World War 2 Memorabilia for pat

    There are relic hunters who still roam the mountains and valleys on Marinduque searching for World War 2 memorabilia. They sometimes find helmets, bayonets, mess kits, a lucky photograph of a wife or children in a leather pouch, pieces of uniforms and occasionally, by the side of downed aircraft, bleached bones. This great world conflict, in the early 1940’s,finished eighty years ago and what we know of it now comes from secondary sources. The generation that fought the war has followed it into history and has left us boxes of stained photographs, old movies and books by historians who have no longer have any living soldiers or architects of the war to interview. .At celebrations on Veteran’s Day there are a few grizzled vets left who fought in these Philippine jungles, but time has rolled over most of them. By the side of the road, just outside Mogpog, is a tall piece of ordnance propped up outside a food mart. It is like the biggest ball of twine somewhere in the Midwest, an Indian teepee hotel along Route 66, the Brown Derby in Los Angeles. To people in the Philippines, Japan is not liked. People remember their grandfather’s killed along with Americans, remember Japanese death marches. World War 2 fades in significance, buried as generations pile one atop another. Now, we are into the entertainment age and World Wars are far from people’s minds. What is funny is that the people that were drawn into World War 11 weren’t thinking about it either.