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Show Page A2 Thursday, May 13, 2004 Times Newspaper TIMES Submit a Guest Editorial or " &Opin Opinion at our office, located locat-ed at 538 South State in drem. Deadlines:' are Monday 10:00 a.m.; All 'submissions are subject to editing tor length, and The Orem-Geneva Times reserves the right to publish or not to publish a submission 0 Ww suraefl ftflu IP i'r.wMiuni,u.iWI COHHEn ion FLORENCE DRAPER Times Correspondent (Speech given by Florence Draper, Orem American Legion Auxiliary President, to the youth going to Girls and Boys State. Our Mayor, Jerry C. Washburn, was there and proclaimed Armed Forces Day Poppy Drive Day!) We are having this meeting meet-ing to let you know why it is important that you help with this Poppy Drive, and why it is important to me personally. How many of you had ever heard of the red crepe paper poppy before you were asked to help with this drive? How many of you have heard of Flander's field? 1 low many of you have ever been to a National Cemetery where our soldiers are buried? I grew up in a small town in Northern California. When I was your age, I was riding with my mother and her friend passed acres and acres of white crosses on a hill in South San Francisco. My mother's friend commented com-mented that she remembered remem-bered when they had buried the first soldier in that field. Somehow that made all those crosses much more meaningful to me. I am hoping hop-ing that I can say something that will help each of you understand the sacrifices that have been made for us so that we can have freedom. We have a country become men like my great-great great-great grandfather fought in George Washington's army in the Revolutionarily War. My great grandfather fought in the Indian Wars. Two of my Uncles fought in the first World War. Red poppies grew in abundance on the battlefields battle-fields of France in 1919. Flander's field was one of those battlefields where many of our men died. Our red crepe paper poppies made by disabled service men are to remind us, of all who have died, fighting for our freedom. Two of my brothers and three brother-in-laws fought in the Second World War. My husband fought in Korean War. He was also in a submarine sub-marine patrolling the coast of Russia keeping the Cold War cold. My grandson is fighting in Iraq. The other day I asked a woman standing next to me in the post office line if she had anyone in her family who had fought in the Wars. She said that her brother was drafted to fight in Vietnam but he pretended to have taken LSD and got a dishonorable discharge. She said her Dad was angry about it but she thought it was a smart thing to have done. Would you like to live with that kind of choice? Our country disgrace itself when our citizen spit on our soldiers sol-diers and called them names on their return from the battle bat-tle for Vietnam. Those men offering their lives for their country! Now there is an element ele-ment in our society trying to do the same thing to our soldiers sol-diers who are fighting the war on .terrorism. When I was a girl every state in the union had poppies pop-pies in every store to honor men who had fought for our land. There were little shacks around our town where World War I Veterans lived. Because they had been gassed with mustard gas they were just barely existing. exist-ing. When we were children we knew what war meant. The Orem-Geneva Times 538 South State Street Orem, UT 84058 An edition of The Daily Herald, Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc. Subscriptions & Delivery 375-5103 News & Advertising 225-1340 Fax 2251341 E-mail oremtimesnetworld.com USPS 411-711. Published Thursdays by Pulitzer Newspapers, Inc., 538 South State Street, Orem, Utah 84058. Periodicals postage paid at Orem, Utah 84059. Postmaster: Send address changes to P.O. Box 65, Drem, UT 84059. Member: Audit Bureau of Circulations NEWSSTAND PRICE $0.50 SUBSCRIPTION RATE 1 year-$36.40 (in county) (Sunday & Thursday plus Holiday deliveries) Holiday deliveries include delivery the week of Easter, Memorial, Independence, Pioneer, Labor, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year's Day. 1 year- $45.40 (out of county) NEWS We welcome news tips. Call 225-1340 to report news tips or if you have a comment or a question. We welcome letters to the editor. All letters must include the author's name (printed AND signed) and a telephone number. We reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, punctuation, taste and length. Letters are welcome on any topic. Let me tell you how close we came to loosing our country coun-try when I was young! School History books never mention what I am going to tell you. In fact, I only learned some of it this year! Our family drove to San Francisco several times during WWII and I saw our war ships in the harbor and all the camouflage and the nightly blackouts of the city. Most of us in California knew that if Japan Had attack us instead of Pearl harbor we would be speaking speak-ing Japanese. What I did not know until this year was that our Commander, George Van DeWater as a boy on the East Coast, watched enemy ships in the harbor from a hill above his home. His father's ship was sunk in the Gulf of Mexico. All but two on board were lost; his father among those lost. This was the fate of many other American ships right off our Eastern coasts!. We were not prepared for war. The pacifist and isolationist isola-tionist had seen to that. After Pearl Harbor every man, women and child in our country began working on the "War Effort." All the available men were drafted. When my sister graduated form Chico State College, there were only three men in her graduating class, and all three of them were in wheelchairs. wheel-chairs. Everyone was at war. As children we- collected scrap rubber and metal and whatever else we could do. Once I went with my aunt to a "listening post" on a little hill several miles from my home to listen and watch for enemy planes. Women worked in factories and did every sort of work usually done by men. We had ration book for gas, sugar, shoe and more. We didn't have enough gas to drive my sister college thirty miles away. One of my brothers fought in Patton's Army in Europe and missed the biggest battle because he had contracted yellow jaundice jaun-dice and was in the hospital for three months. This probably prob-ably saved his life. His buddy Loren, my sister's future husband and fiancee during the Pearl Harbor attack, took planes out of a burning airplane hangar during that attack. They were planning to be married in the Hawaiian Temple but instead were married on a three day pass. After they were married his plane was shot down and he spent 18 months in a unmarked prison camp in Tokyo. A neighbor, Loren's brother, broth-er, was killed in the battle of the bulge in France. Nearly every window in town was graced with a blue star, denoting a relative in the war. Some windows had gold stars denoting that their sons had been killed. From the time my brothers broth-ers went off to war until they returned, I had a knot in my stomach worrying about their safety. Freedom is not free. Our service men take an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United Sates. Each of us within ourselves should do the same thing. If) in the season sea-son of Memorial Day and Armed Forces Day, the Poppy can make the different differ-ent public recall the sacrifices sacri-fices that have been made by the men and vomen who gave their lives that our country might be saved, the first and greatest mission of the poppy has been fulfilled. We hope that you will have helped in this effort Beautification Award May 2004 Mr. and Mrs. Phil Oyler 150 South Westwood Drive Mrs. Janet Latta 905 South 800 East Mi Ranchito Restaurant Manager Victor Armenta 1109 South State Richard and Mary Kay Pierce 458 East 835 North Bret and Dawni Larsen 1030 West 1230 North Tom and Laura Maxwell 1115 North 560 West Harvey and Lena Sorenson 466 West 400 North Ronald and Linda Carrick 712 West 800 South Louie and Joyce Notarianni 892 South 100 West Ellis Greening 326 North Main Jim and Suzette Trent 333 North Palisade Drive Heath and Shelli Johston 1692 North 620 East Edna Jackman 745 West 1700 South Ed and Bonnie Abel 956 East 1200 North mm. Clifton Pyne, former long-time principal of Orem High School, addressed in his interview one of the most controversial, and least understood, issues related to World War II: The relocation of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the war. I was a senior in high school at the time of the bombing bomb-ing of Pearl Harbor, and I remember very well what happened to the Japanese-American kids who were members of our class. Katsumi Yano was one of those kids, and a better people never lived. But as soon as Pearl Harbor happened, the Japanese-American families fami-lies kept their children home, because they were fearful fear-ful of retribution. There would have been several such families in the Orem area at that time. I was senior class president that year, and I remember remem-ber that A. P. Warnick, our principal at Lincoln High School, came in to a meeting of the officers of the student stu-dent council. He read a letter which he'd received from Mrs. Yano, saying how sorry the family was about everything that had happened. The family wondered if the children would be welcomed back at school. The Japanese-American students were our friends, and we committed to do all we could in the school to make them welcome and protected. It was the decision of the student council that absolutely, the children were to come back. Cliff Pyne became very emotional as he related this story. As do many people who share memories of the status of Japanese-Americans during this critical period peri-od of American history. As most readers know, all such people on the West Coast were "relocated" (the official word) to inland camps, where they were interned for the duration of the war. (The word "incarceration" is often used by those who question the propriety of this policy.) Topaz, near Delta, was the relocation camp in Utah; only foundations remain, along with a memorializing memori-alizing marker. The manner in which the relocation took place is indeed questionable: in the rush, most internees lost valuable property; temporary housing on the Coast was most undesirable (in Los Angeles, the Japanese were housed temporarily in the stables of a racetrack); and housing in the relocation camps consisted of barracks bar-racks or hastily built tar-paper buildings. The need for the relocation is debatable. Most people are unaware of the likely existence of a large network of Japanese informants on the West Coast (and Germans as well, throughout the U.S.). Information on the extent of this threat has become public only in recent years. In Hawaii, where there was a large population pop-ulation of Japanese, every family of Japanese descent was thoroughly investigated by security officials, and many sympathizers and informants were in fact imprisoned or relocated. Also, the threat of an imminent Japanese attack on the West Coast was perceived as very real (only one was confirmed, though thousands of incendiary balloons bal-loons were later recovered in the Pacific Northwest, and even as far inland as Montana). Thus, time lacking lack-ing to screen all Japanese-Americans, the government, right or wrong, judged that in the interest of national security, all immigrants and citizens of that ethnic background be relocated inland. The German network of informants was very efficient. effi-cient. Within days of capture in German-controlled territory, ter-ritory, an American soldier (usually an American flier) was often routinely confronted with detailed information informa-tion of his military, family and educational background. back-ground. Many young Japanese men, from the relocation campus and elsewhere, were conscripted into the military mili-tary ("nisei" is the word used to designate second-generation Japanese-Americans). Units of Japanese soldiers, sol-diers, among the most decorated in WW-II, served valiantly in the European Theater. Eldon McArthur of St. George, in a recent interview, described how he bonded with a Nisei in his squad: Half of my squad were Niseis, from the relocation camp at Topaz, and from wherever the Japanese were drafted. The boy whose bunk was next to mine was Isabashi, a black belt in karate, and he was my personal per-sonal bodyguard. I once had to discipline a big, lazy boy in my squad, Higgins, who looked like a Greek god and thought he was one. He said he was going to get from me "a full-course dinner." He later confronted me in the latrine, where Isabashi was taking a shower. Isabashi, seeing the look in Higgins' eye, stepped out the shower, naked as a jay bird. He walked over, folded his arms, looked up at Higgins, and Higgins never said a word. "Don't worry about him," Isabashi told me. "If he'd raised his arm, I'd have broken it. Don't worry about him I sleep with one eye open. Nobody moves but what I know it." The Japanepe boys was just as loyal as you and me. I would go anywhere in the world to find them, if I knew where they were. If you would like to help with the veterans oral history his-tory project, call Don Norton, 225-8050. |