By Richard Bammer

Contemporary Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood once said, “War is what happens when language fails.” And it is certainly hellish, as Civil War Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman famously noted and today’s smartphone videos, seen on cable newscasts, show.

As they do for all, the problems of peace and the hell of war affected the many American veterans of 20th-century wars and also many Japanese-Americans interned during World War II. Their dreams of high school graduation evaporated with the advent of armed global conflict.

During the 1940s, ’50s, ’60s and ’70s, millions of young men and women left high school and their homes to serve in the U.S. military. Consider that more than 14 million were on active duty in 1945 alone, according to Department of Defense data.

Source: Interrupted mission: High school graduation, diplomas offered to veterans, WWII internees