My Hero

So yesterday was thanksgiving and it was really fun. We went to my Uncle Jim's house where is new-ish wife Rebecca made an amazing dinner in their gorgeous house. It was pretty picturesque. We drank expensive wine and went hot-tubbing after dinner. My cousin Brad brought his girlfriend that he met when he was living in France. She was really sweet and really pretty. I'm happy for him.

I also learned a lot about my grandpa frank. He died in December of 1999. He was one of the most amazing, kind, gentle, selfless, generous people I have ever met in my entire life. He never really talked about his life very much, though...and as a little kid, I never really questioned it or wondered why. I knew he was a marine and I knew that he was stationed in Okinawa. I knew that he met my grandma sometime after the war when his car broke down and she helped him push it. He took her to dinner that night to thank her for helping him and the rest is history.

A show came on TV last night on the history channel about cities of the underground (which is a really cool show, and I recommend it, there is always cool shit on that show) and the particular episode was about the Battle for Okinawa and the underground tunnels, bunkers, and hospitals that the Okinawans and Japanese soldiers hid and worked in. My grandmother did not live in Okinawa at the time, but her best friend Fumiko, who was at thanksgiving dinner last night, was telling us about her and her family fled to Taiwan when the battle began.

Now I always knew that my grandfather fought at the battle for Okinawa, but I had no idea what he did or what happened to him until after he had died. My cousin Taylor wrote a report about the battle that included a fact sheet about my grandfather, most of which i had no idea of. and I wanted to share that story with you. It's pretty amazing.

Francis T. Cahoon (my amazing grandfather) was a Sergeant in the 6th Marine Division and he entered Okinawa to fight on April 1at, 1945. His platoon was called "Rat Patrol" and he was part of a team that used flame throwers to flush the Japanese soldiers out of caves (They also ended up freeing many Okinawan civilians who were being held in the caves for many weeks ,starving, thirsty, and riddled with illness. The Japanese soldiers even killed babies who made noise so as to keep their positions secret. The survivor that they interviewed on the show last night said that the Japanese where far more frightening than the Americans and that when the Americans came they gave the Okinawans food, water, and medical care). After coming under heavy fire my grandfather's entire platoon was killed save him and one other soldier. They were hit by a mortar and flung into a ditch, and his dog tags were blown off. the other soldier tried to stand up, my grandpa tried to pull him down, but it was in vain; the other soldier was shot and killed, leaving my grandfather as the sole survivor in his entire platoon. He went into battle shock and lay in that ditch for 3 days unconscious. A medical team searching for survivors found him critically injured by the mortar and with no identification. He was taken to a military hospital where he remained for an unknown amount of time. He woke up not knowing where or who he was. Eventually he was identified by his cousin Frances who happened to be a nurse at that same hospital. Because of the mortar he was deaf in his right ear (which i never knew until last night) and was left with heavy scarring on his upper right leg and buttocks.

How is that for an amazing story? He is so amazingly lucky: he was the only man to survive the battle of his entire platoon, he was found by a medical team in a sea of bodies and carnage, and he just happened to be in the same hospital that Frances was in and she found him and was able to identify him. The way I see it, God was either watching him very closely or He blessed him with extraordinary luck. I think that he knew what a gift he was given to be alive and he really incorporated that into the rest of his life. He did everything he could for people who needed it and would give you the shirt off of his back if you asked for it. He was an amazing person. He is my hero.

<3