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Donald Losey (Fallhiker), MM1
to remember
Tebo, Vernon Lawrence, LT.
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Casualty Info
Home Town Chicago, IL
Last Address 1512 East Gonzalez St Pensacola, FL
Casualty Date Apr 15, 1945
Cause MIA-Died in Captivity
Reason Intentional Homicide
Location Japan
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Courts of the Missing at the Honolulu Memorial - Honolulu, Hawaii
The following history has been provided by Mr. Richard B. Cogdal of Urbana, Illinois, who was Mr. Tebo's shipmate.
"Our ship was an escort carrier--the Makassar Strait CVE91. I was assigned to the ship before it was commissioned, April 27, 1944. Our ship sailed all around the Pacific from that date: to Hawaii, the Admiralities, the Marshalls, Guam, Saipan, Tinian, etc. We at first delivered supplies and personnel all over the Pacific Ocean. Then in January, 1945, Air Squadron VC97 came aboard and we became a war ship. At Okinawa and Iwo Jima our planes covered refueling operations at sea--refueling the large carriers and cruisers, etc. The air squadron protected these operations. At Okinawa we delivered supplies, ammunition and rockets to the marines. The air squadron also protected these operations. The squadron also made strikes at several Japanese bases in the area. Lt. Tebo was shot down near a place called Kerma Rhetto on April 16, 1945. He was pilot and his crew consisted of a navigator and a bombardier. The crew had dropped their bombs and had flown back to photograph results when the tail of their plane was shot off. The 3 men parachuted to the ground but were rescued and taken prisoner. They were questioned and tortured and dragged through the village and killed. Two of them were beheaded. We did not know about all this until several years later. The village people were shocked and devastated by this cruelty. They now have erected a shrine in the village to honor these 3 men." - taken from University of Illinois records, Web site above, and Mr. Richard B. Cogdal, Urbana, Illinois
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Okinawa Gunto Operation
From Month/Year
March / 1945
To Month/Year
June / 1945
Description The Battle of Okinawa, codenamed Operation Iceberg. was fought on the Ryukyu Islands of Okinawa and was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War of World War II. The 82-day-long battle lasted from early April until mid-June 1945. After a long campaign of island hopping, the Allies were approaching Japan, and planned to use Okinawa, a large island only 340 mi (550 km) away from mainland Japan, as a base for air operations on the planned invasion of Japanese mainland (coded Operation Downfall). Four divisions of the U.S. 10th Army (the 7th, 27th, 77th, and 96th) and two Marine Divisions (the 1st and 6th) fought on the island. Their invasion was supported by naval, amphibious, and tactical air forces.
The battle has been referred to as the "typhoon of steel" in English, and tetsu no ame ("rain of steel") or ("violent wind of steel") in Japanese. The nicknames refer to the ferocity of the fighting, the intensity of kamikaze attacks from the Japanese defenders, and to the sheer numbers of Allied ships and armored vehicles that assaulted the island. The battle resulted in the highest number of casualties in the Pacific Theater during World War II. Based on Okinawan government sources, mainland Japan lost 77,166 soldiers, who were either killed or committed suicide, and the Allies suffered 14,009 deaths (with an estimated total of more than 65,000 casualties of all kinds). Simultaneously, 42,000–150,000 local civilians were killed or committed suicide, a significant proportion of the local population. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki together with the Soviet invasion of Manchuria caused Japan to surrender less than two months after the end of the fighting on Okinawa.