On May 2, 2003, a bomb disposal team from Ellsworth AFB is came to my parents’ house.

My sister and brother-in-law have been cleaning the vacant house the day before in preparation for selling it.  My brother-in-law called the police to ask what to do with a couple of grenades from WWII that he found in the basement in a box my dad sent home from Iwo Jima.  Of course he didn’t mention the call to me.

I went to my parents’ house to let in a plumber to repair the lawn watering system.  While sitting on their front porch waiting for him, I was rather surprised to see a police car pull up.  The officer was one of my tax clients.  He told me the bomb squad from the police dept. was coming.  It was a surprise to me.  Three more police cars arrived.  Shortly thereafter a TV newsman showed up wanting to interview me about the bombs in the house.  I refused to be interviewed and the policeman in charge told him to leave the yard.  He went across the street and set up a TV camera there. The police wouldn’t allow the plumber in the house when he came.

After a bomb expert looked at the grenades in the basement, he said one of the grenades could be a live one.  He called Ellsworth AFB and described it.  They told him it was a Japanese grenade, which might have become unstable because of a type of acid in it.

They said they had to come instead of having the local police handle it.

I told the police that I was positive my dad wouldn’t have mailed live grenades from Iwo Jima to his mother or let his grandchildren play with them.  They said they needed a military bomb disposal team just to be sure.

When I arrived at the prison the next day, I was cheered by inmates who had seen me on TV even though my name wasn’t given.  One of them shouted out that I must have run guns for AIM at Wounded Knee.  One of the deputy wardens had seen the TV story too and smiled broadly when he saw me.

When the bomb disposal team arrived from Ellsworth AFB, they had a small very thick metal box in the back of their pickup.  They looked at the grenades and identified them as Japanese from a chart they had.  I told them also I was certain these were not live grenades.  They said they had to take them anyway and would probably put them in a museum at the base after verifying they weren’t live.  They put them in their metal box and drove away to return to Rapid City.  My reputation as a gun runner at the prison didn’t last long.

Mary Montoya