Column: ‘Honey, there will always be war’

I’ve just finished reading military historian Victor Davis Hanson’s brilliant new book, “The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won.”

The six years of WWII (1939-1945) saw the deaths of 60 million to 65 million human beings.

The number is incomprehensible … beyond biblical proportions. It represents the most people ever killed in any war in the history of the world.

The dead were combatants and noncombatants, men and women, children and infants. They comprised 3% of the world’s population in 1939.

That’s more than 27,000 deaths per day over the course of the war. One person died every three seconds, yet each person went to his or her grave — they were fortunate to have a grave — alone.

They died en masse; yet one at a time.

“The summons of death comes to us all, and no one can die for another,” said Martin Luther, the seminal figure of the Protestant Reformation in one of his Invocavit Sermons of 1522. “Everyone must fight his own battle with death by himself, alone. We can shout into another’s ears, but everyone must himself be prepared for the time of death, for I will not be with you then, nor you with me.”

Jesus Christ makes an unambiguous pledge to all believers: “I am with you always.” Most especially in death.

I was born in 1945, nine months before World War II ended. I don’t remember my earliest thoughts, but neither do I recall reaching age 5 and detesting this rotting dungheap of a planet. Quite the contrary.

The world I knew seemed pleasant and nurturing, though I’d been exposed to but a sliver of it.

During the war my parents, like most Americans, actively served their country. It was the worst of times and the best. There were moments of stupefaction and terror, but also of courage and compassion.

For the first seven years of my existence, my world was Balboa Island … a pretty good place in which to begin life. When my little brother and I would play in our front yard, passersby on the sidewalk would frequently stop, look over our small fence, say hello and ask us our names. They were kind people. Naturally, I thought Balboa Island was the world.

It wasn’t.

During my first year of life, Berlin was reduced to rubble; Tokyo was firebombed into dross; and St. Petersburg (Leningrad) was tortured wreckage. And I had no idea.

My childhood was bliss … my world safe. Our family was blessed to be sheltered in the greatest nation on Earth.

My 70 years have taught me a very different lesson, however. Evil exists, and always has. My dad understood that as a young father. He’d served in the U.S. Army for every single second — and a bit longer — of the four years that America fought.

When Gen. Douglas MacArthur accepted Japan’s surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, 1945, my young mother turned to Dad and hopefully pronounced: “This war shall be the last.” Dad was a pragmatist: “Honey, there will always be wars.”

He was right.

Five years later when North Korean troops advanced across the 38th parallel into South Korea, Dad tried to talk Mom into letting him reenlist. With two boys under the age of 6 she put her foot down. Ironically, 15 years later I was stationed with the U.S. Army in Korea — preventing another such incursion.

But, in 1950 at age 5 I sensed no lingering stench of hatred or death. The world seemed clean and new. But 60 million who’d been with us a decade earlier were gone. My 5-year-old brain couldn’t process that.

The present time seems more depraved to me than ever, even though we’ve not recently seen the wanton destruction of 60 million human lives. Today’s 24-hour news cycle and social media perhaps have tainted my judgment. But, as I see it, evil advances.

The past, some say, is prologue.

That’s not a hopeful thing.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.