It’s Veterans’ Day (for a few hours yet as I write). I’ve written about my father more than once here – he was a veteran, but saw no combat and never made a big deal out of it.

The video clip above shows the brighter side of the American occupation of Japan. That’s where my dad served. I don’t know if he ever gave candy to any children.

He never had much good to say about the army. He’d been drafted near the end of the war. Before that he’d been deferred, as his parents’ sole support. Like many another young man, he trained for the invasion of Japan, but the atomic bombs made that unnecessary. Very likely I wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for the bombs. (Dad once took a train trip to see Hiroshima during his hitch.)

I have a nickel-plated cigarette case that he got over there. As I recall the story, there was a Greek guy who hung around the soldiers (maybe he was a soldier himself; some sort of scrounger) and he offered to get Dad a nice cigarette case cheap. Dad gave him the money, but was not pleased when he found the Greek had gotten both their names engraved on it in big letters.

He mentioned seeing (or hearing about) stacks of samurai swords piled up like brushwood and set on fire, part of the forced disarmament of the population. Some guys, I understand, smuggled such swords home with them, but Dad wasn’t like that. He did bring home a little Rising Sun flag. It’s in a box down in my basement.

Dad’s only decoration was a sharpshooter’s medal – he was a farm boy, after all, and knew his way around a rifle. Other than that, he came home with no distinction and went right back to the tractors and the cows.

But he was a veteran, and technically a veteran of war. And since I’m not, I owe him (posthumous) tribute on this day