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Great story! What an experience in life. Thanks for posting. What a tragedy he wasn't driving Patton on the day de died in the wreck. I still can't fathom making it through WW 2 and dying in a car wreck shortly after it ended.

His assignment was long enough for him to meet and marry Evelyn Kramer, a “Rosie the Riveter” who was working on battleships and submarines at Mare Island. They settled in Napa and Sanza got a job at the ammunition depot on Mare Island,

File this under "coincidental" -- yesterday through tomorrow, I'm at the 22nd San Francisco Flyway Festival at Mare Island in California near Napa. We toured Mare Island and the base yesterday -- our tour guide did engineering work on nuclear subs here from 1965 to the day it closed in 1996. If you like wildlife and military history, this is a great place to visit. Lots of buildings are open during the festival that you normally cannot get into. During the tour, I was trying to imagine the place during WW 2 when up to 40,000 people worked here.

Right in the heart of the base are many STRONG above-ground reinforced concrete bomb shelters that could hold ten men and women. It shows the worry we had about the Japs bombing us (in addition to all the shore batteries all over the coast around San Francisco),