Opinion: Finding Meaning

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Meaning in Midway

Some time ago, I told my friend Dave Bartholomew I was going to Midway. Dave, retired from the U.S. Marine Corps, was astonished. “Why are you going there?” he wondered. The trip didn’t seem unusual to me. It was one of those instances of trying to communicate from different perspectives.

We finally sorted out that as a Marine, he was thinking Midway Island, a tiny Pacific Ocean atoll midway between the U.S. and Asia and scene of a great U.S. Navy and Marine Corps victory in WWII. My trip was to Midway, Utah, ancestral home of the Beautiful Wife’s family.

The Battle of Midway came six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor that started WWII, and a month after the fall of the Philippines to the invading Japanese. Those months had seen a string of U.S. defeats with the surrender of the Philippines considered our worst ever, though one with a Laguna side story.

Weston David Balfour was a football star at Laguna Beach High School in the class of 1940. After graduating he joined the U.S. Army Air Force and had the misfortune to be stationed in the Philippines just as the Japanese invaded. Balfour became a prisoner of war, surviving the Bataan Death March and three years as a POW doing heavy labor.

Things took a better turn with the 1944 U.S. campaign to liberate the Philippines. But just as rescue seemed imminent, Balfour and other POWs were loaded onto ships for transport to Japan. His ship was attacked and sunk by a U.S. submarine but Balfour, sadly, was not among the survivors. He never knew the joy of love and marriage, no child ever called his name, no grave marks his passing. Balfour’s sacrifice is remembered by a memorial at the high school and by you knowing his story.

This is on my mind because today, June 4, is the anniversary of the pivotal day of the Battle of Midway. We had not sought war and when it came, weakened by the Depression, we were ill-prepared. We knew of the Midway invasion because we had broken a portion of Japan’s naval code. But naval carrier operations are enormously complex and in 1942 we were still learning.

The launch of planes from our three carriers was chaotic, the planes inferior to those of the enemy, the airmen less experienced. If we had an advantage it lay in the courage of our airmen, though Providence also played a part. The outcome was four enemy carriers lost to one of ours. Our victory at Midway marked the turning point in the Pacific war. By reading this you honor those who fought and sacrificed for our country.

By chance, the Beautiful Wife and I are in Midway, Utah. We went to the town cemetery on Memorial Day. Three generations of her family rest there and we brought flowers. We were moved to see thousands of flowers. It seemed every grave was decorated. It’s good that we honor those who have passed; remembering their lives enriches ours. There’s meaning in that.

Skip fell in love with Laguna on a ‘50s surfing trip.  He’s a student of Laguna history and the author of “Loving Laguna: A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach.”  Email:  [email protected].

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