Thanks for posting and reminding us all.

I put this in another post about Dec 7th but don't think it has been seen much, so I will put it here.

In remembrance of 1941, I have been going through my documents this morning and found a hand written letter from Marine General F C Rogers who had written to General Moore (Commanding General of Marine Aviation in the Pacific) (Ge. Moore was my sister-in0law's uncle) describing him taking the Japanese surrender "up north" (maybe Pelieleu). On the opposite side of the letter was a typed copy of Gen. Rogers VJ speech. This is the way he described Dec 7th.

"Approximately three years and nine months ago, we were a peace loving, self-satisfied, politically indifferent nation. We could have been compared to a prize fighter who had retired and let himself grow fat and lazy.

The Japs and Germans, like tough and coming fighter spotted our obvious poor condition and decided to go in an "take" the big fat man and then run the world to suit themselves. And the Japs, being what they are, hit first, below the belt, and before we even got into the ring, without knowing it did us the greatest possible favor. The low punch not only woke us up, that it made us so sore that we got wise to ourselves as well as our enemy. Our days of self-satisfaction were over. We were not in shape and we knew it. There was no time to go into training. We had to get in there and fight ourselves into condition.We did just that. It's true, we got cut up some, but we never stopped boring in and after the first tough round the fat began to melt, our timing came back, and we forged ahead. We won all the rounds from then on and on August 15 of this year our last enemy threw in the towel in order to avoid complete annihilation. WE WON. We finished this war not only in condition, but the World's Champion, and no person nor nation can deny us the title."

This was just part of the speech, but pretty much sums it up. I wonder now if we are getting fat and lazy again!


Message was edited by: TigerLinks®

Agree ..... we are now fat and lazy, like a retired boxer that General Rogers talked about in his VJ speech.

Thanks for posting the speech!
My father was 19 and his brother 18 when they joined up. My father was a flight engineer on a B23. His pilot crashed the plane in training. Once he recovered they assigned him as a flight test engineer and he flew every type of plane used in WWII. He served in the Air Force until 1985.

My uncle Merrill had a wild experience. In his very first battle in Southern France he jumped out of the troop carrier/truck, took about ten steps, and a German stepped out from behind a large tree and shot him. in the leg. The pain was so intense that he passed out and rolled down a steep embankment to the bottom. The battle did not go well and when he woke up he quickly realized that he had been left for dead behind enemy lines. He played dead in a pile of other dead bodies as German troops checked the area. After they left he made a tourniquet for himself and hobbled off.
He spent months running and hiding from the Germans who figured out he was there and were trying hard to catch him. French people hid him and passed him around from house to house. They gave him enough medical attention to get him by and he eventually joined the French resistance because they were the most adept at hiding things. At one point he was hiding with a young wheat farmer and his wife. The wife went into labor and he delivered her baby because he was the only one around with birthing experience of any kind due to our family being dairy farmers. Meanwhile, at home, the army reported to my grandparents that he was MIA and presumed dead based on reports from the battle. Eventually, the US army took the village he was hiding in and he was able to come out of hiding and was sent home. Finding out he was still alive was probably the best day of my grandparent's life.