The WWII brutality thread got me to thinking about some of my uncles from that era and how they handled life after the war. I had uncles in Navy, Marines, and Army in both theatres. I was very young and not of age to ask questions. I do remember my parents telling me to not ask them about the war. As is common of those men, they didn't talk much about their experiences anyway, but they carried strong opinions with them after the war about their enemies. In my observations, my uncles that fought Japs had much stronger feelings afterwards against them than the ones that fought Germans in the European theatre. They didn't buy Toyota vehicles or Japanese TV's. In my case, my uncles were mechanics after the war and refused to work on Japanese vehicles. I also remember them not speaking very fondly of the Red Cross. I recall a comment "The Red Cross would show up, hand out coffee, but sell you the donut." I'm not sure they ever donated to the Red Cross afterwards. I wonder if any of you fellas have similar stories of their post war attitudes. I apologize if this has been discussed already.

It's natural. Japan was the only country to attack American soil. Americans in the 1940's had stronger cultural ties with Europe even than we do now, and I understand a few lucky men got to strengthen those ties when they were welcomed as liberators. Japan was so different culturally and politically that it would have been tougher to identify and sympathize with dissenters or people forced into service of the empire. Even in the years prior to Pearl Harbor, the news of Japan in the newspapers was about the Chinese war and didn't paint a very friendly picture either.

I didn't get to talk much to any of the men in my family who served, but I remember my grandfather (who never served but lost a brother on D-Day) never referred to the Germans as Germans, just the "Nazzees." The Japanese, however, were just the "Japs." I think it's a significant distinction that we could refer to the bad Germans with a precise term, rather than just Germans.

Did anyone else's grandparents ever use the term "madder than a Jap"?

My father was USMC in WWII and Korea. He's 94 now. God help the poor Red Cross person who contacts him about a donation! They will get an earful. He told me the Red Cross charged for coffee and the donut. He's forgiven the Japanese but not the Red Cross.

My grandfather enlisted around 1942, joined the 811th Tank Destroyer Batallion. He fought at the battle of the Buldge and during an artillery bombardment he went to his jeep and had time to either grab his carbine or his duffle bag which had a signed and personalized picture of Betty Grable. He always regretted grabing the Carbine.

valvemonkey91 said:

---

The WWII brutality thread got me to thinking about some of my uncles from that era and how they handled life after the war. I had uncles in Navy, Marines, and Army in both theatres. I was very young and not of age to ask questions. I do remember my parents telling me to not ask them about the war. As is common of those men, they didn't talk much about their experiences anyway, but they carried strong opinions with them after the war about their enemies. In my observations, my uncles that fought Japs had much stronger feelings afterwards against them than the ones that fought Germans in the European theatre. They didn't buy Toyota vehicles or Japanese TV's. In my case, my uncles were mechanics after the war and refused to work on Japanese vehicles. I also remember them not speaking very fondly of the Red Cross. I recall a comment "The Red Cross would show up, hand out coffee, but sell you the donut." I'm not sure they ever donated to the Red Cross afterwards. I wonder if any of you fellas have similar stories of their post war attitudes. I apologize if this has been discussed already.

---

A Third Army vet told me the same thing concerning the Red Cross; he seemed pretty bitter about it still. I'm guessing this was about 12-14 years after the war.

Cannot say about the Red Cross and as I posted on the other thread, they were "The Dirty Nasty Japs" until the day my Grandfather died in 1987.

But... with respect to asking family members about the war, when my Grandfather died in 1987 and a bunch of his family from the Chicagoland area came down to Galveston County, we had one uncle who was 101 ABN in WWII. We asked him about what WWII was like and he stopped us cold with this phrase - "War is a terrible thing". And he refused to go any further.

As I understand it, this was my Grandmother's brother whose parents were German Immigrants in 1912. But the bottom line is we got nothing out of Uncle Skip. I suspect he was a replacement soldier and after watching "Band of Brothers" could probably never get over the fact that he wasn't there on D-Day.

But heck, as teenage kids, what right did we have to be asking him anyway?

I have a lot of German in my family heritage.

On my mom's side, her grandparents spoke only German. Her mom, and my grandmother's maiden name was Wuensche (if you ever went to Spring, TX, you probably know of the Wuensche Cafe, apparently the same family). From what I was told, they were ostracized during the war due to their German heritage. Her dad was in the Navy. The stories that I was told had him boarding a ship in San Diego in 1944 when he received word (a telegram, perhaps) that his second daughter, my aunt, had been born; and in a bit of a contested story, surviving sinkings of two separate ships that he served on. I say contested because my mom claims that was not the story while my aunt insists that is what he told her. I've never been able to locate any records to verify any of that account, possibly due to the big fire back in the 60s-70s in the St. Louis facility where those types of records were stored.

I once made a very serious mistake shortly after I graduated from A&M. I bought a new Toyota and parked it in his driveway. He advised me that I was to move it to the street immediately and that I was to never park it again in his driveway. That was some time in 1991, so even after 50 years he still harbored a lot of negative feelings toward the Japs. And yeah, he referred to them as dirty Japs. Still, given his experiences during the war, I can certainly understand why he felt like that. I even asked him once that had he gone to Europe rather than the Pacific, would he have come home with similar feelings toward the Germans (despite his German heritage)? He thought he would have.

My dad's dad was apparently a tail gunner on a Navy torpedo bomber (TBF Avenger). But like with my mom's dad, my information is third-hand with no real ability to verify anything. I found out about the tail gunner thing at his funeral. What I do know is that he was in the US Army prior to the war, and had served his time there and received an honorable discharge to resume whatever his normal life was. He then enlisted into the Navy after Pearl Harbor. In another point of contention, my dad thought he was sent home due to a serious illness pretty early on in the war, whereas records that I found suggested that illness did not happen until much later in the war. I'll lean toward believing the latter given that my dad was only 4 when the war started.

Neither of these men ever volunteered anything regarding their war-time experiences. With my maternal grandfather, there was some long-lasting resentment toward anything Japanese; I never got that from my paternal granddad. But he never spoke about the war. I've had a life-long fascination with WWII, particularly with the aviation part of it. I was three years old when I first put together a model airplane, a P-40 Flying Tiger. My paternal granddad once took me on a weekend trip to Houston, where we got to stay in a hotel in the Galleria area and I found a plastic P-38 Lightning in the room when we got there; and after my parents' divorce, we lived with my maternal grandparents for a time - I had a bunch of model planes in that room that I know my Papa was aware of. That was roughly 1976, if I recall right, and we always watched the show Baa Baa Black Sheep - my Papa sat there in his recliner, never saying a word but one could kinda tell that he was not particularly fond of what he was seeing. Given all of this, I used to wonder why they never talked to me about WWII, but now, as I've gotten older and have come to understand more deeply what these men experienced, I wonder why I did not approach them with questions. Really wish I had done so, as I do believe they would have talked to me about it.

Had other, more distant family, who served. One leaped out of a perfectly good C-47 over Normandy in June 1944. He survived and became one of our family's more amusing uncles (this guy insisted to my sister and I that chocolate milk came from the brown cows, with a wink to my dad, when we were roughly 5 and 7). One may have been a bomber crewman in Europe, so either B-17s or B-24s from the little information that I have. And then there was one, my paternal granddad's brother, who was KIA at St. Lo, France, in July 1944.

My fraternal grandfather had already served in the Army in the 1930's. He re-enlisted and trained Tanks Destroyers at Fort Hood. (UncleJew15). He was then sent to train the British on M-18's in Burma in late 1944(which they said they had no use for). He was then transported up the Burma Road or the Ledo Road to Myitkyina where his convoy was ambushed and a bunch of his buddies were killed and he was wounded. Apparently he saw some of his wounded buddies killed as they laid helpless. I never heard him say anything but "damn Japs". He never spoke much about his experiences except for his cavalry days at Fort Clark in the '30s...

My maternal grandfather served in the 42nd Division. He landed in France at Marseille. He went through the entire country of France and into Bavaria. He actually liked the Germans better than he did the French. He said the battle could have passed through a French town and they would be begging and would continue to do so for days. Wouldn't lift a finger to clean the place up. He said the battle would still be raging on one side of a German town and they would be cleaning up on the other. Said he never saw a German beg.

He would tell us stories on summer nights when we were camped out in his back yard.
Said it was dangerous at night when the Brit bombers were flying over. Said one night they had to go to their foxholes because they were crashing with some regularity for some unknown reason. He remembered his foot hurting afterwards. He looked and he had on two left boots. Apparently the Lancaster were being shot up over the target by Flak/night fighters and failed to get home. (My educated guess).
He also saw German jets try to bomb bridges on the Rhine. They would go by and miss and the P-47and P -51's would try to catch up to them.
Said as they progressed from France to Germany the German soldiers got older and younger at the same time.

interesting about the Red Cross, my father who flew in a photo recon wing out ( B-29s) of Japan during the Korean war would not donate to the red cross either. When I asked him about it he said the same thing as the WW2 vets.

Even though I retired from the active reserves, I have never had any dealings with the Red Cross so I do not know anything about of how they operate.

Got my doubts about the Red Cross charging .

When in the Navy right after the war, I was shipped to an island - looked forward to girls in grass skirts !

As we stepped off the plane, who did we see but Red Cross women handing out coffee and donuts - no charge !

Talking about your dad opening up and offering more and more as time progressed reminded me.

My father is 81 and served during the Cold War. It's funny how even during the past year or two I'm getting stories out of him that I've never heard before.

A couple of things happened that were just situational but were the right set of circumstances to trigger a conversation.

My youngest is a cadet at VMI and having to do rifle drills with an M-14 with bayonet affixed jogged some of his memories of being a fish at A&M in the Fall of 1955.

And during a recent work trip to Austin, I brought a German co-worker over to my parents house in Waco and all of a sudden, my dad starts talking about his time in West Germany and some of the hi-jinks he got up to.

Obviously these stories were well over 50 years old but this was the first time I had heard them.

JR69 said:

---

My Dad was a fighter pilot in Europe during WW2. I never knew much about his experiences there when I was growing up because he just didn't talk about it and always found a way to deflect when I asked him questions. He would help me with details when i was building model airplanes, and I knew I was named after his best friend who was killed in action on a mission they flew together. I knew his unit and the names of some of the men he flew with - particularly the aces - J.C. Meyer and George Preddy being the two most well known. I knew he was proud of his service and proud to have flown in combat with them. But that's about it. I never detected any particular animosity towards the German people.

In contrast, my mother's first cousin was a Bataan Death March survivor and POW in the Philippines. I guess he was lucky that he was never shipped off to a labor camp in Japan, China, Burma or wherever. My grandmother bore a seething hatred toward the Japanese until the day she died. Any mention of any thing Japanese would bring on a tirade about Japanese cars, transistor radios, television sets, food - anything. She always remarked how the Japanese had turned a nice strong young farm boy from in Kansas into a frail old man living in a shell.

Sometime in the late 1980s, my Dad got a letter from an Englishman who had recently purchased a junked
P-51 from the Israeli government. After tracing the history of the aircraft through government records, it turned out to be the last plane my Dad flew and the gentleman tracked him down. That opened the flood gates as my Dad had a new pen pal and was sort of a long distance consultant during the restoration of that airplane to its original 352nd FG colors and markings. More important to me, he started talking a little more about his experiences in England and Belgium during the war. Every time I came home on leave, there were new revelations - things long forgotten but recently remembered.

Around the same time, the 8th AF and the 352nd FG began to have periodic reunions. I'm convinced that the the discovery of the airplane in a school yard in Israel and the advent of the reunions really helped my Dad open up and share with those of us who were interested.

Today I'm fortunate. Dad passed away in 2007, but among the things I found in that dusty old footlocker that had been in the garage for as long as I can remember, I found and now have all of his orders and other documents and records, his decorations and the citations for them, his pilot's log book, his personal diary, the letters he wrote home to his parents, and maybe a thousand photographs. Slowly but surely I am compiling it all chronologically and when it's done I'll put it on whatever is the hot new digital medium at the time so it can become a permanent part of family history.

---

Thanks for sharing. What a treasure! Have you looked into the Veterans History Project through the Library of Congress in addition to your family history?

I'm not familiar with the Veterans History Project but it sounds like something I need to look into. Thanks for the heads up.

What a treasure trove!

About five years ago (ten years after my father '44 died), my niece asked me to tell her what I knew about her grandfather's service during the war.

I didn't have nearly as much information as you do to work with, but I have my father's yearbooks from A&M; a letter he wrote home his fish year; his Cadence (the handbook for fish); a letter he wrote from Germany to his father (who was serving as ship's medical officer on a troop transport off Okinawa) summarizing his time in the army after he left A&M; the graduation program from his branch school; the "yearbook" from the engineer combat battalion he was in which had a narrative of the unit's history, complete with maps; an oil portrait done by a German street artist in 1946 while my father was in the army of occupation; a watercolor painting of the insignia of his unit, done by some enlisted men for him as he was about to go back to the states in late1946; and his decoration ribbons.

I used all of this information plus my memories of some things my father had said through the years and typed up a document with photos that I took down to Office Max and turned into a ten-page spiral notebook sort of thing. I gave a copy to my son and his cousins, my sister, and to my father's two surviving (younger) siblings. The siblings in particular were thrilled to have it, and I know your family will be grateful to you for your work in preserving these memories.

OldArmy71 said:

---

What a treasure trove!

About five years ago (ten years after my father '44 died), my niece asked me to tell her what I knew about her grandfather's service during the war.

I didn't have nearly as much information as you do to work with, but I have my father's yearbooks from A&M; a letter he wrote home his fish year; his Cadence (the handbook for fish); a letter he wrote from Germany to his father (who was serving as ship's medical officer on a troop transport off Okinawa) summarizing his time in the army after he left A&M; the graduation program from his branch school; the "yearbook" from the engineer combat battalion he was in which had a narrative of the unit's history, complete with maps; an oil portrait done by a German street artist in 1946 while my father was in the army of occupation; a watercolor painting of the insignia of his unit, done by some enlisted men for him as he was about to go back to the states in late1946; and his decoration ribbons.

I used all of this information plus my memories of some things my father had said through the years and typed up a document with photos that I took down to Office Max and turned into a ten-page spiral notebook sort of thing. I gave a copy to my son and his cousins, my sister, and to my father's two surviving (younger) siblings. The siblings in particular were thrilled to have it, and I know your family will be grateful to you for your work in preserving these memories.

---

I have 4 editions of the Longhorn - '43, '47-'49. He was a fish for only one semester before he left for military service, having been accepted into the USAAF pilot candidate program. He returned to A&M in the fall of '46 to finish his education. The only other things I have from his time at A&M are a few letters home from A&M, some uniform brass, a hat stack, and a plaque from the Engineering Department as the Outstanding Engineering Graduate. When I had my entrance conference with Dean Benson in the summer of '65, there was a duplicate of that plaque hanging in the outer office. I think Dad was more proud of that than even his military service.

When the war in Europe ended, my Dad and many other pilots were held on standby in case they were needed to fight in the Pacific. Dad ended up flying VIPs - Generals, Congressmen, and the like - around Europe until he was finally discharged in the spring of 1946. Sometime during my AF career, I was home on leave and we went to an air show and of course there were a couple of P-51s and some other WW2 vintage aircraft, including a C-47. I remember his remark after a fly-by - "The C-47 was like driving a truck with no power steering, the Mustang was like driving a hot sports car". While it was an obvious observation, it was funny when he said it.