As a gunner’s mate in the U.S. Navy, Morris Barton served aboard the Lady Luck, a landing craft support ship, in the Battle of Okinawa during World War II.
Judging from the festivities held in his honor Sunday, lady luck has been with Barton ever since.
The longtime Hoffman Estates resident and current resident of Friendship Village in Schaumburg was honored for his service by family and friends, who organized the event to make up for the Honor Flight Barton could not attend last year.
Barton, 88, had wanted to take part in an Honor Flight, in which World War II veterans like himself are flown to Washington, D.C. for a whirlwind day of activities that include a visit to the World War II Memorial. However, a heart condition prevented him from making the trip.
“He was disappointed he couldn’t go,” said his son, Brant Barton. “So we decided to honor him in this way by having a little party for him and kind of throwing a celebration to show him how much we are grateful for his service to our country.”
Surrounded by family and seated with his wife, June, Barton watched video of an Honor Flight experience and listened as son Kirk Barton read passages from a journal written by the radio man on his ship.
Kirk Barton described Okinawa as the Japanese Alamo, a last stand, which was reflected in the thousands of kamikaze (suicide) planes directed at Naval forces.
“They would come when we were all bedded down,” Morris Barton recalled Sunday.
Among his ship’s tasks was escorting larger destroyers, spotting Japanese suicide planes and helping to repel them.
Barton remembered one close brush with death, when his ship returned to base and its replacement was sunk.
Another significant aspect of his service was that he served alongside a black steward’s mate — an early example of integration in the military.
Barton said he turned 18 on his way to Japan. He was following in the footsteps of his brother, who, while on patrol, narrowly missed being at Pearl Harbor during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack.
Following the war, he found it took some time to adjust to civilian life. He entered the workforce as an ironworker and eventually settled into work as an electrician.
He said he rarely talked about his service over the years.
“It was like bragging,” he said.
But his actions spoke louder than words, as his great-nephew Matt Barton said in an emotional speech.
“They won the war and they saved the world,” he said.
