The story that follows is based on the actual experiences of Samuel Humphrey, a Lieutenant Colonel in Army Aircrew during World War II, and a Captain and Second Lieutenant in the Air Force during the Korean War. He served in Army Aircrew for four years from1942 until 1946 and served in the Air Force from 1951 until 1971. He was a navigator during both wars. Sam retired from the Army Aircrew after World War II as a master navigator and a physicist. He spent five years in flying duties, with 3500 hours of flying time total. He also spent 17 years in research and development in scientific engineering. Sam has earned total of 14 honors, such as the Air Medal, the Philippine Liberation Medal, and Five Bronze Campaign Stars. When he was called to the service, he was a student at the University of Connecticut and was living in Canton. To this day, he still lives in Canton. He likes to grow Christmas trees and is also a member of the Board of Finance for the town of Canton.”
The Choice
The world today is
quieter than yesterday. Fifty-five
years have passed by him so quickly.
But, time had always passed quickly. One day he had been on the train sitting next to his cousin;
the next thing he knew, he had landed in Leyte, Philippines, the first place
that the Americans landed in the Philippines. Fifty years after the war, Mary and he traveled back to the
places where he had served, the cities that once had been nearly destroyed. Now, they were the most industrialized
cities in the world. Everything
had changed.
When
most people talk about World War II, what comes to mind is, “Oh yeah,
wasn’t that the Holocaust?”
They are right, of course; but most of the battles in World War II were
fought over the expansion of Germany, Japan, and Italy. Even though Holocaust
happened in Europe, World War II extended to Asia and the South Pacific. In today’s world, classrooms
teach less history about the Asian Pacific part of World War II, and some kids
grow up thinking that the war is all about Europe and the Holocaust.
One
day, Sam’s friends gathered in Sterling’s car on their way home.
“Turn
the radio up, Sterling,” Sam asked. The announcer’s stated with
deeply mournful voice, “Pearl Harbor has been bombed.”
“Wow,
what does that mean?” James asked.
“That
means a war is starting, you stupid,” Sterling shouted. He was the oldest
among them; he also liked to joke with others.
The
boys talked about enlistment. Samuel Humphrey would join the Air Force; his
passion for flying was indescribable.
So was his passion for Mary, his fiancée. They were so deeply in love, they
decided to get married before he went to the war.
Sam’s
father and he had always gotten along really well, but not on the day when Sam
was about to leave for the war. The idea of having Sam enlist in the war had
met with his father’s disapproval, because he had lived through World War
I, and he knew that wars destroyed the lives of the innocent. Since Sam was leaving, his father
was in the state of dejection, knowing that this might be the last time he
could see Sam.
Sam’s
second cousin Tommy had enlisted also. Tommy’s family was on the
platform, but because of his aunt was crying all over the place, Tommy’s
face turned red hot. He tried to
hide his face. In
embarrassment, he begged Sam, “Can I switch seats with you,
please?”
Sam
teased with a cunning smile, “Tommy your folks are waving to you, look
out!”
Then
the train started, and Sam glanced at his father one last time not knowing when
would be the next time he’d see his family. Through his father’s eyes, Sam could see the many
years of memories they’d spent together, the good times and bad…
but memory is memory. His father
watched the train leave the station. A pair of sad eyes that were telling Sam
not to go slowly faded into the distance as the train pulled away.
Sam
was nineteen the day he pulled out of that train station. He would serve four exciting years in
the Air Force, mostly in New Guinea and the Philippines. But it was at the end of war that made
Sam the happiest. He was in Japan
when the Japanese surrendered. The service men there celebrated on August 10th. Back in the United States, they
didn’t celebrate until August 15th, but Sam and his crewmates
had heard the rumor that the Japanese were discussing surrender. Sam was on Leyte at the time;
guns went off imitating the sounds of firecrackers. They met some Filipinos,
who told them that the war was over.
It would later turn out that the war wasn’t really over yet; that
the Japanese were still negotiating.
And it would finally take until September 2nd for the actual
surrender, but none of that mattered on August 10th.
A few days before the
Japanese officially surrendered, however, some people in the Air Force were
ordered to fly over Japan to get a peak of the country that they had been
fighting for a long time. Sam was
one of them.
The airplane that
they flew carried 20 barrels of gasoline enabled them to fly from Iwo Jima to
mainland Japan. After their arrival, they would need to pump extra barrels to
ensure their trip back home. As the engines started to turn, the anxiety
started.
“What’s
our enemy country gonna be like?” Sam wondered aloud, “You heard
about those sliding doors and paper houses they have, right? Guys, we’re gonna be the first
Americans to land on the island of Hiroshima. This is a big event for me. Man,
this is going to be exciting!”
“You think
there’s gonna be any anti-American feelings on the streets because we
dropped the atomic bomb on them?” John wondered.
“The bomb
exploded 1500 feet in the air with the parachute. If it had exploded on the ground, it would have
activated earth radioactivity and caused even greater damage. We wanted this
war to be stopped; therefore the only reasonable choice to end it was to drop a
bomb. You know, by dropping that
atomic bomb, we saved many lives, ‘cause if the bomb hadn’t been
dropped, the war would still go on for years and years, killing more people
than the total number of beings been killed by the atomic bomb,” Richard
proudly responded.
“Well, thank
you Richard. That was a WONDERFUL
speech,” John joked.
The fear of seeing
their enemy country and the fear of being captured by Japanese soldiers who
could take them to prison caused Sam’s discomfort. He saw an empty Air
Force base, with no one in the control tower. The ground was ashy, but flat
enough to land a plane.
The moment he got off
the plane was the moment he had felt Japan truly. The weather was impressively
different than the normal heavy rains. The wind had blown the clouds away; the
sky had been repainted in crystal blue after the ashy days. The sun was illuminating Hiroshima,
giving back its strength.
Everything was a contrast.
Sam walked around the
plane with John, Richard, and the five others. There were piles of crushed
stones and ashes where trees had stood.
After seeing a spacious field, they decided to walk on the streets of
Hiroshima to taste Japan.
Houses had been
destroyed into pieces of woods; some were still burning. It was hard to notice
a child walking on the street, wearing a piece of fire-burned scrap material.
Its head, covered in ashes, blended in with the color of the street.
“Where are we
going?” Sam’s
frightened question came out of nowhere.
Something told Sam they were going the wrong way.
“We are going
eastward. When we get to the end
of this block, we take a left and then back to our plane, sir,” John
laughed.
“Oh,
that’s very funny.
I’m serious! I think we are going the wrong way. Gimme the
map,” Sam yelled at him, because it wasn’t the time to joke around.
Sam grabbed the map
from John, knowing they were lost. Actually he wanted to ask someone on the
street, but the Japanese residents seemed so distant, it made Sam nervous.
“Hey, brother,
can you tell us how to get to the Shikisa Street?” John asked a man on
the street.
“Ahh, pleeze
let gu.” He was
terrified, the white part of his eye looked gray, his cheeks were
shivering. He ran away when he had
a chance to.
“That was
really helpful, John,” Sam ridiculed.
It felt odd that the
Japanese man had ran away from them, when they had feared the Japanese were
going to kill them.
After walking around
the street, they finally found a soldier. He looked about 30, but his duty
clothes made him look like a 50-year-old man. He could speak some English, so
Sam asked him. He told them how to get back to the airfield; after a long walk
to the plane, they rested a few minutes under the plane to escape the strong
sun ultra violet rays. Sam’s discomfort of being in Japan was relieved
somewhat after the rest in the shadow of the plane.
“We should fly
over Tokyo, just to see what’s happening there?” Richard said.
Everyone nodded.
Tokyo was Sam’s
worst expectation. When they had viewed Hiroshima from a plane, a circle of the
city had been destroyed, but when they viewed Tokyo from the sky, the city had
been so destroyed that there was barely a building standing. The bombs had blasted the buildings and
houses into pieces. From the air, smoke
was still flowing around the city.
The plane was close enough to the ground that Sam noticed the smoky
smell of the city.
While looking down at
Tokyo, the radio transmitter went on. The dispatcher in the radio commanded
them to go to Iwo Jima. Seeing the destruction that Japan had suffered during
World War II made Sam wonder how the Japanese would rebuild the country in the
future.
Fifty years after the
war, Mary and Sam were still happily married; and when Sam had his fiftieth
anniversary of the end of the war, Mary decided to go with him as he made plans
to revisit the old days. They went
to Tokyo and the other cities that he had seen during the war.
Tokyo was the most
changed; skyscrapers stood around them everywhere while Sam and Mary walked on
the street. At night, lights gave
vibrancy to the city, everywhere indicative of Japanese post-war
efficiency. The Imperial
Palace that used to be on the right side now was on the other. The railroad next to the Palace was
gone, and another skyscraper was situated in its place.
Sam
didn’t have any regrets about the war, because the world wouldn’t
be as peaceful if those two major wars hadn’t been fought. One of our duties is to live to
our fullest; and, at the time when Sam had to choose between war and family, he
had chosen war. Sam went to the
war, and today’s world is more peaceful. He followed his heart to create a better life for us.