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John Iseli was born February 9, 1924 

on a farm south of Wakefield, Kansas. 

He was the first child of John and 

Elizabeth Iseli. Him and his family moved 

to Industry, Kansas, in 1929. In 1942 

he graduated from Dickinson County 

Community High School.

What was it like being 

in WWII?

At that time, John was 

called in one of the largest 

drafts of Dickinson County. 

He began his training. He 

said "We were all just a 

bunch of kids, didn't know 

what was going on" after 

the training, he was 

allowed to come home 

for a week to say 

goodbye to his friends and 

family. He didn't know 

what was ahead of him. 

He left for Okinawa and made the invasion on 

April 1, 1945. This was his first battle. There 

were eight-foot sea walls that had ladders they 

had to climb. Once they got up the ladders, the 

fighting began. He said that it took days to get 

around the Island due to the Japanese defense 

systems. Him and two other men dug a fox 

hole in a garden where they stayed there over 

night. They would take turns being on guard. 

It was one of the bloodiest battles.

Did you ever get injured during the 

war?

Three days later after arriving in 

Okinawa, one of the men in his divisions 

was getting tired of holding his bazooka, 

so John held it for him. It's a good thing 

that he did, because he ended up 

getting shot, once in the arm, once in 

the finger, and three bullets ricocheted 

off of the gun, which he held in front of his 

chest.

First job

His first job was in grade school and he 

worked as hay-baler. He had to hand 

tie the bails as they were being made. 

He said "if it was a good day you could 

make a little bit of money, but it wasn't 

too much.

Best year 

His best year of his life was when he got out of 

high school and went with the harvest crew. 

He worked with his uncle and ran the tracker. 

They traveled to many places to harvest. He 

got payed 6 dollars a day. At this point in time, 

Kansas was a dry state and at the point of 

entry they were checking the combines for 

whiskey coming back into the state.

Favorite song

"You are my Sunshine, that was one we 

used to sing all the time, but when we 

were growing up, my sis played the 

piano all the time and we always had 

old time songs, most of them were 

country and western singing, but You 

are my Sunshine that was one that the 

governor of Louisiana wrote."

Most common food

"The most common thing we had 

then, we raised ourselves, it was 

potatoes. We took a lumber 

wagon to put them in and we 

would always have the bottom 

half of the wagon filled up with 

them. The main thing we had to 

eat was potatoes. Mom and dad 

always had a big garden. We had 

a lot of green beans and we had so 

many peas. I still can't eat peas. 

Mom always had cream peas and 

I guess I got to where I couldn't 

stand them anymore."