Last year in my Memorial Day post I mentioned a Navy Corpsman name Bert Cooper, and how he never forgot the sacrifices of two particular men who died during the Okinawa Campaign. It is such a moving story, and so perfectly sums up the reasons for why we have a Memorial Day, that I thought I'd share the story again in his own words.

----Excerpt from Bert Cooper:

I remember one thing vividly about my service. On Okinawa [there was] this big ugly Marine (I swear he was uglier than Ernest Borgnine, who was a good actor, but an ugly actor), he was tough and muscular, and built like a tank; and his men loved him. We had him as a patient and he called me over to his stretcher in the tent there, and he says, "Doc, I don't think I'm gonna make this one." I said, "Oh come on, we never give up." He said, "I know. I just feel it in my body. I'm not going to make it this time." (And he'd been shot up several times on other island campaigns). And he says, "I wonder if anyone will remember me." So I looked him straight in the eye and I said, "I'll remember you Gunny. I'll remember you the rest of my life, I promise you that." So he died that evening.

Across the tent was a young sailor in a stretcher also. And he called me, "Hey Doc." He could hardly talk, it was only a whisper. About the only thing pink you could see were his lips. He was in a gun tub with eight other guys, gunnery men. And it got hit by a kamikaze and killed all seven, he was the only survivor if you can call it a survivor. When we got him he was black as this mic here. And we knew he didn't have much time left. But we kept him going for about a day and a half, and everything we could do... And it was amazing, the doctor even said he didn't know why he didn't die instantly from all these burns. So he calls me and I kneel down to his stretcher. I say, "Yeah gunner". And he says, "Doc, I'm an orphan. Who is there that's gonna remember me?" I says, "I'm gonna remember you. I'll remember you every day of my life. I promise you that. I'll remember you."

To this day, every night I ask myself when I pull the covers up to my chin, I say, "did you remember the sarge and the gunners mate?" And 99 times out of a 100 I thought of them during the day, and once in a while if I didn't , I go to sleep saying, "I thought of you guys." And I've been doing it every day since. It's not a burden. It's a testimonial to what men will do or have to do to save the freedom for the rest of us.

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This is the true meaning of Memorial Day. Thanks to Bert Cooper, those two brave men will never be forgotten.

The other day I made two happy discoveries related to my great-great uncle Israel Goldberg. As Memorial Day approaches, his death at Camp Cabanatuan in 1942 has been much on my mind. This afternoon at a monthly WW2 veteran's luncheon, I spoke with a veteran who was stationed at Clark Airfield in the Philippines right before Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I told him that my uncle Israel was stationed at Clark at the same time. Though with a different group, my friend was quite familiar with my uncle's squadron group and could tell me about a bit of what they went through before the Philippines fell into the hands of the Japanese.

The same day, and shortly after, I spoke with another veteran who said that while he was stationed in the Philippines in 1945 he was called up for a very special duty. For an entire day he participated in the honor guard's final salute for every single man buried at the American War Cemetery in Manila. My uncle's remains would not be transferred to Manila until sometime in 1947, but I felt a bit like this final salute would have included him as well.

I have known both these veterans for a while, but had never yet made the connection to my family in this sense. Especially with the first one, it is probably one of the closest linkages I've been able to make to my uncle before the Bataan Death March. How appropriate to make this connection in honor of my uncle just in time for Memorial Day.