Thanks for posting, even though it made me cry. My DH graduated from high school and promptly joined the navy. He said it looked cleaner than other branches. He was in CA waiting to ship out when the war ended. His Mother told me she was so thankful, as her other son was already "over there". He is buried at Ft. Sam Houston. I had a cousin who was a spy during WWII. He was also with a group that liberated one of the Jewish camps. He once told me it was so horrible that he blanked the memories out for the rest of his life. When he was getting security clearance, some one went to his aunt's house in Vermont. She was hoarding sugar. When the maid told her it was the FBI, she thought that was what it was about. There has been a member of my family in the military in every war, including this one. My granddaughter went to the middle east in 2006 and my GS is probably over there now. Another proud American

We didn't take vacations when I was growing up. The road trips we took were to move from one of my dad's duty stations to another. I vaguely remember driving from Virginia to California, via Alabama to meet my dad's relatives. I was only about 6 years old. When I went back to visit them years later, they told me a funny story about that trip and my mom. The water quit or power went out or something so they couldn't take a hot bath. My mom asked for water from the stream by their house because she just couldn't go without a bath, even for a day. They got buckets of water and poured them over my mom so she could get clean. She's Japanese so I guess she wasn't embarrassed bathing in front of the female relatives. They said she yelled and carried on from the cold water but got her bath. This was the year my brother got three birthday parties! One in Alabama on this trip, one in San Deigo at another stop we made at the home of one of my dad's old friend's. Bill got a puppy from them too! Then when we got to San Pedro, my dad was assigned to a submarine and they had another party for him, in the sub! Brat. The other big trip we made was from San Pedro to Fallon, NV when my dad got stationed there. We drove through Sequioa and Yosemite National parks, and through the Lake Tahoe area. The only thing I remember about that trip was the trees. When I was in high school a friend came to visit from Virgiina and my dad took us to Bodie, the ghost town in California. (I forgot about this trip!) Then after I grew up and was in the Air Force, I came home on leave and my dad and I took a trip out to New Mexico to help his step mother and brother. We went through Utah's Bryce, Zion and Capitol Reef parks. On the way home or to, we stopped in Santa Fe and visited his dad's grave, went to the capital building. I'm glad we took that trip, even though it was kinda sad. The kids and I took a short trip to Cave City here in Kentucky a couple years ago and stayed in the teepee motel...they still joke about that place. It was old, with no updates to the electric or rooms, probably built in the 50s. Then we went cross country last year out West. I don't know if they are going to remember anything, though...I bought them both moose Christmas ornaments to remember Yellowstone..or rather outside of Yellowstone. Coming into it we saw a moose and then after we left we saw a mom and her baby, but Alex said "what moose?" when I explained the ornaments. How could his memory be that short?!!!

A few more items to add to my earlier post: This country pulled together during WW2. Everyone contributed to the effort. I believe it was because we as a nation was scared. When you become scared enough, you are willing to deal with desperate measures. It was a shock that the Japanese could easily sink a large part of the Pacific Fleet in one pass. We knew that Japan had a navy including submarines. Their fighter planes powered with Mitsibushi engines were equal to ours. After Pearl Harbor, we feared Japanese attacks on the west coast. There were more rumors floating around than truths. The problem was, there were enough actual incidents to fuel the rumors. Many things were tried to demoralize the population. It was tried to float incendary devices with baloons over the west coast. The idea was to set cities on fire. It did not work, but a few forest fires were set. In the Alantic Ocean, our merchant ships were being sunk by German U-boats. Submarine conning towers had been sighted off the east coast. Germany had war planes as well, but we feared their navy more. With both oceans filled with danger and Europe falling to pieces, we at last became scared for our lives and entered the fray 110%. Great effort was made to improve our fighter planes. In 1940, we did not have a big bunch of capable fighter style planes. A rush was done to make aircraft carriers more effective and equipment them with better planes. One the planes that became a premier fighter was the P51 Mustang. It set off to war with an underpowered engine. By war's end, its power almost doubled and it becanme a force to be reckoned with. The gull shaped wing Corsair had an interesting development. That plane was chosen to be adapted for carrier use. There are two requirements for carrier based airplanes that is different to gound based aircraft. It was desired to have folding wings so that more planes could be stored ina given space and the landing gear had to have almost more ft of compression to deal with the very hard deck landings. Now that extra compresion brought on another problem and that was banging the propeller into the deck. The Corsair had been under deveoplment as a land based airplane. Its designer needed to make it ready for carrier use in about 6 months. He did not have enough time to develop a completely new landing gear and figure out how to fold it insde the aircraft. This is what he did. He aimed the first part of the wing downward so that the shortie landing gear would hold high the nose of the plane. The hinge of the folding wing was right over the landing gear. The engineer gave the outer part of the wing a greater angle upward than normal practice. He did this in hopes it would negate some of the negative angle of the inner part of the wing. Designers of the day were building wings that were bent up a bit to aid stability. That negative bend was a worry. The engineer had not a clue if this would work. He more or less 'eye balled' the design making a guess as to what was proper. This gave the plane a distinctive gull wing shape. It was a nerve racking day when the test pilot put the plane into the air for the first time - It worked! And our designer became an instant hero. He had an equal chance of being panned and ridiculed. Radar development was fast and furious as well. Some pretty awkward designs were pushed out the door. There was no time for refinements. A sister development was SONAR for under water use. Penicillin was another WW2 development. It probably saved more lives than anything else. Down on the farms, fertilizers came into widespread use and unfortunately, DDT too. A national speed limit on trucks was 45 mph in the interest of saving fuel and wear (and tires). I'm not sure this was an effective thing because it slowed moving overland freight and extended driver's time behind the wheel. The city of Portland, Oregon became a ship building center. Many Liberty ships were made there. But you may ask, "Why Portland? Its 100 miles from the ocean." Its distance from the ocean was the very reason is was chosen. That portion of the Columbia river is deep enough to float ocean going ships (if they do not have too much draft). Nets made of heavy chains were placed in the stream to prevent a sub from navigating upriver. These chains were far enough below the surface to allow small boats to pass over. Anytime a large ship was to pass, these chains were dropped to the bottom. Listening and observation posts were established along the Aluetian chain of islands of Alaska. This chain stretches far across the northern Pacific. The poor souls who manned these posts were expendible. If anything happened to them, the military was not going to spend extraordinary rescue effort. The reasoning was the probability of success was low and it would be wasted effort. These hardy souls were on their own. Once settled in during late summer, you be spending the winter there. One of my cousins was one of those people. During the early part of the war, a country wide scrap metal drive was made. Independent truckers (mostly farm trucks and private businesses) canavssed the country side gathering scrap metal to send to the smelters. Iron based metals were of high demand followed by aluminum and copper. The first drive was sucessful but soon aferward, the government believed it needed more. A second drive was made and this time, there was not much to be had. After the second drive, there was no spare metal left on farmsteads. The local blacksmith managed to keep enough metal to keep his shop running. Before the war, it was common practice to pick up hitchhikers. The great depression had made hitchhikers out of many persons. In the rural communities, it was the thing to do, to give you neighbor a lift if you saw him trudging down the road. By war's end, this changed. As happened more than a few times, a soldier on furlough would make a home visit or to a relative or sweetheart and then use hitch hicking augment his trip back to base. The general population would offer rides if they were traveling his direction. Unfortunately, low lifes of our country began to take advantage of that situation. They might sit beside the road with a duffle bag and be clothed in a tattered and dirty uniform while their only purpose was to rob you along some lonely stretch of road and maybe take your car. A number of victims were killed. That was too bad, because a few soldier boys did get into bar fights, became unkempt, and maybe lost their money. They'd be AWOL if they did not get back to base. A nation wide campaign began to avoid hitch hikers. You gave a ride to only those you knew, and never to strangers. This was one of the negative effects on our society. The decline of small country churches began when farm communities became depopulated during the war. This trend continues today and the small country church is disappearing. First it was the close of the one room schools followed by the churches. The churches had been the social center of rural populations. It served up more than religion. It was the place to catch up on community news, arrange other social events, and maybe go to someone's home after church for Sunday dinner. There was no television and movies were frowned upon on Sunday. Boys and girls arranged dates. In summer, swimming and picnicing were popular. Chowders and family reunions were common. That all began to evaporate with the population shift and the tremedous advances in communications, both personal and public.

Chisue wrote, I was not so forgiving of my own father, who left my mother and me when I was two. Although he visited me sometimes, and sometimes gave me grandiose gifts, he failed to pay court-ordered alimony or child support. Chisue, I really understand. I've spent 35 years trying to forgive my father and frankly, it has been a hard path. I could write an entire book about the process, and honestly, I'm still working on this new habit of forgiving him. The pain and hurt he inflicted on my mother is the hardest part of this forgiveness equation, but a hospice nurse told me, "Your mother is past all that now, and she has forgiven him." That one comment helped me so very much. (My mother died 10 years ago.) And when I was cleaning out my father's home (before he went into assisted living), I found his baby book, and that helped, too. I've posted a link below that explains it more fully, but that baby book enabled me to let go of a lot of hurt and sadness. And now that I have forgiven him, and now that I realize (and trust) that my beloved mother is "beyond" all that pain now, I feel like I've dropped a very, very heavy burden. The Aramaic word for forgiveness is "shaw" and it literally means "untie," and disconnecting myself from all that sadness and pain has been very liberating. And it only took a lifetime. (sigh) Rose Here is a link that might be useful: Innocence Rediscovered