
                         THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
                 Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994                    TAG: 9406090013 
SECTION: FRONT                     PAGE: A10    EDITION: FINAL  
SOURCE: Medium 
DATELINE: 940611                                 LENGTH:

HONOR PACIFIC WAR WARRIORS ALSO

{LEAD} This past Memorial Day was an insult to those of us who served in the Pacific Theater during World War II.

All of the news media focused on D-Day in Normandy - nothing about the exploits of the Army, Army Air Corps., the U.S. Navy and the U.S. Marine Corps from Wake Island, Midway and finally Okinawa.

{REST} Even though I was a Marine and we jokingly referred to General MacArthur as ``Dugout Doug,'' I hold a deep reverence for him because he and Admiral Nimitz fought a fanatical enemy - the Japanese - on shoestring supplies with too few men and too little equipment.

We had the kamikazes from the air and an enemy that fought us to their deaths, and we sealed many caves with satchel charges because the Japanese would not surrender.

The heroics of the U.S. Navy alone, fighting off the kamikazes at Okinawa and the aircraft carrier Franklin limping all the way home to New York City after losing about 75 percent of its personnel, is a war story that should be told time and time again.

Our Navy and Marine pilots shot down more than 1,400 Japanese aircraft at Okinawa alone. I was there and saw it.

Our fighter pilots would follow kamikazes right through our own ack-ack (anti-aircraft guns) to blow them out of the sky and to protect our ships.

I could go on and on about the Pacific war, Tarawa, Bougainville and (let's not forget) Guadalcanal and the awe-inspiring photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.

Your paper and the TV media made a grave error to completely ignore us grunts and others in the Pacific war. You forgot about our boys being taken prisoner in the Philippines and their death march - General Wainwright right down to Sgt. John Basilone, USMC, recipient of the Medal of Honor post-humously at Guadalcanal.

We had no freed civilians to greet us and shower us with wine and cognac as they did in Europe. All we did was mop up, get aboard ship and go back to training again for another island and foothold to take us closer to Japan.

I think all of us Pacific World War II vets deserve an apology from your paper.

JOSEPH LOMBARDY JR.

Virginia Beach, June 2, 1994

by CNB