V4V-SANDRA Ds POP-06-26-25-The Vic Porcelli Show

NewsTalk STL

This is the VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America.

SUBMITTED BY: Sandra D

_____________________________________________________________

Vic and Ken
Dad would be against me telling people what he did, because he didn't have to go to combat. But he was prepared to be on a landing craft heading toward the shore of Japan. He always said he wasn't afraid, which might be why they tested him to be a frogman. There was something in his makeup that did not register fear. I saw that over and over.

I think he got that job because he was a little knowledgeable about motors and equipment, having been on a farm. So if the motor of the landing craft went down, Pop could have worked on it. So think about this: Pop knew he might have to work on an engine on a landing craft off the shore of Japan while he was being shot at. He was okay with that. Because he knew he had to be.

Here is my submission:
Pop was drafted in the fall of 1944[, which was remarkable in itself. It meant that the US was so hungry for soldiers and sailors that even young farmers were being drafted and that women, old men, and kids were left to feed the country. But ]the US was ramping up to invade Japan.

Pop was assigned to the Navy. [After training at Great Lakes near Chicago, he was tested to become a frogman at Fort Pierce, Florida. Frogmen were the precursors to the Navy Seals. It bothered him to the day he died that he did not pass one test to go on to the next level. My guess is, as a frogman, he would have been used to swim to the shores of Japan and blow up obstacles to landing craft. Instead, ]In 1945, he trained to crew a landing craft to invade Japan. They were told that one half of them would die. They were also told that they would know their chances of survival based upon what "wave" they were in. He was 20 years old when he was told to contemplate dying.

We know how it ended, the atomic bomb meant that Pop never shipped out from Norfolk to the Pacific. Instead, in the spring of 1946, he was assigned to the engine room of the USS Missouri and sent all the way to Istanbul, Turkey. This was a way for President Truman to tell the Soviet Union to "back off." My father loved that ship so much, that I think if they had told him he could have stayed on it, he would not have come back and married my mother whom he had known for her entire life. (And loved. I have the Valentine he gave her in the 1930s to prove it.)

My father never wanted to be recognized for his service because he did not go into combat. He knew people who did. He was incredibly loyal to family members who suffered alcoholism because of being in combat in the War and in Korea. But he was prepared to drive a landing craft with troops onto the shores of Japan. And, if he lived through doing it once, I have no doubt he would have backed that craft up and done it again. His entire life, he did whatever it took.

Thank you for recognizing Pop.

Sandra D.
________________________________________________________________

This is today’s VIC 4 VETS, Honored Veteran, during Veterans Month in America on NewsTalkSTL.

With support from our friends at:

DG FIREARMS - PATRIOT HEATING AND COOLING - BEST BUY FLOORING

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Chapters

1. V4V-SANDRA Ds POP-06-26-25-The Vic Porcelli Show (00:00:00)

2. Marker 02 (00:00:30)

3. Marker 03 (00:07:47)