To fight for the defense of the persecuted and vulnerable is a holy thing! Thanks, Daddy, for your service at Pearl Harbor and throughout your career as a naval officer! May we never forget those who fought or died for our freedom!
We are called the Church Militant not the Church Picnic or the Church Milquetoast. Do you defend the faith? You can't if you don't know it. Let us all commit to studying the catechism and the lives of the saints. And then share it.
St. Ambrose is a saint for our time since he defended the faith against the Arian heresy and we certainly have many heretics and dissenters today. May we have his same spirit of charity as St. Ambrose did as we defend the faith.
It's the second week of Advent. Are you lighting your Advent wreath?
Hi Mary Ann,
ReplyDeleteHere is the note I promised.
I am a civil service employee for the Navy. I have worked as an electronics
technician for 32+ years now. (Your post about your father reminded me of
the experience I wanted to relate to you.)
Yes, believe it or not, my state has a Naval base. (It was started as a Naval
Depot for munitions in the early 40s in conjunction with the Army. I has
since evolved to many other things for the DoD. It is located in a very rural setting.)
Back in 1991 was the 50th anniversary for the attack on Pearl Harbor. I was
there from about December 3rd until December 23rd that month working on a
submarine for calibration of some of the sonar equipment on the sub.
Our first day to the sub we were simply blown away because there was a
*Japanese* submarine tied up to the dock right behind our sub. I could not
believe it.
As you probably know colors are presented with the national anthem every
morning at 8am. The base played the *Japanese* national anthem *before* ours
for the duration of the stay of the Japanese sub. To this day I still don't
know about this decision. (I guess this would have been under the George
Bush Sr. presidency.)
Of course, many of the veterans came back to the Islands for the 50th
anniversary. With *so many* Japanese tourists and transplants to Oahu, there
were more than a few... um, *incidents* between said vets and Japanese!
Anyway, after all of that, I just wanted to share this with you. BTW, I had
a great-uncle who was at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked. He was a
marine. He survived and married an aunt of mine. :^)
God love you and yours, Mary Ann!
Catechist Kev
PS: My grandfather worked at the Chrysler plant in our state during the war. They produced the famous mustang airplanes for the Air Force during that period. Those are the planes with the wings that
folded up. Kind of interesting.
And because your uncle survived, you no doubt have other aunts and uncles (cousins?). If my dad had died at Pearl Harbor he would have fathered only one child, my oldest brother. The other nine of us (and one who died near term, Jimmy) would never have been conceived. Praise God he wasn't on the Arizona! He lost many classmates that terrible day.
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