LEWISTON – With their own numbers dwindling week by week, members of American Legion Post 22 paid tribute Thursday night to heroes of two World War II events in which large numbers of America’s armed forces were lost.
It was a small gathering, but veterans of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines who saw duty in Europe and the Pacific, as well as during the Korean and Vietnam wars, were present.
They participated in a ceremony marking 60 years since the Marines landed on the small Pacific island of Iwo Jima. That took place on Feb. 17, 1945.
As a half-dozen members of the post held candles, Adjutant Jerry DerBoghosian told what he saw on the day of the Iwo Jima invasion from his post aboard the heavy cruiser USS Canberra just off the beaches.
Almost 6,000 Americans died in the first and second waves of the assault on the remote volcanic island, DerBoghosian recalled. Between 22,000 and 23,000 Japanese soldiers also died in battles on the island, he said.
DerBoghosian told of the naval bombardments of Iwo Jima from mid-1944 to early 1945.
“As we pulled away with the task force, I took my binoculars out and got on the fantail of the Canberra and I could see the Japanese soldiers coming out of their foxholes in the volcanic ash waving their Japanese flags,” he said.
The island was not secured by American forces until a month later.
The meeting also was an opportunity to recognize another February event – the sinking of the Army transport SS Dorchester off Newfoundland on Feb. 3, 1943. On that occasion, four U.S. Army chaplains gave up their own life jackets to young soldiers, and they went down with the ship.
Post 22 Commander Richard Giem related the story of the four chaplains – two were Protestants, one was Catholic and one was Jewish – aboard the troop transport ship that was torpedoed by a German U-boat. About 900 lives were lost in the sinking.
Tom Naragon of Lisbon, commander of the American Legion’s 2nd District, attended the meeting.
He said, “One of the things the American Legion does is gather our strength through our numbers, just as the four chaplains did in gathering their strength by their unity aboard the Dorchester.”
Giem also paid tribute to Georgette Berube, Lewiston’s longtime state legislator, who died Wednesday. He said she was a strong supporter of the American Legion and all veterans.
Bert Mathieu, a member of Post 22 since 1945, offered harmonica renditions of the service hymns for the four branches of the armed forces.
DerBoghosian noted that the majority of Post 22’s members are from the World War II and Korean War eras, and the Lewiston post is learning of the deaths of two or three members every week.
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