Father’s Day is this weekend, and I’ll honor my father, First Lieutenant Harold Graboyes, by recalling a few of his World War II-era Army stories. Among other things, he heard about Pearl Harbor two days before the attack, was ordered to report to Germany as an interpreter despite knowing no foreign languages, was disciplined for criticizing Japanese American internment camps, established strong camaraderie with African American soldiers in a segregated town and Army, and turned down a promotion to captain because it entailed filling out too many forms. I’ll tell his stories, because Dad has been gone for 25 years and can no longer share them himself.
In the peacetime draft preceding World War II, the recruiter asked him which service he would prefer. The Navy, he had heard, had better food, so he requested the Navy. Naturally, then, they put him in the Army and sent him from Philadelphia to Camp Lee, Virginia (later Fort Lee, and now Fort Gregg-Adams), 23 miles south of Richmond.
