[pwd72s]

Originally Posted by gsxrken

My father’s earliest memory is from 1946 when his father returned from World War II. My father answered a knock at the door and ran yelling for his mom that “there was an army man at the door!”. (Can you imagine the world where this was how his family learned he was on his way home?) He had been in the battle of Okinawa and had to stay on afterwards, well after the surrender, as part of the occupying troop force. Since of course we had no Army base there, he and other soldiers had to fan out and live with a Japanese family. He remained in touch with them infrequently over the next 50 years. The only thing he ever said about the war were nice things about that family, and one time mentioned the fact that he carried a Browning Automatic Rifle. The horrors of the Battle of Okinawa alone resulted in 26,000 psychological casualties.
The Greatest Generation indeed.

One kinda funny story I read about after the Japanese Surrender. During the early occupation, allied HQ was a hotel in downtown Tokyo. The guards were selected to all be between 6'2" and 6'4", all very tall compared to the much shorter Japanese.