You had grown up during the Great Depression, a hellish time of economic collapse and sacrifice. You saw your parents struggle and maybe even were separated from them. All that you thought was normal wasn’t anymore. While FDR said that all there was to fear was fear itself, the uncertainty weighed on your soul. There was no future and even less hope. There was just the moment. You learned how to take care of yourself and helped take care of your brothers and sisters. You could hunt, fish, fix things and find food when there wasn’t any money for it — skills that would serve you later. And then on a Sunday afternoon, you heard the broadcast that changed your life forever.
Pearl Harbor had been attacked. America was at war.
If you were 18 (or could lie and say you were), you went and signed up to fight the Japanese and Germans. You either trained to go to Europe, to sail the World’s oceans or you were sent to rot in a jungle in the Pacific. You faced foes that were relentless and cruel. And a part of you matched that cruelty. Death became wholesale — 100 men here, a 1,000 men there. You fought for more than you country and your family back home — you fought for your buddy next to you in the foxhole or on the bomber or on your ship. Many times, you saw him die in a way that left scars inside you that would never totally heal.
1942 was bleak with a few glimmers of home (The Battle of Midway). 1943 saw a turnaround. 1944 was a march toward victory. And then 75 years ago today, you got word that the guns had fallen silent. Two giant bombs had flashed over Japan, changing the world forever. But the world was behind you in line — you had already changed. You had fought fascism. You had stood up to tyranny. Now it was time to come home and try to live a normal life.
Thank you to all of the veterans who fought, sacrificed and came home. Thank you to all the veterans who died in the service of our country. Those men and women came home and shaped the United States into the world power it became. That generation, named the Greatest Generation by Tom Brokaw, faced hardships we’ll never quite understand. We inherited the fruits of their sacrifices. Now, in a time of challenge of our own, what we do with those fruits is the ultimate statement of our gratitude.
