A Sad sign of the passing of time.

[RoadKingLarry]

The WWII Sub vets have disbanded their national organization. There isn't enough of them left to keep it running.
These were truly iron men in steel boats. The machines they waged war in make the boats I served in look like luxury liners. I've had the honor and privilege of meeting a few of these heroes over the years.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/09/23/world-war-ii-submarine-veterans-forced-to-disband-national-group/

[41magsnub]

Yep.  My Grandfather's Marine reunions stopped last year.  Too many are gone or are unable to travel.  

[lee n. field]

If you were 20 when that war ended, you'd be 87 now, pretty far down the far side of the survivorship curve.

[RoadKingLarry]

If you guesstimate the youngest that managed to lie about their age and still get in in time to see action are going to be 83-84 years old now. Far too soon the living memory of WWII veterans will be gone.

[mtnbkr]

If you guesstimate the youngest that managed to lie about their age and still get in in time to see action are going to be 83-84 years old now. Far too soon the living memory of WWII veterans will be gone.

Yup.  My grandfather was too young and he's 83 this year.  My wife's grandfathers (one is deceased) are/were in their 90s.  At 39, I've known many WWII vets, but my daughters will only have memories of the WWII vets in our family, none of whom would have spoken to them about their experience as they did with me.

Chris

[MillCreek]

If you guesstimate the youngest that managed to lie about their age and still get in in time to see action are going to be 83-84 years old now. Far too soon the living memory of WWII veterans will be gone.

My dad is 86, and entered Fleet Aviation in 1944, flying Corsairs off the Enterprise at age 19.  He earned his private pilot's license at age 16, and upon graduation from high school at age 18, entered a special '90 day wonder' program that combined Basic, officer orientation and intermediate flight school.  If I recall correctly, this was at a college campus in the Southeast.  They went up to Chicago for a week and did flight quals off the USS Wolverine that steamed around in Lake Michigan.  He then shipped out for the Pacific.

[ArfinGreebly]

My uncle Bob, whose pen name I appropriated for forum use, served on subs.

He was discharged in the fifties, having been found legally blind.

(How he got his sight back is a story I don't generally share, but his eyes were [almost] fine when I met him for the first time in 1962.)

He passed in late 1993, far too young (he wasn't even sixty).

I got a tiny amount of insight from him on what it was like to work on a sub.  I'm not sure I'd have had the brass to do subs.  I had enough trouble with simple seasickness when working below the water line on a couple of the ships I would later serve on.

I got a little more of a view into that life from my other uncle (warrant officer who had worked on carriers).  It didn't improve my affinity for that kind of work.

From what little I've done in enclosed spaces (ever cleaned the boilers in a steam ship's engine room?) I gotta say, I have nothing but respect for those guys, exceeded only by the respect I have for astronauts.

[TommyGunn]

My father served on a WW2 era sub, the USS Cavallla, when the Korean War ended.  When he met my mother he resigned his commission so he could marry her.
Sometime in the early-mid 1960s we were living in Connecticut and driving back from a trip to Mystic Seaport when my father suddenly realized he still had his old Navy pass, and wondered if it still worked.  Well, we turned off I-95 at Groton and pulled up to the Navy Base gate there and sure enough, it got us in.  My father began telling my sister and I what everything was .... then he stopped, surprised, as the sub pens.  The sub he'd served on was there.  Moreover, the commander was an old navy buddy who'd stayed on.  
So my mother, my sister and I all got the 25¢ tour of what then was still an active diesel electric sub, built during WW2 as a Gato class (thin-skin) and refitted in 1953 with a new sail, new hydrophones as a "hunter-killer" type.  As a kid I was impressed with the tiny space the crew had to deal with.  It was nothing like in the old WW2 movies....where they needed to have room for a camera & lighting equipment, of course!

Sorry to see these WW2 old timers go.  My father didn't serve in WW2, he was still in Annapolis, but the USS Cavalla was credited with sinking one of the Japanese carriers used in the attack on Pearl Harbor.

[HankB]

My Dad was in college when WWII began - he was drafted into Army, and though he wasn't a pilot, they decided they needed his skills in the Army Air Corps. As I was growing up, he told me quite a bit about his experiences - fighting with MP's from Keesler Field stateside (MP's lost   ), weathering a typhoon on a troop ship, trading with the headhunters on some Pacific island, seeing what Filipinos did to captured Jap soldiers, and finally taking pictures of the white-painted Jap planes from the surrender party when they landed on Ie Shima where he was based; later stories of the Occupation of Japan were more amusing than shocking.

Did find a picture of a museum aircraft painted up as if it were from his exact outfit here: http://www.pimaair.org/collection-detail.php?cid=368       He would've enjoyed seeing this.

I wish I'd taken careful notes of his stories - if he were still here he'd be 92 - I miss him a lot.

[geronimotwo]

my dad is 91 this summer, and was seventh army.  he was awarded the purple heart and bronze star during his service in wwii, and also served in korea.  my favorite momento is a compartment handle from a zero that he broke off after gaining control of an airfield.  unfortunatly he suffers from dimensia, and is unable to tell his stories anymore.   

[Monkeyleg]

My late FIL was a submariner (amongst other things) in WWII. He'd be 86. He was a short guy, so it was a natural fit.

He never talked about his experiences, though, but he did talk about seeing Japan, and how beautiful it was.

[mtnbkr]

He never talked about his experiences, though, but he did talk about seeing Japan, and how beautiful it was.

My Maternal Grandfather was in the Navy during WWII and would never talk about anything other than fishing in Australia.  He passed away when I was 5, so we never got to talk about any of it, this is just what my mom and other family members tell me. 

However, my wife's two grandfathers were quite willing to talk about the good and the bad.  Both were in Europe, with my wife's Paternal Grandfather being part of the Normandy invasion.  Her Maternal Grandfather was in Italy. 

Chris

[Tallpine]

My stepdad passed away five years ago.  He served on an aircraft repair ship that roamed around the Pacific, trading patched up airplanes for wrecked ones to be used for parts.

My biological father yet lives.  He trained to be a paratrooper, and would have jumped into Japan had not certain other events interceded.  Later, he was a prizefighter for a while, then a mechanic and later started his own dealership which is still run by my half-sister and her husband.  Sorta sad that I didn't know him for the first 40 years of my life 

[Strings]

No living relatives from WWII in my family: grandad died in France during the war. However...

Here in Manitowoc, many subs were built for the war effort. And the Maritime Museum here has one (USS Cobia), which they run tours of. Took Terpsichore's daughter on the tour: ye GAWDS, is that a cramped space!

[grampster]

My dad served in the infantry in WWII in Europe.  He died at age 93 in 1999.  He never talked much about the war and very little about his time as a POW held by the Germans.  I have two cassettes I'm having put on CD's that he made not too long before he died.  He had a nearly eidetic memory and I sat with my mouth hanging open listening to those tapes.  My brother and I found them after he died.  We had no idea the major dreck he went through.

I did know about one of the few things he did talk about.  He and a couple other guys were out gathering wood in a forest to build a cook fire on a misty morning when they saw another group doing the same.  The two groups were getting closer.  Finally they were almost mingling in the fog when one of dad's buddies asked the other what unit they were with and one of the other guys said "Vos is los?" (sp?)  They all stopped, looked at one another, dropped their wood and both groups took off running in opposite directions.  The Old Man always laughed when he told that story.

[HankB]

I did know about one of the few things he did talk about.  He and a couple other guys were out gathering wood in a forest to build a cook fire on a misty morning when they saw another group doing the same.  The two groups were getting closer.  Finally they were almost mingling in the fog when one of dad's buddies asked the other what unit they were with and one of the other guys said "Vos is los?" (sp?)  They all stopped, looked at one another, dropped their wood and both groups took off running in opposite directions.  The Old Man always laughed when he told that story.

Dad told me on some island one night under blackout conditions, they found a couple of Japs in their chow line.    Turned out the guys spoke perfect English - they were Americans - Nisei - who were visiting Japan when the war broke out, and got drafted into Hirohito's army. They fed 'em and shared cigarettes, and in short order they were taken away for interrogation, which is the last they ever saw of them. (Guys were ordered not to talk about the incident - and of course they didn't. When officers were around.)

It did make them tighten up security . . . as "secure" areas weren't as secure as people thought.

[cordex]

I heard about this from a friend who is putting together and donating some customized keepsakes to the remaining survivors.