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The Other D-Day in the Pacific
The Bennion Boys

By Joyce Luker

Dee Bennion

Barton Bennion

Dee Owen Bennion (born in 1923) was the first child and one of three sons born to Evan and Annetta Bennion. Their second son, Lowell Andrew, was born in 1925. After Pearl Harbor, the close-knit group of young men in the tiny town of Mt. Emmons, Utah, were anxious to avenge the attack on their country, and soon they were all enlisted in the conflict as soldiers.

Lowell Bennion

A third son, Barton Evan (born in 1934) was too young and continued with farm chores at home.  After the end of World War II, Barton would enlist in the Navy, with the surely tearful approval of his father at the young age of 17. 


In the meantime, Dee was off to distant shores. His battalion prepared for battles to come in New Guinea and New Zealand.  While in New Zealand, he met a beautiful young woman named Marcia Scott.  They met one evening at a Red Cross dance, which was a favorite activity of young men and women during the war.  They fell in love quickly, as one might imagine during those war years young people never knew what lay in the future, and they didn’t waste precious time. Dee was also admired by Marcia’s family, and whenever possible, he would literally run the two miles from the army barracks to the Scott home in Hamilton.  It was soon common knowledge in both families that Marcia and Dee would marry when the war was over. They treated him like a dear son, and spoiled him with breakfast in bed when he was able to stay overnight in their spare room.  When his battalion was deployed to the Phillippines, he promised Marcia and her parents that he would be back soon.

In the predawn hours of January 7, 1945, miles off shore of Luzon, the main island of the Philippines, the coast guard crews were readying their improved Higgins landing craft for entrance into the Lingayen Gulf. They had already taken Leonard Wing’s 43rd division on three fairly uneventful landings on the Russell Islands, Rendova in the New Georgia Islands and New Guinea.

The Pacific fleet had been obliterated by Imperial Japan, allowing Japan to freely invade the Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and other countries. But now, in the vernacular of the day, they were “pushing the Japs back to Tokyo.”

Even with a rebuilt fleet, the Coast Guard crews could sense that this not was going to be easy. It was going to be more like their experience a few months earlier in Normandy on June 6 1944, the D Day that everybody remembers.

Not as big as the Normandy D day, still it was an impressive armada of battleships and among them the USS West Virginia. Its former commanding officer was Mervyn Sharp Bennion who died on his ship during the attack on Pearl Harbor, (many years later he would be depicted in the movie “Pearl Harbor”). Mervyn was Evan Bennion’s first cousin, and now Evan’s boy Dee was a part of the liberation of the Philippines.  

Dee Bennion, Naaman Buckmiller and three other Mormon boys were conducting a sacrament meeting when the bullets started to ping against the metal front of the boat, approaching the shore where the crucial campaign was to begin. As they came closer to the beach the roaring noises of battle became louder, but did not deter them from bearing their testimonies.  During the last minutes of the approach, Dee would bear real testimony of the restored gospel in the midst of a horrendous reality just like the opening scenes of the movie “Saving Private Ryan” as Naaman would describe years later. They miraculously made it to the shore of San Fabian beach.

Naaman only 4 years earlier was a missionary in the central states mission and had been out a year, serving in Detroit when Pearl Harbor happened. When he came home a year later he was drafted within weeks and was in boot camp at Camp Roberts, California. Before he left, Naaman was set apart as an LDS group leader, a calling that he dedicated himself to. Dee Bennion was in the group just behind him and they met at Guadalcanal. In the liberation of the Philippines they were part of a larger force called the I Corps and were protecting the flank of XIV Corps whose objective was the Clark Airbase.

The second week in January, Evan and Annetta Bennion began to become concerned when they had not heard from Dee in over a month.  They had sent on December 8th a certificate indicating that they had bought a $50 Christmas Bond for him to brighten his Christmas away from his beloved home.  Back in New Zealand, Marcia heard nothing at all until well into March of 1945.  Unbeknownst to them, due to the upcoming campaign, there was a mail “blackout” and no mail was coming in or out.  Dee had not received his Christmas letters, and none of his mail went out.

On a Monday evening at 9 pm January 15th Dee and Naaman and the rest of the battalion marched all night through muddy rice paddies and across two swollen rivers, arriving at Labney. After a short rest, the march was resumed in combat formation across country through rugged, hilly terrain. At noon on January 16, enemy resistance was encountered just west of the Maloquai River. The battalion bypassed this strong point in order to reach the objective before dark. A block was established on Highway No. 3 at 5:00pm on the 16th. Beginning at 9:00pm that night, this position was heavily attacked by the enemy in reinforced company strength. The attack was of such ferocity that the perimeter was penetrated. The men in the perimeter fought until their ammunition was exhausted, then engaged the enemy in hand-to-hand attack and literally drove them from the perimeter. The entire area was cleared of the enemy by 10:30am on the 17th of January. During this action, the battalion sustained casualties of 2 officers and 16 enlisted men killed and 2 officers and 15 enlisted men wounded. Dee’s Silver Star citation details his courageous actions: Bennion was one of those that fought in hand to hand combat and died of shrapnel wounds from a Japanese grenade. Portions of this account are from his Silver Star citation, which along with a Bronze Star and Purple Heart, was posthumously awarded.

It was not like “Saving Private Ryan,” however, when the family was notified of his death at the end of February. Annetta, like the mother Mrs. Ryan in the movie, lived on a farm with long winding dirt road to the house. But no military car came with an officer and clergy.  Mecham’s Store had the only phone in that area of the Uintah basin, and one can only imagine the clerk at the store in Mt Emmons receiving the awful news, writing down a note and then having to deliver it to the farm.

And then the many letters sent to Dee from December 1944 to February 1945 began to come back in the daily mail in late February 1945, stamped “Deceased.”
Back in New Zealand, the days grew longer and longer as no word came from Dee to the Scott family.  Imagine their shock when another friend contacted them and said a letter he sent to Dee had been returned marked “Deceased.”  They contacted the hospital and verified that it was true.

But the most important letter came from Naaman Buckmiller in March at a time when Evan and Annetta wanted desperately to know how the events played out as their son lived his last days:

Dear Mrs. Bennion                 
Feb 21 1945  “Luzon, P.I”

You don’t know me but when I tell you that I knew your son Dee and that I am a Latter-day Saint and returned missionary, you might feel that you do know me. Whenever I meet a “Mormon” I feel that I have known him before, after talking with him. It seems that we all have something in common.  I am especially writing in behalf of our L.D.S group here in the 43rd Division. You see, Dee was here in “D” Co. with myself and 3 other L.D.S fellows and as it was my duty, as a set-apart “Group Leader” among L.D.S service men, we started holding meetings each week when possible. In fact, we were holding them when Dee came to us in Guadalcanal. I invited him to join us and since that time we have come to know and like him well. I needn’t tell you that he was a fine boy and I extend to you in behalf of our little group, our heartfelt sympathy for your great loss. All of his many friends here in “D” Co. wish to extend theirs as well. He was liked and respected by all of us.

During this campaign Dee showed his courage and ability to stand against the enemy and he was unafraid. Especially at the time he was killed did he show his courage and desire to do his part and to help his buddies who were in need of help so badly at that particular time. We all take our hats off to him. He was a man and as your boy, you may be proud of him.…

Annetta wrote back to Naaman and was especially interested in the details of the last testimony that Dee shared with the others, to which Naaman wrote the following reply:

Dear Mrs. Bennion
March 24, 1945, The Philippines

I was very happy to hear from you. Two letters have reached me and this the first opportunity to answer because we have been on the front lines again ever since I wrote to you the first time.

I feel that I can well understand how you must have felt at first – almost bitter – because, as you say Dee had such faith in returning home, as did you and his father and other loved ones. But I was happy to know how you have taken it the only way we, as Latter Day Saints, can take such a loss a you have, if we are living the Gospel we know to be true, and that is that it was God’s will , hard though it is. Even though Dee had that faith, and all of you, even as I and my loved ones have that supreme faith, we must always say as Jesus said during his hour of greatest suffering “Not my will, O Father, but thine be done.”

It is my desire and prayer that your knowledge of the Eternal Life beyond this mortal existence and your testimony of the gospel will comfort you in this time of sorrow in the loss of your son Dee.

You asked me about Dee’s death and burial. All I can say is that so far as I and his other companion know, he died without suffering. I know where the cemetery is where he is buried and be assured that it is nice and he was taken care of by those whose job that is. There was a very nice ceremony at the cemetery for those of the 43rd division who have been killed and although I could not be there, some from “D” Co. were and they told me it was very impressive.

Mrs. Bennion, there were so many of the boys who bore their testimony at our last meeting on the boat that I cannot remember just what he said, but I remember calling upon him to close our meeting with prayer, as I often did in New Guinea and Guadalcanal…

Evan Bennion was not a fan of Franklin Roosevelt largely because of Roosevelt’s 1930’s depression policies where he tried to raise prices by having livestock destroyed on farms around the country. Many of Evan’s livestock were destroyed by government agents; it was a time that he could never get over. But never was there an utterance where he called it Roosevelt’s war, nor did he decry President Roosevelt for killing his son.

Correspondence from New Zealand to Mt Emmons continued to cross the oceans as the two grieving families sought to find comfort in their memories of Dee. Then, in a letter from Marcia Scott’s mother to Dee’s mother at the end of 1946, Mrs. Scott wrote:

      …You won’t have heard that our Marcia is married, had a very pretty wedding and was a sweet bride.  But oh her heart lies buried in the Pacific.  She loved Dee with the sweet pure love that is only awakened once in a girl’s heart: she finds it impossible to feel the same toward her Bob ……I only trust my Marcia will in time be reconciled to her fate.  We will ever cherish the memory of your dear son who so honourably died on the battlefield that others might live…

In the summer of 1948 Dee’s remains were disinterred from the San Fabian Cemetery and brought home where he was reinterred in the Mt Emmons Cemetery. Naaman made the long journey to eastern Utah from Salt Lake to attend the ceremony, but sadly, he never met Annetta, as she had already passed away and was with her firstborn son who she loved so much.

In the following years during private moments and family occasions, Dee would be remembered with sorrow that was bittersweet. No one really knew the specifics of what happened to him or the valor with which he served. His brother Lowell and family would gather at Lowell’s in-laws’ home on Green Street in Sugar House and Dee would come up in conversation, as to where it was and how he died. Ironically the man who knew only lived a couple of blocks to the east and was bishop of the Fairmont Ward of the Granite Stake. Lowell’s in-laws lived the same stake as Naaman Buckmiller, who had given much comfort to the grieving Bennion parents when their son died on the battlefield.