The Times Herald (Norristown, PA)
Casualty
meant the war was over and her brother Anthony would be returning to the family home in the 500 block of King Street.
But war does not always play by the rules.
So it was that when Anthony Marchione finally came home from war, it was to be buried.
A gunner and photographer’s assistant with the Yotan-based 20th Reconnaissance Squadron, Marchione had survived several combat missions. On the day he died, he aboard a B-32 aircraft that was attacked by Japanese fighters, despite the earlier surrender, as it took photographs over Tokyo.
He was struck in the chest by a 20 mm cannon round and earned the regretful honor of being the last man to die in World War II.
It was six days after his 20th birthday.
“He was such a good person,” his sister Theresa, two years his junior, recalled recently in her home in Pottstown’s North End. “He used to scrub the floor for my mother so she wouldn’t have to.”
Marchione graduated from Pottstown High School in 1943 and played the trumpet in the band.
His sister Theresa graduated a year later and woke up the day after her prom to discover that the Allies had landed in Normandy in the largest amphibious invasion in history, better known as D-Day.
Marchione, Theresa and sister Geraldine, five years younger, were the children of Ralph and Emelia Marchione, both Italian immigrants.
“My father was a shoemaker, and he had shops in the 400 block of High Street and on South Franklin Street,” Sell said.
“We lived in the center of town, so we walked pretty much everywhere. And we went to the old Jefferson School on Beech Street and the junior high and we walked to them as well. It was a long way, but we didn’t think much about it in those days,” she recalled.
“Most of our childhood, we spent swimming in the Manatawny or playing in the playground or in the alley,” said Sell.
When war came, Marchione joined the Army Air Corps on Nov. 20, 1943, with an eye toward becoming a pilot, but the Army had other ideas and decided he should be a gunner and photographer.
While overseas “he wrote us tons of letters. He was a very good letter writer,” said Sell, known to most as Terry.
But it was a telegraph that brought news of Marchione’s death.
Sell was working as a bookkeeper for a machine parts plant in the South Pottstown portion of North Coventry, when a co-worker came looking for her and told her the boss wanted to see her.
“I thought I was going to be reprimanded for taking a break,” said Sell. Instead, “someone drove me home, I can’t recall who it was, and when we got home all the neighbors were crowded around the house and I could hear my mother screaming.”
Her sister Geraldine, still in high school, was swimming at Sunnybrook Pool “and one of the neighbors went to get her,” said Sell. Now Geraldine Young, Sell’s sister lives in Fleetwood, Berks County.
Marchione’s death is the subject of a book titled “Last to Die,” by military historian Stephen Harding, published five years ago.
In it he recounted the details of Marchione’s mission.
He was aboard one of several
The 20th Reconnaissance Squadron in front of their F-7 aircraft. Anthony Marchione, kneeling second from the right, was the last man to die in World War II.
B-32s sent to fly over Tokyo as part of a photo team. When two of the planes were forced to return to Okinawa because of serious engine oil leaks, defensive firepower was cut in half and the two remaining B-32s had to prolong their time over Japan in order to photograph targets. Eventually, Marchione’s plane was met by Japanese pilots.
In the book Harding wrote: “The Japanese pilots who took to the air on Aug. 18, whether from Atsugi or Oppama, had no intention of simply shepherding the American aircraft out of Japanese airspace. Their purpose was far more direct: they were fighter pilots, and they were on the hunt.”
“The Japanese pilots ignored the order to ceasefire, it was very, very sad,” said Sell.
In an interview with The Mercury after the publication of his book, Harding explained that Marchione’s death was a significant factor in the final days of World
War II.
His death three days after the Japanese had surrendered made for difficult decisions for the American command. The attacks faced by Marchione and his comrades, as well as others on the day before, forced generals to decide whether to treat them as unfortunate attacks by a few diehard pilots unwilling to accept the ceasefire, or an indication that the war was not over.
General Douglas MacArthur eventually chose not to retaliate, preventing the possibility of prolonged war and far more casualties.
“Nobody wants to be the last person killed in any conflict and Tony’s death would have been a footnote in history had it not been for the fact that his death came very close to restarting a war that most people assumed was already over,” Harding told The Mercury.
It took four years for Marchione’s body to be returned home to Pottstown and he is buried in the old St. Aloysius Cemetery on High Street.
“I went back to work and when I met people in the street, I would get upset if they talked about Tony, but if they didn’t talk about him I got upset too,” she said.
Now 93, Sell said her brother’s needless death still affects her.
Generally, the family marked Marchione’s passing every year on the day he was buried, but Sell does not look forward to Aug. 18.
“It still feels like it was yesterday,” she said.