VJ DAY! REMEMBER PEARL HARBOR!

Today is a famous day in history; the war with Japan ended on August 14, 1945. It's commonly known as VJ Day, but in these days it's mostly unknown. Japan doesn't care for the term; they'd prefer if we called it "Victory in Asia." Of course, they didn't want any more A-Bombs destroying their cities and killing their citizens. It was a terrible thing, but everyone has to remember Pearl Harbor. What goes around, comes around; but I suppose the Japanese would not understand that idiom. Naturally, I was one happy airman; I had no desire to continue flying any more combat missions over Japan. I did not want to kill any more human beings; I did not start out from the beginning wanting to kill anybody. When I joined the Navy, I thought I would become a clerk to take advantage of my typing and stenography skills. Strangely, it didn't turn out the way I expected. As Burns would say, the best laid plans of mice and men often go wrong. I could care less about the mice, but as a man, my plan to become a "Yeoman" did not work out. Instead of tapping keys on a typewriter, I learned to pull a trigger. There is a humongous gap between those two activities! The celebrations in the country were deliriously ubiquitous--and wet; my crew members and I drove to Vancouver and drank whatever the bars served up. The only other time I can remember getting "seven sheets to the wind" (as Rhoda would say) was in Key West when somehow or other I wound up with a tattoo on my arm. I was discharged three months later, and home was a welcomed sight. WWII was over.

Well, skipping over a couple of painful civilian years ( you can read about them in my book), I found myself married and by 1952 there were four little ones who made us into parents and we raised them unto the present day when all four of them are going on a cruise through eastern Canada together. Fortunately, my kids like each other. I've heard of other families where the children do not get along for some reason or another; and that's not a happy situation for parents. And now, 63 years later the problem is fighting a "war" to stay young while, unfortunately, the vagaries of growing old are difficult adversaries. The armories of MDs, medications, and scooters are the weapons of the day, but lo, they are defeatable. And the end of this war does not have a name like "VJ Day".