V-J Day

Sep 10, 2005 11:50

It's been almost a month since I wrote this...
August 15th is the anniversary of V-J Day and the memories of it are in the news today. It makes me think of when I was around 7 and America thought about the war every day.
WWII didn’t really touch us very much in rural Idaho and eastern Washington. We weren’t affected much by rationing because we lived off the farm and already bought very little, so only sugar was scarce for us. My mother didn’t have to give up silk stockings, she and I already wore brown cotton lisle.
We didn't know any soldiers. My personal memories are few. I remember that we made the "V" for Victory sign when saying goodbye to visitors, and there had been a Grange raffled Victory quilt of red, white and blue V squares that my brother Billie won.
It was during the war that we moved from the farm in Idaho to Oaksdale, Washington. Daddy went to the ration office to turn in his farm gas and tire coupons. The girl said, “You can’t do this.” Daddy explained that he had to turn them in as he wouldn’t be farming anymore. She said, “You can’t just quit farming. What are you going to do?” Daddy replied, “I’ve gotten a job at the Split Pea Mill in Oaksdale.” “Oh,” she said wielding the official stamp, “that’s alright then, it’s an essential occupation, too.” No one that I knew went off to war, not Daddy, nor the uncles, nor the other daddies, brothers and sons of our little towns. Everyone was in that essential industry, growing grain for the war effort. Oh, there are pictures in the family albums of Daddy and the uncles in uniform, but it was during ROTC training at WSU in Pullman. When the war came, they were plowing, planting and harvesting wheat fields, and no uniforms went off to war to came home on leave or in victory. Daddy’s younger brother, Harry, wanted very much to join the Army. He wanted to see foreign lands, to see Paris, France. He brought Aunt Frieda’s brother from Montana to help run the farm and went to Colfax to enlist. When they got to the question about his occupation, they sent him home, brother-in-law on the farm or not. Aunt Frieda told me that he never forgave the government for not allowing him to serve his country in Europe.
Then on a pretty summer day in 1945 we happened to be visiting Grandma and Grandpa Schell’s Peone Prairie farm, along with Aunt Elma’s family. It was a weekday and we all drove into Spokane, expecting a quiet day in town. I remember I was riding with my cousins in Uncle Ed’s big car. When we got out of the car downtown the cousins, in their blond beauty, were picked up and swung around by soldiers in uniform that were surging down the sidewalk. The streets were full of shouting, laughing, crying, beautiful people; it was V-J Day. I looked on, a bystander, as my cousins were taken into the middle of it all, and Grandma Schell fussed at Uncle Ed for allowing the familiarity, scandalized that her granddaughters were being touched by strange young men.
The war was over. We were relieved to have it done and that was the end of it for us. As an extended family we were not waiting in anticipation with most of the families of America, for the rest of us to return from the dangers of those foreign lands.
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