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In February 1941 the 2nd Marine Division was activated at a parade and review at at Camp Elliott, the Marine Corps Base in San Diego. During World War II some 60,000 Marines with the 2nd Division saw action in the Pacific.
From The San Diego Union, Sunday, February 2, 1941:
Marines Display War Equipment
First Complete Division Formed
Masses of marching, helmeted men; trucks, anti-aircraft guns, howitzers, rumbling tanks, light machine-guns, slim French 75s, marines with fixed bayonets on their Springfields, marines carrying the new Garand rifles.
Such was the first parade of the Second Marine Division, which passed in review at the Marine base on Barnett Ave. yesterday, a few minutes after the orders were read creating a complete marine division for the first time in the corps’ 165 years of existence. Eight thousand officers and men swung into line on the parade ground as the new streamlined division; eventually to number 10,000, was created, with Maj. Gen. Clayton B.
On Sept. 25, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt visited Camp Pendleton as part of a 12,000-mile military inspection trip and dedicated the new base, which was to be the Marine Corps’ largest West Coast training facility.
Retired 1st Sgt. John Farritor, 98, remembers that day and the day a few weeks earlier when he first marched onto the base north of Oceanside.
Farritor, of Vista, is among area Marines who are celebrating the base’s 75th anniversary with tours and get-togethers, but he is perhaps the only one coming back on base who was there when the base opened.
1st. Sgt. John Farritor in his apartment. (U-T file photo)