Back on Iwo Jima

Orange County Register ^ | 3/13/2005 | James Brooke

[kellynla]

IWO JIMA, Japan Pointing to a sandstone cliff pockmarked with World War II bullet holes, the U.S. Marine historian was describing a honey comb of Japanese tunnels on Saturday when a somber voice piped up from the back of the Humvee.

"Those are the caves I was firing on," said Joe Rogers, 83, a San Francisco lawyer.

The Marines came back to Iwo Jima on Saturday. This time they walked the black sand beaches in sensible white tennis shoes and filled souvenir vials for their grandchildren with volcanic sand from the Pacific isle.

They were marking the 60th anniversary of a battle that has blurred into a U.S. myth, symbolized by the photo of the flag-raising on Mount Suribachi. But for the octogenarians who came back, the nation's history was their personal property.

On the Humvee tour, John Ripley, a retired colonel who is the official Marine Corps historian, pointed out an overgrown gully where 1st Lt. Jack Lummus, an end for the New York Giants, was mortally wounded.

"I put a cigarette in Lummus' mouth - he was going into shock," Gerry Russell said in a matter-of-fact voice from his seat in the front of the jeep. Now 88 and a semiretired college administrator, he was a battalion commander in 1945.

[kellynla]

Semper Fi, Kelly

[Eric in the Ozarks]

Would love to read the whole story...

[Issaquahking]

Thanks Kelly for calling our attention to Some very important history. Our freedoms that so many take for granted, were paid for in blood by American Patriots and deserve to be remembered and honored more so than they are.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

There have been a couple of stories in the MSM about the 100,000 Japanese deaths associated with the fireboming raids. Very few carried what should be the setup story of Iwo Jima and the role it played in the raid and ending the war.
We lived in Japan in the 1950s and there were still large sections of Yokohama that were little more than piles of concrete on vacant lots. Our maid, Masako, was a ten year old girl, forced to work 16 hours a day in a munitions factory when the raid took place. After the fires were put out, some of the salvaged machinery was moved into caves in the sandstone cliffs around Yokohama Bay. The kids in my neighborhood liked to play in the caves but gradually, the MPs and Japanese police ordered them sealed up. One cave about a mile from our house still housed a family of Japanese. They had erected a wood frame front on the cave and had a single stove pile exiting a small window. The father of the household still wore a Japanese Army cap on his way to work at the docks.

[Last Dakotan]

Would love to read the whole story...

Use bugmenot.com

[Last Dakotan]

""That firebombing is unforgivable," Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, said Thursday at a news conference there. "One hundred thousand people died in one night. That's a massacre, isn't it?"

Call it what you may Mr. Ishihara. Evidence shows that the Japanese Military leadership was only less concerned about civilian casualties in the war.

We have an uniquely American saying for the whole event - Don't start what you can't finish.

[kellynla]

Would you care to elaborate...or is it a secret? LOL

[kellynla]

disregard my last post.
wrong thread. LOL

[A.A. Cunningham]

Originally published in the New York Times which does not require excerpting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/13/international/13japan.html

---

March 13, 2005

Once Again, Marines Walk on Iwo Jima

By JAMES BROOKE

WO JIMA, Japan, March 12 - Pointing to a sandstone cliff pockmarked with World War II bullet holes, the Marine historian was describing a honeycomb of Japanese tunnels on Saturday when a somber voice piped up from the back of the Humvee.

"Those are the caves I was firing on," said Joe Rogers, 83, a San Francisco lawyer.

The Marines came back to Iwo Jima on Saturday. This time they walked the black sand beaches in sensible white tennis shoes and filled souvenir vials for their grandchildren filled with volcanic sand from this Pacific isle.

They were marking the 60th anniversary of a battle that has blurred into an American myth, symbolized by the photo of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi. But for the octogenarians who came back, the nation's history was their personal property.

On the Humvee tour, John Ripley, a retired colonel who is the official Marine Corps historian, pointed out an overgrown gully where First Lt. Jack Lummus, an end for the New York Giants, was mortally wounded.

"I put a cigarette in Lummus's mouth - he was going into shock," Gerry Russell said in a matter-of-fact voice from his seat in the front of the jeep. Now 88 and a semiretired college administrator, he was a battalion commander in 1945.

In the 35-day fight for this eight-square-mile volcanic island, 6,821 marines and Navy personnel were killed, more than four times the number of American troops killed in two years in Iraq. About 22,000 Japanese defenders were killed, including 1,600 after the island was declared "secure" by military authorities at the end of March 1945. The tunnel network was so impenetrable that the last two Japanese soldiers did not surrender until November 1949, more than four years after the war ended.

The Japanese fought so tenaciously because this teardrop-shaped island 700 miles south of Tokyo was crucial for American bombing raids on Japan's main islands. From this island, aircraft spotters could warn Tokyo of approaching bombers, and fighter planes from Iwo Jima could try to intercept bombers.

On March 10, three weeks after the battle started here, B-29 Superfortress bombers hit Tokyo with a huge firebomb raid that killed about 100,000 people, almost all civilians.

"That firebombing is unforgivable," Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo and an ardent nationalist, said Thursday at a news conference there. "One hundred thousand people died in one night. That's a massacre, isn't it? We have to say this. But Japanese politicians these days, and the Foreign Ministry, don't."

While Iwo Jima is revered in the United States, the battle is largely ignored in Japan. In events planned to lead up to the 60th anniversary of Japan's Aug. 15 surrender, Japan is expected to focus largely on events in which its civilians were victims: the Tokyo firebomb raid, the battle for Okinawa and the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

In speeches at a memorial ceremony on Saturday, Japanese representatives focused on the growing military alliance with the United States.

"Today, 60 years after the battle of Iwo Jima, it gives me deep awe to see Japan and the United States cooperate in fighting terrorism," said Yoshitaka Shinda, a grandson of the island's last Japanese commander, Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi.

Gen. Michael W. Hagee, commandant of the Marine Corps, said here, "Today the grandchildren of the men who fought on Iwo Jima stand together in Iraq to offer the hand of freedom."

While veterans by and large said they backed the strengthening of the American alliance with Japan, several criticized the lack of education about World War II.

"I was telling a young Japanese woman in Guam that I was coming to Iwo Jima for the 60th anniversary," Keith Mueller, a veteran's son. "She had never heard of Iwo Jima. She kept saying, 'Hiroshima?' and I kept saying, 'Iwo Jima.' "

His father, Clifford, sat nearby in a wheelchair. He noted that his birthday is March 12. "On my 20th I was here and fired 2,000 rounds. Now I am back here for my 80th birthday."

Later this year, Clint Eastwood is to start filming "Flags of Our Fathers," based on James Bradley's best-selling book about the battle.

The theme on Saturday was fathers and sons.

"Until he went to his first reunion in '85, he thought he was the only one to wake up screaming in the night," Paul Jackson said. His father, James, is an 80-year-old former Marine rifleman. The son recalled, "He once told me he put a bayonet in a Japanese soldier's eye socket, and the soldier just ran away."

Elsewhere on the island, Teddy Draper Jr. waited for a photo session to end for his father, Teddy, the only Navajo code talker at the reunion.

"I just thought that everybody's father would scream at night," he said of his father, who translated military radio communications into Navajo, a language unknown to the Japanese. Speaking of his 82-year-old father who had traveled here from Canyon de Chelly, Ariz., he added, "He suffered real bad from the war, but he didn't let anyone know."

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[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

Excellent link. Thanks.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

"That firebombing is unforgivable," Shintaro Ishihara, the governor of Tokyo, said Thursday at a news conference there. "One hundred thousand people died in one night. That's a massacre, isn't it? We have to say this. But Japanese politicians these days, and the Foreign Ministry, don't."


Maybe because they understand, Mr. Ishihara, that had they not awoken this sleeping dog with their initial attack, we would never had firebombed. The blood of those civilians is on the hands of your nation, sir, not ours.

[Ghost of Philip Marlowe]

"While Iwo Jima is revered in the United States, the battle is largely ignored in Japan. In events planned to lead up to the 60th anniversary of Japan's Aug. 15 surrender, Japan is expected to focus largely on events in which its civilians were victims: the Tokyo firebomb raid, the battle for Okinawa, and the dropping of nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

You'd think with the terrible black cloud of Red China looming over all of Asia, the Japanese would be a bit more hesitant to spit in our eye.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Very interesting. Thanks you guys. (My dad didn't scream at night, but he was also a talker - he'd tell you anything you wanted to know about it, when a lot of guys wouldn't say a word.)

[RightOnline]

...and may God bless your dad.

[wtc911]

I spend a fair amount of time at Walter Reed and with troops who have been deployed (sometimes more than once) but not wounded. One of the things that I find is that these guys do talk, given the right setting. I listen a lot and sometimes throw in an old NYPD street cop story just to hold up my end. I think that it is a good thing for them to get it out. There is no doubt that too many men have paid a lifetime price for keeping this stuff to themselves. That goes for a lot of Cops and FireFighters too.

[kellynla]

I don't judge an entire civilization, race, creed, nationality and/or color by what a few people say or do...

But the Japs initiated the war and we finished it.
nuff said!

and we could have buried the entire country if we had wanted to...
if not for America, they'd all be eating rice and living in huts if not dead!

[izzatzo]

"On the Humvee tour, John Ripley, a retired colonel who is the official Marine Corps historian, pointed out an overgrown gully where First Lt. Jack Lummus, an end for the New York Giants, was mortally wounded."

1stLt. Jack Lummus, a football star and graduate of Baylor University, Waco, TX, my alma mater. Also, I might add, awarded the CMOH posthumously.

[kellynla]

Thank you for visiting my fellow Marines and other service members.

You have no idea how much your visits are appreciated.
Those who are in military hospitals are often forgotten.

Semper Fi,
Kelly

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

Thank you so much.

[DaughterOfAnIwoJimaVet]

I agree. Everyone's put together differently - I guess we were a lucky family, because Dad was very mentally strong but he also wasn't one to internalize things like this.

He said there were guys who would get off the landing craft and not even try to avoid being killed. They just lost their minds on the spot, stood straight up, and walked into it all.

Heartbreaking.