After stops for further training at Fort Lewis in Washington State and at Pearl Harbor, my father and his friends stepped aboard an amphibian craft in the Pacific, clutching their weapons, preparing to storm the beach. They fought ferocious battles in Luzon, Philippines, and Okinawa, Japan, facing young, eighteen- and nineteen-year-old Japanese soldiers who were encountering the onslaught of the US Army, newly rebuilt and expanded following the attack on Pearl Harbor. For the young Japanese soldiers, it was their last stand, a fight of desperation, which made for an extremely tough adversary. The battles were brutal; many men perished on both sides. My father remembers that, after one battle, he found himself standing, blood splattered all over him, bodies of the enemy scattered about, and only a handful of his comrades still alive, including the two brothers who had harassed him in boot camp, trembling in fear in the trench.
He also told me a story about patrolling through the jungle and coming face-to-face with a Japanese soldier. For a split second they looked at each other, before my father was able to get off the first shot. He then rushed to the side of the young Japanese soldier, pulled out his first aid kit, and patched up the bullet wound as much as he could. He located the young soldier’s wallet and opened it. Inside was a picture of the soldier with his wife and child, which my father let the soldier look at. My father comforted him and gave him water from his canteen before leaving his side.
In Okinawa, my father witnessed something that would change him forever, and almost cost him his life. After a fierce battle, during the mop-up, he saw a US Marine cut off a breast of a dead Japanese woman and hold it up on his bayonet. This barbaric act incited such rage in my father that he raised his machine gun and prepared to fire on the white marine, but his comrades stopped him. He had witnessed a lot of bloodshed by soldiers on both sides, but in no way did he expect to witness such inhumane cruelty toward civilians. Because of this incident, he went AWOL in Seoul, Korea, where Japanese families had also fled. He spent time with a Japanese family after meeting a young Japanese woman named Myoka, eventually returning to his post in order to avoid court-martial.
Finally, the war was over and my father returned home, bringing with him the spoils of war: two samurai swords, a 7.62 sniper rifle, a much-prized Japanese machine pistol, a Filipino bolo knife, several Japanese kimonos, and a picture of him and Myoka. Those first few weeks at home he said very little or nothing about his experiences until one evening at dinner, his mother asked him, “Well, son, what happened over there?” With that, all the emotions he had been holding back from Mississippi to Okinawa came flooding out, and he began to tell his many stories.
At last he was able to put the nightmare behind him, and he reunited with his Chicago friends, going out to parties, dancing and drinking at the city’s great ballrooms, built in the 1920s. He joined Paul Robeson’s Progressive Party and began attending their meetings. He also started school at the Art Institute of Chicago.
One evening at a party he was introduced to a young girl named Frances, my mother, and it was not long before they agreed to begin a family journey together.
2
Our Family Journey Begins
The house I live in, The friends that I have found, The folks beyond the railroad and the people all around, The worker and the farmer, the sailor on the sea, The men who built this country, that’s America to me.
—Paul Robeson, “The House I Live In,” 1947
I entered into this world in the dead of winter, not far from the cold, windy shores of Lake Michigan, on January 2, 1949, almost four years after the bloodiest of wars and shortly before the beginning of the Korean conflict. By the time my parents finished their personal baby boom, there were four little Dixons and one who did not make it. Diane, a victim of premature birth, paved the way for my entrance. For many years I felt I was living life for both of us. I always imagined what she would have looked like if she had safely made the trip. Joanne came first, taking the crown as the oldest, then came Diane’s short stay, then I arrived, and then sixteen months later, Elmer III emerged into the world. Finally, after two years had passed, Michael, the youngest, made his debut.
We lived with my father’s parents for a couple of years on Chicago’s Southside, at Langley Avenue and 51st Street, while my father completed his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago. When I was about three years old we moved from Chicago to Champaign, Illinois. My father was offered a job as a technical illustrator at Chanute Air Force Base, which put his artistic pursuits on hold. We settled into Birch Village, formerly a military housing facility for air force pilots stationed at the base and their families. It would be our home for the next five years.
Birch Village was made up of dozens of cement brick blocks in clusters, each two stories high, with cold gray cement floors. Though the place looked drab from the outside, this in no way reflected the true character of the village. Many of the families were just like ours, fathered by upstart young Black men who had returned from World War II. These were men who had fought their way out of boot camp in the South just for the right to die in Europe or the Pacific. Their wives were hardworking, strong-willed women. Birch Village was like one big family. You could go anywhere in the village, any time of day, and feel secure.
Here, our family struggled through the same adjustments as most young families. Our parents strove to feed and raise four hungry, needy kids, each with a distinctive personality and specific demands, while my mother and father shifted their focus to parenthood after having spent their earlier lives worrying only about themselves. At twenty-one, my mother had been one year shy of graduating from teachers college before my sister and brothers and I came on the scene. Her time would now be devoted to washing, feeding, loving, disciplining, hugging, and teaching four inquisitive young people.
Joanne coined the names for all the elders in our family. My parents were known as Mommy and Poppy, my father’s parents were called DeDe and Grandada, and my mother’s parents were called Ma and Bop Bop.
Everything seemed perfect and safe during those early years of my life in Birch Village. Everyone looked out for one another. As kids, we roamed around the entire perimeter of the village without a worry or care, getting into mischief and playing hide-and-seek and “Crash the Circle.” In the winter we built snow forts and snowmen, and sometimes huddled against the front door of the house, trying to stay warm, wishing Mommy would let us in. But with four kids, our staying in the two-bedroom house all day was not an option. When naptime came, all four of us had to go to our room whether we wanted to nap or not. My good friends Lyn and Ricky lived in the end unit; their family had just arrived from Mississippi. We spent the night at each other’s houses and walked to school together. It seemed like we would be friends forever.
One of the elders of the village was Mrs. Nailer, toothless and hair in disarray. We kids would sneak into her house, which was full of jars with weird things held in their confines. Everyone looked out for Mrs. Nailer. The only white people we ever saw were the milkman and the bread man, who would sometimes give us hungry kids free jelly rolls.
On a day I remember vividly, my brothers Elmer and Michael followed me down past the fence around the village’s perimeter and over a set of railroad tracks to a large rock quarry. We excitedly climbed the rock mountains as our feet sank in the gravel. We got stuck in a tar pit, barely able to haul ourselves out once we heard Mommy calling us: “Aaron! Elmer! Michael!” We clambered back over the fence with tar-covered shoes and pant legs. I think that was the very first time the three of us ventured out together to do something we knew we weren’t supposed to be doing.
Mommy got a part-time job playing the piano at the local church, and at night, Poppy worked a second job making pizzas. I still remember those nights when, after work, he would bring home delicious Italian pizzas to us waiting kids. And on weekends, Mommy and Poppy would go out to parties with friends from the village, drinking scotch and bourbon, dancing the Bebop and the Swing.
During the summers, Poppy worked in Champaign while Mommy and us kids went up to Chicago to spend those months with Grandada and DeDe, and Ma and Bop Bop. They happened to live around the corner from each other: Grandada