Yep.

Wish i was about 15 years younger now.... :D

..

Your father, and his mates, have my eternal respect and thanks. Ditto for Soterik and Fritter
My kids know who to thank too, and so will their kids.

To the Australians on the board and others...

My dad shipped out of California, they didn't know where they were going except they knew it was warm as they were issued "suntans" for their uniforms.

They ended up in Australia, and though they spent some time in both Melbourne and Sydney, they were based when in Australia in Rockhampton.

I've been fortunate to visit Australia with my father (he's been back many times), and we did the tour of the locations he was based in. We enjoyed many beers with the very amicable and friendly Australians though they did take us Americans to task for killing their racehorse Phar Lap. This engendered quite a few discussions in that my fathers is a former racehorse owner and the Australians consider horseracing the national sport (Melbourne Cup day is a holiday in the Melbourne area, and practically a national holiday).

We had a beer in the same bar my father was in when he missed the boat from Sydney to Melbourne...essentially "jumping ship". They MP's threw him into a little jail they had. Same night 2 lieutenants in my fathers company started to turn themselves in to the MP's as they had missed the ship as well, but they saw my dad in there, so they came in and told the MP's that they were "there to pick up Linden" and escort him back to his company. The MP's believed them, so my dad got out of that pickle! They ended up taking the train instead to Melbourne...fortunately! The ship my father was to have been on encountered a severe storm at sea, and took 2 days to get to Melbourne. His buddies told him they were playing cards on the table on the ship with the vomit sloshing back and forth on the table.... It's a much funnier story when my dad tells it..... Dad made enough money running card games while stationed overseas to come back and buy a near mint LaSalle convertible, though he wished he had bought a Jag instead. I've got quite a few stories from him memorized, but I let him tell them to my kids, and hopefully I'll get the chance to tell his tales to my grandchildren someday.

Thanks to the Austalians for the significant hospitality my father and I received...

As a Kiwi I'd like to say thanks to the US servicemen and their families too. They saved us from the dirty Japons for sure. the Japs had maps of New Zealand with the cities already renamed in Japanese.. One claim to fame; at least we massacered them at a POW camp when they rioted and tried to escape.

My Grandparents became very good friends with a gentleman from South Carolina who they had planned to catch up with after the war. Unfortunately there was no further comunication after he got to paua new guinea :(

The Japanese forced my family out of China.

My grandfather was a chef at a hotel in Tianjin frequented by the J-occupation brass. He spoke some Japanese and was asked to translate for local interrogations. Not willing to be a traitor he refused and fearing for his life fled to Singapore through HK. Leaving his wife, 3 daughters and son behind. My mother almost died many times in the bitter winters in Nothern China, surviving on scrap.

First hand accounts of atrocities J-forces commited could fill volumes. Oddly, she does not hold a grudge against the Japanese. She simply says that those that commted the atrocities are not the same people in Japan today. I guess she moved on from that time.

My grandfather was able to get his family in Tianjin out to British Singapore after some time. Family reunited.

Singapore fell to the Japanese and the officer that tried to recruit my grandfather moved to occupied Singapore. He found my grandfather with no where left to run in Asia.

Interestingly, he did not try to recruit him nor bother our family. Instead the officer ate at my grandfather's restaurant often and they sort of became (uncomfortable for my GF) friends. When Japan fell, that officer bid my grandfather farewell and left quietly for Japan. They did not keep in touch after.

Heart felt thanks to the Allied servicemen who fought against the Japanese in those very difficult times.

hey thanks man! i mean it. gave me chills thinking about it. my dad came home with the jap flag(rising sun) , a broken nambu pistol, a broken samurai sword and a ton of jap funny money. dont know where the flag,the sword,the nambu ever went. i was very young when he showed me them. somewhere over the last years i did run across some of the jap money somewhere.


HE HATED THE JAPS! he was a sarge and didnt take ANY CRAP from ANYONE. if you lied or stole from him YOU WERE TOAST! loved kids, loved animals. only took me bird hunting and small game hunting. always asked him to go deer and elk hunting and he said no, he would rather see them alive. he told me one day i would figure it out. told me enough stories to satisfy my curiosity. when asked later he too was real quiet about what he experienced. his army/aviation battalion photo book summed it all up as i was older looking thru it. horrible wet rainy muddy conditions. his blown up tent labled "500# bomb", the foxhole he dove in that day, with about 3 feet of water in it as well as mud. the blown up showers, the flag draped bodies being prepared for burial and on and on and on.



lots of bomber art on you name the plane, fighters also. the one that always sticks out when the going gets tough and the tough get going in my life,when it absolutely positively has to be accomplished no matter what, failure is NOT AN OPTION was..................."HANG THE EXPENSE" and some scantily clad lifesize maiden painted right below the pilots/co-pilots windows.


he told me stories of how some of the natives were still cannibals. of course this instantly conjured up visions of natives with bones thru their noses and on their skulls, which for a kid really had me going.



and thats why i searched high and low for the best possible condition WINCHESTER M-1 CARBINE and thats what he carried along with a .45.


gawd he could shoot birds on the fly. one hell of a shot. i guess shooting for 5 years of yer life straight, ya just dont forget.


i just read this is only a 10 part series. i am already bumming. maybe spielberg and hanks will do a full length movie on the pacific war.

ya know they all lived a 100 lifetimes by the time they became 25. its 65 years after the surrenders. amazing stuff. amazing scary times.