Wygant, Manley and Bass put a face on this war for me. They made it real. They made it clear that those events, more than 60 years ago, were as vivid for them today as they were then.
After spending time with these veterans, who humbly said they were simply doing their job, I left wondering how many service personnel did not make it back. The answer: 292,000 U.S. servicemen were killed. It also shocked me to learn that 16.1 million individuals served in the U.S. armed forces between Dec. 1, 1941, and Dec. 31, 1946.
According to the 2000 U. S. Census Bureau, there are 5.7 million living World War II veterans. Yet I know that number has diminished steadily during the last five years. I see it every time I look at the obituaries.
These men and women, now in their late 70s and older, sacrificed their youth to protect not just our nation but our planet. That is the significance of Dec. 7 even six decades later. It is not just another day on the calendar.
Corrections
The Nov. 17 issue of the Willow Glen Resident listed an incorrect phone number for AAUW project chairwoman Elaine Benoit, who is collecting gift baskets and sport bags for teenagers. The correct number is 408.268.9654.
In the Nov. 23 story, "United neighborhood workshops help build strong communities," it should have read North Willow Glen resident and vice president of the North Willow Glen Neighborhood Association Clark Williams said education is the key to a neighborhood's and, by extension, to a city's success.
Moryt Milo is the editor of The Willow Glen Resident. She can be contacted at 400.200.1051 or mmilo@community-newspapers.com.
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