Lenses for Life

When the proof came I could not put it down. I was holding in my hands the result of an intensive labor of love. Twenty years of labor to be exact. Well, there was a several years hiatus in there somewhere. The labor slowed way down when I began ordained ministry full time in 1996 and then it came to a painful screeching halt when Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimers disease in 1999. We lost him in 2006. But the labor began again in earnest in the spring of 2009 when I began painting his story and preparing to travel to the places he was held prisoner in the Philippine Islands and Japan during WWII, which I did in February through April 2010. From fall 2009 until Spring 2011 almost every spare minute was taken up in writing and rewriting the story. It consumed me.

It started out as an attempt to record my father’s WWII POW story for the sake of our family. I did not want it to be forgotten. It ended up a very personal journey. As I studied, and read, and traveled, and reflected, it became increasingly apparent just how much my father’s experience had shaped me. So much of who I am and what I do echoes my father’s life.

I was not much interested in the kitchen or cooking. I was fascinated with tools and spent most of my time in the garage or outside with my father. I knew what a crescent wrench was long before I knew what a spatula was. I crawled up on the fender of the car and watched my father fix engines. I loved to be with him and I loved to be up high so I was driving nails on the roof long before I ever baked my first cake. To this day I do not know if my attraction was primarily to be with my dad wherever he was or if it was to mechanical and outdoor tasks. I just know that I was with him a lot and I learned so many practical skills. What I did not realize until much later in life was that I also acquired my worldview from him. I saw the world through the lenses my father wore—not physical lenses, but the lenses of his experience as a young man captured and made a prisoner of war just after his 21^st birthday. He suffered and survived three and a half years of deprivation and unspeakable brutality.

Yet, the lenses my father gave me allowed me to see a world filled with possibilities rather than a world filled with obstacles. Somehow, though poor, and small, and average in almost every way, my father helped me see a world where I could do anything I set my heart and mind to do. The lenses my father gave me allowed me to smile through life’s ups and downs. He saw the good in everything and everyone. My father helped me to see faith in God as the best lense of all to see the world and others clearly. My worldview was shaped by a man who had survived unspeakable brutality and had escaped death over and over again as a result of these lenses. I learned to see the world and myself through them and as a result am an optimistic, determined (stubborn?), hopeful, God-dependant person.

The book about my father’s story and how it shaped me is available on Amazon (link below) in black and white ($14.99) and a color edition ($30.00). It is a very personal story, but it is also a national story. Men like my father who survived and came home from WWII continued to sacrifice and serve in order to build the life and nation that subsequent generations often take for granted. When my copy of the final book arrives I think I will not be able to put it down. I think I will sleep with it. It is a labor of love. I hope all who read it will think about those who have positively shaped their own lives—given them lenses with which to see the world and themselves as filled with possibilities, full of goodness, and because of faith, full of hope.

When I blogged about my personal journey discovering how much my father’s experienced shaped me, friends who read it encouraged me to write it for a wider audience. I have. If you or someone you know are part of that wider audience who might benefit from a read you can order it from Amazon.

JUST IN TIME FOR CHRISTMAS, FORGED BY WAR: A DAUGHTER SHAPED BY A WWII POW STORY.

http://www.amazon.com/Forged-War-Daughter-Shaped-Story/dp/146799149X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1322626305&sr=1-1

Til Death Did Them Part

Although my father’s story of his time as a prisoner of war in WWII is a very tragic one filled with brutality and man’s inhumanity to man, it does have a fairytale ending of sorts.

When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945, of the 300,000 prisoners they had taken, 200,000 survived—barely. Like my father most of them were severely malnourished and diseased. Almost all of them weighed under 100 pounds. The prisoners lost an average of 25 pound a year. Most were prisoners for 3.5 years, meaning they lost 75-90 pounds. My father joined the Army weighing 160 pounds, and he weighed 90 pounds when he was liberated. All of these POWs were seriously ill with malaria, dengue fever, beri beri, and dysentery. Along with 200,000 other soldiers my father spent the next three months in a variety of hospitals being nursed back to his normal weight. It took almost three months. In October 1945 my dad was in Schick General Hospital in Clinton, Iowa, getting very close to being released to go home. There he met Alpheus Brown, who was in the bed next to him. They were both from the Brainerd Lakes area of Minnesota. Al showed my father a picture of his sister Hazel. She was a beautiful young thing! My dad declared, “I am going to marry her.” Al was outraged and responded, “Over my dead body!” Uncle Al later told my husband and me that he thought my dad was some kind of a weirdo! He was so friendly and talkative, Al thought something was wrong with him. But true to form—my father was a very determined man—Ken went home, met Hazel, and less than three months later they were married. The plot thickens.

Mom’s sister Harriet had also begun dating another ex-POW and long-time family friend Carl Kramp when he returned home in October 1945. Mom and Harriet had a best friend named Arlene Leibold. They did not want Al to be left out of the fun, so in late December they called Arlene and asked her if she would like to go out with them. Ken and Hazel, Carl and Harriet, and Al and Arlene went out on a Friday in late December. I don’t know what happened Saturday, but on Sunday Al and Arlene were engaged too. On February 20, 1946, the three couples were married in a triple wedding at my grandparent’s home in Nisswa, Minnesota. The brides all in identical gowns, the guys all in U.S. Army uniforms covered in medals, all three couples married after dating each other less than three months.

Young people who hear this story are aghast. How could these couples possibly do such a thing? They barely knew each other! And what bride would want to share their wedding day with two other couples, let alone wear the exact same dress? And the venue? A living room? As kids would say today, “Shut up!”

Yet these three marriages stood the test of time. Al and Arlene were married 30 years when Al died of a heart attack in 1976. Carl and Harriet were married over 60 years when both of them died in their eighties. And my mom and dad were married 60 years and two months when my father died in 2006. These marriages worked. These men came home after sacrificing some of the best years of their lives serving their country and settled down to do the same for their wives and families. The same work ethic, dedication, and faithfulness that got them enlisted and deployed, and helped them survive unspeakable brutality now went to work to build their homes, families, and this great country we now live in. These Greatest Generation men and women knew what commitment was. When they said “until death do us part,” they meant it.

The sorrow and suffering of their stories was in large part redeemed by this happy ending of three marriages that stood the test of time. All three men almost gave their lives in service to their country. When they survived they did give their lives in service to their families. They remained faithful to each other “till death did them part.”

The Power of Story

Some 300,000 Allied and American soldiers were captured and imprisoned by the Japanese in the Pacific during World War II. One in three perished. There were a lot more POW’s in the European theatre but only one in thirteen perished there. These are just historical facts. Interesting but no one except history buffs get too excited about the statistics.

My father was one of the 300,000 captured in the Pacific, and he was one of the 200,000 that survived. He was severely malnourished and diseased but he survived. The doctors said he would never be able to have children because of the damage done by those three and a half years. The doctors were wrong. I am one of his five children. And not only did my father survive and have children, he thrived and raised a family that now numbers forty-one, with more on the way. I am passionate about telling his story.

My father survived the Bataan Death March, two POW camps and a prison infirmary in the Philippines, a hell ship transport, and forced labor in a copper mine in northern Japan. His three-and-a-half-year ordeal as a prisoner of war is a story of the power and grace of God combined with the determination and hope of a young man. All of a sudden people are very interested in and emotionally moved by this POW story. Why? Because it is a personal story and not just a historical fact. Personal stories are powerful. When told with passion and detail they engage people in quite remarkable ways.

First, personal stories can introduce the listener to a real person. When told well, the audience feels like they come to know the person. Second, personal stories can cause the listener to remember stories of their own. Emotional connection with another person’s story brings to mind experiences of their own and re-engagement with their past. Third, personal stories can inspire listeners to engage more fully in the present. When people experience deep emotion related to real-life experiences of others, they are inspired to experience life more deeply in the present.

This past week I have been telling my father’s POW story, and the response is quite remarkable. People of all ages and stages of life experience my father as a person and express significant appreciation for who he was. People of all ages and stages also open up and begin telling their own stories that are equally engaging. Many of the stories I have been told in the last week have never been told before. Hearing my father’s story encouraged them to tell theirs. And people of all ages and stages expressed a desire to engage more fully in the present—appreciating family and friends, and making the most of whatever life they have to live.

I love telling my father’s story. I love it because it reconnects me to him even though he died five years ago. But I also love telling my father’s story because of the way it impacts those who hear it. The multiplication potential is incalculable. I especially love that my father’s story encourages others to tell their stories too. Personal stories are powerful. The more people telling them, the more life will be enriched for all who tell and all who hear.

Taking Time to Thank a Veteran

Once again today I told my father’s story. A WWII POW story that continues to be written in the lives of his children and grandchildren. The story is a brutal and tender one. Full of the brutality of war and full of the tenderness of a man who rose above the brutality and became a person of grace and hospitality diametrically opposed to what he had suffered.

Each time I do the exhibit I make a point of greeting, introducing, and thanking the veterans who show up. A lot of them show up. They come from all branches of the military and from all kinds of service experiences. Pilots, engineers, medics, sailors all come with unique stories, and many of them are almost entirely untold. Some of them do not want to talk about what they experienced. Many do not think anyone cares. Some have never been asked. One of the hopes I have as I travel and present this exhibit is that folks will begin to pay attention to the stories in their families. Not just war stories but whatever the family story might be. Every family has a story.

One of the most profound lessons of my research and travel to better understand my father’s story is understanding how very much I have been shaped by his story. The Greatest Generation became parents whose WWII experience profoundly shaped families, culture and country. Hearing their stories helps us understand so much about ourselves. The stories of our veterans especially need to be heard, and they need to be thanked for their service and sacrifice. The WWII veterans are dying at a rate of one thousand per day now. We don’t have a lot of time to listen. We don’t have a lot of time to say thanks.

The very first time I presented my exhibit, a ninety-two-year-old veteran named John showed up in full Navy dress-white uniform. It fit him like a glove, and he looked like a million bucks. His entry was a show stopper. All heads turned. My beautiful twenty-eight-year-old daughter met him at the door and escorted him in. I interviewed him briefly, and the whole placed erupted in applause. His story was even more remarkable because he had remained married to the same woman for seventy-two years. (He had just lost his beloved wife four months previously.) He represents the faithfulness that so many of the WII veterans knew and lived. A faithfulness hard to find today.

Today I met a Vietnam veteran. Richard and his wife volunteered to help at the exhibit honoring my father. As soon as Richard came, I shook his hand and asked him what his service was. He said that he was in Vietnam for two years. I looked him in the eyes and said, “Thank you so much for serving. I am grateful.” Then Richard said something shocking. He said, “You know, I have not heard that very often. “ He paused and looked off into the distance and then added, “ In over forty years maybe ten times someone has thanked me.” How very sad this is. Whether we agree with the cause and circumstances of American involvement in any particular war, we can always thank the men and women who serve. Vietnam was a particularly thankless war. The veterans did not come home to ticker-tape parades and fanfare. They came home to protesters and draft dodgers who spit and jeered at them. It was a war that divided Americans, and the division was played out on national TV every night. But, nonetheless, men and women served and sacrificed. They ought to be thanked more than ten times in forty years!

The following is a letter from a friend of my brother’s, Danny DeArmis, after our father had died and after Danny learned about our father’s WWII POW experience.

Dear Ken,

They say that what you don’t know won’t hurt you. Truth is what you don’t know can hurt you. Thank you. Because of you, I shook his hand. I sat as his dinner table. I rode in his car (an adventure all its own!). I only wish I’d known enough to tell him “thanks.”

You introduced me to him. It was really no big deal to me at the time. Another old man, hard to listen to, hard to understand. He seemed to be preoccupied the whole time I was around him. I watched you interact with him and it seemed difficult and awkward. He bounced from subject to subject and person to person. And yet, when I looked deeply I could see more. He loved you. And his appreciation for you, his daughters and his wife, was deep. I watched him one day as you entertained a crowd in his hometown. He was proud, but not in a way that indicated surprise. He expected you to be at least as good as you were. He was sure of your success.

I wonder now about his secrets. I wonder how he suppressed his anxiety and fear. I wonder if the memories had faded, and pain worn off. Its no wonder that he could run a red light without fear. Its no wonder he could work quietly and patiently with his hands at his workbench.

Until recently, I didn’t know what people meant when they called his generation, the greatest generation. How does one come to that conclusion? Now I understand…they were the greatest generation because they were men and women, who choose service over self, sacrifice over gratification, future over present, and principle over peace. It was the greatest generation and Mr. Davis epitomized it.

I never knew about…

him being abandoned by his country…

the sixty miles he walked …

the prison he lived in…

the meals he missed…

the beatings he endured…

the fear he felt…

the loneliness he suffered…

the despair he experienced…

the chains he wore…

the hope he’d lost…

the debt he paid so I can enjoy my pursuit of happiness.

If only I had known all of this, I would have thanked him myself. What I didn’t know did hurt me…and cost me that opportunity.

Danny DeArmis

If you know anyone who has served in the military, take the time to learn his or her story. Encourage the person to pass it on to his or her children and grandchildren. And the next time you see a veteran, take time to ask when and where he or she served. Then take the veterans hand firmly, shake it, look him or her in the eyes, and say thank you. It may be one of a precious few times he or she has heard these words.

Facing Death in a Rice Paddy

Five years ago today, my father, Kenneth Earl Davis, died at the age of 86. That he died is no surprise. The surprise is that he lived to this ripe old age. It is a testament to the power and glory of God. My father was a WWII POW and a year and a half after he enlisted in the army he found himself facing death and his life flashing before his eyes.

Just turned twenty-one, Ken found himself face down in a hard, dry rice paddy in the Philippine Islands. He figured it was his time. He would be executed like the other American soldiers he saw dragged to this spot the day before—shot and bayoneted, and stripped of all earthly possessions. Though he had not slept or eaten for days, he could not sleep, and the hunger and pain he felt was overwhelmed by the reality that he believed his life was coming to an end.

Ken had seen this in movies. A person caught in death’s trap would suddenly see their life flash before their eyes. In the movies it was a flashback played out by the characters of the film. For Ken there were no actors, no characters. This was real life. Less than two years after he enlisted in the Army and looked at a map and chose the Philippine Islands as a place to serve, he found himself facing death in a rice paddy on the Bataan peninsula. And his life began to flash before his eyes.

It was as if a screen was suspended in his mind and his memory began playing back all the scenes. He saw his mom and dad and his 11 brothers and sisters. He saw his childhood antics and his rebellious escapades. He saw his home and the church he attended as a child and the chapel he attended while at the CCC Camp. And he remembered the good news of the gospel he learned from as far back as he could remember, that Jesus died for his sins and that he, Ken, would have a place in heaven because of God’s grace and mercy demonstrated on the cross no matter what he had done. It was April 12, 1942. It was about that time of the year—Easter. The screen went blank but Ken’s mind did not. He described an overwhelming sense of peace that came over him. He knew he was about to die, but he reached deep down into the faith he embraced as a child and took hold of it again. And he prayed. He thanked God for this faith given to him. He thanked God for his family. And he prayed that if somehow he survived this rice paddy death hole he would live his life differently. He would dedicate himself to following the one who gave his life for him—Jesus Christ.

Ken did survive that rice paddy. He did not know exactly why, but he did. The Japanese soldiers returned but they did not kill him. They kicked him and told him to get up and directed him toward a column of American and Filipino troops forming down the road. Ken had survived the death paddy, but now, just two weeks past his 21st birthday, he was about to join the infamous Bataan Death March. He would survive this, too. And the death rail cars, and the death camps, and a death ship (hellship), and another death camp. For three and one half years Ken would survive unspeakable torture and brutality. And he would live another 60 years to make good on the promise to dedicate his life to following Christ.

Ken would do more than survive. He would thrive. Despite these four years of the most inhospitable treatment, Ken was the epitome of hospitality. Even though he suffered untold prejudice and evil, Ken would extend acceptance and kindness to all kinds of people. And even though these years were filled with darkness and despair, Ken would prove to be a man of optimism and hope. His life was a testament to the power of the grace and love of God.

[This story is an excerpt from a soon to be published book about Ken’s WWII POW story and how it shaped his life and the life of his children, Forged by War: A Daughter’s Story of Her WWII POW Father and How It Shaped Her, is due to be published summer 2011.]