6

RELIGIOSITY IN THE PACIFIC AND INDIA

Map 6.1 The Pacific and the Far East, 1941. Courtesy of United States Military Academy Department of History. Public domain.

November 19, 1942. The place was the green, towering, palm jungle of Guadalcanal, not far from the sea. The serviceman—thirty-two years old, quite old for a Marine—was Barney Ross, born in the poor quarters of New York’s East Side as Dov-Ber David Rosofsky. Growing up in the dangerous streets of Chicago, Barney used his fists as shields in tricky situations. With fierce determination and many fights, he became the world boxing champion in the lightweight and welterweight divisions. But on that afternoon, crawling through dense vegetation in the deep and tangled jungle, he and the other, younger Marines were on unfamiliar terrain. Not far from his foxhole, he was ready to fire his Browning automatic rifle. One of the men spotted moving shadows some twenty yards ahead, and the word “Japs” passed from mouth to ear. A rain of bullets claimed victims among Barney’s buddies. Some were killed instantly; others were wounded and needed the immediate help of medics, who rushed to the battlefield. Leaping into a shell hole, Ross and a few men remained in the dirt all night. When Japanese bullets came closer, Barney Ross, still unhurt, was in position to fire. Isidore Kaufman, a war correspondent in the Pacific, reported what happened.

He fired eighty rounds of his own rifle ammunition. The soldiers passed their Garands to him and he fired their ammunition, 200 rounds in all. Every time he fired he had to raise his head a little and more than 20 times Jap machine gun bullets bounced off his helmet. These helmets were made of good steel.

Now there was no more ammunition left—nothing but hand grenades. Painfully Heavy passed up his grenades to Ross, so did the others, giving him a total of 21. He tossed them at intervals, one by one, whenever it seemed necessary to keep the Japs away. At last, only one grenade was left. Ross fixed all the men’s bayonets and then his own. As they waited for the attack which they were certain would come any time, they prayed. Prize fighter Ross murmured the words of a Hebrew prayer he remembered.¹

The omnipresence of death on the battlefield and the threat of a new deadly attack called for prayers. Transcendence was called for by the compelling reality of war. At the break of dawn, the feared attack had not materialized. Instead, a relief unit arrived with Captain O. K. LeBlanc and Lieutenant John Murdoch of Barney Ross’s Marine company. What happened later, Ross could not remember, as he was battling malaria after being brought back to a safe bivouac area. But the following day, still fighting the disease in the hell of Guadalcanal, Private Ross could distinguish the words of his captain: “Ross, you are now Corporal Barney Ross.”² Most soldiers’ stories are not as uplifting. Bravery was too often recognized by posthumous awards and citations. Sometimes, it went unacknowledged. Yet some Jewish soldiers, sailors, and airmen clung to their Jewish identity in hostile territories. Mosquito-ridden Guadalcanal became the setting for a meaningful Jewish New Year celebration.

The current chapter unveils innovative forms of religious observance in unfamiliar and hostile territories such as the jungle of Guadalcanal, revealing how servicemen volunteered to conduct services when there was no Jewish chaplain in the vicinity. Chaplain Joseph H. Lieb served in Hawaii, while other chaplains in the Pacific included Harry R. Richmond, H. Cerf Strauss, and Norman Siegel, who received a certificate after taking a seventy-hour course in chemical warfare. Marching in the mud with fellow soldiers, Siegel decontaminated gassed areas.³ In the fall of 1944, the War Department asked the Jewish Welfare Board (JWB) to send a mission to the Pacific zone. There were increasing complaints from military personnel about the lack of chaplains. Two men were selected for the task: Rabbi Philip Bernstein, executive director of the Committee on Army and Navy Religious Activities (CANRA), and Chaplain Arieh Lev. They confirmed the serious shortage of Jewish chaplains in the South Pacific. On the island of Guadalcanal, there had been only one Jewish chaplaincy service since the island’s capture by American Marines in a surprise attack in August 1942. The victory secured the control of an airfield under construction, and more than a thousand Jewish GIs remained on that section of the Solomon Islands. Servicemen on islands such as Tinian, Kwajalein, and Tarawa did not receive even one visit by a Jewish chaplain, a role that was then most needed. Chaplains could boost morale, serve the wounded, and bury the dead. Nevertheless, Rabbi Philip Bernstein was impressed by the dedication of chaplains in the Pacific. In a report, he praised their sense of duty, which drove them to visit many adjacent islands. Most were dangerously overworked because of the shortage of chaplains and the fact that troops were scattered. “As a result,” Rabbi Bernstein deplored, “a substantial percentage of the Jewish chaplains in the Pacific were broken down in health. All those who had returned to the United States came back via hospitals as medical patients.”⁴

To remedy the situation, religious services were led by Christian chaplains along with Jewish military personnel. Laymen volunteered to fill in for chaplains. Two serve as an example: Captain Benjamin Fenichel, a physician from Philadelphia, and Marine Captain Sydney Altman from Brooklyn, both of whom conducted religious services on the Pacific Island for the High Holy Days. In these Days of Awe, Jews practice introspection and pray to be inscribed in the Book of Life. In such surroundings and in wartime, this tradition could not have been more relevant.

BLOWING THE SHOFAR IN GUADALCANAL

A faded photo offers a good indication of the place and situation: in the jungle, men with unkempt clothing and beards crouch in the vegetation, exhausted but smiling, as if grateful to be alive.⁵ The camera memorialized the challenge faced by a medical unit on the battlefront of Guadalcanal in September 1943. The photo includes Captain Benjamin Fenichel, the only Jewish corpsman in the team. Another photo, also miraculously preserved, shows the same Dr. Fenichel, shaved and blowing the shofar (ram’s horn) with half-closed eyes, his prayer shawl thrown over his head. The image captures the intensity and fervor of those who linked their destinies with God. In that instant, Captain Fenichel’s deeds seemingly stretched him to heaven. As he blew the shofar in that hostile setting, the spirit of transcendence imparted by ancient traditions renewed the chain of transmission. The deep, rousing sound of freedom and liberty attained with the New Year, Rosh Hashanah, tore the silence. The issues every serviceman faced belonged to the reality of the war, now enmeshed with ancient prayers. In the Bible, “the days of blowing the Shofar” (Numbers 29:1) are regarded as the beginning of the year. The rite is observed in synagogues all over the world, a fact servicemen and servicewomen witnessed in the many countries overseas to which they were assigned. Captain Fenichel proved himself capable of improvising the celebration of a universal ritual on a day of divine judgment. This was an achievement. Judgment is passed on the New Year, while one’s fate is sealed on the Day of Atonement, known as Yom Kippur. This knowledge was enough to send shivers up his spine. In a state of awe and deep concentration, Captain Benjamin Fenichel was captured in a photograph sounding the shofar. Why did he choose to accept such responsibility? From the testimony of his children, we know that in Newark, Fenichel’s observant father had taken him to High Holy Day services as a child.⁶ It is possible to recapture the moment when that memory empowered him. As a teenager, he had tried to blow his father’s shofar. He knew how much concentration and spirituality had to be put into the simple action. Now, on an improvised cane-thatched bimah, or reader’s platform, it was the real thing. On this New Year of 5704, he was making the prayers of seventy American soldiers meaningful. The cover picture of the November 1943 issue of the American Hebrew, the National Weekly of Jewish Affairs, exposes this spiritual achievement. A Conservative Jew, Fenichel graduated from Jefferson Medical School in Philadelphia, married, and practiced medicine in Newark in the late 1930s. He volunteered after the attack on Pearl Harbor and was sent to Camp Shelby in Mississippi. In mid-1942, he was assigned to the Fiji Islands (where Americans were fighting Japanese troops). His son, Robert, admitted that he and his mother tried “to cope as best as we could.” This understatement applied to most families still suffering from the lasting effects of the Depression years. The statement also modestly hides the emotional pain of parting with a father and husband who was not drafted but chose to enlist out of patriotism.

Fig. 6.1 Military Record and Report of Separation Certificate of Service of Dr. Benjamin Fenichel. From New Jersey, Dr. Fenichel volunteered as a medical officer from February 20, 1941, to June 2, 1946, and served in the Solomon Islands. He earned an APTO Ribbon with one Battle Star while in the Asiatic-Pacific theater of operations and a Bronze Star Medal while in battle with the Thirty-Seventh Infantry Division. He also won a Medical Badge, an American Theater Ribbon, and a World War II Victory Medal. He was issued a Lapel Button with the American Defense Service Ribbon. Courtesy of Sandra Fenichel Asher.

Fig. 6.2 Captain Fenichel blowing the shofar at a New Year Service on Guadalcanal, September 1943. Courtesy of Sandy Fenichel Asher.

Fenichel trained in the hellish jungles of Guadalcanal after American troops conquered the island. His unit, the Thirty-Seventh Division, participated in the Battle of Munda Point, where he cared for wounded in the battle zone. His daughter, Sandy Asher, stressed that he was awarded a Bronze Star on Munda. His military record and report of separation reveal that he earned a Battle Star, a Medical Badge, an American Theater Ribbon, and a World War II Victory Medal, among other lapel decorations. The captain proved that he could receive respect in the military while displaying his Jewishness. He more than likely healed the souls of many servicemen who thought that Jewish identity would be a burden in the American military.

Records about the enlistment of Jewish American physicians reveal an impressive figure: 60 percent of all Jewish physicians under the age of forty-five served in the armed forces. The study that provides this estimation was carried out between late 1943 and early 1944, covering all of New York State, eastern New Jersey, and twenty-two medium-sized communities throughout the country.⁷ The selflessness of Captain Fenichel, shared by many physicians, continued after he returned to Philadelphia. Suffering from a fatal heart attack at the age of fifty-six after many ignored previous alerts, he “died with his boots on at a house call far across town from home,” wrote his son Robert.⁸

Captain Sidney J. Altman shared the front page of the American Hebrew of November 1943 with Fenichel. Altman was the commanding officer of Company E, Twenty-First Regiment, Third Marine Division. His unit returned to Guadalcanal to recuperate some strength after fighting on the Solomon Islands.

VIGOR OF SPIRIT AND HIGH MORALE AS MILITARY WEAPONS

The front page of the American Hebrew informs the reader that Captain Altman hardly had time to change out of his combat clothes, yet the photo taken on the eve of September 29 captures a man wearing clean white clothes, a prayer shawl, and a pitch helmet. He is in a “tented chapel,” as there were no chapels or synagogues on Guadalcanal. Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Altman made the early decision to join the Marines out of patriotism. Although Jews made up only 2 percent of the Marine Corps in World War II, Altman had a good chance of being accepted into this prestigious military bastion. He was an athlete who grew up in the 1930s and became a noted quarterback. His athletic feats earned him a scholarship to New York University, where he played on the football team. Altman joined a fighting unit in 1942 and was sent overseas.

How did he find the stamina and confidence to lead a Rosh Hashanah service on Guadalcanal in the absence of a chaplain? The religious education he had received as a youth in Brooklyn enabled him to do so. He could conduct a religious service. Servicemen who had never prayed before could at least say “Amen”; God’s help would be summoned through Altman’s dedicated leading of the prayers. His example and that of Captain Fenichel provide evidence that at least two services took place for the Jewish New Year on the island of Guadalcanal.

As was the case with other laymen in the military, Altman immediately volunteered to lead the service when a Protestant chaplain informed him that supplies sent by the JWB had miraculously arrived on those Pacific Islands, the site of not so pacific events. Altman took up the challenge of transforming the surroundings by creating an island within an island, a small ark (maybe with a paper Torah in it) inside a tent. Some forty servicemen participating in the service wore either pitch helmets or Marine Corps caps, covering one’s head being a requirement during the religious ceremony. In the article about him from 1943, Altman thanked the GIs for their participation. As customary, he formulated vows so that they might be inscribed in the Book of Life for the New Year.⁹ It was an experience of transcendence that released the constant grip of fear. The celebration of Rosh Hashanah with the blowing of the shofar instilled in some servicemen a renewed zest for life and an awareness of the blessing of being alive and healthy. In a way, it combated the mental fatigue that threatens all military units.

A combat soldier who on November 14, 1943, earned a Silver Star for exemplary action on the island of Bougainville in the Solomon Islands, Captain Altman was awarded a second Silver Star for his bravery on the island of Guam as well as two Purple Hearts.¹⁰ Altman’s stamina “to do the job,” to use military jargon, was remarkable. He might have read a book intended for soldiers in combat entitled Psychology for the Fighting Man: What You Should Know about Yourself and Others. A chapter about the importance of morale, “the capacity to stay on the job,” might have struck him. The opposite of apathy, morale was defined as the ability to do a long, hard job “with determination and zest.”¹¹ Zest was equated with “vigor of spirit,” “love of life coupled with a willingness, an eagerness to risk life itself in a good undertaking.”¹² Published contemporaneously with the events, the book Guadalcanal Diary, by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis, reveals the fierceness of the first seven weeks of fighting. The movie version of the book, released in 1943, eternalized August 7 as the memorable day of American landings on the island (August 7, 1942). No American could remain unaware of the dangers and horror troops faced on the ground or of the combat experience of young American boys fighting Japanese troops.¹³ The military understood that it was important to maintain the morale of soldiers by making it possible for them to observe religious celebrations. The effort on the part of the American military should be emphasized here, as it represents an element that somewhat counters the argument of pervasive antisemitism among the American military. Rabbi Philip Goodman, when describing the aid tended by the military to enable celebration of Passover, noted the details of the enterprise: “New utensils and silverware were provided by the army. In the Hawaiian area, the Army Transport Service delivered two and a half tons of matzot, and other Passover products, 100 gallons of wine, 7,000 Haggadahs for 12 Seders held within this theater of war. Supplies were flown to Midway and other distant islands.”¹⁴ It is noteworthy that this impressive endeavor of the American military strengthened the Jewish identity not only of GIs but also of citizens of far-flung countries. Goodman mentioned such interactions in his anthology. In 1942, thousands of American troops arriving in Australia to fight the Pacific war were stationed in Melbourne, Sydney, and Brisbane: “In the heart of Australia, three Jewish local residents were guests of the Jewish soldiers at their Seder. Said one of these civilians: ‘This is the first Seder I have attended in thirty years. Until now I had been worried about the continuity of our people. . . . Suddenly, I see several hundred young vigorous American Jews and now I know that our people are still carrying on. This splendid sight warms my heart, for it is a token that, come what may to you or me, our people will go on forever.’”¹⁵ No doubt the joy of local Jewish inhabitants instilled Jewish American servicemen with vigor and boosted morale. Above all, religious observance in war zones answered two basic needs of servicemen: making sense of one’s Jewishness in dire conditions and feeling a sense of belonging while away from home.

A RELIGIOUS SERVICE ON THE ISLAND OF MUNDA

A letter by Captain Elliot Davis of the Eighty-Ninth Field Artillery, published by Philip Bernstein and Philip Goodman in the November 1943 issue of the Jewish Chaplain and reprinted in the Jewish Veteran in September 1944, provides a rich and moving account of the desire to observe religious requirements together with the patriotic need to pursue the war. It was mid-September, and American soldiers were still engaged in furious fighting against the Japanese Imperial army forces on Arundel, in the New Georgia Islands archipelago of the Solomon Islands. The battle of Arundel Island was fiercely fought from August 27 to September 21, 1943. It was launched after the capture of Munda airfield by American soldiers during the Battle of Munda Point, part of the New Georgia campaign, between July 22 and August 5. Mopping up operations on that island consisted of rooting out remaining enemy forces, whose stubbornness challenged the American troops. With the tension of the war zone so close, the soldier explained in his letter that the perspective of religious services for the Jewish New Year seemed totally remote: “We are fighting a war, the Japs are still around, and in the hearts of all of us there is a conflict, too; War and Prayer.”

It was then that, unexpectedly, the Baptist preacher in Davis’s unit, Major Evans T. Mosely, approached him and other Jewish boys in his division to inform them that prayer shawls (talliths), a shofar, and other religious items were on their way, sent by the JWB! Davis explained that when the GIs had left Guadalcanal, they had been unable to take the “religious equipment” with them, but fortunately one had kept the miniature prayer book printed and distributed by the JWB. They used it to conduct the Rosh Hashanah service: “We set up an organ in the mess hall and waited for the men. They had to come from the reef studded waters all around the island—from Bairoko Harbor, Piru Plantation, Rendova, Kokorona. We thought 50 would be a crowd. We waited. They came by boat, by truck and jeep and when we started the service there were 125 present.”¹⁶ In spite of their physical exhaustion and because of their mental exhaustion and weariness of the war, the Jewish GIs made the effort to find a way to get to the island. They needed the spiritual boost provided by the restarting effect of the Jewish New Year, with its symbols and connotations. To the servicemen suffering from nostalgia, and to Davis in particular, Munda was above all “a place too wild even for the natives to inhabit.” Yet the powerful voice of “a cantor singing from the soul” the ancient religious melodies reminded the boys of their beautiful synagogues at home. Soldiers who had been refugees from Nazism were moved to tears at the thought of the burned and desecrated synagogues in Europe, the serviceman commented in his letter, evoking the hope of the new Jewish year of 5704, which began under the auspices of brotherhood and ecumenism: “As the organ softly played on, I looked out of the building and in the distance was that serene blue Pacific separating us from all our loved ones. To my right, I saw the Munda airfield, the object of our recent operation in the South Pacific. Its white, coral runways sparkled in the sun as plane after plane took off from its glasslike smoothness. And as those planes soared into the heavens I could not but compare them with our soaring hopes in this New Year.”¹⁷ The captain encapsulated the eternal optimism of the Jew that the next year would be brighter than the previous one. As a Jew serving in the artillery, he mentioned why they were still on the island of Munda, in the dense jungle: the Japanese airfield at Munda Point that American troops had captured needed to be secured. It was a military asset. But on that day, Captain Elliot Davis became aware of other invaluable assets—brotherhood and belonging. He pondered with satisfaction the religious service led by “two Jews who knew no Hebrew but were proud and aware of their Jewishness” with the support of “a Baptist preacher from the hills of Kentucky”: “The service we had wasn’t Orthodox, it wasn’t even Reform; it was sincere and Jewish. And the sermon on the New Year by our beloved Chaplain Moseley would have done credit to any of our respected rabbis.”¹⁸

A few photographs in the National Museum of American Jewish Military History reveal that a Passover seder took place on the island of Munda on April 8, 1944. In one photo, three servicemen are busy preparing gefilte fish and fried chicken, as confirmed by the handwritten caption by men from the Signal Corps. Pre-Seder Scenes at Munda is the title given, followed by the names of the GIs—from the Bronx, Massachusetts, and New Jersey—while another photo captures three other men, members of the Seabees, making matzah balls for the seder. The culinary and gastronomic aspect of Passover is thus recalled. At the same time, Passover symbolizes the liberation of the enslaved Hebrews in Egypt. GIs did not miss the relevance of this religious observance to the war that was being fought to regain freedom. Rumors circulated about the enslavement of prisoners of war (POWs) put to work under dire conditions in camps or cold bloodedly murdered by Japanese guards. By 1943, Allied governments knew for sure that captured airmen in particular were held in inhumane conditions. Jewish airmen also feared being put to death as POWs or enslaved and starved to death in a Nazi labor camp. But Passover boosted morale by turning servicemen’s eyes toward a future when Allied forces would be masters of the air and oceans. The defeat of Japanese forces on February 9, 1943, after the battle at Guadalcanal and the Allied victory over Germany in the North African campaign on May 13, 1943, instilled hope among American soldiers.

Noteworthy about Passover on the island of Munda is the presence of many non-Jewish officers. Admiral Kinkaid, a navy legend, was a high-ranking officer. The participation of noted officers in a Jewish religious celebration lent to that ceremony a meaningful American dimension.¹⁹

This adds weight to our speculation that during the war, a number of high-ranking officers helped with the recognition of Judaism as one of the three main American religions. One may recall that General Douglas MacArthur offered his impressive mansion as a place of worship in Manila for Friday evening religious services, as no other suitable place was found by Sergeant Larry Yellin, who served in the infantry in the Philippines after fighting in Europe.²⁰ Further interactions between Jewish chaplains and the military were seen especially in the European theater of war, where American generals discovered the “horror camps,” as Eisenhower called them in his memoirs. Concentration and extermination camps where millions of Jews were decimated remained etched in his mind as a symbol of evil. In the introduction to a 1946 special edition of the Haggadah for American military personnel and displaced persons, Chaplain Klausner referred to General Dwight D. Eisenhower as Moses the Liberator, under whose command American forces restored the moral order of the world. Deborah Dash Moore has aptly noted the transformation that took place in different forms of observance in the military, adapted to each theater of the war and to the conditions imposed by combat zones: “Ecumenical observance of a Passover seder under military auspices transformed an intimate Jewish home ritual into a public performance.”²¹

Fig. 6.3 Seder in Munda, collection of Martin Weiss. Courtesy of the National Museum of American Jewish Military History, Washington, DC.

PASSOVER IN MANILA

An unsigned letter from a serviceman to his parents published in the American Hebrew provides a detailed account of a historic religious service in the Commonwealth of the Philippines. It was the first Passover service in an American territory that had been liberated from the Japanese enemy: “Last night I became a good Jew for a change and went to Passover Services. However, to you I can confess that if I hadn’t heard that they were serving wine and matzohs [sic] there I probably wouldn’t have gone. But I am not sorry that I went because it was a very impressive and interesting service. . . . I never thought that there was so many of us in this particular area.”²² He expressed his new awareness of the cultural aspect of Jewishness as well as its ethnic dimension and mentioned how surprised he was to encounter in this ceremony Jewish refugees from Germany and Austria who had fled Hitler. He also encountered Jewish servicewomen (WACs), “Red Cross girls,” and nurses. New forms of observance adapted to military life emerged in the process: “We started off by lining up on the chow line for matzohs, herbs, and wine. Incidentally, we had to bring our own mess gear and canteen cups. We were supposed to save the wine, etc . . . for the services, but it was quite a long time getting started so most of us didn’t have anything to dip or sip by the time we were supposed to.”²³ It was indeed quite a strange situation, not being able to recite the blessing after the corresponding type of symbolic food. But the conviviality and the sense of brotherhood and belonging fostered were enough to make the event unforgettable. The religious services were conducted by two army chaplains with the participation of a German cantor and a German rabbi, both members of the refugee community in Manila.

Ben Magdovitz, an infantryman whose parents were born in Lithuania, was sent to Manila with his unit. His assignment came after his participation in the fighting in France, Germany, Belgium, and Austria. Magdovitz wrote an essay for the YIVO contest in 1946, aware of the fact that “my observations are able to cover two ends of the world.”²⁴ He was on the high seas when the war with Japan finally came to an end; when he reached Manila, “with the initial coming of peace, the Jewish life within the community was again beginning to thrive.”²⁵ The twenty-one-year-old who benefited from extensive Jewish education in the United States was eager to meet other Jews in the Philippines. He was struck by the fact that, unlike in Europe, where Jews were persecuted as such, on that far-flung tropical island “they were treated no different than any other of the whites in the section: Jap [sic] occupied territory spelled doom, in form of privation, hunger, terror, to all white people. . . . Jewish community leaders were among the foremost in the various resistance movements that sprung up.”²⁶ Noting that most of the Jews in Manila were immigrants from Europe and refugees, the infantryman emphasized the warmth of the “well-knit” Jewish community that embraced him: “The hospitality is supreme, and many an American serviceman found a home there that was really his home. A Friday evening kiddush, civilian families accompanying GIs to services downtown, parties, and groups in homes—all were common affairs and frequent occurrences in Manila during the stages after the war.”²⁷ The Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of downtown Manila assumed a powerful meaning for him, giving an indication of the dispersion of Jewish communities in the world. The young infantryman was visibly impressed by the story of the “highly educated” head of the family that extended its hospitality to the GI on Friday nights. The man—whose name was Konigsberg—was originally from Russia and came to the Philippines via Shanghai. During the Japanese occupation, he was caught while in hiding. Konigsberg’s lengthy imprisonment by the Japanese broke his health. Nevertheless, he displayed a great deal of humor on Friday nights and marked the Sabbath celebration with Talmudic tales “or an occasional proof from Rashi,” which made Magdovitz think of the warmth he felt in the home of his Orthodox parents in the United States. The young infantryman perceived the positive interactions between the Jews in Manila and the Jews in the American military: “It was evenings like that, time spent there, that brought my home closer to me, and made my stay in that theatre seem a great deal shorter than what it was. There were often other soldiers there, and with similar get togethers all over the city, it is easy to see the effect the military and civilian populations had on each other.”²⁸

It struck Magdovitz that the Manila synagogue (erected in 1924) had been used by the Japanese forces as an ammunition dump. It impressed him even more that on the return of American forces in February 1945, the Japanese blew up the synagogue together with its contents. As a healing gesture and a gesture of Jewish brotherhood binding Jews all over the world, a group of American servicewomen and servicemen initiated a fundraising campaign to rebuild the synagogue, of which only the outer walls remained. American GIs expressed comradeship by dedicating it as a memorial not only to their Jewish comrades who fell in that war zone but also to all servicemen and women who sacrificed their lives in the Philippines. A memorial service was conducted in the ruins of the Manila synagogue on Friday November 9, 1945. The memorable date marked the anniversary of the destruction of synagogues in Nazi Germany (Kristallnacht) and a pogrom against German Jews carried out by SA paramilitary forces and civilians, all without the intervention of German authorities. It surprised the infantryman that the Manila synagogue was “the only one under the American flag to be destroyed by enemy action during this war.” This is Magdovitz’s description of the ceremony barely a month later: “On December 7, 1945, the anniversary of Pearl Harbor day, the formal presentation of the gift to the Manila community was made in an impressive ceremony at the USO-Perez center of Jewish military activities in the community. Lt. Gen. William Styer, Commanding General of Army Forces Western Pacific, made the presentation that evening with a huge crowd in attendance. The project was symbolic of the nearness of the Jewish people to each other and was very touching in its entirety.”²⁹

The infantryman’s account epitomizes the evolution of his Jewish identity, a Jewish American identity shaped by ethnic aspects that characterize a universal Jewish identity. It is striking that the soldier’s war experiences led him to analyze aspects affecting diasporic Jews so deeply. He also tried to define the features they share. In his opinion: “they are ambitious, generous and hospitable. . . . We very naturally cling to other brethren in religion, we are willing to sacrifice for them, though they may be strangers past and future.”³⁰ It is interesting that he should point out features of Jewish peoplehood that usually interest scholars but not soldiers. The attitude toward religiosity was much different when servicemen clung together in combat zones. The absence of a Jewish community that offered something reminiscent of home made the difference. However, Jewish pilots’ stories provide original accounts of unexpected, last-minute Jewish observance and a link with home.

PASSOVER IN IWO JIMA, 1945

Jerry (Jerome) Yellin, the distinguished pilot of the Seventy-Eighth Fighter Squadron, described the Passover seder in his memoir Of War and Weddings: A Legacy of Two Fathers.³¹ Etched in his mind was a short ceremony conducted in Hebrew by a Marine chaplain while all were in foxholes. Passover (Pesah) is primarily a festival of the home, which makes foxholes incongruous shelters. It was on March 28, 1945, a couple of days after the Banzai Massacre on the island. Yellin appreciated having “specific foods such as matzos, a flat, unleavened bread, symbolic of the hasty flight from Egypt of the Hebrew slaves.” He was grateful to the military, which had arranged for “a shipment of matzos to be brought ashore and an altar to be set up, under heavy guard.”³² The pilot felt that this ceremony created a bond between Dr. Lipshitz, the Jewish dentist of the unit, and himself. He also admitted that although he was not an observant Jew, he was moved by the significance and relevance of the ceremony. In the Jewish liturgy, the festival is described as “the season of our freedom.” Yellin interpreted his own mission as one to free the world from the tyranny of the relentless Japanese Imperial forces. Sergeant George Ammerman, who wrote an article about Jerry Yellin, with whom he had spoken, recalled that “as soon as he and the other pilots learned they were the chosen few, they started to joke about the life rafts, and floating alone on the deep blue sea.”³³ The twenty-year-old pilot felt blessed to have been chosen for the historic mission to bring an end to a deadly war that had claimed the lives of millions of young American GIs. After the war finally ended, other significant Jewish ceremonies included the New Year of the Trees (Tu B’Shevat) on Okinawa, an island that had been devastated by an eighty-two-day battle from April to June 1945 and violent typhoon Louise on October 9, 1945.

THE NEW YEAR OF THE TREES IN OKINAWA

Moshe Sachs, an air force chaplain born in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1920, was stationed in Manila before being assigned to Okinawa from 1945 to 1947. He boosted the morale of soldiers who were bored in Okinawa after the war ended. A man with a dose of humor and a sense of satire, Sachs had them write a Haggadah for Passover that included four boys in the military. The boy who did not know how to ask questions would be the one to reenlist in the military for the rest of his life! The chaplain encouraged them to conduct services to empower them. It is interesting that Sachs reinterpreted the religious observance of the New Year of the Trees in 1946 in the universalistic sense of improving the world (tikkun olam). In the United States, where he had been a rabbi before being appointed a chaplain, Sachs celebrated Tu B’Shevat by partaking of fruits grown in Palestine and distributing them to school children. The island, which was Japanese territory, had borne the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific theater during the Battle of Okinawa between April 1, 1945, and June 22, 1945. Chaplain Sachs and the American Jewish servicemen on the island adapted Jewish custom to postwar needs. Together with high school children from Okinawa, they planted trees to rehabilitate the land. The ceremony—part of the Jewish calendar—assumed a topical, cathartic value.³⁴ This move not only met with the approval of the American military but also became part of the rehabilitation program initiated by the American army. Sachs’s son confided that his father’s perception of Jewishness was ethnic, in line with the notion of Jewish peoplehood. The extermination of more than six million Jews by the Nazis made Sachs interpret the meaning of the New Year of the Trees as requiring the planting of trees in the Jewish homeland of Palestine.³⁵ His position was congruent with the Zionist vision that had become relevant to numerous servicemen and servicewomen, as seen in chapter 4. In that respect, the Jewish observance of Tu B’Shevat of 5706 in Okinawa added significance to the renewal of life in communities all over the world. Never had Judaism been so universalistic. Rebirth and redemption followed the destruction brought about by the war. The need to rebuild on former enemy territories facilitated the postwar encounter between Americans and natives of Okinawa.

Miles away from Okinawa, American servicemen assigned to India met different people with other customs. Their wartime experience expanded their worldview and lessened their xenophobia.

ENCOUNTERS WITH JEWISH COMMUNITIES IN INDIA

“Let me take you on a slow Liberty ship making its way across the beautiful but treacherous Pacific from Los Angeles to Calcutta, India in the summer of 1943.” With these lines, serviceman Marshall Wolke opened his memoir. Born in Poland in 1920 as an only son whose mother died when he was twelve years old, Wolke’s life depended on the support of relatives in the United States who helped him emigrate in August 1937. Under the guardianship of the relatives who sponsored his admission to the country, he took evening courses to master the English language. He was working in a department store in Chicago when war broke out after the Pearl Harbor attack. He volunteered and joined the armed forces in April 1942 as a private in the air force, serving in the G2 branch of the China-Burma-India theater headquarters until October 1946. Wolke was discharged with the rank of captain.

Why were American troops sent as far as India? General Eisenhower provided an explanation: “As a prerequisite to everything else we had to stop the Jap short of countries that were vital to our successful prosecution of the war—Australia and India.”³⁶

Wolke recalled that the journey to India took sixty days, with a stop in Australia and through the Indian Ocean and Bay of Bengal toward Calcutta. He was surprised by the presence of Jewish refugees who fled Nazi persecution as far as Indian territories in the hope of finding shelter. In search of a Jewish organization, he finally found Sir David Ezra, a Jew of the upper classes whose wife gave weekly teas and dinners for Jewish Allied soldiers. The native Jews of India with whom he came in contact fascinated him. He observed their customs during his twenty-seven-month tour of duty in the China-Burma-India theater of operations. Like most of the two hundred thousand American soldiers stationed there between 1942 and 1945, he was shocked by the poverty he saw among the general population.³⁷ He noticed that except for a small number of well-to-do Jews, many were extremely poor, even destitute. An inspiring encounter in Marshall Wolke’s account was his meeting with a Jewish chaplain in Karachi. Chaplain Abraham Dubin of New York worked in “cementing relations between Allied white servicemen and their distant dark Jewish brethren in India”: “Chaplain Dubin contacted the Karachi Bene Israel leaders when he first arrived, secured their permission to use their synagogue for Jewish services on Thursday evenings (Fridays were for the Native Jews), and generally organized American military-religious-social Jewish activities in coordination and in conjunction with the Bene Israel.”³⁸

Wolke emphasized the interactions between the American troops and the members of Bene Israel who welcomed them. The community of Jews in India learned a lot from American Jews, he observed. They met for traditional Jewish festivals such as Simhat Torah (“Rejoicing of the Torah”). That day marks the conclusion of the annual cycle of Torah readings in the synagogue and is associated with rejoicing at the beginning of a new cycle. Wolke saw the “little Indian boys” of the Karachi Bene Israel community dance in circles as Torah scrolls were carried by worshippers in seven circuits (hakafot) around the reader’s platform. They sang Hebrew songs “in an oriental melody” in the “beautifully lit and decorated synagogue.” The serviceman, who had taught the Indian children songs, happily joined the ceremonies in Sephardic Hebrew.³⁹ Although religiously observant, Wolke admitted he “had a hard time following the prayers” because of a chant he did not know and a “weird oriental tune.” Yet, he was “flabbergasted and excited by the whole experience,” both in Karachi and in Calcutta, where “I learned that American Jewish soldiers attended services during the High Holidays just passed, and that there are weekly gatherings at the Judean club in the city, and that the last names of the Jews are Ezra and Jacob, and Gershon, and Pinchos—just as our first names are.”⁴⁰

A glance at the genealogy of serviceman Wolke reveals his original Polish name: Mojsze Haim Wolk from the Volhyn province, where he was educated in Hebrew and gained the knowledge of the Torah expected from boys. In India, he took the initiative to conduct services when there was no chaplain. Wolke confessed that he sometimes found himself “feeling like the other” when he was the only white among Indian Jews. However, the Gershon family in Karachi, in whose residence some religious services took place, made him feel at home. He found there traditional hospitality, a Jewish value he thought crossed all borders.⁴¹

DISCARDING PREJUDICE

Serviceman David Macarov was assigned to India for two years as a meteorologist. Along with the whims of the weather, he tried to understand the concept of Jewishness and diasporic identity in relation to the Jews he met in India. He, too, was invited by the noted Lady Ezra in Calcutta. Macarov pointed out that Jews who did not speak Yiddish—the language of Ashkenazi Jews of European descent—challenged his understanding of who is a Jew. In his YIVO essay, he went further than Wolke in his analysis of the link between skin color and the feeling of “otherness.” He reflected about “prejudice against dark skins” when encountering Jews in Bombay or Calcutta. During his short time in Karachi, David Macarov served as assistant to Chaplain Abraham Dubin, whose work was praised by Wolke.⁴² Macarov did his best to get to know Indian Jews through close contact with them: “A short tour of volunteer combat duty won me a furlough to Calcutta, where my acquaintanceship with Indian Jewry really began. Immediately upon return from furlough, I applied for transfer to an airstrip outside Calcutta, which was granted. Here, I spent a bit over a year, and became an actual part of the Indian Jewish community.”⁴³ A native Atlantan brought up in the South, Macarov articulated his own evolution regarding age-old color prejudices. His initial viewpoint, instilled with prejudice shared by white Southerners, was transformed by his experience overseas. His Jewishness was very much linked with Jewish peoplehood, and he emphasized that the bond he felt with the Jews of India helped him overcome the ingrained color prejudice from his Southern environment. But he first thought that his preference for lighter-skinned Indians came from “instinct.” He was not yet aware of the fact that his bias was rather a cultural outcome of his education and conditioning in the American South. Replying to a letter from his parents in Atlanta, he tried to make them understand his own evolution.

Yet I know that what you really mean is “Are they dark skinned?” And I find that I get very angry at the question, and I am tempted to answer: “What difference does it make?” Perhaps you don’t realize what a remarkable achievement that is for me. Born and bred in the South, it didn’t matter what I thought, I felt an instinctive prejudice against dark skins. Given the choice, I would invariably sit by or talk to a white person, rather than a colored person, even though I knew such an attitude was wrong. I felt that the prejudice had been so deep-rooted by conditioning that I could not overcome it. . . . And yet [I] don’t see how it could have existed.⁴⁴

David Macarov’s honesty toward himself and the reproach he addressed to his parents are striking. It is quite unique to read a letter that describes so lucidly a victory over ingrained prejudice with the awareness of prejudice’s link to the environment in which one is brought up. Macarov went further by mocking the stance of those who, sometimes unaware, cling to prejudice: “For your information, however, they range from what we would call ‘white’ to a very dark copper tan, with the majority merely a sunburnt brown.” He perceived the concept of tolerance as inherent in Jewishness and therefore felt the incongruity of color prejudice by a religiously educated Jew. Besides, Macarov realized that his encounter with Indian Jews had made him question his own Yiddish-linked American Jewish identity. He was amused to find himself sprinkling his speech with words that replaced the intrusion of Yiddish into the American language: “A little Hindustani has crept into our language, and phrases such as ‘Maluum’ (Understand?), ‘Pucca’ (real), and ‘Teekhai’ (OK) enter in our normal conversations. One of the funniest things happens when Yiddish and Hindustani get mixed up by a speaker and he refers to an unreligious Jew as a ‘Pucca Goy.’”⁴⁵

It is not without a touch of humor that the phrase “a real Gentile” is itself not devoid of preconceived views. When considering the encounter of two peoples as different as Americans and Indians, it is not surprising that suspicion works both ways. Macarov, however, deplored that lack of trust. When I talked to his wife, Frieda, in October 2020, she vividly remembered how much her husband was frustrated that American soldiers could not ask for a date with the daughter of a host family. More than that, it was the best way not to be invited back! Yet repaying a dinner invitation by taking the daughter out was common among GIs. Jewish servicemen did so in North Africa, where many war brides later discovered the American dream. A couple of war brides from Calcutta also joined Jewish GIs in the United States and began new lives on American shores.

David Macarov, for his part, became friendly with several Indian Jewish girls, as testified by a photograph he preciously kept. His memoir reveals that he was invited to parties and dances in the Calcutta Jewish community. He met visiting Allied soldiers in the Jewish community of Calcutta and struck up a friendly relationship with a Jewish British soldier who joined the Young Judea club, where his own Jewish identity became intricately bound up with Zionism. Feeling integrated into the Calcutta Jewish community, Macarov seized the opportunity to organize a Zionist meeting for Allied servicemen and local Indian activists who belonged to different Zionist movements. These included leftist youth movements such as Habonim (The Builders, affiliated with Labor Zionism), Hashomer Hatsair (The Young Guard), and Chaluzim (Pioneers). The serviceman rejoiced that the consensus about the importance of Jewish nationhood did away with differences between youth movements. As a Habonim leader, Macarov deepened his own self-understanding and reexamined his views about life in the diaspora versus life in the Jewish homeland of Palestine by bringing these groups together. His introspection and grappling with crucial issues crop up in almost every paragraph of the memoir he intended for his family. His reformulations of life-changing decisions made in Calcutta stand out in his postwar essay about his experiences as a serviceman overseas. After twenty-six months spent in India, his statement is unequivocal: “Seeing how the Jewish people in India live, and knowing what is going on in Europe and Palestine . . . I’m afraid I’ve finally been forced to the conclusion that I argued with Nat about so many years and miles ago—that only those Jews who go to Palestine are doing all they can for Zionism.”⁴⁶ Reflecting on the spiritual journey in India presented in Macarov’s 1946 essay, Deborah Dash Moore offers a pertinent observation: “Rather than affirming his own Americanness, his contacts generated a Jewish solidarity that gradually dominated his Jewish American identity.”⁴⁷ An interview I conducted in Jerusalem with Hebe Solomon Benjamin, an Indian woman Macarov met in the Calcutta Jewish community, confirmed his preoccupation with Jewish solidarity. A picture in a peaceful Calcutta garden captures David Macarov with Hebe Solomon standing behind him, together with other girls from the Calcutta Jewish community. Eighteen-year-old Solomon, who immigrated to Israel in the 1970s, can be seen in the middle. She provided information on her encounter with David Macarov, who “was kind of an intellectual and the most serious of all the American boys in uniform” she met.

At my request, ninety-five-year-old Hebe Solomon Benjamin expanded on Jewish solidarity within the Indian Jewish community. A few wealthy Jewish families supported poor Jewish Indians and awarded grants to students. As a serviceman, Macarov observed manifestations of Jewish solidarity. Regularly invited to Mrs. Gubbay’s home on Fridays, where meals were organized for scouts, he and his friend Hebe Solomon Benjamin deplored how bad-mannered American servicemen would criticize in Yiddish the food to which they were not accustomed instead of being grateful for hospitality overseas. Asked how she perceived American soldiers, she answered that Jewish GIs were received as Jewish people in Indian homes. However, she remembered her shock at seeing segregated African American troops on army trucks in Calcutta.⁴⁸

Interspersed in Macarov’s memoir are testimonies of his patriotism and Americanness. One is the demoralizing effect of a news dispatch on April 12, 1945, announcing the death of President Roosevelt. Macarov was on duty at the weather station in Barrackpore.

I was greatly affected as FDR had been my hero for years. . . . VE day in May was also not greeted uproariously, since our war was against the Japanese, and they had already announced that they would fight until the last man. We knew we would have to invade Japan and flush their troops out of caves and hiding places, and even weathermen knew that they wouldn’t be able to stay behind in safe India. From May on we followed the war in the Pacific with grim intensity. . . . As May became June, and July, and August, we realized that our war could go on indefinitely.⁴⁹

***

Friday night, September 7, 1945. It was Rosh Hashanah in Guam, in the western Pacific. The small island remained under Japanese control for thirty-one months until July 21, 1944. On the recaptured American territory of the Mariana Islands, the place of celebration and worship was a big B-29 hangar. It was the shelter of the impressive Superfortress B-29, which had played a crucial role in ending the war through ceaseless bombing raids over Japan and, finally, by dropping the atom bomb. At the same place ten days later, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, “1500 Jewish men in uniform assembled to worship, to give fervent thanks to God for victory and returning peace,” noted Isidore Kaufman, a war correspondent in the Pacific.⁵⁰ Major David Cedarbaum, the Jewish chaplain of the Twentieth Air Force that operated the B-29s, perceived the unique character of this unit. In addition to his duties, he assembled data on auxiliary units located on the islands of Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and Iwo Jima. Cedarbaum found that in one wing alone, the Seventy-Third, there were 473 Jews, of whom 166 were air crew. There were eleven pilots and sixty-five navigator-bombardiers. A month after the war’s end, he found that in the Seventy-Third Wing, thirteen Jewish fighters and fliers had been killed in action, forty-eight were missing, and ten were liberated prisoners. Chaplain Cedarbaum reckoned that General LeMay’s command included about three thousand Jewish servicemen, among whom about nine hundred were airmen. “The large number of the missing,” commented Kaufman, “gives an indication of how often men and planes were lost on the 1600-mile flight to Japan, and, even more, on the flight back.”⁵¹

The more fortunate GIs encountered Jewish communities overseas. In the Pacific, where the level of Japanese savagery did not match any other theaters of war, new forms of improvised religious observance evoked a sense of home. Soldiers found refuge in Jewish spirituality, which fostered a form of Jewish solidarity and a sense of purpose. The war experience also triggered deep interfaith relations, as shown in a few case studies in this and in earlier chapters. Passover renewed servicemen and servicewomen’s willingness to bravely attain victory of freedom over enslavement and tyranny. The efforts of laymen to conduct religious services in hostile territories was an innovation in World War II. There emerged a way to rectify the lack of chaplains in the scattered islands of the Pacific. A minyan (a quorum of ten servicemen) was necessary to hold Friday night services in far-flung war zones. When a chaplain was present, he boosted the sense of Jewishness, comforted the wounded, and buried the dead. For Chaplain Joshua Louis Goldberg, a good chaplain was someone with “feet firmly planted on the earth.” “You want to reach heaven? Stretch yourself to heaven, but the feet must be on the earth,” he advised in an interview.⁵² The noted chaplain was in charge of distributing Passover supplies to the navy in the Atlantic and in the Pacific. He had to ascertain the number of Jews who needed supplies. He humorously stated: “I could tell you, quite frankly that I was surprised how many Jews were on some ships for Passover because we used to send wine, and I think that the numbers were a bit padded in some requests. But God bless them all, even in this respect. If a Patrick or a Patterson had a sip of the Passover wine, it’s perfectly all right. They took it on their ship, I suppose, in good spirits as we did.”

Servicewomen attended Jewish services in New Guinea and other places in the Pacific. Far from home, they sacrificed their lives. Sergeant Belle G. Naimer from the Bronx served as assistant post sergeant major at Kelly Field, Texas. She was one of eighteen servicemen and women listed as American casualties in a far-flung part of Papua, New Guinea, on May 13, 1945. A member of the WAC serving in the Pacific, she was buried in a field grave near the crash site without her remains being recovered by the War Department. Ten years after war’s end, her body was reinterred in Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, as part of a group burial, once the other remains were identified. Her name is memorialized in the Manila American Cemetery. Photos account for the war experiences of other servicewomen who served in the Pacific. Some, like Belle Goldman in New Guinea in September 1944, are captured in a photo while attending a Yom Kippur service. When interviewed, she said: “As a conscientious soldier who did whatever assigned, there was a war on, and I tried to do my part.” She did not miss the opportunity to observe the Day of Atonement, even on one of the most remote southern Pacific islands.⁵³

Religiosity is an important part of the American ethos, as expressed by President Roosevelt on many occasions to strengthen the faith in victory of American GIs and civilians. What is more, it is reflected in the closing lines of the national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” included in the abridged prayer book for Jews in the American forces.

And this be our motto: “In God is our trust!”

And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave

O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!⁵⁴

The compelling reality of war, the resilience needed to survive, and the force of religiosity are fathomed in the next chapter on captivity under the Japanese.