The British had a fighting attitude, but without Ameri- ca, they would have had nothing to fight with. America became The Arse- nal of Democracy, supplying the Allies with war materials. They were shipped via boats, the same boats torpedoed by
interests began to collapse. A teary General Douglas MacArthur said it succinctly when he left the Philippines, “ I shall return. ” In leav- ing, he was forced to abandon 90,000 soldiers; they were stranded. Most became prisoners of war. Many starved and died. The Japanese were heartless. A few survived, becoming the core of a guerrilla army. American resolve set in. Manufacturing steadily increased. Industry swung into high gear. In the spring of 1941, Congress created The Lend-Lease Act. It was basically a blank check for Great Britain to buy war materials and pay later. The entire world lived in fear. Democracy was on the defensive. The cost was so high that by the end of the war the financial capital of the world transferred from London to New York. And Jews everywhere were on alert to an existential threat. Anti-Semitism was on the rise, only this time, it wasn’t a village or a town but the whole world at stake. If the Nazis won, there would be no safe place left to run. I was too young to join, but after listening day-after-day to the radio, I felt the calling of my nation. So did my peers. To build our army, a draft lottery system was instituted. All young men between the
Herman Shooster
the Nazis, the ones the merchant marines were talking about at Shooster’s Drive-In. After attacking Pearl Harbor, a Japa- nese Naval Marshal, General Isoroku Yamamoto, is credited with saying, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.” He was talking about America. History proved him right. America declared WAR! We couldn’t do much at first. Our army was ranked 18th in the world. That placed us squarely behind Romania. The first order of business was a retreat. Without our navy projecting might from Pearl Harbor, all of our Pacific
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Buck Private Herman Shooster 1943
Buck Private Herman Shooster 1943
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