PUBLIC OPINION

THEN

FRANK KEEGAN

We knew these dunes better than the Japanese, ‘cause we went on picnics and we hugged girls and we drank beer and things like that. We peered, we saw nothing. But we knew the Japanese were subtle, deceitful. We waited and waited, until it got dark. There were no jokes. We were deadly serious.

We told our parents we were going back early the next day. There was a general feeling of approval. We’re country boys out here. It was very ordinary to shoot rabbits. They said, “Would you want us to pack a lunch?”

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We were terribly disappointed the next day because we never saw a Japanese submarine. And the next day. By that time, the lunacy of the moment had sort of dissipated. But we went out there to do the only thing we knew how: take a gun and defend our land.

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I joined the merchant marine at sixteen.

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At Hobart, Tasmania, we were heroes–”Oh Yank, oh Yank.” The two fingers, the Churchill thing. They wanted our autographs, free drinks. Fathers and mother would be delighted to bring a sailor to spend a weekend with the daughter and mom’s home cooking. We were gonna stop the Japanese from coming down. They had parts of Borneo at the time, and Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania were scared to death. When you first come in you’re a hero, but enough sailors come through these ports, and social disease, alcoholism, rape, mayhem, and they’re not popular anymore.

We were in the Hebrides when we heard about the huge bomb that decimated Hiroshima. We said, Thank God that’s over. A hundred thousand, two thousand Japanese? Too bad. It’s over, that’s what it meant. Nice goin’, Harry. You did it to ‘em, kid. That’s how guiltless I was. He saved our lives, he terminated the goddam thing.

When the war was over, we were disoriented. We didn’t know quite what to do. I was getting paid off on the last ship when Franklin Roosevelt died. I remember being paid twenty-five fresh, clean one-hundred-dollar bills. I’d saved about three thousand dollars, and got through college.

If it weren’t for the war, I would be selling you insurance right now.

Retired Sgt. Master Frank Keegan in his Florida home in 2013. Photo by Don Moore

NOW

ANONYMOUS

I think that we were fighting against a man who was going to take over the world, and was killing people, innocent people, and we had to stop him. It was a war that had to be fought and had to be won. If you’re talking about the use of the atomic bomb would be, probably, a repercussion of that war, whether it was necessary or not is up to debate, but I think winning the war was absolutely necessary.

My parents were children during World War II, and we were also Jews, so World War II was horrifying for them. Jews in the United States knew what was happening to Jews in Germany and eastern Europe and they were frightened. I grew up hearing about the Holocaust from a young age. World War II was different–I think there was a certain pride.

When I was a teenager it was during the Vietnam War, which I was completely against. We were fighting in a foreign country that we had no business being in, our boys were dying to keep them from becoming communist. It was a terrible war fought in the jungles and it didn’t feel like a "just" war. It was also the first war where it was on television every night, so you got to see it up close every single night on the evening news, which you never had before. During World War II they would show you things that had happened three weeks ago in the movie theaters, you’d get a little short film. The Vietnam War was in your face. My friends didn’t want to join the army but some of them in the sixties got drafted into the army, my dad got drafted into the Korean War, so no one in my family signed up voluntarily. During the Vietnam War you got a draft number based on your birthdate, it was a lottery drawing, so some of my friends got bad numbers and were drafted into the war. Some of them did things to avoid going to the war, things that lots of people did back then.

My generation, the people I knew, were against the war. My parents were against the war, my friends were against the war, I knew people who protested the war. I was younger, in my early teens, but we wanted the war to end, we wanted Nixon to resign. We were very much against that war.

Wars now, you know, the first Desert Storm War and after 9/11, those wars feel very distant. You don’t see it the way you saw the Vietnam War. And it’s a war that sometimes is with drones and bombs. You didn’t see it like you saw the Vietnam War, which was hand-to-hand combat in the jungles. That doesn’t mean...boys are dying–men and women are dying in all of the wars. War is terrible.

I don’t equate war to murder because it’s being sanctioned by the fact that if you join the armed services, you know what’s expected of you. You’re not murdering, hopefully, wantonly. If you are in a war that has some justification and you are following orders, no.

I do think that World War II was a just war and I don’t know if my–I was born after World War II–so I don’t know that my views are colored by that. I think they’re more colored by the Vietnam War and the wars that followed, because I was very young.

Do you think that it is honorable to be a soldier?

I do think it is honorable to be a soldier. To live in a free world you have to have protection and I do think the armed forces are necessary, and I do think it’s honorable.

If you were called upon your country to fight, would you?

When I was of age women were not drafted. During Vietnam, I wouldn’t have sent–I didn’t have children then–but I wouldn’t have wanted my son or daughter to fight in Vietnam. I don’t know what I would do because I’m sixty years old now and it’s not going to happen.

I’m not sure I would not consider myself a pacifist. When I think of a pacifist I think of someone who wants no war under any circumstances and I don’t think I could fall into that category. I think of war as an absolute last resort, I would try to avoid it at all costs, but I don’t know that it’s absolutely unavoidable at all times.

Do you trust the government?

For the most part I do trust the government. The government is never done anything to me to make me distrust them, on a personal level. Do I think they’re perfect? Hardly. I think we have a pretty good version of what a government should be. They make mistakes, they infringe on your rights sometimes, but they also provide programs for people that are sick and disabled and poor. They provide retirement money for people in their senior years, they provide funds for education, they do disaster relief when there’s a terrible catastrophe, so I think the government does more good than harm.

Above, anti-Vietnam protestors carry a sign reading "END THE WAR IN VIETNAM"

Wars now... feel very distant. You don't see it the way you saw the Vietnam War.