The Things Our Fathers Saw: The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation from Hometown, USA-Voices of the Pacific Theater

Great book with so much history

It was a great read for anyone that likes to know more about our history in war.

I commend the author for taking the time to teach his students about World War Two. When my children were in school during the 90’s, 2000’s, I would ask the teachers how much time would the spend on the topic. I think a week was the maximum. I think one teacher told me three days. I found the same message as a substitute teacher in Tulsa/Broken Arrow, Oklahoma. Unless the kids had relatives who served, they didn’t have a clue and could care less. I was appalled.! The one thing they did know about was the atomic bomb.The majority of the students were against it until I went through the numbers of Americans who would be killed and wounded. There were still a few holdouts, but there were starting to get a picture of the brutality of the Pacific Theatre.The execution of the story is interesting. He uses Glens Falls, NY as his idealic setting.It starts with a student from the community who wanted to get into the fight, Randy Holmes. Hew would graduate Naval Basic Training and find himself assigned to the USS Oklahoma on December 7, 1941. For those who don’t know, unlike the Arizona, she took four torpedoes in the port side and flipped over, trapping hundreds of sailors.From this point, Mr. Rozell takes a score of survivors accounts and takes the reader through the entire war.My problem with the memoir is it composition. Too many times the story would jump forward, thus losing the flow and timeline. I felt the intro was way too long. Introduce yourself and move on.The story does capture the tenacity, heroism and uncommon valor that was a staple of this generation. They didn’t ask for the war, but when their country called, they answered and never looked back until the war was won!If a school doesn’t’ have the time or resources to adequately cover the most important event in the 20th Century, they should pick up a copy this work and make it MANDATORY reading followed up with a lively discussion with the students. I found that is what is so lacking in the classroom when it comes to history. Stop reading the text and make it come alive.Four Stars

You might find this interesting.This interview was done by Adrianne, our oldest daughter when she was still in high school. My father, Walter Solomon Ek, was born on Jan. 22, 1921 and died on May 10, 2014. His memories:Q.: What do you remember from World War II.A.: "Then, as the late thirties came along, in high school, the history and civic teachers would talk about the outlook of what was happening and going on in Germany. Hitler had come into power, and had walked away from the League of Nations, which was a league formed after World War I to try to maintain peace between countries, and I remember our teachers in school told us that it looks like a repetition of World War I. The teachers, of course, all remembered World War I, and as this time was coming in the late thirties, it looked like the same type of thing that was coming on, that Germany, again, was preparing for war. That was a prophecy, you might say, but it came to pass. We can heard so much about the persecution of the Jews, for instance, which was going on, even in the late thirties and early forties, but we didn't get much news other than that. They were pretty quiet and suppressed.As the war came on in Europe, America started building up there defenses. When they did, that meant jobs almost everywhere, and more people could go to work, which they did. So after high school, and after jobs that didn't amount to very much as far as pay, I applied to the Bremerton Navy Yard, and went to work up there a couple years before I went into service. So I was up there when Japan hit Pearl Harbor. I was twenty years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed. Among other things, there was an unusual thing that I happened to see. Pearl Harbor, the Navy Yard in Pearl Harbor, the Navy Yard in Hawaii, was bombed, and here I worked at Bremerton, Washington. We didn't know, but Japan had planned on bombing Bremerton at the same time, but they had changed their mind. They couldn't even believe, with the spies they'd had, how unprepared America truly was. It was unprepared, there was no fortification or anything, or the ability to withstand an attack.So we heard the news come that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and of course, we were all pretty scared, we just didn't know what had happened. I went to work, I worked swing shift, and then I went home to the apartment where I lived. The next night, after Pearl Harbor was bombed, at midnight, I looked out towards the Olympic Mountains. I saw fired, big fires burning on the tap of the mountains, the Olympics. Now, this was in December. They couldn't have been forest fires. I still remember thinking, "What are they doing? Are the bombing the mountains up there?" I went to bed, but I couldn't sleep, so I'd get up and look. I could see the flames, they were probably twenty or thirty miles away, big flames, but I didn't know what they were.Then it so happened that the authorities felt that they had to put all the Japanese people, and all those with Japanese descent into these camps, internments, they called them. Afterwards there was lots of opposition that this should have never been done. But after the war I learned what those fires were about. They had been set by hundreds of people who had gone up there. They were spies working for Japan. They had gone up there with thousands of barrels of oil, just so much that it's hard to believe, and had made big arrows up on the mountains, aiming towards Bremerton. I saw those fires with my own eyes, but I didn't know what they were. The empty barrels were all left up there, they found them up there. The authorities had no idea who the spies were, but it wasn't just two or three; it was hundreds of them that had done this, and they were empowered to guard and protect America, and the only thing they could do was to put all the Japanese nationals and the Japanese descendants in these camps. They never were treated unfairly like the Japanese and Germans in the prison camps, how terribly those prisoners were treated. They weren't prisoners down there, they were just interned for the war, because the authorities who the spies were, but they knew they had to be, or most likely were those Japanese.So, I've been concerned, when I read later that the congress gave each one of them twenty thousand dollars because they had to leave their homes, and leave their businesses, and lost money, you might say, but so had thousands and millions of American soldiers lost their jobs when they went on to war. Many of them lost their lives, and they didn't get any twenty thousand dollars for that.But the Japanese did. War is a terrible thing, but I've felt that those people that were in charge of protecting America, that was the only repose they had to do, and a lot of people don't know that.I remember how scared I was at the time, there wasn't much sleep for me that night I saw the fires, because I wondered what were the meaning of these fires, what was there purpose. Well, then, as the progress went on, and we heard about the news, the bombing of Pearl Harbor, and what was going to be bombed, and then I kind of forgot about the fires, because I never heard more about them. But after the war, I learned what the fires meant.So that was the start of World War II."Thanks!Howard J. Ek360-904-0940

My husband couldn’t put down vol. 1 or 2. I decided to see why he was so captivated since he’s a big reader. They are an easy read and all Americans need to read these stories. I read a lot of history but this is told by those that lived it!

I am the 71-year old daughter of a soldier who fought in the Philippines in the Pacific during WWII. This book has given me a doorway of knowing what he faced in his war years.He never would speak of the war. When my mother passed away suddenly in the 1986, I spent many nights with him. One night, I asked him what he experienced in the war. He jumped up from the table and told me to never ask him that again.Mother and Dad were high school sweethearts. They had two small sons when he was drafted to fight in the Pacific. Mother moved in with her parents who farmed while he served.This book, perhaps, gives me a glimpse at what he faced in the Pacific. I had never asked mother. Perhaps, he should have spoken of it. Perhaps, it may have brought him some peace in life if he had spoken of the ghosts that haunted him.I think I was meant to come across this book online. It gives me a sense of understanding. I so thank the author!!!Patricia.

Il primo volume dell'opera di Rozell è davvero indimenticabile. L'autore ha voluto raccogliere le testimonianze di vari veterani che hanno combattuto durante la Seconda Guerra Mondiale (quest'opera è focalizzata sulla Guerra del Pacifico). Le storie di ogni uomo sono difficili da dimenticare per via dell'intensità con cui vengono raccontate e gli argomenti trattati.Il progetto dell'autore è rimarchevole, grazie a queste opere le testimonianze dei vari soldati non verranno dimenticate.L'unico lato negativo è la mancanza dei racconti di chi ha combattuto dall'altro schieramento ma credo che sia un problema minore poiché questo volume è incentrato solo dal lato Statunitense.

A very interesting approach of the "hometown" veterans recall their still and their still vivid memories of the massive war in the Pacific. .

These stories are tempered by the perspective of time and thus are much more genuine than the narratives which had appeared closer to the end of the War. Those earlier books were coloured by the official propaganda of the winning side - the Allies.

After becoming interested in war memoirs since reading biographies of various WW1 poets I have broadened out from the trenches of the Western Front to Vietnam, Korea and the many theatres of the Second World War. There is much to learn of the human condition by reading about those in combat. Also, with reading, much to realise just how grateful we should be for the sacrifices of others - this no matter what our views on war itself are.This book for me was one of the very best. My first real introduction to the Pacific War in WW2. Many truly haunting testimonies, told without fanfare, of commitment and courage almost beyond belief. Suffering also.Just a word specifically on this ebook. The text is such that it would be compelling however badly formatted. In fact it is one of the very best produced books I have read on Kindle. Spaced well, with different fonts for the memoirs and the historical background sections; footnotes that work perfectly between text and the notes, and back again. Good photos. Truly excellent and if there is a typo then I missed it. Astonishing at this low price and makes me wonder about the larger publishing houses that seem incapable of the same excellence even when charging ten times the price.Irrespective of this, a great book. One that brings me closer to my fellow human beings of the United States. Thank you.

Brilliant and well written book that turns dry facts into living history by tying together events in WW2 with the voices of those who lived them. Thought provoking and moving. My own relatives never spoke about their experiences with us. They maintained a silence about those experiences (which they only broke at times with fellow veterans) until they were elderly and even then they spoke rarely, so books like these are precious. What we do not know, we cannot remember. What we cannot remember we cannot pass on to future generations. Lessons learnt with such sacrifice need to be shared with our children.