Page 5 - Iwo Jima Album

In November, 2011, I sat down with my father, Ralph Jesse Carrington, and recorded memories of his service in World War II, related as we went through an album of photographs from that time. Some of the stories I had heard in bits and pieces over the years, but I had never heard it all put together with the photos. In fact, I don’t recall ever having seen the album before.With my father 87 years old and many of the memories as indistinct as the faded images in the photographs, the e ort was long overdue.Of course, others have told the story of Iwo Jima and the Paci c war years in great detail for the history books. This album is meant only to relate my father’s role in that tale.These are photographs and memories from a brief period of one man’s life. However, it was a period of our collective history when hundreds of thousands of men and women came together from varied backgrounds with common purpose, sacri cing years and families, limbs and lives, and changed the fate of the world.No one person’s story in that collective is insigni cant. Each memory is to be treasured and honored.These are Dad’s, preserved here with love and gratitude.– Cyndy Carrington Milleriii