In what way did WWII affect you the most?

[begin_within]

I wouldn't exist if it weren't for it, because my Mom and Dad were both in the USMC at that time and met in 1944 at the Marine base in El Centro (now a Navy airfield). My Mom probably would not have entered the Marine Corps if WWII hadn't happened, and would have never met my Dad.

[Vincardog]

1. My father was on the first ship into the harbor after Hiroshima. He might not have picked up the

Radioactive dose that gave rise to the mutant that is me if not for WWII.

[Kutjara]

2. It turned the man who would become my father...

...into a psychotic control freak who was incapable of talking about anything else but the "good old days" when he was killing Germans, something he clearly wished he was still doing until the day he died. He made life a living hell for anyone unwise enough to get anywhere near him, with unexpected bouts of rage mixed in with yawning chasms of self pity. Of course, any suggestion he needed therapy was met with blank incredulity. Only "whackos" went to shrinks.

His worldview was black and white in the extreme, and his preferred choice for dealing with any social problem was either incarceration or hanging. He was a racist, nationalistic bigot who, in spite of working all over the world, never opened his mind to other cultures by even a nanometer.

This was a man who, according to other members of his immediate family, was a sensitive musician and painter before the war, whose fondest desire from childhood was to be a doctor. After 1939, all that changed. I never met the man he'd been before.

[Suich]

11. I'm so sorry, Kutjara...

I can't even imagine what it was like for the soldiers to return home, after being in Europe or the Pacific. I wonder the same thing today.

:hug:

[Kutjara]

14. Thanks Suich.

My experience of my father, even though he fought in a "just" war for noble reasons, has made me a strong opponent of war. It destroys the very thing it seeks to secure and renders all those touched by it into either monsters or victims, and sometimes both.

:hug:

[DURHAM D]

13. Did you watch the The War?

I would curious as to your reaction and thoughts after watching.

[Kutjara]

15. Unfortunately, I've managed to miss it so far...

...but there's an episode on my local PBS affiliate tomorrow, which I've just set to TIVO. I've been meaning to watch it, but kept forgetting. Thanks for the reminder! :hi:

[tularetom]

3. My parents both enlisted after I was born in 1941

and left me and my sister with my maternal grandparents. The war's most lasting effect on me was getting to know my grandpa and grandma who were almost like a second set of parents to me until I was 10 years old.

[RB TexLa]

4. I would have been able to meet more of my relatives

And have more relatives.

[Fredda Weinberg]

12. ..

[yurbud]

5. Is it just me or is all this jizzing over the Good War a lot like what happened before Iraq started?

remember Tom Brokaw and his Greatest Generation book?

I'm glad we fought Hitler and all that, but Jesus Christ, it seems like we are being played again, and this worship of World War II is like the background music for propaganda puppet show in the foreground.

[BrotherBuzz]

7. Tom Brokaw's Greatest Generation splashed in Jan 1999

one entire year before Bush entered office.

[ashling]

6. My Father was a Navy Doctor

stationed at the VA hospital in Jackson, MS after the war. My mom was director of the Red Cross at the hospital. When Dad got out of the Navy he went back to Henrietta TX and set up his medical practice. They corresponded by letter (I have most of them) and when she wrote that she was going to marry somebody else he bought a car and drove to Jackson and married her.

[parasim]

8. It affected my relationship with my dad mostly...

Without the wars my dad fought in, I might have got to know him better. At about 10 I witnessed his alcohol-induced flashbacks of wwII and korea more times than I care to remember and from that point on I became a pacifist. My dad was an avid hunter, but I never hunted with him, because I abhored guns and the thought of killing things. He never talked about the war, except through those crazy flashbacks. But then he wasn't talking about it. He was re-living it.

Although he was a die-hard, America-love-it-or-leave-it conservative, he later told me he hated war and hoped I would never, ever have to endure what he did.

But then again, perhaps the way it affected me most was, since he was infantry, I guess I'm pretty lucky that he made it home at all. Because if he hadn't, I wouldn't exist.

[leftofthedial]

9. it gave me the false assumption for most of my life

that Americans are the "good guys"

[RamboLiberal]

10. I wouldn't exist in another way

Man my mother loved was killed in WWII. She met my dad after the war.

Also my uncle who I never got to meet was killed in a training accident on a B-24. Always wish I could've met him cause he sounded like an interesting guy. Could play guitar by ear, an electronics whiz (in fact that got him killed since he subbed for the radio man that day instead of being in the nose where he could've bailed out), and a mechanical whiz who could completely disassemble a Model A Ford and put it back together.

Sad part was they drafted him in 44 and didn't even let him graduate with his high school class. He was killed in Dec 44 and chance are by the time he'd have gotten in to the war it would've been about over.

[rAVES]

16. I would be writing this in German..

:sarcasm:

[Bobbieo]

17. I think the most memorable thing about WW2 - the aftermath-

was the fact that it gave the hundreds of thousands of veterans the GI Bill Of Rights and the opportunity to go to college which changed the economic face of our country for the next 50 years.

[Spinzonner]

18. Don't flatter youself

It might have been Japanese.

Well, my father didn't serve because he was partially disabled by polio but he met my mother through his sister who worked with my mother together in a war-related office.

[Skittles]

19. the bombing caused lifelong scars to my English mum

WWII happened when she was aged 8 - 14. No way could it not affect her.

[KharmaTrain]

20. I Grew Up In The Shadow Of This War

My father served in Europe. He married my mother before they went off...had their first child in 1942 who died while he was overseas. They were both depression kids who had just toughed out a decade of poverty that explains a lot to their mindset going into this war. Also, being Jewish, I had family that perished during the Holocoust. The connections have always been strong for me and this is the best presentation of that time I've ever seen (far better than the crap on the History Channel). I only wish they were alive to see this.

My son has watched most of this with me...and he was moved by the sacrafices they had to endure. The graphic films really helped bring home how war is the ultimate madness, but that this what this country was fighting for. How the worm turned as I've now had to endure two wars where our country has created the madness.

BTW...my father did his basic at Camp Calland outside of San Diego. I have his footlocker with his uniform, mess kit and his letters to my mother and family. I've avoided looking in their since his passing, but now I will go in there and document his war experience.

Cheers...

[Raine]

21. I wouldn't have been born if not for WWII

My father (he was from Los Angeles) was in Sacramento before he shipped out and he met my mother who lived there. My father met my mother's sister first at a dance and thru her met my mother and the rest is history. :loveya: They married in 1946 and I was born in 1950, they were together till 1997 when my mother died from cancer.:-(

[eridani]

22. My father was in the Signal Corps, and never saw combat

All his Army stories were funny, unlike (presumably) those of my uncle who was in the island to island fighting in the Pacific. My cousins have yet to hear a single word about his experiences. I suspect that he stayed sane because he was able to cram all of it into one mental compartment and firmly slam the door shut permanently.

I'm here because some army doctor told my dad that being in the tropics suppressed sperm count!

[pampango]

23. If there had been no attack on Pearl Harbor and the Philippines,

we might have stayed out of the war, as we had from 1939 up until December 1941.

If we stayed out, Germany would probably eventually have defeated England which wouldn't have had any help with German submarines. I think Russia would have probably eventually defeated Germany, but either Germany or Russia would have won control of all of Europe and the land mass of Russia, not just the eastern half that Russia ended up with.

Japan could have ended up with control of China and much of southeast Asia, though Russia may have turned on them once they took out the Germans.

The US would have rebuilt its military, which was pretty pathetic in 1941, as long term protection. It would have been a much different world with some combination of Germany, Japan, and/or Russia controlling much or Europe and Asia.

[annabanana]

24. My folks also met becasue of the war. . .

But in a different way.

The G.I. Bill allowed my Dad to go to the Univ. of Michigan when he got out.. That's where they met.

[trof]

25. I lost my father.

No, he wasn't killed in combat.
He and my mother divorced in 1944.
I was 3, and I never saw him again.

I later learned that he was stationed in Honolulu, in charge of graves registration for the Pacific theater.
I guess he got lonely out there.
There was a Dutch woman (secretary?) working for him and they fell in love.

I've had a good life, happy childhood and all that, but I've often wondered how things would have turned out if he hadn't left.
:shrug:

[Vinca]

26. I probably wouldn't exist either - my parents met in the Navy. nt

[Thothmes]

27. Parents

Thanks to Pearl Harbor, my dad's ship(USS West Virginia) was in Bremerton Naval Shipyard being rebuilt. One day while on liberty in Seattle he stopped at a soda fountain where my future mom worked behind the counter. The rest as they say is history.