NHS Visitors Share First-Hand Accounts From WWII

By Eliza Hallabeck

“Welcome to World War II,” Newtown High School parent Lois Barber said before introducing students to veterans Anthony Yakacki, Alexander J. Sawchyn, Deacon Joseph Melita, and Bill Duncan.

For multiple periods in a row on Tuesday, June 9, three days after the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the visitors shared their experiences, anecdotes, collections, and facts with students. NHS social studies teacher Anthony Metz and Ms Barber put the day together for students to learn first-hand accounts from the war. Mr Metz said this was the first time the event was put together, and said it will hopefully become a yearly event. Also visiting the class for the day were WWII collector Ken Boughton and Sam Johnson, with the Military Museum of Southern New England in Danbury.

After explaining to students they were lucky to have a veteran there to share his experience from landing on Iwo Jima, where the United States fought to capture the island Iwo Jima from Japan, Ms Barber said, “A third of marines who landed on Iwo Jima, and went on to Okinawa, were killed in action.”

Anthony Yakacki served as a Marine machine gunner in the Fourth Division, and said he landed on Iwo Jima the day of his 19th birthday. As they landed men were singing Happy Birthday to him, “and down I go. Right to your neck in water.”

Now 83 years old and living in Danbury, Mr Yakacki said he was drafted into the service at 18, went to Hawaii for his training, and the first combat he was involved in was at Iwo Jima.

“It was like a football field,” said Mr Yakacki of trying to take the island. “You didn’t get much, and the casualties were heavy. And I mean heavy.”

His stint as a machine gunner did not last long, however. When his corpsman was killed, Mr Yakacki said he took up the mission and helped the wounded. He ended up with 14 dog tags, and one soldier asked him how bad his wound was. The soldier had a first-sized hole in his back.

On the third day, right before it was light, their defenses were penetrated and Mr Yakacki used his left hand to grab the throat of a man as he jumped Mr Yakacki.

“The medics deserve a lot of credit,” he said.

He spent two weeks at Iwo Jima, and at one point when two shells were launched, one hit the right side and one the left of his division. He was on the right; no men on the left survived. All totaled, 6,800 soldiers were killed and 2,500 were wounded in the fight to take the island, Mr Yakacki said.

“The only thing I regret,” said Mr Yakacki, “after all my Marine bodies died there, it hurts me that in 1968 the government gave back the island.”

Mr Yakacki landed on Iwo Jima February 19, 1945, and was honorably discharged from the service on October 5, 1945. He received a Purple Heart and the Asian Pacific Campaign Medal.

“You guys are going to be one of the last generations who have the possibility to meet multiple WWII veterans,” said Ms Barber to students. “So it’s a gift.”

Alexander Sawchyn was the next veteran to speak to the students. Mr Sawchyn, who now lives in Redding, was a 20th Air Force Division pilot for B-29 planes.

“We were going to invade Japan,” said Mr Sawchyn, “and had we invaded Japan, half the people here would not be here.”

Had Japan been invaded, Mr Sawchyn said the United States would have lost half a million service people. That prospect was one of the reasons President Harry S. Truman authorized the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on, respectively, August 6 and 9, 1945. The Japanese government surrendered six days after the second bombing, ending World War II.

During initial bombing raids over Japan Mr Sawchyn said incendiary bombs were primarily used, because Tokyo was mostly paper. The bombers also dropped food and supplies for the American troops in areas that were unreachable from the ground. During other flights he said two landings on Iwo Jima had to be made, because the destination could not be reached and the island was in the middle. He said without the use of Iwo Jima, 25,000 soldiers would have been killed, because the flights would not have made it back.

“Right now 800 of us WWII veterans are dying every day,” said Mr Sawchyn to students. “I’m glad you are here, but remember, never forget what these guys did.”

Mr Sawchyn said he was involved in 12 bombing raids over Tokyo, and the last one bombed beaches. As the bombs hit the beaches, they would explode the land mines placed by the Japanese.

Deacon Joseph Melita flew in the Eighth Air Force as a radio operator for B-17s and B-29s. More than 200,000 members of the force were stationed throughout Great Britain; their mission was to help the Royal Air Force destroy the military and industrial power of Nazi Germany. Deacon Melita, who now lives in Redding, said there were 12,000 B-17 airplanes and 18,000 B-29 planes during WWII, and now only two of each remain. Some of the main targets during his bombing missions included ball baring plants, air craft plants, and oil refineries in Germany. He said a lot of missions involved US soldiers being shot down, and the Germans had the best gun in the war, the .88 millimeter.

“I know,” he said, “because they shot at us.”

Deacon Melita said the Eighth Air Force was very critical for the war. Of the 12 Air Forces, the Eighth lost the most men, 24,000. Ten men flew in an airplane together.

“We were like a family in a plane,” he said. “We took care of each other.”

Deacon Melita said he flew more than 55 missions, and five of those he flew as a volunteer, and “Thank God I came through the missions okay.”

“The Germans could not replace their equipment they were loosing fast enough,” he said as a response to the missions.

He told the students, if they ever visit England to see St Paul’s Cathedral, because the 24,000 names of men lost from the Eighth Air Force are listed there, and each day ceremony is held in turning the page of the names.

One mission he flew stands out in his mind. Mr Melita said during that mission his suit, which helped protect him from cold temperatures, stopped working while the temperature was 55 degrees below zero. When he made it safely to his destination, he read the tag, and the suit had been made in Bridgeport, a plant where his future wife was working at the time.

“Many of our veterans gave their lives,” Mr Melita said, “because freedom sometimes calls for the ultimate sacrifice.”

Mr Melita said out of 400 men in his squadron, “I think we are down to 23 now.”

Bill Duncan was the last veteran to speak to students during the second period at the school. Mr Duncan, who now lives in Danbury, served on the Tenth Army Mountain Division, an elite division trained for winter battle conditions. Mr Duncan said, although he grew up in Brooklyn, he began skiing when he was 6 years old.

Training for the division lasted a couple years, while other areas of the military had soldiers train for 16 to 17 weeks, and, he said; that training kept him out of D-Day.

On February 18, 1945, Mr Duncan said the division climbed a mountain in Italy, where the German troops were stationed.

“We counted on the Germans saying, ‘Nobody in their right minds is going to take this thing,’” he said, “and on February 18, that is exactly what we did.”

He said he was considered a master climber, and it took him seven and a half hours, according to a letter he sent to his mother at the time.

When they reached a German tank, he said one of the men asked him, “in perfect English, what took you so long?”

Years later in Vermont, during a 1984 reunion, a group of men from his division were met by German soldiers who had heard of their reunion. One of the Germans, who had since moved to the United States, was the same man he had met during the war. For years the two continued to meet on V-J Day, August 15, to climb Mount Washington in honor of the day Japan surrendered.

In closing for one of the student groups, Mr Sawchyn told the students when he was in the service, “We were gung ho.” He also asked them to “listen to this history. Carry on, because you have to take care of us old-timers.”