Pearl Harbor Day

Today is December 7th, Pearl Harbor Day, the 75th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and in honor of this I am featuring a photograph of my father Nelson (on the left) and my Uncle Jack (my mother Mary's brother and on the right), probably taken in the Philippines toward the end of World War II. My father, a dentist, was drafted in his mid-thirties and was sent to Okinawa.  My Uncle Jack, however, tried to enlist and was rejected because of a hernia.  He actually had an operation so that he would be accepted into the air force, and after training here in Denver at Lowry Air Force Base (now a trendy housing development), he spent the war slogging through the Pacific.  In New Guinea he contracted malaria, and his health suffered for the rest of his life.  He felt he had to fight for our country after Pearl Harbor, and wound up paying for that the rest of his life.  One of America's unsung heros.