The Visit

Below is an article I hope you find interesting:
The Visit
In the spring of 2002, I was visiting my parents on the Easter holiday from Europe where I started working a new job the summer before. I was staying at my parent’s home in Vero Beach with my 9 year old son William. In my son’s nine years he had not met my father’s 2 brothers and one sister who all lived in Largo Florida, about 3 hours from Vero. So I offered to drive my parents to Largo from Vero Beach for a visit if they would arrange it. Arguing that with me living overseas now and my son having never met these relatives, it was important to me that he should have some knowledge of my fathers’ family. As I mentioned, he had never met them, even though we had lived in Florida until he was six, then Chicago until he was 9. My parents agreed to arrange the trip, which they needed to do anyway, my father had been a tax attorney during his career, and he prepared tax returns for his family every year, and Easter usually provided an opportunity to get together.
In some cultures there is identity in name. I have always felt a sense of who I am by knowing I was named after my father’s father. I am William Christian Schaub (Bill), no Jr., I am not to the son of the first one, nor did I ever co-exist with him, which is why I am not the second. He died three years before I was born. My son is William Christian Schaub III, the suffix a nod to this tradition of identity in name and tradition. My father appreciated this and thanked me at my sons’ birth. Uncle Bill sometimes went by Bill Jr. or Sonny, but his name is actually William Robert Schaub. Even without the middle name, I always had a special connection with him as my godfather.
Now I mentioned my fathers’ oldest brother, my godfather, above for a particular reason. My Uncle Bill provided us with a rarity that particular trip. It was an incredible experience for me, my father and my son. My Uncle Bill had been serving in the US Army in the Philippines when the Japanese invaded the Islands. He was taken prisoner, contracted malaria, was assisted by a fellow soldier on the Bataan Death March and spent three and a half years in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. My fathers’ family did not know if he was alive for over three years, and when they heard from the Red Cross that he was alive and had been rescued, he weighed 90 pounds (he was 5’10”). That was the sum total of everything I knew because my father would not permit me or any of my siblings to ask him questions about his experience in the war because my father said he did not want to talk about it. My father had softened quite a bit with his grandchildren, and my son received no such warning before the visit. He was somewhat aware of the story, having been told by me and made inquiries to my father. After dinner at my Aunt Clara’s house, out on the porch with me, my Uncle Bill and my father, my son asked the forbidden question to my Uncle Bill; what was it like and what happened to you in WW II?
My Uncle answered him immediately, and started a narrative that I will remember the rest of my life. His tone was of that of anyone of a certain age sharing their youthful memories, he was jocular and laughed at most of the anecdotes, showing reverence when appropriate for a lost colleague. The starting point was the propaganda the Japanese would recite to the prisoners every day. “We occupy the western United States and are moving on Washington” he said was the consistent theme of the messages. He said that when the war was over, the messages just stopped with no warning, they woke up one morning and all the guards and administrator were gone, the guns neatly stacked in the middle of the camp and the camp gate left open.
Soon after US airplanes dropped leaflets telling them the war was over and help would come soon. After the leaflets, he said they started dropping supplies. One crate dropped from a plane exploded on impact, decapitating one on the American POW’s. The first crates contained to his astonishment, chewing gum, not what they had been dreaming of or even expecting. At this point Aunt Clara walked in and offered some more coffee or cake. When she heard a bit of what he was talking about, she scolded him for talking about such things. Fortunately for us, he ignored her.
He was in what was known as Pine Tree Camp, which was not very far from Nagasaki, so after liberation but while still at the camp he and a few friends took a day trip to Nagasaki to see what the atomic bomb did. He was shocked to see a train engine half melted into the ground. He was awed by the sight.
When relocating him back to the US, the hospital ship was filled with wounded, so an Army troop ship to take the rescued POW’s whose primary malady was malnutrition was used. The ship’s scheduled route was from Japan to Pearl Harbor, then on to San Francisco. Once at sea, the ship got caught in a typhoon, which knocked out its engines. They drifted for three days. A British Navy ship finally found them and within a day had the ship repaired and on its way again. Having lost three days, the captain of the ship decided to bypass Hawaii and head straight to San Francisco. A few days prior to docking in San Francisco, the ship supplies ran out of most food groups, having not had the opportunity to resupply in Pearl Harbor. The POW’s were left with primarily rice to sustain them. This being the principle diet for three and a half years, they were pissed. They threatened mutiny and the Captain of the ship with hanging. Things fortunately got calmed down before anyone got hurt.
When the ship docked in San Francisco, the FBI was waiting for the POW leaders of the threatened mutiny. No charges were brought against the POWs; they were warned not to cause any more trouble.
The next phase of the trip was a hospital train to deliver the former POWs to a rehabilitation hospital in upstate New York. The train had doctors, nurses, rules and lots of very rambunctious former POWs. The soldiers were not allowed to drink alcohol. On a short late night stop in Chicago, my Uncle and a friend left the train, purchased bottles of booze, and to hide those purchased stuffed animals. They tore out the insides of the stuffed animals and hid the booze inside, and successfully got back on the train. The next day, when one of the soldiers went for his daily check up, the doctors saw that he was intoxicated and figured out the scam. They confiscated the alcohol and warned the former POWs to behave.
Once at the Rehabilitation Hospital, the POW’s were regaining their strength and energy by the day. They were getting into all kinds of mischief. The Head Doctor, who was military, began assigning them to light work details, mostly cleaning up and washing windows. The soldiers complained to the military and got the orders overturned. A former POW cannot be ordered to perform such tasks on a military base, which the hospital technically was. The shenanigans continued.
The soldiers had three and a half years back pay due them and they had at the hospital a cashier to provide them with access to that back pay in the form of advances on it. One troubled soldier took money every day and headed to town to drink. He drank excessively and everyone knew it. The doctors could not order him to stop and he did not listen to advice. He died of alcohol poisoning within months, never getting back home to his family.
That completed the night’s story. Uncle Bill was drained by the telling of the story, the last segment bringing him to a somber place. My son had been entertained enough and my father and I were dumbstruck. We all needed a rest from the visit.
My father that evening heading back to our hotel was in shock. He could not believe what he had heard. He had never heard any of those tales before. We discussed whether it was all the books and television shows about the POW experiences and broader WW II experiences made it okay to discuss these things, or maybe he needed to talk about it after keeping it to himself that long. Another thing that struck us was that the narrative began with the wars’ end, not being drafted, the details of Army life or capture, the Death March, the prison experience beyond the propaganda. The Japanese were mentioned only about propaganda, and the bulk of the narrative was him and his comrades in arms against the establishment trying to bring them back home. The memory and questions of that visit will stay with me forever. I will never know the answers to my questions, both my father and my Uncle Bill passed away in 2006. The lesson for me is; my perpetual advice to my son is; ask questions.