Charles Hale has pictures of his father’s life in the Navy. He wonders how his father felt about things that didn’t happen.
My father served as a Pharmacist’s Mate aboard the aircraft carrier the USS Antietam during WWII and the ensuing occupation of Japan. He saved a few photos from his experience in the navy. One is startling. A fighter plane, known as a Hellcat, is attempting a landing but instead is cartwheeling across the carrier’s landing deck. The photo captures the moment when the plane is perpendicular to the deck, as if it is balanced on one of its wings, its propeller still turning. What I knew, or at least I thought I knew, was that my father had taken that photo.
A year ago, while speaking with my mother, I mentioned the photo my father had taken. “Taken?” she said. “That’s your father running from harm’s way.”
I was stunned, but my dad and I, like many war veterans and their children, didn’t talk about the war unless asked. And even if I’d asked him, he might not have said much.
Now, sixty-eight years after my father’s return from the Pacific, I am left with little tangible evidence of my father’s experience. I have the photos. I have a letter: The Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, wrote, “…The Nation which you served at a time of crisis will remember you with gratitude…” I have my father’s discharge papers, which note his training, his qualifications and medals, and his desire to study medicine. And I have my imagination in which I see an impressionable eighteen-year-old, brought up amid the vibrant streets of New York, passing through a similarly vibrant, but to him, mysterious culture that was Hong, Kong, Okinawa and Japan.
Many books have been written and stories told about the impact and effect WWII had on those who served. My father, and many others who served, were proud of their experience, and for many it was the adventure of a lifetime. And how many men, like my father, put their dreams on hold to fight a war and upon their return, realized that their dreams needed to be altered or worse, forgotten?
One of my father’s childhood dreams was to become a baseball player, more specifically, a Brooklyn Dodger. My father’s high-school coach had sent a letter to the Brooklyn Dodgers touting his ability. A month later my father received a letter from Branch Rickey, Jr., the head of the Brooklyn Dodgers Minor League baseball operation, inviting him to a tryout with the Dodgers. It was too late. My father had signed up during wartime; he couldn’t turn back. The dream of becoming a major league ballplayer behind him, he entered the navy.
I never spoke to my father about another of his dreams, becoming a doctor. Maybe I heard that when I was young, but I can’t remember. I’m embarrassed not knowing more about his youthful dreams and his WWII experiences. I feel I have ignored an obligation to him and his descendants. Now there is little left, the discharge papers, the letters, and a few photos with notes on the back that preserve a personal voyage, one that I am left to interpret.
I’ve often wondered how my father must have felt about his lost opportunities. I never heard a “Poor me,” nor did he ever offer an “If only” or “What if?” Young men of his generation were marching off to war and he was proud to be part of the effort. There are a few stories, but not enough. More and more I wish he were still here with me, standing in front of a fire, telling a story, as only he could. He’d lean in, his brown eyes opening wider, and then he’d lean back. He’d flash a brilliant smile, hold the moment, and then, from out of nowhere, bellow with laughter. At those moments, in his presence, the world’s possibilities were endless. The laughter and the smiles, the yearnings, the hopes and dreams have vanished, but the memories haven’t. I cannot think of it all without wonder.
Photos courtesy of the author
You and I are a generation that knew that our fathers fought in the war and like you I never learned much. I have pictures of Coral Seas, a battle my father was in. And It wasn’t till I was older that my father talked about that war. He was drunk and so it was easy for me to ask and him to answer. When he found tho he wouldn’t talk about it again. I think him seeing what he saw was to overwhelming for him. My dad was admitted to Yale so that he could become an Officer but… Read more »
At this point, Kim, it’s all left to our imagination. I too wish you had more time with your dad. We missed so much. It saddens me so.