LEATHERNECKS on BLOODY IWO JIMA
Lt. Harry E. Richter, 24,
squinted uneasily across the sparkling Pacific waters toward the hazy island
that loomed ahead. He watched his men, their faces smeared with white
anti-flash cream, and wondered how many would return alive.
Charles Ray Barnes,
19, considered himself a lucky man. When Uncle Sam called, Barnes had requested
the Navy. He never wanted in the Marines, but that’s where he went. And he had
never backed away from duty.
Jesse Earl Long, Jr., 19,
joined the Marines June 16, 1943. After his cousin, Macon Lamon, 3rd Marine
Division, was killed by Japanese on Nov. 29, 1943, on Bougainville, he had one
burning mission in life: to fight the Japanese.
IWO JIMA
Feb. 19, 1945, Harry Richter, with the 5th Marine Division, had sailed
from Pearl Harbor in late January. Their mission: Take Iwo Jima and save 20,000
airmen from ditching at sea on return bombing missions from Japan. They made it
sound important.
The 4th and 5th Marine
Divisions, 50,000 Leathernecks, watched the island take shape. The Navy had
been bombarding the volcanic island for three days, keeping up a drumbeat of
fire. Big guns on the battleships North Carolina, Washington, New York,
Texas, Arkansas, and Nevada belched sheets of fire, making a
moonscape of the Japanese stronghold. "Nothing could survive there," someone
said. "It'll be a walk-on."
Richter "Second Louie"
of the 3rd Platoon, Company D, 27th Regiment, slung his M-1 over his shoulder
and ordered his men to check out their gear one final time. He watched them,
their faces smeared with white anti-flash cream, and wondered how many of them
would return alive. The sky was clear and the weather a warm 68 degrees. From
ship deck, he watched as the first wave of Marines streamed toward the beach.
Four minutes later, Richter's vessel lurched forward and the second wave headed
for the island. The noise was deafening as six-inch naval guns thundered away,
hurling tons of steel onto the island. Overhead, planes dropped napalm and
strafed the beach. Richter studied the approaching landscape as his men sat
quietly, some with heads bowed.
To his front, looming
554 feet over the small end of the island was extinct volcano, Mt. Suribachi,
honeycombed with gun emplacements and pillboxes. The 28th Regiment was to take
Suribachi and Richter's 27th was to cross in front and isolate it from the rest
of the island. Then they were to move northeast and take Motoyama Airfield No.
1.
A 90-millimeter shell
fired from Mt. Suribachi barely missing Richter's vessel, creating a water
geyser. The Amtrak (amphibious tractor) jerked to a stop, the ramp lowered and
Richter and his men splashed through knee-deep surf onto the volcanic ash
beach. The first wave had just reached a high terrace created by a tropical
storm. The third wave was about to land. Still no Japanese resistance.
Richter remembered what an officer had said: "You might just be able to walk in
and that's it."
Burrowed into volcanic
caves, pillboxes and bunkers, were 20,700 Japanese soldiers with barely a
headache after three days of bombardment. They were patiently waiting for the
third wave to get ashore. General Kuribayaski's strategy was simple: Permit
the Marines to land, then annihilate them.
Iwo Jima would become
the site of the Marines most heroic and bloodiest battle of the Pacific War.
Twenty-two of the 80 medals of Honor awarded Marines during WWII were earned
here.
The third wave landed
and mortars and machine gun fire rained down on the exposed Marines.
"They were killing those
people... we knew them... it was terrible," Richter says.
Richter and
his men crawled inland about 200 yards. "I kept hearing bullets whizzing over
my head - phewm, phewm, phewm.” From their position on Mt. Suribachi, the
Japanese were slaughtering the luckless Marines like flies. Richter and his men
slithered across the hot sand on their bellies, digging a hole under them when
the firing became too intense to move. They were supposed to establish a
straight line across the island by nightfall, but it became impossible. "There
were sand dunes in front of us that were actually fortified pillboxes," he
says. "We were pinned down and couldn't move." Richter was up front, at the
point. He saw some movement. "Get down out there!" he yelled, thinking it was
Marines. It was Japanese soldiers! Pinned down by machinegun fire coming from
the pillboxes, Richter and his platoon couldn't move. They dug holes beneath
them and waited for morning and help. Richter didn't know it at the time, but
566 Marines had already been killed and 1,755 wounded -- approximating two of
the eight battalions, which had landed that day. Richter dug in about five yards
from two guys near the point. The night was moonless and cold and seemingly
unending.
Richter was brought to
full attention by the crack of rifle fire. Two quick shots. The firing came
from the two men near the point, five yards away. Next morning, Richter saw two
dead Japanese soldiers. "They had been shot in the middle of the forehead," he
says. "It looked like they had been standing behind each other and hit by the
same bullet, but they hadn't."
Tanks were brought up
later in the morning and blew the pillboxes out of the sand. Later that
afternoon, they moved up behind another outfit and dug in. They were told to
prepare to move forward again at a minute’s notice and plug the gap in the
line. They did, jumping in holes with Marines already in place. "They were all
down," Richter says. "No one was looking to see what was going on out front."
Next morning, the unit Richter's platoon had come to help was pulled back.
"Some of them were going by our foxholes and they were getting shot." Richter's
platoon was near Motoyama airstrip, which was elevated by pillboxes along the
side of the embankment. "We were pinned down," Richter says. "They were firing
machine guns and mortars at us. It was almost unbelievable at the people being
killed.” Richter's platoon was ordered to move forward, but they kept getting
flanking fire on their right and waited for the unit on their right to move up
in place. When the other unit moved, they ran into a wall of fire. "My men saw
how many of them were getting shot and we moved up to help them."
Richter and his
Leathernecks routed the Japanese from their reinforced sanctuaries one pillbox
at a time. Someone would crawl close to the opening, toss in a white
phosphorous grenade, and when the Japanese soldiers emerged, they were shot.
Hardly any surrendered.
On the fourth day of
fighting, the 28th Regiment took Mt. Surabichi and hoisted the flag. Richter
didn't see the famous event, now immortalized by the bronze monument in
Arlington Cemetery, but he remembers his first glimpse of Old Glory fluttering
triumphantly over the island. After several days of bloody fighting,
Richter's tattered platoon was pulled back for rest.
After a day or two of
rest, Richter was back up on the front line trying to blow Japanese out of their
caves and pillboxes with satchel charges and flame-throwers. The tops of the
bunkers and pillboxes were impervious to satchel charges. One of Richter’s men
found an entranceway, tossed in a satchel charge and out came a grenade from the
same hole. "We called for flame-throwers. They came and sprayed and a minute
later out came another grenade."
On March, 1, Richter was
standing behind a rock when he heard "Kaploop - kaploop." Someone yelled,
"Watch out for those mortars!" Richter looked up and saw a round coming toward
him. "It didn't arc," he says. "When it reached it height, it turned and came
straight down hitting the top of the rock I was behind." Flying shrapnel tore
into his right leg and ankle. Corpsmen evacuated him to an auxiliary hospital
ship. The war was over for Richter.
Iwo Jima fell on March
26. Of the 20,700 Japanese on the tiny island, all but 200 were killed. Marine
casualties were 5,888 killed and 17,272 wounded in action - over 33 percent of
the landing force. Richter's platoon had been practically annihilated. Of the
original platoon of 40, only 10 men were left.
"I still mourn for the boys that
were in my platoon..." His voice breaks with emotion. "I think about them on
Armistice Day. For years I've tried to forget the bloodshed -- the youth of the
boys -- can you imagine almost 6,000 getting killed on that little island?"
In June 1944, Charles Ray Barnes,
19, considered himself a lucky man. When Uncle Sam called, Barnes had requested
the Navy. And he got it. He glanced around at the group of young men
surrounding him at the Induction Center in Birmingham. Some had opted for the
Army, some for the Navy, like himself, and some of the more daring had joined
the Marines. They could have the Marines.
Barnes eyeballed the
officer with the clipboard standing in front of the formation.
“Seventeen of you fellars will have to go to the Marines,” the officer said. “Any volunteers?”
Silence. Barnes was young, but Sally Hightower
Barnes hadn’t reared any fools. The officer shrugged and looked down at
the clipboard and started calling out names, skipping around as he did.
Barnes kept count in his head. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen - his luck was
holding.
“BARNES, CHARLES RAY!” Barnes felt his stomach
plunge to his bowels. It was worse than the electric chair. Dear
God, why do I deserve this?
“Gentlemen, welcome to
the Marine Corps.”
Barnes was assigned to
the Fourth Marine Division, veterans of Roi-Nemur and Saipan. Barnes, unaware
of what lay ahead of him, sailed for Iwo Jima. En route, he studied a map and
plastic model of the tiny volcanic island. Barely five miles long and shaped
like a pork chop, Mt. Suribachi loomed over the small end. Plateaus and ridges
were carved in the northern end. There were no trees. It was hot, black and
lifeless. Tunneled under this inferno were approximately 23,000 Japanese
soldiers.
Early morning, Feb. 19,
1945, Barnes looked out across the blue Pacific. There were ships from horizon
to horizon. Battleships, cruisers and destroyers pounded the island with their
big guns. H-Hour was 9000. Barnes watched as Marines climbed down nets and
into landing boats. Airplanes flew in low over the island, strafing the
beaches. “I could see flashing in the sunlight.”
Barnes’ outfit remained
onboard ship as replacements, waiting innocently to be fed into the human meat
grinder. On the fourth day the 28th Regiment, 5th Marine Division, captured Mt. Surabachi and raised the flag. Barnes didn’t see Old Glory go up, but he
remembers his feeling when he first saw it fluttering in the distance. “It was
a great sight. Those of us aboard ship didn’t know no better. We thought the
whole thing was over.”
A day or two later,
Barnes prepared to climb down the ship nets and into a landing craft. It was
gut check time. He never wanted in the Marines, but he had never backed away
from his duty. Anyway, over the months of hardship and training, he had grown
to like the Corps. He was proud to be a Marine.
Barnes recalls landing
on Iwo Jima: “Wrecked landing craft and vehicles were turned upside down. The
beach was a mess and they were trying to get supplies unloaded. Everything was
mired up in the sand”
Lugging their 30-caliber
machine gun, dubbed “The Widow Maker,” Barnes and his squad were sent to the
frontline as replacements. “When we got there, they didn’t have any officers,
they had already been killed. A buck sergeant was leading the outfit.” That
evening Barnes, scared and miserable, dug into the volcanic sand and waited.
“The sand was so hot, you’d have to turn over every few minutes to cool.”
Next morning, at dawn,
he heard what he thought was a rooster crowing. “It was the lonesomest sound
you ever heard in your life. I lay there listening and I couldn’t hear
nothing. I rolled over on my back toward a shell hole behind me and saw a
helmet, just the top of it. I figured it was some of our bunch,” he says.
“Suddenly, a Japanese solder jumped out with a rifle in his hand. I made a dive
for my carbine. Two riflemen in a nearby hole opened up on the Japanese
soldier. They put ‘im on the deck and put some more in ‘im just for good
measure.”
American strategy was to
cut across the small end of the island and isolate and capture Mt. Surabachi.
That had been done at great loss on the fourth day. But the fight had hardly
begun. Lying to the north was Hill 382, which comprised the backbone of the
Japanese defense. Intelligence reports described the hill as “a complicated
mass of crevices, 15 to 20 feet deep which covers its surface, making it a
bastion of defense capable of receiving an attack from any quarter.” On top,
buried several stories down in the volcanic rock, was a reinforced blockhouse.
When the firing became too intense for the Japanese, they would move downward,
then come back up to fight again.
On February 26, the
assault on Hill 382 began. It would be the bitterest and costliest battle of
the whole Iwo Jima campaign. Barnes’ 25th Regiment played an important role in
taking the hill. Official records state: “Both flanks (25th Regiment) received
a murderous concentration of heavy mortar fire which was extremely accurate.”
Barnes remembers the
battle: “We went up there twice, maybe three times,” he says. “We’d get up
there and have to leave because it would get too hot. The Japanese were down in
holes and caves and the engineers got most of them out with explosives and flame
throwers.”
After Hill 382 was finally taken, Barnes and his
outfit dug in on top. “Everybody had them a nice deep hole and stayed in
it.” One night, Barnes and his platoon were asked to help flush out
some Japanese hemmed up below them. “We heard shooting below us and heard
somebody running toward us. Sounded like a running horse. Joe
hollered ‘HALT!’ A flare went off. I heard Johnny holler
‘Shoot ‘em Joe!’ I heard screaming and hollering. Next morning, Barnes and
his buddies inspected the dead soldier. He was shot in the center of the
heart. Lying beside him was an American carbine, without an ammo clip.
Barnes says, “He had a folding cigarette case made in the shape of a dollar bill
with dollar bill signs on it. He got it off some American the same way he got
the carbine, I guess.”
Later, that evening,
Barnes and a buddy were digging a hole for the night and accidentally struck a
lead-covered telephone cable buried in the ground. “We chopped it in two and
bent it out of the way,” he says. “And we didn’t tell nobody about it. I
didn’t think much about it until later, but it could have been tapped. Anyway,
we messed up the Japanese communication.”
Next day, another outfit
moved up to the front and set up a machine gun near Barnes’ platoon. “They
started shooting at something across there,” Barnes says. “Directly, a sniper
got the man on the machine gun. The next man took over and he was shot. Then
the third man crawled up the machine and the sniper got him. The sniper shot
three of ‘em.”
The Japanese were
masters of camouflage. “They hid everywhere,” Barnes says. “They would come up
behind you, in front of you, it didn’t seem to make any difference.”
On March 16, after 26
days of battle, Iwo Jima was secured. No quarters had been given. The losses
were horrendous. Approximately 23,000 Japanese had been killed, of which the 4th
Marine Division claimed 8,992. They took only 441 Japanese prisoners. As for
Barnes’ Company C, all of the officers were killed and wounded except one.
Rifle platoons were commanded by enlisted men, one a Pfc. “It was a slaughter
house,” Barnes says.
The 4th Marine Division’s next objective was Japan,
but the war ended early August 1945. Barnes was lying in his bunk.
“It was daylight and I wondered what was wrong. No reveille blowing nobody
hollering ‘fall out’. Nobody saying anything. Directly, some guy
come running down the street hollering ‘the war’s over the war’s over!’
You’d thought everybody would have been jumping up and down singing and having a
big time. They seemed unconcerned about it."
Barnes had a recurring
dream. “A Japanese fellar would be after me in a small airplane. I’d be
working on my pasture fence and I’d hear an airplane and look up and it would be
him. He’d dive at me. Same airplane, same Japanese pilot, same everything. It
went on for years. I told somebody about it. He asked if I’d brought anything
back from the war. I told ‘em about the hand grenade and he said get rid of it
and you won’t be bothered again. So I did, and I never had anymore dreams.”
World War II had shaped
Jesse Earl Long, Jr.'s life. From the beginning, he was destined to be a
Marine. James Daniel, his uncle, Assistant Farm Agent in Madison County had
joined the Marines at age 32, reasoning that his enlistment might save some
young father from having to serve. Daniels was killed on Guadalcanal, the first
Limestonian to die in the war. Long was 18 at the time and a senior at Tanner
High. He wanted to join the Marines immediately, but his mother had insisted he
finish school. His cousin, Macon Lamon, had already joined the
Leathernecks and was serving with an elite Raider Battalion somewhere in the
South Pacific. His uncle had forfeited his life for his country and Long
was prepared to do the same.
Long joined the Marines
June 16, 1943. After his cousin, Macon Lamon, 3rd Marine Division, was killed by
Japanese on Nov. 29, 1943, on Bougainville, he had one burning mission in life:
to fight the Japanese.
Long, assigned to the
newly formed 5th Marine "Spearhead" Division, 5th Engineer Battalion,
headquartered at Camp Pendleton was soon training in the southern California
canyons and deserts. On weekends, Long and buddies sometimes hitchhiked to Los
Angeles and hung out at the Hollywood Canteen and rubbed shoulders with film
starts such as William Bendix on one occasion, he snagged a dance with Shirley
Temple.
While at Camp
Pendleton. Long's mother mailed him a "Heart-Shield Bible" -- one with a gold
plated steel cover that fit snugly in his dungaree pocket over his heart.
Engraved on the steel cover was a mother's wishful prayer. "May this keep you
safe from harm.”
The 5th Marine Division
sailed out of San Diego in August 1944. Rumors abounded among the Leathernecks.
Some said they were going straight to Tokyo, others said San Francisco.
Neither was correct. They landed at Camp Tarawa, Hawaii, their new home where
they trained for their first combat mission - "Island X". There was liberty for
the men in Honolulu, then the Division slipped out of Pearl Harbor. Two days
out to sea and "Island X" was officially identified: Iwo Jima. Plans were to
sweep across the island in two or three days and move on to Okinawa where the
real fight would take place.
The battle for Iwo Jima,
a volcanic island five miles long would become one of the epic struggles of the
war. Approximately 46,000 men, Japanese and Americans, would be killed or
wounded on the eight-square miles during 26 days of fighting. "Taking Iwo Jima"
someone wrote afterwards, "was like throwing human flesh against reinforced
concrete."
The Navy pulverized this
spit of land for days and planes bombed and strafed from above. It didn't seem
possible that any Japanese could be alive. Yet, hardly any were killed.
Long's job was to drive
a bulldozer ashore and push aside land mines, clearing a path for tanks and
infantry to follow. Steel armor one inch thick that would deflect .50 caliber
bullets was constructed around the dozer with an exit door on top and a peep
hole in front for Long to see out.
Monday morning, February
19, was lovely. At 8:59 a.m. the first wave of Marines hit the beach, followed
closely by the second wave. Long climbed inside the armored dozer and drove
onto a landing craft. "Don't drop me out here in the middle of the ocean," Long
joked with the operator, "because this tractor can't swim." The third wave of
Marines landed. All hell broke loose. The Japanese opened up with machine
guns, mortars, and artillery from high on Mt. Suribachi. Marines were being
mowed down like grass on the volcanic ash beach. The landing craft operator
veered off course, putting Long ashore at the wrong place. It would be a week
before he hooked up with his company.
Long drove his armored
dozer ashore onto a beach clogged with disabled landing craft and dead and
wounded Marines. He lowered the blade and began pushing up land mines, being
careful not to run over dead Marines. There were three airfields on Iwo Jima.
Taking Motoyama Airfield No. 1 was the first objective, but it was an inch by
inch slugfest. At nights, Japanese soldiers walked through the Marine lines,
trying to draw machine gun fire thereby locating their positions. Marines were
under orders not to shoot. They quickly dispatched the Japanese with sharp
knives and bayonets.
Long, like a turtle
hunkered inside his armored shell, cleared a path of mines enabling tanks and
riflemen to move up from behind. Mortar rounds dropped all around him and
machine gun bullets hitting the steel armor sounded like popcorn popping. Some
luckless Japanese attempted to disable the dozer with explosives but were shot.
One night, the Japanese penetrated the American
lines and blew up a huge ammo dump. Long, a hundred yards away, felt the
earth tremble. Long and his dozer were out front in the heat of the
battle. He knocked out more than one machine gun emplacement by lowering
the blade and pushing a mound of sand into the pill box opening, burying the
Japanese. While they were digging out, another Marine would toss a grenade
or satchel charge inside.
On the fourth day of
battle, Long was near Airfield No. 1. "Look!" A Marine pointed toward Mt. Surabachi. "What is it?" Long asked. "See that flag?" Long looked up at
Surabachi and saw the Stars and Stripes, a small one, fluttering over the
island. "Yeah." He shrugged. It was no big deal since it wasn't any help at
the moment to Long and his hard-pressed buddies. Later, a second flag, a larger
one, was raised on Surabachi, the photo of which, when it appeared on front
pages back home, electrified the nation.
During the last days of
the campaign, at the north end of the island where the Japanese were fighting
tenaciously, Long was asked to gouge out a path down to the sea so that the
tanks and infantrymen could advance. Long responded. He squinted through the
peephole and gave the dozer throttle. The big machine crawled forward into an
area where no American had gone. Long was greeted by a hail of bullets. Two
tanks covering Long from the rear were drawing intense fire from mortars, and
round began dropping, each one moving closer to the dozer. Long heard a loud
explosion. The dozer lurched and wouldn’t move. He figured his truck had been
hit. The official Marine citation tells what happened:
“For conspicuous gallantry and
intrepidity in action against the enemy while attached to a Marine Engineer
battalion on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, March 12, 1943, Pfc. Long was operating
an armored dozer forward of the front lines through a deep ravine leading to
heavily fortified enemy positions. Despite heavy fire he was successfully
completing his mission when a land slide caused his dozer to slip too far over
an embankment making it impossible for him to move either forward or backward.
Without a moment’s hesitation and with total disregard for his own personal
safety and despite the heavy enemy fire, Pfc. Long climbed out of his cab, raced
back to the tank which was supporting him, unfastened the tow cable with which
the tank was equipped, carried it forward, attached it to his dozer and by so
doing saved his dozer and was able to complete his dangerous task enabling the
tanks and infantry to advance. His prompt and heroic action was in keeping with
the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.”
