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.

[Eric in the Ozarks]

That is exactly what's happening now. Japan and the US are allies. The war was over in '45. Except for these anniversaries that come around, we have a common problem.