Posted on 08/03/2009 8:56:04 PM PDT by smokingfrog
Iwo Jima vet's son takes photos to family in Japan
The two wallet-size photos sat in a box in Fiorenzo Lopardo's bedroom dresser, reminders of a promise not yet kept. Decade after decade he held on to them, through law school, through raising a family, through 16 years as a Superior Court judge in Vista.
Lopardo got the photos at a moment of high anxiety – literally in the heat of battle. That's what made them precious. On March 19, 1945, he was a Marine commander on Iwo Jima, an island in the Pacific that was the site of one of the most bloody and legendary battles of World War II. That morning, a Japanese communications officer named Taizo Sakai walked up to American soldiers, stripped to his underwear and boots, and surrendered. He'd never believed much in the war, and he knew futility when he saw it.
Lopardo wasn't having the best time, either. Of the 360 men in his company, all but 11 were wounded or killed on Iwo Jima. The two sat together in a foxhole for three hours that day – a 24-year-old American lieutenant of Italian descent conversing with a 26-year-old Japanese sergeant major in the only language they both knew: French.
It didn't take Lopardo long to realize Sakai was no ordinary captive. He knew Japanese communications code. He knew Okinawa, the next target in the American march toward mainland. Lopardo sent word to his bosses, and arrangements were made to take Sakai off the island and into the hands of American intelligence agents.
(Excerpt) Read more at 3.signonsandiego.com ...
Things happen in war that can get legs of their own.
Thanks for posting this.
Thanks for posting this story.
Fascinating story. Thank you for posting.
Very touching, thanks for posting.
Awesome story. Bump
What a wonderful story. I am having all sorts of confused thoughts about life and God.
Yes, that made me cry. A hard cry but for a great reason.
:D
I am a real sap for these kinds of stories. Thanks for the posting.
Would make a great movie.
This is a great read for WWII Marine buffs...
Wonderful story, but it doesn’t explain how they found this man’s family when he had given the wrong name to his captors. How did they find him?
Very interesting story from a human emotional angle. My dad was a cryptography officer in the U.S. Army Air Force during WWII (the counterpart of that Japanese soldier, as my dad was also a sergeant major). My dad held no malice towards the Japanese, he was just trying to do his job as a good soldier. My dad thought he would die, but the war was soon over and he was put in charge of seeing after the needs of a section of Tokyo during the occupation.
He needed an interpreter and hired my mom. She was fluent in English as a 2nd language. Japanese schools required students to learn a 2nd language. She held no malice towards Americans, despite her home having been damaged by American pilots while inside. They married within a year of the war's ending. War is hell, but when it's over, it should be over. Incidentally, my grandfather on the Japanese side spoke French - he learned it while working with French consultants on Mitsubishi aircraft before the war.
Probably weren’t that many Japanese survivors of Iwo Jima that were also POW’s. Maybe someone recognized them from the TV program.
That’s a cool story.
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