Hundreds of thousands of American soldiers paid the ultimate price during World War Two.
Few members of the Greatest Generation remain alive today.
But one Cleveland veteran survived two of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific without a scratch.
This week we salute Sailor Harry Brenezer.
News 12's Nordia Epps has his story.
Harry Brenezer, "She was 16 years old."
You'd need more than a thousand words to tell the story behind this picture.
Brenezer, " I never had met her."
It's one Navy man Harry Brenezer loves to share.
Brenezer, "It was up on the bunk above me and I could look up at her."
The sailor first laid eyes on the photo in the early 1940s during World War Two...years before he ever saw the real thing.
Brenezer, "Two 250 pound kamikaze bombs, suicide plane bombs, and it hit our ship and didn't even hurt her."
It's like a symbol of Brenezer's time in the Navy.
He enlisted at 18 years old and became a radar man on the U.S. S. Halloram.
The World War Two veteran spent most of his three years in the Navy in heavy combat ... fighting in two of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific...Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
The memories stay imprinted in his mind.
Brenezer, "Our ship was on fire and another destroyer came up at Okinawa there and helped us fight fire or we'd have sunk. Did you know 32 of our ships at Okinawa was sunk. 32 of our ships, with Kamikazes and killed 10,000 of our sailors."
Brenezer remembers being at Iwo Jima when the photographer snapped this iconic picture.
And he fought in Leyte...and survived it all to tell his story.
Brenezer, "Men killed all around me and I didn't get a scratch. I grieve my buddies some of them are lying over there in the sand they didn't make it."
The sailor made it home to meet and marry the love of his life...whose picture helped him through many a long night at sea.
He and Charlotte are still married today.
Brenezer, "I'm not a hero. I want to tell you I'm not a hero. I don't regret the war. I did what I could do and I did what I was supposed to do."
For what he did do..we salute sailor Harry Brenezer.
