8

CAMARADERIE BEYOND PREJUDICE

The first American nurse killed in action in the European theater captured the essence and warmth of camaraderie in a letter to the GI newspaper Stars and Stripes. Lieutenant Frances Slanger wrote these eloquent lines: “We have learned a great deal about our American boy and the stuff he is made of. The wounded do not cry. Their buddies come first.”¹

Hundreds of stories of mixed crews of American bombers evince the necessary interdependence that led to comradeship in teams of airmen. It was a major element in the high level of performance in the American air force; camaraderie was born of mutual dependence and thus went beyond prejudice.² It stemmed from flying missions. Flight officer and former prisoner of war (POW) Harvey Horn, twenty years old when he served, emphasized that this bond was especially strong when the crew of a B-17 had to ditch.³ This final chapter explores how shared experiences, selflessness, and leadership fostered mutual trust and social acceptance in the military for American Jews.

TOWARD MUTUAL TRUST WITH JAPANESE AMERICANS

Milton Zaslow, who had just graduated from New York City College in 1941, thought of enlisting in the army as the war broke out. Little did he know that the strange phone call inviting him to start an expensive Japanese language course would shape his life, eventually dedicated to the American military. Nor could he have imagined that deciphering captured Japanese material during the war in the Pacific would lead him to the battleground. In his first assignment in the Mariana Islands, he had to search for Japanese prisoners hiding in caves alongside the US Marines, noted combat units. He was often greeted by a live exploding grenade tossed from within the caves. Leading a team of ten Nisei servicemen, Milton Zaslow, an American Jew who grew up in New York, confessed in an interview conducted in 2004 by Vietnam veteran Bob Nakamura that his unexpected war experience “made him a better person.”⁴ His example deserves an analysis. His empathy for the Japanese Americans who comprised his team was remarkable—at a time when Japanese people in America were an even less desirable ethnic group after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the outbreak of the Pacific war in 1941. It was then that the exclusionists, groups of men and women active in politics, demanded the evacuation and internment of Japanese Americans in camps.⁵

Milton Zaslow’s wartime story evinces that his encounter with Japanese Americans was a life-changing experience. At the time, the young serviceman was perhaps not aware of political debate about the passage of an immigration act in 1924 that would exclude Japanese immigrants from entering the United States and limit the admission of certain Europeans, such as illiterates, Catholics, and Jews. It is ironic to recall that in February 1942, Jews ranked third, after Japanese and Germans, in a poll about the most menacing groups for Americans.⁶ Although he had not previously been exposed to Japanese Americans, Zaslow, a patriot, felt it would be useful for the war effort for him to embark on the most intensive course he had ever taken. How else could he have labored over the assigned homework until bedtime after a long day of study?

The intensive course, taught by a Japanese teacher and in complete immersion with other Japanese people, eventually paid off. Zaslow successfully completed the program and was contacted by the army. He enlisted and moved to Camp Savage, outside Minneapolis, in “a very austere bunch of Quonset huts out in the countryside.” Camp Savage was a site of the American Military Intelligence Service and a language school that operated in San Francisco before moving to Minnesota. The purpose of the school was to teach Japanese to both military personnel and civilians involved in the war effort. Trainees’ acquired skills were to be used to interrogate POWs, interpret, and—most often—translate captured material. It was at Camp Savage in July 1943 that Milton Zaslow met several hundred Japanese American Nisei. Many were “young kids”; a few were older. He recalled that because many had lived in Hawaii, they had never seen snow. They went out stark naked (the way they slept) in the freezing night at the first appearance of the cotton flakes falling from the dark sky. He admitted to feeling like he had encountered “a new kind of person.”⁷

The serviceman reacted to several challenges with compassion. He felt empathy for Japanese Americans. Years later, he admitted that as a young man, he had not quite understood to what extent these Japanese Americans were eager to fight for the United States: “I had ten men, and off we went to San Francisco. Before going to Hawaii, we had one night free before embarking. The first special problem occurred. A local law prohibited Japanese Americans to be seen outside, so as a second lieutenant, I told them, tonight you are not Japanese, you are Chinese! Just don’t get into trouble and enjoy yourself! And the bond between me and my team became stronger.” The Japanese Americans in Zaslow’s team traveled with him to Honolulu on a liberty ship “as small as we can get.” Another problem cropped up because, although assigned to the navy command, Asian people were forbidden from entering Pearl Harbor. He had to find a place for his Japanese American team to examine material from Guadalcanal and other combat theaters in the Pacific. Zaslow dealt with another major challenge when the team reached the Mariana Islands: “Japanese Americans walking around would be the first to be shot! So we had passwords, it worked very well. The Marines would not take Japanese Americans in uniform. Tinian was an agricultural place. Maybe 8000 Japanese families and Korean families. . . . We organized a kindergarten. We were kind of successful. It was a new experience for all of us.”⁸

Zaslow was cautious and fortunate that no members of his team were killed by American Marines, who could easily have mistaken them for Japanese enemies.⁹ Fairly quickly, he adjusted to war zone conditions. He and his team were first attached to a navy command and then to the Marines. In the years 1944–1945, in Okinawa, he was attached to the Army Twenty-Fourth Corps. To land on the Japanese island, he had to swim ashore amid a lot of shooting with a bag full of Japanese dictionaries, a carbine, and a .45 handgun. Asked by the interviewer how his Nisei team felt on August 6, 1945, the day of the bombing of Hiroshima, he answered that although no one knew what it truly was, the news brought relief: “Oh, they were delighted. Of course. Absolutely.”¹⁰

A similar reaction of relief was felt by US Army Corporal David Mandell, a soldier stationed in the Philippines who trained in a unit meant to be the first to hit the beach in the planned invasion of Japan. Corporal Mandell, who had the feeling he would “end among the slain,” later told his son how relieved he was at the news that a newly invented atomic weapon would lead the Japanese to accept unconditional surrender.¹¹

A chief of staff under Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, General George C. Marshall told the latter that it was the “shock value” of the weapon that would put an end to the war. He explained that dropping the bomb “seemed quite necessary, if we could, to shock them into action. . . . We had to end the war, to save American lives.”¹² Historian David McCullough draws a clear picture of the situation: “Okinawa was on Stimson’s mind—Okinawa was on all their minds. An attack on the American armada by hundreds of Japanese suicide planes, the kamikaze, had had devastating effect—thirty ships sunk, more than three hundred damaged, including carriers and battleships. Once American troops were ashore on the island, the enemy fought from caves and pillboxes with fanatic ferocity, even after ten days of heavy sea and air bombardment.”¹³

And yet, the memories etched in Milton Zaslow’s mind were not only of the twelve thousand Americans killed in Okinawa and the thirty-six thousand wounded but also of the Japanese losses, ten times worse: one hundred and ten thousand, while civilian deaths may have reached a third of the population of the island.¹⁴ He recorded a fact that moved him, denoting his empathy and the camaraderie that drew him close to his Nisei team of Japanese Americans.

If you want to send mail to anyone it has to be censored by your commanding officer for obvious reasons. And so I was in the business of reading the mail of every single one of these young men, mostly young men. And mostly they would write to their families and mostly they were in the relocation camps. And the heart wrenching thing to me was that here—here are these guys not living too well, in danger of being killed at any time, writing letters to their families in the relocation camps and trying to keep their families’ spirits up. Whereas normally you would expect the families’ letters would be quite the other way. And I felt that—that just was—I was overwhelmed by that. And it was quite common with almost every one of them. They had older parents or grandparents and uncles. They were very attentive. Would talk to them, make sure they mentioned their names and what they were doing. But in every case, they were writing it to try to raise the spirits of the people back in the camps. And that’s such an inversion of what you normally would expect coming from people in combat for their country, that it overwhelmed me.¹⁵

As if Nisei servicemen were not themselves entitled to empathy from relatives, they had to worry about the psychological well-being of their parents. Not surprisingly, the American officer strove to maintain contact with his men and the Japanese community in the United States after the war. He kept in touch with Don Oka, the sergeant of his team, who became a cartoonist for Walt Disney. Invited to a Japanese American Veterans Association (JAVA) meeting in downtown Washington, DC, many years after the end of the war, Zaslow, eager to find people he knew, recognized one of his men among hundreds of Japanese Americans. Asked to recount the striking encounter with a former member of his military team who had become a businessman, Zaslow described recognizing a man of about fifty-five years of age, although the team member was nineteen years old when he was part of his team: “And he had that lovely look in his eyes that you see when somebody who is smart is talking to you, you know? He just radiates. . . . It was the most rewarding experience I can ever recall. So I will never forget them and the service they performed. It made me a better person.”¹⁶

The interviewer did not mention or inquire about Zaslow’s Jewish identity. But again, showing empathy for others is a Jewish value that makes one a better person. Once Zaslow had adjusted to life in the Pacific Islands and gotten closer to the ten members of his team, he was basically a white American officer.

Zaslow was not asked to expand on the presence of Japanese American women among those who translated captured Japanese material while serving in the American military. Yet it is worth pointing out that Japanese American women were allowed to enlist in the WACs in March 1943 and later in the Military Intelligence Service Language program, sometimes against the will of a mother who would disown her daughter “for joining the enemy army and help defeat Japan.”¹⁷ The importance of deciphering and using foreign languages was recognized throughout the war in many domains, ranging from the use of German by former German Jewish refugees—enlisted in the American military to serve in the Intelligence Service and save thousands of American and Allied lives—to the use of the Navajo code talkers, memorized by young Native Americans. This language, which was originally oral, acted as an unbreakable code; its use saved lives, as enemy Japanese forces never managed to break it unlike other codes.

In 1941, the growing need for airmen spurred a pioneering initiative that eventually broke through the barriers of prejudice. First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who also encouraged the Women Air Force Service Pilots (WASP) experiment, convinced her husband, President Roosevelt, to agree to the creation of the first squadron of African American pilots and crewmembers.¹⁸ As seen in earlier chapters, while Jewish pilots—both men and women—were often washed out because of prejudice, African Americans too suffered harshly from rampant discrimination and segregation. No all-Jewish units were created by the American military, but segregated units existed for African Americans, men and women alike. Jewish servicemen and women sent to the American South for military duty often expressed shock at discovering signs reading “no Negroes allowed,” which reminded them of panels with “no Jews allowed” at the entrance to some public places in the 1930s and even until the late 1940s. Feelings of empathy and even a sense of fellowship with African Americans pervade the personal narratives of Jewish GIs, especially those from the East Coast.

EXPERIENCING FELLOWSHIP IN THE MILITARY

Instances of fellowship, friendship, and a sense of brotherhood abounded—and, of course, varied. Psychologically speaking, these interactions not only with Jewish “buddies” but particularly with non-Jewish GIs shared a sustaining function. Small group solidarity was a great help in fighting overwhelming homesickness. But many GIs had never encountered Jews, and some had been exposed to caricatures of Jews with horns on their heads. Time spent together in basic training, battle, or POW camps led to a realization that Jews were first and foremost Americans ready to sacrifice their lives. Infantryman Milton Norman, from Brooklyn, was somewhat upset at his comrades’ astonishment that he did not have horns like the Jews they pictured in their minds. He found some comfort in the camaraderie he felt with an Italian immigrant who could not write English and whom he helped write letters.

And so that there was anti-Semitism, but it wasn’t overt, and as a matter of fact, I bonded with a fellow in my Platoon who was from Pennsylvania, of Italian heritage. I think Italian was probably his first language; at least he could write or read English hardly at all. And he had a girlfriend, and I used to help him write letters to his girlfriend. She wrote him in English, and I had to read the letter to him, and we composed an answer, and we became good friends. And he happened to be the Division Lightweight Boxing Champ, which I think was helpful in a sense that here I am, 18 years old, 128 pounds soaking wet, you know, and so we became good friends.¹⁹

A non-Jewish friend was no doubt a good support, and the proximity of a boxing champion might have deterred Jew haters.

THE BOND OF CAMARADERIE

A lieutenant colonel in the Air Corps, noted filmmaker William Wyler was born in 1902 in Mulhouse, Alsace, which was then a German possession. To produce a morale-building documentary film for the War Department, he took flying lessons to accurately document a bombing mission. The film he produced focuses on the crew of the B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle as it prepares to carry out a mission of strategic bombing over Germany. The spectator feels the freezing cold and fear of being hit by flak through the laconic messages exchanged between the flight crew. With empathy, Wyler expressed those boys’ feelings and shared their apprehension of bailing out. Each one knew that the loss of a crew member was like the loss of a limb. Wyler wanted to convey the humane side of the war and became attached to this crew, making its twenty-fifth and last mission. As a Jew in uniform flying over Germany, he feared that in case of bailing out, he would be captured and murdered by Germans. While filming a B-17 on a mission, Wyler’s Jewish cameraman, First Lieutenant Harold Tannenbaum, a World War I veteran, was killed when the bomber was shot down. Wyler took it on himself to write a letter to inform his wife. The filmmaker never lost contact with the crew of the Memphis Belle, whose bravery he played down so that the film footage could speak for itself.²⁰

Many Jewish airmen spoke warmly about African Americans in interviews conducted by author Bruce Wolk. Veteran Norman Smeerin of the 332nd Fighter Group found them simply “fantastic.” He recalled: “They would pick us up as soon as we got into enemy territory, they would fly cover for us until we got to the target.”²¹ Technical Sergeant Norman Zalkin, a radio operator with the Ninety-Ninth Bombardment Group, opened up about his flying experiences with African American escorting pilots, who were only allowed to fly P-51s. The interviewee offered moving recollections of fellowship in spite of expected “social distancing”: “On several missions we encountered German fighters. . . . We had two engines shot out. Our bomber was a four-engine plane. And we had to turn back and we were by ourselves. We were attacked by German Messerschmitts, and we called for help, and afterwards, we found out that the fighter group that came and shooed them away was the Tuskegee airmen. They took us back to Italy and they were black and we could tell by looking at them that they were the Tuskegee airmen. On that particular mission, the Tuskegee airmen saved our lives.”²² He added that back then, they were not called Tuskegee Airmen: “Black fellows at that time were Negro.” He explained that they were college men who had been allowed to enlist and were expected to stick with members of their own squadron.

Technical Sergeant Frederick Bartfield also credited the Tuskegee Airmen for his being alive. In many instances, Jewish fliers felt that close encounters with African Americans were not encouraged. The Jewish veteran reminisced that they escorted his bomber up to the target. He appreciated it all the more as he got hit in the head by flak on a mission once and had to ditch: “I wanted to go over and see them but we had a couple of southerners on our crew who said they weren’t particularly anxious to mix with ‘coloreds.’”²³ Another Jewish navigator went through similar experiences on dangerous assignments over the Adriatic Sea. First Lieutenant James Ruttenberg was flying a mission to Zagreb, Yugoslavia, when he encountered the Tuskegee Airmen, who escorted his plane back to their airbase. The officer recounted:

I was on the radio when we were coming into the airbase, and you never heard such wonderful jive talk. Those guys have a very soft place in my heart. . . . I felt very strong kinship to these guys because they were going through the same sort of things because of their race that I went through my whole life because I happen to be born of Jewish parentage. When we stayed there overnight and had dinner with these guys the conversation went along the lines of an apology. I guess I more or less apologized for the rest of my citizens in the United States. I wanted them to know that everybody didn’t feel the same way.²⁴

Adopting the perspective of the underdog is a Jewish value that overlaps with the spirit of America, a notion formulated by Thomas Jefferson in the Declaration of Independence. The correspondence between these two ideas was particularly striking during World War II, which explains in part why Jewish Americans considered it “a just war” while others cynically viewed it as a “Jewish war.” This point has been dealt on in various ways in previous chapters. Considering the numerous common denominators between Jewish and American values, suffice it to mention the safeguarding of freedoms such as religion, speech, and creed guaranteed by law. Let us recall that the preface of the Jewish prayer book issued by the National Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) indicates that “it serves not only the men who use it, but also the highest ideal of America.” The prayers instilled both the aspirations of the Jewish people and those of all mankind, as they “quicken loyalty to loved ones and to all one’s fellow men.”²⁵

For Americans of all faiths, camaraderie in wartime was indispensable to maintain high morale under the worst conditions. When Jewish infantrymen were battling their way through the bug-infested Pacific Islands, comrades in arms depended on each other to survive. With no time nor taste for anti-Jewish attitudes, only indispensable words were uttered when conquering the island. Often, each soldier would surpass himself to prove his own worth and sense of purpose to himself and others. A photo captures the courage of three buddies advancing on the Munda trail on New Georgia Island. Among them, erect and tense, ready to open fire, Private First Class Archie Shapiro of the Bronx precedes his two buddies on an uneven and muddy path. Unlike his comrades, he wears no helmet. The year was probably 1943, and Japanese snipers were still around. What mattered was their dangerous mission, conquering Munda and reducing the distance to Tokyo by enabling American bombers to land on airfields in the islands. The same objective in mind and the same spirit of camaraderie are captured in another photo: Major Robert Hirshfield of Chicago and Brigadier General John Arrowsmith of Reno, Nevada, are seen at the window of their bamboo basha office. These two American engineers constructed another road to Tokyo from India—built on the most difficult terrain, it established a connection with the old Burma Road to China. Cutting through the Assam Jungle to send supplies to southern China, it was called a “miracle of a road.” Working in cooperation assumed various forms. Another undated photo in the volume published by the JWB shows three people squatting and apparently communicating in a field in China. One identifies Hank Greenberg, former Major League home run champion and now Captain Henry Greenberg, close to two Chinese laborers.²⁶ The caption indicates that he was “comparing notes” with them. It is probable that those notes accompanied maps or pictures of potential airfields.²⁷ The champion served for six months in the China-Burma-India theater, spotting locations for B-29 bases. He was also in charge of the physical fitness of the men of the Fifty-Eighth Bomber Wing. This interaction with the Chinese fostered a unique form of fellowship promoted by the necessities of the war.

In this theater of the war, the help and compassion of Chinese people for Allied soldiers saved American lives. A 1944 report, the story of a Jewish airman who later obtained the Distinguished Flying Cross, reads thus: “On his fifty-first bombing mission over Japanese controlled territory, Lieutenant Milton Miller of Brooklyn, New York, was forced to bail out. He landed in Japanese held territory and escaped with the help of Chinese natives.”²⁸

COMPASSION, A SOURCE OF COURAGE

Empathy, a key Jewish value, is perhaps what helped many courageous servicemen become distinguished Jewish officers in both World War I and World War II. Such achievements are illustrated by Vice-Admiral Ben Moreell of St. Louis, Missouri, who arduously and patiently worked his way to the top by selling newspapers in the typical American tradition. As chief of the US Navy’s Bureau of Yards and Docks and of the Civil Engineer Corps, he organized the Seabees, who performed engineering feats in the Pacific, and became a four-star admiral and the highest-ranking Jewish officer in naval history.²⁹ In late 1941, his concern that civilian workers at bases in the Pacific ran the risk of being shot at in case of guerrilla warfare led him to request permission to form “construction battalions” or “CBs,” pronounced and named Seabees. The naval officer and engineer thus initiated the idea of training skilled workers to handle weapons as a battalion in case of an attack. Vice-Admiral Ben Moreell (also spelled Moreel) went down in naval history as “King Bee.”³⁰ Although his Jewishness may not have been disclosed, his deeds are in keeping both with the highest American ideals of dedication to the military and the central Jewish value of empathy. The wartime book Fighting for America: A Record of the Participation of Jewish Men and Women in the Armed Forces during 1944, which detailed his achievements and contributions to the American military, emphasizes that Jews from all walks of life behaved like American patriots. Brigadier General Julius Klein, another noted officer, also dedicated his life to a larger goal. Recipient of the Soldier’s Medal for Heroism, he was decorated for battlefield valor when he saved numerous lives during an explosion in New Caledonia, in the southwest Pacific Ocean.³¹

Yet some service members suspected Jews of cowardice, along with physical weakness, selfishness, and dishonorable behavior. For others, Jews were too bookish or brainy. Such a representation of masculinity seemed at odds with the American ideal of the muscled man and “good left hook.” Although the stereotype first created anxiety among Jewish servicemen, such apprehension gave way to assertiveness as they became physically fit. Coping with anti-Jewish slurs eventually strengthened them, as it “happened en route to becoming soldiers,” Deborah Dash Moore subtly remarks.³² Noted counterexamples of these stereotypes include American professional baseball player Hank Greenberg, whose story in the military was detailed in a previous chapter.³³ Let us also recall Colonel David Marcus, a hero and one of the most popular men to graduate from West Point because of his boxing fame. His desire to help “underclass men” made him appear as a compassionate person. With the military help he provided to the fledgling Jewish state in 1948, the story of the American war effort in World War II “touches on the story of Israel,” as the authors of Jews in American Wars put it.³⁴ Solidarity with other Jews and American servicemen could entail the sacrifice of one’s life.

CAMARADERIE THROUGH HEROISM AND SPILLED BLOOD

Jewish servicemen defied the stereotypical idea that Jews were only willing to serve in safe roles as reporters or observers. They were more numerous in the infantry than in any other branch of the army. The final phase of the war in the European theater resulted in many receiving decorations for their courage, often posthumously.³⁵

The life and achievements of undefeated world boxing champion Barney Ross powerfully illustrate the transformation of the Orthodox Jew into a muscled Jew. Although Ross broke loose from Orthodoxy, Jewish values of selflessness and empathy guided him when he enlisted. The citation for his Silver Star notes that Ross remained under Japanese fire with two comrades to protect the men of his unit: “He assisted on the following night in dragging the injured and helpless men to comparative safety. Trapped approximately 400 yards in front of the Army’s main line of defense, Private First Class Ross and his companions cared for the injured Marines until a rescue party arrived on the morning of the 20th. His great personal courage and sincere devotion to his comrades were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”³⁶

Ross’s life was to be an endless fight. After the war, his dedication to helping veterans and people suffering from addiction showed he was not reluctant to go public about his addiction to morphine to alleviate pain as long as it could help others fight addiction. This courageous attitude from the former Talmud student and son of a rabbi—murdered by two robbers in his grocery store—may be construed as a yearning to make the world a better place (tikkun olam in Hebrew).³⁷

As a war correspondent in the Pacific, Isidor Kaufman noted that in the battle of Guadalcanal, Ross’s foot was injured by mortar shells. He also caught malaria and was delirious for ten days. Admirative of “the fighting medics,” doctors in uniform and medical aides who left their established practices, the war correspondent observed that they performed the job “often under imminent danger to life and limb from battle raging around them.”³⁸

JEWS IN THE MEDICAL CORPS: COMRADES WITHOUT ARMS?

The story of Captain Ben L. Salomon—serving in the Mariana Islands at Saipan on July 7, 1944, as the surgeon for the Second Battalion, 105th Infantry Regiment, Twenty-Seventh Infantry Division—is emblematic of the dedication of a medic to his fellow soldiers. Salomon’s sense of camaraderie led him to infringe the rules of the Geneva Convention according to which a medical officer is not allowed to take up arms against the enemy. His case raises a question: should a medic let his patients be murdered by the enemy if he knows how to handle weapons? Compassion for wounded patients who had been bayoneted by the Japanese and quickness of wit drove him to behave with courage.

Salomon graduated from the University of South California Dental College in 1937. Inducted into the army when the war broke out, he was assigned to the 102nd Infantry Regiment, where his abilities as an infantryman brought him awards. A sergeant in command of a machine gun, he was commissioned an officer in the Dental Corps in 1942. As a first lieutenant, he became the dental officer of the 105th Infantry Regiment, Twenty-Seventh Infantry Division. Promoted to captain, he saw action when he reached the shores of Saipan in June 1944. Realizing that there was little need of a dentist there, he volunteered to replace the Second Battalion’s surgeon, who was wounded. On the night of July 6, the Japanese attacked with three to five thousand troops. Ben Salomon realized how desperate the situation was when he saw enemy soldiers inside the aid station tent where he was treating the wounded. The first Japanese soldier bayoneted a wounded American soldier and attempted to kill three others with a knife, which Salomon managed to snatch from him. Soon, about thirty wounded Americans crawled to the tent. Salomon ordered his medical assistants to take the wounded away from the tent; armed with a rifle he grabbed from one of the wounded, he strove to hold off the Japanese from disrupting the evacuation of the wounded and killed several enemy soldiers. Captain Ben Salomon was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor posthumously on May 1, 2002, by President George W. Bush, some fifty-eight years later.³⁹ The citation sums up the rest of the action: “After four men were killed while manning a machine gun, Captain Salomon took control of it. When his body was later found, 98 dead enemy soldiers were piled in front of his position. Captain Salomon’s extraordinary heroism and devotion to duty are in keeping with the highest traditions of military service and reflect great credit upon himself, his unit, and the United States Army.”⁴⁰

An inspiring example of dedication and courage in the European theater of operations, where numerous Jewish GIs served, is provided by an American Jewish servicewoman. Alleviating pain and comforting the wounded was the goal of Lieutenant Frances Slanger. Eager to take part in the war against Hitler, Slanger, who was born in Poland and whose family immigrated to the United States in 1920, was assigned to the Forty-Fifth Field Hospital. She was one of four military nurses who landed in Normandy with American troops after D-Day. A Purple Heart, awarded posthumously, confirms her dedication to healing servicemen at the risk of her life.⁴¹ The lines she wrote in a moving letter to Stars and Stripes as a tribute to the American fighting men radiate with her warmth, humor, and sense of sacrifice to heal the wounded and uplift their spirits. A short passage from Slanger’s letter reveals her gratitude, love, and understanding for American combat soldiers: “The patience and determination they show, the courage and fortitude they have, is sometimes awesome to behold. It is we who are proud to be here. Rough it? No, it is a privilege to be able to receive you, and a great distinction to see you open your eyes and with that swell American grin say, ‘Hi ya, babe?’”⁴²

The sense of purpose of this American nurse, who lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts, was in keeping with the Jewish values of hessed, doing good things out of generosity, a wish expressed in daily prayers. Her example also evinces that humor helped cope with the dire conditions near the battlefront, showing that “what we can laugh at we can survive”—it does not “hold us captive of fear,” as a renowned rabbi put it.⁴³

Beyond the dangers they faced in the line of duty, members of the Medical Corps shared a bond with “their” GIs that was not free of emotion. One of the first army nurses to serve in the Pacific theater, Anita Claire “Goldie” Gold, born in 1919 in Brockton, Massachusetts, was commissioned barely two weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. She had just graduated from nursing school when she was sent to the Pacific theater. She was transferred to Melbourne, Australia, in April 1942 and to a frontline hospital in New Guinea in January 1943. The hospital suffered daily attacks by enemy bombers and Japanese artillery. Her husband, Fred, later commented on her three-and-a-half-year service: “She took care of all the wounded. It was an awful time, but she saved many lives.”⁴⁴ Anita Gold also cared for three hundred survivors of Japanese prisoner camps, horrified at the health and mental condition of those who survived inhuman starvation, beatings, torture, and rampant disease.

For some women, military service as nurses encompassed taking care of survivors of the atomic bomb. With the American medical unit sent to Hiroshima, Gertrude Shapiro encountered devastation and strove to comfort and heal those in hospital. She died prematurely in the early 1970s of a cancer likely resulting from exposure to nuclear radiation. Other servicewomen extended compassion and care to former inmates of POW camps and survivors of concentration camps. They included Ruth Karsevar of the 136th Evacuation Hospital’s communicable disease unit, stationed near the combat zone of Bad Kreuznach, Germany. Lieutenant Karsevar, from Atlantic City, New Jersey, had previously treated war amputees. She wrote to her parents about “fellow Jews being massacred” in Germany. Working in a hospital and caring for Jewish survivors from concentration camps, she was surrounded by German civilians. She made sure to let them know how “proud she was to be an American Jew.”⁴⁵ Being an American servicewoman meant she was among the liberating armies. From that perspective, Lieutenant Karsevar thwarted the perception of Jews as victims.

A sense of American fellowship blended with patriotism when young women were courageous enough to oppose their parents and enlist. Proving capabilities to help and care for others in unfamiliar and often dangerous environments demonstrated their capacity for empathy and ability to endure basic training, to follow orders in unfamiliar surroundings. In 1944, Jeanne Zamaloff of the US Women’s Army Corps (WAC) was sent to General MacArthur’s headquarters in New Guinea, where, she noticed, all the prettiest girls ended up. The friendship of another Jewish servicewoman from Brooklyn was comforting, especially because both of them had boyfriends serving in the army. Her friend was fortunate enough to reunite with her boyfriend in New Guinea, where they were married, while Zamaloff met back with hers after four years of separation. Reflecting on her experiences, she was admirative of the servicewomen she called “politically conscious,” who “got in touch with the resistance movement in Manila.” While she found that most GIs were respectful and grateful for the presence of women overseas, she added that “there were some rapes in the army.”

I was never subjected to that, but what would happen was the generals would send messages to an office where was somebody they wanted to go out with, and they would ask if that woman would go with them. And they did or they didn’t, as they wished. But when I got those invitations, I looked very innocently at my superior officer, the officer in charge of the Department and asked, “Why would I want to go out with him” and he would say “Oh you don’t have to, you don’t have to.” And I would say, well I don’t want to, that’s it. You know, totally innocent.

But there was another side of the coin—women who did and I don’t say that they were a lot. I knew one woman who did, who danced around all the officers and was promoted to warrant officer very quickly so she could consort with them—in a passive sense—not so she could be part of their group. It was very obvious to all the other women that if you wanted to become a warrant officer, you had to do what she did, and nobody wanted to.⁴⁶

Still in New Guinea, in unexpected settings, American servicewomen overseas like Belle Goldman of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, joined religious services in search of fellowship and spirituality. Improvised moments of religiosity were especially needed in the South Pacific, where enemy bombardment, random attacks by Japanese soldiers, and disease took a toll on American troops.

Led by General MacArthur, island warfare in the South Pacific implied “island hopping,” a strategy that targeted key islands to establish footholds in the Pacific to get nearer to the enemy homeland. In many places, signs of civilization were scarce, and religious services reconnected GIs to home even if they had not been observant before the war. In New Guinea, where Goldman was stationed, infrastructure boiled down to army tents and barracks. Strips of land served as airfields for aircraft that would be backed by naval and ground forces. In these surroundings, a photo captures Belle Goldman attending Yom Kippur services outdoors in September 1944.⁴⁷ For some, such locations implied modifying religious practices such as fasting—refraining from eating and drinking—for twenty-five hours, from sundown to nightfall the following day. Worshiping together not only created cohesiveness between members of a minority but also led to new interpretations of the meaning of the day in light of shared war experiences. Above all, archival photos of Jewish services in war theaters testify to the military’s tolerance and even encouragement of Jewish religious practice, although exceptions existed, depending on the convictions of Catholic chaplains. With the three main American faiths represented in the ranks, the American military “promoted the new concept of Judeo-Christianity,” as historian Jay Eidelman puts it, and “to express their religion in public was heartening for Jews in service.”⁴⁸

CAMARADERIE UNDER EXCEPTIONAL CIRCUMSTANCES

The bond established between Jewish servicemen in the military disregarded hierarchy as well as nationality. As seen in chapter 7, the war experience of Alfred Weinstein, a prisoner of the Japanese who attended the first service of the Day of Atonement in a prison camp in the Philippines, exemplifies this statement. This bond does not apply solely to prisoners of the Japanese but rather to all servicemen and women, including Jewish POWs of the Nazis. Take the case of Ralph Tomases, a twenty-three-year-old Orthodox Jew born in Wilmington, Delaware, to immigrant parents from Romania and Belarus. In the heart of Germany, after a week’s march in the snow from the Belgian-German border as a POW, the American officer (who was a dentist) arrived at a prison camp where several hundred soldiers were gathered in a big warehouse. The German officer in charge began calling out names of captured soldiers one by one. Those whose names were called left the warehouse. As the sun set and darkness crept in, Ralph’s name had still not been called. Only two American servicemen men were left in the warehouse: he and another GI. Tomases approached the other captured soldier and asked his name. “Kimmelman,” a Jewish name, was the reply, confirming his fear that they were being singled out as Jews. Fortunately, the other captive was also a dentist and, like him, would be useful to the Nazis. The two men bonded because they were the last in the warehouse. They had both been waiting in agony to know if they would be murdered immediately in the dark or sent to die in a slave labor camp. This shared anguish sealed their comradeship.⁴⁹

Ralph Tomases worked in the POW camp as a dentist, physician, and interpreter who knew Yiddish and some German.⁵⁰ Toward the end of the war in Europe, the officer wrote from Stalag IV-B to his parents and young wife, reiterating his hope to be freed soon. He secretly attended a religious service on German soil.

This eve, I went to services. A service which I shan’t forget. Here, in the midst of our worst oppressors, in secret, an odd collection of people met in a Catholic French chapel. Serbs, Checks [sic], French, Poles, Yanks, Hollanders, Palestinians, Scotch, English, Greek, and God knows what else. Mixed up uniforms, different tongues, but one thing in common. As I stood there and listened, first to a Hollander and then a Serbian Chazzan, my eyes wandered about. Men, with tear-filled eyes sniffling, lumps in their throats, thinking of other days, and other erevei [eves of] Passover. . . . With the help of God, I’m sure that we shall be together next Pesach, and that soon the Lord will, with His strong hand, take me out of this bondage like He took out our ancestors. El Male Neeman. Shma yisrael H’ alokeynu H’ echad.⁵¹

In his letter, Tomases emphasized the relevance he saw in the commemoration of Passover, prefiguring the long-expected liberation from the POW camp.

As observed in earlier examples, many Jewish soldiers attended services to seek Jewish fellowship overseas, in strange surroundings. Participation in religious services also created a bond with Christians, who were sometimes invited to attend by their fellow Jewish GIs. In December 1943, Harold Ribalow was in Morocco. Impatient to visit Casablanca, he seized the opportunity to get “a free pass to town” by joining a group of servicemen to attend a Friday night Jewish religious service and then visit the town. Ribalow was surprised to see that his Italian American buddy, Rogliano, easily passed as a Jew. A first lieutenant in the air force turned to Ribalow’s comrade to find the proper page in the prayer book.⁵² Rogliano, who had just been guided by his friend, placidly showed the Jewish officer the relevant page of the liturgy.

Although the Jewish serviceman’s initial objective was to visit Casablanca, he admitted that he sensed some form of transcendence in the religious service.⁵³ Now that he was overseas, Jewish prayers reconnected him with home. Many GIs found that religious services and Jewish festivals alleviated homesickness. We may speculate that, better adjusted to their new wartime environment, they could be a better psychological support for their fellow servicemen.

The war experiences of servicemen behind the front lines cannot be compared with those of battlefield soldiers. Those behind the lines in the Pacific were vulnerable to tropical diseases and bombing raids. Although the inhospitable jungles of the Pacific Islands, the burning sands of North Africa, and the hot climate and poverty in India were all unfamiliar, fellow Jews could be found in these areas.

Another type of bond between Jews and Christians arose from challenges. Captain Max E. Zera, who fought in the Tunisian campaign and later with the Fighting First Infantry Division in Normandy on D-Day, wrote about the harsh experiences of infantrymen. There were numerous Jewish servicemen in this corps, despite the misperceptions that Jews shirked harsh combat assignments. Zera recounted in a letter the shared experiences of battle that created a bond between these men.

Some day, I hope to write a bit about the infantry man. To my mind, he is the Army. . . . He’s the plugger that does all the dirty work and gets none of the glory. He is the kid who stays in there pitching, knowing there is no relief in sight. He is the lad who stays in the foxhole all day, blistering in the sun. Then fights his heart out at night . . . chilled in the lull of battle. And all the time he is subjected to gunfire, bombing and strafing. He is the youngster you see in the photos with a mangled body . . . and the soldier, who sits contentedly eating cold hash out of a tin can. He is the expendable doughboy!. . . . Filled with a hate . . . a hatred developed in the realization that it is his life or his enemy’s.⁵⁴

This quote demonstrates again the truth behind the statement that there is no antisemitism in foxholes. The fear of death and the need for each soldier in battle leaves little place for subtle anti-Jewish slurs. In the letter to his friend Herman, Captain Zera expressed deep admiration for American infantrymen, his buddies. He thus reiterated this point: “There is no tougher job in the world! And no one can accuse them of shirking out their duties.”⁵⁵ As a Jewish American infantryman, Zera implied that he did not shirk service in a combat unit either. Born in New York City to parents who had immigrated from Poland, Max Zera joined the army as a private in March 1941. The twenty-three-year-old had graduated from New York University as a physical training teacher. Having previously encountered renowned American war correspondent Ernie Pyle in England, Zera met him again during the North African campaign. Like most American soldiers, Zera was uplifted by the sense of fellowship expressed by the war reporter in his columns. In turn, Ernie Pyle was admirative of the courage and qualities of infantrymen, which he discovered by attending their classroom lectures and basic training. Max Zera wrote to his friend about the journalist from Indiana.

He was a quiet, unassuming gent. There is a reason for his success as a writer. He lives what he writes, while up at the school he would double time from class to class with us. He doesn’t appear to be strong but he subjected himself to the rigors that were ours. He sat through our lectures attended the study periods, went out to the range with us. Ran the obstacle course and took hikes just as the candidates did. He was up at reveille, and was out there at 5:45 doing the calisthenics. . . .

When I got down to Africa, I met him again. He didn’t recognize me, so I introduced myself. He was still being thorough in his work, he’s the only correspondent that actually went up to the front lines. I mean on the lines.

Pyle spent all his time with us in the Tunisian campaign.⁵⁶

Reciprocal admiration for the war correspondent, who risked his life at their side to inform Americans at home about the sacrifices the boys were making on behalf of their country, could only boost morale. Like some infantrymen, Ernie Pyle cheated death several times in the foxholes of Europe, but he was killed by Japanese bullets near Okinawa.⁵⁷

Unsurprisingly, letters about the death of comrades contain curbed emotion: “For several months I suffered with nightmares. I used to make the landing at Tarawa. They had to fly me from Hilo to Pearl Harbor. There were only six of us in my boat that reached the beach alive. I don’t want to tell you these things, but I know there’s a war still on and I suffer each day in a way you can’t understand while my buddies are still out there.”⁵⁸ Being able to kill for a buddy—or to die for him—were characteristics shared by comrades in arms, committed to fighting for their country and spurred by the sentiment of living on borrowed time. That made soldiers in combat feel something similar to being part of a big family.⁵⁹

In other instances, friendship grew out of shared respect and empathy. An interesting mention of friendship is found in a letter by infantryman George Bader, addressed to his wife and daughter, from a hospital after being wounded in the leg shortly before the Battle of the Bulge. When a non-Jewish fellow GI told him he was hungry, Bader, an Orthodox Jew, was pleased to take the serviceman with him to a Friday night service where he was the layman conducting the service. There, he invited his hungry buddy to enjoy bread and herring.⁶⁰

AMERICAN SPIRIT, PATRIOTISM, AND BROTHERHOOD

The intention of the Jewish War Veterans of the United States of America (JWV) is to encourage and maintain a feeling of fellowship among Jewish GIs. The oldest organization of veterans in the United States, it was founded on March 15, 1896, in New York City. Its first meeting was attended by sixty-three Jewish Civil War veterans, named as “members of the Hebrew Union Veterans.” When considering the connected issues of camaraderie and commitment to serving one’s country, it is worth recalling the JWV’s mission. Still relevant today, the JWV defends the following Jewish values closely intertwined with American moral principles.

To maintain true allegiance to the United States of America; to foster and perpetuate true Americanism; to combat whatever tends to impair the efficiency and permanency of our free institutions; to uphold the fair name of the Jew and fight his or her battles wherever unjustly assailed; to encourage the doctrine of universal liberty, equal rights, and full justice to all men and women; to combat the powers of bigotry and darkness wherever originating and whatever their target; to preserve the spirit of comradeship by mutual helpfulness to comrades and their families; to cooperate with and support existing educational institutions and establish educational institutions, and to foster the education of ex-servicemen and ex-servicewomen, and our members in the ideals and principles of Americanism; to instill love of country and flag, and to promote sound minds and bodies in our members and our youth; to preserve the memories and records of patriotic service performed by the men and women of our faith; to honor their memory and shield from neglect the graves of our heroic dead.⁶¹

With the world in flames and the war raging in the Pacific, the flag raising on Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, became an iconic representation of the American spirit as well as an image of comradeship celebrated by Harry Truman in his memoirs: “During the battle for Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, had taken his inspired photograph of the American flag being raised on Mount Suribachi. Never before, perhaps, had any photograph been so enthusiastically received.”⁶² The ineffable, evocative power of the American spirit, uniting diverse ethnic groups and faiths in a commitment to the flag, was captured in a single photograph. In a fraction of a second, amid bullets that whistled around him and killed one of the soldiers holding the flag, Jewish photographer and GI Rosenthal risked his life to convey to the American people the valor, commitment, and comradeship of American GIs. Like many other photographers and reporters, he served as a kind of liaison officer between combat forces and home front. Rosenthal, who was later awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this picture, admitted that of all the photographs he had taken on the front lines, nowhere was the spirit of “GI Joe” so well caught.⁶³

It was actually a second flag raising; two hours earlier, a first flag had been raised on Mount Suribachi, but it could not be seen clearly on the other side of the mountain by thousands of Marines fighting to capture the island. Marine Corps commanders decided that another, bigger flag should be flown. It took many years to identify the six soldiers who held the flag, three of whom were later killed in the deadly battle of Iwo Jima. The first day of the invasion of the island took a higher death toll in American lives than D-Day in Normandy.⁶⁴ Since Iwo Jima was a small island, close-range fighting was called for, which increased the casualty rate. With over six thousand Americans dying during thirty-six days of combat on Iwo Jima, their number amounted to “five times the number of deaths on either Guadalcanal or Tarawa.”⁶⁵ This figure provides another indication of the multiple symbolic values of the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. In April 1945, Secretary of Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr. offered the president a painting made from Rosenthal’s photograph to be used as a war loan campaign poster. He also presented to the president three of the presumed surviving Marines from the inspiring picture. Among them was Private First Class Ira Hamilton Hayes of the Pima Indian Reservation in Arizona. This encounter highlighted the visibility of minority groups among those who bravely wore the American uniform.⁶⁶

Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn’s famous Iwo Jima eulogy for his fallen comrades is also iconic in that perspective. The first chaplain ever appointed to the Marine Corps, he was assigned to the Fifth Army Division. Gittelsohn, a Reform rabbi born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1910, earned three service ribbons for comforting the wounded of all faiths during the fierce fighting on the island. Division Chaplain Warren Cuthriel, a Protestant minister, asked him to deliver a memorial sermon at an interfaith religious service to dedicate the Marine cemetery, but a few Christian chaplains opposed the decision, arguing that a rabbi could not preach over a majority of Christian graves. It should be emphasized that the division chaplain refused to change his plan. To save him embarrassment from the biased attitude of bigoted chaplains, Gittelsohn suggested that separate services be held for each faith. He thus delivered to Jewish servicemen the speech he had prepared for all the Marines. It included the following excerpt, which honors the sacrifices of all Americans.

Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. . . . Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this, then, as our solemn, sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price.⁶⁷

The chaplain, called to minister to Marines of all faiths and having helped bury the dead on the island, was deeply saddened by the prejudice voiced by a few Christian chaplains—his colleagues. In a gesture of solidarity and objection to bigotry, a few Protestant chaplains attended his service. They listened to his speech entitled “Brothers All?” thus aptly conveying his disillusion. His eulogy became famous because of the rejection it suffered and the moving depiction of those who “have paid the ghastly price of freedom”: “Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the sides with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.”⁶⁸

Another Reform rabbi, Alexander Goode of Washington, DC, embodied even more powerfully the ideal of brotherhood beyond prejudice through the sacrifice of his own life. In the faint light of a freezing Atlantic dawn on February 3, 1943, the crowded US Army transport Dorchester was torpedoed by a German U-2 submarine. Lieutenant John Mahoney, who was among the two who survived in a lifeboat, admitted that he owed his life to the gloves of the Jewish chaplain who had given his lifebelt to an enlisted man: “My fingers would have frozen stiff had it not been for the gloves.” Together with Chaplain Goode, Protestant chaplains George L. Fox and Clark V. Poling and Catholic chaplain John P. Washington—who had all given away their life-preserving equipment—prayed in Latin, Hebrew, and English on the sinking boat for the souls of their comrades. An iconic picture of the four chaplains was eternalized on an American stamp, prefiguring an emerging Judeo-Christian tradition in the military and the development of interfaith memorials. Analyzing this icon of Judeo-Christian America, historian Jonathan Sarna pinpoints that the sinking of the USS Dorchester “symbolized the model of American religion that rapidly gained ground in the postwar era.”⁶⁹ War reporter Isidor Kaufman indicated that before boarding the USS Dorchester, Goode had written a letter to his wife: “We are fighting for the new age of brotherhood, the age of brotherhood that will usher in at the same time the world democracy we all want. . . . Our spirit of tolerance will spread.”⁷⁰

In the immediate postwar period, in a society in which manliness was so admired, those affected by what was then called “battle fatigue” were perceived as weak and lacking courage to fight. Even spouses who had longed for the return of their husbands or companions from the war could not understand the mental blockages or deep silences apt to ruin a relationship. Because of a stereotyped American vision of manliness, some veterans would not mention their inability to function normally. A wartime documentary film recounts what some servicemen faced when they returned to the United States in a terrifying though realistic way. Let There Be Light (1946) demonstrates how the empathy and expertise of psychologists and doctors could help trace the roots of trauma preventing veterans from even moving their limbs. Former intrepid servicemen seemed like mental wrecks when they came back to America. Former combat soldiers, sailors, and airmen had to adjust to a postwar reality. Directed by American filmmaker John Huston during his military service in the Signal Corps, the documentary was intended to show the traumatic experience of many soldiers. But the presentation Huston and cowriter Charles Kaufman made of mental disability led the American government to suppress the film until the 1980s.⁷¹

Empathy must have been displayed by American psychiatrists treating “battle fatigue” or “battle shock” (later identified as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD). As indicated in a report published in 1944, Major Harry L. Friedman of New York City “contributed to the successful treatment of men suffering from battle shock.” The report mentions that 40 percent of the men treated by this physician of Jewish faith were reassigned to army duty, a great improvement in comparison to the high rate of permanent mental breakdowns that destroyed the lives of thousands of veterans of the First World War.⁷²

As recounted in chapter 6, when twenty-one-year-old Captain Jerry Yellin landed back at Iwo Jima, he learned that the war had ended while he had been flying his P-51 over Japan three hours earlier. It was hard to come to terms with the loss of the young Jewish pilot and friend who flew next to him on that last mission and disappeared in a cloud while Yellin and his crew were strafing airfields near Tokyo. The following is how he accounted for his own transformation.

I hated the Japanese all of my adult life. Then I attended a wedding in Japan on March 6, 1988, between the daughter of a Japanese Imperial Air Force veteran and my youngest son, Robert. This wedding between children of former enemies made me rethink, not only my life as a warrior, but the lives of all of us who served in combat. Today I have three grandchildren living in Japan, aged 19, 17, and 13. They love me, I love them. I can’t help feeling that all of Humanity is the same, that the pure purpose of war is to kill and the pure purpose of life is to connect to all of Nature.

Like surgeon and former POW Captain Alfred Weinstein, when Captain Yellin visited Japan, he encountered a new generation. Even after his son and his Japanese wife divorced, Yellin continued his yearly visits to Japan to see his in-laws, with whom he had bonded while sharing war experiences as a pilot (with the indispensable presence of a translator).⁷³

JEWISH VETERANS OUTREACH

As a senior patient advocate and member of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Harry Corre—recipient of a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart—helped hundreds of veterans of all faiths and ethnicities. At age ninety-one, Corre continued his welcome visits to VA medical centers four days a week. A former POW, he was sensitive to trauma and inclined to foster positive interactions with fellow veterans. Corre continued a spirit of military fellowship after the war.⁷⁴ Providing help to fellow veterans meant seeing reality through their eyes and addressing their emotions. Often, those suffering from traumatic memories kept silent for fear the memories would reemerge and compromise their fragile psychological balance. Corre explained that only veterans can understand each other. That is one reason why veterans are reproached for remaining silent. In his view, most people have forgotten or know little about World War II and what soldiers went through.⁷⁵ Robert M. Morgenthau—chairman of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, World War II veteran, and son of Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau Jr.—emphasized that veterans share characteristics with Holocaust survivors. Given that “thousands and thousands were lost at sea” during attacks that were defeats for the United States, he insisted on the difficulty of putting into words war experiences that involved a tremendous loss of life. Serving as executive officer on the USS Lansdale and USS Harry F. Bauer, which were attacked by the enemy, he recalled the trauma of those who witnessed the loss of their buddies in simultaneous torpedo attacks and kamikaze raids. He recalled that at Okinawa, 1,900 such suicide attacks occurred.⁷⁶ Therefore, veterans often share with Holocaust survivors a sense of guilt for being alive. Numerous were those who remained silent about their traumatic experiences, including discovering the Nazi concentration camps. What GIs in combat zones and POWs went through taught them that the body and spirit can endure a lot and somehow still function. Like survivors of the Nazi enterprise to exterminate the Jews during World War II, they learned the value of resilience and freedom.⁷⁷

Some servicemen whose stories have been shared in this volume exemplified the fact that to contribute to a better world, man must accept to change something in himself. Broadmindedness and a dose of tolerance are the pathway to a form of “repairing of the world.” Suffering from PTSD after he returned from the war, Captain Yellin visited Japan in 1983. As seen in chapter 7, Captain Alfred Weinstein attained a similar goal in his postwar visit to Japan.

Stories of Jewish American servicemen that suggest a desire for reconciliation and reconstruction are exemplified by the religious ceremony of the New Year of Trees performed by Chaplain Sachs on Okinawa.⁷⁸ Being married in Japan by a navy rabbi in Yokohama was symbolic too. Navigator-Bombardier Stuart R. Reichart saw fierce combat as a member of a B-29 crew conducting bombing raids over Japan, flying at low altitude in daylight.⁷⁹ Remaining in the Air Force Reserve after World War II, he was called to active duty and transferred to Japan for a few years. His wedding on Japanese soil with the woman to whom he became engaged before leaving the United States meant embarking on a new life in parallel with the rehabilitation of Japan. The major he became was fresh from the Brooklyn Hebrew Orphan Asylum when he joined the Army Air Corps at age eighteen, enlisting as an aviation cadet in November 1942. The veteran who entered law school at war’s end became general counsel of the air force and served for forty years in the air force.⁸⁰ In the social landscape of the late forties, remaining in the American military was seen as a factor of integration for Jewish veterans. It also afforded them a long-expected sense of belonging and security.

The narratives of the Jewish American airmen and airwomen, soldiers, sailors, Marines, nurses, and corpsmen offered in the present book—many of whom died too young—testify to their dedication to their country in answering the call of duty and to the dynamics of camaraderie that helped overcome their legitimate fears and homesickness. Camaraderie assumed a sustaining function in the continuous personal fight against prejudice.