
In the spring of 1945, Betty Buttala was just 8 years old when her uncle, without explanation, picked her and one of her brothers up early from school and drove them to their Chicago home in silence. When Betty entered the house, she found her mother on the floor, crying. Her mother had just received a telegram stating that her son Justice, a prisoner of war in Japan, had been killed in a prison fire. One by one, Betty’s five other siblings arrived home to learn their brother’s fate. “It was the saddest day of our lives to see our mother crying,” Betty said. “It was just a crying day.”