Remembering Okinawa: Moon Vet Seeks Medal for Pacific Injury

Riding on the USS LSM-32 was a lot like riding in a bathtub.

Nicholas Steri should know. He spent a good portion of World War II aboard the vessel. The lifelong Moon Township resident also weathered much of the Pacific theater, the Battle of Okinawa and a tsunami while on the ship.

The amphibious ship was 300 feet long and 35 feet wide with a flat bottom.

“Shaped sort of like a bathtub,” Steri, now 85, will tell you.

The nimble war vessel transported its 52-member crew and equipment to enemy shorelines with efficiency. And it was decidedly no-frills: While battleships of the era were named after states, amphibious landing ships medium (LSMs) were known only by numbers. 

Nicholas Steri had just turned 18 when he first boarded the LSM-32 on the California coast in 1944. The teenager from Coraopolis had been in the Navy for four months when he headed to the Pacific theater on the ship, half a world away from home.

"When you're 18 years old you don't know what fear is," Steri said, leaning back in his chair. "You're just ready to go."

In October 1944, Steri and his shipmates sailed to the Philippine Sea for what would become the Battle of Leyte Gulf, generally considered to be the largest naval battle in World War II. Months later, he found himself shooting at Japanese kamikaze planes during the months-long Battle of Okinawa while aboard the LSM-32.

He was injured in that battle.

“It was very emotional for me,” said Steri of a proclamation he received earlier this month from the Moon Township Board of Supervisors, whose members recognized his military service. Steri attended the brief ceremony with his son, Todd, who works for the .

“Just having people stand up and clap for me,” Steri said. “I know that it’s been 60 years, but it was very, very nice. No one ever stood up and clapped for me.”

Six years ago, after the death of  Steri’s wife of 50 years, a doctor advised him that talking openly about his wartime experiences might ease wounds he thought he'd put behind him.

“I had become very depressed,” he said. “So the doctor told me that talking about things that happened in the war might make it a little bit better. Even all these years later.”

Steri and his son have begun to string together a documentation of Steri's service during World War II.  With the help of U. S. Sen. Bob Casey and state Rep. T. Mark Mustio (R-Moon), Steri obtained some of his military records from the Navy. His 21-month military service included an encounter with a Pacific Ocean tsunami and a close call with a Japanese torpedo.

In recent months, he's received the Bronze Star, the World War II Victory Medal, the American Campaign Medal and the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign medal, among other military honors.

“It’s made [me and my son] very close,” said Steri of revisiting his military history. “We’ve always been close, but this has really brought us together, going through all this stuff.”

The medal that still evades Steri is the Purple Heart. The award usually is presented to veterans wounded or killed in the line of duty. Veterans must be injured while in action and have two witnesses to their wartime service.

Steri's problem: He has only one witness.

Jack Collins, of Binghampton, NY, was aboard the LSM-32 during the Battle of Okinawa when a piece of shrapnel lodged in Steri’s leg.

Steri was shooting at kamikaze planes when fellow sailors, perhaps Collins, noticed that his leg was bleeding. By Steri's estimate, he had unloaded roughly three magazines-worth of ammunition toward enemy aircraft by then.

Amid enemy fire, the injury went unnoticed at first. 

“I said, 'What’s this?' ” Steri said. “I looked down and there was blood, and I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t even know I was injured.

“You know, I’m 18 years old, I go to the captain and say, 'I think I’m hurt,' ” Steri said, laughing. “He said, 'Well, go get a bandage on it and get back to your gun --  I need you out there.' But I went to the medic and they said it was a piece of metal in my shin.”

The LSM-32 made it through the war in the Pacific with no major damage. 

Nearly 70 years later, Steri and Collins are the only surviving members of the LSM-32 crew. The two keep in touch with occasional phone calls. Collins has written a letter vouching for Steri’s wartime injury. With no other living witnesses to the shrapnel incident, Steri, who ended his military career in 1944, is left hoping officials will make an exception in his case.

“I said, 'There are two witnesses [to the injury],' ” Steri said. “Jack Collins and me.”

 Steri, who retired as the vice president of sales for a vending machine company two decades ago, said even without the elusive medal, he remains proud of his service.

"I went into the Navy as a kid, and I came out as an honorable man," he said. "I know what I did, and I'm proud. No one can take that away. It would just be nice to have it noted."