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Verdugo Views: Soldier travels long emotional journey in hopes of moving past mental scars of war

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A young soldier named Cliff Archer was home on leave in the Los Angeles area on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Archer, then in his early 20s, was quickly trained as a medic and soon boarded a tanker bound for Honolulu, where he and his unit awaited further orders.

From there, he went to New Guinea, then to the Philippines and eventually to Negros Island, where Archer saw action in the lengthy Battle of the Visayas, which began in March 1945.

Their mission was to take Hill 3155, later renamed Dolan Hill in tribute to 1st Lt. John W. Dolan, the first officer to be killed in the attack. Archer himself narrowly escaped death in one of the battles.

“Dad’s unit did a lot of mop-up action and island hopping during the last stages of the war. Negros was the fiercest fighting,’’ wrote his son, Mike Archer, who now lives in the Seattle area, in a series of emails regarding his father, who died in 2002.

This was one of the final battles of the Pacific Campaign, and the Negros Island troops received a visit from Gen. MacArthur. When the fighting was over, Cliff Archer returned home, went to work for Greyhound, met and married Lola Oswald and bought a house in Torrance on the G.I. Bill.

Two little boys later, in 1952, the Archers purchased the Glendale Greyhound Station and found a place to live here in town. Two more children joined the family, and then they opened a travel agency in the lobby of the bus station. Later on, they purchased a home in northwest Glendale.

But the war years were never far from her husband’s mind, Lola Archer told me one afternoon at her home. “He had been a very young man when he was drafted and spent four years, from age 21 to 25, in the Army. Four years which left him with nightmares. Now, they would call it PTSD,” she added.

Mike Archer recalled many dinnertime conversations about the war.

“He would get very animated about all of his experiences up through his Hawaii deployment,” Mike Archer said. “As soon as he started getting into actual battle scenarios, he would get very quiet, to the point where he simply stopped talking and just looked down at his hands in his lap.”

At that point, the children would get up quietly and start clearing the table.

“Sometimes Dad would just sit there for another minute or two,” he added.

Then, in 1976, some 30 years after the war was over, Cliff Archer decided to return to the scene of so many of his memories. And he wanted his wife to go with him.

He was the first Army veteran to return to the hill, she said. The mayor of Silay City arranged for a local guide and, on the designated day, the couple climbed into an old Army weapons carrier left behind after the war.

The worn-out floorboards had been replaced with wooden boards and more boards provided seating. “We were accompanied by the guide and also an armed guard,” she recalled. “On the way up the hill, it was like a local bus that would pick up and discharge passengers.”

At the top of the hill, Archer and the two men walked around “trying to get a feel for the place.” They returned to have dinner with the mayor and learned of a Japanese officer, Kazuo Ishizuka, who had returned several times to pray for the souls of his fellow countrymen.

Cliff Archer took the officer’s address home with him, and the two survivors exchanged letters for four years. They discovered they had fought in the same battles and that Ishizuka had suffered at least 13 wounds.

“He was one of the few officers that did not commit Harakiri, probably because he was too wounded to do so,” Mike Archer said.

Their correspondence led to another trip in 1980.

“The Japanese invited him and whoever was left of his unit to come help them dedicate a memorial to their fallen on Negros,” his son added.

This time, Lola Archer stayed behind in the village while the two men, who had fought so hard against each other, went up the hill together. There, at the top, at the scene of so many horrendous battles, they hoped to lay to rest the ghosts of their mutual past.

Readers Write:

An email arrived from Daniel Conover, who wrote that he enjoys “your historical articles in the Glendale News-Press.” Conover is seeking information about the Roads End Street neighborhood, the short continuation of East Los Feliz Road after it crosses Glendale Avenue. If anyone has any information to share, please contact me.

KATHERINE YAMADA can be reached at katherineyamada@gmail.com or by mail at Verdugo Views, c/o Glendale News-Press, 202 W. First St., Second Floor, Los Angeles, CA 90012. Please include your name, address and phone number.

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