William "Billy" Suiter

My Grandfather, William Kent Suiter was a part of the greatest war the United States has seen, and was lucky enough to tell his story. When the war broke out, my grandfather was attending college at UCLA in California (go bruins!) After he graduated, William enlisted in the Army Air Core. With his education -- something that many soldiers were deprived of when entering the war -- my grandfather was able to serve the United States without directly fighting on the battlefront. He was stationed in Guam, an island in the Pacific, where the allies were able to strategically plan attacks against Japan. William briefed pilots on their missions to Japan, where they would likely be going on bombing missions through Tokyo. On their trips back, he would debrief them via radio on how successful their sorties -- an attack made by troops coming out from a position of defense -- were, or what went wrong during the mission. The all important question: "what were his motivations for enlisting in the war?" Like most, he believed that his duty was to serve his country and to help win the war. My grandfather was a patriot, and I know that he indeed carried out his duty in flying colors. Colors of red, white, and blue.

My Family in WWII

When first given this assignment I assumed that I had no connection at all to WWII. I thought to myself there is no way my boring family has any interesting history at all. Turns out for once I was wrong. (sarcasm) I called my grandmother Marjorie Siemon, now known as Mama Midge. My family didn't follow the norms of many other families of this time. When I asked my grandmother why her fiancee and brother went to war she simply said, "To get the bad guys." It seemed to me that they were not very informed and that they simply wanted to spill Japanese blood to get revenge for Pearl Harbor. My grandmother's fiancee, my grandfather to be, enlisted as a fighter pilot. He joined the Thunderbirds for one sole reason, they were the only fighter plane that could drop bombs. (This information may be incorrect my grandmother is old and doesn't quite remember all the details.) Mama Midge moved from Chicago, Illinois to California to wait for her fiancee to return home. It turns out that he had already been shot down before she had even left for California. Mama Midge dropped out of college to live in California for her lover. The one thing that she most vividly remembered was the dances designed for the soldiers. She remembers going to them in Chicago and having a great time. I am also good friends with her brother who enlisted. His name is E.G. "Bud" Siemon. Bud tried to enlist at age 14, however his parents would not sign his enlistment papers and forced him to graduate high school. At 17 he enlisted in the Navy Airforce. He trained a few weeks until he was told that the Navy Airforce had too many pilots and that they did not need his services. Then he joined the Army Airforce to try to fulfill his dream of flying for his country. The Army Airforce required all of their pilots to have one year of college so Bud went off to school. After he finished his year of schooling he tried once again to become a pilot. When he returned to the Army Airforce they had shut down their doors to new pilots and gave their pilots in training three choices: discharge, to join the infantry, or to join the ground crew. He decided to discharge and was never able to fight the Japanese. He told me that the reason he enlisted was not because of Hitler, but because of his hatred of the Japanese. After Pearl Harbor he always wanted to get back at the Japanese. He told me that he can vividly remember V-J Day and the celebrations that went on when the war in the Pacific was finally over. I am glad that I didn't assume that I was not connected to WWII because now I feel connected to my past and I feel apart of American history.

6th grade teacher's father

During my sixth grade year I attended a club that was led by one of my favorite teachers. He loved to tell stories, especially about him and his father. He told us stories of how his father joined the army and what happened to him as told by his father. Because I could not get a hold of him this story is solely based on my memory.
My teacher’s father had just finished college when he began to think of what he was going to do with the rest of his life. He had graduated with an English degree and he didn't know how he was going to be able to put it to practice. Even though he did not have a plan, returning back home was not really something he wanted to do. He had a tense relationship with his father because his father did not approve of his decision to focus on English. One of his friends had enlisted to the air force, while his closest friend had enlisted in the army. He really enjoyed the idea of becoming a pilot and roaming the world while defending his country. However, he soon discovered he had problems with his depth perception. Because of this he was not aloud to enlist in the air force. Searching for any that aloud him to avoid home he decided to join his best friend in the army. My teacher believes that his father joined the army because of all of the hype going on about fulfilling his duty for his country and also because of peer pressure from his friends. But in reality we don’t know.

My Friend's Grandfather

While I don't have any relatives that fought in World War II, one of my friend's grandfather did. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1944. He was then deployed to the Pacific and served as an officer in the submarines. The reason he was directed to command the submarines was because he could not go on boats because he got sea sick. On the submarine, they torpedoed and sank Japanese supply ships to weaken the Japanese army and navy and to ensure that they did not get any new supplies. He also torpedoed some Japanese warships. He recalled that explosions reverberated throughout the vessel and that people smelled since they were down in the submarine for months at a time. He came back safely 1946.

My Grandpa Eli's WWII Experience

My grandfather moved from Poland to the United States in 1929 at the age of 6. He lived in Detroit, Michigan and suffered through the Great Depression living in horrible poverty. After he became the only one of his three siblings to graduate high school, he started to work at a Ford factory in Detroit. He decided that he wanted to become part of the war and attempted to join the cadet program in the Air Force. This program was to become a pilot, a navigator, or a bomber.  After flunking the test to become a cadet, he went back to work at Ford. In 1942, the year after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, one of his friends approached him saying that he was going to enlist in the army. Being a Jew, my grandfather decided that it was time to enlist as well, and fight against Germany who was killing the large amount of family that he left behind in Poland. He suspected that had he not enlisted then, he would have been drafted within the nest six months. He enlisted in the Army Air Force and they made him a teletype mechanic. He claims that he was horrible at the job, so they moved him and he once again attempted to join the cadet program. This time he was accepted into the program. The final test of the program was the physical, my grandfather flunked the depth perception part of the physical and once again could not become a pilot. They then sent him to gunnery school to become a gunner, where he learned how to shoot from the b29 planes, the type of plane that dropped the atomic bomb on Japan. When it was time for his troop to invade Japan, they decided to keep him behind to be an aerial instructor in Nebraska. Towards the end of the war, they moved him to Washington state to then deploy to Japan, but right as he was about to leave, the war ended. My grandfather fought in the war to do what he could to save as many Jews as possible. He lost almost all of his family in the war.

My Great-grandfather

My grandfather was born in Russia right after the war. When he was very little, both of his parents passed away, but he still remembered some stories that his father, my great-grandfather, told him of World War II on the Russian front. My great-grandfather was drafted into the military. My grandfather told me that his father didn’t want to leave home and go fight, but he had no other choice. Everyone that was old enough and did not have any serious medical conditions either volunteered, which few did, or were taken away. He was briefly trained and taken to the battlefield, which was in Ukraine. He first fought in Kiev and then in Kharkov.
My grandfather told me of a very interesting story that happened with my great-grandfather. One time my great-grandfather was defending some anti-air guns. He looks over the horizon and sees 20 tanks coming straight at the guns. He reports this to the higher ups and they have no idea what to do because they don’t have any amour piercing guns. They think for a while and decide to do something very drastic- to use the anti-air guns against the tanks! So they lower the guns and aim them through the barrel (looking through the barrel and aiming directly at the tanks). They load up the first gun and fire it. Since the anti-air missiles fire at greater speeds because they need to reach the planes in the sky, the tank was completely obliterated. The Germans thought that the Russians invented a new powerful gun started retreating.

My great-grandfather

I am perhaps one of the few people to have a relative who fought on both sides of the war.

My great-grandfather was living in eastern France, on the border with Germany, when war was declared. Because he had done his military service in the navy, he had to go join the navy down in Toulon, in southern France, when war was declared. The entire French navy was stationed there. Then, one day, the Germans staged a surprise attack against Toulon, and Admiral Darlan, the head of the navy, ordered that all the ships in the navy be sunk so that the Germans couldn't get them.

After that, France quickly surrendered to Germany, and northern/eastern France was annexed by Germany. Then, all the men in that part of France (including my great-grandfather) were drafted into the German army and whisked away to the Russian front. As soon as my great-grandfather got to the front, his section of the army lost a battle, and was taken as prisoners by the Russians. My great-grandfather spent the rest of the war in a prison camp, and was later returned to France in 1945.