Willow Glen Resident

Cover Story

Spirit of '45

Stories of Service campaign brings the past to life

ByMarianne L. Hamilton

July 30, 1945--Two torpedoes from the Japanese sub I-58 struck us. I was on the top deck, asleep in my blanket. My blanket caught fire, saving my body from getting totally burned, except for my leg. My buddy convinced me to jump off of the ship ... I survived by holding onto a raft, because the other sailors would not let me get on. I helped my other shipmates stay alive by pulling them close to the raft, and at times tying them to it. My crew chief was one of these men. He had been hurt, and later when I was pushed underwater, he untied himself and drifted off to sea. I saw him wave his last farewell, causing me much distress.

We were in the water for five days. Most men died due to the elements and vicious shark attacks. ... Even after surviving this horrifying experience, I would still defend my country. I am honored to have served in the Navy, and I am proud to share my stories with others.

--Adolfo Celaya of San Jose, who served aboard the USS Indianapolis, Stories of Service Video

They do their best to stand at attention. At the opening strains of "The Star Spangled Banner," gnarled hands grasp canes, wheelchair handles, faded photographs. For many, tremors cause the pictures to shimmer in the clear afternoon sun.

On this August day at History Park in San Jose, they have come to remember. In their photos, six-decades-younger soldiers stand erect, smiling into the camera's lens with the confidence of the untested. Slowly, often painfully, the heroes begin to share laughter, tears and memories--many never before revealed--with their brothers-in-arms.

The Aug. 8 Day of Remembrance was orchestrated by the Digital Clubhouse Network, a nonprofit organization that seeks to transform the world via digital technologies. Through DCN's Stories of Service campaign, members of the Internet generation are collaborating with the "Greatest Generation" to produce and archive the latter's oral histories. Over the past several years, World War II vets and their families, working with students as young as eight years old, have created hundreds of short films documenting firsthand remembrances of the war. Now DCN is helping the world recall the war's end as well, with its new "The Spirit of '45" digital history initiative.

Warren Hegg of Los Gatos launched Digital Clubhouse Network in 1996. At the time Hegg was a Stanford Research Institute staffer; NASA tapped SRI to address a simple question: How would average people use new digital technologies to improve their lives and benefit the community? Out of the early focus groups conducted by Hegg and his colleagues came DCN.

Says Hegg, "One of the common themes that emerged from our research was that digital technologies would allow intergenerational storytelling and community building. That's when we decided to create the Digital Clubhouse and enable all generations to take advantage of emerging technologies to capture and share their experiences.

"Over time," Hegg continues, "we also discovered that our parents' generation had shared three common experiences: the Great Depression, World War II and the post-war rebuilding. That led to our Stories of Service program, where we put the kids, who are actually using the digital technologies, together with the vets and their families to make the movies."

Hegg says he had a personal agenda in launching the Stories of Service initiative. A decade ago his father, a former member of Coast Guard, was stricken with Alzheimer's. "No one knows my dad's story, or the story of his youngest brother, who was one of the first 100 U. S. soldiers to die on Okinawa. When my dad drifted away, he took those memories with him," Hegg says quietly.

But the single most compelling reason to archive the Greatest Generation's stories came courtesy of Hegg's wife, Miyuki, he says. For eight years Hegg, who holds a master's degree in Asian studies, lived in Japan; there he met Miyuki. Her father was one of just 285 Japanese soldiers (out of 22,000) who survived the bloodshed on Iwo Jima. During the last, most horrific battle, the 37-year-old civil engineer took refuge in a cave.

"This was at a time when Japanese soldiers would either fight to the death or commit suicide; they would never surrender," explains Hegg. "So instead of using flame throwers or charges to coax everyone to come out, this group of Marines threw handfuls of candy into the cave. Out came Miyuki's father, weighing 87 pounds, suffering from dysentery and nearly dead. He couldn't speak much English, but he could understand what was said to him."

Here Hegg pauses, his words faltering. Then, in a voice suddenly grown hoarse, he continues: "The first words Miyuki's father heard were from a young Marine who said, 'Let's get this guy down to the beach; we can save his life.' So that story, that humanity ... that was where this whole thing began."

Today, from offices at both History Park San Jose and Manhattan's New York Information Technology Center (the latter run by Hegg's son Ryan), DCN has an active coterie of volunteers who seek out veterans and their families, and produce their digital memoirs. Robert Corpus, age 21, has been working with DCN and overseeing the teen filmmakers for nearly five years. Corpus, who remembers attending Veterans Day parades each year with his grandmother, has had a lifelong interest in World War II.

"I used to collect action figures and toy soldiers, and we never missed a parade," Corpus says. "Then I started volunteering at Kaiser Hospital in Santa Clara, and some of the guys I was wheeling around had tattoos that they'd gotten during the war. I started connecting the toys to the actual guys ... and then at a parade I heard about the Stories of Service." Corpus recruited five high school buddies to join him in the digital domain; he's been a part of DCN ever since.

"What's so amazing is the way that the videos bridge the gap, and facilitate conversations between generations," Corpus notes. "Even if a movie doesn't come out perfectly, what's important is what's gone on behind the scenes for six weeks: The older and younger people share pictures, go out for coffee and just talk. It's really powerful."

Almaden Valley resident Ray Carlson is one of the vets who has been profiled in a digital video. In 1942, at the age of 19, he enlisted in the 1st Infantry Division known as "The Big Red One." During the German invasion of Sicily, Carlson was shot in the face while attempting to exit a landing craft.

"A machine gun picked us up and started firing at the front of the boat," he recalls. "I was right there and got hit; it wasn't a bad wound, but I bled like a stuck pig." Sixteen days, massive infections from his wound and a debilitating course of sulfa drugs later, Carlson was sent to a base hospital in North Africa, where he completed the remainder of his 3 1/2-year tour of duty. "I don't see why anyone 50 or 100 years from now would be interested in my story," he says. "But I guess some people think it's valuable to pass on. The guys who are over in Iraq today are doing every bit as much as we did, if not more."

Such modesty is common among the WWII survivors. "I suppose that us telling these stories enables future generations to get a better handle on some history that they'd otherwise have no way of getting," says Saratogan Ed Vincent, who at 22 was the youngest B-29 commander serving in the Pacific. "I'm so grateful to Warren and the folks at Digital Clubhouse for the time they spend with the vets. They've made it possible for our kids to learn about our experiences."

Adds Sunnyvale's Juanita Harris, whose husband was a member of the famed Tuskegee Airmen (the nation's first African American fighter pilot squadron), "Stanley never said a word about his experiences; the first time I ever heard about what he did in the war was when I was the librarian at Sunnyvale Public, and we put on a program called 'Conversations with Tuskegee Airmen.' Until then Stanley had never talked about the war at all. It was emotionally upsetting for him, and I'm sure for the rest of the vets, too."

When Charles "Charlie" Baker, who served in the Air Force in the South Pacific, answers the phone at his Cupertino home, he downplays the dangers he routinely faced. "I joined the 22nd bombing group in 1944. My group was in combat areas for 19 months," remembers Baker. "We were bombed once in a while, and sometimes we had Japanese infiltrators around us.

"We're going to a 60th reunion of the group in December this year ... there are only a few of us left."

Out at the third annual "Day of Remembrance" at History Park, several vets admit that the yearly gatherings (as well as ad hoc meetings over coffee) are often the only time that any of those who lived the war can bear to relive it.

"When we get together, we can talk about things that we normally can't discuss with civilians," says Silvio Gallo, a San Francisco native who served as an interpreter/chauffeur for his battery commander in Italy. "We have one friend who never used to talk at all, but when he started coming to our get-togethers, he gradually came out; it was therapy for him. None of us really wanted to talk about the war afterwards. All you wanted to do was get home, and get back on the job."

Los Gatos resident Mary Schlink, whose uncle Richard (known to his fellow medical corpsmen as "Doc") survived both the attack on Pearl Harbor and the D-Day invasion of Normandy, cherishes the tidbits of information her uncle doles out from time to time. A former teacher in the Campbell school district, she says it's imperative to capture the digital histories.

"We're constantly surprised and amazed at all that my uncle has done," she says. "We knew about Pearl Harbor, but it's only in the last few years that we found out he'd been at the Normandy invasion. It's very, very important for families and younger kids to learn about these things."

Fellow Los Gatan Lavada Begley Peterson vividly recalls the telegram she received in February of 1945. Just 16, she drove from her family's home in the country to the post office to pick up the mail. There she was advised that a telegram from her brother, Tommy Begley, then serving aboard the USS Saratoga on Iwo Jima, awaited her at the Western Union office.

"I remember walking across the floor--it had these hard black and white tiles," says Peterson, her voice catching. "I said, 'I understand I have a telegram from my brother.' The man at the counter leafed through the pile, and then looked up at me as if to say, 'I don't want to do this to you.' He leafed through the pile a second time, and then put the paper on the counter so I could read it. Somehow--I still can't figure out how--I was able to get in the car and drive home. And that was how I learned that my brother had been killed."

Even 40 years later, the psychic wounds--along with a few fond memories--borne by the vets are still in evidence. As Doc Schlink recounts his Christmas Day return to the Bay Area following the sinking of the USS Oklahoma at Pearl Harbor--during which he jumped into the Pacific and swam through blinding oil to safety--his eyes fill with tears.

"They gave 26 of us dress uniforms, and a three-day pass. The entire time, I spent maybe three bucks ... and when I went to pay my bill at the Rialto Hotel in San Francisco, I was told, 'Sorry, sailor, it's been paid.' " By now Schlink is crying unabashedly. Wiping his cheeks, the 91-year-old adds softly, "That was probably the most touching moment. I don't mind telling these stories anymore ... but to this day, it still gets to me."

Schlink and his comrades are receiving some extra impetus to give voice to their experiences, good and bad. At the Day of Remembrance, a surprise guest introduced DCN's new "Spirit of '45" campaign: Edith Shain (known as the "V-J Day Nurse"), who was photographed kissing a sailor in Alfred Eisenstaedt's iconic 1945 Life Magazine cover celebrating the war's end, made a special appearance to encourage wartime survivors to jot down their memories. Lively and lucid at 91 years, Shain has made it her mission to connect with vets and their families across the land and motivate them to participate in DCN's digital history initiatives.

"We're losing the vets at one every 90 seconds, so if we don't get their stories now they'll be lost forever," Shain advises. "The important thing is that these are not the stories you'll find in history books. These are the memories of everyday vets. The emotions that these men go through are so touching. And it really educates the kids, hearing these stories from someone's lips who actually went through it all."

On Aug. 14, Shain traveled to New York to re-enact the famous kiss that came to symbolize the nation's joy at the end of the grinding global nightmare. She also announced that in the next year DCN will host similar Days of Remembrance in more than 100 cities nationwide, all leading up to the 65th anniversary of the end of the war. Prior to Aug. 14, 2010, Shain hopes all of those who are still able to do so will put pen to paper and reflect on their past.

"Write down how you felt that day," she urges. "The most important thing is to remember, and to know that the Digital Clubhouse volunteers are doing what they do so that your stories can be expanded to others."

"In the next 12 months we'd like to pull together 1,000 of these vignettes," Hegg finishes. "Whatever your politics are, we still must honor these people in full measure, who did what was necessary to keep us all safe."

For more information about the Digital Clubhouse Network, or to submit your remembrance to either the Spirit of '45 or the Stories of Service campaigns, visit www.digi club.org.

Photograph by Derek Sijder

World War II veteran Ray Carlson of Almaden Valley fought in North Africa and in Sicily where he was wounded in his left cheek. He is resting his arm on the helmet he was wearing. In 1984, Carlson revisited Tunisia and collected stones from the battlefields as souvenirs.

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Sunnyvale resident Juanita Harris holds up a photograph of her late husband, Capt. Stanley L. Harris Sr., and the medals he earned as a Tuskegee Airman. Harris served in the U.S. Army Air Force between 1943 and 1945 and participated in the Digital Griot Project before his death in 2001.

Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer

Morton 'Sti' Stivison, 85, was a machine gunner in the U.S. Cavalry, then a mounted force of the U.S. Army, 3rd Infantry Division, from 1942 to 1945. He was captured and held in Anzio, Italy, for 14 months until he escaped in April 1945. Looking back on his time during the war, Stivison said, 'All trails led to barbed wire.'

Photograph courtesy of the Digital Clubhouse Network

'V-J Day Nurse' Edith Shain, made famous in the 1945 Life magazine cover picture, joins former Marine Skip Adams at the kickoff event for the 'Keep the Spirit of '45 Alive.' Shain and Adams were in San Jose for a recent Day of Remembrance program.

Photograph by Dan Powers

The Singing Blue Stars, representing the group of mothers of servicemen and women serving overseas, offered a tribute to the Andrews Sisters during the Aug. 8 Day of Remembrance at History Park in San Jose.