They called it “the beach party.” But there would be no picnics. It was Iwo Jima in February 1945. And Ivan Bruderer, a 19-year-old sailor from Logan, Utah, was assigned to go ashore. Some 67 years later, Brother Bruderer sat in his living room beside his wife, Ellen, in Star Valley, Wyoming. It is a late summer day and green stretches across the valley where soon will be one of the Church’s new temples.
“For years I wouldn’t talk about my service [during World War II], the things that I saw, to my kids,” said Brother Bruderer, a member of the Meadows Ward, Thayne Wyoming Stake.