My sailor (Kevin) serving aboard the USS Tortuga had the rare privilege of visiting Iwo Jima as part of the 65th Anniversary celebration on February 25th. While he wasn't able to attend the ceremony (he was pulling road guard duty) he did get to see a lot of sights and catch a glimpse of some of the dignitaries in attendance including the Secretary of the Navy.
What really struck me was when he told me about this was his encounter with a WWII vet of the Battle of Iwo Jima. My son said he had to be in his late 80s or early 90s and was sitting there in a wheelchair after the ceremony. My son had the opportunity to talk to him. He said the island was a lot different than when he first saw it. My son asked him if he got to see the ceremony, and like a true sailor, he said, "Hell no! I didn't want to hear all that stuff...that's not why I came here. There were a lot of men lost here....they didn't expect us to come back from here". At that point, this sailor stopped talking and just stared off toward the beach. Kevin said you could tell he was remembering everything he had gone through on that island so many years ago. I think at that moment it really hit home for my son as to what happened there and he found a tremendous sense of kinship with that sailor in the wheelchair/
It is amazing to me and I am so thankful he had the opportunity to do this and actually talk to this great representative of our WWII vets. My Dad was an Army grunt and served in the European Theatre during WWII and my son never had the chance to meet him, so this encounter means even more as he heard it from someone who lived through it to tell future sailors about it.
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