Page 30 - November 2018

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South Pacific’s most illustrious battles.
Famed Admiral William Halsey was aboard the Missouri
leading the Third Fleet that included two other battleships, three heavy cruisers, two light cruisers, four aircraft carriers, destroyers and submarines. The campaign to finish off the Japanese started in Iwo Jima. Planes were striking every day, and Ogonowski was so in the thick of the action that he en- dured a stint of firing his 16-inch gun 12 hours a day for 30 consecutive days.
This was heavy artillery raining down all the time. A half- mile away, a Japanese plane dropped a 50-pound bomb on of the carriers and killed 700 sailors. “It took the deck off like a can opener,” Edwin recalls.
His job was pretty straightforward. For each shift, he was handed a map with targets. Start the barrage and don’t let up until so ordered. At night, they weren’t even allowed to use lights to read the maps. Turning on a flashlight could lead to a court-martial.
“I knew my gun backward and forward,” Edwin relates, perhaps a harbinger of developing the expertise that would translate to a storied law enforcement career.
After taking Iwo Jima, the campaign intensified, moving toward Okinawa. Getting control of the air strip on this is- land proved to be pivotal, so Ogonowski was now on his gun around the clock. Cooks were deployed to carry ammuni- tion, and he was finding a few hours to sleep in his turret. At one point, rain poured as he was trying to catch a few winks and his belt, designed to inflate if you went into the water, clogged the drain. He nearly drowned.
But that’s what it took to win the war, and even at 92 years old, he recalls the surrender like it happened yesterday.
“When the Japs lost Okinawa, the war was over,” Edwin re- counts. “At the surrender, you couldn’t hear yourself talk. We had like 1,000 planes flying all around. I couldn’t actually see it, but all our allies were there. It was crazy. We had just won the war.”
Memorable service
Serving his country will always be Ogonowski’s greatest love. Serving the City became a natural livelihood, and his days as a Chicago Police Officer really would personify “Chi- cago Copper.” Returning to yesteryear with Edwin, you can almost see the black-and-white newsreel in his eyes and
30 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ NOVEMBER 2017
A Chicago Tri- bune newspaper clipping shows
Ogonowsk right) with O cer Harry Lopez and the
two children they saved from a house re.
hear Studs Terkel doing the narration.
Ironically, Ogonowski would have liked to stay in the Navy,
live in Hawaii and make a career of teaching gunnery school at Pearl Harbor. But there was no opening. Working for Mo- torola for four years after getting out of the service only fu- eled his desire to join the Department.
“I put an application in, but I knew it would be about a year before I got called,” he explains. “In those days, you had to know somebody to get on the job. My friend worked in the City’s Recorder of Deeds office. He knew Mayor Daley. I didn’t have to wait.”
So in 1956, Ogonowski began a 32-year career that went to mandatory retirement at age 63. He started at the old North Avenue station as a motorcycle officer, then went to the old 29th running a beat car. He moved up to working narcotics and vice by making pinches and satisfying the key Depart- ment requisite for advancement even in those days.
“I had no beefs against me,” Edwin says, puffing his chest a bit.
Of all the illustrious artifacts Ogonowski has collected over the years, he shows off two from his days on the job. The first is an old Chicago Tribune clipping with Officer Harry Lopez and two small children, Janie and David Garcia. Edwin has his arms around David, who is clutching his teddy bear.
Ogonowski and Lopez were on patrol when they saw smoke pouring out of a house. Somebody was screaming that two kids were trapped on the second floor.
“We went up to the second floor and knocked down the door, but there were no kids in there,” he expounds. “We saw another door. It was to the attic. The kids were locked up there in the attic.”
His other prized possession is the rap sheet for Joseph “Pops” Panczko, who along with his brothers, Butch and Peanuts, were the famed Panczko brothers known as the “Polish Robin Hoods.” They robbed and terrorized residents, earning as much press as John Dillinger and even Al Capone.
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In 2014, American Airlines ew Ogonowsk to Hawaii, where he returned to the USS Missouri for a V-J Day celebration and had a chance to see the gun that he
manned on the ship.
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