Check out this News in Jefferson Country article

Posted 11-5-2012 on Jefferson News Service.com

http://jeffersonnewsservice.com/?p=757

Includes the link to Big and Rich’s hit song: The 8th of November 1965.

Tell and Vietnam Veteran we appreciate his or her service, especially during such a dark time in our country.

Thank you Vietnam Veterans!

 We do honor you, because FREEDOM doesn’t come freely or easily.

– Editor Liz Bowen

As the nation marks Dec. 7, Sacramento’s WWII vets look back

Joe Ojeda Sr., with his wife Erna in their Roseville home, describes his service in Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima during World War II.

By Anita Creamer

acreamer@sacbee.com

Published: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 – 12:00 am | Page 1A

Last Modified: Wednesday, Dec. 7, 2011 – 9:43 am

Nightmares kept Joe Ojeda Sr. up in the darkest hours of the night for almost 60 years. He wandered his Roseville house, peering out at the empty street, temporarily lost in the past. In his mind, he was pinned down with his fellow Marines on the black beaches of Iwo Jima, waiting to die.

He told no one; not his wife, Erna, whom he married in 1949; not their five children.

His memories of some of the most vicious battles in World War II were the burden he carried for serving his country, the stories that he spared his family, until the day in the late 1990s that a Veterans Affairs counselor in Auburn asked him where he had served.

“Joe broke down and was crying, and he started talking,” said Erna Ojeda, 83.

And in talking – in finally sharing what he had seen as a 17-year-old kid so eager to be part of the war that he had his mother sign a waiver for him to join early – Ojeda, now 85, discovered that his family is immensely proud of him.

On the crystal clear morning of Dec. 7, 1941, the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor launched a shocked nation into World War II. Seventy years later, many aging and long silent veterans of that war feel an increased urgency to tell their families how they went to war and how they survived to come home and carry on with the business of living.

Despite a generational reluctance to seem less than humble, each is a living witness to a piece of history that changed the nation and the world.

Left untold, their stories die with them.

They’re vanishing from our midst, dying off at a rate of more than 800 veterans a day across the country – six a day in the Sacramento region alone during the past decade, according to U.S. census figures.

Of the 16 million men and women who served in World War II, fewer than 1.6 million are alive today.

“These veterans are remarkable in the way they conducted their lives and viewed their service,” said Bob Patrick, director of the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, which in the past 11 years has amassed the oral histories of almost 50,000 World War II veterans.

“The one thing you hear from them again and again is ‘I didn’t do anything special.’ For some, what they saw was too hard to talk about it. And some don’t want to sound like they’re bragging.”

And some simply came home and built lives for their wives and children, too busy to dwell on what they saw when they were young and the world was at war.

“When these young men returned from fighting, they’d seen enough death, and they wanted to experience life,” said Keith Huxen, senior history director at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

“That generation gave birth to the baby boom, because they wanted to surround themselves with life.”

Read more: http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/07/4105102/stories-of-sacrifice.html#ixzz1fsNId2TB

LaMalfa Announces Redding Community Coffee

(SACRAMENTO) – Senator Doug LaMalfa (R-Richvale) announced he will be hosting a community coffee in Redding at the Northern California Veterans Museum & Heritage Center.

“I’m looking forward to having the community coffee at the Veterans Museum.  They do a wonderful job honoring our veterans’ memory and preserving our past,” said Senator LaMalfa.  “Please come by and have a cup of coffee and let me know what issues are important to you.”

The details of the town hall are included below:

Northern California Veterans Museum & Heritage Center

Friday December 2, 2011

8 – 9:30 am

3711 Meadow View Drive

Redding

Contact: Brenda Haynes 530-225-3142

Senator Doug LaMalfa is a lifelong farmer representing the fourth Senate District including Shasta, Tehama, Butte, Colusa, Glenn, Siskiyou, Sutter, Del Norte, Placer, Trinity, Yuba and Nevada counties.