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We’re less than five months away from 2020, the year that will mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. There will be many commemorations: the liberation of the concentration camps, Victory in Europe Day, the dropping of the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Victory Over Japan Day and more.

My grandfather, Rauni Honkala, served in the Army during World War II. The only story he shared with me about his military service was the time he tripped and fell on his ship and knocked out all of his teeth (which is why he had dentures that he liked to expel from his mouth without warning). He also constantly reminded me that if the United States had not dropped the atom bombs on Japan, I would not be alive. In August 1945, he was on his way to the Pacific.

My grandfather died in 2014, just weeks after I started a new job as the managing editor of a publication covering military and veterans issues. Before that, I had lived overseas for four years. I never really took the opportunity to talk to him about his time in the Army or the broader implications of World War II. Seventy-five years on, it makes me question what lessons from the war will be lost with his generation.