#VeteranOfTheDay Marine Veteran Leoma Benjiman Blackmon
Posted on Wednesday, November 25, 2020 11:30 am Posted in Veteran of the Day by VAntage Point Contributor
Today’s #VeteranOfTheDay is Marine Veteran Leoma Benjiman Blackmon, who served at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese attacked Dec. 7, 1941.
Leoma Benjiman Blackmon joined the Marine Corps because he wanted to serve the country. The Marine Corps supported him taking correspondence courses in bookkeeping, so he enlisted in September 1939.
After basic training, Blackmon went to the Recruit Depot Detachment at the Marine Corps base in San Diego, California to undergo marksmanship training. In December, he went on the carrier USS Henderson from San Francisco to the Marine Barracks at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Blackmon served with the 2nd Company and two weeks after his arrival, he went to the ammunition depot on the base to work as a guard and in kitchen patrol. Later, he joined the Horse Marines, a cavalry-based guard that watched over ammunition on base.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Blackmon finished guard duty that morning when he saw a group of planes flying toward the harbor. He originally thought they were American planes due to the harbor’s proximity to airfields. Blackmon realized they were Japanese after the alarm sounded to man battle stations. He witnessed the second wave of dive bombers and torpedo planes during the attack. Blackmon’s group shot down a few planes and took some Japanese pilots as prisoners. They also kept watch the night after the attack. Blackmon described the atmosphere as tense, especially when false rumors reached the base of a Japanese landing force approaching the harbor Dec. 8.
https://www.blogs.va.gov/VAntage/81183/veteranoftheday-marine-veteran-leoma-benjiman-blackmon/
