Little Joe And GI Joe After The War

More than 63 years after Ed Bernacki of Cedar Rapids befriended a 9-year-old Filipino boy while stationed in the Philippine Islands, they reunited in Cedar Rapids. (See today's Ramblin' column in The Gazette.)

Ed was 22 at the time and became known as Uncle Ed. The little boy, Juanito Page, became known as Little Joe. So it was Little Joe with a GI Joe.

During their reunion they reminisced about those times in the Philippines, which was covered in today's column. But, what were they up to those 63 years apart?

Well, as mentioned, Little Joe's father was killed when the Japanese bombed Camp John Hay on Dec. 8, 1941. He was 27 or 28, a serviceman in the U.S. Army since the Philippine Islands was a U.S. territory. He played percussion in the Army band there.

In 1945, when Little Joe befriended Uncle Ed, his mother, Urbana, was ill with cancer. After she died in 1948, Little Joe moved in with relatives to Manilla. That is probably why he and Uncle Ed lost contact by mail.

Little Joe and his wife, Jean, married in 1959. They had five children, although two of them have died. They also have four grandchildren.

As he grew up, Joe went to Naval school in the Philippines and became a merchant Marine for 18 months. He later worked four years as a policeman, was with a maganese mining company for six years, then became a laborer and eventually a paralegal. He retired in 2004 when he and Jean moved to San Jose, Calif., to be near their youngest son, Joseph, 35, who had moved to California in 2002. Joseph instigated the reunion and came with Joe and Jean to Cedar Rapids.

The reunion was set up by a telephone call out of the blue in early November.  "I didn't know what to think," Ed said with a chuckle. "It was the best thing to happen to me."

Ed went into the service in 1943 just two weeks after marrying his first wife, Wanda Farmer, who was from Cedar Rapids and met Ed through a mutual friend. They had been married 28 years when she died. Ed later married her sister, Doris, and they celebrated their 28th anniversary before she died in 2002. Ed and Wanda had five children. Doris and her first husband had three.

Ed came to Cedar Rapids in late 1945 for a short time, then returned to Akron, Ohio, where his father spent his life building truck tires for Goodrich. Ed went to work there but didn't stay long. "I had a week of that and that was enough," he says with a laugh.

So, Ed returned to Cedar Rapids in 1946 and became a railroad engineer for 10 years, making a regular passenger train run from Clinton to Omaha. Then, as passenger service dropped off he became a salesman in insurance and securities. At one time he had his own brokerage firm with seven employees. He retired at age 62.

As Little Joe and Uncle Ed met Dec. 31 at the Marriott Residence Inn in Cedar Rapids, they caught up on those missing 63 years as well as recalling the few months they had together in 1945.

Uncle Ed nodded his head frequently as Little Joe talked about playing at the motorpool, going to the night movies, having his aunt make a uniform for him and having Ed pass his hat to raise $88 for a new house. While Ed admitted he didn't remember it all, several times he said, "That was fun, Joe. I remember now."