Proud Daughter of the One of the Greatest Generation, Part Two
By Sue Andrews, Inland Empire Branch
(continued from Part One on socalwritersshowcase.com)
I had to run and get a magnifying glass to verify what I had been reading. I was right. They were the Hawaiian Islands proportionately shaped with their names written in the middle. Someone had taken facetious time to do all the etching and writing with the utmost precision. When I turned the bracelet around to view the inside, it said, “Aloha, Hawaii 1945.”
I ran into the kitchen and showed my mother my new acquisition.
“Mom,” I said. “How did you get this? There must be a story here.”
My mother smiled. Then she spoke in the softest voice as if she wanted my discovery to be a secret.
“Sue, your father made that bracelet for me when he was at Pearl Harbor those four years. He made it out of scrap metal in the shipyard.”
“It’s beautiful!” I said to her as I put it on. “I can’t believe Dad made that for you. Why haven’t I ever seen you wear it?”
She answered again in a quiet voice as if she didn’t want my father, who was sitting in the adjacent room, to overhear her. “You know Dad never wanted to be reminded about his time in Hawaii or talk about the war, right?”
“Yes,” I said, knowing full well that he had repeated those words to me at various times of my life whenever I would ask him about it.
“So now you know,” she said. “You may keep it, but you can’t wear it here. Put it in your suitcase and take it home with you.”
To this day that bracelet has been one of my most cherished possessions. I show it off to anyone I meet while wearing it on those special holidays. The rest of the year it stays locked inside my safe.
The August 14, 1945, YouTube Video, I found quite by accident. I think someone else had posted it in on Facebook saying she was a young woman who had found the old film in her father’s attic. I’ll never forget the first time I viewed it maybe five years ago. I’ve watched it over and over again trying to find my dad somewhere in that film. To me that movie was exhilarating to watch knowing my father was there during that time. I got the same feeling when my husband and I went to Oahu for our 15th wedding anniversary. When we visited the USS Arizona Memorial and then the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, aka the Punchbowl Memorial. Both brought tears to my eyes knowing my dad was once on that island during a time of war.
My mother and father were married shortly after the bombing, Dad had already enlisted and knew he was destined for Hawaii. For how long, that was unknown. But he did return four years later with a bracelet my mother never wore, but the one I wear proudly today.