After reading 'The Unbroken' I believe that I now understand why my dad never talked about the war. He was in Okinawa, at the last part of the war and at the time the a-bombs were dropped. The only thing I got out of him was that the ship he was on was taking the marines to Okinawa then the ship was to return to the states. But as the last boat load of Marines were being off loaded on Okinawa, the boat that my dad was piloting, the ship that brought them over was torpedoed and my dad was stuck on island until after the war was over. I know that he was manning a large gun and got a shell dropped on the top of his foot and was never able to wear normal shoes after that. I also know he was on Okinawa when they were doing everything possible to get the Japanese out of the caves. And he was also there when they had to go to the caves to survive a Typhoon that hit the island but other than that he would never talk about what he saw or what he had to go through. Unbroken gave me a look into the war and the Japanese culture that I never new about. I did work for almost 12 years for a Japanese company and I came very good friends with some of the top Japanese managers and found them to be very hard working but also very fair. But they for the most part were very stand offish and did not talk much about their homeland. All that the one I made friends with would say is that they were ashamed of the way that the Japanese treated the POWs and they were very impressed in the way the Americans treated the Japanese POWs.
From reading the Unbroken I can at least have a very small understanding of what our Marines, and soldiers, and POWs are going through after they return home, and I for the first time have a very small understanding of what PTSD really is. I can now also finally forgive two of my close friends that was in the Vietnam war that came home and killed themselves must have been going through.
War is hell and I am so glad that I was spared from having to go into combat.
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