From Brooklyn to Okinawa (My Father's Secret Life)

At some point shortly after the Dec 7^th bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 and the entry of the United States into the Second World War, my father shaved off his beard and peyos, put away his tefillin, kissed his parents goodbye, and joined the armed forces in hope of fighting the Nazis on their own turf. I don’t know much else about those five years of his life save that he survived and lived to tell very little about it. What I share now was made known to me in bits and snippets of conversations with those who my father confided in during his lifetime. Like most things, my father simply refused to tell me or couldn’t find the words or heart to do so.

I was left with nothing more than fading memories of aging men, their vague recollections of the times, and the context of the events surrounding his military service. I had to somehow piece it all together at some point. Even his closet friends knew almost nothing of his time in the service, never actually saw him in a uniform, or without his levush (traditional clothing) upon his return. He remained apart and away for only as long as it took to do what he felt was right. His beard grew back and his life went on, but I am told that the war changed him in many ways. Having no details of who he was before the war, I can make no comment as to comparisons.

My father went through basic training somewhere in Kansas and was assigned to an engineering battalion. Much to his dismay (or luck), he was not sent to Europe, but to the Pacific. Early on in the war, Jewish soldiers were not sent to Europe because the officers knew that Jewish prisoners of war would be summarily executed upon capture. At least this is what I am told. It makes sense. In any case, my father was not a designated combatant, though he did see combat on more than a few occasions. They did issue him a rifle (he somehow kept it upon his discharge and it was stored in a closet), but I don’t know if he ever used it. His war was fought with a shovel and cement trowel.

Cpl. Aronovitz worked alongside some 2000 other ‘engineers’ building airstrips on islands recently captured from occupying Japanese forces. Immediately after a beachhead was cleared by Marines and barrages from Navy gun-ships, my father’s battalion would land and begin pouring concrete for an airstrip. It was grueling work and often had to be done under the hot sun, in swarms of mosquitoes, and intermittent gunfire from the surrounding jungles, which had not yet been completely cleared of Japanese defenders and snipers. Try doing your job while bullets are being sent your way.

Father kept his old uniforms in the same closet he did his rifle and some other personal items; some of those family heirlooms from Europe and other precious objects he picked up along his way through life. I was not permitted to see the contents of his private treasury, but being curious I did so anyway, and was surprised to find some of these uniforms riddled with bullet holes! This truly shocked me. I know what my father looked like when undressed, as I had seem him any number of times at either the mikveh (ritual bath) or when swimming without his shirt on, and I can assure you, he was never wounded. This question led to my first and only conversation with my father about his experience, and the only time he ever spoke to me regarding the war.

The sneaking-into-the-closet incident occurred shortly after my bar mitzvah, and the question lingered in my mind for some 10 years on before I finally amassed enough courage to ask him outright. It was right after the bris-milah (circumcision) of my second son, E.C., and my father and I were both drinking quite a bit in honor of the simcha (celebration). It was at that point that, for some reason unbeknownst to me, I decide to ‘pop’ the question. My father looked at me with a stunned sort of expression and said “You want to know? So I’ll tell you, but only because of the vodka.”

“The Japanese were very tough and even our best troops had a hard time dislodging even a few of them. I never met one face to face, but I did see many, many dead Japanese soldiers on the islands where we put down airstrips. I felt rachmones (pity) for them because I knew they weren’t going to win the war, and were going to keep fighting no matter what. I could never hate them the way I hated the Nazis yimach shemum (may their names be erased).”

He continued.

“Every day that it didn’t rain and most days even when it did, the weather was hot and we had to work out in the open sun without shade for hours at a time. We would only wear uniforms at night when it cooled off a bit or during days when we weren’t working on the runways. Sometimes our shirts would be draped over clotheslines we set up for laundry or on scarecrows we put up to fool the Japanese snipers. On several occasions Japanese fighter planes would strafe the airfields with machine gun fire and manage only to massacre our clean laundry. This is how my shirts and pants got the holes. I still thank God I wasn’t wearing them very much at all. I kept them so I shouldn’t ever forget.”

(There was one other Aronovitz who fought in the war and was killed in the Battle of Saipan. He is related to us. My father, however, never knew him.)

I had hoped that this conversation would lead to more conversation, but I was to be once again disappointed. My father was never accused of talking too much. We never spoke of it again. Perhaps I should have always gotten him a little drunk first.