I wrote this about my father last Memorial Day:
April 1, 2010
Dear Readers;
April 1st is more than just April Fools Day - it is also the anniversary of an event that should never be forgotten, at least not by anyone who loves America.
In 1945, April 1st was Easter Sunday. In 1945, April 1st was also L-Day in the Ryukyu Islands in the Pacific; shortly after dawn, the first wave of United State Marines would slip over the sides of their troop transports and climb down rope netting into the rocking landing craft below, known as Higgins Boats.
The codename for the operation was Iceberg. On the morning of April 1st, 1945, the invasion of Okinawa began.
My Dad is 85, and I consider myself blessed, and more than a little lucky, that he is still with us and enjoying life; I’m 58, so very few of my friends and relatives can say the same. But I remember them all, all the Dads of my youth; so many different personalities and styles, all of them patriotic Americans, most only a generation removed from the old country.
They all, to a man, believed in the greatness of America, taught us to work hard, taught us that there is no free lunch, taught us to have compassion for those less fortunate and to be generous with them, taught us to struggle for a better life, and told us that having achieved it, no man could take it from us.
Would that the men who now run this country been taught the same way.
My father enlisted in the Marine Corp the day he turned 18, in 1943, and after a year of stateside training was shipped overseas. There, on Guam and Iwo, he trained for amphibious landings. By that time, the United States Navy and Marine Corp had island-hopped almost all the way across the Pacific – almost. There was one island to go before the invasion of Japan, and that was Okinawa.
PFC Frank Santarpia, Company I, 3rd Battalion, 29th Marine Regiment, 6th Marine Division, 20 years old, went ashore with the first wave on the morning of April 1, 1945: Easter Sunday.
There’s no time or space here for the details, but suffice it to say that Okinawa, which was in such close proximity to the home islands of Japan that it was within the prefecture of the city of Tokyo, was the most heavily defended island of the entire war.
By the time it was secure, 12,513 brave American men were dead. Mull that number over in your mind for a moment. Twelve thousand, five hundred and thirteen. In an action that took less than six weeks.
The wounded numbered 38,916, and my father was one of them; he was shot on April 16th, during the Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill. He received a Purple Heart, spent three weeks in a makeshift island hospital, and was sent back to his platoon before the operation was completed. His regiment, the 29th, had been thrown into a meat grinder; their casualty rate was over 90%.
As brave as he was, and as compelling his story, he was far from unique - he did his job alongside tens of thousands of other Marines and soldiers. In the same mold as any other American fighting for freedom, past and present, his actions represented the norm, not the exception – and to this day, every detail about that battle has to be coaxed from him; he never talks about it voluntarily, and never thought it was anything special.
In an America that teaches its children little about the greatness of our country, that teaches shame for our past rather than pride, that ignores those who are noble and heroic, yet glorifies those who couldn’t shine the combat boots of the least of the men who fought in that battle, it is time to remember.
If, in writing this piece, I can get just a few of you spare a thought for these men today and every April 1st, I will have done my job. Maybe you could tell their story to a friend or neighbor - tell them about the men who fought and died for our flag and our freedom on a God-forsaken piece of volcanic rock that was ten thousand miles closer to Tokyo than it was to Ebbetts Field.
Tell them. Because if you don’t, nobody will.
Frank Santarpia
Staten Island, NY
www.teapartysi.com
Ironically, or not, I started and finished my Vietnam service on that same day!
Tell them. Because if you don’t, nobody will.
No, we must never forget, we must tell our children!!
Thanks for the post, FRiend!
I finished reading a book about the Okinawa campaign. The Battle of Sugar Loaf Hill is an extraordinary telling of bravery above and beyond.
I want to add that some of these men, both soldiers and Marines, fought for more than 30 days straight, under constant artillery fire, and viscious Japanese counterattacks, before being relieved and rotated to the rear for a bit of rest. After that, they were thrown back into the fight.
After American forces took Okinawa, they knew the next step was the invasion of Kyushu, where one million casualties was the expected toll. When the men on Okinawa heard about “the bomb,” there was great relief. One Marine wrote that he “might make it home alive now.”
Tell your father thanks and Semper Fi.