Now that Mike is somewhat advanced in years, a new career, or hobby, or something, has found him. He’s a popular guy these days. He is a WWII veteran, and there aren’t that many of them left.
The
calls started a couple years ago, from war museums, patriot groups, and the
like. Would Mike be willing to attend a banquet
and a ceremony at our museum? Would Mike
like to join other veterans at a July 4th celebration? He agreed to do a couple of them, enjoyed
himself, and now he gets called regularly. On his latest trip, a veterans’
organization brought him to Arlington National Cemetery to lay a wreath at the
Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
I think
one reason he has become a sort-of star of these events is that he doesn’t need
a wheelchair, he doesn’t have to drag a care-giver along with him, and when he
speaks, he makes about as much sense as he ever did. Mike is easy. Give him a nice ride, a room at a 5-star
hotel, three squares, and some recognition from grateful patriots, and he will
come to your party. As a bonus, he also
gets to meet other ancient warriors and swap stories with them. It’s not a bad deal. He does have his limits, though. A while ago, a group wanted to fly him to
France for a WWII event and he turned them down. He said he would have felt silly doing it
because he spent his war in the Pacific.
Mike
joined the Marines in 1943 (with parental permission since he was only 17), and
was promptly shipped to the Pacific theater.
He was a grunt in the 2nd (and later the 4th), Marine
divisions, and his military career was “distinguished” primarily by the fact
that he somehow survived it. But though the
armies of the Pacific were unable to kill Mike, or even seriously injure him,
it was not for lack of trying. He was involved
in three horrific battles of the Pacific War, all of which killed and injured
thousands of American soldiers.
First
was Saipan, an amphibious assault by 8,000 Marines on June 15, 1944 that was
later called the D-Day of the Pacific.
The battle ended three weeks later with 3,100 Americans dead. But not Mike.
One
week after Saipan was secured, on July 24, American forces moved on to the
neighboring island of Tinian. The two
are so close that artillery on Saipan was fired across the strait between the islands
to soften Japanese resistance. Though
the battle took only one week, the invasion involved 41,000 Marines, 368 of
whom were killed along with 2000 other casualties. But Mike survived.
Mike’s third
nightmare was Okinawa, which was the largest amphibious assault of the war. (Fun fact: Mike couldn’t swim. He still can’t.) Beginning on April 1, 1945 and lasting almost
three months, Okinawa took the lives of 12,000 Americans, including 7,500
Marines. It is believed Japan lost over
100,000 soldiers and 100,000 civilians.
Even
then, Mike was not done. American forces
remained in the Pacific preparing for the invasion of Japan itself, which some
have estimated would have cost another half million American lives. It was only after the Japanese surrender
following the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that most of the Americans,
including Mike, went home.
After
the war, Mike apprenticed and became a men’s tailor, and he was good at it, so
that became his career until he retired in the 1990s. Since then, he has spent much of his time
pursuing his two hobbies, cycling and skiing, and his good health allowed him
to do both until just a couple of years ago.
(There are no downhill competitions at his age, but I can state with no
fear of contradiction that he was the best 95-year-old skier in America.) He
has lived for many years in the Mayfair section of Philly, which used to be
called a “working-class neighborhood.”
Maybe it still is.
Billionaires
and neuro-surgeons tend to get a lot more ink, but Mike is what you need to
keep a place like America going. And you
need a lot of them---guys who will do what has to be done when it has to be done, and not do a lot of bitching about it. Then they move on with their lives and their
families and their grandchildren.
Mike
was born in Philadelphia on May 26, 1926, so he is 97 years old today.
Long
may he wave.
Copyright2023MichaelKubacki
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment