My Father Survived WWII, And (Thanks Be To God) That’s Why I’m Here
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(OPINION) I’m sure I am not the first person to think along these lines, but did you ever consider that you might not exist if certain things had happened or not happened?
Now the Bible teaches that we are no accident. God knew us before we were even born, if we can wrap our minds around that.
As King David put it: “My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them.” (Psalm 139:15-16).
Or, as the prophet Isaiah put it: “Listen to me, O house of Jacob, all the remnant of the house of Israel, who have been borne by me from before your birth, carried from the womb; even to your old age I am he, and to gray hairs I will carry you. I have made, and I will bear; I will carry and will save.” (Isaiah 46:3-4)
So the answer to the question, “Why am I here?” is because (spoiler alert!) God put you here. That means that all the events that led to your being here were in God’s control. But I think it is still instructive to examine those events in our lives.
In my case, I would not be here if my mother’s mother, my Grandma Bessie, had not come to the United States from Lithuania along with her brother at the beginning of the 20th century. Had she remained in the Old Country, it is almost certain that she would have been killed in the Holocaust, as that was the fate of the rest of her family. You can read her story here.
Bessie married and gave birth to my mother and 10 other children, lives that otherwise would never have been.
My father, Wallace, was born in 1918. He enlisted in the Army after Pearl Harbor. He married my mother, Jeanette, on Dec. 2, 1943, when he was stationed in Fort Dupont, Delaware. He served in the 132nd Engineers Combat Battalion of the 77th Infantry Division.
He was engaged in several perilous combat battles. From April to October 1944, he fought in Guam, helping to recapture the Japanese-held island. From there his battalion moved on to Leyte in the Philippines from November 1944-March 1945, where he fought under the overall command of General Douglas MacArthur. The United States capturing the Philippines was a key strategic step in isolating Imperial Japan’s military holdings.
His unit then advanced to Iejima, one of the Japanese Ryukyu Islands. The 77th Infantry Division landed there in April 1945 as part of the Battle of Okinawa, and there was heavy fighting from April 16 until the island was secured on April 21. U.S. journalist Ernie Pyle was killed during the battle. Iejima was the major starting point for the surrender of Japan. My father was on the island until October 1945.
My dad did not often talk about the war, but one time he told me that several of the soldiers in his battalion, with whom he had been close, died right next to him from bullet fire as bullets whizzed by his head. He said to me, “I don’t know why I’m still alive.”
On a lighter note, he once looked at the overgrown backyard at my home in South San Francisco and said it reminded him of the jungles in the Philippines!
On Aug. 6, 1945, while my dad was still on Iejima, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Three days later, the U.S. detonated another atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The aerial bombings killed between 150,000 and 246,000 people. On Aug. 15, Japan surrendered.
Had President Harry Truman not elected to drop the bombs, the U.S. would have invaded Japan and my father’s division would have been among the first. It is estimated that a land invasion would have cost as many as 1 million American lives. My father would probably have been one of them.
The use of nuclear weapons is considered by many to be immoral. They believe that the bombings were war crimes. When I was growing up, my father told me that he now understood those ethical issues. But he said his honest reaction at the time was relief, knowing that he would not have to invade Japan, whose soldiers were determined to fight to the last man.
So — and this is a tough one — if Truman had not dropped the bombs, I might not exist, as I was born in 1953. Am I saying that the deaths of nearly 250,000 Japanese are a fair exchange for my life? Of course not. I can’t account for so much human suffering, just as I cannot account for 6 million Jewish people dying in the Holocaust. I understand why in the face of so much tragedy people do not believe in God or lose their faith in him.
My parents, both of whom were Jewish, were not religious. So I grew up, not so much with doubts about God, but with few thoughts about him. By a set of miraculous circumstances, I came to believe in Jesus, a story you can read here.
I married a Gentile believer in Jesus, and our three grown children are believers, and we now have three grandchildren. Apart from all the circumstances I detailed above regarding my grandmother and dad, none of us (other than my wife) would exist.
I shared about Jesus with my mom and dad. My dad passed away at 91 years of age, and my mom lived to be 100. I don’t know if they ever gave their lives to God. On the surface it appeared not, but who knows what happens as a person faces death?
I am 72 now, and assuming I inherited my parents’ genes for long life, I hope to be around a while. But if not, I am prepared for eternal life, which Jesus has made possible. And, ultimately, that is why all of us are here — to have the opportunity to surrender our lives to God through Jesus the Messiah so that we can live with him forever in heaven. And to share that good news with others.
Matt Sieger, now retired, is a former sports reporter and columnist for The Vacaville (California) Reporter. He is the author of “The God Squad: The Born-Again San Francisco Giants of 1978.”