I would like to say I was reminded by an article in the New York Times today, but the truth of it is that I have no idea what day the Japanese surrendered to end World War II.  That day is today, August 14.  64 years ago.  The article is about former Seaman 1^st Class Albert Perdeck, who served on the flight deck of an aircraft carrier in the Pacific.  He survived Kamikaze attacks and near misses, and spent his 19^th and 20^th birthdays aboard the ship.  Now, he strives to preserve the memories of that day while he battles his memories of the war.  His story resonated for me for a couple of reasons.  One, I work with veterans in my civilian job.  I have never met Mr. Perdeck, but I have met countless like him.  Two, he could be my grandfather. 

Growing up, I knew that Grandpa had been in the Army.  He was a quiet man, but stern and intense.  I don’t know when I knew that he fought in the Pacific in World War II.  I do know that I was in high school before I had any grasp of what that meant.  More recently, I see my grandfather in the faces of the young men on The War on PBS.  I know that he was in the infantry.  I know he was an officer.  I know he received the Bronze Star Medal, and an ass-chewing, for pulling a young enlisted man out the line of fire during a close ambush.  I can look at his picture, as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Army Reserve, and see his ribbons and know that he was awarded the Purple Heart more than once.  That man in the picture looks like the man I remember.

The last time I saw him was before I left the first time.  I knew I was leaving and I knew that my grandparents were old, so I should go visit.  Grandma was getting more and more frail by the day as pancreatic cancer ate away at her insides, and Grandpa was hunched in his chair.  Tired, but more or less healthy.  He sighed when I told him why I was there.  He did that a lot, sighing.  This one seemed different though.  There was a depth and tiredness in it.  A tightness in the chest.  He wished me luck.

I left in March.  Grandma died in June.  Grandpa died in September.  He rarely talked about his time in the war.  I know he talked some to my dad when my parents were still married.  I had hoped that when I came home, as a veteran myself, that maybe I could learn his story.  Learn where he had been and what he had done.  What he had seen.

Grandpa has been dead for almost five years now, but I think that he may have gone into the war with the same romantic notions that many young officers still carry.  That war is a noble thing, a place to prove manhood and do brave deeds.  I’m sure he learned the truth in the jungles of the Pacific.  That war changes people.  That boys do come back men, and now girls women.  That war truly is hell and that brave deeds are done.  

That if we do not remember we are doomed to repeat.  And so I remember Grandpa today, and Mr. Perdeck and so many hundreds of thousands of American Soldiers, Sailors, Marines, and Airmen.  And I remember the horror of the atom bomb and the untold numbers of Japanese fighters and civilians.  These two are linked, and must be remembered together.  Not judged, one against the other in hindsight, simply remembered.