I had a work thing last night and so missed much of the WWII discussion. Probably a good thing, as having your mother shot at by German planes as she fled her home with a random neighbor who just happened to have a car, does not make for a very rational view of when the US should have gotten involved in the war.

My father spent much of the war playing basketball (he was semi-pro before the war) for the US Army in San Francisco (yeah San Francisco!), but then fought in Europe and dealt with the aftermath of concentration camps and reconstruction in Germany. He never talked about it.

In WWI, my grandfather (on my Mom's side) recruited African soldiers and was present for the whole battle of Verdun. The only thing that I know that resulted from that experience was that he became a lifelong Communist and forbid horsemeat to ever be eaten in the house.

My uncle a flew a bomber during WWII. He ended up with head injuries he died of a few years later. My Father was exempt from the draft as the only living male member of his family and sole support of his mom. My Grandfather was gassed during WWI, and had only half a lung left. He smoked like a chimney and died of respitory failure at 65. His last words to my mother were "maybe it is time I quit smoking". Under the circumstances living to 65 was fairly impressive.

So that you can say you know someone affected, my (not immediate) family was interned. We were in Hawaii, so it was much rarer there than in California where pretty much everyone was taken (thus, Hec's comment on the resulting lack of Japanese communities).

My grandfather was deemed a dumb farmer and thus not a threat, so my mom's family was not interned. But her cousin's family was. The father was educated in Japan and was (I believe) a schoolteacher, and thus dangerous.

My mother remembers, as a child, the truck that drove her cousins away. She didn't really process why, just that everyone was upset. Her cousin's family was one of the lucky ones, because they had help. My mother & her family moved into their house; otherwise they would have lost it. Everyone still lost many family heirlooms, because everyone had to destroy or hide anything that seemed Japanese. In fact, whatever didn't get hidden was taken by the government.

They were taken first to Tule Lake and then later to Topaz in Utah. They remained until the end of the war. Afterward, they were not the same people. They rejected much of their American heritage and became deeply involved in the mystic Japanese Dancing Goddess religion. They became withdrawn and would not speak of the internment.

Because of my grandparents' action, they were able to return to their home. However, it was not until recently that my mother was able to have a conversation with one of the cousins about their experience.

I was a child myself when I learned about it. I took it upon myself to give a presentation about it for speech class. I continued to try to inform people about what happened, because it was so unknown.

And it's important.

I thought that one of the reasons why there aren't any/few Japanese communities in California wasn't just that they didn't feel safe but that people took the opportunity of the internment to buy up their property and not everyone was able to get it back after the war.

This is funny: Into every generation

The paper today ran an item in the national briefs about a new White House report on Social Security:

The Bush administration said in a new report Monday that Social Security is facing a $13.6 trillion shortfall in coming years and that delaying reforms is not fair to younger workers.

The full-length AP report doesn't provide much in the way of supporting evidence for that claim of a "$13.6 trillion shortfall," except to say this number was arrived at by calculating a cumulative deficit into "the indefinite future." Apparenty, in order to come up with a sufficiently scary-sounding large number, they projected the deficit expected to arise in 2042 over the next several centuries, extending a demographic bubble (the Baby Boom) into a permanent, never-ending trend.

The Treasury report also seems to be based on the assumption that, over the next few centuries, America's population will not grow but, rather, contract.

Scary thought: What if the Bush administration knows something the rest of us don't about the next 300 years of America's future? Maybe they have some kind of top-secret, ultra-classified advance warning about a Children of Men-type plague. If the human race suddenly and mysteriously became unable to reproduce, there would be no new generation of workers to fulfill the intergenerational compact of Social Security. That might account for this $13.6 trillion figure.

There's more - it gets funnier....

My paternal grandfather served in Europe in WWII. He was the company clerk because he knew how to type. A few years ago, going through my grandmother's things, I found some letters and photos he sent during that time. Some of the photos are of beautiful countryside but the notes on the back of the photos always have the location blacked out.

My maternal grandfather was in the army but I'm not sure if he was in WWII or Korea. He emphatically never wanted to talk about it. I suspect his experience was considerably more grim.

ION I have a car question. Yesterday I was informed that my timing chain is loose or stretched but was advised not to do anything about it. What might be the repercussions of that? Will I be okay to make a 9 hour drive in a couple of days?

Sumi, I know that's true in a lot of the Seattle area cases.

A close friend's stepfather was born in a camp, and the local Japanese community would make sure it was spoken of in schools here, so it's something I think about a lot. (Especially over the last 5-6 years, unfortunately.)

I don't know if my MiL's Aunt was affected, because I keep thinking Aunt Toki was in Hawaii, but I've never actually asked.

One grandfather tried to serve in WWII, but wound up, due to his status as married (and pushing 40) with five children, being stuck in Victoria for the duration. The not-a-grandfather (it's... complicated, and I still don't fully understand, but my unhappily married grandmother wound up living with and having to answer to not one, but two whiny men) had served in WWI. My common law stepgrandfather served in WWII, and the shrapnel in his knee is what killed him, in a round about way. (Surgery for the knee in '98, took more pain pills than he should have, wound up with a bleeding ulcer and died.)

One of Gram's sisters went and did something in England during WWII, and wound up coming home carrying my Dad's cousin Liz. (Speaking of yesterday's topics, when Liz's mother married and had her younger brother Phil, I don't think Phil was told until he was an adult that Liz was his half sister by another man.)

Paul's grandfather was in WWII, which is how he met Paul's grandmother. He was one of the soldiers on the ground right after the bombings in Japan, which they think might be one of the reasons he developed an aggressive cancer later in life. (Though the cancer lost the race to kill him to the lung damage from working in cement.)

All this family talk has me wanting to do some research. Anyone have a geneology site or sites that they like?

How much do you know, GC?

Not much at all. I know my father's parents and my mother's parents, but that's pretty much it.