MillRatUSMC
06-20-04, 05:31 AM
For some this day is a painful day, because dad is fighting in a war on terrorism.
Some dads have died fighting this war.
For those dads and dads to be,
we wish to offer this story from the Houston Chronicle.
June 20, 2004, 1:36AM
In homage to my father, my war hero
By MARK S. MILLER
MY father, the war hero, abandoned his family. He couldn't cope with the responsibility any longer. Financial burdens overwhelmed him. Late one Passover night, while I was away at rabbinical college and my brothers and mother were gathered at my grandparents' Seder table, he packed his suitcases and departed Chicago for Florida. His exodus was as rushed as that of the children of Israel when they ran from Egypt. I never heard from him again.
That was more than 30 years ago. The summer after his departure, I legally changed my last name from Albert to my mother's maiden name, Miller. I wanted to deny my father the perpetuation of his name and hoped my two brothers would follow suit.
As a Marine, my father was captured at Bataan and suffered through the Death March. Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star adorned his record. He endured years in the coal mines of Japan but never spoke of his experiences.
He once said no one would ever understand; they would think he was exaggerating. I hungered to know more but had to content myself with looking at the most famous photo of the march. It featured my father, hands raised, emaciated.
I was ashamed of the man as a father but was proud of the man as a war hero. I became the keeper of the medals he left behind, which I hung in my rabbinical study. I read books on the Death March. The one that impressed me most was My Hitch in Hell by Lester Tenney, like my father a young Jewish soldier from Chicago. I resolved to find him and invite him to address my congregation. I located him near San Diego, and he accepted my invitation.
After dinner, we arrived at my synagogue a few minutes early. I showed him my father's medals and ribbons, and he explained their significance.
The last piece of memorabilia I showed him was a yellowed and frayed telegram from the Marine Corps, informing my father's parents of their son's capture. Tenney stared at the telegram and was silent for several minutes. Finally, he asked: "Your father's last name was Albert? But yours is Miller ... "
"Yes," I answered, "I changed it due to some unfortunate developments."
The 84-year-old man looked at me and said, "Your father was one of my best buddies. We were on the same transport together, we slaved side by side in the mines of Fukyoka Camp 17 for almost four years. We celebrated Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur together while our friends stood guard, we talked all the time about what we would do if we were ever freed. ... Phil Albert! You're his son? My God, why didn't you say so?"
He told me about his buddy, filling in what my father had refused to reveal. I learned more that night than in all the years I lived with my father.
Tenney began his speech that night by announcing that my father was one of his most cherished friends. Before he left, we spoke of my father's flight from home. Tenney suggested that the war, the march and the camps changed people, and that sometimes this alteration manifested itself only years later.
As a rabbi, I have taught Judaism's insistence on personal responsibility and moral accountability. But how I wanted, at that moment — and today, on Father's Day — to accept Tenney's hypothesis that my father's cowardly action in the early 1970s was not his fault but a result of the torture, fear, deprivation and starvation he suffered 30 years earlier.
I tell my congregants that while we do not live in the past, we live with the past. Maybe, as Tenney suggested, the past was too much with my father. My belief that you are responsible for your own actions quaked.
The rabbi believed one thing. The son wanted to believe another.
Miller is senior rabbi of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach, Calif.
The father of the rabbi was was suffering from PTSD and really had no one he could talk to.
Some drink to forget the unforgetable, others take their own lives.
To ease the pain of memories who never stop.
What really is a father?
One who comforts away the pain, when the child hurt.
One who listens, even if he up to butt in work.
One who feed and changes the child when he soils the diaper.
One who stand by Mom in the caring of their offspring.
We think that father fall somewhere inbetween those perimeters.
Men may fail but they must keep trying to get it right.
A grandfather is a father twice over.
If your dad is still living cherish him, if he no longer here cherish the time that you had with your father.
Some men never knew their father,
They were jealous of their peers who had a dad.
They now try to make up for the father they never knew.
Happy Fathers Day to all the men who are fathers.
Some dads have died fighting this war.
For those dads and dads to be,
we wish to offer this story from the Houston Chronicle.
June 20, 2004, 1:36AM
In homage to my father, my war hero
By MARK S. MILLER
MY father, the war hero, abandoned his family. He couldn't cope with the responsibility any longer. Financial burdens overwhelmed him. Late one Passover night, while I was away at rabbinical college and my brothers and mother were gathered at my grandparents' Seder table, he packed his suitcases and departed Chicago for Florida. His exodus was as rushed as that of the children of Israel when they ran from Egypt. I never heard from him again.
That was more than 30 years ago. The summer after his departure, I legally changed my last name from Albert to my mother's maiden name, Miller. I wanted to deny my father the perpetuation of his name and hoped my two brothers would follow suit.
As a Marine, my father was captured at Bataan and suffered through the Death March. Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star adorned his record. He endured years in the coal mines of Japan but never spoke of his experiences.
He once said no one would ever understand; they would think he was exaggerating. I hungered to know more but had to content myself with looking at the most famous photo of the march. It featured my father, hands raised, emaciated.
I was ashamed of the man as a father but was proud of the man as a war hero. I became the keeper of the medals he left behind, which I hung in my rabbinical study. I read books on the Death March. The one that impressed me most was My Hitch in Hell by Lester Tenney, like my father a young Jewish soldier from Chicago. I resolved to find him and invite him to address my congregation. I located him near San Diego, and he accepted my invitation.
After dinner, we arrived at my synagogue a few minutes early. I showed him my father's medals and ribbons, and he explained their significance.
The last piece of memorabilia I showed him was a yellowed and frayed telegram from the Marine Corps, informing my father's parents of their son's capture. Tenney stared at the telegram and was silent for several minutes. Finally, he asked: "Your father's last name was Albert? But yours is Miller ... "
"Yes," I answered, "I changed it due to some unfortunate developments."
The 84-year-old man looked at me and said, "Your father was one of my best buddies. We were on the same transport together, we slaved side by side in the mines of Fukyoka Camp 17 for almost four years. We celebrated Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur together while our friends stood guard, we talked all the time about what we would do if we were ever freed. ... Phil Albert! You're his son? My God, why didn't you say so?"
He told me about his buddy, filling in what my father had refused to reveal. I learned more that night than in all the years I lived with my father.
Tenney began his speech that night by announcing that my father was one of his most cherished friends. Before he left, we spoke of my father's flight from home. Tenney suggested that the war, the march and the camps changed people, and that sometimes this alteration manifested itself only years later.
As a rabbi, I have taught Judaism's insistence on personal responsibility and moral accountability. But how I wanted, at that moment — and today, on Father's Day — to accept Tenney's hypothesis that my father's cowardly action in the early 1970s was not his fault but a result of the torture, fear, deprivation and starvation he suffered 30 years earlier.
I tell my congregants that while we do not live in the past, we live with the past. Maybe, as Tenney suggested, the past was too much with my father. My belief that you are responsible for your own actions quaked.
The rabbi believed one thing. The son wanted to believe another.
Miller is senior rabbi of Temple Bat Yahm in Newport Beach, Calif.
The father of the rabbi was was suffering from PTSD and really had no one he could talk to.
Some drink to forget the unforgetable, others take their own lives.
To ease the pain of memories who never stop.
What really is a father?
One who comforts away the pain, when the child hurt.
One who listens, even if he up to butt in work.
One who feed and changes the child when he soils the diaper.
One who stand by Mom in the caring of their offspring.
We think that father fall somewhere inbetween those perimeters.
Men may fail but they must keep trying to get it right.
A grandfather is a father twice over.
If your dad is still living cherish him, if he no longer here cherish the time that you had with your father.
Some men never knew their father,
They were jealous of their peers who had a dad.
They now try to make up for the father they never knew.
Happy Fathers Day to all the men who are fathers.