I’ve seen the Japanese socks.
I’m not sure how my father came by them. He became a Marine who enlisted - as many men did - immediately after Pearl Harbor, even though he was too old to be drafted.
And again, like many of his generation who served, he would never talk much about his War experience. (He actually told me, at one point when I asked about his experiences, that men who have seen war don’t want to talk about it.)
I know that his outfit served in some way at Iwo Jima; and after the war ended, he somehow wound up in Hawaii. (Maybe he bought the Japanese fans, the socks, the enameled matchbook covers - all the stuff he brought back - there.)
He wouldn’t talk about the War, and he died before I was old and thoughtful enough to really engage him on the issue. I just remember one conversation - a hot Summer night, when I couldn’t sleep and he was sitting up with an abscessed tooth. I think the power had gone out - maybe there had been a thunderstorm, and that was what ignited his memories - I can’t recall the circumstances clearly.
But in that hot Summer darkness, he told me about a terrible storm that hit his ship in the Pacific. He told me how the enormous waves and rolling of the ship made him realize how small and insignificant he was against the sheer power of Nature.
I must have been no older than 13 or 14 at the time; and it was the last time my Daddy ever talked to me about the War.
I’ve never forgotten it.