Mr. Jerry Wright in WWII
Written by: Breanna G., Jory O., and Mallery C.
Jerry Wright was born on June 1942. Mr. Wright was 12 when the war started. He lived in Illinois at the time of the war. He says that he was
very scared when the war started because he knew it was serious. He had a best friend, who’s brother was in the war. Later that boy had died. Mr.
Wright could hear his friend’s mother wailing all the way from his house. He knew then that the boy had died. Mr. Wright’s father had worked in a
dairy before the war and had maintained that job during the war. Mr. Wright had a job of his own in which he delivered papers in the morning.
Mr. Wright and his family continued to live in Illinois. Mr. Wright’s mom did not work, but stayed home to take care of the house and Mr.
Wright. She was what you could call a “house mom”. His family was doing better than others were though. He hadn’t even really had a hard time
during the depression. The family was sad though because they didn’t want the war to start. All the families were. They couldn’t wait for the end.
They had hoped that everything would go back to normal. When the war first started, Mr. Wright said that his principle called up the school and had
them all listen to the loud speaker for the announcement that the U.S was going to war.
It had the president and congress saying that they had declared war on Japan and Germany. Over the course of the war Mr. Wright saved lots
of propaganda and he was nice enough to show them all. He had one that was making fun of Germany and Japan, and ones that made the U.S look
good. He had newspapers and drawings from real soldiers that showed some of the bases they were sent to. He showed us blueprints of some planes,
including the Fuddy Duddy. Mr. Wright disliked others knew that the war was going to be long and gruesome.
When the war ended Mr. Wright was at the YMCA watching a movie. A man stood up and said that the war was over. Then he told them all
that he was just kidding. Ten minutes later another man came in and told all the kids that the war really was over. Mr. Wright says that the war
really was a World War. Mr. Wright really didn’t have an opinion about the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. He was just relieved to hear it had
finally come to an end and nobody was going to be killed any more. Everyone was relieved.
WWII changed Mr. Wright’s life because he learned what it was like to mourn. The loss of his friend’s brother did not directly hit him but it
was still as though it was his own brother. He was very sad when he heard the wails of those poor women whose innocent son had died. He knew
then that war was different. It wasn’t just some game where you “blow the heads off” a little plastic army man. It was real. There were real men
out there getting shot and killed. You couldn’t Just stand them back up again. Once they were down they could never get back up. Like most boys he
found out the hard way that war was a real and terrifying thing. The most important thing to remember is to never forget the poor soldiers who
gave their lives up so that a few million people could live a happy and carefree life where they didn’t have to worry about being killed or beaten
for no reason. Never forget those that weren’t saved and those that were. The people on the home front played a really important role also. They
contributed the food and weapons that really won the war. They did just as much as they possibly could in a hard, cold, gruesome war like World
War II.