My grandpa Tony on the left with his brother Angelo on his way to my cousin Suzanne's baptism
In my family every male that was old enough to fight fought in World War II. I had a great uncle who was killed at 17 on Okinawa and who's now buried at the punch bowl in Hawaii. Other relatives fought in the pacific and Europe. I even had a great uncle who liberated a concentration camp. WW2 is part of my families mythology. Now we can debate for days about the causes of the war that yes Germany royally got screwed by the treaty of Versailles. That we pushed the Japanese in a corner with our embargo. That American corporations did business with the Nazis.That yes the US sent jewish refugees back to Germany to face the slaughter of the gas chambers. That FDR my favorite president knew the Japanese where going to attack Pear Harbor. We could go on for days. But at the end of the day we had to fight this war and we had to win it.
Both my grandfathers fought in the Pacific campaign. My moms dad Tommy "Rosie" Rosenberg( an Irish catholic with a Jewish name, long story) joined at 17. He joined in 1940 after hearing the Stars and Stripes being played at a parade( we go in for the dramatic in my family). He served aboard the USS Huston and was taken off two days before it was sunk in the Battle of the Java Sea, he saw combat all over the Pacific from Tarawa where he witnessed marines get slaughtered over an island the size of the Meadowlands to Leyte Gulf where he saw the Japanese fleet get destroyed. He survived three typhoons and almost was kept in the Navy until 1947 when through some careful manipulation he was finally able to be discharged and start a family with the love of his life. Because he was the smallest he was sent inside the ships boilers to clean and because of that came away with asbestos poisoning that damaged his lungs for the rest of his life. The other physical scare he came away with was the loss of all of his teeth. During an air attack an explosion threw him face first against a metal door knocking out his teeth and leaving him a 22 year old able to do an excellent Popeye impression. Like many vets he came home angry and a chain smoker, but due to the practicality of my grandmother was able not to let the horrors of the war dominate his life. As kids my brother and I would have him tell us stories of his war experiences which at the time came off as funny but in retrospect where horrifying such as the time he went to pull a guy out of the water after a battle and found the Mans lower half missing or how while pulling survivors out of the water he got his pants stuck and nearly lost his life but instead only lost his pants.
My grandfather never took advantage of the GI bill. He had spent almost 8 years of his life in the Navy and wanted to be left alone. He quietly lived his life in the Seattle area as the chief engineer at Virginia Mason Hospital and didn't travel until after the age of 55 when due to a hilarious circumstances he came into an obscene amount of money. Even though he was now well off he was still that tough blue collar guy who had badass tattoos before they where considered cool.
My dad's father Anthony Demanti was the son of immigrants from Italy. His father had immigrated from Calabria as a small child and after surviving the 1906 San Francisco earthquake had settled in East Oakland and worked various jobs to support his family. His mother had been brought over from Sicily as a baby. My grandfather spent the first couple years of his life living in a converted chicken coop in his grandparents back yard before moving into a real house. He was still a teenager when the war broke out and joined the Navy at 18. He had never seen snow until he attended basic training in Idaho. As the story went he had signed up to be a navy corpsmen which is a medic thinking he would be stationed on a hospital ship. But after impressing his superiors he was transferred into a marine combat unit and was sent on his way to Okinawa. When he arrived he was sent to a unit to replace four men who had been killed. His sergeant said to him " Whatever you do just keep on moving forward and you won't die". My grandpa Tony saw horrors that no one should see or live with. According to my dad his dad would occasionally tell stories of what he did in the war. His where not stories of gallantry or heroics. His where stories of survival and a young man having to do horrific things that would stay with him forever. When the war ended he was part of the occupation force in Japan and later said to both my parents" these guys where ready to surrender we didn't need to bomb Hiroshima". He was vague but the sense was he may of done medical work there.
He didn't get to return through the golden gate. For some reason they sent him through the Panama Canal to Virginia. He then travelled back to East Oakland by train.
He came back a completely different man from the one who left. Angry, pissed off with a hair trigger temper, his was a life marked by instability and tragedy. He too never took advantage of the GI bill, instead getting a job in a tool and die company and becoming a Jr Sinatra if that makes sense. He ended up marrying three times all ending in divorce. Today he lives a quiet life in Fremont California. He keeps to himself and occasionally goes to Tahoe to gamble or on the occasional road trip with his younger brother who checks on him once a week. Being 87 he doesn't own an air conditioner or a answering machine. I try to call him when I can. When we talk it's usually about sports. How the raiders are crap and Tebows no good. Occasionally he'll talk about his childhood and will hint about the war.
Both of my grandfathers lived low key lives. They never ran for political office, cured cancer or won a major court case. Both didn't really travel except when my grandpa Tom fell into that money. They never met the president and the biggest celebrity either one if them met was when my grandpa Tom hitched a ride from the great English actor Charles Laughton while heading back to base after WW2. Both worked blue collar jobs and simply raised their families.By the time they where both 23 they had already achieved something great. They had fought and survived and won a war that no matter how you look back on it needed to be fought and won.
In the last five years of his life my grandfather Tom mellowed considerably from the angry war vet he had been. Losing your wife does that to you. When he heard that I had done a terrific job in a school production of West Side Story and that maybe I wanted to be an actor, instead of saying that was dumb he to the shock of everyone said maybe that's what I should do with my life. When my grandpa Tony heard I was an actor in NYC he said " That's terrific to hear". Both of these men didn't accomplish much in some respects. But the sacrifice they made was huge. I heard a couple years ago that my grandpa Tom had before the war wanted to be a history teacher but after the war said fuck it and got a job. Who knows what my grandpa Tony wanted to be but after what he went through in his mind it was just about getting a job.
A lot of times people say how thankful they are for our freedom but don't really understand it. It's been bastardized so much that it's become almost meaningless. People will thank a soldier out of guilt and not out of real thanks. When you stop and think about what these guys have had to go through it's pretty amazing.
So on this Veterans Day I say thank you to both my grandfathers. Because of what you guys did Iam able to live the life I want, where I want and how I want without someone telling me what to do. Iam able to pursue the arts as a profession out of my own free will. Iam able to date any one I want and there race or religion or social standing doesn't matter. For that Grandpa Tom and Grandpa Tony Iam forever grateful.
Not long before he died my Grandpa Tom said to my siblings and I about the war " if you paid me a million dollars to fight all over again I would say no but if you offered me a million dollars never to have fought I would say no"
