I’ve recently become friends of an older couple. The husband sports a navy tattoo and I mentioned that my dad had been on a Mine Sweeper in the Pacific during WWII. The gentleman said that he had been a Higgins Boat driver - on D-Day. Wow. I mentioned that he didn’t seem old enough. His wife replied “He signed up the day after Pearl Harbor. He was only sixteen but lied about his age”. Wow again. I started to ask another question but his wife said he doesn’t like to talk about it.
oh my, none of them talked about it....my dad would never talk about the war, I found out from my aunt that he was at Saipan, Tinian, Guam, Leyte Gulf, and who knows where else...all I know is he would never curse without “Japanese” as a pre-fix ( Japanese SOB, Japanese bastid, ect.).