COLERAIN TWP., Ohio — After leaning a Japanese rifle against his window, Patrick Kerin dumps a bag onto the dining room table. Out falls a straight razor, a mirror and other barber tools.
Kerin tells me his dad used these to cut hair during World War II.
From another envelope, he pulls out several pictures. In one, a medic stitches up his father’s back. Then, Kerin shows me his dad’s memoir.
“I could feel the blood running down my back, and I knew I had to get out of there,” his father wrote. “That thing hit me so hard, I distinctly remember flying through the air.”
James Richard Kerin, known to most as Dick, is a Marine veteran who was shot during the Battle of Iwo Jima. Dick earned two Purple Hearts during his time in the military. And toward the end of his life, he wrote about what he experienced, where he turned 21 years old during one of the deadliest battles in American military history.
“Dad never wanted to go back,” Kerin said.
WATCH: Emotional son reads from dad's WWII memoir
At the library in Colerain Township, Kerin thinks about his dad a lot. Not just because he taught history, but because his dad experienced it.
“People like us, we have no clue what that was like,” Kerin said.
That’s why he turned his father’s writing into a book. And why he donated a copy to the library, where he works part-time. Kerin had originally helped turn his father's words into something for his family.
Now, you can read it at the downtown branch of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library. It’s part of the library’s initiative to hear more stories directly from veterans.
At his home, Kerin flips through a few pages and then reads a passage to me.
“In some parts of the world where war raged, there might be a buffer zone of some distance — not on Iwo Jima,” Dick Kerin wrote. “It’s hard to believe the number of officers we lost in the Iwo Jima operation.”
More than 5,000 Marines were killed.
“He wanted to sign up," Kerin said. "He really wanted to make something of his life."
And he did, coaching football for years in the Tri-State after his time in the military. Before Dick died in 2019, he kept a photo in the corner of his bedroom mirror. Patrick Kerin shows it to me. And then he starts to cry.
It was a Marine graveyard.
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