My mom’s younger sister got married when I was a few years old. Previously, she’d lived with us just outside Washington, D.C., despite the fact that she, my mom, and her husband, all grew up in or just around Scranton, PA. Her husband, my uncle, I deemed, as a young child, to be my “Buddy.” Today, that’s still how I refer to him: he’s not Uncle Bill, he’s Uncle Buddy. (Well, okay, these days, half the time he’s Uncle Bill, and half the time he’s Uncle Buddy).
They live up in Connecticut, and this weekend, that’s where I was. My folks went up to accompany them to the “Big E”, sort of a state-fair for New England (yes, I do know that New England has more than one state: but they’re all very small!) Given the dreary weather, and that I was very caught up in a book (which is my usual state of being), I opted to skip the festivities and relax around the house. It was just me and Uncle Buddy’s dad, Bill Senior.
Bill Sr. and Uncle Buddy look exactly alike. Bill Sr. was in the Marines during World War II, and when Buddy’s son — my cousin, Will — was a young child, he saw a picture of his grandfather in his Marine dress blues, and thought it was his dad. I’ve seen the picture too, and they’re the spitting image of one another. My aunt knows exactly how her husband is going to look thirty years down the line.
Bill Sr. moved in with them — they just finished a two-bedroom attachment to their home. One room is Bill Sr’s new home. The other room is for my grandmother when she goes to stay with them (she lives with my mom’s older sister in Scranton). The move was a big adjustment for Bill Sr., ever since he came back from the Pacific, he lived in a small house in the Scranton valley with his wife and four kids. The kids have scattered — one son near Scranton, a daughter in Philly, another in Minnesota, and, of course, Buddy in Connecticut.
Bill Sr’s wife died a few years ago. It was hard on the whole family, as I remember, but especially for Bill Sr. Now he was alone in a house small for six people, big for one. A year or two after his mother died, Buddy was cleaning out the attic in the house he grew up in. Buddy’s a big history buff, a huge beautiful bookcase in his living room is dedicated to biographies and histories. Imagine his surprise in cleaning when he found a Japanese sword: a katana. He also found a small flag with the Rising Sun and words in Japanese, splattered with dark brown stains: blood.
Bill Senior is a lot like my own grandfather, who had to be prodded and begged to talk about his experiences in World War II. My grandfather came home minus half an ear and with a Mauser bayonet which now sits about a foot to my right. Bill Sr. came home with a blood-stained flag and a katana. My aunt had the writing on the flag interpreted by a Japanese speaker she works with. The writing is from a family to their warrior son, wishing him luck and victory and success and honor. Sixty years later, his sword collects dust in an attic half a world away.
I’m sure there’s some meaningful lesson to be taken from this. That heroes don’t brag. Or that there are no heroes, merely men who go to fight for the cause their country says is just and honorable. Me? I just think it’s cool that my uncle has a real authentic katana in his house. And I think it’s sad that there’s probably some family in Japan who, at holidays, talks about some distant relation, and wonders what he’d've been like if he hadn’t died on Iwo Jima. Me? I’m glad Bill Senior made it back, because I just can’t imagine my life without my Uncle Buddy. (And Bill Sr’s quite a guy, too).