THE WAR YEARS

Jenny would never forget that Sunday afternoon on December seventh, nineteen forty one, when Aunt Gladys stopped by on her way home from town to ask if they had heard the news. They hadn’t turned on the radio yet that day, so they didn’t know what had happened.

“The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor,” she said. America had a big naval base in Hawaii, so the probability of war was likely. President Roosevelt was going to address the American people that night. War! It just couldn’t be. Yes, they had been hearing all about the war in Europe, about Hitler’s conquests, but America was going to stay out of this one. Hadn’t the president said so? They were safe. This should not have been a complete surprise. There had been far off drum beats, but they chose to ignore these. They immediately turned on the Silvertone radio they had gotten from Sears that fall after the installation of the 32 volt light plant Dad had bought at a community sale. The radio had added a new dimension to their lives. Of course the radio was full of nothing but the news of the bombing and the terrible casualties. That night at eight o’clock, FDR made his famous address where he declared that December seventh, nineteen hundred and forty one would live on forever as a day of infamy. We were now at war with the Axis powers, Japan, Germany, Italy and Russia, its heads of state being Emperor Hirohito, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini and Joseph Stalin.

Jenny had a romantic unrealistic view of war. The U.S. would “win,” of course. We were invincible. She didn’t realize that nobody ever wins a war. She thrilled to the stirring war songs and the incredibly sad songs as well. Who could forget Kate Smith’s, “God Bless America,” or the hauntingly sad, “Bluebirds Over The White Cliffs of Dover.” The news media also glorified and romanticized the war and much emphasis was placed on keeping up the morale of the soldiers, and to keep up the morale of the American people, they were not informed as to how bad the war really was. There were many secrets about what was happening. America was unprepared for such a war and there were terrible losses of American troops. America became mobilized as quickly as it could, and everything went into the war effort. The cream of America’s young men was drafted to go into battle. Patriotism was at an all time high. To question the war was viewed as treasonous.

It was not until Jenny’s cousin Bill , a navigator in the air force, had his plane shot down over the Pacific and was lost forever, and Jenny observed Aunt Ada’s grief, that the impact of the war became more of a reality. She continued to cheer the enemy’s losses, however. Sometimes she had nightmares about the Germans and the Japanese flying directly over their farm and bombing them. The tide on the western front began to turn when Hitler made his fatal mistake by invading vast Russia and the German soldiers froze to death and died like flies in the harsh Russian winter. Americans rejoiced at the dropping of the atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not considering at the time, that this could someday happen to them. In nineteen forty six the war was officially over, but though there was some healing, much of the suffering would continue forever in a never ending chain of events.

Not until years later, after she read stories about the Holocaust and the widespread devastation of war, and got to know some victims and survivors of the war, did Jenny become became a pacifist and a strong supporter of war protests.