WWII

My Dad was 41 years old, I was 8, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. I remember well the day we heard it on the radio. I remember how pale my dad and mom's faces became and my fear of what would become of our family if dad had to go to war. The radio was run on a big battery and the battery was a precious thing because you couldn't get another one even if you had the money which we didn't. The radio was only turned on to hear the news and what Franklin D. Roosevelt was going to lead the country to do. Dad didn't go to the service, he was listed as 4F, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know if my beloved dad was sick and couldn't go or if maybe it was like they said, the farmers had to raise food crops to keep the country going. We had to work even harder then. My three older brothers all went to the service, all came home alive but my brother Ed only barely. Dad had been told that Ed died in action, but when the war was over he was found in a prisoner of war camp in Germany. His weight was down to 105 when they found him. He didn't talk much about it but he said that if a stray dog was killed in the street and it was thrown over the fence the prisoners fought over it. They caught garter snakes and anything else they could eat, the grass didn't grow on the yard because they ate it all. That is why to this day I can't watch war movies, the news on the radio was a daily thing and our boys were dying by the hundreds. Sons of our neighbors were being killed and reported missing in action. My uncle, Clarence Key, was killed in action, the fear was always with us. This went on for over five years.....then I remember VJ Day 1945. We had moved to the town of West Helena by then, dad was working at a wood mill there. When the news came over the radio, the fire sirens were going off, the people were in the streets rejoicing and crying and jumping up and down. There was a German prison camp just off the main street in West Helena. The prisoners were hauled to the near by farms to work each day, they were fed better than we were, we couldn't get sugar, coffee, flour and certainly not beef, I would hear remarks made by the grown ups about the prisoners were eating steak and we were about to starve ourselves.
But those prisoners were as happy that day as the rest of us. They would be going back home on the prisoner exchange program between the countries. They were laughing and jumping up and down like we were. THE WAR WAS OVER !!!