All sorts of war stories are tales about soldiers on a mission to find the enemy.
This war story is about a man on a mission, too -- a mission to find his father.
Peter G. Russell was just 17 when he enlisted in the Navy during World War II in hopes of tracking down his father, who was being held as a prisoner of war in Japan.
"He was taken prisoner when I was 14," says Russell.
So for all those years, the teenager had been waiting to "get in the fight, for crying out loud -- don't just sit at home. The anxiety was just driving me nuts."
The Pleasant View veteran recounts his unique father/son story Monday during the Remembering World War II Veterans Lecture Series in Salt Lake City.
The monthly event, now kicking off its eighth season, highlights Utah veterans and their wartime experiences.
Although Russell, 84, says he isn't sure how he was selected for the series, he adds, "I happen to have a good story and I'm willing to share it with anybody who's willing to listen."
'Too skinny'
Russell's father, Leal H. Russell, was a construction worker who went to work on Wake Island, in the Pacific, to build an air base.
His dad was there about a year before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and also Wake Island, in 1941, says Russell, whose family was then living in LeGrande, Ore. The 1,160 construction workers on Wake were all eventually taken prisoner; most were sent to China, but Russell's father was shipped to a POW camp in Japan.
Back at home, in late 1944, 17-year-old Peter Russell quit high school to sign up for the Navy. But, "I flunked. I was too skinny; I didn't weigh enough for my height."
He appealed to an officer in charge, explaining his father was "rotting away in Japan" and he had to go find him.
"He couldn't stand to hear a kid whine, so he let me in," quips Russell, a graduate of the University of Utah and a retired Thiokol scientist.
Russell says his "crazy" scheme was to somehow get on a gunboat, get to Japan, jump off the boat and swim to shore, and "then tell the good Lord, 'I'm here -- show me where the prison camp is.' "
He later found out there were 187 prison camps in Japan.
On the lookout
After completing basic training in San Diego, Russell was sent to school in Hawaii to become a signalman and then assigned to the USS Pennsylvania. Once he was aboard, the battleship headed west -- first to Wake Island, then to Okinawa, where it was hit and badly damaged by a Japanese torpedo.
And then the war ended -- Japan had surrendered.
"There was no celebration, no noise, no cheering, no nothing on our ship," Russell recalls. "We were working to keep the thing afloat. We couldn't take the time to celebrate."
The Pennsylvania was towed to a dry dock in Guam and it was there that signalman Russell began communicating with other ships coming in.
"Have you been to Japan?" he would message via signal lamp. "Do you have any prisoners of war?"
One day -- Sept. 26, 1945 -- a hospital ship arrived. Yes, it had been to Japan. Yes, it had POWs aboard. And finally, yes: "Your father's aboard here now."
Seaman Russell was shortly on a water taxi to the hospital ship, where he boarded and found himself greeting his father.
"We fell into each other's arms and went and had a glorious reunion, five years to the month (since) I'd said goodbye to him," he says.
His father asked, "How'd you find me?" and Russell says he didn't dare tell him about his crazy scheme. So he answered, "I just came looking for you Dad."
Coming full circle
In the end, Russell says, "The whole thing, it kind of fell into place."
His father was off to the mainland the next day on the hospital ship; Russell was in Guam for a few weeks until his battleship was seaworthy enough to travel to Bremerton, Wash. He spent several months on the ship there and finished his Navy service on a destroyer in San Francisco.
His time in the Navy was a "glorious two years," Russell says, and, "I thank the good Lord I was there."
Looking back, the veteran, whose story was included in the 2010 book "Fathers of Faith" (Covenant Communications), says he figures he made two mistakes related to the whole experience.
One was not getting a photograph taken of him and his father together on the hospital ship.
"The second mistake was I didn't read his diary before he died (in 1957)," he says. "I've got a million questions now."
The Remembering World War II lecture series continues every second Monday through May. The East Street Band, directed by C.J. "Sandy" Santoro of Ogden and featuring some Top of Utah musicians, performs music of the 1940s and '50s before each lecture, at 6:10 p.m.