Disappointments? I’ve had several in my 101 years of life. It was in January 1946, 76 years ago, at Camp Stoneman in Pittsburg, California, in the Bay Area.
“Land ahoy!” Who among the super-happy GIs on board would be the first to shout out those magic words? Our good ship, the MS President Monroe, steadily plodded toward the Golden Gate of California.
January 1, 1946: Happy New Year! Heartfelt salutations and greetings echoed from bow to stern on board the MS President Monroe. For the first time in 10 years no shots were fired in anger, no bombs were dropped, no torpedoes were launched.
Christmas 1945: We were on the high seas, en route to San Francisco, more than 4,000 happy and giddy GIs, all survivors of months and months in the Southwest theater of operations.
What if there was no mushroom cloud over the city of Hiroshima on August 6 or the seaport of Nagasaki on August 9 or Tokyo was mum, with zero announcements over its NHK radio network on August 15?
Flashback to the year 1945: The 42nd Army General Hospital on Leyte was huge! Two months after arriving via hospital plane from Mindanao and into the intensive care unit, I felt better but not strong.
It is Sunday, December 7, 1941. It is chilly and gloomy outside, warm and cozy inside. I was in Dick’s House, admitted three days earlier with fever and flu. There was no more golf and tennis and I was looking forward to indoor squash.
It was the year 1945. World War II officially ended on the deck of the USS Missouri, where the peace treaty was signed on Sunday, September 2, in Tokyo Bay. I was one of thousands of U.S.
Mindanao is the second largest island in the Philippines. It is 35,537 square miles of mountains, valleys, and farmlands. It is double the size of a combined Vermont and New Hampshire.
Coronavirus, shelter-at-home, social distancing—never in my lifetime (I just turned 100) did I dream we, as a nation, would be capitulating to an invisible disease.
It was the summer of 1942, and our senior year was a conflict of anxiety and uncertainty. Nobody in our class knew what exactly the future held. Where would we be in 12 months, or 24, or 36?