Charles Walls, 27, home on leave from the Navy, hugs his wife, Dorothy, 23, in this 1943 photo, taken by a family friend.
Judy Walls Lowe of Festus says she was just 4 months old in 1941 when her parents heard the news over their tall Philco radio of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II.
“Daddy looked at mother and said, ‘I’ll have to go; we are at war,’ so in 1943, at the age of 27, Charles G. Walls enlisted in the Navy.”
Lowe said her mother, Dorothy Walls, then 23, was left at home alone to care for three small children.
“We didn’t own a car,” she said. “Mother walked everywhere with the three of us in tow. We used our War Ration Book given to her by the USA Price Administration for items that were in short supply like soap, toothpaste, sugar and coffee. She also went back to work at PPG until daddy’s return from the war.”
Charles Walls served in the Pacific aboard the aircraft carrier USS Salamaua.
“Mail was censored during the war,” Judy said. “Words and sentences were cut out of letters. Before he left for the Pacific, my parents worked out code names for islands and locations using the names of fictitious people. If my dad wrote and asked how Great Aunt Gertrude was, mother would know the location the ship had been.”
Although his ship was hit by a Japanese kamikaze suicide bomber, Charles Walls survived without injury and was honorably discharged as Seaman First Class on Oct. 17, 1945.
“My dad died at age 70 in 1986,” Judy said. “He was part of the Greatest Generation.”
But he wasn’t the only one who survived the battles of World War II.
“After a broken hip, my mother was living in Crystal Oaks Assisted Living,” Judy said. “One day she called me to come to a Veteran’s Day celebration, a noisy patriotic party with lots of singing and flags waving. They asked for veterans from the war to stand, and some men proudly stood. My mother jumped up, cheering and waving her flag.
“I pulled on her skirt, saying, ‘Sit down, Mother!’ And she indignantly and loudly stated, ‘I was left at home, alone, for two years with three little kids … I served in that war!’
“She continued to proudly wave her American flag. To my amazement, at least eight other women proudly stood up with mother, expressing how they served in World War II as much as the men did.
The Walls children, from left, Janice, 5, Judy, 2, and Richard, 4, in 1943. In the background is the window with the Service Star representing their father, who served with the U.S. Navy. “I now proudly have that star framed and hanging in my home,” Judy said.
“At that veteran’s celebration, my mother demonstrated you didn’t need military discharge papers as proof that you served in the war. Those women took care of the home front while their husbands and brothers fought in the battlefields and from ships. They raised their children while supporting the war effort and working in factories.
“My mother died at age 90 in 2010. She always considered herself a proud veteran. It was not a good idea to argue that point!”
