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I’m sorry your dad died so young. My dad died at 75, but his life was hell. His sisters said he was never the same when he came back from the war. The jungle combat and the brutality of the Japanese soldiers left images he could not deal with. He drowned his nightmares with alcohol. He had severe emotional problems. I understand him better now. I wish I had known what he went through when he was still alive. I honored him by attending his battalion reunion - I only found out about it after he died - and there was only 8 guys there, but they shared stories with us. It was amazing. I wish I’d paid attention before.

The jungle combat and the brutality of the Japanese soldiers left
images he could not deal with.

When I was a youngster (late 1960s-early 1970s), my family would
provide tranportation to church for an older lady and her family.
Her husband didn't attend church, but he was at a number of
functions (e.g., July 4 picnics) where his family (and the family
of a married daughter who lived next door) were in attendance.

I suspect that in over 20-30 hours of being at these get-togethers,
I heard him utter only a couple of fragmentary sentences to
other adults. Although his long beard wasn't what you expected on
an older gent in Oklahoma, he didn't look like he was "disturbed"
or odd.

I found out later that he'd been a "tunnel-rat" in some of the
WWII Pacific island-hopping.
Apparently it did take a toll on him.
I didn't fully grasp it until I watched a History Channel documentary
about the Vietnam-era tunnel-rats.

They hadn’t invented post-traumatic stress syndrome in 1946, but I’ll bet most returning frontline troops qualified for it. My father suffered from “nervousness” that made him unable to sit at a desk for extended periods, for example. Unfortunately, his physical ailments prevented him from taking up any of his pre-army occupations. He had worked mostly as a logger or in cattle ranching. He had a job as timber cruiser when he met my mother.