Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (19 page)

Joseph slept better for the next few nights. The battle dreams continued but with less intensity and then began to fade away. He made one last visit to the field hospital on August 22.

“
To duty,” his medical record decreed that day. “Well.”

The Marines began to depart Guam on August 22 for their rehabilitation base on Guadalcanal. Joseph and hundreds of other survivors from the 1st Battalion climbed into their amphibian tractors on the beach and floated to the security of a navy ship offshore.

Aboard ship, Joseph listened once again to the alphabetical roll call of his platoon, including the names of his buddies who had been assigned with him to the second wave: Fleetmeyer, Godzisz, Haas, Heusel. Joseph was the only one to answer “here.”

He couldn’t count his blessings. They were too innumerable to count.

Joseph’s blessings continued when he failed to recuperate over the course of several months on Guadalcanal. His most persistent wound was a recurring case of severely aggravated sinusitis and its accompanying headaches. It was an excellent wound to have. It wasn’t urgent enough to warrant emergency treatment in Honolulu, and yet it wasn’t ordinary enough to be treated in the field hospital on Guadalcanal. So the field hospital transferred Joseph all the way to the Oak Knoll Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, which referred him for treatment to the naval hospital in San Diego, California, which transferred him for convalescence to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. The Marine Corps granted Joseph an honorable discharge in Philadelphia on June 21, 1945.

As he convalesced in the Philadelphia hospital, he reviewed his personnel file with a navy attorney. Joseph briefly alluded to his immigration status.

“
You mean you’re not a citizen?” replied the incredulous attorney.

“
Well, no, not really.”

The attorney returned several days later and told Joseph to put on his uniform. “Just do it, private.” The attorney then drove Joseph from the hospital to a “nice big office” of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in downtown Philadelphia near Independence Hall.

The attorney introduced Joseph to a judge. In a one-on-one ceremony, the judge thereby swore in Joseph Godzisz as a naturalized U.S. citizen.

“
It was a complete surprise!” said Joseph. “I was really privileged. That was a very proud moment for me. It was a nice fringe benefit in addition to being alive. That felt good. Here I could say, ‘I’m an American! I’m a legal American in every sense of the word.’ And I earned it! I earned my right to U.S. citizenship!”

Joseph acknowledged that he survived physically because of many factors: his lack of height, his sharp aim with a carbine, his agility, and his blessed wound. He was convinced, however, that he survived mentally and emotionally, withstanding any wounds to his mind or soul, because of three other factors that were anything but random.

He counted each factor on his fingers. “First, Father Joe prayed for me every day and frequently wrote me and gave me hope.” His spiritual big brother stuck with him for the duration. “Second, I visited a Catholic navy chaplain immediately before leaving Guadalcanal for Guam. I knew that, should my time come, I was in a state of grace.” In meeting with the chaplain, Joseph made his Confession and received Communion, and he therefore felt prepared to meet his maker. “Third, I felt a strong sense of purpose to help my adopted country defeat Japan and also Nazi Germany,” which had invaded Poland. He found his personal sources of strength and resilience in those three allied forces that were intangible yet mutually reinforcing: hope, grace, and purpose.

In some ways, the experience changed him. “It gave me more confidence. It gave me more self-esteem.”

In other ways, the experience affirmed him. “It made me feel more thankful to God for having preserved my life. It deepened my religious beliefs.”

The liberation of Guam represented more to Joseph than the recapture of a very strategic island that was necessary for American security. His sacrifices were made doubly worthwhile to him by the fact that he had helped, if only in a very small way, to liberate the Chamorro people from Japanese occupation. The Chamorro natives of Guam, who accounted for a large majority of the island’s population, were predominantly Roman Catholic, on account of the Spanish missionaries who had arrived around the year 1600. There was no doubt in the mind of at least one U.S. Marine that the 21-day invasion and liberation of Guam was an act of devotion to both God and country.

If Joseph’s military service in Guam was his finest hour, it was not because of his heroic battlefield feats, although they were indeed heroic. It was not because the achievement was the greatest thing he would ever achieve in his life, for he had many achievements yet to achieve. It was not because he had reached his ultimate goal or fulfilled his wildest dreams, although he certainly had fulfilled an extraordinarily ambitious goal. If it was his finest hour, the reason was this: He had discovered himself, in all his uniqueness and individuality, in the service of something greater than himself. That discovery had involved several difficult steps. As a child, he had established a set of principles and a code of honor, integrity, and fidelity. As a teenager, he somehow kept aspiring to those principles and virtues despite an upbringing that had often contradicted them. As a young man, he lived up to his own stringent standards of behavior on behalf of his country and of his God. And finally, he triumphed, winning his battles and his U.S. citizenship all on his own terms. It was his finest hour in another important way as well. His dual devotion to Catholicism and patriotism made perfect sense for the historical moment. His deepest values had been put to their highest imaginable use, and they had carried him through one of the 20th century’s most horrific episodes. Against all odds, Joseph had hammered out a profound sense of purpose in life; and all earth, heaven, and history seemed to shine a blazing light of salvation upon him.

Given the bravery and worthiness of his deeds, nobody around Joseph challenged the veracity of his assumptions and beliefs. Nobody questioned if the two older Marines who were blasted from the amphibian tractor died because they had scorned prayer. Or if the navy corpsman at the beach was sent by God. Or if it was a blessing to be short. Or if it was God’s will that nearly 1,800 Americans and 11,000 Japanese should die in the battle for Guam. Or if it was proper for an American to equate patriotism with religion of any kind in fighting against the religiously intolerant Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It behooved nobody to question the beliefs that had sustained Joseph through the battle. The events bore themselves out. History trumped skepticism. The scale and import of the accomplishments of Joseph and the other U.S. Marines in World War II were unassailable, and for one of those Marines to associate his valor with a personal value system was tantamount to establishing its validity—or at least its tremendous utility. Universal admiration for the veteran squelched any discouraging words. It was in nobody’s interest to fuss over the details of what had happened or why, and most veterans certainly weren’t interested in boasting or even talking about their experiences. They didn’t have to. What they said, thought, or felt never mattered as much as what they had done, and the righteousness of their deeds was incontestable, incontrovertible, irrefutable, irreproachable, and indisputable. It was that kind of moral clarity, after all, that had helped America win the war. For Joseph, everything fit together perfectly.

He would fight to retain that kind of clarity for the rest of his life.

5. California Dreamin’

Serafino and Maria Di Gregorio cried from June to December 1943. Those were the months when Ida worked in the accounts payable office of Deckers packinghouse in Mason City for $13 a week, planning her getaway to California.

One by one, the children of Serafino and Maria were leaving home: first Mafalda, then Ralph, now Ida. The parents encouraged the kids to strike out on their own. But the parents reserved the right to cry their eyes out whenever any of the kids did.

In early December, Ida sent a chunk of her savings to Mafalda for a one-way train ticket to Los Angeles. Mafalda came home for Christmas with the ticket in hand.

Ida was elated. Serafino and Maria were dejected. They were forced to accept the inevitable sooner than anticipated. Their only consolation was that their two daughters would be living with one another.

“
Now you kids stay together,” Serafino and Maria hugged the girls at the train station as the whistle announced the last call. “Always stay together!”

The Union Pacific train carrying Ida and Mafalda wound around the bend from San Bernardino and headed due west for downtown Los Angeles. As the train rolled into Union Station, Ida smelled the orange blossoms, spotted Poinsettias growing in people’s back yards, saw snow on the mountaintops, and took her coat off. It was January 4, 1944.

“
It was summertime all of a sudden!” Ida remembers. “The sun was shining. There were flowers and palm trees. It was paradise!”

She became inconsolably homesick within two weeks, crying every time she saw the picture of her parents that she had placed on her bedroom dresser. She realized how much she appreciated them, how much they had taught her—if not in words.

“
They taught me that actions speak louder than words. I learned how to work from them, because I knew how hard they worked for us. They were my role models. Everything I did in life was for them. Getting good grades. Studying. Memorizing tables.” Ida got all choked up. “They gave me a happy life. They would die for us. I knew that.”

It astounded the 18-year-old girl fresh from the farmhouse to hear other young people in California denigrate their parents. She couldn’t fathom it. “I’d never run down my parents. I’d never hurt them. I’d never disgrace them. They’d do anything for us.”

Ida had wanted to get the hell out of her little hometown, but she had only a vague idea of what life would be like in the great big world beyond. She had prepared herself for work outside the packinghouse, but she saw few career options as being available to her in California. She had expanded her social horizons in high school, but she found the social world of her California peers to be bewildering at best and disheartening at worst. Her vision blurred by homesickness and tears, she saw only formidable obstacles beyond the immediate task of survival, and she doubted her ability to surmount them.

Mafalda helped Ida find a job in the accounts payable office at the Union Pacific Railroad in February 1944. But when Maria and Bessie came to visit Los Angeles in March, Ida couldn’t resist the chance to come straight home from work to greet them with an unusual welcoming gift.

“
I quit my job!” she smiled in relief from ear to ear. It puzzled her that nobody smiled back.

Nobody else even spoke. Mafalda kept her disappointment to herself.

“
I thought you’d be happy to take me home to Iowa,” Ida told her mother.

Her mother surprised her. Maria had never realized that California looked like Italy, with its oleanders, camellias, fig trees, and olive trees. Even more important, Maria did not want to see a fourth daughter of hers end up at the packinghouse. Serafino may have believed that Farindola was a trap, but Maria believed that the packinghouse was a trap, at least for Ida. For her entire life, Maria could verbalize her ideas to Ida only partially. But now was the time for Maria to send her daughter a clear, unambiguous, and stern, if tender, message. Maria looked into Ida’s eyes and instructed her in the direct, unadorned Italian that Ida could understand: “I’ll go home when you find another job.”

End of discussion.

While Ida was unemployed, she had the chance to communicate with her mother like never before. In words. For the first time, Ida and Maria found both the ability and the opportunity to talk things through. They spoke in a mixture of English and Italian.

“
Mama,” Ida began a timid confession. “I love you very much. You know that. But sometimes I feel like I’m closer to my brother and sisters than I am to you.”

“
Yes,” Maria smiled and nodded. “That’s how it should be.” Maria was not hurt. She was proud, because Ida had recognized the superior order of things.

Ida tilted her head, giving her mother a quizzical look.

“
You kids should always get along,” Maria elaborated. “Live together. Help one another. I don’t want you kids to ever argue with each other. Always get along.”

It was all about the kids loving one another. It was not about the parents.

“
That’s
what I learned from my parents,” Ida recollected years later.

Ida found her way in the Los Angeles job market of 1944. She found other payroll jobs, first at Acme Fast Freight and then back at the railroad.

Feeling greater confidence, she checked the job listings for people like her who knew how to use a comptometer, which was an adding and calculating machine that had 90 keys and required all 10 fingers to operate. That led to a sweeter payroll job at Tuxedo Candy Company, where she collected the timecards, totaled the hours and wages, subtracted the deductions, typed the checks, and accumulated cavities on chocolate drops, jellybeans, and marshmallows.

Others helped Ida find her way.

On her first visit home to Iowa in the summer of 1945, she reunited with her best friend from high school. “Gee, do you think maybe I could ride the train back to California with you and live with you and Mafalda?” asked Valletta.