THE SHADOW OF SACRIFICE - Donald Deignan D

A multifaceted and timely work of nonfiction military and social history, THE SHADOW OF SACRIFICE: The True Story of a Pearl Harbor Survivor and his Nephew and Namesake redeems an outstanding “Debt of Honor.”  Seventy-five years ago, “Remember Pearl Harbor!” was the poignant and powerful slogan which rallied a badly shaken nation and galvanized the American people to win World War II.  On December 7, 1941 twenty-seven year old Private First Class Joseph J. Deignan of Worcester Massachusetts (pronounced DEGGNAN) was strafed by low-flying Japanese war planes while he was serving as an Army Field Artilleryman at Schofield Barracks on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.  Little more than two months later, Deignan was dead.  His mother believed that her youngest son, baptized as Donald, succumbed to wounds received as a result of the attack on Pearl Harbor and its military environs.  After World War II Donald’s oldest brother, Frank, a U.S. Army veteran of the Pacific Campaign, came home, married, and fathered a son.  Frank named that boy “Donald” in memory of his lost, heroic youngest brother.  Donald Joseph’s “supreme sacrifice” has positively influenced the life and career of his nephew and namesake.  In fact, the bequest of his uncle’s name has proven to be both a talisman and a blessing to Don Deignan, the author of this book. Although the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor is the pivotal event in THE SHADOW OF SACRIFICE, this work is not primarily about that occurrence.  Rather, chance, choice and consequence are the themes which inextricably link two spiritually connected lives together over the span of much more than a century.  From their impoverished family origins in pre-Famine Ireland down to the present day, Donald Joseph Deignan and his nephew, Don Deignan, have been bound together by ties of Faith, shared adversity, abiding love and mutual loyalty.  Donald Joseph grew up in poverty and endured unemployment after which he met a sudden and violent death in wartime.  From birth, his nephew and namesake has had to confront and overcome the continuing challenges posed by severe physical disabilities including visual impairment and cerebral palsy.  Growing up in the 1950s and the 1960s in the segregated residential environment of Perkins School for the Blind, young Don Deignan needed a source of external inspiration and strength to enable him to survive and ultimately to flourish personally and professionally later on in adulthood.  Don found what he needed, as a boy, in the supposedly exemplary life, death and legacy of his “Uncle Donald” who became for him, “A Pearl Harbor Hero.”  Don’s intention then was to honor Donald’s memory by living a full and successful life of which his late uncle would be proud.  As an adult and a professional historian, however, Dr. Donald Deignan began to question the validity of hitherto unexamined family lore surrounding his illustrious ancestor.  In 2005, he began more than ten years of systematic, scholarly research on what was to become THE SHADOW OF SACRIFICE. Based on extensive research in primary sources, this book will nonetheless be readily accessible and interesting to general readers.  It combines the flow of a novel with the allure of a mystery story.  Treating the four great themes of Immigration, The Great Depression, World War II and the evolution of Disability Rights, readers will find much here to savor and to reflect upon in THE SHADOW OF SACRIFICE.