Connecticut during World War Two is made possible by the American Department of Connecticut, whose mission is to preserve the and incidents of our association in the Great War.

As with additional support provided by Lincoln Financial Gr and Genesis Elder Care.

My Dear Governor, a convoy which included units of the 43rd the 169th Infantry Regiment, most importantly, the 192nd Field Artillery Battal the 118th Medical Battalion, and the 180 Quartermaster Battal of the Connecticut National Guar has safely reached an overseas destination.

I am sure the units will give a good account of themselves in carrying out their assigned m faithfully.

Yours.

George Marshall, Chief of Staff.

November 16th, 1942.

Some 210,000 men from Connecticu answered America's call to arms between 1941 and 19 They fought battles from one side of the earth to th to defeat imperial Japan and Naz The cost of victory stood at some 4500 Connecticut men who perished in combat.

Another thousand died of disease or were killed in training accid Private First Class Joseph Augustine of Middletown distille the war experience for all Conne soldiers, sailors, airmen and Ma When he returned from action in the combat days are the bad days You have to be there to know what I mean.

The United States professed neutrality amid escalating political and militar through Asia and Europe in the two decades following the end of the First W But it became clear as early as December 1937 that it would be difficult to stand off from hostilities in Britain, France and the low c Meanwhile, struggle with the arm as presented by Nazi Germany and Adolf Hitler.

Germany, Japan and Italy under Mussolini vowed to help ea if global war erupted.

German threats turned to action on September 1st, 1939, when Nazi troops invaded Poland and ignited the Second Wo Soon, the Netherlands, Belgium and France all fell under the German onslau The Nazis then laid siege to Eng through constant bombings.

The war in Europe seemed remote to Connecticut, even though orde from England in America's milita energized the state's economy.

Connecticut's young men and wome worked side by side in large num Many socialized after work.

My two brothers took me up to Danbury to apply for a job at the mail company where I met Eddie Mink.

I worked there and we didn't go out really for a year, a year and a The industrial city of Waterbury produced brass artillery shells and bullet casings in huge amoun But even in the heartland of the industry, war stood far removed from daily particularly for the city's youn They formed clubs and fielded te within leagues, organized around neighborhoods.

In 1938, the Lamberti brothers Frank and Joe formed a new club with their fri from the Scoville Street area near the south end of Water They called it the Warriors.

A bunch of kids from around that Streator Run, play, barter in an lot there, you know.

You'd get a ball, either a footb or if you were lucky enough or.

Threw.

A softball there and you played a nifty out there And eventually, as I said, we used to go over to Boys Club play our games there too.

Then all of a sudden, let's star a new club.

That's what we did.

At Wesleyan and other colleges in Connecticut, intellectual deb focused on global war and the pr for American intervention.

Debate alone, however, did not s Wesleyan student Carl Carlson.

Canada and Germany were at war.

He reckoned he then drove to Montreal with a to enlist in the Canadian Air Fo Everett Rosin of West Hartford, tired quickly of civilian life after leaving the Army before th He re-enlisted.

The Army shipped rosin to the Ph Philippines was not prepared for We only had one American infantr out there and and most of the troops in the Philip were special troops that, like, warehouses and finance clerks and things of that nature.

They weren't combat troops.

The hard edge of segregation per despite the patriotic impulse to unite against Japan and Germa Connecticut Governor Robert Hurl draft boards to stop discriminat against African-American men who were automatically placed on deferred lists without cause.

The wounds still went deep.

Germany, Italy and Japan had to be stoppe But I felt that as a gay, African-American black man who had never enjoyed the full fruits of living, I should not have to go in and f and give the last full of magic.

And that case went up to Selecti headquarters to General Hershey.

But General Hershey ruled that i I was not a theology student and not studying to be a ministe Rather than sitting here to be a or a psychologist, therefore, I would have used to have to go into the Army.

I'll go to Denver, I go to federal penitentiary.

African-Americans sought to enli in specific units Other state such as the Tuskegee Institute's air wing in Alabama.

When I was about five or six, we were walki Dad and I were walking down Worcester Street, and I heard a loud noise and I grabbed his hand and it frightened me.

I ask, What is that?

And he pointed to an object in the sky.

So that's an airplane.

At that moment, I wanted to fly.

FDR moved Connecticut men closer to harm's way in Febr when he federalized the 8000 sol of the National Guard.

He sent them a month later to a training base called Camp Blanding in Florida near Jackson The War Department assigned the group to the 43rd D We were there with another divis the 31st Division, from the southern states of Alab Mississippi and Georgia, I think And there were, you know, most of the people in the 43rd Division were Yankees from New E And when we got down to Camp Bla there were quite a few fights la in some of the barrooms around t Blanding and Starke, Florida, because we just didn't think the In the fall of 1941, diplomats from the United States and Japan sparred over the Asian nations i Meanwhile, the flagship of the Pacific flee the USS California, entered Pear Hawaii.

A career Navy warrant officer from Thomaston, Connecticut, Thomas Jay Reeves, served on the as a chief radioman.

On the morning of December 7th, Japan launched 360 carrier based and attacked the Pacific Fleet in military installations at Pearl Harbor.

One box slammed into the deck of California and poured into an ammunition storage area before exploding.

Reeves found ammunition in the wreckage and fed the antiaircraft battery until killed by smoke and fire.

The attack on Pearl Harbor killed 26 servicemen from Connecticut, including four sailors from Brid aboard the Battleship Arizona.

When it went down, fighter pilot Sterling of West Hartford destroyed a Japanese pl before he was shot down and kill In the attack.

I was a dumb kid, just like everybody else in the Pearl Harbor meant nothing to an We didn't.

We didn't even know what it was.

We thought the world was going to come to an end, and of course, we were going to shipped out immediately.

Somewhere we didn't know where I was retur to the Yukon campus Sunday afternoon stopped to see my roommate and leave off some clothing that his mother had given me to He greeted me at the door and sa Japanese have just attacked Pear Well, it was such a shock.

I don't think we could understan the full impact of what that mea The U.S. declared war on Japan the next d Germany and Italy then issued declarations against which responded in kind.

American forces, including Evere surrendered to Japanese infantry 9th, 1942.

After four months of combat on B in the Philippines, already weakened by months on short rations, the American p embarked on a fourth 70 mile march in blistering heat They walked without food, water or medicine.

Thousands perished.

Some of the men had had high fev from malaria.

They would have convulsions and they'd just fallen.

The Japanese would kill them, sh And one time I saw a Japanese so Some tanks were coming.

Cars and one man was stumbling a like he was going to fall.

And he hit him with his rifle bu and he shoved him right out in front of the tanks.

And three or four tanks went over this man.

And all it was, the uniform was looked like it was pressed in the dirt after they'd passed.

I'll never forget that.

Corregidor, the island citadel of American forces in the Philippines, fell next.

70,000 soldiers surrendered unconditionally to Japanese forc off the coast of New Guinea in a little known area of the Pacific called the C A U.S. still, America and Connecticut's citizens, soldiers and sailors faced a long grind of war and route to Tokyo and Berlin.

The Pearl Harbor attack and the loss of the Army garriso at Corregidor sent morale on the home front, t But Connecticut quickly provided two heroes in the early of hostilities to see the state through the rough, early days of Thomas J. Reeves received posthumously the Medal of Honor for feeding ammunition to the an battery on the California during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Lieutenant Harold Watson of West Hartford f one of six bombers led by James that surprised Tokyo on April 18, 1942.

Good morning, Australia.

Good afternoon, Hawaii.

Good evening, America.

Whoever you are, wherever you ar This is Connecticut calling.

A shortwave radio broadcast from the Bushnell Memorial in Ma Transmitted descriptions of Connecticut life to the troop in Australia and elsewhere.

It's fitting that you should hea the first citizen of the Nutmeg the handsome wearer of the gubernatorial toga A Bridgeport boy who made good in the big city.

I present His Excellency Governor Robert H. Hurley of Connecticut, manning the serv Your state salutes you.

It is spring now here at home.

And you know what that means.

The feel of a green laurel and dogwood are in bloom along the highways of the countr newly formed green parts of our city and village st These things you have and know a But they aren't quite the same.

And just as we have a deep and abiding faith in you, we want you to be sure that whatever our beauty is, it will be done.

We want you to know what we are working for, working to.

At home, though, winning the war meant often going without things such as gasoline, sugar, meat an Anti-aircraft guns around key defense plants i and other cities provided remind of the threat from German bomber Rumors of U-boats in the Connect in Long Island Sound kept river and shoreline communities But it was the long reach of the across the state that brought ho the full nature of the sacrifice Conscription.

Odd twists gave factory workers the chance to use in combat what they had built on the produ line back home.

My friends said, You came from N Why don't you put in for some se I says, I don't know.

I've been working on those thing for a while and I didn't really think it was a branch of service I wanted to go into.

But then I thought about I says, Well, New London.

I had to go to a sub school up at the base.

And then from that I went to Bat and Gyro School that was up at t So I said, Well, I'll give it a So I put in for submarines.

Once inseparable brothers left for military training in different branches of the ser My brother was stationed at Camp Catlin, which isn't in Hawa And the day I arrived, I was stationed at a Camp Catlin only there was a fence in between where he was, the bar He was in a tent and I was sleep So I went under the fence to see my brother.

And I saw him and I came back th the same way and I got caught by So he brought me up against an o and he says, tomorrow morning you've come up for office hours and then I turn.

I said, Yes, si I turned around.

He says, No, don't come back.

You saw your brother?

Yes.

He said, Let's forget it.

Richie and I, we had little diff He was younger than I was by a couple of years, two and a hal But we got along.

We went to different high school but he had his friends and I had And we got to the point where we enough to realize we weren't kid When the fighting had to cease a The war meant separation for young coupl When you're going together and e We had to save money.

We were both young.

We wanted to get married, but we knew we had to work at it and we didn't want to do that.

When he went in the service, he said We shouldn't, you know.

And I said the same thing.

So we didn't get married then and we were not formally engaged But we he went into the service and we wrote every day letters back and forth.

And he came home on a couple of Members of the Warriors Athletic Club of Waterbury began leaving for the service even before Pearl Harbor.

Frank Lamberti joined the Marines early in 1941 His brother Joe and most other m of the club were drafted.

Basic training broadened the social experience of many Co servicemen who were away from th state for the first time.

All learned the rigors and routine of military life within the unique environment of culture.

Sugar Report means a letter from the g Swank's or a soldier's best clot A short circuit between years means a mental lap Blind flying is a date with a gi you've never met.

Scandal sheet is known as the pa in this circuit.

Slip in the clutch is talking or criticizing too much and up the pole is recognized as on the Charles McCarthy.

The Bristol Pr March 23, 1942.

The war did not wait for green t to mature on June four, 1942.

Navy repulsed Japanese naval and air forces on Midway Island, The U.S. B-17 bombers launched a devastating counterat and drove the Japanese westward.

They would never gain the initia in the war.

In November 1942, American troop joined the war against Nazi Germ Infantry landed in North Africa to fight axis forces.

We're on our way, President Roosevelt said.

Also that month, small formations of B-17s flying from in England began to bomb military targets in France, Belgium and Germany.

We used to bomb with a handful of airplanes.

15 airplanes went to Paris one d Six airplanes went to Germany.

15 airplanes?

No fighter escorts.

The bombing raids expended men and machinery without mercy.

Men in four engine planes had 25 missions to until grounded.

Jim Varieties of New Haven serve as copilot on the Memphis Belle and the early bombing campaigns.

The War Department ordered Bolin and the Memphis Bell Crew home after their 25th mission to promote bond drives and other elements of the home f They toured the country until they grew weary of the constant attention.

The 43rd Division and its contingent of Connecticu received orders in October to go to Guadalcanal.

As the division sailed westward, Marines and Army units were enga in fierce battles with Japanese naval and infantry forces for control of the island.

When the 43rd got there, Guadalcanal was in American hands.

We landed in Guadalcanal in January, and the fighting there was pretty well over.

Most of the so-called combat was patrolling, and most of the we saw were dead and they were h been dead for a long time.

The 43rd Division moved out of t Islands in the spring of 1943.

The next target, Wendover Island and Munda, where the Japanese had built an The Americans learned quickly how the Japanese infantry fought at night and without regard to their own They were vicious fighters.

They were.

We thought they were crazy the way they charge, you know.

And we killed hundreds and hundreds of them.

But it didn't seem to make any d to them.

And after a while, you got to th where you didn't feel that you were shooting or killin a human.

The war in Europe had been fough largely in the air until 1943.

Allied forces invaded Sicily in and at Salerno two months later.

And the first nine days in Saler I didn't sleep.

Finally, on the ninth day, my battery commander ordered me to lie down and get s And one of the officers that was nearby commented, He's afraid he's going to miss someth The hills and grottoes of San Pe turned into a killing ground for both sides until American forces broke thro The German army, however, had du in elsewhere and would be diffic to dislodge.

Larger and larger formations of allied bombers confronted fer German fighters and sheets of fl Nazi occupied territory.

In Danbury, Allen Bathroom and t family received the news they had feared most.

Edward Minks be 26, had been sho in Europe with the crew reported missing and presumed lost.

The doorbell rang and this man said, I'm sorry, Mr Mink.

And then when I went in the hall it was in the hall.

Dad.

My dad was holding this telegram and I glanced and I saw killed instead of miss So it was traumatic.

And then my mother came in and of course, they we all cried Everybody was devastated.

Both families absolutely devasta It was just it's indescribable what everybody was going through I remember how, you know, how awful it was for every and how I just didn't believe it I never believed it.

Carl Karlsson, the Wesleyan stud who joined the Canadian Air Force, was killed in the skies above Europe.

Two Wesleyan English professor Fred Millard circulated news of death among classmates scattered around the world.

Dear Fred Carlson's death came as quite a surprise to me.

I thought he could conquer anyth That fate threw his way.

Death seemed an untimely and ins answer to the questions he was asking of life.

There is perhaps a basic reason for his death.

I doubt whether he ever learned He expected to leap full sprung into blinding battle, depending on the steel of his sp and the sheer force of his will his opponents.

His restless spirit never allowed him to learn.

It was against his nature.

He expected to fly.

As the artist in him would draw And failing to make the necessary compromise He finally lost his life.

His loss.

I think we should regret above m He was a strong salt in a weekly savored Talcott Williams, The Philippine June 12th, 1945.

Fred Willard, according to a colleague, was bo in the year of Melville's death in a massachusetts town called W Mollard composed a newsletter and distributed it to his studen overseas and in camps for conscientious o letters, he remarked, could keep the scen during the insanity of war.

The Second World War occasioned the most spectacular renaissance of letter writing in history.

There is abundant evidence that one of the activities most to the preservation of sanity an was the writing and receiving of In all probability, the invention of B mail saved far more minds than the most ama of the new drugs restored bodies Prof. Fred B at Wesleyan University.

As the ground campaign in Italy accelerated.

Military nurses saw the horrendo toll of war among the wounded in evacuation hospitals.

The very first amputee had absolutely no arms or legs, and he was in a ward with there were 30 in and all of the fellows were just watching me to see how I was going to handle because that was not easy.

I managed think I could see I could see the eyes, you know.

What did she do?

Did she did she cry?

Did she do?

As the hard year of 1943 closed?

A palpable weariness with the wa settled on the United States.

But the fighting through the hed of Europe and the volcanic ash of the Pacific Islands would demand an even gre in the months ahead.

In the year 1943 came a certaint the partizans of life had grown than the mechanized conspiracy o The Allies had started to break The man of the year did not live to take He died in Tunis, on Tarawa.

At Salerno, on the blood soaked fields around Kiev, Chalk Kharkov.

He lost his face, his limbs and his mind before flamethrowers in the cockpits of blazing plane and the insane shadows of the ju He had badly wanted to live when he died.

The world had lost one particle of its meaning.

But his death added more meaning than it took.

It gave the living another chanc to abolish the ugly crime of war The soldier who died was the father of the unborn fut Time Magazine.

January 3rd, 1944.

Racine of West Hartford had been in a Japanese prison camp for tw Everett as the spring of 1944 blossomed in Connecticut.

The survivor of the Bataan Death March weighed only and he witnessed unimaginable ho every day.

When we first got captured, everybody got horrible diseases from starvation.

And you you need starvation.

Diseases.

The first thing you notice you c when you starve for weeks and mo at a time, you I start to affect You blink in a lot and it feels someone throw some dirt in your and then all of a sudden you start to swell up your legs.

Swell up like.

Like that your belly sticks out and you get or you get some of t even get when they lay down a sw behind the glands of the ears and they puff up and they they don't live very long after And so we were losing men every in Connecticut.

Only 6000 men, 26 and under, remained in the state The rest had gone off to war.

The insatiable appetite for comb claimed even middle aged men who had been exempt from the dra they were fathers before Pearl H I remember as as that time came which we would say in the House, is this the month that I'm going and if I get passed out, is next going to be the month?

And that finally came to the tim when February I was February of I was drafted.

Like a growing list of people in Connecticut.

The mink in Bartram families in mourned the death of a loved one Edward Mink, an airman, was thought to have been killed the previous September.

Then a letter arrived at the tiny post office in Bethe This December 25th.

My dear Sweets, well, today is C And I hope you and the family had a nice one, becau Under these circumstances, I went to midnight mass last night and tonight I am going to a Christmas show.

Well, dear.

I'll write later.

All my love to you and the famil Your loved one.

Eddie, Joe, Edward Mink.

Prisoner of War, Germany.

The girl next door brought the card home to my fami And when I got down there, the police chief told me to go g because Eddie was alive and I just looked him.

I don't remember how I got home.

Pilot said, Get out, get out.

Go So it was my job being a radio m I was sitting up on a parachute and I sat on the guy in the top He's got a chest, which he doesn't have on.

My job to put that just shoot on When he comes out of the top tur the escape hatch and tell him to Well, I got him all set and I says, Go out.

He says, No, you go first.

I didn't waste any time.

I went and I just I only got out about seems like only a minute or two when I hit the ground.

My plane was no farther away than 200 or 300 yards from me.

So the poor guy didn't get a chance to get out.

So I was the only one out of tha that day.

Hundreds of thousands of America and their equipment poured into throughout 1943 and 1944.

The long awaited invasion of Fra was scheduled for late spring 1944.

For three days in early June 194 battle ready allied troops awaited invasion o The Supreme Commander for Allied Forces, General Dwigh Eisenhower, ordered Operation Ov The invasion of France to commence on June six, 1944.

The President of the United Stat My fellow Americans, in this poignant hour I ask you to join with me in prayer.

Almighty God, our son's pride of our nation.

This day, set upon a mighty ende a struggle to preserve our repub our religion and our civilizatio and to set free a suffering huma Lead them straight, cruel.

Give strength to their arms, stu to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

They will need thy blessings.

Their road will be long and hard But the enemy is strong.

You may hurt them back.

Our forc success may not come with rushin but we shall return again and ag And we know that by thy grace and by the righteousness of our our son will triumph.

They will be sort crane by night and by day without rest until the victory is won, the darkness will be ruined by noise and flame.

Many souls will be shaken when the violence is a war.

And they drop the gate.

And when I went down you had to go off the low side.

And so I had these four £25 shells besides all my pack and everythi I went off on the low side and w like I'm the head of big show cr go on under the water and I had to dispose of.

That or I would have drowned.

The Allied Drive for Paris stalled at Saint Lo, where German troops had dug in.

The brutal fighting that followe in heavy allied casualties.

James Kanata of Waterbury, one of the original members of the Warriors Athletic Club, was killed in the It took the largest bombing raid of the war up to that time the battle.

The D-Day landings in Normandy overshadowed significant gains in the Pacific campaign.

U.S. Marines invaded Saipan and cleared it of Japanese defen by the middle of July 1944.

After weeks of hard fighting against troops that ref to surrender.

American forces then targeted the small but vital island of Iwo Jima, whose airfield would American pl in reach of Japan under the Pacific.

Submarines kept the pressure on Japanese sh We got into this transport and they said that I checked this with the captain the last time I talked to them and they said they told us it wa 5000 Japanese killed in that fri He says that's about right.

And he said that the other boats that relieve that area from us, they couldn't raise the scope without hitting the Japanese.

In Italy, American troops continued to drive northw clearing town after town of Nazi But in the mountains, what troops call the tough old guard of Italy became that much By the time we got up into the h the infantry company was pretty well spread out across the hillside.

And I was alone with one infantr and the guy carrying my radio and we were approached by one German that we shot.

And then shortly after that, I decided to bust up the radios that they couldn't captured.

And some Germans closed in on us shouting, Hands up, hands up.

And I put my hands up.

American success in the drive toward Berlin and Tokyo sparked that the war would be over by Christmas 1944, at least in E A German offensive launched less than two before Christmas changed that.

German tanks and infantry drove through thinly spread allied positions near the Arden.

They surrounded the Belgian town of Bastogne and told the garrison there to s No.

The Americans answered.

The whole Battle of the Bulge was miserable.

The first night was a dark night and after we had met the first attack, they told us to pick positions for the night.

So Ernest Jackie of Worcester and me spotted a lone barn and picked it to spend the night It was bitterly cold and no lights whatsoever were al We got into the barn all right and felt around for a to lie down about in the middle of the barn We found what seemed to be some sacks of meal or stock feed So we spread out blankets and crawled on there to When daylight came and we woke u we were amazed to find that our was not a pile of feed sacks.

It was two dead horses.

Private First Class Lewis O'Dell 199th Infantry, New Haven.

Thickening clouds kept allied pl grounded for most of the first ten days of th But when the weather cleared, American pilots battered German positions.

The battle ended in January.

Vincent Ionic, on another origin from Waterbury, was one of thousands of American killed in action during the Bulg in the Pacific.

Nicholas Farrell learned of his brother's fate.

He volunteered to go on his last so that he'd be eligible to come home for Christmas.

And he told my mother, I'll see you at Christmas.

And she never liked that song.

I'll be home for Christmas.

I can tell you that.

So they went out.

They dropped their bombs over th in Homer oil fields in Germany, and they were headed back to their base in Italy.

And when they did, they ran into the squadron leade Two planes came down to B-17.

They were some survivors, but he wasn't one of them.

I just prayed, I should say this was a polish.

I was open.

God would take me and send him h U.S.

Naval and Air Forces launch and sea invasion of Corregidor in February 1945.

American troops routed Japanese from their positions around Mani and then moved to wipe out any remaining resistance in the Philippines.

On February 19, 1945, U.S. Marines launched a seaborne assault of I after securing the beachhead.

Infantry forces moved quickly toward the commanding heights of Mount Suribachi.

We are really taking much of the when the flag was raised.

But the reason why it was so imp was the highest point.

And the the whoever has the high point has a great advantage in a So we took mount 70 because Japanese were firing from the mountains down on us on the beach.

They could see every move we mad and we couldn't see them because in caves up in the mountain.

five weeks, Marines and Japanese battled for every yard of ground Over the next in a costly test of strength that occurred largely at night.

One of them jumped out with his but then he pointed down to the trench.

There was another Jap down there and so he got up, but he ran tow with a bayonet, small bayonet that they had.

So they.

They killed them.

We had to kill him.

My favorite weapon, I should say no weapon is favori My favorite weapon was a was a hand grenade.

If you do a general idea where you area that you thought there were Japa because of sound you heard or you might have momentarily sa a movement there, you throw a ha and it has about a 40 foot, if I correctly, spread of shrapnel.

Many Connecticut servicemen fighting in Italy in 1944 and 19 found themselves in the ironic circumstance of helping to free their relativ from Nazi domination.

Some servicemen even visited rel after specific areas of the coun were declared secure.

Everybody just broke out crying.

So they said, All right, now be Be quiet.

So they got my my grandmother, who was 94, is up on the second and she's coming down the stairs says, You think that you're fall She says, I can recognize my gra anytime.

Northern Italy remained in Nazi hands in the 1945.

German ski troops had lodged the deep within a mountain range.

Military planners formed the 10th Mountain Divisio on the spine of Japan, but decid to dispatch the unit to northern after almost three months of fig The division secured the mountai but with many casualties.

A shell came in and landed to the left of us.

I had fallen to the ground with my head.

By his feet, he felt just the op His feet were at my my head.

And I remember a medic shaking me, thought I wa want to know if I was wounded or probably thought I was dead and shook me and said, Help me g Help me with this.

This fellow right here.

And I picked up his feet and he picked up the head and the left side of his head was just shorn right off.

American forces raced toward Germany in early sp overcoming determined Nazi oppos Accept the results of this confe and the beginning of a permanent of peace.

President Franklin D Roosevelt died in Apr Vice President Harry Truman succ as the allies tighten their grip German fighters refused to capit We were going into the town of Rhine burg and the Germans were all along.

The road and they knocked off 15 of a set My fire.

Killed.

And I was lucky.

I didn't.

I made it.

American armored and infantry co freed thousands of prisoners of and route to Berlin.

They also exposed Nazi Germany's network of concentration and slave labor camps.

Wink at the broken world, where we were very upset seeing all these bodies that wer and in the ovens that they were and also piled up on these boxca boxes of the beds of the trucks.

And it was really.

Very sad seeing that happen.

And I know the people.

Today don't believe that.

That ever happened, but it did.

German resistance crumbled in Berlin by the middle of spring 1 On May 9th, 1945, President Harry Truman declared in Europe.

The ferocity of the defense of I convinced naval officials that an invasion of the Japanese mainland would take two years and a million lives to complete.

The invasion of Okinawa did nothing to change that view.

Facing sustained attacks from kamikaze and stubborn defensive caves and other areas, American forces took almost three months to clear the island of resistanc Meanwhile, troops from Europe be arriving in the Pacific area to prepare for the invasion of m Japan on July 16th, 1945.

And Alamogordo, New Mexico.

successfully tested its secret weapon, the atom The U.S. bomb.

A B-29 dropped the weapon on Hir Japan, three weeks later, on August 6th Japan refused to surrender.

A second atomic bomb leveled Nag three days after the first on Hi The Japanese gave up arms after and officially surrendered aboar the USS Missouri on September 2nd, 1945.

The Second World War was over.

I can't tell you how happy we we because, you know, everybody felt, hey, the law of is going to catch up with the ea Japan, you're dead because because of our experienc they put the more experienced fighters up front.

And so we figured, hey, that's i So we were ecstatic.

Everett Rosing spent almost the entire war in a priso He was finally a free man.

They knock you down with a rifle they kick you, and hopefully the on the head with a two by four and cut my scalp open and it was it was constant.

It was constant.

Did it seem as though no matter what we would never do anything right And then sometimes if you were w they'd come along with it with a rifle button.

They hit you across the back and knock you down and a bunch o kick you in all places.

And that's the way it went almost every day.

So you got so used to this being all the time that you just ignor And so to be stuck up there and say that you're free to go, you can leave and go out of the without somebody with a rifle in a bandit on your And every minute, it's just it's If you can't.

You can't have the words to describe the feeling.

The free started to return to Connecticut almost immediately.

troops But for anxious wives, the wait seemed too long.

When a GI Joe is 37, two and a half years old, has faithfully served his countr for a year and eight months when he has a wife and two have grown children, not His own home and a good job to come back to.

Why can't he come home?

It's too late now to do anything about Christm I couldn't believe we again woul separate this Christmas in peace But it looks that way now, and the children are heartb Not to mention a certain guy who undoubtedly will have to spend another Chris a thousand miles from home.

Respectfully, yours, Ruth.

Charles held December 18th, 1945.

The end of the war closed a significant part of the lives of many Connecticut veterans.

Connie Napier received his wings and served in the last class of the Tuskegee Airmen in 1946.

Shirley Fox was one of 3000 Connecticut women to serve in the military during She remained a nurse in civilian after the war.

Memphis Bell copilot Jim Varieties later worked with pilo Robert Morgan in the furniture b The Warriors Athletic Club of Wa waited for the return of their b friend Frank Lamberti, from Japa where he served in the occupatio He never made it back to the nei Lambros plane crashed into the P Ocean enroute to the United Stat His body was never recovered.

The Warriors continued to meet, but the days of athletic competition were over.

They would hold reunions for dec Edward Mink, the airmen, shot do Italy and thought to be killed i And Alan Bertram got married after the war.

Everett Racine spent the rest of his career in Army, the remains of U.S. servicemen killed in the Pacific and European theaters of action returning home for burial in 194 Most of the 2500 Connecticut servicemen killed in action were brought back to their home The full measure of the wartime of Connecticut veterans emerged only after years of personal con about what had happened between 1941 and 1945.

Well, to think that all of this, all the deaths and everything an and things, you did change the question, you know, j the way you did them after.

But you knew why you did it when you were there.

There were times I don't think it really happened that I wasn't really in a war and I didn't go through the expe which I did lose.

But because it's so long ago, it seems so realistic in a way.

But is there in its history?

Anthony Santoro, one of the original warriors from Waterbury, realized that he an earlier generation of America were forever connected by two seemingly dista When I was going to grammar scho I was about eight, nine years ol I can still remember in grammar the Civil War veteran coming to the class and talking to the kids.

And this is about 60 some odd years after work after the Civil War, right?

I'm going to schools now and I'm talking to kids.

65 years after World War Two, talking about history, repeating you know, there is history repeating itself armed to God wi I was talking to them more, be i addressing their classes.

kids.

I have a thing, an Irish song.

Walter Bell, the brother of my g Morton Downey Warden's brother, is Corporal Ed Wallingford, Connecticut.

I said, Hey, can you hold my gun?

KOPPLIN All across the ocean floor and line where your heart has been in the infirmary over my bo But I pull the rubber ball.

Half and half.

Your feet on.

When or where I'm gone.

Your life is hard when you come here.

In.

New York being all.

Chicano men, you got me on two different coun I'm going to go three, two.

I'm not going to say.

Okay, okay You know, raise that camera and I'm doing another one, three Thank you and good evening.

Over the course of the next hour we'll be discussing one of the m daunting fiscal challenges facing state and local governmen the mounting bill to cover the p pension plans and health insurance benefits for teachers, state workers and municipal empl Our intent is to hear both sides of the debate and to give you those in the stu audience and the TV, NPR viewers and listeners an opp to ask questions of our panelist Members of our expert panel are the need snappier?

Connecticut State Treasurer.

Goo for a perfect one and make sure it's on the ta