Right now I am in the midst of a campaign for the U.S. Congress in the Missouri Second District. In my 50 years of political efforts, I have never seen a campaign with so many disturbing statements or actions. It is a real battle.
Today I received the June 2012 American Legion Magazine and read it through. (This marks my 68th year of membership in the legion and VFW.) I was reminded of another kind of battle that I witnessed. So, I wrote the magazine a letter about what may have been the last real battle of World War II. I had previously written this up in a Patch blog back in December, but here it is again to save you the effort of looking it up:
In the summer of 1946, I had been scheduled to be discharged from the US Marines and on a Sunday took part in a beach party on the north shore of Oahu along with seven other Marines in two jeeps. I had never met these men before and suddenly we were together for a day of relaxing on the beach with a few beers and good discussing of our past and future.
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So we came back to the base across the island and found ourselves at a Japanese prisoner of war camp.
Most all the Marines I was with had served earlier in many attacks and we had been saved from the deadly assault on the Japanese Homeland where we all expected to be killed or wounded. Just thingk we heard that 500,000 purple hearts had been ordered for the invasion.
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So suddenly we were on the outside of this POW camp where Japanese were active behind the wire. Some of our group had cameras and they began taking pictures. This was not acceptable to the Japanese and they began throwing rocks or pebbles.
Our group reacted and I remember one statement by a Marine in which he said that he killed enough in the Mariannas that a few more would not make any difference and began to climb the wire. This disturbed me as my orders to come home for immediate discharge were at my base and I was awaiting a ship assignment so I certainly didn't want to mess that up.
At that time, we had the thought that war as we knew it would be over after the A Bomb result. So perhaps this would be a new way to fight, that is with rocks and the group with the most throwers would win. That happened that day in 1946 as we were only eight and they had many more. So they won and we left before any big trouble started.
Harry Truman had sent me home to farm and I have been my own boss every since. If you want a full account, go to www.georgedweber.webs.com where we have linked my book and hundreds of blogs for a Patch publication. I am going on 88 and have information there that is not available in other sources and it is free.
Sincerely, George D. "Boots" Weber
One of the last of the WWII people in my area