Pearl Harbor occurred while I was in kindergarten. A precocious reader, I followed the subsequent war in the Atlanta newspapers and radiocasts. My frequent babysitter, a wise African-American lady, discussed the war with me.
V-mail, the highly censored letters from uncles, cousins and close family friends who had either enlisted or been drafted, began to arrive a year later and were circulated among various households.
The most poignant letter arrived days after we learned of the writer’s death on Iwo Jima. A friend and former co-worker of my Dad’s, he wrote about his anticipation of returning to his family and his job.
In grammar school we had paper, tinfoil and scrap-metal drives. My friends and I would load our red wagons with materials we had solicited from our neighbors, then take the items to a dropoff point at our school’s playground. We always reached our quota goals, for which we were thanked by an American Legionnaire. It affirmed our small part in a massive effort to defeat dangerous enemies.
Newsreels shown at every movie that I attended, save for Saturday double features, brought us up to date with the war on every front. In our games, we assumed the role of soldiers rather than cowboys.