"Hell on Earth:" U.S. and Japanese Veterans Return to Iwo Jima

By GORDON I. PETERSON, Senior Editor

Senior Editor Gordon I. Peterson accompanied a group of World War II veterans to Iwo Jima in March 2001 during a "Reunion of Honor" visit organized by Military Historical Tours of Alexandria, Va., on the 56th anniversary of the battle.

The passage of more than five decades has changed the appearance of Iwo Jima's eight-square miles of volcanic rock, sand, and ash. The barren beaches, ridge-lined plateau, and shell-blasted sulphurous 550-foot extinct volcano that awaited the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions on 19 February 1945 are now covered with a mantle of grass, shrubs, and stunted trees.

The wide sloping beaches of loose black sand below Mount Suribachi--smothered then with assault craft and Marines--are today littered by a throw-away society's plastic debris carried to the island by offshore currents. The occasional rusting wreckage of an amphibious-tracked vehicle, pock-marked pillboxes, scarred entrances to 16 miles of underground fortifications, and a scattering of U.S. and Japanese memorials are some of the few reminders that more than 71,000 U.S. fighting men and 22,000 Japanese defenders were once locked in a fight to the death during the closing months of World War II.

A lone marker documents the location of the former cemetery for the 3rd and 4th Marine Divisions. No trace exists of the large 5th Marine Division cemetery that was dedicated in March 1945. The remains of the thousands of U.S. servicemen who died on Iwo were reinterred decades ago in cemeteries in the United States.

Time has allowed Iwo Jima's landscape to recover from the war's devastation, but for a small group of Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers--joined by family members and a handful of their former adversaries--who returned to Iwo Jima last March the memories of that vicious battle are as haunting today as they were 56 years ago.

"You Will Hear the Gunfire"

"You can't come away from this visit without being touched for the rest of your life," said retired Marine Lt. Gen. Lawrence F. Snowden, a rifle company commander with the 23rd Marines during the attack and a cochairman of the "Reunion of Honor" for the battle's 56th anniversary. Reflecting on "the hell on earth we shared on that island" at a predeparture reception in Los Angeles, Snowden told Iwo veterans, "You'll stand on a spot where you stood before. You will hear the gunfire. You will remember the buddies you lost."

Stephen "Kelly" Jakupcak, of Streator, Ill., was a private assigned to the 28th Marines of the 5th Marine Division during the battle. Accompanied by a son, Robert, he made the trip at the urging of his family. Others on the tour had similar motivations for returning for the first time to Iwo Jima and other World War II battlefields--on Guam, Saipan, Tinian, and Peleliu.

Jakupcak carried with him a prized memento of the battle--his bullet-pierced canteen. After landing with the sixth wave on 19 February--for what he had been told would be a 72-hour operation--his squad was pinned down by enemy fire for four days. His company commander was killed. A corporal assumed command of the squad when the order was received to "move up."

"You could hear the bullets going by your head," Jakupcak told Sea Power. "I felt a hit, and my pantleg was wet." Jakupcak feared the worst as a Navy corpsman rushed to his aid--only to learn that he had been hit in his canteen. "I said a lot of prayers then--and every time I moved up," Jakupcak said.

Many Marines rarely saw their elusive, underground enemy. Japanese weapons, preregistered in intersecting arcs sweeping across the entire island, were protected in strongly fortified bunkers and caves carved deeply into Iwo Jima's volcanic rock.

The Japanese Army inflicted fearful casualties after the initial landings on D-Day. Former 2nd Lt. Patrick F. Caruso records in his memoir Nightmare on Iwo that only 12 Marines in his company of 252 officers and enlisted men emerged unscathed.

Altogether, there were nearly 26,000 U.S. casualties on Iwo Jima--roughly a third of the total U.S. force. Nearly 6,000 were killed in action.

At a distance of 670 miles from Tokyo, the United States needed Iwo Jima's strategically important airfields to provide fighter escorts for its long-range bombing missions against Japan. By war's end, 2,251 combat-damaged Superfortress bombers--carrying 24,761 Army Air Corps aircrewmen--also diverted to the safety of the improved airfield that Navy Seabees had built on Iwo.

"The Honor of a Lifetime"

Jakupcak, who departed Iwo Jima safely after the island was finally secured on 25 March 1945, and approximately 150 other members of the tour group landed shortly after dawn on 14 March 2001 at the modern Japanese naval air station on Iwo Jima. Welcoming the veterans were Capt. Kazuo Yoshizawa, the air station commander; Lt. Gen. Earl B. Hailston, then-commander of the III Marine Expeditionary Force; U.S. Marines and Sailors based on Okinawa; and Col. Michael Low, commanding officer of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU).

A handful of Japanese veterans and their families (fewer than 1,000 of the island's Japanese defenders survived) also were present; they were led by Taro Kuribayashi, the son of Lt. Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, the island's Japanese Army commander in 1945. A deputy official from Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and other dignitaries also were in the Japanese group.

Marines of the 31st MEU escorted veterans, family members, and other visitors to the scenes of some of the most bitter fighting on the island--the landing beaches below Mount Suribachi, some of the remaining latticework of 642 pillboxes and concrete bunkers, the network of fortified caves and tunnels that still catacomb the island, and the U.S. and Japanese memorials carefully maintained on the summit of Suribachi and at other sites.

It was "the honor of a lifetime" to escort the veterans during their return visit, Hailston said. The young Marines of the 31st MEU voiced similar sentiments. For Lance Cpl. David Welsh, of Atlanta, Ga., it was "hands-on history" to accompany former Pfc. Cyril J. O'Brien to Iwo Jima's "Green Beach" immediately below Suribachi. O'Brien, a veteran of earlier Marine battles at Bougainville and Guam, had provided eyewitness news of the attack 56 years earlier as a Marine infantryman and combat correspondent.

Gazing to the southwest as he related his experiences to his two escorts, O'Brien described "the dreary presence" of Mount Suribachi throughout the weeks of bitter fighting.

Marines were grouped three deep around former Pfc. Jacklyn H. "Jack" Lucas to hear his description of his ordeal as a flame-thrower specialist. Ambushed with three comrades in a ravine early in the attack, Lucas threw himself on one Japanese hand grenade and scooped another under his arms to save his fellow Marines. For his heroism, the 17 years and six days old Lucas received the Medal of Honor. He was one of a total of 22 Marines and five Sailors to receive the nation's highest decoration for valor during the month-long campaign.

Many veterans were overpowered by the emotions of recalling the battle and their fallen "buddies." Leonard Evans, a pharmacist's mate 3rd class assigned to the 25th Marines of the 4th Marine Division, was wounded in early March. After dragging Evans to safety, a sergeant took his medical satchels to assist other wounded Marines. "That esprit de corps, that honor, that brotherly love that we felt for one another showed itself on Iwo--and especially when I was wounded," Evans said. "Thank God I was a Marine corpsman." (More than 700 Navy doctors and corpsmen were killed or wounded while serving with the Marines on Iwo Jima.) Col. Steven Anderson, chief of staff for the 3rd Force Service Support Group, captured the mood of the day's reunion for all Marines. "For people who have worn the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor," he told Sea Power, "this is our bonding place."

"The Infinite Sadness"

Shortly before noon, the U.S. and Japanese veterans gathered with several hundred guests, visitors, and U.S. and Japanese military personnel to conduct a "Reunion of Honor" ceremony before the memorial that had been erected in 1985 by U.S. and Japanese survivors on a site 200 yards from the landing beaches on the south shore of the island.

Kiyoshi Endo, chairman of Japan's Iwo Jima Survivors Association, was one of several speakers. "Today we are standing here, before the monument of another Japanese-U.S. reunion, to commemorate the souls of the dead of both countries," Endo said. "To commemorate the infinite sadness of their bereaved and not to repeat such an act of cruelty, I sincerely pray for the souls of the dead."

U.S. veterans echoed Endo's spirit of reconciliation. "We salute and honor our fallen comrades," Snowden said. "We continue to ask for the comfort of their souls. We seek relief for the sadness of their families. And, while we mourn their loss, we also celebrate their lives that we shared with them."

Veterans of the two nations laid wreaths at the monument. Kuribayashi poured water on the memorial marker to slake the thirst of the spirits of the many thousands of Japanese still entombed in the island's tunnels and caves--water so precious to those who died of thirst when they were trapped in the 120-degree heat of the underground fortifications.

A Marine band from Okinawa played the national anthems of each country, following which a joint U.S.-Japanese color guard rendered honors as Marine buglers played Taps. As the last note drifted across Iwo Jima's wind-swept battleground, a Marine squad fired rifle volleys in honor of the fallen from both nations to conclude the ceremony.

Looking back more than five decades to the events of February and March 1945, the average American today may wonder how it was that a force of such young Americans (most enlisted Marines in the battle were only 18 years old) managed to wrest control of Iwo Jima from its well-armed, well-protected, and determined Japanese defenders.

Asked to respond to that question, veterans of the campaign generally offered three explanations: (a) their training; (b) they were Marines; and (c) it was the Marine Corps.

Unlike the U.S. Army's World War II policy in the European Theater to assign raw recruits directly to ground-combat units, the Marine Corps normally reconstituted its divisions with recruits who had trained side-by-side with combat veterans. "I trained with combat veterans of Guadalcanal--some who had two or three Purple Hearts," Jakupcak told Sea Power.

Tactics were rehearsed in detail in Hawaii and on Saipan before the Iwo Jima invasion. Two veteran Marines, standing next to Jakupcak by the railing of his troop transport as they waited to climb down the cargo nets to their landing craft on 19 February, sought to reassure the 18-year-old. "Kelly, this is the fourth time for some of us," Jakupcak was told, "and we've always been scared. All you do is pray to God."

Secondly, with few exceptions, the Marine Corps bonded its men emotionally to an extraordinary degree. Most of the Marines who fought on Iwo Jima had known one another for many months.

William Coats, a veteran of the 26th Marines, recalled hearing one historian recently describe the Japanese soldier as a fighting man who was willing to give his life for his emperor. A U.S. Marine, this historian related, was willing to give his life for his fellow Marines.

The citations for the 27 Medals of Honor awarded for heroism on Iwo Jima--said by historians to be the most valorous single month in U.S.-military history--are replete with examples of Marines and Sailors sacrificing their lives for their buddies. In the view of James Bradley, author of Flags of Our Fathers, it was this emotion--of a Marine's love for his fellow Marine--that won the battle for the United States.

Lastly, Marine veterans of World War II (and of other wars, for that matter) still stand tall with pride to say they volunteered to serve in the Marine Corps, one of the world's truly premier fighting forces. Marines, with their tradition of esprit and devotion to Corps and country, fought the way they did because they believed themselves to be the best warriors in the world.

As J. Robert Moskin wrote in The U.S. Marine Corps Story, "In a brutal, deadly way, Iwo Jima was what the Marine Corps was all about: young men ... assaulting a defended objective from the sea and then advancing in the face of death and disfigurement, exhausted beyond reason, seeing their leaders and buddies dying around them, but moving forward."

Privates and corporals took charge on Iwo Jima when their squad leaders were killed. Noncommissioned officers filled the officer ranks of platoon and company commanders when they were lost in staggering numbers. Officers led from the front to spur their Marines to the attack.

Speaking at a farewell dinner on Guam the day following their visit to Iwo Jima, one Marine veteran told his companions that he was "tremendously impressed" by the Marine officers he served. "I never saw a Marine officer say to his men, 'Go do something,'" he said. "He got up, pulled out his .45-caliber pistol, and said, 'Let's go!' If you have an ounce of manhood about you--and all Marines do--you followed that kind of leadership."

Retired Maj. Gen. Fred Haynes, the operations officer with the 28th Marines on Iwo Jima and cochairman of the 2001 Reunion of Honor, summed up the feelings of the other veterans of the campaign at this farewell dinner. "Every day from the 26th of March 1945 on has been a 'free' day to me," he said.*

Ed. Note: Learn more about Military Historical Tours at www.miltours.com 

D-Day Invasions of the Pacific Exhibit to Open

The National D-Day Museum in New Orleans, La., will conduct a grand opening--on 7 December 2001, 60th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor--of a new exhibit documenting the contributions that U.S. military veterans and home-front workers made to the Pacific amphibious campaigns of World War II. Four days of grand-opening events for the "D-Day Invasions of the Pacific" exhibit are scheduled for 6 through 9 December. For more information, see the museum's homepage at: www.ddaymuseum.org  or call (504) 527-6012.