A veteran's story

For John Lewis, 93, hearing blowing whistles and firing guns that signaled the Japanese surrender in Okinawa in 1945 is one of the few images of the war that remains in his mind — and most of them are memories he had never shared with his wife of 13 years, Marion, until he was interviewed for this article.

Being stationed on a group of islands outside Okinawa was brutal, he said. The fear never dissipated that a Japanese kamikaze (suicide) plane could dive into an American ship at any moment. 

But the lieutenant was more afraid of watching 40-foot walls of water crash onto his ship when typhoons struck on the Pacific Ocean. One man washed overboard during one of the storms, he recalled.

After another fellow soldier went on shore to Okinawa to find souvenirs, a search-and-rescue team was sent to find him. He did not come back alive.

When the Allies’ invasion started in Okinawa, he watched from afar as the whole city glowed with gunfire.

Before going to the Pacific, Lewis was in the Caribbean, where he patrolled the air looking for German submarines in the waters around islands like Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Dominican Republic and Aruba.

All the while, what sticks out to him now is how young everyone was in World War II. 

“An old man was 28 or 29,” he said.

These days, life is a little different for Lewis. He and Marion now yell the battle cry “Roll Tide” and attend all home and championship games for The University of Alabama’s football team, as well as any other sporting events possible. After all, he had received a degree in chemical engineering from the University before enlisting in 1942 at age 22.

This month Lewis will attend the fourth-grade Veterans Program at Mountain Brook Elementary with his step-granddaughter, Payton Flynn, one of Marion’s 11 great-grandchildren who live in Mountain Brook.

After that, the couple is hoping to pack Marion’s “Lucky Touchdown Peanut Brittle” and head to Pasadena for their fourth national championship game.