PATRIOTISM

My thoughts on Patriotism run far and wide from time to time. I've wanted to write them down for some time and today is the day.

Patriotism apparently motivates most citizens of the United States of North America. I happen to be a citzen of the United States of North America and here follows what I can write about it from personal experience.

I remember Pearl Harbor; the Japs (America's term then, not mine.) bombed Pearl Harbor. It happened on December 7, 1941. It was the year I graduated from High School in Peñasco, New Mexico. That single act, the Pearl Harbor attack, united my world to an extent I had not seen before or since. Of course, I had not seen very much; I was only sixteen years old. I had already graduated from High School, though, and served a six month enlistment in the Civilian Conservation Corps under a false birth certificate. When President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared it (December 7, 1941) a day of imfamy and declared war on Japan and the Axis powers, every male in my little community of Peñasco, went to Taos or Santa Fe to enlist in the United States Army. Some could not read or write, some were crippled or had some other handicap; but they all wanted to go and fight for their Country. Some got in. Most died. My best friend and cousin, Juan Romero, made the supreme sacrifice for his country in the Ardennes; his body was never found. He was declared Missing in Action. That was the first time I heard the term. Now it is MIA and everyone understands what it means.

But I am deviating from P-A-T-R-O-T-I-S-M. Let me get back on track.

So this is what my experience had taught me and when I reached seventeen I was working at the Bremerton Navy Yard as a sheet metal worker. First, I tried to get in the Navy's V-5 program that was being advertised as a great program for High School graduates. I went in to the recruiting station in Seattle and took the tests and passed them, but after the gringo (I'll expain that later) recruiters noted the color of my skin (brown although my birth certificate says I am white, I found out this year) they said that I did not have enough Physics and Mathematics courses in High School to qualify. I did not know then that down in Mississippi I would have had to recite the entire United States Constitution had I applied there. Oh well, I went in the Navy anyway and reported to Camp Waldron at Farragut, Idaho for Boot Camp in April 1943. On completion I went to NATTCENTER at Norman, Oklahoma for the Aviation Ordnance course. My grades were in the top 10% of the class and I got an AOM3/c rating, the equivalent of Buck Sergeant in the Army. I was not eighteen yet, but man was I fired up. I was an American! Or so I thought. It took many, many years for me to face reality and it was painful.

Got to finish this essay! Perhaps referring the reader to the essay Freedom is Not Free will have the same effect. Double Click Here for it.