My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings from World War II

Everybody remembers exactly where they were that Sunday. You sensed immediately that there had been a subtle shift in the world, a movement you could almost feel in your bones. What it would portend would come later. For that split second, the whole room simply froze. It's funny what you remember. Davey Beere, his face beet red from running across the campus, tore into our fraternity house. "They bombed Pearl Harbor!" he gasped. And somebody said, "Who the hell is Pearl Harbor?" Davey dropped onto a leather couch and shook his head vehemently. "Not who. What, idiot. Pearl Harbor is our navy base in Hawaii." His eyes widened. "And the radio says it's the Japs that did it." "How bad is it?" I asked. "They didn't say," said Davey. "They just said Two days later I boarded the early morning train to Buffalo, found my way to the navy office, and took the physical exam for the naval reserve. It was the middle of my junior year at Syracuse University. I was studying to be an illustrator in the College of Fine Arts, and I was learning so much. How to draw, how to paint, how to see! And now, suddenly, the leisurely cadence of college life gave way to an unfamiliar urgency. My graduation seemed very far in the distance, so far that I wondered if I would ever get there. And here I was, signing up to be a naval officer, a guy who had never even seen a ship up close! The chief petty officer, hashmarks on his unbuttoned blouse, listlessly studied my application after I passed the physical. He nodded to the chair by his desk, and I sat down. In a distracted voice he asked, "Can you believe those Japs? Hitting Pearl? That was my base for seventeen months! My base! And all those guys . . ." He stopped abruptly. The room was silent as he turned back to my transcript. "What the hell are you doing at college?" he asked curtly. "And what is fine arts? Like drafting, for engineers?" I didn't know what to say. "No," I muttered finally, "it's more like . . . camouflage. Stuff like that." I got up quickly. "Gotta catch my train back to Syracuse." I held out my hand. "Thanks, sir." The CPO rose and leaned heavily against his desk. "No. No," he said. "Not sir. I ain't a commissioned officer. I'm a noncommissioned officer. Commissioned officers is sir. You understand? Commissioned officers." He watched my face and then said kindly, "You just call me Chief." "Right," I said. "Thank you, Chief," and tossed him a salute. He stared at me. "No," he groaned. "No. No. No. You don't salute noncommissioned officers. You salute commissioned officers." He sat down heavily and stared at the stack of papers waiting to be processed. "Commissioned officers," he growled, "like you're going to be." As he reached for the pile, I ducked out the door.Sugarman, Tracy is the author of 'My War: A Love Story in Letters and Drawings from World War II' with ISBN 9780375505133 and ISBN 037550513X.