War Stories II: Heroism in the Pacific

by Oliver North

  “Doc” Bradley had stayed after raising the first flag and helped the five Marines hoist the new one. In that famous Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph, the most published picture in history, were Bradley, Sergeant Mike Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, Private First Class Rene Gagnon, Private First Class Ira Hayes and Private First Class Franklin Sousley.

  Strank was the “old man” of the platoon—at twenty-four he was a noncom and the senior in the squad. Block was just eighteen years old, a hardscrabble oil worker from Weslaco, Texas, who had joined the Marines a year earlier along with thirteen graduates of his high school football team who all volunteered together. Rene Gagnon, from Manchester, New Hampshire, eighteen years old and far from home, carried a photograph of his girlfriend in the webbing of his helmet liner to give him encouragement. Ira Hayes was a young Pima Native American from River Indian Reservation, Arizona. And Franklin Sousley, a nineteen-year-old, found himself far from the quiet and peaceful hills of Kentucky.

  These young men were just emerging from boyhood, and not quite a year earlier, all of them had been part of a huge wave of more than 21,000 who poured into California’s Camp Pendleton. “Doc,” Mike, Rene, Harlon, Ira, and Franklin became a part of Company E, destined for an appointment at Iwo Jima that would make them all famous.

  The man who carried the flag ashore that was raised on Mount Suribachi on 23 February was a young officer from F Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division. Lieutenant G. Greeley Wells came to Iwo Jima with that group of 21,000 replacement troops from Camp Pendleton.

  LIEUTENANT G. GREELEY WELLS, USMC

  Vicinity Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima

  D-Day Plus Four

  23 February 1945

  0800 Hours Local

  I hadn’t been in combat. I was called before Colonel Chandler Johnson, and he looked me over and said, “I’m going to make you my adjutant and you’re going to rue the day. Report on time tomorrow.” And that’s how I started in the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines.

  I didn’t know anything about being an adjutant, so I read the manual, and it said, “ . . .the adjutant carries the flag.” Someone asked, “Why the flag?”

  I said, “I don’t know, but I’ll have it if you need it.” So everybody kidded me about being this flag-carrying adjutant.

  Then the training increased, and we got on board a ship to go into combat.

  A third of us were paratroopers, a third were combat veterans, and another third were novices. And we had all our orders. We were on an LST and knew we were to land following the 1st Battalion. There were two battalions to take Suribachi.

  So we got out into the water, waded, and ran up forward. There were a lot of wounded, and a lot of dead—it was mayhem. The beach was completely covered with Marines, struggling, crawling, trying to go up in the black sand, that slowed everything down. It was difficult. People were in shock. We were told to get off the beach as fast as we could, and then suddenly we were hit with a barrage that knocked everybody down.

  There was complete confusion and it took us several hours to get settled. I had my blanket and my ammunition and hand grenades, so we were loaded down, and it was tough.

  The Japanese hoped that they could make things so bad that we would withdraw. We landed over 30,000 men and a lot of the supplies that first day, but at a terrible cost.

  When I first got out of my LST, with artillery shells and everything going off, I hit the deck. The man next to me was dead. Another guy was wounded; machine gun fire was going, and so we just got up and said, “We’ve got to keep moving.”

  I turned and was shot through the arm and across my back. The bullet went through my arm but didn’t touch the bone. I felt lucky.

  But there was all kinds of gunfire and activity going on all over that island. We had to fire star shells that illuminated and use them all night long, because when we didn’t we found some of our men had had their throats cut in the dark.

  Our planes were dropping napalm on Mount Suribachi. Suribachi got an awful beating, and our naval vessels were pounding away at the side of it. It took us two and a half days just to get to the base of Suribachi. It was only a short distance, but it was slow going.

  Colonel Johnson sent a patrol from F Company to go up and reconnoiter. He didn’t say, “When you get to the top, raise the flag.” He said, “If you get to the top, raise the flag.”

  So we got up there, looked around and found a pole, and started to put up the flag, which then was raised.

  People on the hundreds of vessels around us, plus the Marines ashore, had heard that we were going to raise the flag that day. And when we did, all the ships’ horns and whistles blew. It sounded like Times Square on New Year’s Eve. The whole battle suddenly stopped for a moment and you could hear Marines cheering. It really was an amazing scene.

  We can never forget the tremendous battle that the Marines fought on Iwo Jima. They went in heroically, without hesitation, at an enemy that they couldn’t see, buried below the surface of the island. They were almost impossible to get out, and we spent thirty-six days accomplishing the mission. I think that we can also never forget the flag raising—but as far as the Marine Corps and the people who fought there, we can never permit anything to overshadow their heroic actions.

  U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE

  IWO JIMA

  D-DAY PLUS FIVE

  24 FEBRUARY 1945

  1330 HOURS LOCAL

  Many of the Marines thought that the famous flag raising was a signal that the battle for Iwo Jima was almost over. However, there were still another thirty-two days of brutal combat ahead as the Marines and General Kuribayashi’s soldiers slugged away at each other. Sadly, half of the flag-raisers were among the casualties. A week after planting the flag on Mount Suribachi, Sergeant Mike Strank was killed by friendly fire from an offshore ship. A Japanese shell exploded near PFC Harlon Block just hours later, killing him. His body was misidentified for two years, and it wasn’t until after the war that he was finally identified. Four weeks after the flag raising, Franklin Sousley was picked off by a Japanese sniper while waiting to be shipped out for the trip back home.

  Private John Cole, barely eighteen, was a Marine whose only previous combat experience was just prior to Iwo Jima, on Guam. It may have helped him survive. He was part of the new group from the States assigned to the 3rd Marines for graves registration detail. He and his buddies recovered bodies of Marines and soldiers killed on Iwo Jima. It was a grisly task.

  PRIVATE JOHN COLE, USMC

  Iwo Jima, D-Day Plus Eighteen

  9 March 1945

  Most of us had only been in the Marine Corps six or eight months. When I landed it was the sixth day of the battle. The beachhead had been occupied for almost a week. I went back down to the beach, where the first supplies unloaded were ammunition—machine gun ammo, rifle bullets, mortar shells, and shells for the howitzers. Then all kinds of rations.

  After a week in shore party, we were sent to various regiments of the 3rd Marine Division. When we did that, we came under mortar fire almost immediately, which was a frightening experience.

  Some of us went off with an NCO and we were blowing caves. Our task was to take white phosphorous grenades, throw them into the caves through whatever openings there were, and follow that up with blocks of TNT, which we used to collapse and seal the openings of the caves. And if that didn’t kill them, the smoke and the fumes would asphyxiate them. Sealing the caves prevented them from climbing or digging out.

  Then a group of us were assigned to work with the graves registration detail. We did not dig graves or put people in graves; we never saw the graves the bodies ended up in. Our task was to carry the dead off the battlefield and get them back to regimental headquarters, where they could be identified, if possible. We checked their dog tags, their last name stenciled on the breast pocket of their uniforms, and sometimes their equipment, packs and so on. Besides that, and by means of their personal effects, identification was generally establishe
d.

  We had a four-wheel-drive truck with an open bed in the rear. It carried about a dozen stretchers, which were so stained with blood and bodily fluids from the wounded that they were no longer suitable for that purpose. These were given to us to carry out the bodies. So our task was to climb aboard the truck and ride as close to the line as we could get. Then we’d park the truck and get somebody to tell us where the last known men had been killed. We’d take the stretchers and walk until we found them.

  As long as there was light, and there were bodies to be found that could be gotten out, we’d go get them. Carrying the bodies down the terrain was difficult. The ground was completely broken by all the shell-holes and gouges. The terrain was rugged and rough to begin with so it was a physical burden to carry these guys.

  And then we’d roll them or lift them onto a stretcher, typically two men on a stretcher. We’d go back to the truck, load the bodies, maybe eight men, and we’d have to hold and balance the load as the truck bounced along.

  Typically the bodies that we picked up had been dead for anywhere from three to six days. It wasn’t until that ground was taken and held that anyone could get in and recover the bodies.

  Because of that delay, the bodies were bloated and crawling with maggots. The maggots were under the skin and crawling in their eyes, and beyond that, bodily fluids leaked out and skin was separating. Things would swing against you, and you’d get these fluids on your body, on your uniform. And we only got to wash them once in thirty days. So we learned to live in that atmosphere, eat our food, ignoring the flies buzzing off the bodies and onto our food.

  But the smell was probably the worst. It’s so intense that sometimes you’d literally gag and have dry heaves. You shut down your emotions and your feelings to the extent that you can, because you have a task to do. It is shocking, and at one point or another you say to yourself, “I wonder if they’d send me to the line, it might be better to be dead than to be doing this.”

  It was mind-boggling to see the destruction. It gives a feeling that life is cheaper than dirt. And since I only dealt with the dead, all I saw was the inevitability of death.

  I did that from about 3 March through 27 March, the day I left the island. By the time we came under fire and started to deal with the dead, the idea of war as a romantic adventure was long gone.

  If I had been one of the guys who ended up in a line company, I heard that the probability of being wounded or killed was ten times higher.

  Yes, the worst is the smell. When I finally left the island, I escaped the smell but not the memory of the smell. I promised myself never to forget that smell, never forget the men, and never let it happen again.

  U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE

  IWO JIMA

  D-DAY PLUS FORTY

  31 MARCH 1945

  1330 HOURS LOCAL

  The total of thirty-six days of fighting on Iwo Jima resulted in 19,000 U.S. troops wounded or MIA and 6,825 killed in action. The Marines had been fighting in combat for four years, but here—in just a month—the U.S. Marines suffered a third of all their casualties of World War II.

  “Doc” Bradley, the Navy corpsman, in a letter home to his folks, wrote: “I never realized I could go four days with no food, sleep, or water, but now I know it can be done.”

  Bradley was the only one of the three surviving flag-raisers on Iwo Jima who resumed a normal life after the war. He summed up his assessment of the battle when he told his nine-year-old son upon his return, “James, I want you to always remember—the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back.”

  Bradley returned to America to a hero’s welcome by President Harry Truman, who sent Bradley and the other two survivors of the Iwo Jima flag raising on a war bond tour of thirty-three cities. Truman gave the men the impossible task of raising $14 billion in war bonds, which represented 25 percent of the national budget. The men accepted the responsibility and raised not $14 billion but $26 billion in two months—amounting to 47 percent of the U.S. budget.

  Iwo Jima was one of the bloodiest battles in modern history. More Marines died there than in any other battle in the Pacific in WWII. And more U.S. Marines earned the Medal of Honor on Iwo Jima than in any other battle in U.S. history, while thousands of Marine veterans of that battle were awarded the Purple Heart. Twenty-seven Medals of Honor were awarded to Marines and sailors of Iwo Jima, many of them posthumously. Admiral Nimitz would remark after the battle, “Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”

  The Navy also lost two of its carriers at Iwo Jima. The famed USS Saratoga was hit by a kamikaze aircraft and sank. The escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea was likewise sunk. The Navy lost more than 1,000 sailors to the kamikaze attacks.

  The Japanese defenders suffered 21,000 casualties, most of whom were killed in action. Surprisingly, in contrast to other island battles, more than 1,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered, despite their strong adherence to the samurai code.

  And, as was the case on Tarawa and Peleliu, some Japanese stragglers hid in the caves until well after the war ended. The last two Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima surrendered four years after the battle.

  After the initial assault, the Marines didn’t break through the last Japanese lines until 9 March. Iwo Jima wasn’t declared secure until 26 March, following a banzai attack near the beaches. The Army’s 147th Infantry Regiment relieved the Marines and assumed ground control of the island on 4 April.

  After Iwo Jima was declared secure, more than 2,000 B-29 aircraft were able to make emergency landings on the island during later bombing raids of the Japanese mainland. These actions saved as many lives as there were total casualties in the Battle of Iwo Jima.

  Chaplain Roland Gittelsohn said it best during the dedication of a battlefield cemetery on Iwo Jima:

  Somewhere in this plot of ground, there may lie a man who could have discovered a cure for cancer.

  Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet. Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.

  Here lie officers and men, black and white, rich and poor... here are Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Here no man prefers another because of his faith, or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Theirs is the highest and purest form of democracy.

  Unfortunately, at the end of March, although the Marines of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions had secured Iwo Jima, they had no time to celebrate or even catch their breath.

  The next island assault landings—on Okinawa—were just days away.

  CHAPTER 17

  OKINAWA: THE LAST BATTLE

  (APRIL 1945)

  U.S. MARINE ASSAULT FORCE

  OPERATION ICEBERG

  1 APRIL 1945

  1030 HOURS LOCAL

  The morning of 1 April 1945 was Easter Sunday. It was also April Fools’ Day.

  Events on the two fronts were irrevocably bringing the world war to an end. In Europe, U.S. troops had encircled remaining German troops in the Ruhr Valley and the Soviet army had surrounded the capital city. In a Berlin bunker, Adolf Hitler and his henchmen were preparing for an ignominious end to their evil campaign for conquest of the West. 1 April was also D-Day for the Allied offensive into northern Italy, as the Axis began to crumble.

  But for the more than 200,000 American soldiers, sailors, and Marines heading to Okinawa, it was “L-Day”—Landing Day—for a campaign the war planners called Operation Iceberg. Okinawa is the main island in the Ryukyu Islands group, halfway between Formosa and Kyushu. Tokyo was committed to the defense of Okinawa as long as they could. They sealed that determination with plans for maximum use of kamikaze attacks.

  As the Allied troops aboard the invasion ships pressed closer to Okinawa, their officers stressed the importance of taking this final island, that it would help end the war. But they
were also brutally honest. In light of the casualties inflicted at Iwo Jima, there was no reason to expect anything less at Okinawa. The question plaguing the Americans was how to fight an enemy so dangerous and so desperate that he was willing to kill himself in order to destroy you. The answer seemed obvious: The only option was to fight to the death—just as the enemy planned to do.

  On the island of Okinawa, that’s exactly what the U.S. soldiers and Marines did, in a gut-wrenching final showdown with the Japanese forces that spring of 1945. This would become Japan’s brutal “last stand” against the American forces.

  The Americans had fought World War II on two fronts on opposite sides of the globe. Both Germany and Japan had refused to give in, and the casualties of bloody battles in both theaters mounted. The number of American military dead or wounded had risen to more than a million. Yet the American fighting men still pushed on. Because the U.S. Armed Forces were waging a two-front war, they desperately needed matériel and reinforcements in order to keep going.

  Yet although things were tough for the Americans, they were worse for the Japanese. The Imperial Army was getting even more desperate than they had been at Iwo Jima. They knew that if they failed to push the Americans back into the sea at Okinawa, the next place they would be fighting them would be on the beaches of Japan.

  All across the Pacific, Emperor Hirohito’s time was running out. Fighting the Americans and their allies over the past three years had taken a huge toll on the Imperial Army, Navy, and air forces. They were out of nearly everything—fuel, ships, aircraft, munitions—and each day they were running lower and lower on their most essential war component: the Japanese fighting man.