Veterans share stories of service during MAPS roundtable - Akron ...

For the fourth year in a row, the Military Aircraft Preservation Society (MAPS) museum in Green hosted a Veteran?s Roundtable.

This year?s veterans included Jim Mitchell (Army), Owen Stahl (Navy), moderator Dale Campbell (Marines), Jim Jarvis (Navy) and George Snyder (Army). Mitchell and Snyder were in the Army during the Korean War but did not serve there. Campbell spent a year in Korea, and Stahl and Jarvis both served in World War II in the Pacific.

The roundtable focused on Jarvis and Stahl, who is the former mayor of Hartville. Stahl discussed his service onboard a Landing Craft Support (Large) 25 during the Okinawa campaign in the spring of 1945.

The ship was involved in protecting the radar picket line, which surrounded the island to protect the American fleet from Japanese Kamikazes.

He said that on his last engagement, one destroyer was sunk and another severely damaged. His ship was also hit but shot down two Japanese Zero fighters, one of which crashed into the craft support, killing one crewman and wounding 11 others. ?

Jarvis was on the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35).

He volunteered for duty on the ship while she was being repaired at Mare Island in San Francisco after suffering battle damage. After the repairs were finished, the ship picked up a large crate that was stored down in the aviation hanger where Jarvis worked. He and his fellow shipmates often stood on the crate while working on the ship?s floatplanes. He learned later that the crate contained the first atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima that August.

After delivering the bomb to Tinian, the Indianapolis headed to the Philippines. It was sunk enroute by a Japanese submarine. Her distress calls were not picked up, and more than 900 of the crew?s nearly 1,200 men survived the sinking. When the survivors were finally discovered, only 317 had lived.

The roundtable is part of an effort to record the stories of the men and women who served the United States in war and peace. It focuses on area veterans and the service and sacrifices they have given.

Wednesday?s video will be aired prior to Veteran?s Day on Time Warner Cable Channel 11 in the Hartville/Lake Township viewing area. Times can be found on www.timewarnercable.com.

Source: http://www.thesuburbanite.com/news/x1831581376/Veterans-share-stories-of-service-during-MAPS-roundtable

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