Gilroy community members gather to speak about World War II
experiences
By Jessica Thy Nguyen
Special to the Dispatch
Gilroy – Heidi Collier discovered details about her father’s World War II experience she’d never known. That was during a Wartime Memories program held earlier this year at the Gilroy Community Library.
As Collier did then, Saturday’s program at the Gilroy Library is an opportunity for residents to pull out that dust-covered memorabilia and share old wartime stories, while learning more about other’s experiences during the war.
“It was a situation where some of the people were very interesting and knowledgeable,” she said. “Not only about the facts of the war but also the content that [my father’s] pictures told.”
Collier’s father, George Carver, died in December of last year, and she felt compelled to attend the program to share his renditions of life during the war.
“One thing Lani [Yoshimura, community librarian] said about my father’s sketches, were that they were a very rare find,” Collier said. “It was my father’s young observations. He was 18 and some of the captions were humorous.”
Her father-in-law, Charles Collier, a photographer, took extensive pictures during the war, which included photos of Dwight D. Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.
“I found it enriching,” she said. “It enriched my sensibility about my father-in-law’s photography and it was nice to see the preservation of his photographs being valued and appreciated.”
Everyone is invited to participate Saturday, even if the experience they’re sharing is not their own.
“We’re interested too in stories not only about the war and fighting, but what people were doing here, away from the fighting,” Yoshimura said.
Her father, Aki Yoshimura, was a veteran who fought in the Pacific and the program gave her the chance to share not only his history, but the history of her entire family.
His involvement in the war helped spur her interest in hearing other people share their own stories.
“It’s been one of the most profound programs we’ve done at the library,” she said, “and I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”
Yoshimura said the generation of WWII survivors is dwindling and said she thinks this event will be one of the last opportunities to hear the stories in their own words.
“It’s been a great source of information to stay in touch and hear the stories,” she said. “To just be in awe of the tremendous camaraderie between the men who fought the battles.”
As for the younger members of the community who have never really experienced war, Yoshimura said she thinks the program is a way to expose them to the past.
Although the last program was only attended by a few younger members, Yoshimura said they were totally taken by the pictures and artifacts brought by the speakers.
“It’s something different,” she said. “You don’t have a World War everyday, and you don’t have the opportunity to meet someone who was in a World War everyday.”
