Okinawa

For five years, a group of aging warriors has been gathering on the second Tuesday of the month for breakfast. But this is no usual breakfast club. These 30 men share a number of defining points in their lives. All are Marines. All served together in the same division. And all survived the last great engagement of World War II - the battle for Okinawa. These Marines (there is no such thing as an ex-Marine, they are quick to tell you) travel from as close as Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties and as far as New York state and central New Jersey to meet at the Whitpain Diner, just outside Norristown.

They live on the other side of the world. They speak a different language, eat different foods, enjoy different music - and their only firsthand impressions of Americans come from the soldiers who are stationed in their homeland. So how would three young men from Okinawa fit into Camden, one of America's poorest cities? Turns out - with surprising ease. Using a smattering of English, some "doctored" music, and a little judo and karate body language, they charmed their way through Camden's schools over the last two weeks as part of a new youth exchange program.

To reach the home of Desmond T. Doss near Rising Fawn, Ga., you take the Desmond T. Doss Medal of Honor Highway. The folks around there are mighty proud of their neighbor up on Lookout Mountain. As a 20-year-old in 1945, the shy, slim Seventh-Day Adventist became one of the most famous and unusual heroes of World War II. A strict believer in the Sixth Commandment - Thou shalt not kill - he refused to bear arms. But he was willing to serve as a medic, one of the most dangerous jobs the Army had to offer.

After nearly 50 years of waiting, an Upper Darby veteran has received recognition for wounds he received during World War II. Anthony Greco, 83, was awarded the Purple Heart during a special ceremony yesterday for wounds he received in Okinawa in 1945. The award is the nation's oldest for military valor; it is given to people either killed or wounded in combat. "We need to recognize our heroes," said Rear Adm. William A. Retz, who presented the award to Greco at Bryn Mawr Hospital.

Leonard A. Levin, 76, longtime Vineland dentist and one of the first to work in mobile dental trailers aiding indigent children, died Sunday at Newcomb Medical Center, Vineland. A lifelong Vineland resident, he was a 1939 graduate of Vineland High School. Dr. Levin practiced dentistry with offices at 609 Landis Ave. in Vineland for many years. He also was the part-time dentist for the New Jersey Veterans Memorial Home in Vineland for 42 years before retiring last year. He also was the first dentist in Cumberland County - and perhaps in New Jersey - to provide dental care to indigent children through a state program using a mobile dental trailer.

The Rev. John A. Griffin, 87, a retired pastor who as a chaplain in World War II earned the Bronze Star for heroism in the South Pacific, died of a stroke Sunday at St. Francis Country House, a nursing home for the clergy in Darby. Father Griffin was the founding pastor of Our Lady of Fatima Church in Bensalem, where he served from 1955 until his retirement in 1987. He also was an associate pastor at churches in Philadelphia and in Girardville in Schuylkill County, and was rector of the Padua Retreat House in Pocopson, Chester County.

Sonatine, starring Takeshi "Beat" Kitano and written and directed by him, is a rivetingly weird existential gangster picture. Although the story line - about a world-weary crime boss called in to settle a turf war in Okinawa - is your standard gangland scenario of duplicity and betrayal, there's nothing standard about Kitano's approach. Often keeping his camera in a fixed position, Kitano creates a mood of unsettling tranquillity, and so the violence, when it comes, is doubly alarming for the matter-of-fact manner in which it's recorded.

Libyan official quits under fire TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's interim interior minister resigned Sunday after members of the newly elected parliament accused his forces of neglect when attackers bulldozed a Sufi shrine and mosque while police stood by a day earlier. Saturday's attack on the shrine was the latest in a string of assaults on Sufi places of worship, sparking fears of stewing sectarian troubles in a country that is still without a strong central government and largely without a functioning police or military.

Caught up in the patriotic fervor sweeping the country in 1943, John A. Saddic, a native of South Philadelphia, couldn't wait to join the Marines. He quit school and signed up at the age of 17. After basic training, he volunteered for overseas duty and was sent to Guadalcanal in the Pacific for more training. His regiment was headed for Guam, which had fallen to the Japanese days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. "We landed on Guam July 21, 1944," Saddic recalled. "We met an awful lot of resistance.

The brouhaha over the Air and Space Museum's planned exhibition next year of the Enola Gay is but a foretaste of what we can expect on the 50th anniversary of the end of the Pacific phase of World War II after the United States dropped atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And I think it's damned important, in part because I was involved. My nickel's worth had to do with the estimates of potential casualties should the United States have to invade Japan to end the war. I was a civilian in uniform, following movements of Japanese kamikaze units by use of intercepted and decoded enemy military messages.

TOKYO - An outspoken Japanese politician apologized Monday for saying U.S. troops should patronize adult entertainment businesses as a way to reduce sex crimes, but defended another inflammatory remark about Japan's use of sex slaves before and during World War II. Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, coleader of an emerging nationalist party, said his remarks two weeks ago rose from a "sense of crisis" about cases of sexual assaults by U.S. military personnel on...

Sixty-seven years did not blot out the searing memories of the Battle of Okinawa for World War II infantryman Montraville "Monte" Lybrand. He held his hand to his quivering chin, bowed his head, and whispered, "You always remember the ones that didn't make it. " With blue eyes welling up, he waited for composure. "I was with them for such a short period of time," he finally managed to say. "We were buddies. " Over the decades, Lybrand, of Drexel Hill, rarely spoke of his experience in one of the war's bloodiest episodes, dispensing his fighting past only in "little bits and pieces," said his oldest daughter, Kathleen Murtaugh.

Libyan official quits under fire TRIPOLI, Libya - Libya's interim interior minister resigned Sunday after members of the newly elected parliament accused his forces of neglect when attackers bulldozed a Sufi shrine and mosque while police stood by a day earlier. Saturday's attack on the shrine was the latest in a string of assaults on Sufi places of worship, sparking fears of stewing sectarian troubles in a country that is still without a strong central government and largely without a functioning police or military.

It was a few minutes before 8 on a Sunday morning, and Army Tech. Sgt. Dave Coonahan of Philadelphia was riding in a truck with some fellow soldiers headed for Mass. Initially, he didn't think there was anything unusual about the planes traveling west through the clear, blue Hawaiian sky above. Planes were always taking off and landing at Kaneohe Bay Naval Air Station, so he assumed it was just normal traffic. As the drone of the planes grew louder, though, Dave looked up and was puzzled not only by the large number of them, but also their strange shape.

THE NEW OFFICE of Property Assessment is taking the steps necessary to ensure that the people carrying out the city's first full reassessment in decades are expertly qualified. While, as the Daily News reported, the state exempts Philadelphia assessors from needing evaluator certifications, under the leadership of Chief Assessor Richie McKeithen, OPA is ensuring that all assessors meet state standards. The city strongly supports legislation to require all assessors to obtain a certified Pennsylvania evaluator (CPE)

Kendrick Vaughan had a job that you don't see much of anymore. He was a milkman. But Kendrick loved it. He loved associating with people, and his customers loved him. "He had one of the biggest routes, and he was very popular," said his son, Eric Vaughan. "He was very personable and outgoing. " Kendrick, an Army veteran of the Pacific Theater in World War II, died Oct. 6 of a heart attack. He was 82 and lived in West Philadelphia. He was born in Philadelphia to Colen and Annie Vaughan.

Former Marine Corps Col. Francis Fox Parry had at least one memorable moment far from the battlefield. A Publishers Weekly review of a 1987 book by Mr. Parry reported that he "is a salty, tell-it-like-it-was writer whose comments on the military milieu are well worth reading. " The review noted that the twice-married Mr. Parry had spectacularly interrupted his military career for his first wife. "Learning that his wife had become a Conover model and nightclub singer," the reviewer wrote, "he obtained emergency leave, flew from the Okinawa battlefield to New York, and snatched her barely in time from the claws of showbiz.

John E. Littleton, 86, a Philadelphia lawyer and a viola player for suburban ensembles, died June 21 of complications of prostate cancer at the health center of the Quadrangle in Haverford, the retirement community where he had lived since 2002. From 1972 to 1981, Mr. Littleton was bond counsel to the Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency. Born in Philadelphia, he graduated from the Haverford School and Harvard College and became a World War II naval officer. During the Battle of Okinawa in April 1945, his daughter Joanna said, his landing craft support vessel came to the aid of the USS Bush.

Daniel B. McCormack, 90, formerly of Holmes, a retired SEPTA superintendent, died of kidney failure Monday at Brendenwood Assisted Living in Voorhees. Mr. McCormack dropped out of Overbrook High School at 16 to work on buses and trolleys operated by Philadelphia Rapid Transit Co. The company later became Philadelphia Transportation Co. and then was absorbed by SEPTA. During World War II, he served in the Navy and was assigned to a new destroyer, the Twiggs. The ship saw action in several battles in the South Pacific, and Mr. McCormack saw the Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima from his ship.