Posted on 02/19/2014 9:40:28 AM PST by Oldpuppymax
In the summer of 1965 Marine Corps Boot camp training included the boast “If it weren’t for the Marine Corps you’d be speaking Japanese.” It was true then and it is still true today.
Sixty nine years ago waves and waves of eighteen and nineteen year old Marines, waded ashore on Iwo Jima to defeat the Japanese and help win the war in the Pacific on American terms. They fought to keep us from being the slaves of the Japanese and being forced to end up “speaking Japanese.”
By mid- February 1945 Franklin Roosevelt knew Americans were running out of patience and money for the war against a country thousands of miles away and on its last legs anyway.
Some thought we should make peace with the Japanese and cut our losses. The only resource America had left was a Marine Corps largely filled with...
(Excerpt) Read more at coachisright.com ...
I don’t think most of those Marines fought so their great grandkids would be speaking Spanish. Invasion by Japs or illegals the result is the same, an end to American culture
I hear Obama is contemplating shipping the memorial back to Iwo Jima. For that matter, he can raise the Arizona and give that to the Japs for their WW II memorial.
I had the honor, one Marine Corps birthday ball, to sit with an Iwo Marine as well as an Inchon Marine. They were outstanding individuals who went through hell on Earth. The Iwo Marine told me he could still smell the bullets that went by him on that tiny island.
Thank you for the reminder. My dad, who died 5 years ago at the age of 97, served those young marines as a Navy doctor.
At his funeral, one of the men who served with him told us that Dad was responsible for saving many hundreds of lives. I have always been as proud as possible, and Dad’s 5 children, 12 grandchildren, 27 great grandchildren, and 6 great-great grandchildren are being taught about Iwo Jima and the great sacrifice made on their behalf.
The book “The Old Breed” is a good read of the battle.
Comments like this, in view of what that generation suffered and why, are utterly demoralizing.
But the experiences were no different than on Iwo, for sure.
Let me correct that. “With The Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa” by E.B. Sledge.
Another good book is “Helmet for a Pillow form Paris Island to teh Pacific” by Robert Leckie is another good read.
I am a Vietnam Vet and I am totally amazed what these guys survived.
Near the end of his life, from page 356 ... Puller wrote ... "Americans had better wake up, fast. It might be possible to bomb our country into submission, unless we have strong leaders."
She should talk to some of the Korean “comfort women”.
They would look at the Arizona as a monument to the moment when their salvation was assured.
I'd have kicked that fat ass all the way to Punchbowl. Apparently there weren't enough dead sailors under her feet.
I cannot stand talking to this kid.
It certainly is!
My late uncle Bob K. was one of a handful from his battalion to survive the taking of Iwo. He was the first from our family to become a MARINE.
I became the second, in 1969.
Having kids who went to the same public high school as this ingrate I know exactly where she got such an ignorant attitude.
There were 27 Medals of Honor awarded for action on Iwo Jima..22 to Marines, 5 to Navy corpsmen. 14 were posthumous. The 27 MoH represented about 30% of ALL the MoH awarded to Marines during the entire Pacific War
To this day you can still run your hands through the black sand on the invasion beach and come up with shards of metal in every handful.
Another good read is “Flags of Our Fathers,” by James Bradley. He is the son of the Navy Corpsman (John Bradley) who was one of the flag-raisers immortalized in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph. Only three of the six men (including the elder Bradley) made it off the island, and he was the only one who enjoyed a happy, prosperous life as a civilian.
As Bradley writes, his father never discussed the battle and only gave one interview on the subject (largely because a Chicago Tribune reporter surprised him at the funeral home he owned). When John Bradley died, they discovered a Navy Cross among his personal possessions. He received the Navy’s second highest award for valor for his actions on Iwo and never told anyone.
John Bradley did tell his son that “the real heroes were the men who didn’t make it off the island.” There is no doubt about that.
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