General Discussion

I don't think he was near Iwo Jima, but I recall him telling me he spent time in the Philippines and elsewhere in the Pacific theater and the ship he was on evacuated wounded to Australia as well as back to Pearl Harbor and San Francisco. He was in the Atlantic by June of '45 and his ship made several passages from Europe back to Norfolk in the weeks after D-Day, taking the seriously wounded back to stateside hospitals.

The scenes in the series "The Pacific" that show the US Marines taking R&R in Australia was also something my father did. He got to know his host family in Melbourne very well and went back to stay with them for a time after the war.

The men who fought in the Pacific were doing unbelievable things under extreme conditions, but I am sure that can be said about all soldiers in all wars.

My dad passed away in August of 2000. A WWII and Korea Veteran, followed by 25 years in the CIA.

He would have been 100 years old this past December 21st