By Reid Forgrave
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Marine WWII veteran Milt Rooms, 80, talks about his experiences on Okinawa and elsewhere in the Pacific Theater. Clermont County is making a documentary film. The Cincinnati Enquirer/GLENN HARTONG

NEW RICHMOND - Some buried their war stories in their minds, rarely to be discussed.

Others talk freely of kamikaze planes diving toward American battleships near Okinawa, about banzai fighters charging at American troops.

On the banks of the Ohio River this week, seven of Clermont County's greatest generation recounted their experiences for a documentary that will follow these men to Washington, D.C. on Memorial Day weekend to visit the World War II Memorial.

"It's going to be quite a convoy invading Washington," said Milt Rooms of Milford, standing in front of the World War II memorial near Steamboat Marina.

Clermont County Veterans Services Commission is teaming up with the county commission to produce the video.

A limited number of free videos will be available to Clermont County veterans. Clermont libraries will have the video, which will broadcast on cable access channels.

Last year when the traveling Vietnam Memorial came, Clermont County produced a documentary of several local Vietnam War veterans visiting the wall. Next year, the county plans to make a similar video of Korean War veterans.

Rooms, 80, was a Marine corporal and sergeant in the Pacific Theater from 1943 until 1945.

"We were standing on the beach in Okinawa, and the Japanese planes were coming in and blow up the Navy ships like this," said Rooms, simulating an explosion with his hands. "The planes, they were loaded up with ammunition. What an explosion that was. We'd just holler, 'C'mon, Navy! Get 'em, Navy!' "

Rooms told interviewer Kathy Lehr about the island-hopping near the end of World War II: defending American Samoa, invading the Marshall Islands, losing thousands of comrades in five months of battle on Okinawa.

Don Couser of Miami Township was a 19-year-old Army infantryman in Germany when he was shot in the arm. He played dead for 20 minutes so Germans wouldn't shoot at him again. He also had frostbite in his feet.

"It was really a million-dollar wound," Couser said. "If I hadn't been shot then, I'd have been dead because most of my outfit was wiped out later in the Battle of the Bulge. I just wonder why I was so lucky."

"War is hell," Couser said.

To obtain a free copy of a video documentary following seven Clermont County World War II veterans to Washington, D.C. to see the new World War II memorial on Memorial Day weekend, bring a blank videocassette to the Clermont County Office of Public Information when the video is completed in July.

The office is located at 175 East Main Street in Batavia.

E-mail rforgrave@enquirer.com