If being a religious Jew in the army was difficult, the complexities certainly multiplied while stationed in a completely foreign continent. Sergeant Paul Walfish good-naturedly wrote from the Philippines, “I doubt very much if I could organize a [religious] group among the natives. Although they are deeply religious, I doubt whether they are inclined to [our] ideals.” Chaplain Meyer H. Diskind, however, had a different take, writing in February of 1944, “I am studying Japanese for the last four months… One of my ambitions in life is to deliver a blatt Gemara in Japanese in a Tokyo shul between Mincha and Maariv.”
For many in the Jewish community, the war in the Pacific is the “forgotten battle” of World War Two. With our rightful focus on the sheer devastation of the Holocaust in Europe, we tend to overlook the fierce battles that took place on the Asian continent. Yet, beginning with the attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941, the United States was forced into a long and arduous war with the Japanese. Not only did that conflict outlast VE (Victory in Europe) Day by a full three months, but the US Military fought in the Pacific well before their crossing the Atlantic in 1944 to fight in Europe. In fact, in March of 1943, The Orthodox Youth newspaper reported the first death from amongst its members, Second Class Seaman Morris Seif, who was killed in action in the Pacific. Perhaps a more stark illustration of the brutality of the Pacific War is that three of the six military men depicted raising the US flag in the iconic Iwo Jima photo of February 1945 were dead within days, killed in further skirmishes.
Yet, no matter where he was located, the US soldier persevered. That is reflected in Sergeant Walfish’s letter where he summarized his challenges. Walfish wrote, “The mud that we were wallowing in has now turned to dust and we can’t figure out which is worse. It is very hot out here now but thank goodness the nights are still cool. From what the Filipinos say, it gets so hot here at night, you can’t sleep. That is a nice prospect to look forward to but [we’ll] take [it] as we do everything else and that is [with] the attitude of ‘Well, it must be endured.’”
From what we know about these courageous soldiers, they did more than just “endure”; on both sides of the International Date Line, they served their country honorably.
