Area veterans remember victory in the Pacific

Veterans from the Greatest Generation seem to share an uncanny knack for numbers, remembering dates and figures from decades ago with precision and clarity.

“I was in the service three years, three months, 14 days, two hours and 45 minutes,” Navy World War II veteran Tom Webb of Sneads Ferry said. “But who’s counting.”

It’s little wonder, then, that many of these men can remember exactly what they were doing 65 years ago today, when Japan surrendered to the United States aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, and World War II effectively came to an end.

Webb, 86, spent the early years of World War II in the Atlantic Ocean, aboard the light cruiser U.S.S. Omaha, and was aboard ship at Okinawa, Japan, in late summer 1945.

“I was at Okinawa with the Marines, but nothing ever happened to us,” Webb said. “I was one of the lucky ones, I guess.”

Webb recalled that he was standing deck watch when the announcement came that President Harry Truman had dropped atomic bombs on Japan, bringing the war to a close. The jubilation among the troops, Webb said, bordered on violence.

“They started shooting the biggest things they could find to make a noise and make a light,” he said. “I crawled under the thickest piece of metal that I could find, and that’s where I stayed the rest of the night.”

Webb’s precaution was a wise one, he said: He later learned that a number of troops had been killed by falling ammunition discharged in the celebration.

George Meyer, of Jacksonville, was a 20-year-old Marine private first class on Sept. 2, 1945, training in Guam after having fought for three months in Okinawa, and helping to secure the island at the end of June.

Meyer, 84, had believed he would be sent back to Japan for more fighting.

“We were training on Guam to make amphibious landings in Japan, and to make a long story short, the happiest day was when we heard on Guam that we dropped the atomic bomb,” he said.

Word of Japan’s surrender was not received quietly.

“There was dancing, jumping off ships, screaming, and hollering,” Meyer said. “We were thankful that President Truman made that decision.”

Because of the events of August and September 1945, some never saw the fight.

“I was at Parris Island,” Jacksonville resident Frank McNeive said. “I was supposed to go to the war, but I didn’t, and I graduated shortly after that … The war ended, and everything stopped dead in its tracks.”

McNeive would serve in the Marine Corps for the next 30 years, retiring as a sergeant major.

American troops paid a heavy price to help bring the war to an end: 416,800 U.S. troops were killed, including 24,511 Marines and 62,614 sailors.

With such sharp recollections of those days in the Pacific, the veterans of World War II might be expected to celebrate anniversaries such as V-J Day. But many mark it soberly, or not at all.

Webb said he did not plan to acknowledge the day in any special way.

“I don’t have a thing,” he said, “Only a fuzzy memory.”

Meyer said he would note the anniversary the way he typically does:

“I usually go to church,” he said. “I’m thankful I’m alive. And I pray the ones that didn’t make it are resting in peace.”