They came out of factories and farms and everything in between, and what was most striking was how young many of them were. They had no idea what lay ahead. Only that the cause - defending America during World War II - was right.
"And when they came home, they never said anything, never complained," said Mary McDonough of Clearwater, whose husband served in the Pacific theater. "They had a job to do, and they just did it."
Saturday afternoon, almost 59 years after the end of World War II, the nation will dedicate a monument to those men and women who fought and died in the war.
The National World War II Memorial in Washington officially opened to visitors April 29. But it is Saturday's dedication, a grand reunion of sorts, that has captured the most attention.
About 100,000 World War II veterans are expected to visit the $174-million granite and bronze monument during a four-day celebration - what could be the largest gathering of World War II vets in one place since the war's end.
Many of them will be from the Tampa Bay area.
Harry Begle, 79, of Brooksville has diabetes, heart problems and high blood pressure and has had two knee replacements, but he'll be there.
"I'm going, you better believe it," he said. "After all these years, the nation finally has a memorial to all those people in this great war. . . . "I told the wife, "I don't care what happens, we're going.' "
Bill Allen, 85, Largo
In the fall of 1941, the 194th Tank Battalion was made up of National Guard members from California, Illinois, and 32 guys from in and around St. Joseph, Mo. One was Bill Allen. Ten hours after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Japanese aircraft attacked Allen's unit at Clark Field in the Philippines. Allen's unit eventually withdrew to the Bataan Peninsula as the Japanese invasion force tightened its noose around the island.
"The surrender came early one day in April," he said. "They searched us, and then directed us to begin what turned out to be the Bataan Death March."
With little more than bananas and rainwater to sustain them, the men marched about 60 miles in 10 days. Those who lagged behind were sometimes shot, clubbed or stabbed to death by guards.
"It was really a tough situation," Allen said. "The Japanese told us we were cowards and bad soldiers. That they would never surrender.
"We were dirt in their eyes."
Once they reached the prison camps, life wasn't much better.
"So many died in the camps," Allen said. "Malaria was such a killer and the filthy conditions. At one time, I weighed less than 100 pounds."
As the Philippines was about to be liberated, Allen and several thousand other Americans were loaded aboard unmarked cargo ships bound for work camps in Japan. "Many of my friends were lost being transferred," he said. "Our ship was bombed by the American Navy, but not sunk. They didn't know we were inside."
Allen worked in a copper mine until the war's end. When he returned home, he graduated from the University of Kansas, got his law degree and became a county judge outside of Kansas City, Kan. He and his wife, Maxine, have two daughters and five grandchildren.
"Over the years, I've been asked to make speeches about my POW experience," he said. "Sometimes I can hardly complete it because those terrible memories come back to me."
"I don't think the memorial is overdue," he said. "It's appropriate that it's happening now. Our country is busy. Our military is busy. There's a lot going on.
"I just hope I don't get too choked up."
Robert Jorgensen, 76, St. Petersburg
It was the summer of 1944, and most of the young men in Bob Jorgensen's East St. Louis neighborhood were off fighting the war. "I didn't want to be the only one left," he said. But he was just 16. And his father was a city commissioner and the person who screened local enlistment applications.
He thought he could never slip his application past his own father, but that is exactly what he did. His father didn't notice until the Navy selected him.
On Jan. 3, 1945, he turned 17 aboard Landing Ship Tank 860. Not long afterward, his ship was sent to Okinawa, Japan, to begin preparations for an invasion.
He remembers listening at night for the clapping sound.
"Suicide boats that rowed up to our ships," he said. "When they'd get to within 10 or 15 feet, they'd turn on their engines and blow up the ship."
He retired after 30 years in the service and, at 76, believes he is one of the youngest living World War II veterans in America.
"The memorial is way overdue," he said. "Years and years overdue. For people like me, so patriotic throughout my lifetime, it kind of downs you. Makes you feel you were overlooked."
Jorgensen was diagnosed with bone and lung cancer in 1990. Doctors gave him two months to live.
He has six children and seven grandchildren, but he's going by himself. His wife, Hazel, is too frail to make the trip.
"I'm wearing my uniform," he said. "I can still fit into it. And I'm going to be buried in it.
"But that," he added with a laugh, "is 20 years down the line."
Robert Alexander Jr., 78, Spring Hill
Bob Alexander had quit school and was working for the Evening Star newspaper in Washington for 75 cents an hour when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. A week later, he joined the Navy.
Like Bob Jorgensen, he was just 16.
"My parents weren't happy," he said. "But . . . my dad signed the papers that said I was 17. Later on, I learned there were kids 14 and 15 who snuck in."
He served in the Pacific aboard the USS Wichita, a heavy cruiser, and it wasn't long before his ship came under attack from Japanese warplanes. On Jan. 30, 1943, he watched as another heavy cruiser, the USS Chicago, was sunk by enemy torpedoes. "It was right in front of us," he said. He had played trumpet in junior high and high school, so among his other duties, he served as one of the ship's buglers.
A month after the war ended, his ship was sent to Nagasaki, Japan, where the second atomic bomb was dropped just a few weeks earlier.
"There was nothing left of the city. We went on shore and walked through the ruins. It was still radioactive, but no one told us. Then a train brought in about 9,000 Allied POWs."
"The only reason they survived," he said, "was they were in the mines working underground.
"We got together a group of musicians and played California Here I Come. And we had doughnuts and cookies for those who could take it."
He was discharged a few months later, returned home and finished high school. He worked as a draftsman for nearly 40 years before retiring to Spring Hill in 1987.
Bob and Judy have been married 60 years. They have three daughters and seven grandchildren.
"Just my wife and I are going," he said. "We're driving our Buick Century. I can't afford to fly up.
"I doubt I'll see any shipmates. We used to have reunions every few years. Then we just closed up because too many were dying or were too old to travel."
He said he used to get his bugle out of the closet and play taps at military funerals.
"But the VA came out with a tape. They just push a button now."
Tom McDonough, 77, Clearwater
His supply ship, the USS Castor, was ordered to Japan when the war ended. It docked on the western coast of Japan, outside the town of Sasebo.
"When we went ashore, they gave us a bag with a sandwich and an orange, and we gave it to the kids," he said. "The adults would pull it away from them, so we had to make them eat it in front of us.
"We stayed about a month. The whole city was completely wiped out."
McDonough was practically a kid himself. He grew up in Long Island, N.Y., and had enlisted at 17.
It was only later that he fully realized the danger he had been in. His ship carried ammunition. There wouldn't have been much left if it had been attacked.
"But when you're young, you don't think about things like that," he said. "I'll tell you what, you wouldn't have to worry about sharks if you got hit. You're already halfway to heaven or hell."
He worked for Con Edison in New York for 31 years and retired in 1979. He and his wife, Mary, have five children and 16 grandchildren.
The couple and one of their daughters will make the trip. And it will be doubly special for the McDonoughs. Their 50th wedding anniversary is Saturday.
"If you didn't go in the service, you felt like an enemy agent," McDonough said. "I guess there are some like that today. But the people (in the service) today are more professionals. It was a different generation."
Although he's glad World War II vets are being honored, he said, "What's sad is that a lot of guys who served are dead now. And a lot of guys are in bad shape and can't get make it.
"But better late than never.
"That's the way you gotta look at it."
Henry Gorski, 86, Seminole
Assigned to an Army medical corps, Hank Gorski found himself in North Africa, Sicily, Italy, southern France and finally, Germany.
But it was the 10 days he spent at the Dachau concentration camp at the war's end that left the deepest impression.
"We got there the day the camp liberated," Gorski said. "The people were just bones. The camp was surrounded with electrical fence and a moat. They had a gas chamber outside the camp. . . . "People who survived told us they could hear the screaming. And then it got quiet.
"The German civilians said they didn't know about it. But Munich is only 10 miles away. And there were about 20 railroad cars loaded with dead bodies. Thousands of men, women and children."
Three months after witnessing unspeakable horrors, Gorski was back home in Detroit. He arrived on a Friday and on Monday started back at the shop where he worked before the war.
He would rarely talk about what he had seen in Germany.
Hank and his family moved to Florida in 1957, and he helped build power plants before he retired.
"I'm really looking forward to going to Washington, especially because most of my family is going with me," he said. "But I won't meet anybody from my outfit. Most of the other guys were older than me, and I doubt they're still alive."
Even so, he bought a new suit and shoes for the occasion.
"We were promised a lot of things when we got home," he said. "But most of what we got we had to do on our own. Even the monument.
