Editor’s note: Recently Bruce Heilman, chancellor of the University of Richmond, joined other veterans who had fought in the South Pacific during World War II to revisit the battle sites. With them were a group of students from the College of the Ozarks. This is the second of a two-part account.
Many incidents occurred along the way, mostly positive. We discovered, however, that our air transportation from Okinawa to Iwo Jima was in jeopardy. Finally a C-130 Marine Corps troop carrier was dispatched to ferry our group of 50 to 60 individuals to Iwo Jima.
Bruce Heilman today …
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… and during World War II
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Once we arrived over the island the pilot circled as veterans looked out, took pictures, shed tears and broke down emotionally at seeing it for the first time since being extracted from it alive. Some 6,800 of their fellow Marines died there while some 20,000 were wounded. Eighteen thousand Japanese troops died there as well.
One student observed, “When the plane came within viewing distance of the island, the veterans began flocking to the windows. They watched closely and anxiously. The small windows became precious viewpoints for these men. They viewed the island with great anticipation and some began to look nervous.”
Upon landing, one student wrote, “A flame thrower man during his time on Iwo bowed silently to the ground. When he rose there were tears streaming from his unusually mischievous eyes. ‘I just don’t know how we did it,’ said one Marine. ‘I don’t either,’ another replied. It was over these beaches he had packed water, bodies, fuel for the flame throwers and a great many other things.”
“As we arrived at the top of Mount Suribachi, one veteran was crying,” said a student.
Another veteran said, “I thought I wanted to do this before I passed on and now I have. The experience is past, but the memories are forever embedded in my mind. I’ll never forget that mountain.”
Another commented, “I swore I’d never go back again, but now I am convinced this trip is going to help guys like me have a better life for the few years we have left.”
Another who watched the flag being raised both times through field glasses said, “When I left that miserable rock, I swore I would never go back. But I don’t have to dig a foxhole this time around.”
The landscape of Iwo Jima could not have been forgotten. The black sand was still there. The visions of fellow Marines dying in battle reminded the survivors of their good fortune of having enjoyed these long years of life since.
As I stood atop Mount Suribachi with the 10 Marines who had landed on the beaches under fire I could along with them embrace their good fortune in their having survived the conflict against all odds. As each shed tears or fought their emotions they must have reflected on the many successes they had enjoyed, the children they had fathered and the lives that had been extended for them while buddies had long ago given up their future on those beaches.
Following the visit to Iwo Jima a student commented, “We watched a five-minute segment on ABC World News Tonight that portrayed the veterans’ journey back to Iwo. One of the veterans watching the news segment began to sob. Tears ran down his face and his hands covered his eyes. His body began to shake and his eyes filled with tears. It was heart wrenching to see these men break down as the memories from the past and the trip yesterday flooded their thoughts.”
The divisions participating in the Battle for Iwo Jima had been so greatly depleted by death and injury that those remaining were sent back to other islands to rehabilitate and replenish their ranks in anticipation of their participation in the invasion of Japan.
From Iwo Jima we flew to Osaka, Japan. We located there in order to board the bullet train to Hiroshima. I and a couple of the others had experienced the awesome destruction of the atom bombs while on occupation duty in Japan. One other veteran and I had experienced Nagasaki, and I was in Hiroshima shortly after the bomb was dropped. We had walked in the radioactive dirt, dust, ashes and destruction of those cities and viewed remnants of the skeletons following the bomb.
Now, 65 and a half years later, I had returned to see that city as a thriving metropolis.
As we sat in a cathedral now rebuilt I was asked to share my thoughts concerning the bombing of the city. My first response was that we Marines whose lives were spared could never apologize for the bomb having been dropped. We would be apologizing for having married our wives, fathered our children and grandfathered our grandchildren and for all the years since of enjoying the fullness of life. Without the bomb we would have died in the battle for the Japanese mainland, either by Japanese suicide planes diving into our troop ships or by machine guns as we went up the beaches or by the poison spears that the women and children would have forced into us.
I acknowledged that it was a wonderful revelation to see the rebirth and renewal of the city which like the sphinx had risen from the ashes, and what man had totally destroyed had been reborn. I noted that “what man can destroy, man and nature can restore” and that out of the past dictatorial government had come freedom and democracy.
A student blogged, “One of the men made an interesting remark as we sat in the chapel. ‘Thank God for Truman. If it wasn’t for him, we wouldn’t be alive today. It was that decision that ended the war.’ ”
Today some protest the act of our having used the atomic bomb. Yet most have little knowledge of the realities of that time. Some months ago when a young man writing a paper asked my opinion about the use of the atomic bomb, I responded that if the bomb had not been used, my children would not have been born. My wife would have been destined to find another mate, and my mother would have lost one or two or perhaps all three of her sons who served in the armed forces.
To me and my fellow Marines the “kill or be killed” tenacity of the Japanese could not have been overcome without the climatic impact of the atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
When I walked into Hiroshima not many days after the bomb had been dropped, what I saw was unbelievable, but no more unbelievable than what I saw in Tokyo and Yokohama. The difference was that a few shells of buildings were standing in Tokyo and Yokohama, but little, if anything, was standing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
For those who think the atom bomb must have been a painful experience, just imagine residents being roasted in the streets of Tokyo in their homes and in entire city blocks by B-29 raids, as if they had been “shoveled into an oven.” The horror was above anything one could imagine, with charred corpses piled high where they tried to escape. It is said that “the fire raced like a tidal wave, sucking city sections in the fiery vortex.” A quarter of a million buildings were consumed.
“The heat turned bodies to ashes in an instant like some industrial furnace disposing of autumn leaves. People ran from the flames as fast as they could, but many simply burst into balls of fire, while others jumped into canals and were cooked alive in boiling water. Thousands died of suffocation as the flames extracted all oxygen from the air.”
Could those at Hiroshima and Nagasaki have suffered more? I doubt it, so why was this bomb more inhumane than the thousands before?
All Marines on this journey had been fortunate to live long lives. Even so, along with millions of other young men of that era, we had accepted death as a real possibility and had no reservations about the cause justifying the means. Such a commitment and the prevailing potential consequences gave to all of us a unique perspective for the rest of our lives. This journey was reinforcement of that perspective.
This journey back restored in our minds and drew from our memories a vivid part of what had faded from the past. We will forever be indebted for this privilege which will long remain in our memories.
And while this journey may have brought closure for the veterans from demons in the crevices of their minds, there is neither a good place nor grand phrase to bring closure to this commentary of our days of renewal and remembrance. So I will close with some select lines from Tennyson’s Ulysses, about another old warrior:
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil; …
Some work of noble note may yet be done …
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”
So to all I say a sincere Semper Fi.