Explaining War to Children Part 1

War is hard on nearly everyone. After we move beyond notions of heroism and patriotism, I find it difficult to talk about human values alongside battle statistics when I am teaching children about history. If you talk to high school students today, many will tell you that twentieth century history—whether it’s the American or World platform—is the study of war…war…war. We are better at speaking about the causes than the effects. So, as we watch another un-war unfold, I am making a personal connection to the subject and to families left behind. In 1952, my father was drafted to serve as a M.A.S.H. physician during the Korean Conflict. He had already served as a medic in World War II,  and this was his second compulsory service. Howard Schneider, MD was a patriot, and he was not going to avoid this call to duty.


Howard Schneider, MD World War II

During the Korean Conflict, Howard wasn’t told where he was going until he reached Seattle with “secret orders.” He opened them before he left Alaska, and he quickly called my mother with the news: Korea. The plan had been that my mother and I would follow him to Japan after he was settled. My mother had packed her dishes. We weren’t allowed to go.  Here is a copy of the first postcard my father ever sent me, featuring the Seattle-Tacoma Airport in 1953:





He didn’t return for 18 months, and anxiety and fear ruled all of our days. For me, it was the beginning of a nightmare that I dreamed every night for nearly 30 years. In that dream, people were trying to find me to tell me my father was dying, but they couldn’t get to me in time. My father did everything he could to keep our connection going. We spoke to him only once by telephone during that entire time. My first real memory of my father has me standing on an airbase tarmac and putting my hand through a fence to touch him because I recognized his voice.

My father died when I was 45, just after his 80^th birthday. I wasn’t able to get to the hospital in time to be with him in his last moments. Becoming a widower, he had told me, resembled the isolation he felt in Korea. I didn’t want him to be alone. War is cruel in so many ways and for so much longer than the incidents a soldier and a family suffer. Sometimes there aren’t any words, and pictures are a better way to express the unexplainable.