Every Memorial Day, I find myself thinking not only about the men who served in World War II, but about what became of them afterward, reflecting not on the polished mythology of “The Greatest Generation,†but the quieter truth carried home in silence, in nightmares, in anger, in warnings to their children never to glorify war.
I think especially about the fathers I knew.
Men who believed deeply in the necessity of fighting fascism. Men who enlisted or were drafted because the threat was undeniable and immediate. After Pearl Harbor, there was little ambiguity. They believed they were defending democracy itself against authoritarianism and mass extermination. Their generation saw war not as a political abstraction but as a matter of survival.
My own father, Walter Scott Perkins, was stationed in Japan soon after the beginning of World War II. Like so many of his generation, he and my mother believed there was purpose in the sacrifice demanded of them. The war was horrific, but to them it was also morally clear. Hitler's rise, Japanese militarism, the destruction spreading across Europe and the Pacific- these were existential threats.
But something happened to many of those men when they came home.
They saw what war actually was.
Not the flags and speeches. Not the recruitment posters. They saw burned bodies, shattered cities, starving civilians, lifelong trauma, and young men returned home emotionally destroyed. Many of them carried what we now recognize as PTSD, though at the time it was buried under silence, alcoholism, depression, or stoicism. Families learned not to ask questions. Soldiers sent to fight woke screaming in the night. Children learned to read moods instead of stories.
And over time, many of those veterans became deeply suspicious of war itself.
The irony is striking. The very men who fought in what is often called “the good war†became some of the fiercest opponents of future military interventions. They understood better than anyone the true cost of armed conflict, and many came to believe that politicians invoked the heroism of World War II too easily justified wars that bore little resemblance to it.
Vietnam shattered many of them. Iraq enraged them. Endless wars in the Middle East left them exhausted and heartsick.
My father became a fierce opponent of virtually every war that followed World War II. He believed Vietnam was catastrophic and unnecessary. He saw the Iraq War as built on manipulation and fear. And he would likely roll over in his grave watching another escalation toward war with Iran unfold under the language of patriotism and national security.
Because unlike World War II, these modern conflicts often feel morally untethered.
World War II began with direct attacks, territorial invasions, and the global rise of fascism. Americans understood what they were fighting against. Today, many Americans, including veterans themselves, look at military escalation with Iran and ask a far simpler question: defending what, exactly? Oil interests? Political posturing? Election-year distractions? Strategic dominance in a region destabilized for decades by foreign intervention?
The public skepticism surrounding strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and the ongoing escalation in the Middle East reflects a growing exhaustion with “forever wars.†Increasingly, Americans no longer believe military intervention automatically equals safety or freedom. Veterans, active-duty service members, and military families have become some of the loudest voices warning against repeating the same mistakes.
The phrase many of those World War II fathers eventually came to embody was brutally simple: old men talk, young men die.
That disillusionment matters.
It matters because Memorial Day should not become merely a celebration of militarism. It should be a reckoning. A sober reflection on lives interrupted, bodies broken, and futures erased. It should force us to ask whether the wars we ask young Americans to fight are truly necessary, or whether we have become numb to sacrifice because fewer and fewer families personally bear the burden.
The fathers who survived World War II often spent the rest of their lives trying to ensure their children would never have to endure what they did. Many stopped believing that war ennobled nations. Instead, they came to see it as humanity's failure, sometimes unavoidable, but never glorious.
As Memorial Day has come and gone again, I think of those fathers. Of the silence they carried. Of the lessons they tried to pass down. And of how heartbreaking it would be for them to watch another generation march toward conflict without clear purpose, without broad public belief, and without honest accounting for the lives that will inevitably be lost.
Walter Scott Perkins
My father, Walter Scott Perkins, served in Japan during and immediately after World War II. Like many Americans of his generation, he believed the war against fascism was both necessary and justifiable. But the experience profoundly changed him. Though he rarely spoke in detail about what he witnessed, he emerged from the war deeply skeptical of military intervention. He became an outspoken opponent of later conflicts, especially Vietnam and the Iraq War. He believed that patriotism required moral courage, including the courage to question war itself.
Maurice F. Ahearn Jr.
Maurice F. Ahearn Jr., my uncle, was a Marine and one of the small percentage of survivors (less than 15 percent) of the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill during the Battle of Okinawa, one of the bloodiest confrontations in the Pacific theater. He was shot multiple times and spent years recovering from wounds that never fully healed, physically or emotionally. During his recovery at Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston, he met my mother's sister, Patricia Kelleher, the nurse who would become his wife. The war shaped the remainder of his life, reminding those around him that survival itself often came at an immeasurable cost. Despite having been awarded two Purple Hearts and several other accolades, he never liked to talk about his war experiences, as it was too painful.
Russell “Russ†Greenfield
Russ Greenfield, father of my friend, artist and activist Mark Steven Greenfield, was a Tuskegee Airman who rose through the Army Air Corps before the branch became the United States Air Force. He later retired as a Lieutenant Colonel. Like many Black servicemen who fought for freedoms abroad while enduring discrimination at home, his service reflected both patriotism and contradiction. Exposure to carcinogens during his military career may have contributed to his early death at age 71. His life, and the life of his son, stand as reminders of the sacrifices made by veterans whose stories are too often simplified or forgotten.
Whether on Memorial Day or Father's Day, Americans often speak of heroism, and rightly so. But these stories also remind us to speak honestly about war itself- about trauma, sacrifice, racial injustice, grief, recovery, and the lifelong impact military service can have on veterans and their families.
