Our Honored Veteran

The handsome young man on the left in this photo is Maurice Earl Asay, our dad, granddad, and great grandad.

Dad served in the army after his mission in the latter part of 1944 and most of 1945.

He was first sent to the Philippines. He spent about 6 weeks in Luzon - the main island - where he first landed then was sent to Cebu -the southern island - where he was stationed for the next 6 months. The war officially ended while he was there and the main duty of those stationed there was to round up Japanese soldiers who were scattered in the hills. Eventually 20,000 Japanese soldiers were brought down out to the hills of Cebu.

While he was stationed there a chapel was built for the use of the various denominations. Dad and other LDS soldiers started having classes in the building before the roof was even on it. Their unit had a Catholic chaplain but when the supervising chaplain visited he gave the LDS group 1st choice of meeting time - they picked 10:00 am. An LDS chaplain from another unit visited and set Dad apart as the presiding elder for his group. He was about 23 at this time and was a Private 1st Class. He earned two rows of ribbons and the Infantry Combat Badge.

After his time in the Philippines he was sent to Japan for almost a year where he was made a staff sergeant and put in charge of supervising the quarter master laundry where the workers were local Japanese women. The workers liked him and when he'd get his laundry back even the socks and underwear were ironed.

Part of his rations while he was in the service was a carton of cigarettes every week. These he sold to some of the local Japanese. With the money that he accumulated he bought two authentic Japanese kimonos. He gave one to his sister Anna Mae. Mother has the other one.

Jenny recently asked for a picture of him for a display that they were putting up in her office to honor veterans. The night she came by he didn't have a picture in uniform on hand. He looked through some old pictures the next day and found the one that's on this page now. She originally took his mission picture just to have one of him at the approximate right age to use. She also took a copy of the picture of Andy Wilson that I posted on the blog a few weeks ago. When she came by on Halloween to bring her girls she said that a man that came into her office said he recognized Andy from the picture. She told him that it was her grandmother's cousin who had fought in the Battle of the Bulge - he said "So did I!"