Memorial Day

As I was cruising around the San Francisco bay this past week, something came to mind: it’s possible that these sights, or the 1941 version of them, were the last my great-uncle Arthur saw of America, before he died over the Pacific in WW2.

During the war, San Francisco was a major naval base, and Angel Island was a major embarkation point for men going out to fight the war in the Pacific. So it’s possible that Arthur sailed out through the beautiful Golden Gate that long-ago day, never to return.

He has a grave in the Punchbowl military cemetery on Oahu, instead. We visited it when I was a child, on our one family trip to Hawaii. But he’s not there; he was MIA and presumed dead, with the rest of his crew. Whether he was shot down by the Japanese or was a victim of mechanical failure, we’ll never know.

I keep a small book that I found in a used bookstore in my top desk drawer. It’s a small, dull brown volume titled “Prayer Book for Jews in the Armed Forces of the United States” that dates to 1941. It wasn’t his, but I keep it to honor his memory.