Sitting in his pale, pink kitchen – which has remained relatively unchanged since moving to the quaint, Boonton Township, New Jersey townhouse 55 years ago – 84-year-old Anthony Bellini sits with his 1943 high school yearbook, reminiscing about his days as a star athlete and being an all-around ladies’ man. “In high school, my two passions were football and foolin’ around with the girls,” Tony says with a smirk, while his wife of 57 years Lillian smacks him lightly on the arm. “What the hell, it’s the truth!”
“The only thing now is that most of the people in these pictures are dead. I’m trying to look for the ones still living,” Tony remarks. The varsity football pictures and senior superlatives – where Tony is named Most Talkative, Best Athlete, and Most Happy-Go-Lucky – soon turn to black-and white photos of World War II and the USS Boston; the reason for why he graduated high school early and risked his life for the next two years sailing the Pacific.
Looking at Tony, a World War II Navy veteran, you can tell he has lived a long and strenuous life. His movements are slow and he needs help walking the short distance from the couch to the kitchen table. With old age he has become very forgetful, jumbling the names of his grandchildren and not being able to keep up with simple small talk. Yet when it comes to reminiscing about the war and his youth, his eyes regain their sparkle and his memory suddenly revamps. He remembers the small details: how he wanted to be in the air force but did not have 20/20 vision in his left eye, how no one could get anything during the war because all supplies were rationed, and how he woke up one morning after a long night of celebration upon returning home from the war with a very mysterious new tattoo. The tattoo is of an eagle holding an American flag, to be exact, that now looks more like a muddled blur of gray ink on his wrinkling forearm.
“I shouldn’t be saying this in front of my wife, but when I got back to California after the war, I was just so happy to be off that ship. Me and a few buddies went to a cathouse and I must’ve ended up at a tattoo parlor down the road. I got up in the morning and my arm was all bloody and I thought ‘Oh, Jesus Christ.’”
Times have greatly changed since that wild night back in 1945, and Tony rarely makes it out of the house anymore. “Take a look at these pictures, my son-in-law found them off the computer! Technology nowadays,” Tony says with amazement but with a shared hint of sadness in his voice.
It seems that over the past few years many World War II veterans like Tony have come to experience that same sense of silent withdrawal from society. Their stories of bravery, struggle, and honor are being overshadowed by today’s fast-paced world immersed in advanced technology and material possessions. Sitting down with Bellini at his blue-and-white checkered kitchen table, I find a warm-hearted man reminiscent of his days as a young man who fought in a war, risked his life on the high seas, and who still found happiness in returning home with a mere $200 in his pocket. The memories of veterans such as Tony are fading quickly into the shadows of history, but their stories prove just how hard life was for them back then and how such small comforts we take advantage of today were cherished luxuries for the World War II generation.
Tony, who was born in Brooklyn on March 11, 1925, moved to New Jersey at age three with his father and younger sister after his mother passed away. He had his first job by age eleven. “I ran a milk route with my friend. I’d wake up at 4am and he’d come pick me up at 4:30am. We’d do our work, pick up some breakfast, and then head to school. I did that for three years and I’d get $5 a week. That was good money for back then.”
One can tell just by looking at his face that Tony was proud of this work and salary. He swears he did not break one bottle while on the job. “That’s how it was back then. You did what you could to get a little money in your pocket.”
In high school, Tony had no problem having to walk the two miles to and from school every day in order to play on the varsity football team, but when it came to his studies, things were not so simple. He wished to graduate early in order to enlist in the war, but was told he had to write a total of six English reports in order to receive his diploma. “I eventually had to ask my lady friends to do them for me. Let’s just say I ended up getting more reports than needed, and I passed. I got my diploma early.”
“Quit acting like hot-stuff, Tone,” chimes in his wife, Lillian. “You aren’t so hot these days now, are you?” The whole evening plays out this way. The couple constantly bickers. Tony tells Lillian to go make him some coffee and she responds by telling him to work his legs for a change and fix it himself. But beyond this playful arguing still lies a couple with a bond thicker than blood. A 57-year marriage – with six kids and nine grandchildren later – Lillian will still help Tony when his knees decide to give out on him or if he needs help getting dressed in the morning.
“I met Tone at a carnival in Boonton after the war when I was 20. I was there with my sister,” Lillian recalls. “Oh, we used to break up all the time. He was supposed to be the Best Man at my sister’s wedding, but we had a fight and broke up at the time.”
Although she did not experience the war firsthand, Lillian had to deal with her own dose of reality with the coming of World War II. “I had two brothers in the war, one in the Army and one in the Navy,” Lillian says. “My brother Sammie got injured his first day there. He hurt his leg at Iwo Jima and received the Purple Heart. When he got home my mother and I would take the bus to and from Long Island every day in order to see him in the hospital.”
Like many young women during this time, Lillian had to drop out of school in order to find a job and make some money to support her family. During the war she worked at a factory with her mother that made materials including canteens for the army. “I wish I could have at least finished off high school and graduated, but I had no other choice. I needed work and work needed me,” Lillian states.
“Don’t you be complaining, I was in the war! I missed my life, freedom!” Tony exclaims. After graduating high school early in 1943, Tony headed to Great Lakes, NJ where he was tested by the army and received a high score of 90 on his written exam. “They told me that I needed to go to radio school, but I wanted to be involved in the action.” After being sent out to school in Miami, Ohio, he got into a fight with a classmate and would not apologize. “They finally realized then that I wasn’t meant for school, so I was sent to fight out in the Pacific.”
Tony served the next two years on the USS Boston, a Baltimore-class heavy cruiser and, according to navysite.de, the sixth ship for the US Navy to be named after the city of Boston. “Our job was to protect allied carriers, so yeah, we saw a lot of action,” he recalls. Tony says the ship was 800 feet long and was in charge of following and protecting numerous allied battleships and cruisers. According to Navy History and Military Command, in early 1944 the USS Boston participated in raids of the Philippine Islands and Luzon and in the invasion of Guam. Although Tony witnessed intense battle and action, he says fear was never a factor. “You don’t get scared. It’s adrenaline. You see a plane that’s not yours, and you think‘sonofabitch!’ but you never worry. It’s your job.”
Tony remembers vividly the one time in the Pacific he did come close to being scared. “A plane was above me, but didn’t hit us. Oh, but he was close. He was aiming for the carrier with us. We killed him first though. I still remember his face. He was Japanese. I can still see those leather goggles he had and that expression on his face. Now that was somethin’.”
Unlike today, communication with friends and family for the soldiers of WWII was nearly impossible. Not only was soldier-life completely isolated, but getting simple materials like food or clothing was just as difficult. “The one thing I missed most being on that ship was life. You couldn’t get nothin’ during the war, there was just not much of anything. Everything was rationed,” Tony remembers.
“I remember my mother would send packages to my brothers during the war. She would empty out oil cans and fill them with food and little supplies,” Lillian adds.
That is one of the reasons why Tony claims he joined the Navy in the first place. “The army was what got us out of the Depression. The US built the ships and war materials for the British. If it weren’t for that, who knows how much worse it could have been.”
Tony remembers that when he first returned home to the United States after the war, he and a few soldier friends got stranded during a trip to Las Vegas. All of their clothes, money, and cigarettes were on board the ship that had already departed. “I had $200 in my bag, so I was worried. That was all I had and it was a lot of money,” Tony exclaims. When the men called ship patrol and got their belongings back, everything was accounted for but the cigarettes. “That was a bummer. You weren’t supposed to smoke in the Navy, but cigarettes were a rare luxury for that time. They only cost 50 cents a pack back then, but they were hard to get hold of.” Tony’s one delight upon returning home from the war was found in this simple pack of cigarettes.
His actual return home to Boonton, NJ was no more of an extravagance either. After taking a train from Chicago to Newark, he took a shower, threw away his ragged clothes, got changed, and took the 116 bus home. At the time, so many young men were off fighting the war and so many families were going through such difficult times, that Tony’s return home was not a call for any special celebration. “My main thing was to meet up with old friends, see which ones had died,” Bellini remarks.
“Actually hearing his story in full makes you really sit back and think. I should definitely get this on video someday before he completely forgets everything,” says Tony’s 45-year-old son Mark. We’re still sitting in the Bellini’s kitchen; Tony has finally gotten his cup of coffee and Lillian has just pulled out a deck of cards.
“My wife and her card-playing, she’ll play with anyone who is willing,” he laughs. The youngest Bellini daughter, Lisa, has just arrived to check on a fresh cut on the back of Tony’s head.
“He’s been falling all of the time lately and keeps hurting himself. Good thing he had better agility while in the Navy,” she says with a chuckle, but you can tell she is truly worried about her father’s age and physical condition.
“Don’t worry about me, I’ve survived the war and living with your mother, we’ll see if I can make another Thanksgiving,” Tony jokingly responds to lighten the mood. He picks up another picture from an old newspaper. This one is of all the young men from Boonton who served during WWII. “I hope those boys out there today in Iraq and Afghanistan have it easier than we did. Hey, they must, at least they have TV.”
