It
was December 1941. Americans who
normally anticipated the approach of the New Year with excitement and jubilation
now did so with mixed emotions. As the
clock steadily ticked past the last few minutes of the year, we entered 1942 as
a nation in its twenty-fifth day of war.
Americans went about
their daily routines in an atmosphere of impending disruption. In our household, the very idea of the United
States being at war with Italy was especially disturbing to my parents: My
father and mother had emigrated from Italy and were extremely saddened by such
devastating news. Also on their minds was
the possibility of their two oldest boys going off to war, perhaps never to
return.
My oldest brother Bob, age seventeen, was looking forward to
graduating high school in the spring.
The next in line was Angelo, a year and a half younger than Bob.
The prospects of a compulsory draft hovered over many adolescents on the verge of adulthood who could reasonably anticipate being in uniform within a year. To Bob and Angelo, the draft was not a problem. Instead of waiting to be greeted by Uncle Sam, they had decided to enlist.
When Bob enlisted, the military immediately realized what they had. As a young civilian, Bob specialized in auto mechanics and could fix anything. His mechanical mind could troubleshoot any problem and, with a little tinkering, could set any engine humming again in good order. To the military, Bob was a godsend and after having been given specialized training in aircraft mechanics, he was assigned to the Army Air Corps and eventually sent to a British air base where he kept the planes in battle-ready condition.
The prospects of a compulsory draft hovered over many adolescents on the verge of adulthood who could reasonably anticipate being in uniform within a year. To Bob and Angelo, the draft was not a problem. Instead of waiting to be greeted by Uncle Sam, they had decided to enlist.
When Bob enlisted, the military immediately realized what they had. As a young civilian, Bob specialized in auto mechanics and could fix anything. His mechanical mind could troubleshoot any problem and, with a little tinkering, could set any engine humming again in good order. To the military, Bob was a godsend and after having been given specialized training in aircraft mechanics, he was assigned to the Army Air Corps and eventually sent to a British air base where he kept the planes in battle-ready condition.
Angelo’s
enlistment was somewhat different from that of his older brother. Angelo was only seventeen years of age when he
quit high school and tried to join the Marines. Uncle Sam rejected his offer of enlistment
because of his young age. Born on the
first of October 1925, Angelo had to wait until he reached the magic age of
seventeen and a half before he was eligible.
In the mean time, with Bob away serving his country, Angelo was left at
home pacing the floor like a caged tiger.
When April 1, 1943 finally arrived, he wasted no time: Six days later, he
found himself at Parris Island, South Carolina, training alongside hundreds of
other enlistees of the United States Marine Corp.
On the home front, my family kept up with the latest
developments on the war and learned about the custom of placing a star banner known
as a Service Flag, in the front window of the home. This custom, it turned out, was not a new one.
It began with the Gold Star Mothers
Club, formed to provide support for mothers who had lost sons or daughters in
the Great War, later renamed the First World War. The custom was derived from families of
servicemen who hung a banner called a Service Flag in the window of their
homes. The Service Flag had a star for each family member in the military.
Living servicemen were represented by a blue star, and those who had lost their
lives were represented by a gold star.
My
father readily adopted this custom and proudly hung the Service Flag in the
front window of our home displaying two blue stars. He was proud of his sons and prayed every day
for their safe return home. In our Brooklyn neighborhood, Service Flags were
displayed in the front windows of practically every household, some with blue
stars and some with gold.
Although
Bob was kept busy mending airplanes in England, he was lucky enough never to
have been engaged in combat. Angelo, on
the other hand, was also kept busy, but in the South Pacific, his deployment
would take him into combat zones on the islands of Saipan, Okinawa and Iwo
Jima. It was during the raising of the
Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima that some of the fiercest
fighting had occurred. The Marines cleared one island after another but still
the fighting continued.
The
United States had made many attempts to bring the war to a close, but Japan,
though beaten badly, refused to surrender.
It was only after the United States had dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese
soil that Japan’s sense of discretion had finally outweighed its need for
valor.
On
September 2, 1945, in the middle of Tokyo Bay, on the battleship USS Missouri, the
formal and unconditional surrender of the Empire of Japan brought hostilities
to an end. Angelo was just short of his
twentieth birthday when and he and his fellow Marines marched into Japan.
Now
that the fighting was over, Angelo found time to play his favorite sport - baseball.
It was during one of the games he played
with his fellow marines that he was spotted by a naval officer who handed
Angelo a card. The officer, who had been
a baseball scout before the war, invited Angelo to apply to the New York Giants
farm team as a possible candidate to play professional baseball. As far as his plans for the future were
concerned, it was a toss-up: either finish high school and go to college or
check out the Giant Farm Team. Either way, things were looking up.
In
Brooklyn, as well as in other parts of the world, families were welcoming their
loved ones home from the war. Housewives
cried and their husbands toasted the war’s end with the fighting boys who had
returned home as men. Block parties were
everywhere and in the wake of their revelry Service Flags were gradually,
almost without notice, becoming less visible in the front windows of homes. And the nation, at long last, looked forward
to recapturing its rhythm of peace.
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