Allen Brown spends the first hour of each morning reading the Bible. He might follow that up with breakfast, but it is not long after that he sits at the table in his Heritage House room and begins to write.

And write.

And write.

The 86-year-old American born in Panama in 1925 has nearly 100 pages complete on his yet-to-be-named memoirs.

“I’m the last of the Mohicans,” said Brown, shuffling through a mound of photographs, handwritten notes and completed pages typed by his niece, Connie Davidson. “If not now, when?”

He is not taking any of his days for granted. He said he writes all day — every day. On the few occasions that he is out of his room, he carries a small wire-bound notebook to jot down ideas, “so I won’t forget them.”

His story takes him from failing kindergarten through the victorious celebration in Iwo Jima, Japan, following the surrender of the Japanese in World War II. He’d still be living in Panama, he said, if Jimmy Carter hadn’t given the Panama Canal away.

“I got so dad-gum mad I moved away,” Brown said.

But it was in the canal zone in 1944 when the then-18-year-old signed up for the Navy. He had been to a military school — a remembrance he doesn’t like to recall because of the brutal instructors — and did not want to be in the infantry.

By April 1945, his patrol boat anchored off the coast of Iwo Jima. The small island became a strategic necessity in the Pacific Theater. It was the site of horrific battles that claimed the lives of 6,800 Marines and more than 20,000 Japanese defenders. Burial grounds for the fallen American Marines dotted the island.

It also was the site of the flag raising on Mount Sirabachi on Iwo. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s photo of U.S. Marines hoisting the flag is one of the most famous war photographs ever.

“I had so much more respect for the Marines after going to Iwo,” Brown said.

Between his arrival — the Americans had control of the island in March 1945 — and the end of the war on Aug. 15, 1945, Brown said he could see almost nightly Japanese planes bombing the island. His ship was about two miles off shore. Occasionally an American B-29 bomber would crash-land in the Pacific. His ship’s responsibilities were to retrieve the personnel on board.

“We had to help save the B-29s that crash-landed at Iwo in the ocean,” he writes. “They would start from Guam at 4 a.m., going over Iwo to bomb Japanese cities and by 3 p.m., they were coming back from Japan; some with only one engine.”

After the second atomic bomb fell on mainland Japan and the Japanese had officially surrendered on Aug. 15, 1945, a party erupted on the island. Marines were selling their rifles for $5, Brown recalled. He bought one, but sold it because he didn’t think he could get government-issued property through inspection upon his discharge.

After his discharge, he returned to Panama as a bridge engineer and worked there until leaving for Fort Worth, Texas. He arrived in Vicksburg on Oct. 30, 2011 — days before the city’s Veterans Day Parade. He moved to Vicksburg at the urging of his niece and her husband, Kevin, and has been living at Heritage House since his arrival.

“We went to the start of the parade and asked where a good place to watch would be,” his niece said. “When they found out he was a veteran, they told him to ride in the parade.”

A photo of Brown standing in the back of a truck with other veterans is among the vast collection of photos stored in his room. Many of those, he said, will find their way into the memoirs. But that will be a project after he is done writing.

And he shows no signs of letting up.

There are still many open pages in the small notebook — and plenty of stories to fill those. He plans to continue to spend his days — and nights — hand-writing page after page. He is still six months shy of his 87th birthday and is aware of Father Time.

“If you ever want to write down your memories, don’t wait,” Connie Davidson said. “Get it down on paper.