From Dec. 18, 2012, AP
Died Dec. 17th at age 88.
On December 7, 1941, he and his Japanese-American friends on Hawaii, knew they were in trouble. They wanted to go to war and fight for their country and be accepted. "I felt that there was a need for us to demonstrate that we're just as good as anybody else," he said.
He had a dream of becoming a surgeon, but that was lost in Germany along with his right arm in 1945. His platoon came under fire. He was shot in the stomach while drawing a grenade. Even wounded as he was, he climbed up a hill and took out two German machine gun bests and was getting ready to throw a grenade at a third one when a rifle grenade fired by a German just ten yards away hit his right elbow.
He grabbed the grenade, pulled the pin, tossed it back and it blew up in the German's face.
He later served thirty years as U.S. senator from Hawaii after it became a state.
The Greatest Generation. --GreGen
My Cooter's History Blog has become about 80% World War II anyway, so I figured to start a blog specific to it, especially since we're commemorating its 70th anniversary and we are quickly losing this "Greatest Generation." The quote is taken from Pearl Harbor survivor Frank Curre, who was on the USS Tennessee that day. He died Dec. 7, 2011, seventy years to the day. His photo is below at right.
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