Pre-Owned Don't Just Look-See!: My Parents' War (Paperback) 173725641X 9781737256410

A secret story. Untold stories. A Love story. War stories. A true American story in a different America.

Early in 1940, two college freshmen met each other for the first time as they walked to their classes at the University of Illinois. They could not have predicted then how they would be swept up into the whirlwind of World War II. Vernice would become a cryptographer, a code girl, doing top secret work in the Signal Security Agency at Arlington Hall Station in Arlington, VA. As an aerial artillery observer with the First Marine Division, Steve would be shot at by friend and foe alike as he flew in a small, slow, fabric-covered plane searching for Japanese targets on the battlefields of Peleliu and Okinawa. Then he would be sent to China to humanely repatriate the citizens of the country whose soldiers he had worked so hard to defeat. Vernice would learn secrets she could never share and experience the crazy world of wartime Washington, DC. Steve would witness and endure the tragedy of all-out war and be awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross medal for his gallantry. Then they would both return to campus to find out if they could share a life together after all they had each experienced as individuals.

This comprehensively researched book is both a biographical memoir and an accurate historical account of the times. It describes America as it was when the outcome of World War II was unknown. The book also shares the larger stories of the codebreaking contributions of American women in the war effort, some of the valiant, violent, and heartbreaking fighting history of the United States Marine Corps in the Pacific, the decision to drop the two atomic bombs over Japan in 1945, the role of the United States in north China after the war ended, and the challenges faced by both women and men when the World War II veterans returned home.

This book tells her story, his story, their story, and rarely told backstories of the people, places, organizations, and events that shaped both their World War II experiences and themselves for the rest of their lives. This is Steve and Vernice's personal story, but it is also a story of America during World War II. It's an important story to tell.