The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater

by Matthew Rozell

  6:00 PM

  Several old letters were just brought aboard from Manila. Most of them have been here for months! I received several Christmas cards from people in North Creek in December 1943, also some letters from home, one had a nice picture of my ma and dad.

  I know this is going to be hell, standing down here in this cramped position for twelve days, but after seeing those pictures and reading those letters and cards, I don’t feel quite so bad now.

  October 3, 1944

  Finally moving out of the bay in a small merchant convoy of Jap ships. The bay is full of wrecked ships which the Americans sank in the September 21 and 22 air raids. With no markings on this tub, whatsoever, we are expected to be sent to the bottom any day now by a Yank bomb or a torpedo! No one has a life belt, and there is only one small escape ladder running down to this stuffy crowded hold, three decks below the top of the ship, so our chances of surviving is darn small, if the Yanks sink this scow! With only a couple small machine guns on it, the Yanks can also strafe the heck out of us if they so desire.

  October 9, 1944: 2:00 PM

  Ten men have already died from overcrowded conditions and lack of water and have been thrown overboard. We thought we might be some more shark bait a few minutes ago when the Yank sub fired a torpedo at us, barely missing the bow of the ship, and sank an oil tanker along the side of us. When the Japs started dropping depth charges, it sounded like the sides would collapse in on us!

  October 10, 1944

  Carl Deamer died last night in my arms. He passed out several times last night with a high fever. I managed to bring him to several times by fanning the heck out of him, but about 5 AM, Carl’s worries ended. I first met him at Camp I in Nov, 1942.

  October 11, 1944

  Sailed into Hong Kong harbor.

  October 12 to October 21, 1944

  Started sailing out of the bay for Formosa [Taiwan]. Sure glad to leave here! Americans have visited this place several times with their bombs and have bombed many of the buildings on the waterfront and have left the bay full of bomb-blasted ships. We were bombed once, but luckily the Yanks missed us again. We unloaded copra and have sugar aboard now.

  October 25, 1944

  Arrived at Port Takao in Formosa.

  November 8, 1944

  After being chased in and out of the bay by the Americans bombers, we are finally going ashore this morning!

  10:00 PM

  Just got on shore, most of us are so weak we can barely walk! During those 39 days of hell, cramped up in that crummy hole, we lost 38 of our men. The rest of us who managed to survive have lost many pounds. God! What [awful] looking men! With a 39-day beard, dirty, pale, and skinny, we all look like walking skeletons coming out of a dungeon!

  Like Joe and thousands of others, John Parsons had arrived in Formosa from the Philippines on a hellship, two years earlier. During this time the men captured with him at Bataan labored at working in rice fields, growing sweet potatoes, and making rope. He remembered that ‘on rainy days, the camp would be called out and made to sit in a group on the wet ground facing mounted machine guns. [We] were told that in the event of an allied invasion of Formosa, this would be [our] fate. This took place about once a week, and having no source of news, [we] never knew if it was the real thing or another rehearsal’.

  Just before Joe Minder arrived at Takao, John was leaving that port on another hellship bound for Japan, a route that Joe would be following soon enough. The Oyroku Maru had considerable difficulty getting out of the Formosa harbor. The prisoners were packed into their compartments with timbers wedged against the door with the hatches sealed as the harbor endured three days of consecutive bombing by American planes. One bomb struck so close that it killed 17 Japanese soldiers on the deck. The first attempt to leave the harbor ended when a submarine was detected the first night out and the hellship turned back; the men remained confined aboard and forced to wait in the harbor for another five days. On the second attempt, a torpedo narrowly missed the ship and exploded on the shoreline. The vessel finally made it out of the harbor and on its way to Japan only with the help of a destroyer escort. [58] Two months later, the Oyroku Maru was bombed off the Philippines in Subic Bay with 1,600 American prisoners on board. Survivors were forced into the water and many were deliberately machine gunned before they could reach shore.

  John Parsons would spend the remainder of his captivity at the notorious Mukden POW camp in the far reaches of Manchuria. He would be liberated by Soviet troops on Aug. 20, 1945.

  chapter ten

  The Sands of Iwo Jima

  As the tens of thousands of prisoners were being transported to the Japanese home islands for slave labor and the Philippines was slowly being liberated, military planners focused on the next two stepping stones—Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

  Iwo Jima, or ‘Sulfur Island’, was eight square miles of sand, ash, and rock, lying 660 miles southeast of Tokyo. It could serve as a refueling stop for the B–29 and B–24s that were now flying almost daily out of the fields in the Marianas to bomb the Japanese mainland. In late November 1944, aerial bombardment of Iwo Jima with high explosives began and continued for a record 74 straight days. The 21,000 Japanese defenders survived this with scores of underground fortresses connected by 16 miles of tunnels stocked with food, water, and ammunition. The surface was covered with concrete pillboxes and blockhouses housing some 800 gun positions. On Feb. 19, 1945, the attack began as the landing ships brought the Marines in towards the beaches of blackened volcanic sand.

  Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

  At 24, Sanford ‘Sandy’ Berkman was the old man of his outfit, serving as a second lieutenant in the 5th Division, 26th Marines, and wound up commanding a machine gun platoon on Iwo Jima. In 2007 he sat down for an interview with the New York State Military Museum’s Veterans Oral History Project.

  Sandy Berkman

  We shoved off from Hawaii January 1st, 1945, and we were part of an invasion force—not knowing where we were going at the time—but we found out later that we were going to Iwo. Everybody wanted to know where Iwo Jima was, no one had even heard of it. There had never been a white man on that island, only the Japanese, they owned and controlled it and lived there. We were aboard ship over forty days.

  Arthur LaPorte was an 18–year old Marine from Hudson Falls. He had been trained on the light machine gun in the 4th Marine Division. His convoy left training at Pearl Harbor for the long journey across the Pacific. It would be his first time in combat, as an ammunition carrier for a gun squad.

  Art LaPorte

  We went aboard ships right to Pearl [Harbor] and stayed at Pearl for a couple weeks until they got supplies and got the convoy together, and then we headed out, not knowing where we were going, across the Pacific on a huge convoy. We did not have any Japanese resistance, we were very lucky, no torpedoes or anything. We got out to Saipan and stayed off shore. After that, when we got going again, they brought out an easel, and they told us about how the Japanese had gun emplacements and what we would meet there. And that was our first knowledge that we were going to Iwo Jima.

  We approached Iwo at night, and we could hear the gunfire from the ships. We could see the flashes and the firing, but we could not see Iwo at that time. Us new guys were too nervous to sleep, and we played poker all night. And even some of the old timers, who were shaken up going into another battle, would be there with us.

  Herb Altshuler joined the Marine Corps in April 1943 and was also assigned to the 4th Marine Division. The naval bombardment preceding the landings lasted three days.

  Herb Altshuler

  I remember very clearly how dramatic it was, seeing for the first time T.V. [monitors] with all these silhouetted ships and the beach. It was quite an impressive thing going up on deck, and seeing as far as you could see, in a circle of 180 degrees, nothing but ships lined up. Battleships and destroyers and cruisers and all, just throwing in bombs right into this little island! You wondered how anybody would be there, how could an
ybody possibly live, and I think the leadership thought so too. They really thought they pulverized this island. It was amazing to see the armada of ships that were just lined up around this little island, just pounding it.

  Sandy Berkman

  We landed on Iwo February 19th, 1945, and our division was part of the assault. Needless to say, it was a very, very tough operation, very costly in human lives. You couldn’t move. It was all volcanic ash. We had poured some 18,000 rounds of [heavy] ammunition into the island from the battlewagons that were out there. And they [the Japanese] sat there and laughed at us, they were dug in. [Our] intelligence was not good—it later came out, and they admitted that it wasn’t. We lost a lot of men. I lost a good deal of my platoon, early.

  Art LaPorte

  Early in the morning, they fed us a steak dinner. Then we went up on deck, and we watched the ‘going-ons’ over Iwo. We looked out the stern of the ship, and there was Iwo standing right in front of us – Mount Suribachi to the left and a long stretch of beach, and to the right, some higher ground. The first outfit [went in] at 9:00. They hit the beaches, and we weren't scheduled to go in till the afternoon, but they lost so many men that we went in at 11:00. The thing that really got to us almost immediately—the boats were bringing back the wounded to our ship. I guess they were at least not-so-badly-hit casualties; the worst ones were being taken to the hospital ship. But they were bringing casualties back to our ship, and of course that made us quite nervous because we knew what we were getting into.

  Herb Altshuler

  I can remember very clearly watching the guys getting loaded onto the boats that were coming along side and coming down the ladder, the netting. And I remember seeing a guy slip and getting crushed between the landing craft and the ship. I also remember very clearly that night when we had the burial at sea, we held service on deck, with a bugle and the works, and him being slipped over the side. Before you even went into battle, you were introduced to the reality of the war. I went in on the following day.

  Art LaPorte

  Our turn to hit the beach came at 11:00 AM; we were called in early. And the Japs didn’t fire on us as we went in; I hardly saw any shells... When we got close to shore we were told to get in the landing craft. And when we landed at the beachhead, we ran out, and there was a slight rise ahead of us. It was hard to get over it because it was a mix of that black sand and volcanic ash and it was awful hard to get over it, and we were worried about the bullets.

  Sandy Berkman

  It was all volcanic ash; you couldn’t dig. You’d dig a hole and it’d cave back in again. There was no such thing as digging a foxhole because it wouldn’t hold. You lay there and hopefully you were all right. You see, they could see us, but we couldn’t see them. They were so dug in, in these [fortified] emplacements. They had all those years to get that island ready, and especially when the war broke out, they knew that eventually we’d be going there. And they were waiting for us. There were over [20,000] of them. Probably, in the entire engagement, we landed over 40,000 men. You can imagine on an island [that small] with 60,000 men on there, it was just incredible. Absolutely incredible!

  Herb Altshuler

  Iwo was nothing but pulverized volcanic ash, and you sunk in further over your ankles as you hit the beach. Now the Japanese had registered all their weaponry onto the beach, so you were there and you were just sitting ducks. The idea was to get in and get in as far as you could, and I remember doing that. And I remember that night, I crawled in a foxhole—well actually it was a hole that was caused by one of their large mortars—I had been laying there, and a ‘recon’ came by. A ‘recon’ was a small little vehicle loaded with rockets, and it was dark, and it pulled up alongside of where I was, and I dug in just holding onto my rifle, scared as hell, and he let go of all of his rockets which flashed and made a big bright spot. After he let all of his rockets go he just drove off, and I thought ‘well, this is the end’, these guys [the Japanese] would just register on me, but I was lucky that it didn’t happen. I remember lying there thinking about all of the stuff I hadn’t done [in my life]. Then I fell asleep.

  “Trapped by Iwo’s treacherous black-ash sands.”

  Mount Suribachi in background. National Archives.

  Walter Hammer had just turned 21 a few months before the landing.

  Walt Hammer

  When we landed, our landing craft got hit. I was a heavy machine gunner carrying a 43–lb. receiver [the midsection ‘business’ action of the machine gun]. We had a tripod carrier and also a guy who carried the barrel, which had a handle on it and a little pocket. Well, when we landed, I got ashore and the landing craft backed off and the barrel went with it! Now we were ashore, so I said to Looney, “we can't damn do anything right now, so take that tripod and put it on the ground, and let me put my receiver on there.” First thing that had to be done [on the beach] anyway was to start finding the mines, or we wouldn't have gotten any tanks, bulldozer tanks, or flamethrower tanks in there. So for a while, that's what we were doing…We were doing engineering work to make a pass up there [off the beach], putting the white tape on the side, so that we could get the heavy equipment in. Later on, about two days later, the barrel showed up!

  The Japanese were dug in and they had cisterns all over the island, and those got destroyed by our Navy [shelling]. The water ran out and a lot of those cisterns became operating rooms for the doctors. Doctors took those over. And the Japanese themselves, as this campaign wore on, they started wanting for water, so they used to go out and take the canteens from the dead Marines. They’d take their [empty] food cans and they'd set them outside so that when it did rain, they could collect the water. Now I understand that [the Japanese soldier] lived a miserable life underground, and he had to get the water so that he could take his biscuits and soak them so that he could eat them. And the lice drove 'em crazy! [Laughing] They lived that way, and they fought that way, and they fought to the very end. They stayed in the ground and they died in the ground.[59]

  At Iwo Jima, Ralph Leinoff made his fourth invasion landing as a Marine.

  Ralph Leinoff

  The first wave landed, they went ashore, and apparently there was very little resistance. They started to move inland and a few minutes later the second wave hit, and they started to move inland. And the wave I was in, the third one, we hit behind them and we started moving inland, and suddenly all hell broke loose!

  We were sitting there on these open beaches. Our unit had to get up to this airfield, we wanted that airfield. When I went ashore, I had seven or eight men—the table of organization for a machine gun squad calls for eight men, but by the end of the first day, I had three guys left! I went in with seven, and I lost about half of them. Not killed, but so badly wounded that they couldn't go any further. And we were only about halfway up to the airfield and I tried to get up as far as I could [with the men]. Machine gun squads in an infantry company are in support of the riflemen. The riflemen are supposed to lead the way; the machine guns are supposed to protect them, set up crossfire in front of them, so that any enemy coming at us, the machine guns could take them out. When it became apparent that we had suffered so many casualties by the end of the first day, everybody just dug in where they were, halfway up to the landing field.

  We got the word to stay where we were, we were in for the night, and we had to wait for reinforcements. When dusk came the Japanese couldn’t see us that well, so the firing died down quite a bit. I said, ‘We are going to dig in here tonight’, then I looked at one of my men, Tom Keiser from California, and I saw him up close for the first time that day. He had a big patch on his right cheek. I said, ‘What happened to you, Tom?’ He said, ‘Nothing.’ I said, ‘I want to see what is under that patch, I don’t know if you should be here.’ Well, I made him take off the patch and I could see a piece of shrapnel and I think it went through, but I couldn’t tell clearly because it was dusk and all. He took it off and I could see a pretty good gouge out of his cheek and I said, ‘Ok Tom
, you are out of it, you go back to the first aid. You have had enough.’ He said he wasn’t going. So we had an argument, again—before the landing, we had had an argument about some of the weaponry that I wanted the squad to carry. I said, ‘Yesterday you wanted out of my squad, now I am telling you to go back! I don’t need another wounded man on my hands! I will wait until I get relief in the morning!’ He said to me, ‘I am not leaving you with two men.’

  What do you say to that? I was about 21; I did not know how to take it. I did not know if I should thank him, or tell him to follow orders, but I needed him. I really needed the manpower, and he says ‘I am not leaving you.’ I was kind of flabbergasted. To make a long story short, Tom stayed with me for the rest of the war.

  Art LaPorte

  Our target was an airbase. They had one main airfield, and they had another smaller one and the third one, they were still working on. That was where I got wounded, the unfinished airfield. They had Mount Suribachi, the highest peak, which the 5th Division took. We had the next highest peak which was Hill 382—you name them by height. The day I got hit, my company went against it. They lost half of the men and had to pull back.