Why is our flag important? Ask the Iversens, who never came back to the Mendocino Coast

This is a follow-up story to one about a German battle flag being displayed ABOVE the American flag in Fort Bragg. Some people didn’t think it was a big deal. I do and wanted to show what the flag meant to some forgotten local heroes who should be remembered.

On Jan. 30, 1941, Norman Kenneth Iversen enlisted in the United States Navy. HIs big brother, Earl Henry Iversen also enlisted that day. They were the two sons of Iver Henry Iversen and Irma Ilene Iversen, who were among the  immigrant families that settled the Mendocino Coast, likely from Sweden, Norway, Denmark or Finland. There were seven sisters and two brothers, their grand grand niece remembers. The boys had always planned to be there to watch out for all those girls, but that was never to be.

Nobody now knows why the brothers enlisted that day. But many men enlisted in the Armed forces that month, after President Franklin D. Roosevelt made a speech about Four American Freedoms worth fighting for: freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.  Germany was bombing Dublin, in the British controlled Ireland at the time they enlisted.

They were serving aboard the USS Arizona when the Empire of Japan launched a sneak attack while other Japanese were trying to negotiate peace in Washington D.C.  They were killed by the Japanese and remain entombed with their fellow sailors at the bottom of Pearl Harbor, from enlisted men to an admiral. A total of 2,403 Americans were killed at Pearl Harbor, all but 49 being those who served in the military.

It’s hard to imagine the impact the deaths of two sons must have had on Iver and Irma. They moved from Mendocino to Monterey County at some point, but I could not find out more. Special plaques, one for each war in the 20th and 21st centuries, are mounted in the rear lobby of the Fort Bragg Veterans Hall. The one for World War II lists the iversen brothers and 44 other servicemen who never returned to the Mendocino Coast from World War II.

There were 37 sets of brothers killed aboard the Arizona, including the Iversens, whose names are specially honored in bronze in Fort Bragg. 

The military ceased the practice of people from the same towns and especially from the same family from serving in the same unit, after whole towns had their native sons killed in the World Wars, and as portrayed in the movie 

Saving Private Ryan, which is partly based on the true story of the five Sullivan brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who were all killed in action on  November 13, 1942 while serving aboard USS Juneau.

History showed that the Japanese right-wing militarists, who essentially took over with a military coup by pushing the attack, hated the modernist liberals who were negotiating for peace as much as they did America. The militarists could best be described as a “Make Japan Great Again” faction. They created phony links to mythical Samurai and resisted and then suppressed all those who sought to move the most powerful Asian country of the time away from superstition and toward science and equality. 

Earl and Norman Iversen were among the very first of 400,000 USA casualties in World War II.  Most of the deaths were at the hands of the Germans, not the Japanese, although nearly 150,000 were killed in the Pacific theater.  

Why the history lesson? In reading the comments to this story it seems many people have forgotten how much was given by so many to uphold our flag. Perhaps others are as sick as I am of of fake patriotism, such as politicians hugging and kissing the flag or sending young men and women to wars when they themselves skipped out, but men like Norman and Earl gave up lives that were full of promise and lust for life. What would  Fort Bragg have been like had just some of these 46 men had a chance to contribute to the future, which is now our past.  What was the story of this family? I wish I could tell that story. All I have is what the military provided.