11:39 PM PDT on Saturday, April 3, 2010
Duncan Bergeron is one of the sometimes forgotten mariners of World War II, but he says his turn at the podium last Nov. 5 asking the San Jacinto City Council to add a monument to merchant mariners wasn't for him, but for others who served in perilous conditions.
"I'm doing this for the guys who sailed in the early 1940s and got hammered," he said.
One in 26 mariners died in the line of duty, 1,475 ships were lost and only about 10,000 of 250,000 seamen are still living. Those are among the statistics he cites to tell the story.
Story continues below
********************************************************************************
Bergeron, 81, of San Jacinto, came to the council offering to donate a 120-pound bell that once was mounted on the SS Cape Johnson, a C-1 class freighter that transported troops and cargo during World War II.
Bergeron will get his wish. The San Jacinto City Council voted unanimously Thursday to add a Merchant Marines memorial to the military monuments at the San Jacinto Veterans Memorial at Druding Park at Ramona Boulevard and Pico Avenue downtown.
The city will spend up to $6,700 from development impact fees for the monument and a plaque for the park and a flagpole and flag to add to a row of military service branch flags along the boulevard.
The city public works staff will construct the features as they have other monuments in the park, and the dedication day will be May 22, National Maritime Day, according to a staff report by Barry Mulcock, acting public works director.
Military hardware already on display in the park includes a replica lighthouse, a U.S. Army tank, a bomber propeller and a ship's anchor. City officials are trying to obtain a 105-mm howitzer to represent the Marine Corps.
In war, the merchant mariners and ships worked under Navy command, moving troops and supplies where needed. After a lawsuit, legislation extended veterans benefits to mariners in 1988.
Story continues below
***************************************************
"I was one of the young ones," said Bergeron of his signing on as a merchant seaman at age 16. "I worked in the engine room -- fireman water tender and oiler," he said.
He served from 1945 until 1947. He signed on again in 1966 to go to Vietnam. The latter tour lasted only about four months when his ship developed a leak that had to be repaired stateside.
He stopped in ports around the world, including Valparaiso, Chile, the Philippines, Saipan, Belgium and Germany, the latter after World War II ended.
"I've been as far north as Norway above the Arctic Circle," he said, traveling on mostly Liberty and Victory-class ships, with speeds half as fast as the one the bell came from, he said.
In postwar Oregon years later, the USS Johnson's bell became a dinner bell at the Oral Hull Foundation for the Blind, a nonprofit group in Sandy, Ore., where Bergeron and his wife, Maxine, volunteered for about 17 years.
Snowbirds to San Jacinto for 16 years, the Bergerons decided to move to the city permanently last year. A friend delivered the bell.
Bergeron wants to invite members of an Old Salts chapter of a Merchant Marines group that meets in Sun City to the dedication in May.
Reach Gail Wesson at 951-763-3455 or gwesson@PE.com
http://www.pe.com/localnews/stories/PE_News_Local_W_ebell04.4836c34.html