A St. Joseph man paused to remember Thursday what he was doing 63 years ago.

“It’s a day I think all Americans should remember,” said Dr. Robert Keller.

Back on Aug. 14, 1945, the doctor was a recently graduated optometrist from the Illinois School of Optometry serving as a technical sergeant in the U.S. Army’s 24th Corp, Sixth Station Hospital on Okinawa.

That was the day the emperor of Japan told his nation they were unconditionally surrendering.

Prior to that day everyone had been saying “San Francisco in 48” because everyone thought there would be another three years of fighting in Japan, Dr. Keller said.

“I was very glad they were calling the whole thing off,” he said.

Because of school, he’d missed a lot of the war but in early 1944 the Army drafted the new doctor and sent him to Texas for medical training, a brief tour of duty at a hospital in Camp Barkley, Texas, then off to Fort Lewis, Washington.

While in Washington, he got the opportunity to use one of his non-medical skills. He’d learned German from his mother and studied the language in a Chicago high school.

“I was about the only one on base who spoke German and a number of German prisoners-of-war were working on base,” Dr. Keller said.

The good duty ended with orders overseas. That meant a 31-day sea voyage to the Marshall Islands and then to Okinawa. The doctor missed the ground battle to retake the island, which ended in June. Living on Okinawa, soldiers saw a tropical island that became a quagmire of mud with almost no trees or standing buildings. Allied casualties, mostly American, from the Okinawa battle were estimated at 50,000.

“The hospital was set up in tents just like what people saw in the television series M*A*S*H,” he said.

Instead of helicopters everyone came in Jeeps and ambulances, Dr. Keller said. There were still Japanese air raids to contend with, Dr. Keller said. It was a busy time with patients being booked several months in advance, he said.

Japan formally surrendered on board the USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945. Discharged in the summer of 1946, Dr. Keller bought a practice in St. Joseph. In 1963, he became a co-founder of this community’s U.S. Coast Guard Auxiliary unit.

Marshall White can be reached

at marshall@npgco.com.