Page 18 THE VILLADOM TIMES I • November 12, 2014 Honor the fighters, but question the fights How well I remember the first time I interviewed a bunch of Pearl Harbor survivors at a backyard barbecue. I parked my Japanese-made car several blocks away and tucked my Japanese wife’s photo deeper into my pocket. Not to worry. The guys at the reunion were 1940-1941 draftees from New York City, Brooklyn, and New Jersey. These Irish, German, Italian, and Greek Americans who served in a U.S. Army anti-aircraft battery at Pearl Harbor were not so much angry at Japan. They were far angrier at Franklin Delano Roosevelt. They told me their stories. The ammunition lockers for their three-inch anti-aircraft guns were locked and an offi- cer had to shoot the lock off with a .45 automatic pistol before they could even load their anti-aircraft guns. Once they started shooting, the Japanese noticed the difference. The first wave of Japanese did most of the damage. The second wave suffered most of the losses. The third wave was canceled. Had the Japanese hit the million-gallon oil tank at Pearl Harbor and the dry docks, the United States probably would have lost Hawaii. These guys were angry that, while they were resentful peacetime draftee soldiers to begin with, they turned out to be brave and capable soldiers and were not allowed to do the jobs they were signed up for. The same government that had taken these guys away from Mom and Pop and the women they wanted to marry and had almost gotten them killed, and had also denied them the chance to make their lives mean something. If they knocked down a Japanese aircraft carrying a torpedo meant for a U.S. bat- tleship, their deaths would actually have meant something. If they got killed trying to get the three-inch shells out of the ready box, things would have been different. Civilians who never served do not understand this. That’s why it is a good idea for them to stay quiet on Veter- ans Day. They are not veterans. Their speeches are hot air and sometimes outright lies, and those who served know it. The politicians have nothing to say that anybody who served wants to hear. This is the reason I avoid ceremo- nies in which people who have never served make speeches about, “If it weren’t for you guys we would all be speak- ing German or Japanese.” I read German and French and have Japanese read to me. The Axis originated as “the anti- Comintern Pact” -- an alliance to oppose the expansion of Soviet communism on the Eurasian continent. Our hostility to the Axis originated due to communist sympathizers in the U.S. State Department who favored Britain and Nation- alist China and to Soviet moles in the U.S. Treasury Depart- ment who favored “the Russian System.” We got pulled into a war that was none of our business. The argument was that of the Nazi Holocaust. When Jan Karski, a Polish freedom fighter, arrived in the United States and tried to explain that the labor camps had been turned into murder camps, nobody was allowed to believe him. The United States was not allowed to know that the publicized German deportation program of Jews had been turned into a mass murder program. Nor were Americans allowed to learn that the Soviet mass murder of Polish reserve officers at Katyin and elsewhere had killed more than 14,000 Polish priests, teachers, engineers, architects, accountants, and professors -- and that Stalin, our ally, rather than Hitler, our enemy, was the actual instigator. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill both knew, but they played games until after the war ended. We destroyed a maniacal mass murderer who was genuinely evil to save a far more prolific mass murderer who posed a huge threat to the United States. Remember “duck and cover” school drills in the 1950s? Remember the Cuban Missle Crisis of 1962? We were not expecting the Luftwaffe. A few weeks ago, my wife and I visited the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Rock- well was a wonderful illustrator, and he was wonderfully reassuring about traditional American virtues. One special alcove features “The Four Freedoms” -- Rockwell’s drama- tization of freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom of worship, and freedom of speech once the war was won. Freedom of speech in Stalin’s Soviet Union? Who was FDR trying to kid? Freedom from want? Any Red Army sol- dier captured by his own side after he had been behind the German lines, even in Poland or Hungary, let alone Ger- many, usually got five years in the Gulag because material conditions were so much better even in Poland, let alone Germany, that they might have inspired dissent. Freedom of worship in the Soviet Union? Come off it. The Russians used to offer an Alexander Oparin Prize to anybody who could explain the origins of life by accidental chemistry, as Charles Darwin had postulated. Nobody ever won it. The gold fields of Kolyma and Magadan where dissi- dents were worked to death included a number of Orthodox Jews, and their names are remembered today. In 1938, Stalin murdered 38,000 Russian Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist believers. Freedom of speech? Ditto. Regular German Army units minus the Waffen-SS had regular chaplains, Protestant or Catholic, or both. Did Soviet Red Army units have chap- lains? They didn’t. Russian defectors who signed up with the Germans gasped when they saw disgusted German sol- diers knock off Hitler’s ranting speeches in the middle and look for music broadcasts instead. Russian soldiers who did something similar would have been handed over to the commissar for a bullet in the head or five to 10 years in the Gulag. We backed one mass murderer against a worse mass murderer because Soviet moles in Washington told us to. Where does that leave us on Veterans Day? Where we have always been -- with a moral obligation to honor and respect those who served, because the mass media did not give them the chance to know what they were serving. The morning after Pearl Harbor, the guys who volunteered -- like my own father -- did not show up to save Stalin. They showed up because a foreign enemy had attacked the United States. The fact that Hawaii had been lifted from the local Polynesian monarchy and snatched from Japan by a take-over that thwarted a plebiscite was not part of their public school education. These guys cared about their country, and, perhaps more importantly, they did not want to be known as guys who pulled strings to stay out of action. They were real men. My mother used to tell the story about a guy whose mother went to the Draft Broad and told them her son was afraid of loud noises. They smirked, but they exempted him. I told her bluntly that if she ever tried anything similar in my case, I would shoot myself on the head on the Draft Board steps. I knew guys who were not at all religious based on their sexual antics, but claimed to be conscientious objectors. I still hold them in contempt. If your country, religion, or family does not mean more to you than your life, you are not a man as I understand the word. I got injured in training and I lucked out. I never had to kill anyone in a very dubious battle, and I never had to cover up for buddies who killed civilians by accident or for kicks. I spent five years stateside tutoring refugees from Vietnam. Based on what they told me as frank and grateful friends, we never should have been there and they thought we were stupid to get involved. That is true generally. We can live without the Middle East, and which coun- try controls uninhabited islands between Japan, Korea, and China is not worth thinking about. Do you, Mr. or Ms. America, really care about whether Muhammad’s legiti- mate heirs descend from his uncle Abbas or his daughter Fatima? Muslims have been fighting about this for 1,400 years and killing each other in large numbers. The people on either side who spend a lot of time yammering about it should go back where they came from -- as in NOW! Honor the Americans who served and risked their young lives to show us all they had the goods. We may never see their like again. Considering the stupid conflicts that worth- less politicians and corporate lobbyists get us into, we may not deserve to see their like again, either. Letters to the Editor Expresses thanks for support Dear Editor: One of the most rewarding aspects of running for local office is meeting and speaking to residents, no matter the outcome on Election Day. I was fortunate to get to know many Wyckoff residents over the course of my campaign. Whether I met residents at their homes or in town, the over- all message was the same: They are proud to call Wyckoff home. I appreciate all the support that I received from residents throughout this community. While disappointed in the out- come personally, I am confident that Mayor Doug Christie Dispatch service (continued from page 7) 200,000 residents, answering over 230,000 calls in 2013. The PSAP is also a backup/overflow for all 70 munici- palities within the county serving a resident population of 905,116. The 29,000 sq. ft building on Campgaw Road consists of a PSAP Call Center, Dispatch Center, OEM, Public Safety Administration and an Emergency Opera- tions Center. According to the center’s public information literature, the larger the communications agency, the more effec- tive the staff will be at handling emergencies as a result of better training, more experienced personnel, and better technological resources. “One to two communications professionals in each municipality are in no position to assist any other agency when an emergency arises. However those same person- nel, in a centralized communications center, are able to work together as a team to mitigate an emergency, there- fore drastically improving the safety of responders and the public,” the literature contends. and Township Committeeman Brian Scanlan will continue the good work of the governing body. I congratulate them both and wish them well. I look forward to continuing my work on the zoning board of adjustment, and I shall participate wherever I can to ensure that Wyckoff remains the place we are all proud to call home. Thank you again for your support and your friendship. It was an honor to be a candidate. Susan Bograd Yudin Wyckoff