Three weeks later, Joe arrived in San Francisco.
November 1, 1945
Up ready for breakfast, couldn’t sleep very much last night. Thinking of landing kept me awake!
8:30 AM
There she is! Off in the distance we can see a faint glimpse of the Golden Gate lying in a dense bank of fog. A beautiful day! In a few minutes the beautiful, tall buildings in San Francisco will be visible!
8:45 AM
Shouts and cheers rang out all over the entire ship as 3,200 men and army nurses clung to every possible point from deck to top mast watching the boat pass under the Golden Gate! Boy, what a wonderful feeling!
11 AM
Tied up at Pier 15 now. Mothers, sisters, and friends are going wild down on the pier as they spot men that they know, who are clinging to the rails, life boats, and what-not. Boy, there is some swell-looking girls down there! Those Yank gals are as good looking as ever!
12:15 AM
Officers have started down the gang plank. Major Warmuth’s sister and mother are kissing him and going crazy with joy! There are also a large bunch of newspaper reporters around, trying to get a story from him.
1 PM
Arrived at Letterman Hospital by bus from pier! It’s a great feeling riding up a modern city street again!
Thanksgiving, 1945, would find Joe at home in North Creek, New York, with his family for the first time in nearly four years. The joyful reunion was tempered with his learning of the passing of his mother while he was in captivity, but after months in and out of hospitals he would find solace in the quiet of the mountains, streams, and lakes of the Adirondacks. He found skiing, which he had taken up at the age of seven, to be particularly therapeutic as he slowly gained back some of his strength. During his visits to his doctor, he noticed a young lady who worked in the office, and began to offer her a ride home after his appointments. In 1948 Joe Minder and Hazel Allen were married and settled down to raise two boys. He worked out of the office of the local garnet mine and also in the fledgling ski industry that began to take off after World War II. He gave back to his community with a commitment to his church, fire department, and other civic organizations, and patiently taught the youth how to ski and even how to properly cultivate a garden. Despite the physical effects of those Japanese clubs or the 16-hour days carrying 70 lb. bags of Japanese copper ore, which took their toll on his body as time progressed, Joe never harbored any bitterness or hatred for the horrible suffering he had experienced as a young man. He did not talk often about his prisoner experience, but his ethos of patience, kindness, and compassion for others shines forth in his journal and was confirmed in the way he lived out his days. The entire community grieved when Joseph Minder passed away in 2006 at age 88; the little town’s ski bowl lodge would be named after him.
*
‘Lost is the Youth We Knew’
A poem composed by Lt. Henry G. Lee, a Bataan survivor and fellow prisoner, was discovered during the daring American rescue raid on Cabanatuan Camp at the end of January, 1945. Perhaps Lee’s feelings, written so near to the end and hidden in the journal of poems he was forced to leave behind, sum up the conflicting emotions of so many of the young defenders of the Philippines, and all the men who fought in the Pacific.
Westward we came across the smiling waves,
West to the outpost of our country’s might
‘Romantic land of brilliant tropic light’
Our land of broken memories and graves.
Eastward we go and home, so few
Wrapped in their beds of clay our comrades sleep
The memories of this land are branded deep
And lost is the youth we knew.[85]
Lt. Henry G. Lee never got to go home; he had been killed in one of the American air raids on the unmarked hellships in Takao Harbor in Formosa, just three days before Joe Minder began his own voyage from there to his final destination at the mine in Japan.
World War II had formally ended, but back in “Hometown, USA”, the returning survivors, their families, and the families of those who did not return would see the legacy of the war last far beyond the end of 1945.
John Norton
There was a family that lost two sons in World War II. The family got a telegram on a Monday that one of the boys was killed, and that Thursday they got another telegram saying that his brother had been killed. There were about 35 young men from Granville who were killed in World War II, and I knew every one of them. Some of them were older, and some of them were younger; most of them were good friends of mine. [*]
Ralph Leinoff
I was one of the lucky ones who managed to escape essentially unharmed physically; but there is no doubt that when you see men die around you and when you’re holding dying men in your arms, it has an effect on you. Even when things calm down you start to think about it, you see things that happen when a man is begging to see his wife and children one more time before he dies, you can’t help it. I mean, that has an effect on you.
When I was able to come home, I married the girl I knew from infancy. We had a good life and I got a job, we had children, but I slept for the first two years of marriage and children with a Bowie knife beside my bed, because I could still see Japanese coming at me in the dark. It was just something that I felt secure about; I had to have a knife beside me, but I got away from that.
Physically I was in good shape, but psychologically, there is some trauma. If you’re fortunate, other things in life come along and they crowd out the trauma. Only in retrospect do I look back on the war and I get to feel it again. When I talk about it, see, I get teary-eyed—I can’t help it. There’s a lot that happened in those three years, a lot happened.[86]
At age 94, Walter Hooke summed up his feelings about the legacy of the generation that experienced the most cataclysmic war in the history of the world for his young interviewer.
You know, it is about the future of the world for you young people, and you have to keep everyone honest. I think that is one thing I learned with the atomic bomb, that there is no future in war, so as far as I am concerned…the worst thing that is happening is that young people are brought up to be in fear, and you should not be.
Kids should not grow up cynical—they should grow up like the world is theirs, and enjoy it and have a decent world. [87]
Epilogue
Resurrection
The bell rings. The students take their seats. The lesson of the day is about to commence.
A hand shoots up.
Yes, Jessie?
Mr. Rozell, I am leaving school early on vacation and won’t be here for a few days. May I have the work I will be missing?
My blood pressure ticks upward, slightly. With exams pending in the days before our Easter break, my tenth grade history student informs me that she is leaving for a vacation to Hawaii—a tad early—and she wants her assignments in advance. Since she will be missing a few classes (and she’s heading to Hawaii and I am not!), I give her an extra task, never dreaming that she will actually pull it off.
Finding Randy
Randy Holmes was a couple years older than Jessie when he died. He was the first kid from our high school and all of the North Country, and quite possibly all of New York State, to be killed in World War II. Randy, you will recall, was on the USS Oklahoma when the Japanese torpedoed it at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941.
By the time I walked the halls of this high school as a student in the 1970s, no one remembered him. Today, as then, there are no plaques, no memorials on display here, outside of the local cemetery. I certainly did not know about him.
He was gone.
*
Nearly sixty years after he went missing, I’ve returned to the ‘other side of the desk’ at my alma mater. In the high school library, World War II veterans from the communities near the “Falls” have gathered on a warm spring afternoon. We’re here to put on a seminar on the Pacific War for maybe a hundred excited students. During a break I’m listening to t
he casual conversation between our guests, and by chance I catch this snippet between Navy pilot John Leary and the Marines sitting around the table:
‘There was a young man from around here; he hounded his parents to let him enlist because he was only 17. Do you remember Randy Holmes?’
‘Why yes, didn’t the Class of 1942 dedicate their yearbook to him?’
I’m intrigued. My next step is to search the dusty yearbooks in the district vault and sure enough, in the back of the slim 1942 volume, I find him. Randy is decked out in his white sailor’s suit and cap. He is at home, on leave, crouching before some bushes in the backyard, smiling for the camera as his mother or father proudly snaps the picture. He looks happy, and proud.
And I feel like he’s beckoning to me. It’s similar to the picture that my father snapped of me, less than a mile away, shortly before I ventured out into the world, like Randy, for the first time.
The photo was probably taken in the summer of 1941, after his schooling and shortly before he was assigned to the Oklahoma. That fall, his classmates started their senior year of high school. Everyone’s world would change shortly before Christmas, and Randy would never be heard from again. His classmates would compose a final tribute to accompany the photograph:
‘RANDOLPH HOLMES—MISSING IN ACTION’
‘Word was received soon after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, by Mr. and Mrs. Randolph Holmes, that their son was ‘missing in action’. The young sailor was on board the steamship Oklahoma, when it was struck by a Japanese bomb. Randolph would have been a member of this year’s senior class if he had remained in school.
He enlisted in the Navy New Year’s Day, 1941, and was sent to Newport, R.I., where he was in training as a machinist. Later he was transferred to the Great Lakes Training School in Chicago. He graduated with the rank of Seaman, Second Class.
In August of last year Randolph was ordered to report for duty to the S.S. Oklahoma. He was stationed on this boat in Pearl Harbor when the attack was made by the Japanese.
This young sailor was a popular student in Hudson Falls High School and both faculty and students keep in their hearts kind thoughts and happy memories of his manly qualities and sterling character.’[88]
*
According to the 1940 federal census, Randy had a sister, but she left the village, as far as I can tell, becoming a nurse in the war. His parents passed away, brokenhearted. The family homestead on quiet James Street was sold. The trail just ended.
He was gone.
In the years that followed my trip to the vault, I told the story of the ‘Okie’ and showed my classes Randy’s photograph. I would talk about him, and wonder about him. Who were his friends? How did this news affect the community? What did his death do to his parents, and his sister?
Do you realize he was your age when he died? Where is he buried? Did his body even come home?
Finally, one of my students, Mackenna, took me up on the challenge, conducted her own research, and discovered the following from the National Park Service website: ‘Resting in the main channel of the harbor, a major salvage operation began in March of 1943. This massive undertaking involved the use of winches installed on Ford Island, which slowly rolled the ship back into place in an upright position. The ship was then pumped out and the remains of over 400 sailors and Marines were removed.’[89]
The remains.
Underwater.
Eighteen months.
As World War II raged on, the bodies of the men remained entombed in the ship. Parents grieved as logistics were studied and the salvage operation planned. What was left was recovered and buried in a mass grave at Pearl Harbor. Only 35 men have ever been identified.[90]
In 1947, the Oklahoma was sold and began its last journey to be cut up for scrap at a salvage yard in California. Not long into the journey, she began to take on water and the tow lines had to be severed; the ‘Okie’ slipped away into the abyss 540 miles northeast of Pearl Harbor. A former crew member summed up the feelings of many who had served aboard, and those who perished on her, when he wrote these lines:
‘Good for you, Oklahoma!
Go down at sea in deep water, as you should, under the stars.
No razor blades for you!
They can make ‘em from the ships and planes that did you in.
So long, Oklahoma! You were a good ship!’
The Oklahoma did not even have its own memorial at Pearl Harbor until 2007. But every December 7th in our school, since I found the yearbook, we make an effort in our history classes to remember the day Randy Holmes went missing.
Resurrection
My heart is gladdened when I arrive in school the day before the Easter holiday, open my e-mail, and find this photo.
I smile. She did it.
Maybe my eyes brim for a brief instant.
Maybe Randy and all of the soldiers, sailors, and Marines and airmen are resurrected.
The kids remember.
In the words of Susie Stevens-Harvey, who lost her brother in Vietnam and advocates for all those still missing in action, or prisoners of war:
‘Dying for freedom isn’t the worst that could happen.
Being forgotten is’.
Thank you for reading!
I hope you found this book interesting and informative; I sure learned a lot researching and writing it. If you liked it, please consider leaving a review at bit.ly/FSReview1. It does not have to be long, but it is incredibly helpful in directing more readers to discover this history. You’ll also love hearing from others of the World War II generation in my upcoming books. TO LEARN MORE sign up at bit.ly/RozellNewBook. (No spam ever and I will never share your information.)
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ALSO From Matthew Rozell
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and the reuniting of the survivors and soldiers,
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–Featuring testimony from 15 American liberators and over 30 Holocaust survivors
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Early Reviews:
"If you have any trepidation about reading a book on the Holocaust, this review is for you. [Matthew Rozell] masterfully conveys the individual stories of those featured in the book in a manner that does not leave the reader with a sense of despair, but rather a sense of purpose."–Reviewer
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FROM THE BOOK:
Battle-hardened veterans learn to contain their emotions, but it was difficult then, and I cry now to think about it. What stamina and regenerative spirit those brave people showed!
― George C. Gross, Liberator
Never in our training were we taught to be humanitarians. We were taught to be soldiers.
&n
bsp; ― Frank Towers, Liberator
[After I got home] I cried a lot. My parents couldn’t understand why I couldn’t sleep at times.
― Walter ‘Babe’ Gantz, US Army medic
I cannot believe, today, that the world almost ignored those people and what was happening. How could we have all stood by and have let that happen? They do not owe us anything. We owe them, for what we allowed to happen to them.
― Carrol ‘Red’ Walsh, Liberator
I grew up and spent all my years being angry. This means I don’t have to be angry anymore.
― Paul Arato, Holocaust survivor
I survived because of many miracles. But for me to actually meet, shake hands, hug, and cry together with my liberators—the ‘angels of life’ who literally gave me back my life—was just beyond imagination.
― Leslie Meisels, Holocaust survivor
It’s not for my sake, it’s for the sake of humanity, that they will remember.
The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater Page 19