BOOK TALK: WW2 Letters Home from the South Pacific

WW2 Letters Home From The South Pacific by Angelo Buccino

Nutley-Belleville Old Guard, 9 a.m., Friday, June 14, 2019

Historian Anthony Buccino will meet with the Nutley Old Guard at 9 a.m. on Friday, June 14, to discuss his dad's letters home from the South Pacific during World War Two.

WW2 Letters Home from the South Pacific by Angelo Buccino is one GI’s view of the war amid the heat, bugs, carnage and noise in an artillery battalion supporting First Marine Division at Guadalcanal and other islands that never get mentioned.

Buccino wrote these long-lost letters to his best friend back in the states asking about the old gang. They turned up nearly sixty years after they were mailed, censored, read by his buddy and then found again in a forgotten footlocker in his old friend’s attic.

Hear the whole story of their discovery, the words of a young man far from home, and why they were published in November 2018.

The Old Guard of N.J., Nutley Chapter No. 7, meets weekly on Friday at 9 a.m. at the Frank A. Cocchiola Parks Building, 44 Park Avenue, Nutley, NJ. 

New members always welcomed. Stop in at any Friday meeting and say hello.

Order your copy online WW2 Letters Home from the South Pacific by Angelo Buccino 

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Buccino Will Honor D-Day Heros at 'Nutley At War' Film Screening

Nutley at War Film Screening & Discussion
7 p.m. Thursday, June 6, 2019

NUTLEY NJ -- Township historians John Demmer and David Wilson will host a screening of Nutley at War, a 1942 film by the Nutley Defense Council that has not been shown in public since 2002. 

Recently restored footage in this forty-minute film will take you back in time when Nutley organized its citizens to prepare for enemy attacks. 

Scenes filmed throughout Nutley, familiar family names, interior and exterior views of old Nutley buildings, and a celebratory parade document the hard work and dedication of Nutley neighbors. Recently discovered material relating to the making and marketing of the film will also be shown.

Local author and historian Anthony Buccino will speak briefly about Nutley servicemen in the Normandy Invasion of Fortress Europe on the 75^th anniversary of the D-Day landing.

WW2 Letters Home From The South Pacific

WW2 Letters Home from the South Pacific by Angelo Buccino (Cherry Blossom Press ISBN 9781729270219) is one GI’s view of the war amid the heat, bugs, carnage and noise in an artillery battalion supporting First Marine Division at Guadalcanal and other islands that never get mentioned.

Buccino wrote these long-lost letters to his best friend back in the states asking about the old gang.

"Met there’s dam little I can write about from this end. But I’m okay & still kicking that’s the main thing." 

These missives turned up nearly sixty years after they were mailed, censored, read by his buddy and then found again in a forgotten footlocker in his old friend’s attic.

Along with a stack of Angelo’s photos from training and across the ocean, we’ve put together this collection in time for his 100^th birthday.

The war aged him, and he passed in his sixth decade. Here is a way to remember him, his sense of duty, his sense of humor, and the years he spent on hot bug-infested islands defending all he left at home.

Available on Amazon

On the Anniversary of Iwo Jima

On the anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima, I want to honor the men from Belleville and Nutley who perished in the Pacific Theater in World War II.

Here, from the news reports of the day.

D-Day Ohio,

The German soldier is rolling down the hill, another is falling – dead – down the hill, the smoke is clearing, the gunfire dissipating. 'Wounded' and 'dead' are scattered along the 250 yards of beach and incline where Army Rangers and the Big Red One have taken the hill. The Wehrmacht gives up this beach, these guns, this hill representing the enormous undertaking 69 years ago on Omaha Beach in Normandy, France. 

Anthony Buccino joined nearly 20,000 re-enactors and visitors at 2013's gathering on Aug. 16 and Aug. 17 on the shore of Lake Erie at Conneaut Township Park in Conneaut, Ohio.

The re-enactors recreated the camps, the training and carnage of the D-Day landing on Normandy beaches in France on June 6, 1944.

Read his account of D-Day Ohio in Ashtabula Living Magazine.

Not forgotten; Nutley Sun

Anthony Buccino's letter, Not forgotten, to the editor of The Nutley Sun was published on May, 23, 2013

A Memorial Day Scrapbook

Laurie Fendrich remembers the uncle she never knew, WWII pilot Richard Van Divort of Nutley, NJ.

A Memorial Day Scrapbook