05/30/2023
Memorial Day 1945
By Bill Nugent
My dad, Paul C. Nugent (1921 to 1997) spent Memorial Day 1945 on the island of Okinawa south of Japan. It was in the midst of the battle of Okinawa the last great battle of World War II.
He'd been sent from the Philippines to Okinawa during the battle, arriving in mid May 1945 on day 46 of what turned out to be an 82 day battle. 13,000 US service men were killed in that battle, more than all that were lost in Iraq and Afghanistan over 20 years.
Over 100,000 Japanese servicemen lost their lives. An even larger number of Japanese civilians were killed. More people died in that battle, including civilians, than in the atom bomb attack at Hiroshima.
36 US Navy ships were sunk in the battle most of them by kamikazes. My dad, for a time, was on an LCT landing ship waiting to land on the east shore of Okinawa. The deck was loaded with 55 gallon drums of high octane fuel. And then two or three kamikazes showed up but fortunately they were diverted and didn’t hit anything.
Dad was a technician specializing in repairing radio equipment and radar. He was assigned to a US Marine corps Air squadron to maintain the radios and radar on the plains. A typhoon came through with winds of 180 miles an hour and damaged or destroyed most of the planes. Not long after that another typhoon came through with similar wind speed, causing devastation.
I wonder how he and the other men of the Marine Corps and the other branches of service celebrated that Memorial Day. The Air raids, the artillery barrages, the stench of rotting bodies all around surely made a deep impression on their young minds.
They learned firsthand that freedom is not free. And it is so sad to see our freedoms slipping away in the early 21st century as the Federal law enforcement three letter agencies (CIA, FBI, DOJ) are weaponized against patriotic Americans. We've got to reclaim our country!
