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Seventy-nine years ago on this date, though it was actually a Sunday, my uncle John Willis had ridden his bike down to the Puyallup river and was fishing Clark's Creek that morning when a car drove up and stopped.
The man yelled over, "what are doing; haven't you heard?" "You need to get home right now!" My uncle "Jack" was an avid Pacific NW hunter and fisher even as a kid so when he graduated high school that next year, he enlisted in the Navy. No surprise that he went on to Gunnersmate (GM) school.
After training he shipped out to the Pacific to an LST (landing ship tank) where they served in what he called "McArthur's Navy," until hostilities stopped. He saw action but only rarely spoke of it. His ship was in the group that was hit by the first Kamakazi attack. My mom said her big brother Jack came back from war in the Pacific extremely thin, would't talk much, and would wake the house many night screaming. Mom never forgave the "Japs" for "trying to kill her brother."
I had two other uncles but on dad's side of the family that served in the Pacific after December 7, 1941. One an Army vet who also served in the next war, and never spoke about his experiences, and my other uncle was a Marine Corps gunner & radioman in dive bombers, awarded the DFC.
Lest we forget
The man yelled over, "what are doing; haven't you heard?" "You need to get home right now!" My uncle "Jack" was an avid Pacific NW hunter and fisher even as a kid so when he graduated high school that next year, he enlisted in the Navy. No surprise that he went on to Gunnersmate (GM) school.
After training he shipped out to the Pacific to an LST (landing ship tank) where they served in what he called "McArthur's Navy," until hostilities stopped. He saw action but only rarely spoke of it. His ship was in the group that was hit by the first Kamakazi attack. My mom said her big brother Jack came back from war in the Pacific extremely thin, would't talk much, and would wake the house many night screaming. Mom never forgave the "Japs" for "trying to kill her brother."
I had two other uncles but on dad's side of the family that served in the Pacific after December 7, 1941. One an Army vet who also served in the next war, and never spoke about his experiences, and my other uncle was a Marine Corps gunner & radioman in dive bombers, awarded the DFC.
Lest we forget