Dear Editor:

I read with great interest the well-crafted column on Aug. 30, Joe's Journal, Memories by Joe Gelarden and you had me hook, line and sinker, until the very end of the column.

With great clarity you highlighted V-J Day and especially the horrifying experiences suffered by Boothbay's Annemarie vanDeventer Apollonio in a Japanese POW Camp.

While I'm grateful for all history relayed especially on a personal level, and as hellish as Annnarie's experience was, I feel you took the liberty of grandstanding this horrific historical account and twisted it to serve as a platform to sound off against families in current time on our US-Mexican border.

Ending your column, you wrote: “Not long ago, photos of crying immigrant children triggered... (her tears)...once again.”

From a poignant column now twisted in a subtle manner to one’s own political beliefs.

There is no question that it is sad and induces tears indeed seeing children separated from their parents under any circumstance, but on the US-Mexican border, these are not immigrants, they are entering our country illegally. Many of the so-called parents are not parents but drug and human traffickers posing as parents.

Yes, by any account being in a Japanese POW Camp or our US-Mexican border is indeed heartbreaking to see those who really are with their parents endure any type of separation.

But to in a subtle manner to blend both in to your column does a disservice to Annemarie's survival then in 1945 with those today in 2018 trying to illegally cross into our country.

Robert B. Devost

Jericho, Vermont