REFLECTIONS ON A BLESSED AND HAPPY LIFE  NO.25

  WWII WAR'S END                                                                          

As mentioned previously, the years of WWII matched almost exactly my years at Concordia Academy for grades 9-12. On April 28,1945 Mussolini committed suicide after being captured by our Italian allies. On April 30 Adolph Hitler committed suicide. Germany surrendered on May 8. While we rejoiced over VE Day as we called the victory in Europe, there was still the very heavy fighting and heavy casualties occurring on the Pacific.

 Immediately upon graduation, May 10, I rented a room and went back to work as a waiter at Wukash Brothers Café in Austin. This was a broadening experience for me-especially as I began to interact with fellow wait staff. Almost all were women married to US servicemen. As such they were of a different (if any) faith and they brought with them values, language, and life styles quite different from what I had experienced in rural, German speaking Lutheran Walburg. They also brought the war in the Pacific closer as their spouses were deployed around the world and together we daily looked at the headlines and wondered if these men were still alive.  

In between all the anxieties (and some rejoicing) about the war, I had a great time playing city league softball.  Mr. Peal, a wonderful business owner of a potato chip factory sponsored a team and I played on it. We were good. (Our ball boy later was a star pitcher for the Chicago Cubs.) I made the all-city team and got to play with some experts. The competition was fiercest with teams from the near-by military bases. We were scheduled to play one of them for the city championship on the evening of August 15. But they never showed up. 

They were celebrating VJ Day and the end of World War II. In the second week of August the USA had dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and on August 15 Japan surrendered. 

There was great and appropriate celebration. We thanked God for what our country had achieved and we were especially mindful of the sacrifices of our service personnel-remembering   their patriotism, valor, courage, dedication- and for many even the giving of their lives. 

Along with the celebrations there was also great sadness and distress. We learned of Auschwitz death camp and the other places were million of Jews had been slaughtered by Germany. As the POWs   came back (especially from the Pacific Theater of Operations), we heard first hand from persons who survived the Bataan Death March and the indescribable torture in Japanese Prisoner of War encampments. Regretfully we also (for me for the first time) heard more about how the USA had "resettled” many thousands of USA citizens who happened to have Japanese ancestry. 

I turned 18 years of age after the end of the war and so did not need to make any decisions around enlistment or being called up for service. However, I was deeply aware of the cost of the war to people all over the world. I thanked God for the victory and noted again the fact that our democracy was safe because of the sacrifice of fellow citizens. I even prayed for our enemies. And joined all those who sought peace on earth midst a fervent plea that there would never again be a world war.