[PEN-L:343] Re: Re: Re: Saving Private Ryan

[James Devine <jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 08:32 AM 7/29/98 -0400, Mike Yates wrote:
>I intend to see Spielberg's film, even though I know it will be a mixed
bag, like
>his other films.  My father was in the South Pacific war for a couple of
years as
>a radioman in theNavy.  WW2 was the most important event of his life, by far,
>though he too seldom spoke of it.

I'll join the chorus on this (though I probably won't see Saving Private R
until it hits video, since going to a movie plus baby sitting adds up). My
late father was also in the Pacific, in the supply corps on an LST. I
always got the impression that WW2 was the high point of his life, despite
having had his goal of being assigned to the destroyer fleet sabotaged
(somebody put a "Mickey Finn" in his drink, he said, right before a crucial
exam) and having the LST attacked by kamikazes. During WW2 he had a Larger
Purpose, much more than working in middle management in an not-for-profit
bureaucracy to support a wife and 3 kids and a mortgage in the suburbs.
They were fighting the Good Fight, Together, rather than the mundane
getting and spending that characterized his downwardly-mobile life.

Strangely, he worked with and liked the Japanese business execs his bureau
worked with, while continuing to hate the Germans.

in pen-l solidarity,

Jim Devine jdevine@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx &
http://clawww.lmu.edu/Departments/ECON/jdevine.html