MULLICA TOWNSHIP — At age 10, Joe Iona was walking out of Catholic Mass the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, when he saw Japanese war planes fly over Honolulu to make their attack on Pearl Harbor.
“I was coming out of the Lady of
Peace Cathedral in Honolulu, and all of a sudden you could hear the
noise. The radio was saying, ‘This is the real thing. Take cover,’” he
said. “I saw the Japanese planes go by — flying over heading for Pearl
or Hickam Field.”
He remembers chaos after that,
and made his way home to the apartment he shared with his father in
downtown Honolulu. Later, he saw trucks go by carrying the dead, he
said.
From that day, he was determined to join the military.
From that day, he was determined to join the military.
“I wanted to join the Marines
when I was 13, but they wouldn’t accept me. They told me to come back
later,” the 84-year-old said. So when he was 19 he joined the Army, and
made a career of it, staying in 21 years and spending much of his time
in Asia.
“I was in Army infantry. I did
two combat tours in Korea and two in Vietnam,” Iona said. “I traveled a
lot to Okinawa, Japan and Germany. I took jungle training in Panama,
mountain climbing in Alaska.”
But he made his permanent home in Mullica Township, because he had married a local
girl from the Nesco section, the former Janet Beebe. He met her at a dance in Fort Dix, he said, and they married in 1963.
After retiring from the Army in
1971 he worked for Whitehall Laboratories in Hammonton as a janitor and
later as a compounder of over-the-counter drugs, he said.
Iona retired from Whitehall in
1995, and is a member of the Veterans of Foreign Wars 5043 in Mullica
and the Disabled American Veterans Chapter 66 in Hammonton.
There are no Pearl Harbor
military survivors still living in Atlantic County. The last two were
Allan “Al” Darby, of Absecon, who died in 2012, and Al Matthews, of
Somers Point, who died in 2014.
“A group started the Sons and
Daughters of Pearl Harbor Survivors in the early 1990s,” said Lee Darby,
of Absecon, daughter of Al Darby. “They knew the day would come there
would be no more survivors, so it would be up to the sons and daughters
to relay the story.”
The group’s website is sdphs.org/.
The group’s website is sdphs.org/.
Darby said she knows her father’s stories so well because he talked about his experience there every day.
“It was a form of PTSD (post
traumatic stress disorder),” she said. “Some never talked about it. My
father never stopped talking about it.”
He had a broken leg from playing football and was returning to the hospital from breakfast when the attack started, she said.
“He had just gotten to the
hospital when the planes came over and strafed it,” she said. “Bullets
hit the wall on either side of him. He said one pilot flew so low, he
could see his face. He appeared to be smiling.”
So her dad went inside and helped
move patients away from windows, and to put mattresses against windows.
Later he went outside, and the next wave of Japanese planes arrived and
strafed it.
“There was a giant red cross on
the roof. They knew it was a hospital,” she said. Again, he escaped
injury. Again, he said the Japanese pilots flew so low, Darby could have
thrown a baseball and hit them
Doctors removed his cast and he started walking to rejoin his group of artillery soldiers, limping along the road.
“His leg wasn’t right, it kept
swelling up. He was sleeping in the truck that pulled the howitzer,” she
said. “That kind of stuff touches a daughter, with him being injured.”
She said her dad was a State
Police officer and a big, strong man. But he was haunted by nightmares
all his life about his time as a soldier. When she took care of him in
his later years, she noticed he would brush his arms as he slept, and
she found out he was remembering brushing mosquitos off his arms from
his time in foxholes in New Guinea.
He contracted malaria from mosquitos there, she said, and had recurrences of it for the rest of his life.
Iona’s life was changed after the
attack. His parochial school was closed and made into a hospital until
the end of the war. So he went to school in different Catholic diocese
buildings, he said.
But mainly it made him realize he wanted to join the military.
“I wanted to travel, because I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to stay in Hawaii all my life and work in the pineapple field or the cannery,’” he said. He joined the Army, and the first place he was sent was Japan, en route to Korea.
“I wanted to travel, because I said to myself, ‘I’m not going to stay in Hawaii all my life and work in the pineapple field or the cannery,’” he said. He joined the Army, and the first place he was sent was Japan, en route to Korea.
“I did several tours. I made up my mind I’m staying in,” Iona said.
Contact: 609-272-7219
Twitter @MichelleBPost
http://www.pressofatlanticcity.com/news/breaking/mullica-man-witnessed-planes-chaos-on-day-of-infamy/article_e780453a-9c76-11e5-8554-4734885c2b1f.html
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii took place on December 7, 1941. Just before 8am, Japanese fighter planes dropped bombs and fired bullets and torpedoes on the vessels in Pearl Harbor, destroying or damaging 18 American battleships, nearly 300 airplanes that were in adjacent airfields, and killing almost 2,500 men and wounding 1,000 more.
The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor near Honolulu, Hawaii took place on December 7, 1941. Just before 8am, Japanese fighter planes dropped bombs and fired bullets and torpedoes on the vessels in Pearl Harbor, destroying or damaging 18 American battleships, nearly 300 airplanes that were in adjacent airfields, and killing almost 2,500 men and wounding 1,000 more.
Photo Gallery: Pearl Harbor
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