Almost seven decades after he lost it, a 92-year-old Indiana Marine has his World War Two dog tag back thanks to a garden tiller. Jahue (JAY-hue) Mundy was among the Marines who invaded Iwo Jima and helped secure Okinawa and other islands in the Pacific. When he was sent to China after the war he lost his dog tag shortly before it was time for him to come home.
“I think when I lost it was when I was putting some stuff in some packages to send to my wife.
In June, while doing some work in his mother‘s garden in Mooreland – not far from where Mundy grew up, Delbert Adkins saw something in the dirt. He says it had United States Marine Corps on it, so he knew right then it was a dog tag. Adkins gave it to his wife, Pam, who tracked Mundy to his current home in Roanoke, Virginia.
The Adkins family mailed the dog tag to Mundy, and on Wednesday, they met in person for the first time at the home of Mundy‘s son on the north side of Indianapolis.
For Mundy, the returned dog tag brought back a lot of memories, good and bad, from the war. Mundy says his son will keep his dog tag, just as he keeps the Purple Heart Mundy earned when he was wounded during the war.
