Oh, Beautiful: An American Family in the 20th Century (16 page)

He was also being practical. He knew that it would be easier for him to find jobs in factories or elsewhere in America in the future if he could be recognized as an American who had earned his right to be here. He didn’t want merely to assimilate. He wanted to prove himself worthy of assimilating. “By carving out my own right to citizenship, by fighting with the U.S. Marine Corps, I could say to myself, ‘Let anyone call me Polski Joe or Polack.’ And I could come back and say, ‘I’ve done as much as you, or more than you, did for this country.’”

His devotion to the United States of America was also born of gratitude. For him, the country was more than just a strong and rich country. It was also a wise and generous country that had given boys like him from shattered backgrounds a chance to excel in the CCC. And it never mattered in the CCC if boys like him were natives or immigrants.

“
The CCC was really good for me,” Jozef reflected. “It prepared me for the Marines. It taught me how to be responsible, to be on time, to be orderly. I learned to obey orders and to respect authority. And it gave me more reason to be proud about my adopted country.”

There was just one thing Jozef needed to do before going to war: He needed to meet his “real” family. He had never been introduced to the uncle in Grand Rapids who had sponsored Michal’s immigration and loaned him the down payment for the house on Sobieski Street. Aside from Michal, the family in Grand Rapids was the only full-blooded family that Jozef had outside of Poland. There were six members of the family: Uncle Joe Godzisz, Aunt Emily, and their four children.

One of the children, 26-year-old Joseph Stanley Godzisz, had just recently been ordained a priest on May 30, 1942. The chaotic family in Detroit seemed like immorality incarnate, but the cousin in Grand Rapids had just become a priest!

“
I knew it must be a solid family,” said Jozef. “I just knew I had to get to know them.”

He made the trip to Grand Rapids at the end of the summer of 1942 and found everything there that he had ever hoped to derive from a real blood family. Warmth. Acceptance. Prayers.

“
They were just as happy to meet me as I was to meet them,” he said. “For them, I was for real, unlike the rest of my father’s family in Detroit.”

For Jozef, the Godzisz family of Grand Rapids embodied everything that he had always valued and wanted but could never find in his own home: fidelity, stability, morality. The family seemed to restore the most important things that had been snatched from him in the first few years of his life, including a faithful father, an entertaining mother, and a protective big brother.

Uncle Joe, born in Rozlopy, was a solid man who controlled the blast furnace at the Buick plant. He also responded thoughtfully to questions and adhered closely to the religion of the old country, according to Jozef. Aunt Emily couldn’t sing and dance like his mother in Poland, but Aunt Emily did have a sharp tongue and a feisty wit, making him laugh about his “half-assed” half-siblings in Detroit. Cousin Joe, who was now Father Joe, promised to pray for Jozef in his daily Masses and prayers along with the prayers for his two younger brothers, both of whom were also going to war.

Father Joe was the kind of priest that Catholics pray for. He was physically robust and reassuring yet also kind of heart. He put his arm around Jozef’s shoulders and led him outside the family home. “Let’s go for a little walk,” said Father Joe. “There’s something I want you to see.” His hobby was feeding the hundreds of birds that gathered about the dozens of feeders that hung from freestanding trellises outside his rectory in Grand Rapids. “Just look at them!” Father Joe enthused to an amused Jozef as they reached the destination and beheld the sight. “Only God’s paintbrush could draw such beautiful colors on those birds!” Father Joe seemed supremely happy with his decision to become a priest, to lead a life of celibacy, and to serve his flocks of birds and people.

Jozef idolized him. “He was the pride and joy of the family.”

Jozef stayed in Grand Rapids for just one night, but the time he spent there would strengthen and sustain him for much longer. On the bus ride back to Detroit, he gazed at the passing landscape outside his window and reflected on the meaning of his journey. The visit reminded him of the lesson that he had learned during his childhood in Poland: “Children don’t beg to be brought into this world.” Jozef had been raised to believe that it is the duty of the father and the mother to do right by their children—and that the children deserve all the love and sacrifice that both parents are able and obligated to give. Jozef had always embraced that belief, but his own experience of it had been, at best, limited. He hadn’t begged to be brought into this world, and there were few things about his youth, especially since coming to America, that made him feel that this world was worth the trouble. But then as a teenager, completely on his own, he found two things that made life worthwhile. First, he found the CCC. Second, he found a real family.

The latter discovery was the most revitalizing of all. “It made me realize that there are some good families,” he said, “and that life is worth living if you live it the right way.” A difficult stepfather had raised his father, Michal. Jozef himself then stumbled into a difficult stepfamily. He vowed to break the cycle of living the wrong way.

The stark contrast between his “half-assed” family on Sobieski Street and the intact family in Grand Rapids led Jozef to a series of stern conclusions that would guide him for the rest of his life. From his own experience, he concluded that people who divorce lead unhappy lives and that divorces destroy children most of all. He believed that nothing is more important for children than a responsible father and a loving mother; therefore, he concluded, divorce simply does not happen between a responsible father and a loving mother, because no things could be more mutually exclusive than divorce on the one hand and love and responsibility on the other. Finally, for his role model of the ideal family, Jozef looked to the holy family of Joseph, Mary, and Jesus. In an ideal family, Jozef concluded, a responsible father and a loving mother produce sons and daughters of God, maybe even priests and nuns, just as Uncle Joe and Aunt Emily had produced Father Joe.

Despite these rapidly percolating principles, Jozef never rejected his own divorced father. However, Jozef completely rejected his father’s choices in life and absolutely forswore the turbulent lifestyle of Sobieski Street. Instead of following the example of that miserable household, Jozef found a separate spiritual home in the devout and dutiful Catholicism of his extended family in Grand Rapids.

Simultaneously, he became more dedicated than ever to serving his adopted country. The two very disparate devotions to church and state, which in America are often in direct conflict, began to meld in Jozef’s heart in perfect concord.

Church and state had saved him. He would fight for church and state.

In preparation for war, Jozef attended Mass, received Communion, went to Confession, and prayed the rosary. He begged God to help him survive and to help America win. God and country naturally reinforced one another.

In Poland, a dual devotion to church and state had formed the bedrock of national identity and cohesion for centuries. In times of enemy occupation, Poland’s efficiently organized church hierarchy and its vast network of parishes became, in practice, the state functioning from within regardless of whatever forces had invaded or conquered from without. For the survival of the Polish nation, the parishes were the platoons, the bishops were the generals, and the Blessed Virgin Mary was the commander-in-chief.

In America, the very idea of nationhood is premised on the separation of church and state. But for Jozef, the fusion of his Catholicism with his patriotism constituted the core of his emerging identity as an American. Moreover, his dual devotions to church and state bonded seamlessly into a unified whole in the very process of his becoming an American hero. And it could very well be called his finest hour.

4. Guam

Just seven years and eight days after his arrival in the United States, Jozef enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps. It was October 2, 1942. He was 18 and hadn’t completed the tenth grade. He signed up as a reservist, which meant his term of duty was open-ended. He would stay and fight either until the war was over or until he could fight no more.

As he filled out his enlistment papers at the Detroit recruitment center, he paused for a moment and then entered his first name not as Jozef but as Joseph. He figured that by enlisting in the Marines, he was at least half way toward becoming an American.

With his military voucher, he rode the Union Pacific Railroad from Detroit to Chicago and then along to San Diego, where he reported to boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot. He trained there for 13 weeks, shooting a .45-caliber revolver, scrambling over high wooden fences, and sharing a tent with seven other infantrymen.

The Marines issued him an oblong tin cup. It was about four inches at its widest and three inches deep. Joseph turned the cup into his log of service. Using his bayonet, he etched an abbreviated name of the Marine Corps base in San Diego into the top of the cup, just beneath the rim: MCB DAGO. He left ample room beneath the first etching so that he could document each base, ship, and battle that he would see.

Using the same bayonet, he then carved his name, JOE GODZISZ, into the leather sheath that held the bayonet’s seven-inch blade. The block letters covered the length of the sheath. He carved his U.S.M.C. serial number, 472268, in much smaller characters into the opposite side of the sheath. Using a different knife, he carved his initials, JG, into the wooden handle of the bayonet itself.

Most of the men in his unit went directly from boot camp in San Diego to Camp Pendleton, farther up the California coast, for extended infantry training. Joseph, however, was assigned to field telephone school at Camp Dunlap in the California desert east of the Salton Sea. For six months, he learned how to splice telephone wires, climb telephone poles with spurs on his boots, hang the wires from the poles, lay the wires securely on the ground, assemble a switchboard, test the circuits, and maintain a communications system. His job would be to run through contested territory, climb trees, hang the wires from the trees, and connect the commanders at the field headquarters via telephone with the lieutenants on the front lines. He would also patrol the wires for damage caused by battle or weather and make any necessary repairs.

Joseph learned to defend himself with just a small carbine rifle instead of the heavier, semi-automatic M-1 rifle that was being issued to the other infantrymen. The good news was that the field telephone men were not supposed to engage in close combat with the enemy on the front lines. Therefore, the field telephone men did not carry the M-1 rifle with its heavier firepower. The bad news was that the field telephone men did not carry the M-1 rifle with its heavier firepower. The smaller carbine was useful only for self-protection, not confrontation; only for defense, not offense. The bigger M-1 rifle was too unwieldy for the field telephone men to carry as they scooted up and down trees, juggling spools and tools. It was impractical for the telephone men to carry any weapons other than the carbine and the standard bayonet attached to the belt. Beyond that, the telephone men could do little more than dodge bullets as they climbed the trees and sometimes dangled in the air, tethered to the trunks by a safety belt.

At Camp Dunlap, the men learned to work in pairs. Joseph went first by climbing a pole about 20 feet in the air with his spool of wire. He wrapped the wire around the top of the pole several times, tied the wire tightly to the pole, and then dropped the spool to the ground. His partner then ran with the spool to the next pole and did the same thing, while Joseph scurried down the first pole and raced toward the second pole to be ready to retrieve the spool. That way, leapfrogging each other past every other pole, the two men could string the wire much faster and farther than either one of them could string it alone.

Joseph was appointed chief switchboard operator and became an acting corporal, overseeing four men who were older than he was. Upon completion of field telephone school in the summer of 1943, he was promoted from private to private first class.

He then rejoined the other infantrymen at Camp Pendleton, where he was assigned to the 1st Battalion of the newly created 22nd Regiment. In the fall of 1943, his battalion boarded the USS
West Point
and sailed to Pearl Harbor.

The full 22nd Regiment consisted of three battalions, for a total of about 3,000 men. The full regiment—including infantrymen, engineers, a navy medical company, supporting units, and tanks—converged on Maui in November 1943. Over the course of several weeks of further combat training, Joseph and his buddies marched and drilled in formation, grew in strength and confidence as individuals and as a unit, and synchronized their footsteps to the vigorous, throaty chanting of “The Marines’ Hymn”: