Arizona American Legion post honors Urbana, Ill., Iwo Jima veteran

Jim Kelly proudly wears a hat and T-shirt sent to him by the American Legion in Sacaton, Ariz.. (Photo by Jim Kelly Jr.)

James “Jim” Kelly, 98, of Urbana, a World War II Marine veteran who was on Iwo Jima for the entire 36-day battle, recently received a surprise in the mail from Tony McDaniel, adjutant of the Ira H. Hayes American Legion Post No. 84 in Sacaton, Ariz., and Urbana High School alumnus Gene Atteberry, a classmate of Kelly’s son, James Jr.

          When Atteberry, now living in Baton Rouge, La., attended a flag-raising ceremony for the 75th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima in Sacaton on Feb. 24, he received a Legion Post challenge coin from a tribal elder and wanted to honor the senior Kelly by giving it to him. When Atteberry told the officers at the American Legion, they put together a larger package of two post hats, two T-shirts, four challenge coins, and four pins and sent it all to the 98-year-old Marine veteran.

          A letter from McDaniel enclosed with the gifts explained that they were being given to Kelly “in honor of yourself, our comrade, and your dedicated sacrifice of military service to the best nation in the world. Your sacrifice to service gave veterans like me the opportunity to serve my nation as the democratic free country that it is.”

          Kelly served with the Fifth Service Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment of the Fifth Marine Division. During the battle on Iwo Jima, Kelly lost his friend and fellow Urbana High School classmate, Richard L. Pittman, on Feb. 21, 1945. The local Marine Corps League #1231, formed in 2005, is named in his honor. Kelly also lost three of his service battalion buddies in the battle when they were hit by a mortar round as the four of them were delivering ammunitions and supplies to the front.

Memorial Day 2020 -- Loss is felt every day

Here is the Memorial Day tribute I gave last year that the local newspaper, The News-Gazette, asked to print this year:

CLICK HERE

May 29, 2019, Address for Veterans' Assistance Commission Memorial Day Ceremony at the Champaign County Courthouse

I have always appreciated the opportunity to remember and honor those men and women who died while serving in the militaryand fighting to protect us and preserve the freedoms we enjoy. People attend ceremonies, like the one here today, that are held throughout the country, and they visit memorials to remember those who died. Flags are placed on their graves with respect. These activities have been an American tradition since Memorial Day was first observed not long after the end of the Civil War.
        Of course, it isn’t just today that we should remember and honor their memory and their sacrifices. The families and friends of those now gone don’t just think of them on this one day each year. That loss is felt every day. It remains real. It never goes away. And that is something we all should remember and honor, as well.
        Amid the pain and the loss felt by those left behind, we want them to know that we are with them. That we acknowledge what they are missing because of the cost of freedom. They bear that burden for the rest of us every day of their lives.
        When I was growing up in southern Illinois, there were numerous veterans in the community—a few from the first world war, many from World War II, and later several Korean War veterans. So I was always aware of the significance of Memorial Day—or Decoration Day, as it was called back then. My hometown was a small village of about 75 people and the surrounding family farms. There was a two-story general store with an upstairs area for people to gather for plays, dinners and other occasions--like when the World War II veterans were home on leave or one of them was killed in action. A board on the wall listed the names of those who were serving, and a Gold Star appeared next to the names of those who were killed. There were four Gold Stars. And in later years, the father of one girl who lived nearby was killed in Korea; and two of my classmates from the one-room schoolhouse we attended were later killed in Vietnam.
        I remember them today, and I remember their families.
        Back in the Civil War, my great-grandfather received a medical discharge from the 123rd Regiment, Illinois Infantry, came home and died not long afterward from severe dysentery—as did many veterans of both the Northern and Southern Armies—before Decoration Day began in 1868. My grandfather was only a little over a year old when his father died, leaving another son and two girls to grow up without a father. My great-grandmother raised them alone and lived another 64 years.
        I remember them today, too.
        An older cousin of mine landed on Omaha Beach in Normandy in an M4 Sherman tank in A Company of the 741st Tank Battalion and was brought ashore by an LCT—a tank landing craft. B and C companies were in the amphibious Duplex Drive tanks with a “flotation screen” around them, which was supposed to enable them to float, and were launched 6,000 yards out in the rough waters of the English Channel that day. Many of them immediately sank to the bottom of it. Some of the men were rescued by nearby boats—but not all.
        My cousin made it to the beach, but his tank was soon put out of action, and he and his crew never got another one until before the Normandy breakout some time later. Then they rolled on through to Paris, were at the forefront of the Battle of the Bulge in Belgium, made it through Germany, until finally ending in Czechoslovakia at the end of the war.
        When he came home, my father hired my cousin as a truck driver, and I saw in his actions what is now called PTSD. After years of dealing with that internal pain, as well as severe pain from a permanent injury to his neck, he specifically chose D-Day, June 6, to take his own life, leaving a wife and a young daughter behind. He didn’t die in the war, but from the war.
         I remember him today, and all those men and their families.
        Each of us has someone to remember. Each of us knows family members or friends who died in the military or those who live with such losses. As someone who works with veterans’ organizations and writes military historical fiction, I spend a lot of time talking and working with other veterans and their families.
        There’s one last story I’d like to share with you today. It’s about a battalion commander from the Fifth Marine Division who died in the battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He was also a husband and a father of four at the time. I’ve known three of his children—his sons—well over 10 years now, and I’ve known that they lost their dad in the war. Two of the sons don’t remember him. One of them told me: “All I knew was that I never had a dad. His picture was on the wall.” The oldest son was 5. He remembers seeing his father off in San Diego in late 1944 when the Fifth Division headed for the Big Island of Hawai’i to train for the invasion of Iwo Jima.
        But I recently learned more about their story that makes me better understand why—to this day—they still feel his loss in their lives so profoundly.
        Before going into battle, their father wrote the letter a father never wants to write. It was a farewell letter to his wife—to be opened only if he was killed. During his time overseas, he wrote many letters to his wife, expressing his love for her and his family. But while on Iwo Jima, he only wrote two brief letters: one from “Fox Hole Villa” on February 25th—six days into the battle; and the other from “Tojo’s Cave” on March 2nd. His eldest son told me both of the letters praised the courage of his men, and that, woven throughout, was his father’s unwavering faith in God that he shared with his wife.
        Three days later, he was killed.
        Somewhere along the line previously, he had told his wife that if he were ever to be killed in battle, he wanted to be buried with his men. He was first buried in the Fifth Marine Division Cemetery on Iwo Jima. And when the bodies were exhumed after the war to be sent home, his wife honored his request to be buried with his men by selecting, as his final resting place, the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacificin Hawaii, which is also known as the Punchbowl, rather than bringing him back to his hometown of New Orleans.
        It wasn’t until years later, in 1990, when they were able to visit the grave together as a family for the first time—a widow and her four grown children. The older sister had brought the letters their father had written—including the farewell letter—and they all sat around the gravesite and read each one.
        It was a deeply emotional experience for them. And they never shared that farewell letter outside the family until their mother gave her consent to do so after her death.
        With the family’s permission, I’d like to share some of it with you all here today on this Memorial Day.
        He wrote:
        “There is so little that can be said in this letter, my darling, when our hearts shall go on talking to each other forever no matter how silent is my voice. It would be so utterly unreasonable to believe that my departure means separation.
         “Don’t mourn, babe. I did not go into battle unprepared for death. It wasn’t going to touch me, for sure; this I was supremely confident. You cannot imagine my surprise when it finally came. I firmly believed that I was to return to you and our children. But God thought otherwise; and, darling, if I loved God less despite all His kindness to me, I would not have gone unprepared for fear that it would mean separation from you for eternity.
        “I am leaving you with four small children. Some will pity you, but I don’t because I know you loved me dearly and these children of ours are the living testimonials of our love. Mary Jo and the boys will do much to keep your heart alive. I have great faith in them, babe, because I have faith in you. It doesn’t matter so much whether they be rich, or considered brilliant, or achieve great worldly fame, but so much more important is they know, love and serve God and respect the integral dignity of all men.
        “It is goodbye for a little while only, babe. I always loved you.
        “Yours forever,
        “Johnny”
        Growing up, the kids learned much about their father from their mother and often had to take their big brother’s direction, partially motivated by the instructions given in letters his father wrote to him about his responsibility to look after his younger brothers. My friend treasures those letters. Especially the last one that was written to him on February 18th—the day before the Marines landed on Iwo Jima.
        When their mother died in 2003, the two oldest sons took her ashes to Hawaii to be reunited with her husband.
        Their father was very present in their lives, as I hope the families of all those we honor today also feel. Those servicemen and women sacrificed SO much so that you and I, and all of us, can live in freedom. Let’s not forget that their families have also sacrificed so much. And, sadly, many continue to.
        Today, tomorrow, and always—we will remember them.
        And we do so because, as President Lincoln said in his Gettysburg Address, it is up to us “that these dead shall not have died in vain.”
        Thank you for coming today. It is still up to us.

Recalling a conversation with Burl Ives

The famous singer/actor Burl Ives was from a little town of about 100-150 people called Hunt City in southeast-central Illinois, a few miles from the village of Bellair, where I was born and raised. "From Here to Eternity" author James Jones was born and raised in nearby Robinson.
          In 1982--13 years before his death in 1995--I interviewed Burl as part of a cultural journalism project called Tales from the General Store that published 27 issues in tabloid newsprint format and was distributed in several newspapers throughout east-central Illinois. Those issues are helping to preserve part of the history and culture of the area, and the entire collection is now available for free through the Digital Public Library of America at http://www.idaillinois.org/digital/collection/p16614coll12/search/.

          Burl had much to say about growing up in the area, his career, the musicals in which he performed (Lerner and Loewe's "Paint Your Wagon"), movie roles (Big Daddy in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"), songs he sang ("The Ballad of Barbara Allen," where he sees the same image saw when he first sang it early in his life), and more. Read all about him: http://www.talespress.com/Issue_3_Burl_Ives.pdf.

Fifth Marine Division Association reunion Oct. 16-21 brings Iwo Jima veterans to Urbana-Champaign

Two Iwo Jima veterans and I made our way to the elevator through a group of young students in the lobby of the Sheraton Pentagon City Hotel in Arlington, Va., a few years ago during the annual Iwo Jima Reunion and Symposium to commemorate the Feb. 19 anniversary of the invasion of the island during World War II.

            When we got on the elevator, one of the veterans looked at the other one, chuckled and said, “Those kids are not much older than I was when I saw a bunch of Civil War veterans at a reunion of the battle at Gettysburg.”

            “Yeah,” the other one said, “I remember seeing Civil War vets, too.”

            I remember looking at them and being rather amazed. The Civil War was over in 1865, some 145 years before that night on the elevator. I’d never thought about these World War II veterans having ever seen Civil War veterans.

            The Fifth Marine Division Association is bringing Iwo Jima veterans to Urbana-Champaign Oct.16-21 for its 69th annual reunion. This is the Marine division whose Easy Company, 28th Marine Regiment troops raised both flags on Mount Suribachi, the second one depicted in the iconic photo that Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took that is one of the most recognized photos in history and was made into the statue that overlooks the nation’s capitol from Arlington Cemetery.

            While there are Iwo Jima veterans around the area, people will have the opportunity to meet and greet several of these aging veterans from around the country at the free screening of Oscar-winning filmmaker Arnold Shapiro’s 1985 documentary, Return to Iwo Jima, on Saturday, Oct. 20, at the Virginia Theater. The theater will open at noon with historic displays, and the film will be shown at 1 p.m.

            Shapiro is coming from his home in California to introduce the film and sit on a panel with the Iwo Jima veterans afterward to discuss the battle and the effect it has had on these men. There is no charge for admission, although the FMDA will accept donations to help maintain the association and to develop a digital library of books, interviews, photos, and artifacts for the FMDA museum on the Big Island of Hawai’i where the division trained for the battle of Iwo Jima.

            Years from now, when the Iwo Jima veterans and all the World War II veterans are gone, there will be some aging citizens saying the same thing about seeing these Iwo Jima veterans like the two veterans said about seeing the Gettysburg and Civil War veterans on the elevator that night.

            Looking back, I remember seeing World War I veterans when I was a kid. Some of them hung around the pool hall, playing pool and enjoying life. They were a lively group and had a lot of fun talking trash to each other as they played snooker. One of the group who had lost an arm in the war sat and watched. And I watched him, quite astonished, as he rolled his cigarettes with only one hand.

            But most of the veterans I remember were from World War II and Korea. They had flown The Hump over the eastern end of the Himalayan Mountains in military transport aircraft from India to China to resupply the Chinese war effort of Chiang Kai-shek and the units of the United States Army Air Forces, they had flown missions over Europe and throughout the Pacific and to Japan, they had made landings on Pacific islands and on Omaha Beach during the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe and fought throughout Europe and the Pacific. When I hosted television writer and producer Norman Lear at Ebertfest a couple of years ago, I’d read that he had flown 51 missions over Europe.

            “Really that many?” I asked. “That was a lot of combat missions.”

            “Only 37 of them were combat missions,” he said dryly. 

            The barber who cut my hair for years was a veteran of Iwo Jima. Somebody told me once that one day, they’d walked into his barbershop in the middle of the afternoon. Three or four other men sat around the shop talking. Besides Ben the barber, who had been wounded on Iwo Jima and was being hoisted up the side of the hospital ship and looked over his shoulder and saw the flag on Mount Suribachi just after it was raised, one of them had been relieving the guard a little before 8 a.m. on Ford Island on Dec. 7, 1941, when the Japanese attached Pearl Harbor, another had landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, for the allied invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe. The other two were Marines who served during the Korean War.

            That’s one conversation I would have liked to have heard. And we’ll have the opportunity to hear some of these veterans talk about the experiences they had during the battle for Iwo Jima after the film at the Virginia on Oct. 20.

            Hope to see many of you there because these are things to remember.