Keeping Alive Memories That Bedevil Him

Keeping Alive Memories That Bedevil Him

By DAN BARRY
Published: August 13, 2009
MANCHESTER Township, N.J.


A retired postal worker, living not entirely at peace in an adult community called Leisure Village West, recently sent remember-the-date notes to large newspapers and television networks, then followed up with calls that often bounced to voice mail. The 14th of August; remember the date.

He was not asking so much as he was demanding.

Friday is the 14th of August: a dog day to many but always V-J Day to some, including this man, Albert Perdeck. It is the 64th anniversary of the surrender by Japan to end World War II. Attention must be paid, he says with urgency. He is 84.

“Last year, 2008, there was no mention of this on the news,” reads his handwritten note to The New York Times. “I am requesting to have the day remembered by your in-depth reporting.”

In addition to “V-J,” as in Victory over Japan, his note contains other abbreviations, including “P.T.S.D.,” as in: “The 17 months I was in combat still causes terrible flashbacks and nightmares of the mutilated bodies I helped to recover.”

He does not care that some people are uncomfortable with V-J Day, given the close relationship the country now has with Japan, and given two other dates in August 1945 (the 6th: Hiroshima, and the 9th: Nagasaki). To him, the day carries its own political correctness: It celebrates the victorious end to a world-saving war in which hundreds of thousands of Americans died far from home. He saw some of them die.
read more here
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/14/us/14land.html?_r=1