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Copyright © 2015 Albuquerque Journal

It was clearly a sign of the times, and a bittersweet reminder that those strapping young men who fought on the battlefields of Europe and the Pacific islands – now mostly in their 90s – won’t be with us much longer.

Two days before today’s commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over Japan, more than two dozen veterans were honored at the first Purple Heart Recognition Ceremony at the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center.

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The Purple Heart medal, among the most recognizable of military awards, is given to military personnel killed or wounded while serving with the U.S. military against an enemy force.

Two decades ago, at least half of those medal recipients who gathered for the ceremony might have been World War II vets. On Thursday, there were only three – Bob Nowlen, Ted Kocon and Jose Ramos Chavez.

It seemed fitting to ask them the question, what do you remember about V-J Day?

“I was still in a military hospital in Indiana,” on Aug. 14, 1945, when he heard the news that Japan was going to surrender, said Nowlen, a trim 92-year-old who served as a rifleman with the 102nd Infantry Division in Europe.

The Tyler, Texas, native was in the Army Reserve while attending Texas A&M University and was activated for the war in May 1943.

In October 1944, his unit was fighting in Germany when a chunk of shrapnel from an exploding German 88 mm mortar round shredded his left arm.

“It just about blew my whole arm off,” Nowlen said. “I spent about nine months in Army hospitals. … The doctors did a pretty good job on me.”

As word of the imminent surrender – and the end of a horrific war – spread through the hospital, small celebrations quickly grew into larger ones.

But Nowlen’s thoughts were focused on his younger brother, Tom Nowlen, who was still stationed in the Philippines with an artillery unit awaiting the planned invasion of the Japanese mainland – a plan rendered moot by the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“We were pretty worried about him,” Nowlen said of his brother, 2½ years his junior. “He would have been in that first surge into Japan. … I was very glad to hear that the war was ending.”

Both Nowlen boys survived the war, Tom settling in Texas and Bob in Albuquerque.

As a graying Vietnam veteran passed him in a hallway leading to the Purple Heart ceremony, Nowlen smiled.

“I’m one of the lucky ones to survive this long,” he said.

Ted Kocon was drafted in 1943 and spent most of his time with the famed Americal Division – short for “American, New Caledonian Division” – a tenacious infantry unit that island-hopped throughout the Pacific during World War II.

While Kocon was patrolling a beach in the Philippines, a Japanese sniper shot him in his right leg.

“I was the last guy in the patrol and the first one to get shot,” Kocon said.

The Pennsylvania native, who retired in Albuquerque after serving 23 years in the military, was in Cebu City in the Philippines when news of the Japanese surrender reached Cebu island, setting off a huge celebration among Filipinos and servicemen.

“There was lots of beer, and everybody got drunk,” Kocon said. “Did we celebrate? Absolutely!”

Kocon, 90, said he still has occasional nightmares about the war but is glad he made a career of the military – Purple Heart notwithstanding.

Like those of many World War II veterans, Chavez’s 92-year-old ears don’t work quite as well as they used to.

But the native of Kewa Pueblo, formerly Santo Domingo Pueblo, said he wouldn’t have missed Thursday’s ceremony for anything.

“I don’t drive no more, but my friend brought me,” he said. “You always need your friends.”

V-J Day, or Victory over Japan Day, is celebrated on Aug. 15 in recognition of the Japanese surrender that ended World War II. Because of the different time zones, Americans received the news on Aug. 14, 1945, triggering nationwide celebrations of the war’s end.

The actual surrender ceremony was Sept. 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, Japan – thanks in no small part to men like Nowlen, Kocon and Chavez.