Posted on 01/26/2015 10:18:51 AM PST by Kartographer
Don Fida, of Syracuse, visits the small boomerang-shaped Pacific island in his sleep.
He remembers the way 22,000 soldiers of the 7th Infantry Division emptied a ship onto Kwajalein and worked their way across the 2.5-mile island, killing close to 5,000 Japanese and losing 177 of their own.
He can picture the way a Japanese soldier crawled out of a bunker waving the underwear of a young American nurse who had been held, "worse than hostage," as he puts it. Fida said his unit rescued the woman, draped her with the clothes of a dead soldier and escorted her onto a U.S. ship.
(Excerpt) Read more at syracuse.com ...
We are losing this guys faster with every passing day and we will so much poor with their passing.
That picture brings tears to my eyes.
Well done Soldier. Well done.
WW2 veteran.
My Dad’s 88 he was part of the occupying force of Hiroshima. He’s the best
.
It's sad how many that happened to.
The price of freedom is high and even those who do make it through alive are still never able to truly come home.
It’s astounding that he lived, at all. Just 20 when they hit the beach on Kwajalein. I’m glad my 20-year-old son is a college student, instead!
My Dad’s 88 he was part of the occupying force of Hiroshima. He’s the best
.
My Dad’s 88 he was part of the occupying force of Hiroshima. He’s the best
.
US troops capture Roi-Namur island in Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands during th...HD Stock Footage
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMoNh4wrEtY
WW2: Kwajalein Atoll, Marshall Islands (31 Jan-4 Feb, 1944)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNmkF4MaVJU
HD Stock Footage WWII U.S. 7th Infantry Takes Kwajalein Island Color
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qfue3L0p7DU
I am curious how a young American nurse would have ever been captured on Kwajelein in the first place. Female nurses certainly wouldn't have been at the front during the invasion. My limited knowledge of the history of the place indicates the Japanese took what was German administrative control of the Marshal Islands after WWI.
What is that blue medal with the musket?
Amazing. Back in 92, the ship I was serving on made a stop at Kwajalein. It reminded me of the island that the character Kirk Douglas played in the movie In Harm’s Way, was banished to and was rescued to John Waynes XO or Chief of Staff. 5000 Japanese? I didn’t think that little island could hold that many people.
Combat Infantrymans Badge (CIB).
I always marveled at the sense of perspective one must have gained after making it all the way through the war and back home safe.
Anything else you would face in life as far as difficulty would pale by comparison.
Could be a garbled account, complicated by scuttlebutt.
May not have been American, or a nurse.
May have been an Australian, British or NZ woman taken in the occupation of other islands in the region, such as Tarawa.
These were occupied by Japan by expeditionary forces staging from the Marshall Islands bases IIRC.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_and_Ellice_Islands
Louis Zamperini passed through the island as a prisoner along with his comrade.
One would think so. The only WW2 veteran I know well is my great-uncle, who was in the Pacific. (He's fighting in the Philippines, "now-minus-70 years.") Although he'd gotten married a few days before the Pearl Harbor attack, he stayed on in the Pacific until 1947. Then he went to work for a fertilizer company back in Missouri.
Owwww! That had to hurt!!
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