[Begin tape 2002OH12.3a] Harris: Interview with James H. Wright, May 24, 1991,
in Frankfort, Kentucky.Harris: Okay, before we get into the... specifics of terrain and so on. Could we
just back up a little bit. I know we’ve covered this before, but the qu... sound quality on the first tape was so bad that...Wright: Yeah.
Harris... probably ought to go over it again. You said part of your motivation
for joining the Marines… was the severe wounding of a friend of yours. Was that Al B. Gilbert?Wright: Algie.
Harris: Algie Gilbert.
Wright: Albert, I think was his name and
1:00Algie, we just called him Algie Gilbert, A-l-g-i-e, Algie Gilbert, yes, that’s true.Harris: He--was he… two, two, three, four five years older than you?
Wright: No, I would say he was... two years older. We were at school, eights
and, and… played on the football team, and he, he left school and joined the Marine Corps, yes, that’s true.Harris: And he was a gunner on… Wright: The navy
2:00dive-bomber-type thing, they, they carried a... a pilot and a gunner, a non-commissioned gunner, and he was a gunner, yes.Harris: Okay. All right, do you know what action he was wounded in?
Wright: No, I don’t.
Harris: Okay. See, you, you said you went to, you were born and grew up in Louisville?
Wright: Mm-mm, yes.
Harris: And then you went to... Louisiana Tech... briefly?
Wright: Yes, well I was in, I was at, I went to… Manual High School in Dupont
Manual High School in Louisville and then I left there before I graduated to go to a, a junior college in Mississippi. And, and then joined the Marine Corps and was sent to Louisiana Tech, in this V-12 program, you know, but yes, that’s true, basically. 3:00Harris: Could describe the V-12 program?Wright: Well, it was a... it was an officer procurement program for the marine
corps and... I guess based on... I, I suppose it was a scholastic and, and other skills, they selected certain people for this program and the, the, the... contention was that you would go to school, to college and then come out a marine corps officer, but it would take four years, it was a four-year program, and the V-12 at Louisiana Tech was mostly, was made up to a great extent from folks from Texas, and, and Oklahoma, and s... and the states in that area. Of course my home in Kentucky, normally I would have gone to a school on the east, east of the Mississippi River, but I, but I joined the Marine Corps in New Orleans. That put me west of the Mississippi River, so that’s why I was put in there. 4:00But it, it was a regular battalion of troops. We were issued uniforms... and... barracks life was, I guess similar to, to... regular military, with the exception that you were in college… Harris: Yeah.Wright: … and... we had... officers and so fourth, and, we had to fall-out for
formation and marched to… to meals and so forth.Harris: When you... did you volunteer for the ma... the V-12 program?
Wright: No [Chuckling], as a matter of fact, I didn’t, I... I volunteered for
the Marine Corps, I was seventeen when I went in, and... I, I didn’t know that I was going to the V-12, and I didn’t stay there long, as a matter of fact. 5:00I, I guess there was a period of time there, I think it was several months, when I was trying to decide what to do and I, I, and a group of, I’ve got to say twelve or fifteen of us, went to the commanding officer, he was a, a navy commander, he was... had a little age on him and he wasn’t in a combat position, so they put him in charge of this, this school, and we approached him with the... request that we be allowed to, to, withdraw from this program and, and go ba... and go on active duty and, of course he was more than happy, he was old fire ball, you know, and he, he... ran it right through the, with the paperwork, and we, we were on our way to San Diego before we knew it, which is what all of us had decided we wanted to do. And 6:00so I really didn’t stay in the V-12 program too long.Harris: Was... was everybody in the V-12 program itching to get in the war
before it ended?Wright: No, I don’t think so, I don’t think so. Obviously not, because they
stayed there, but... we were, and, and, and we made--took steps so that we would be allowed to go... where the fighting was. It’s, it’s dumb now, but it th... it seems like the thing to do then, you know, and... but I’d say, no, they were happy with what they were doing. You know, it was co-ed and that they... it was a, this was a novelty for Central Louisiana to have a bunch of marines running around there, and, and so I think they were enjoying life and it was a good life, it was just like going, going to school, only somebody was paying for everything, you know, and... 7:00but I’d say they were, they were, most of the troops were happy to stay where they were and, and did stay there and graduated, as far as I can tell.Harris: I’ve always wondered what those programs were like, I’ve known of
there--I’ve know of a lot of them around here, that, I just wondered what it was like to be inside one. When you joined the marines, why did you pick the marines over the other branches?Wright: Well, as I say it was because of Gilbert, he... he had, he had, I don’t
know his reasoning, but my reasoning was the same as, as his because, and because of him, and that’s why I got in the Marine Corps. And I done, my daddy was in war, he was in World War I in the, as a flyer. Logically, I would have gone there, but I didn’t.Harris: Yeah.
8:00After you were sent to Camp Pendleton, you said you got in to, to the parachute regiment ( ) raiders.Wright: No, no that’s, that’s close, Russ, but I was sent to San Diego, that’s
the Marine Corps recruit depot… on the west coast, and... boot camp, and then after that I’d volunteered again [Chuckles] I was full of it, I guess, I volunteered for the Marine Raiders. Now the paratroops were also a volunteer unit and, but two distinct units. So, then I was sent to... not to Pendleton immediately – well to the northern end of Pendleton, it was up by San Clemente where the presi... where President... Rea... Nixon lived and just a little south of there was a, was a... it was really a, a chicken farm where they had, and had been built for to raise chickens and they cleaned it up, and whitewashed it and by golly we moved in there, that’s where we trained from and of course then the hills above San Clemente there. Then, the Raiders were back in the same hills, in fact we would frequently meet and... 9:00and--I mean the, the paratroopers were back in the same hills we would, we would meet once in a while and have a f... little... fracas[Chuckling] you know… Harris: Yeah.Wright: … just friendly. And... so what happened then came a need for another
division in the Marine Corps, and they took the raiders and the paratroopers and some troops had come back from the first division, they had been already in combat and, and we were the, the, the cadre, sort to speak for the Fifth Division, then they sent recruits in from, from the east coast recruit stations and from San Diego to fill out the batta... the division, and that’s how they, the Fifth Division was formed.Harris: Yeah. Before we get on to the composition of the Fifth... did you ever
have any, did you ever see or have any contact with Evans Carlson of the Raiders?Wright: Not
10:00any, not to see him or have contact, of course I knew who he was and...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... we, we studied his tactics and so forth, but no, I was, I was after
that. We were a, we were a raider replacement battalion for the Second Marine Raiders. Carlson and Edson, Edson were... were the two famous commanders of, of the Marine Raiders.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But I never did, I never did fight with either one of them.
Harris: I read that there was more than a little bit of friction between regular
marine units and, and Carlson... at least. Did you encounter any of that?Wright: Just barely. We... we wore the... the skull and, and, and Southern Cross
emblem on our, on our shoulder and, and there were, people would take a little second look at you, 11:00but I don’t – nobody bothered us. We had been trained pretty well... in those days Karate and Jujitsu were about the only martial arts that they, they really knew about and we’d had of course knife fighting and stick fighting 12:00and various and sundry ways to hurt people and these, and other troops knew it, so we didn’t have any real problem. There were maybe a little envy... and I suppose it would be like the, the later rangers or... other elite troops. I guess we were, felt that we were above the, the normal foot troops.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And, but I didn’t experience any, any problem in that light. Of course I
weighed about two-hundred and twenty pounds and was six-one, and [Chuckling] you know, and so I don’t think...Harris: That, that minimizes it.
Wright: That minimizes it to somewhat, yes.
Harris: When we talked before you said that there was a certain informality...
is that correct?Wright: Informality in the...
Harris: In...
Wright: ... the make up of the units you mean?
Harris: Yeah, in the, in the... in the social contact between
13:00the, the people and the, the Raiders... they were sort of a community to themselves that the...Wright: Oh yeah!
Harris: ... that the... you, I remember you said, “an officer is always an
officer and an enlisted is always enlisted, but... some of them were still on the first name basis.Wright: True, that’s true, yeah, that’s true. Well, as I say a lot of these
people had come out of these... V-12 programs also and they were potential officers and, and then a lot of the, the... officers who were then in the Marine Corps had, had... they were not old men, they were all young guys just out of college you know, and, so we were, we were all of an age maybe within three or four years or whatever, and certainly, certainly there was a, an informality but, but nothing... nothing to a great extent, 14:00 yeah.Harris: Yeah, but there was sort of a... unspoken bond between the Raiders.
Wright: True, well...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... well they...
Harris: We’re all marines.
Wright: ... the officers knew f... that first we were marines and, and they were
officers and we were the troops, but we were there to help and protect and, and keep each other from getting killed...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and, and the officers made sure that the troops were taken care of,
even before themselves, you see.Harris: Any good officer would.
Wright: Certainly would, and... but I mean they...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... they would, they made sure of it, so if they had something, we got
part of it, and again to a great degree that you know, they still... there still that some folks they get a little power, you know… Harris: Yeah.Wright: … they, it goes to their head, you might say.
Harris: You spoke of the, the training was... rigorous and very thorough
15:00and you had to develop, I thing you called it a continuity of thought. But did--by that did you mean that stopping an operation to find out what to do next was never necessary?Wright: That’s true. No, we were trained to such a degree that it would, it
would come automatically to your head what you had to do. It, it was, from the... from the... position of taking apart weapons in the dark or blindfolded, and putting them back together, field stripping and, and to some degree detail stripping weapons, to... as I say, all fighting with various objects, different ways to l... literally different ways to kill a person... 16:00climbing, scaling rocks and this-and-that-and-the-other, and night patrols. We went more deeply into things like that than you would under ordinary circumstances. Continuity of thought I guess I would, I meant that, that we all had the same thought and, and... and were trained to do what the best thing for the, for the action that we were in.Harris: Mm-mm, yeah. Do you recall what you were, what to believe, or and led to
expect about the Japanese while you were still in training?Wright: Yes, we were--and here is where the, mostly the folks from the previous
Raider troops and, and first division guys came back, you know, had faced them and... they, they shot down some myths but built up other myths that the Japanese were... ferocious fighters, they, they were... mean spirited and... and we were to get that way if we wanted to survive.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And, yes we knew that we were up against a pretty good set of troops.
Harris: And aside from that, did they give any practical advice about
hand-to-hand combat, or how to infiltrate an area?Wright: Well we had, we’d, we had that
17:00of course, the hand-to-hand and infiltration and creeping and crawling, and...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... we, we’d practice that on a daily basis to some degree, some, some
phase of it, you see.Harris: I meant in addition to formal instruction.
Wright: Oh, you mean in the (all fires?) Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Oh absolutely! We were always talking to them and grilling them on now
what would the Japs do like this, and I remember on... when we got to Hawaii, forming up for the invasion... we went down through a, a... grove of trees into a little draw and, and the path went down through that way and, and this one fellow... he stopped at that--down in the bottom of this little, little hill and, he said, “now this smells exactly, for some reason, like a Jap encampment was right here and, and there was a pungent odor into the air, and he says “I...”-- and somebody said, “you mean you can really smell them,” he said, “you can sure as hell smell them,” and...Harris: Was that the food?
18:00Wright: Just the general... fact that they were, the food, the fire, the, the odors that they all make...Harris: Mm-mm. What did it smell like?
Wright: Well, it was just a, a pungent... it wasn’t sharp, although... that
would indicate it was, but it wasn’t really sharp, but... I don’t know how you would describe it, Russ... but I, I could still, I think I would still remember it. Can you go...Harris: Yeah sure. Let’s see. [Pause] Harris: We
19:00were talking about... the Japanese, what you had to come to expect from the Japanese. How long was it between the time you completed training and the time that you... got to Iwo Jima?Wright: Well, we left... we, we f... we formed up and left the states and went
to Hawaii... to the island of Hawaii, and, and further trained there f... and we, amphibious landings and, and so forth, and then boarded the ship and it took us forty-four days to get to... to Iwo Jima. Now, which part of it, you, are you talking about when we boarded the ship, or...Harris: I just wondered how quickly you were sent into combat after you finished
training in California. 20:00Wright: Well we didn’t finish in California. That...Harris: Or Hawaii?
Wright: ... was the phase one you might say, then we went to, then we went to Hawaii...
Harris: Oh.
Wright: ... to, to finish training on the amphibious part of it.
Harris: How long did the training in California last?
Wright: Well, let’s see, it was... I’d say about... eight months is the best I
can g... guess right now. I wasn’t too much of a record keeper in those days, and I really, I would judge about eight months.Harris: So eight months in, in state, then forty-four days in Hawaii.
Wright: No, no-no, then we went to Hawaii and stayed for another... five or six
months, I suppose.Harris: Oh.
Wright: Then boarded ship, and then forty-four days...
Harris: I see.
Wright: ... we stopped at, at Saipan, and, and... see the, the combat troops
road from, from Hawaii to Saipan aboard the, the, 21:00the... AKA, the, the personnel carrier is a big ships. The secondary troops are, are reserve troops rode in the LSTs, they rode in the, in the... ships wou... would be in the first line, in other words, when we got to Saipan, we switched. The assault troops went to the, went aboard the LSTs, where the amtracks were stored, see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And then from Saipan to Iwo, and I think it was seven-hundred and
fifty... miles, I remember the, the, that was the story... we rode on the LSTs to, we went ashore, and... but now of course on the, on the transports coming from Hawaii to Saipan, we were still training, they had, as soon as we got at, at sea, they... there were... 22:00mockups of the, of the island, broken out for all the, the officers and non-commissions officer--non commission officers, and then... and then we would hold meetings with different--a platoon at a time, say, or a squa...--no, about a platoon at a time with the details and they, it was a, simply a map, I mean a... in scale of the island, topographically accurate as far as they could tell and, and... about, I’d say it was four by eight, maybe, and... or right here we go ashore, here we... the twenty-eighth goes here, the twenty-seventh across here, here is reserve, and talk about the airfields and where we thought we’d run in to such and such, which wasn’t at all true [Chuckling] you know...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... it really wasn’t. So, but basically we knew what, we realized
23:00then what the target was, we realized we were going to Iwo Jima, here is what it looks like, here is what they think they got a, ashore, the troop, the enemy has ashore, the... number of troops (coughing)--excuse me--and... they were on the island and we were on the island and that was it, I mean there was only one going to walk off.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And... and there for a while, it didn’t, it, and they really didn’t know
which, I guess.Harris: So... you knew it, throughout that whole voyage, exactly wh... exactly
where you were going.Wright: After we left, after we left Hawaii, then, then there were no m...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... there was no other shore... until we hit
24:00Saipan, other than, than... people who needed to go ashore.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... people who had to go ashore. Now, but they – that doesn’t mean that
that, it was a secret where we were going… Harris: Yeah.Wright: ... because going across, I w... Tokyo Rose, I can remember hearing that
with my own ears, the, the comment was, she wanted to welcome the Fifth Division to the, to Iwo Jima and said that she, she knew we were coming and, and commented on various ship numbers and this, that, and the other, and said, “well,” said, “it’s going to take... so-and-so... AKA-54 or whatever, and she listed the ships, to bring you up there,” says, “but I’ll tell you what boys,” said, “it will only take one jeep to haul you off.” Harris: [Chuckles – Interviewer] Oh!Wright: So [Chuckling]...
Harris: How was that received by the marines?
Wright: As a joke.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: … you know, it... she played good music...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... you know, that’s the way we looked at it.
25:00But... but they knew exactly where we were, when we left s... Hawaii, when we left Saipan, and supposedly when we were going to hit.Harris: Hum. Well you, you would think people, or you’d think governments should
be more sophisticated about their propaganda, but they’re...Wright: Yeah.
Harris: ... I was talking to a guy came back from the gulf recently and he said
Baghdad Betty was doing that...Wright: [Laughing] Same thing.
Harris: ... same thing! Just as, just as clumsy in...
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: ... they treated it as a big joke.
Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Harris: Let’s see, what else was I going to say? Oh! I’ve often wondered what
the atmosphere on, on the ships, as you were headed towards what you knew was an invasion, what the atmosphere was like.Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: Did it get more and more tense the closer you got?
Wright: Mm--yes it did. And, as I say, we were, we were still in training.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: We would still, we would have the... you know, calisthenics
26:00and this and that and the other, to keep our minds occupied, and our bodies sort of shape, shaped up. But then we, we would study this map and they had some, some, not much, not very much information on Iwo Jima, hell they’d never heard of it, who had ever heard of Iwo Jima? But we were kept pretty much busy, but in free time you’d--I know I would, I would think about it and try to envision a little bit of what might happen, and, and... you had some good thoughts and some bad thoughts, you know, and just hoped to your good thoughts prevailed, but you didn’t see anybody running around gnashing his teeth and pulling his hair or anything.Harris: Yeah, but you knew it was so massive it...
Wright: You could feel it was, it was getting more tense, yes, especially when
we transferred to the LSTs and...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and saw the, the amtracks in the hole, you know [Laughing] and...
Harris: Kind of snapping at each other...
Wright: Yeah, a little bit...
Harris: ... and di... was there any of that? Yeah.
Wright: ... a little bit, yeah.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: A few knock downs; but hell that’s normal… Harris: Yeah.
Wright: … in the Marine Corps, you know.
Wright: But maybe a little, little accelerated.
Harris: Yeah. There were--this guy was telling me that as, as it--in the
Gulf--as it got closer to the day they were moving around more and more and it, the massive scale or, of everything seemed to overwhelm everybody, and they knew that it was just a matter of days 27:00before they’d be in combat and that he said, you didn’t look cross-eyed at the next guy...Wright: Oh yeah.
Harris: ... because... you knew they would that blow up or a... he wa... he, he
was in the 101st and they were, they’re honed to a pretty fine edge anyway, and he said that, how things, it was a, I almost relief when they [Chuckles – Interviewer] when they started, because...Wright: Mm-mm. Well, but you see there was a difference, I believe, I don’t
imagine there is anybody in the 101st of then, that went in the gulf outfit in the ... I hate to call that a war, I’ll be honest with you… Harris: Yeah.Wright: … but that it was in the gulf, I don’t imagine any of those had seen
combat unless they were in a, ten years old, you see...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... but in our group we had some combat troops and they would--could steady
28:00it down a little bit, and, and we had some officers, some of our older officers had been in combat and, and so they, there was that... I think, factor, which helped hold our, our lids on a little tighter. You still didn’t want to start an argument because nobody is going to back down, and...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... but we didn’t... we--I don’t remember too many times there was, if
they did, they let them fight a little bit and get it out of their system, then pull them apart, throw water on them and that’s the end of it.Harris: Yeah. No, some of the older officers... field grade, were Vietnam
veterans, but virtually no one else was...Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Harris: ... so, oh, anyway... let’s see when you got to Iwo Jima, you were a, I
believe you said you were acting sergeant?Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: You’re corporal but an acting sergeant so you were in charge of
29:00a... platoon?Wright: No, I was in t...
Harris: ... squad?
Wright: ... I was a squad leader.
Harris: Squad leader, how many in a squad?
Wright: Well, in those days I don’t know what it is now, we were, there were
thirteen, we, they were broken down into... four... rifle teams... of four ma... three rifle teams of four men each and the squad leader. And the BAR and, and... assistant BAR and two riflemen in, in the team. So we had three BARs and, and... three assistants and two, four, six, six riflemen in a squad.Harris: So...
Wright: That’s the way.
Harris: ... so altogether that’s...
Wright: Thirteen.
Harris: Thirteen.
Wright: Mm-mm, mm-mm.
Harris: Okay.
30:00See, you were in the Second Battalion, Twenty-seventh Regiment?Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: First Division.
Wright: Right.
Harris: Okay. I guess we might as well get to the landing itself. Let’s see
where is my fi...--go ahead.Wright: I will tell you one thing, you’ve heard of the, the... story of the,
the... condemned man’s last dinner and all that, right?Harris: Yeah.
Wright: We, typically, I guess it’s tradition, we had our, our steak and egg
breakfast aboard ship and, as tense as everyone was, I don’t, I don’t s... recall seeing too many people who didn’t, didn’t turn out, you know. So, might have figured this is going to be the last for a while, you know, and...Harris: I re... I read somewhere that the... the doctors... objected
31:00to those steak and egg breakfast. Did you hear any of that?Wright: No. [Pause] Harris: Okay.
Wright: No, I... I didn’t and of course we’re talking forty-five years ago
[Chuckling] so, it, it was... it would have be – it would have caused more trouble to discontinue it than to, than to maybe somebody to get upset stomach or something, but...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... no, I haven’t heard that.
Harris: No, I’ve heard that part of the reason they objected was that it made
wounds more difficult...Wright: Yeah.
Harris: ... to treat later.
Wright: Yeah, sure, I can see, I, I can see how, yeah, if you get a full
stomach. No, we were even told to shave closely in case you get a face wound or something, they can clean it up better, but... most people won’t listen to things like that, they do what they want to do in a case like that.Harris: Yeah. The… I’ve seen films,
32:00aerial films of the... landing craft approaching a beach, and they... I don’t know if it was Iwo Jima or some other ou... invasion, but they were going in a circular pattern until they got assembled. Then they would head towards the beach. Is that what your group did?Wright: Yes, uh-huh. I, I don’t know the, the configuration, but you would have
a ship heading... into the beach, and it’d offload the amtracks off one end and they would, they would form either in a circle of their own, or join another one carrying troops from the same battalion, and then there would be a, at a signal, when all troops were in, in, in s... is s... place and properly spaced, they would--it was a m... strictly a maneuver, they would, 33:00there would be a signal, a horn, or whatever, or a flare, and they would, then the lead boat, the lead amtrack would take off on a westerly direction or whatever, and the others would fall--follow, and on a given signal, they would, they would all... turn to the starboard and head toward the beach, and at a certain speed and then the next wave would form up or had formed up all the way out so they had to get all the waves in sequence...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and all that and then on a given period of time, the, the... overall
signal would come down and, and they would all move in unison toward the shore, and, and that’s, that’s, I, I, as I say, I wasn’t involved but I can remember the, the circling and the forming and the, and then the moving out.Harris: That must have taken a long time to get all those...
Wright: Oh it did, yeah...
Harris: ... all lined up.
Wright: ... we went ashore I think at nine o’clock...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and we were up and in the boats certainly a couple of hours.
Harris: Was seasickness a problem?
Wright: No, I don’t, I don’t remember it of anybody. I, it may have been, but I
don’t remember it. There was none, in any of our troops.Harris: I know it was in some other invasions. I guess the water was rougher in
some places, huh.Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Harris: Anyway.
Wright: No, it wasn’t.
Harris: So how far out were you, when you got in the boats... roughly?
Wright: I would say we were...
34:00a thousand yards, I’d, I just judge that, I really don’t know. Everything was visible, and the navy was still shelling. In fact, as we went under a, we went right under a battleship’s guns, and close enough to where the... the wadding, so to speak, would, would g... fell down in the boat and [Chuckling] that, and they were still shooting and, and then we, and they, they, they’re pretty far out, you see, and we went on through them I guess, we had...Harris: ( ) the concussion must have been...
Wright: Oh hell...
Harris: ... tremendous.
Wright: ... it ( ) and, busted my eardrum, I guess, but... yeah it was pretty,
pretty much, but... that’s the way you fight a war, I guess.Harris: Yeah. I guess...
35:00I lost my trend of thought.Wright: We, we’re on the way in, I guess.
Harris: When--yeah I was going to ask about the speed. I read in some, in some
invasions, amphibious landings, as they got near, nearer the shore, that the, the craft increased their speed to a maximum. Is that, is that correct?Wright: Well, yes, I think it’s correct, but the, and amtrack is not fast at
maximum, you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: When you get in some of those... those other landing crafts, they can
pour the coal on it and, and move right along, but we went in, I’m sure, at wide open, and... at best hu... and twelve, fifteen miles an hour? I don’t know.Harris: Yeah, well, let’s, you, the, the troops were in the second wave behind
36:00the, the amtracks, wh...Wright: No.
Harris: No?
Wright: Well, there were amtracks in, in the first wave armed with seventy-five
millimeter cannons, okay, we--the second wave, which was the first assault wave, was an amtrack but without the cannon. And then the third, the, the second wave, which would be in the third wave was like that, and that went on back maybe for three waves, I guess and then they got into Higgins boats and that kind of a tra... of a, of a landing craft, but the f... the, the s... the first assault wave, in other words the troops got off there and went ashore, was actually the second wave going in, following the... fire, the cannon firing amtracks.Harris: When the, on the... okay, so an amtrack hits the beach like this, and
37:00the assault wave comes in. Does that... it, by the time you get there is a amtrack further ashore, or do you pull to a s… to the side?Wright: You mean the one following?
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Hopefully, Russ, the first one will be in and may take a port turn,
ninety degree port and stop the troops float against the sea, and then around front and back and, and the inland, and then he is out of there by the time the next one come, come in and hit generally the same place. Now, but what you’ve got to do before you, before you offload is... they, we, we took in ammunition, gas cans... hand grenades, you know, all li... strapped up on the gunnel of the, of these amtracks and we won--we kicked those off and cut them and, and threw them off on the beach, 38:00half of them, I guess, were destroyed, but, but... we had to do that, and then, I don’t know if I mentioned it last time, as we turned, and this is again how close that terrance was, when we turned on that beach, I was on the starboard side of the, of the craft, so that would put me closest to the shore, because we turned port, and I looked, here, and here was the, here was the turrets right, I could reach it, in fact I threw off my gear and just climbed up on there as there was no such around that way, I’ll just go the short way and I got up on the gunnel and jumped and landed halfway or more up on that turrets and, and of course my gas mask was right between my legs, almost, and when I got up on the r... ridge where I could look up and down the, the beach and, and... I guess I was a mess, but I was there, there wasn’t anybody else there, you see, 39:00so I just waited [Laughing] I wasn’t going to take the island by myself, so but that’s how close, that--now that’s the point of how close that beach was, how short that beach was before it hit that twenty-foot turrets, you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And then, then hopefully the troops are going to keep moving, or you’re
going to get a mess, like some of these pictures, you see, and that’s what you try to avoid, and you’re supposed to take anything you can, of course depending on the amount you, you receive. If you are not receiving fire, then you can drag along a, a... gallon--I mean a five or ten-gallon can of gas, or a crate of hand grenades, or whatever you see, and--which we did, because we figured, you know, we’re going to need them, and then I guess they put troops ashore later to organize all this stuff and packed it up and stacked it up, and, you know, but, but... that’s, that’s the way we went ashore, 40:00and there wasn’t too much, for the first wave, maybe the second... and from what you’ve read, they, they... they... the fire on us was a little light going in.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: So we did have the opportunity to just go right on in, and that was good
because it allowed us to clear the beach for the other waves.Harris: Yeah. I’ve often wondered, in a situation like that, how does your squad
get assembled again? How...Wright: Very... awkwardly [Laughing]. Well, you’re all in the general area and
the, and you know, everybody is looking for everybody else you know, and got... I lost one guy on the beach, and oddly enough it was a fellow got shot right through the rump [Laughing] he has always, he has always joked that he was going to shoot the Japs, “I am going to shoot them in the ass,” you know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: That’s right where he got shot. But he just,
41:00he, he dropped out and was put back, he--of course there were boats going back out--and, but we got, we finally got together and, and went on, just moved on in. Basically though, it’s a, you don’t attack as a squad or as a platoon or, if anything you, you attacked as a, attack as a company, you see. And you might be out of place, and then, if you come to an area where you’re going to hold, then you sort of form back up and, and... dig in as a, as a group, as a squad you might say, take your, right take your squad over there and dig in along that area, you see and... and... and we put a machinegun, we’re going to put a machinegun out there and you, and the mortar, the mortar be behind there or whatever, and that’s the way it was done. But--in other words you didn’t just attack four abreast or, or thirteen abreast like that, it just didn’t work.Harris: Yeah. That would be--I read about the Omaha Beach...
Wright: Oh yeah.
Harris: ... and
42:00then that was a, a nightmare of confusion.Wright: Oh yeah.
Harris: And I wondered what, what it was like under circumstances, circumstances
where you didn’t get much direct fire immediately.Wright: Yeah. We, we, we formed up pretty well, but, but only because they, it
was light fire. We were still getting hits and, and they were still throwing mortars in and so forth, but... but that’s light fire...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... you know, and now inland they had, going on across the neck, that’s
what our, our... area was, was to cross the neck of the island, and they had tanks dug in – the Japs had tanks dug in over there and, and firing, and... you know, they, they weren’t mobile, they were literally...Harris: Mm-mm, yeah.
Wright: ... in places, pillboxes and so we ran into some of those, and you know,
you had to work your way through those, and first one thing and another. 43:00Harris: Before we get much more inland, this photograph of the beach looking towards Suribachi... these tufts of sand looks like the sand is pretty loose.Wright: It is.
Harris: And soft...
Wright: Terrible loose, yeah.
Harris: What, was that a big problem? It looks like it’d be hard to run through.
Wright: Well, well see, it was a problem, and it was a problem getting up that
initial terrace you know, because you, you’d take two steps forward and slide one step backward, you know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and to run through a, and off these little (pocks?) there that
troops moving through there before, it was hard to run in it, but it’s just like hard running in loose sand if you had to get across it, so you’d, well you went, but... that’s... that’s true that it was... a problem and then getting your equipment and then, and your weapons and so forth and...Harris: It’s like moving a vehicle through there would be hard too.
44:00Wright: Well for a long time they, they had to b... I think they had to build a, a way for our tanks to get in and the amtracks, you know, bringing up supplies and so forth, and yes it was tough for them to go through.Harris: There was, was the sand black right there?
Wright: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Harris: And it...
Wright: Everywhere.
Harris: The whole island the sand is black.
Wright: As far as I can remember, it was black...
Harris: Oh.
Wright: ... and hot, you could dig a hole a, a foot down and put rations down in
there and they would get hot.Harris: Hum. Gosh, there were so many--you said earlier there were so many
minerals in that sand that it discolored everything.Wright: Mm-mm, yeah, like people [Chuckling] Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: There were bodies that turned green...
Wright: That’s right.
Harris: ... in the sun.
Wright: Mm-mm. In fact there is the first, I guess it was the first day, I
remember a... a friend of mine, 45:00a good buddy of mine, got shot and I went by him and, and noted where he was. But, we were open--across a little opening there, and, and I kept going and later in the day I told the lieutenant, or something that I was going back and make sure everything was okay, and, and in just several hours this guy had a green cast to him, and... of course he was dead and, and I, put the ( ) rifle hat thin... helmet thing you know, but... yes it did that, and normally troops didn’t lay around that long, they had, there were litter bearers in there from--they appeared from somewhere and got them out as quickly as possible, but... I did notice that.Harris: It must have been a... disorienting--look, from these photographs, it
looks like the whole place was a, a free fire 46:00zone almost.Wright: You could, you could get fire from any direction.
Harris: Yeah. There was no...
Wright: Any direction.
Harris: ... no cover anywhere.
Wright: No, no, a few little scrub trees here and there, but
47:00if you (coughs) there wasn’t anything to, to, to... it wasn’t like the woods in which you could hide or whatever and, and if you move in, into an area of a tree, they, they, the Japs had, as I figure it now, hindsight being what it is, and I [Chuckling] figured that years ago but not at the time, but they were, they were evidently on the some high ground in front of us and all the time, actually, and they would have rifles... scoped in for giving points...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... realize he c… at some time, people are going to have to cross that
point, and like under the base of a tree or something, and I’ve seen, seen guys just shot that you wouldn’t, you don’t know where the rifle--where the fire came from. The fact is, on n... well twice I can remember talking to a person and... and seeing them, seeing them shot, once 48:00right between the eyes, and once went in, this was a, a--our top sergeant, a first sergeant, and he, he was al... he was always yelling, he would, he turned his head to yell at someone and... a round went in one side of his mouth and out of the oth... one cheek and out the other and didn’t even hi... didn’t hit one of his teeth. And when I got called back [Chuckling] in for Korea, I looked him up in, in Pendleton...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: He was in the... I think the... the post first sergeant, sergeant major,
I guess, and he still had--he of course had the scars, you know...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and we talked about that. And I said, “well, if you’d keep your damn
mouth shut,” you know, [Laughter – Wright and Interviewer] of course if he had, he’d lost all his teeth...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... he, maybe he his ahead.
Harris: Well, sometimes it helps.
Wright: Yeah, it helps.
Harris: Hum. Oh, I was going to ask about the, the visibility and the, the
cover. Did you ever--normally 49:00you didn’t see Japanese, alive Japanese.Wright: Not too many, no. A few, we see, we, you see them, especially if you’re,
if you’re, if you’re moving on an advance or something, they, you’ll, you’ll flush them you see, and then, they had what they, they had what they called spider, spider traps (tapping sound), have you ever heard of that?Harris: Spider holes?
Wright: Yes, spider holes, or they called them spider traps.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But they had spider holes, yeah. Does it say something about them in there?
Harris: Huh, I think it mentions them, just in passing.
Wright: It seems like there is something on display over to the museum about a
spider trap.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Well, I’ll show you how those things work. I found this. (Background
shuffling noise). See what would happen, they’d dig these, these holes 50:00in the sand and reinforce them so they wouldn’t slide in, and they’d build a little... aperture for a, a machinegun, and they, and then they would get in there and then there’s one of these things, they, they’ve got to feel the fire here, you see, and the, into this scope and, it’s a periscope and they’re down here in the hole looking at you coming over the ridge and scanning the horizon and they’ve got a release on the machinegun and they...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and there is no way you can get them out there, and plus, then they,
if they draw back after you go through, then they close up the (more background noises) the little... top of the thing, they pull something over the top of it and then they just turn around and, and fire at your rear, at your rear going through, you see. So that’s... that’s one way that happens.Harris: Where...
Wright: And I got a chance to...
Harris: Where did this come from?
Wright: That came right off Iwo Jima.
Harris: This is a Japanese scope.
Wright: That’s a Japanese, oh yeah.
51:00Harris: Hum. What’s the range on this thing?Wright: Oh, I don’t know, it will bring, it’ll bring a couple hundred yards up
to where you can see a guy’s face pretty well.Harris: Gosh!
Wright: And see, there is the (more sound commotion) they have a little number
on it and everything. This is serial three-three-one-three and, and see here? It got a little blood on it.Harris: Yeah [Chuckles – Wright and Interviewer]. Did you take this from a...
Wright: Either I took it...
Harris: ... a bunker?
Wright: ... I took it from a dead guy.
Harris: I mean a bunker, or...
Wright: No this guy had it on his, on his back. I didn’t know what it was, to be
honest with you, until I, I had a buddy that was in the, was a... corpsman...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And they had cases that came up later and when I finally got--I just put
it in my--carried it for a day or two, and then put a, I put it in a case and finally located it.Harris: I have never seen one of these, but it’s effective.
Wright: Yeah, it is. I... I’ve never seen another like it.
52:00I think Danny would like to have it.Harris: I think he would. That’s about... let me think I want to describe it for
the tape, it’s about what, eight...Wright: It’s about eighteen...
Harris: twenty, thirty inches long?
Wright: That’s eighteen inches there and a nine, and a ten-inch handle, so that’s...
Harris: And it breaks down.
Wright: yeah, and then you got a scope that would raise in another ten inches.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: So... from, from eye point it’s... eighteen, about twenty s...
twenty-four, at least twenty-four inches from eye point to, to... the look out.Harris: And the whole periscope fits in that case.
Wright: In this case.
Harris: It’s about what?
Wright: Well that’s nine, that’s eighteen-twenty inches.
Harris: And that would fit on your ( ) shoulder, I guess.
Wright: Uh-huh.
Harris: And the whole thing, telescope into a real compact.
Wright: Fit in, see it fits in this little fitted
53:00case for it.Harris: Gee, this guy must have been an officer or something.
Wright: Must have been. He was dead though, he didn’t have anything, any more
need of it.Harris: Yeah, might as well take it if he is not going to use it.
Wright: [Chuckling] yeah. When I brought that I just thought you’d...
Harris: Yeah ( ) Wright: ... be interested to see that.
Harris: That’s fascinating.
Wright: And the number I think the number on here... though, no, that’s not
right. But this number here, thirty-three-thirteen coincides over here. Danny always likes to match his numbers you see, thirty-three-thirteen and thirty-three-thirteen [Chuckling].Harris: Yeah, I’m sure they could make a place for that in the museum, [Chuckles
– Interviewer] don’t you?Wright: I think they could probably, and I may do it one day, I don’t know.
(background noises). 54:00But you had guys that, that would make a, really make a business out of collecting stuff like that, I, I did a little, but... and it was--there was--a lot of it was booby trapped and you had to be careful if you see a guy fall and, and know he is, that nothing has been done to him, which I did with this guy, you can, you, as you run by, the fact is, this had to be an older soldier because he had on his... uniform, ribbons, and I, well this is strange, a guy in the middle of a battlefield wearing ribbons, but I just reached out and grabbed them and they, they came off easily, they weren’t pinned like ours and I got home, or got somewhere the next time I looked at them, which would have been, hell I don’t know, how, how long, much later, but I said well this looks familiar, and it was a World War I victory ribbon 55:00and it turns out of course that, that, as we know, Japan as our ally and here this was an old (strange sounds) whatever he was, I don’t--he was an officer but I don’t know the rank, and he had been in World War I. That was strange; to me it was strange anyway.Harris: I was going to ask about booby traps in...
Wright: Oh yeah!
Harris: ... Do you, did you lose a lot of Marines that way?
Wright: Yeah, mostly mines, more mines than booby traps, but... but... they,
they planted a lot of mines and they’d blow your legs off. A real good friend killed that way. In fact is he probably in that book, he, he, he got the Medal of Honor. But... he and, he was... I guess he had, at that point and time was company commander of, of D Company, and a big whole boy from Texas, 56:00Jack Lummus, and first lieutenant, and had been going to school at Baylor, I believe it was, and played football there and I think he had a, a... contract to pay--play ball for the Giants… baseball contract also. But anyway, he stepped on--he was leading, they ran up against some machineguns and he was, he wasn’t a follower, he was a, he was a guy that went out front and he said, “let’s go,” and... he started out and he, he ste... he hit a mine and of course he was put out of sight for a, for a while, and when the, when the... dust settled, he wasn’t killed, he got up and, and kept running and... and I think he took a grenade 57:00and then finally the big, he hit a big mine and... when the dust got settled on that, he was standing on the stumps of his legs and still saying, “let’s go, let’s go.” And so that’s, that’s the kind of things you were, you were facing, but that’s the kind of guy that was facing them, so they couldn’t win with people like that.Harris: No.
Wright: But, of course he, he died immediately. I think they did get him out to
the ship somewhere, yeah.Harris: How close were you physically when, when this happened?
Wright: Well (sighing) I... I knew, I could see the, the squirreling around over
there, I knew something was going on, but I would say I was... fifty yards, fifty yards away.Harris: Hum. Was he well known throughout the...
58:00Wright: Oh yeah, he was, he was a, he was a well known officer... he had been, he was with us all the way in the Raiders and he came down from, from the San Clemente camp and was there when we formed up, you know, and he’d been with us all the time. He was a hell of an athlete, and, and of course he played on a division baseball team and, and... he had a heck of a future in front of him. I imagine he was twenty... five, maybe, twenty-four, something like that, about six foot four.Harris: Yeah. How, how long did it take for news, for news of this to spread
through the unit?Wright: Well, not long, that’s, that is one thing that would happen, news would
spread pretty fast when something like that would 59:00happen. You’d hear about it, I don’t know, within an hour, maybe, depending on which way the wind was blowing [Chucking], you might say.Harris: Yeah, that had to be hard for everybody...
Wright: Yeah, yeah, he was...
Harris: ... ( ) Wright: ... he was a great guy, he really was.
Harris: Yeah. Before... or in a situation like that, I guess everybody has to
think about the possibility of not making it back. When something like that happens, di... is, is the reaction mostly anger or... something else?Wright: Well, you feel anger. I think you, and you probably feel fear, but I
think revenge is probably most in, in the, as a, as a predominant thing you feel. I know the troops that went ahead with him, and I was, I had at that point in time I was moving along with him but, but... they wen... they, they overtook the Japs immediately and there weren’t any of them left, let’s put it that way. But... 60:00it, it, it, you, you, then you forget it, you know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: You forget it.
Harris: But just... I just wondered how... how a marine in that, in a situation
like Iwo Jima would--you would know that... let me start again. A marine officer I knew in Viet--who was in Vietnam said that in the battle for Huey, he, he had thought about being killed and he, he had pretty much accepted that as a given. As it turned out he lived through it, but how is that compared to your experience? How do people assume that they are not going to make it beforehand and then just go ahead and do their job or do they... 61:00not think about the possibility of, of being killed?Wright: Well, I don’t think either one of those and I, of course in s... can’t
be answered yes or no because you don’t think about it all the time and you don’t ignore it all the time. It, it certainly comes to mind at times, especially if you are in a, in a situation like this with, with Jack Lummus or if you’re in a, a... an artillery bombardment, you know, these shells falling as close as the--see there is the kicker there you s... you could be, you could be laying here and, and the shell can fall five feet from you, and due to the terrain the, the... [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.3a] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.3b] 62:00Wright: ... and the ground it would go underneath and then explode and you wouldn’t get a, a lot of shrapnel flying around but you’d get that, you, you think you’ve been killed because [Chuckling] you be thrown from here to the end of the table, you might say... by the concussion. So you wonder, well now, you know, en... another three feet and that one would have had me and, and you think of course, this fellow, Bobby Smith, I was telling you I was standing, looking right at him and I, I w... the rifle had the, the round had to come right pass my head because it him right in the eyes and, and he just fell over and he was dead you know, and one inch this way and it would have been in the back of my head.Harris: Oh.
Wright: So, you got to think about it, but you don’t dwell on it, you, you dwell
on what you got to do and, and what’s the best way to do it, and hopefully you’ll get out of it.Harris: Yeah.
63:00That, the... the friend of mine seems to be... from my reading, it seems like the frame of mind that a soldier is in, has, play the major part in what happens to him.Wright: Yeah, I would think so; I would think so.
Harris: Huh, of course you never can eliminate chance, but... still.
Wright: Well, Russ, I think the more you, the more you expose yourself, the
better chance you’re going to have of getting hit. Now in fighting like this on Iwo Jima, you were exposed every minute of every day, and every night, you see, it was just that simple. There were flares up; you couldn’t, if you moved you could be seen. Everybody had a chance, had as good a chance 64:00as they were going to have to get killed, they had it on Iwo.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And I’m sure that these other people you talked to feel the same way
about where they were but, but... there was no rear echelon to, or no rear area to go to. If you went back to the rear area, so to speak, they’d fire at you from the caves on Suribachi and... if you went--fire would, of course that’s where we... we were closing them in, so... I guess you’ve got to think about it, certainly I thought about it, but I don’t remember consciously thinking about it. I remember being afraid when this, these, when it was building up with this artillery, and I, I think it was ours, I think it was our artillery, but it doesn’t matter, it will kill you [Chuckling] anyway.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But I, my God,
65:00if I ever get out of this one, you know, and, and as I say you know, the old story about the foxhole... conversions, well, I am, I mean I made some promises and I don’t guess I’ve kept them but I’m sure there was a lot of that going on. And, but you don’t see people crying and wringing their hands and... praying or anything like that, you know.Harris: I was going to ask how you dealt in fear in situations like that.
Wright: You get over it as fast as you can, that’s all. You just say, well, you,
as they say, you suck it up and go! You can’t, what can you do? You [Chuckling] can’t take a rest.Harris: Concentrate on the job at hand.
Wright: Yeah, that’s it, do what you got to do. Just keep going. It’ll, It’ll
ease, it’ll, it’s, as soon as I thought about it and I found out I wasn’t dead, I, I was ready to go, [Laughing] you know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Everybody else thought I was dead too, that’s the funniest thing.
Harris: I guess they were sort of surprised...
66:00Wright: Yeah.Harris: ... that you weren’t.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: Look at this picture. It’s a, it’s from further on in the island. It
looks like... I want to describe for the tape is two marin... two or three marines... firing at Japanese positions that can’t be seen in the photograph. About all the cover they have is a, it looks like three or four feet of...Wright: It looks like a bulldozer ( ) Harris: ... all right, yeah, a ditch or something.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: Is that about as much cover as it was ever available?
Wright: Well, there were rocks and all, and all that, you could, you’d go
through a lot of rocks on the island, and... but the, the Japs there, you, you, they would carve out, it was soft sandstone, you know, and they’d carve out a big clump of rock and get up in there and drill a hole through 67:00it and that’d be a sniper position you see.Harris: yeah.
Wright: Even the rocks weren’t safe. But now this town of Nishi, I’ve, I’ve...
I’ve seen it in print but it wasn’t a town, I guarantee you. We were right up through there and I remember I, I remember seeing a tank--now the tanks were, were, some of the tanks were equipped with napalm through the, through the barrel of their... weapon, and I remember, there were a couple of bamboo huts, and I think that was Nishi this, this says the town of Nishi. Well, they may know more than I do, but... there was no town.Harris: There was another village marked on the map.
Wright: Yeah, ma... (Modiano?), (Modiano?) Harris: I know it, I know this wasn’t
in your sector, but later on did you ever go over that part of the island?Wright: No, no, no. We went across here all the way up to here and came back
here and off loaded the island 68:00right here.Harris: I see.
Wright: We came in here, up this way, and back here. This was a whole different
ball game over here.Harris: Yeah, it’s different ( ) I was going to ask about those towns, I had
never heard of.Wright: I, I can’t tell you a thing about them except that they weren’t there.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: They weren’t there.
Harris: Did you encounter any civilians?
Wright: No, no, no, none. Has anybody ever told you they did on Iwo?
Harris: I saw... a documentary on TV about Iwo Jima, and, oddly enough,
down--well, let me look at the map again--down on the north end of the, of the island, there are a lot of--apparently there are a lot of gorges and... really 69:00sharp defiles.Wright: That’s true.
Harris: And... there were--in, in these gorges, they were honeycombed with caves...
Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: ... and according to what this documentary said, there were... a, a
great variety of botanical... species that didn’t grown anywhere else, and at the time of the battle just, by pure chance, there were some civilian s...Wright: Botanists, huh [Chuckling] Harris: ... yeah, a botanist and school
children here had come there to see the...Wright: I doubt that very seriously, I don’t care who documented it, I, I don’t,
that island was closed the, the Japanese they couldn’t get on and off at, they couldn’t get supplies, you know, I don’t know, 70:00I’ve never seen that. I, I’d have to question that, but...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... there again.
Harris: I don’t know if it...
Wright: Now, these true so much about--the fact is right here is where we had
the, the, what they call the turkey shooting, that’s where the staff... officers from the... from the island were finally put under, you see, but and they, they, these, and they had, they had a Jap talkers up there you know, that would say, “come out,” and all that “you won’t be killed” and, and of course if you didn’t, then you went in with flom--flame throwers and, and... charges and sealed the caves. Of course they probably went down a few rounds and came out on the other side, but that’s all right, but I, I don’t... what you just told me is all new to me, I, I’ve never heard of it.Harris: Well, like I say, I can’t speak for the authenticity of this… Wright:
Now this was...Harris: ... documentary, but I saw it on TV.
Wright: On TV.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I’d still doubt it. Everything you see on TV isn’t true either
[Laughing] Harris: [Chuckles – Interviewer] That’s true, it was a film about... 71:00let’s see, some Japanese and some marines survivors of Iwo Jima went back to the island... let’s see, when was it? It would have been forty... forty years that, ( ) I guess eighty-five.Wright: Eighty-five, yeah.
Harris: Yeah. And... oh... but when they told the story of these botanists they
were caught in the...Wright: Well, it’s entirely possible, let me put it that way...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... as I say, my area of, of concern was right up that west coast all
the way to the point up here and I--now, we did get over in here in between these hills and went, we did spread out that far, but I was basically up that long run, right up there, because I came in right up against the 28th and you can see if you take that and turn it, that’s the way it would be.Harris: Huh, before we get... too far away from it.
72:00You said you saw the flag on Suribachi at, pretty soon after they raised it...Wright: ( ) Harris: ... how, how, about where on the map were you?
Wright: Well, let’s see, well I’d be right about where that arrow is, I guess.
Harris: Let, let’s see, for the tape, that’s about...
Wright: I would say it’s... seventy yards?
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Well, no that, I wouldn’t have been that far then, I’d would have been
maybe in here, I’d say five to--I’d say seven-hundred-fifty to a thousand yards, because that’s looking up in that re... increase the... the range, I’d say it was thousand yards, but... but it was, it was close enough I, I could clearly see the flag and... but we had already turned, so I guess it was right in this area, right in that area, right in there 73:00( ) Harris: All right. It was just by chance that you saw it happened to look that way?Wright: I rolled around my back. We were, we had stopped, there was a clearing,
I, I was laying on some kind of a rut where troops had walked there a trail or whatever, and anywhere they’d get, the closer you’d get underneath you know, and I just rolled over and looked up and there it was, and... but it was the day it was raised, it was... you know, you’re always looking around, I’d...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... you looked in the mountain, many times everyday, but... I would say
it was within an hour after it was raised... but I d... I couldn’t say other than that.Harris: Mm-mm. Was it visible to marines all over your area?
Wright: Oh yeah, yeah.
Harris: Mm.
Wright: Yeah, but it, I’d called attention and everybody and, and... I guess it
was the first sighting, I don’t know, but it, and there was a big cheer 74:00when it went up, a big yell, everybody yelling that, that the flag was up and all that, and that was quite a moment.Harris: Yeah. Did... did that lift the spirits of the...
Wright: Oh yeah, absolutely.
Harris: You weren’t... were you in a firefight right then?
Wright: No, we were stopped for some reason.
Harris: Oh.
Wright: We, we had... I was stopped. But the 28th, as I say, they, they had gone
up there.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And they finally got it. We knew they would, but we didn’t know when.
Harris: Mm-mm. Well, after the, after the flag was, set there was there still
occasionally fire from the mountain?Wright: Oh yeah.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Yeah, because of the, there again they, the, that mountain was
honeycombed totally with... gun positions, they could roll a gun out of there, a wheel gun 75:00and fire a few rounds and pull it back in you know, and, and they had machineguns and, and the mortars they’d fire everything from that mountain, and they could range all this whole area, here. And they took them days after these, after they got to the top and put the flag up, to... to... seal them or to chase them out, or kill them, whatever. But... yeah, they were throwing things from the mountain for se... many days after that, after they took it.Harris: Mm-mm. These concealed positions all over the island, especially the
ones you were concerned with...Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: ... they were... I guess every kind of ordnance they had, rifles up to tanks.
Wright: Yeah, yeah. They’d have the, they would have, they’d pick a field of
fire you see where they figured anybody would--they, the first part, I think they believed we would land on the west coast, because 76:00they had big concrete bunkers built along here, you see.Harris: Mm-mm, along this...
Wright: the west coast.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Over here.
Harris: Where they built right down to the beach?
Wright: Yeah, right, right where you can see up and down, firing up and down the
beach and, and out, you know. And... it was like the Maginal line, I guess, but, but of course they weren’t used when we came upon them, they had withdrawn because we came in from this way, you see. The, the Japs had withdrawn from the, the placements, they would have been defenseless from the rear...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... if that makes sense. They didn’t defend them from the rear at all,
so... but we did see those and, and, but you were constantly coming upon a surprise a, a tank dug in, you know, and he would hold up our company, you know, firing the, swinging it the... turreted gun around and firing on the company, you could put them in the ground pretty quick, you know, so you, that would take time, to get stuff in there and clean him out. 77:00Harris: How long?Wright: Well, depending on what you had with you, if you had... if you had a...
a Jack Lummus you’d grab up two or three guys with some shape charges and they’d try to kill the tank.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But normally what they would do, if, after they got the tanks ashore,
they would, they would hold in and keep them pinned down as best and see if we could get somebody in there, maybe try it one or two times, and then if not, call for tanks, or call for artillery, or whatever. But I’d say, a tank like that could... or a couple certainly, could hold up a, a... a platoon, up to a company depending on how they were placed, for a... couple of hours, minimum. Yeah, sure could. But it wouldn’t be, wouldn’t be held up, you’d still be maneuvering around, because you had to get by them.Harris: Yeah. Was it difficult to get artillery air support?
78:00Wright: Well, supposedly we had air support, especially on, on D-Day, we had our air support. And we had panels that we’d put out in front of our troops and our frontline, and the d... the ships from the, the airships from the carriers would come in and dive in with bombs, five-hundred pounders mostly, I think. The, we were supposed to have fire control, people from the, from the battleships off shore. But see we were on the off isle, off the--off the side of the island. Well this was in high ground and you couldn’t get a, a, a sixteen-incher to come make that kind of an arc, you see. But I understand they had good, good control on gun fire over on this end, on the east side of the island... and then they, of course when we finally got our artillery in place back here, 79:00we called it in, which we did, and, and sometimes not, not to our advantage I’m sure. I’m, I’m positive of that. That’s what was part of it; it’s like these people in the gulf. Well they... you know, they, it’s the price of doing business, you’re going to kill some of your own men that way. We had it, and I’m sure they had it in World War I, and I’m sure they had it when the monkeys were fighting the June bugs [Laughing].Harris: Yeah.
Wright: (Coughing) Excuse me.
Harris: I just wondered, I’ve heard a lot of Vietnam veterans complain that all
hell would be breaking loose and they’d call for artillery and or air and there would be a delay of, of however long before they could get a, did that occur?Wright: Well we didn’t have that, because we were all setting on about, on a
pork chop, 80:00you might say and, it... a... if you had planes in the area they could be anywhere in our, in our operation within a matter of seconds, let alone minutes, and the, the battleships, while they were there--now they pulled out eventually within a few days...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... but while we--they were there, they were in direct contact, and,
and... you could call in and fire there and then when we got our own artillery in, it was just a matter of, of... coordinating and you’d get fire in.Harris: Mm-mm. This, on the map anyway, this large prominence is… Wright: Yeah.
Harris: ... labeled three-sixty-two.
Wright: Hill three-sixty-two A, and...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... and B, and C.
Harris: Do, do you remember the fight for that?
Wright: Yeah, yeah.
Harris: Specifically?
Wright: Yeah, it was just... it, it’s three-hundred and sixty-two feet
81:00above sea level, it’s, it’s not that much to, to begin with...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... you see. And then we were on sort of high ground anyway, so what it
really was, was a knob [Chuckling] Harris: Yeah.Wright: But, I wasn’t involved in, in going up--fact is we went around one end
of it, one, one side of it, but... as I recall, they just, a couple of, I guess one company went up over the hill and we had fire coming in probably from mortars, before we went forward, and, but we, I don’t think it was that big of a stopper. I’m not, I’m not, I’ve heard differently about one of these over here. Maybe this, no, this turkey knob, that was a...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... this was ( ) much of a problem for the Third Division over here,
82:00I believe, when they finally got ashore.Harris: Mm-mm. Yeah, they call this area the meat grinder, I think...
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: It took them several days to get through there.
Wright: Uh-huh.
Harris: But...
Wright: The Fourth Division went in through there.
Harris: But on your side of the island, it was... what was the terrain like for,
for most of this stretch?Wright: Well, it was basically the same kind of terrain, that was the same
terrain as all over the island, but here they had some, they had some cliffs along here, I believe, right along in this area. Well, here is the rock quarry, yeah the, the... Fourth Division was supposed to, they were trying to get the fr... the, the reserve of the Fourth Division to go in here and there is no way they could get in there. I guess that’s why they piled them up, went right in, over the, the Third Division went over the Second Division. But, basically it was loose 83:00sand, rocky, some hilly, when you get up in this area, and seemed to rise a little here and slope in the middle of the... this area here, and then, no you can see this sort-of-like this. This is all high ground, so to speak. So that’s what I say, when you have a three-hundred and sixty-two foot hill on already the high ground of the island, it’s not that much difference.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: The... the s... the sand was the same all over the island, as I recall.
Harris: Same black sand.
Wright: Same black sand. It seems like at night it got a little whiter up here,
but it was still stinky and... and... not clean sand, you know, and it was hotter, I guess hotter up in this part of the island, and...Harris: That’s in... that’s interesting. I’ve heard that the sand smelled bad.
Wright: Yeah, it did, it really did.
Harris: There was some metallic smell?
Wright: Sulfur smell, sulf... well I think Sulfur Island
84:00is what they called Iwo, that’s what me... it means, maybe.Harris: Oh, sulfur.
Wright: Yeah, but it was a, it was a bad stink, rotten eggs smell type thing,
and, but there again, you get used to that, you get used to anything, I guess.Harris: I suppose. Most, it l... it must have looked and smelled like hell.
Wright: [Laughing] it did, some of these, I just looked at these after I talked
to... Danny, I guess and some of these things, look at that.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: We had a saying, if he doesn’t, if he don’t stink, stick it. [Chuckles –
Interviewer] ( ) if we couldn’t make sure he was dead we’d stick him in the back or the front, whichever way he was turned.Harris: Were the... let’s see there is one, two, three, four, five, there is
about six bodies here. Were they ever found in groups larger, larger than that?Wright: Mm, I don’t know, that probably a shell, a shell probably did that.
85:00Or he, he could have been shot like that but... they, they didn’t, they didn’t congregate too much that I recall seeing.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I think five or six would be a crowd.
Harris: I would, yeah, I would think... did you ever--you said the... the area
was honeycombed with trenches and tunnels. Did you ever go in any of those?Wright: No, I never did, I, I, I’ve thrown grenades in and, and fired in them,
but I, hell I was, I had no n... call for me to go in there and I didn’t go.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And, now here is, here is so... you can see this is a hill coming down
here sort of, in that little path, a little path along here. In fact there is a bicycle laying there you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Then it goes on, slopes on down here. So that evidently came down like
this and then out, 86:00so this is evidently around maybe one of these hills.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: So you can see they were pretty well occupied, so-to-speak.
Harris: Yeah. Let’s see, this must be the cemeteries over here.
Wright: No, it started...
Harris: No, here?
Wright: ... here, down here.
Harris: Oh.
Wright: That’s the Fifth Division cemetery, I guess it is.
Harris: Mm, can’t tell. How long were they, were the marine dead left on Iwo
Jima before they were moved? Were...Wright: I don’t know.
Harris: Oh.
Wright: I don’t know. The way I g... I think I might, I just noticed this, this
might be the beginning of Suribachi...Harris: Yeah.
87:00Wright: ... there in the back. So this would be the Fifth Division. I don’t know, Russ, but I know they... I know they got them in the ground as quickly as possible, and it was just a matter of bagging them and, and bulldozing the place and putting them in it, putting the cross up where it stick up with a dog tag on it.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But... that’s all they could do, you know.
Harris: I know that some of [Clears throat] I know that some of them were, some
of them I’ve read about were moved back to the states.Wright: I think they probably were, because I think this island reverted to
Japan, if you can believe that, but...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... I think they own it now again, with the rest of the country.
Harris: Hum. Gosh,
88:00see what else I had to ask? Huh, oh yeah! When you came upon a fixed position...Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: ... how did you communicate what needed to be done to the re... other
members of your squad?Wright: You mean like a machinegun or something like that?
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Well, if you couldn’t talk good, you could do hand signals. We didn’t
have radio communication. I think they have that now, I don’t know, but we didn’t have radio communication then between the squad, or even a platoon. You did, you, if you were pinned down you’d point, like that, and they’d go there and we’d go this way, and bring somebody up through the middle, you know, you’d just tell people what you wanted them to do like that. And... everybody knew. We’d practiced it, and, and it doesn’t talk--take long to get, become a veteran in a place like that, I can tell you that. 89:00Harris: Yeah. It looks like the big difficulty would be knowing where the fire was coming from.Wright: Well, that’s what you ha... that’s what you do first...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... is determine where you’re getting hit from, and, and then decide
what you want to do (Clears throat) but... I don’t ever recall any problem with that. And of course, I remember one time, going across here, in fact as I was leaving the b...--I call it the benz... bonsai charge we were, our immediate first... responsibility was to get to the, the coast. So, that’s what I was trying to do is push on through there and I got out ahead. So I was in this bomb crater and looked back and I saw the platoon sergeant, and he was giving me the hand... sign of a machinegun holding the rifle up and he pointed it over this way, 90:00and there was a clump of bushes over there, and so, and I, we had a machinegun coming up on our right and they--I saw where he was, so I got word to them and, and I had, we had tracers, and I just fired tracers into this clump of bushes and then he emptied the... part of a belt in there and it stopped, so we can assume that that’s... because when I, I came back to... I turned around and ran back to where the, the... platoon sergeant was and, and the, they were firing and he told me when I got there, I’m glad they could tell me, that they were hitting right up under my heels, you know, when I was, when I was running across there. So then I had to go back over there to get our, so our machinegun could direct fire to that machinegun. But that’s just the way you did it, half by vocal, half by signs, or hand signals or, or directing fire with a, 91:00with a tracer, and enemy fire, you know, and, and they then know what to do. You just knew.Harris: That’s where training pays off.
Wright: That’s where it pays off, that’s practice, that’s right.
Harris: That would be, it looks to me like the confusion of, of combat would
be... about the hardest thing to deal with you know, what happens now?Wright: Oh yeah.
Harris: What do we do next?
Wright: it’s very great confusion and reign supreme you might say. Yes, it’s...
a lot of times, you don’t know what’s going on, and certainly at the, at our level, and, and the troops... I don’t think the officers did either; I’ll be honest with you. But... you know you were supposed to go on one direction [Laughing] and, as long as you keep going in that direction, you guess you’re doing something right and, and 92:00that’s what he always says, damn it do something e... e... even if...Harris: Even if it’s wrong?
Wright: ... even if it’s wrong, because you know, if you don’t do anything,
that, you know that’s wrong, so we, we kept going in one direction as much as we can and could and... it works out you lose some people of course, but you hope you just don’t lose a lot of them.Harris: Yeah. What was the noise level like?
Wright: Well, in the middle of a firefight it was pretty hectic. I mean you’d
have machineguns and rifle fire, and hand grenades, and... mortars, and, and it got pretty raunchy. Then you’d have the dust blowing up and you couldn’t see part of the time and...Harris: Yeah. [Pause] Harris: I wanted to show you this photograph.
Wright: Okay.
Harris: It’s a picture of a war dog...
93:00Wright: Oh yeah.Harris: ... and his handler.
Wright: Yeah, mm-mm.
Harris: I read that there were three s... yeah three platoons of these... on
Iwo. Did you ever see any of them?Wright: Sure did!
Harris: What, what were their duty?
Wright: We... let’s see now, right about in here, about half way up on the... on
the west coast from Suribachi to Katano Point, there were some wells, water wells, and once we pushed past those, these were the northern most wells on the island, and once we pushed past there, they, they were, they were out of water, you see. So, there was ce... there was a rock out here... (Kitchijima?) or something like--a couple of little rocks out of, half 94:00mile or so off shore, and we thought that they would bring some troops around and try to come in and, and get those, get some well--some water to fill in their canteens and so forth. So we set up a perimeter right around here, and brought in some of these... canine dogs two Dobermans they were two. Yeah, that’s a Doberman. And we put them in, spaced them in between, oh maybe four or five... of the troops and just waiting for these Japs to come in. And so this one old guy, he, he was in a, got in my hole with me with his dog and of course I, you know, as I say, I love animals, so I said, I wonder if I could pet his dog. I never will forget. He said, “well,” he said, he said, “yeah, you could but,” he said, “he wouldn’t like it 95:00and then you wouldn’t like it, so” he says, “maybe we just better not,” [Laughing] and so, I said, “okay, that suits me,” and...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... but he was a big whole thick-chested Doberman and... he I guess
around two o’clock in the morning and... this old boy nudged me with his foot, with his toe, you know, and that dog was just letting out a rrrrrr, you know, in his, in his throat, he wasn’t barking or anything and he says, “they’re coming.” And by golly and their, the, the, of course the waves were breaking along that shore there but, we passed the word, and, and they came in. They came in I think about four, four boats of them, and I think they pa... they finally figured out they had come from these rocks. They probably went out, way out and then came to the rocks, and then came on in from there. And, so we, we cleaned up on them pretty good. I don’t think any of them got out of there. But that’s the only time I was involved with the, with the canines.Harris: So how much, how many
96:00minutes advance notice did you get, because of the dog?Wright: Oh, I would say... well that’s a little, I never thought of it, it’s a
little hard to guess, but time, time plays different tricks on you...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... but I would say without doubt, three or four minutes.
Harris: It’s enough.
Wright: Enough time to alert everybody and, and get positions and so forth and
so on. They and, maybe they caught it on the wind, I don’t know.Harris: Did they use the dogs to... get the Japs out of tunnels and bunkers and
so on?Wright: I never saw that.
Harris: No.
Wright: I don’t think so; I don’t think so. If they didn’t come out, they had
the Jap talkers, and if they...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... if they didn’t come out, then they...
Harris: That was it.
Wright: ... they got one chance, as far as I can recall.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: At least that’s what it was in our group.
Harris: Yeah. So
97:00Dad got in now.Wright: It?
Harris: Yeah, he had the, see he was with the, I, he wasn’t in the initial
assault group. He was with the army, and... they... what they did was... in addition to occupying the island, was... they had to go back up in the hills...(background noises) Wright: Oh yeah, yeah.
Harris: Clean up, clean out these... caves and... wherever they found them,
flame throwers, satchel charges, I believe they used dogs...Wright: To go in there, huh.
Harris: ... you know, scare the hell out of the Japanese and just something
unexpected, and that show themselves and… Wright: Well, they may have done that, Russ, I just don’t know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I just don’t know.
Harris: They had, they had a lot of tunnels,
98:00and... underground tunnels and... sometimes there’d only be large enough for one man, two men, if you brought a dog loose in there it... affects his attitude [Laughter – Wright and Interviewer].Wright: I bet it would.
Harris: Well, anyway.
Wright: Did your dad make it out all right?
Harris: Oh yeah, uh-huh.
Wright: Did he, that’s nice.
Harris: Yeah. He... didn’t enjoy it, but he [Chuckles – Interviewer and Wright].
Wright: It’s not very joyful, really.
Harris: No, here is the same picture of the, the rocket.
Wright: It sure is, yes it’s sure is, it’s the exact same picture.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Let’s see where, USMC photo, I’ll be darn, yeah. Yeah, I had do... this,
yeah, see, Houma Louisiana. I was down New Orleans, this old boy’s name was... J. J. (Rebstock?), Jefferson, J. (Rebstock?) and [Chuckling] I was down there one time and he gave ma a set of them. 99:00Yeah, that’s it all right.Harris: The... the combat... in the area where you were, had to be hand-to-hand
at times. How many instances... does any particular instance stand out?Wright: Well, yeah now there is a time, there was one time I almost went crazy.
It was night, and it was cold, and it was raining, and we were far, maybe a little bit ahead of what we ought to have been, because at night you could hear them over there, they’d be straightening the corrugated iron, beating on it, and building back up [Chuckling] what, what had gotten blown out the day before. But we were maybe up a little far in the island, and they were getting drastic, and we knew they were sanding out infiltrators to just create 100:00havoc, do what they could, steal, whatever. So, and I had a poncho and I had a, a forty-five, and hand grenades and some flare grenades. The, the theory was to keep, just keep, keep them out from infiltrating. Well, I was--and then you know, after so many hours, you, everything starts to move. I mean you think that chair is moving over there, but it’s not. So I had my eye and I’d look away from it and then out of the corner of my eye, I could see something moving up on my right. Oh boy. And... but it was raining, as I say. So (sighs) I kept watching and looking away from it and picking it up and... and there he, there was a guy crawling up. So, and there I was in the [Chuckling] in the poncho, 101:00a noisy damn poncho and, and... couldn’t get to my rifle, I didn’t really want it, but I had my K-bar, and I had a forty-five, and this guy just came right on up and he was about, I don’t know, I’d say five feet, and he would move, but he was just, had, he was just so intent, he wasn’t looking right or left, and it didn’t seem to me he was, and just moving right intent on getting as far in as he could. And when he got up about even to me, I just said, well, it’s either, if it’s not him or me, because he is certainly going to see me. So I just came out of the, out of the... a little pit, a little, it wasn’t a real foxhole, and landed right on his back and with my K-bar and, and got him right between the shoulder blades and I guess I went a little ape [Chuckling] because 102:00I almost cut his head off, and they pulled me off and settled back down and... got back in my little hole, you know, and then the next day, we looked at him, and he, he was pretty well cut, cut up. His head was almost off. But that’s as close as I got, and he didn’t, he didn’t, he didn’t strike at me because I was setting right on his back. But he was loaded down, he had hand grenades and, and... a pistol, I think, and... a knife and so forth. So... but they did, they sent, sent troops out and we got, we’d get word to watch for them and then they were, but also go out at that time, stay in your hole, because anybody outside moving around is going to be shot, you know. So everybody would stay the hell in their hole, and... but it wasn’t rampant, you didn’t see it all the time.Harris: So that’s about the only time you did that.
103:00Wright: Well that, except you know, for you’d get a group maybe of, as I say half a dozen or eight, figure they were going to break through or something, they’d run up on the front somewhere and they’d shoot them down. But that’s as far as hand-to-hand. There wasn’t really that much, you’d see a little of it, but not a lot. We were pretty well trained in the basics of hand-to-hand. I don’t think we’d have any problem.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: We were, we were bigger and probably healthier than they were, or
healthier than they were, stronger, but... they were on their own ground and knew it. That would have been, it would have been, I think they could’ve probably created more problem than they did by... infiltrating and hand-to-hand, you know.Harris: Was the infiltration... it was, was that ever effective? Did they ever
104:00cut anybody off?Wright: Huh, they cut people up. They’d sneak in and, and... kill people and
steal what they had, and weapons, and this-that-and-the-other and just leave them laying there, like we left that guy laying there, you know.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I don’t think they ever cut a platoon off from a company or anything
like that...Harris: That’s what I meant.
Wright: ... that I know of, no, it didn’t, it didn’t go to that degree.
Harris: Just very isolated.
Wright: Yeah...
Harris: Once in a ( ) Wright: ... isolated and, and small groups, you know, or a
single (Coughs). He may have had two guys out like a rattlesnake, you know, have two, two guards out on the sight, but no. He may have been relieved and when that happened they may have faded back but he is the only one that showed that night, so, but I have seen as many as, I think eight, come in, but you didn’t see these bonsai charges...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... you know, like you hear about. I think the Japs
105:00by that time had learned that they just didn’t pay off.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: They weren’t going to scare anybody, and you just hold your ground and
keep shooting and they’re going to drop.Harris: Mm-mm, yeah. You said, you mentioned it rained. I read somewhere that
after everyone was ashore and in the middle of, of the operation, there was a... enough, enough of a rainstorm to turn everything to mud. Is that correct?Wright: (Coughing) Excuse me. Yes, it seems like it was, it seems like I
remember that. I’ll tell you this, it got as cold on Iwo Jima as I have ever been in my life.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I mean, it wasn’t cold but you thought it was cold. You were probably
wet and, and chilled. Of course it is in the middle of the ocean, 106:00you see. And... I remember it raining, and I think it rained almost every night, it seems to me it did...Harris: Oh.
Wright: ... and I was on the damn island thirty-six days, as I recall, from the
nineteenth to the... twenty-sixth, we got off on the twenty-sixth. It tickles me these people say the island was secured in fourteen [Laughing] days or something there, that’s not the way it happened, but... I seem to remember a, a mucky situation, yeah. It didn’t bother us because we were ( ) you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I can see where it might have bothered trucks or bringing in supplies.
Harris: Yeah. The... you said it was not secure in fourteen days... did you ever
feel like you were safe?Wright: No, hell no! No sir. Well, we, we were on the beach, on the west beach
107:00ready to, to board our, our... I think they were LCIs to, to go out to get aboard ship to sail back, and they said, well we need--and there again, hell what are you going to do, but they needed some troops to go ahead and clean up these caves.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: So we, we went up there, and as soon as we came back, we got aboard,
but... no, I never felt safe on that island, hell no, no sir. I think anybody that did is probably still there [Chuckling] Harris: Yeah, I imagine so.Wright: Part of him.
Harris: Let’s see. Was the fighting down here, on the very north end at Katano
Point, was that any different from what you’d been doing...Wright: Yeah...
Harris: ... the rest of the time?
Wright: … that was--well they call it the turkey shoot. That was just target practice.
108:00Harris: Yeah.Wright: I mean there w... I don’t know too many troops--a lot of troops--got
killed up there. But it had to be done. These people were still there and they were still armed, and they’d still kill you, if, if, if they could and it was proven, because after we got--after the Marines left, and the air force started using these fields and they put in a little tent camp down here, they did have one of these banzai charges and they, they cut up a bunch of people.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And they had to come out of these caves that we had missed, or, or
whatever, you see, but by killing, I don’t know how many hundred we got up there, but they got a bunch of them. But, but taking them out up there, then that kept them from coming down here and cutting up the air bo... the air force.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But it wasn’t, ha... it wasn’t that hazardous for us because we knew
what we were going to do and they didn’t, and they, they couldn’t do anything. They could either come out, come out and surrender, or else 109:00get blown up, and sealed up.Harris: Yeah. You said you had Jap talkers, was there any other communication
between the marines and the Japanese... like when you got to the point of saying, surrender or die, was that it? Was there any other... any other messages?Wright: No, no.
Harris: No.
Wright: They, I think some... you mean like leaflets or something like that? I
think there was some leaflets passed out, or put out, or whatever.Harris: Well, I didn’t ask the question right, but I know that... were you able
to intercept any radio communications the Japs had with, with each other?Wright: No, I think, but some going back to Japan they didn’t, until they cle...
until they... broke that communication right off. I don’t know that they ever got any... any 110:00island talk on the radio. I don’t think they--of course we had Indian talkers on our ri... into n... they couldn’t decipher that.Harris: Nava...
Wright: But we had na...
Harris: Navahos, weren’t they?
Wright: ...Navahos, yeah, but they... I, I--that’s a good question I’ve never
ask, been asked that but I don’t think, I don’t think they did have much radio communication after we went ashore. I’m sure there was some, because they ( ) controlled (Tabachi?) I think that was his name [Chuckling], I can’t even remember the general’s name anymore, but his, his headquarters was up here and he had, certainly he had some kind of communications in there, but I don’t think it, I think, communications from here to... in the north through here on Suribachi was, was not in, in place for very long.Harris: Oh, when you--I know, I know the general’s...
111:00headquarter was up here. Did you ever see it?Wright: No.
Harris: You didn’t know where it was exactly?
Wright: Oh yeah, I knew where it was but nobody, I don’t think anybody ever saw it.
Harris: Oh.
Wright: I don’t think--and he wasn’t there. Nobody, there is no real proof that
was his, as far as I know, but it was the biggest, grandest post in the, that anybody found, so they concluded that was his.Harris: Oh. What did it look like?
Wright: Well, it was long, it, underground it was all walled up, you know, and
concrete, and desks and maps, and... electronics, and things like that, you know, so, just like a, I guess like any of them would look. I’m trying to think, I guess they had steel doors, I think from one room to the other down there they were no doors, as I recall. I just went in there and out, I didn’t kn... I didn’t want to stay in there.Harris: You
112:00act... you went in this...Wright: I went in, yeah, yeah.
Harris: ... quarter.
Wright: Yeah, we could go in there, yeah.
Harris: It’s like...
Wright: When you, when you’re the first one there, you can do, you can do
[Chuckling] whatever you want to, you know.Harris: Yeah.
Third party: You all still recording?
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: No, we were waiting for you.
Third Party: Okay.
Wright: [Laughing] No, we are recording.
Third Party: Did he bring some goodies to show you?
Harris: Oh, yeah.
Third Party: Good!
Wright: Oh, I forgot to put that away too.
Third Party: Okay, that’s great! Did Tom sit in on it?
Harris: No, he had to do the program across the way. . .
Third Party: Oh! I see.
Wright: There is some w...--we are recording, by the way, you’re on tape right now.
Third Party: Oh, you’re still recording?
Wright: This one is a confederate major they sent ( ).
Third Party: Yeah.
Wright: Where is Julie?
Third Party: She is gone to the powder room and I just want to tell you, we are
about ready to go to lunch.Wright: Oh, okay.
Harris: We are almost finished.
Third Party: General Davidson is going to go with us; we’re going to pick him up.
Wright: Okay.
Third Party: Mm?
Harris: I said we are almost finished.
Third Party: Okay, fine.
Harris: So you got off the island, twenty-sixth March?
Wright: Yeah.
113:00Harris: Okay. Do you remember what a c... what you did, what you did after that?Wright: After that we went--we were taken and, as I say, I believe it was LCIs
landing craft infantry. We were taken to the, to the transport ships, and there was some, there was some foggy situation there. They--it was either a holiday or a, a Sunday, or something wrong that I think it was the merchant marine didn’t want to l... draw anchor, pull anchor and, and sail, and I think they were told in so many words they better if they, if--unless they wanted to stay on the island.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But (coughs) they had, there was a little problem there, and then we got
aboard ship and... and went back to Hawaii.Harris: To Hawaii?
Wright: Mm-mm.
Harris: Oh before we leave the island, you told me a story the first time
114:00about, between (Nine’s?) landing on the strip there.Wright: Oh yeah! Right. That would have been down here on this, on this...
number one, (Modiano?) number one field, and we had moved past that, and I don’t know why I had some troops and we were--the first, the first plane that came in circled the field--circled the island two or three times. He didn’t know if we had, if, if he could land, he didn’t know if we had taken the island. Somebody finally got to him and said bring it in, and he b... he came on in and landed and he was up in this part of the area, and he, and he was shot up so bad, I think he pulled it off. Maybe that wasn’t the one that was pulled off, but anyway... at one time we went over there and there was a big whole bomber over there that we had never seen, been close to one like that, so we asked this captain, he was standing there with it, he said, asked him could we go aboard and look around, we 115:00wouldn’t touch anything or blow anything up. He said, “boys,” he said, “if you can have the damn thing, if you can carry it off you can have it.” Harris: Yeah.Wright: So, he--there was, they were very happy that we had been, that, that put
a landing place for them and then there four P-51s but they came from the north, probably been escorting bombers, and the first time I’d ever seen it, they were oh about fifteen hundred off the island, I think, and they, they first one pealed around, and then when he, at a certain time, the second one and then they came in and landed on this field, and that, you know, that’s what we went there for...Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... was to provide these guys with a--to keep them from ditching in the
ocean and, and the, the escorts planes with a place to get us up and so forth, so, so... I was happy to see that.Harris: And that happened... before the fighting stopped, actually.
Wright: Oh yeah, yeah, it sure did.
Harris: I re...
116:00Wright: I don’t remember the day.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: That’s certainly documented somewhere.
Harris: Yeah, I read somewhere that before the end of the war, twenty-four
thousand air crewmen made runs, landings there that...Wright: That’s...
Harris: ... would have had to ditch.
Wright: That’s the number I heard, and you know who I heard it from? From a
fellow named Montgomery, James Montgomery, and I was in Chicago. Now this may be off our, the, this by, byplay, but I was--I had to take it from Chicago back to... Cincinnati, and I sa... we, this fellow was on the standby he was just right across the chain and we were talking and going aboard and, and I said, I said, “well I got to go,” I said, “I hope you make it.” So he was on standby. So I got on and sat down, and everybody got aboard, and he came on, and we sat, there was a seat, I said, “sit down sir.” He said, “is this taken?” I said, “no, sit down.” So we got to talking first one thing and another, and... the 117:00war came up and yeah, I was in the service, in the Marine Corps, and... I have another saying whenever I see a, an air corps or an army guy, I say, “well I was the same as a air corps colonel.” [Chuckles – Interviewer]. And he said, “oh yeah? You were, huh!” I said, “yeah, my.” He said, “well where were you?” I said, “I was a marine sergeant” [Chuckles – Interviewer]. He thought that was great, he said, “my God if we would have had more, few more marine sergeants then we’d, we’d won the war quicker.” It turns out he was a general, the commanding general. I asked him then if he was in the air corps, so I figured him for a colonel, actually. And he said, no, he was a major general. I think he later made lieutenant general. The name was James B. Montgomery, and he was in head of, the head of the... bomber groups out of Saipan, and he quoted me figures on how many troops and that twenty-four thousand came across, and how many planes, and this and that and the other, and he was very sincere in thanking me and I--that’s the first time anybody had ever mentioned the reason we went ashore, 118:00to save twenty-four thousand airmen from, from dying, you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And so, we were landing at Cincinnati and he said, he said, “you got,
you, is your car over here?” I said, “no, I am going to take a cac... taxi over to the hotel, my wife is going to meet me,” I said, “do you want to share a cab?” He said, “no... somebody is--Jerry is coming,” or something, I thought it was his wife. He said, “do you want--come right over with us.” I said, “well all right, I’ll right over with you.” Well, whoever he said wasn’t his [Chuckling] wife, it was his chauffer.Harris: Oh.
Wright: He, he had a big... I think it was a big Lincoln, or a Cadillac
limousine, and this guy was his chauffeur and put our bags in this and other. It turns out the guy was head of... of the GE jet area there in Avondale, Ohio, the jet propulsion lab, you know?Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And... so but, but that’s a... and he was very, very happy about the
fact that we had gone ashore at Iwo and cleared 119:00his way.Harris: Well he should have been.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: It’s... one of the major moments in American history.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: How--do you think about Iwo Jima often?
Wright: Yeah, I do! I see medals, that fellow I turned green?
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I see two things, I see him laying there green, and I see old Jack
Lummus… Harris: Yeah.Wright: ... standing up on his legs--not legs, standing up on his stumps. Yeah,
I think about that quite often, yeah.Harris: Did--see, how many out of your squad of thirteen made it back?
Wright: Well, hell, I thought I had a picture of that too, but I see I don’t. Of
my squad? Well, let’s see, we had four, myself and three. Out of our battalion we had fifty-four 120:00out of a battalion, and I had a picture--no, it’s not in here. The ship, they called for the battalions, and this includes... replacements. I think we took a hundred and... I forget what percentage casualties, you know, of course you had then the replacements is how you get a, how you get above one hundred percent, but we were, we were hit pretty hard and we had co... pr...--well I got, I got hit myself three times, I--two purple hearts, one to, you know, (I wasn’t bleeding enough?) so I didn’t go back, but I don’t know of too many people who went through that campaign that weren’t hit.Harris: You s... you were wounded three times?
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: At Iwo Jima.
Wright: Yeah, at Iwo, I got two purple hearts and... but everybody did [Laughing].
Harris: Yeah, almost every marine
121:00was wounded.Wright: Everybody got a couple two or three purple hearts, you know.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: It’s laughable now, it wasn’t at the time.
Harris: Yeah. Do you ever have nightmares?
Wright: Yes.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Don’t tell my wife [Chuckling] Harris: About, about Iwo Jima.
Wright: Oh yeah, yeah, I do, I do. And that, it involves... basically those two,
two guys and, and... but it changes, it works around. I see old... Jones getting shot right through the eye, and various things like that. But I still do, hell it’s forty, forty-five years. My ears are still ringing too from those damn battleships.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Right now, my ears are going mmmmm [Chuckling] Harris: Yeah.
Wright: Yeah, they sure are.
Harris: Those things stay with you.
Wright: Yeah, I got shrapnel, enough shrapnel in my leg,
122:00we went to the senate, we were in Washington and had to go through those metal detectors and I kept ringing the bells, you know [Chuckles – Interviewer] and, and, and I said, “well, you got everything I own,” and Julie said, “what about that, and what about that shrapnel?” And... and I said, “no, I don’t think so.” So I walked over and stuck my leg through the thing and it went zzzzz [Laughing], and that guy said, “good you had to get, go, get in there,” you know. So he... he felt that was pretty funny. So I do have a little, I do have a little extra weight based on that.Harris: Yeah. Well, oh yeah, after... after Iwo Jima and Hawaii, you went to...
Japan for a while.Wright: Well, we were, we went back to Hawaii after Iwo Jima...
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: ... to do form up for the invasion of Japan.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: And then God bless Harry S. Truman,
123:00dropped the bomb, and... so we were ready, we were battle ready, so we were the first troops boarded for the in... for the occupation. So we went into Sasebo, on Kyushu, when was the war over? September?Harris: The Fifth got to Sasebo in September.
Wright: Yeah, that’s what I thought. We went in there in September, and I stayed
there I think a year and Sasebo, and then went up to Ogimachi and, I was, I had some troops and we would go out looking for... [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.3b] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.3c] Wright: … we’d go out looking for... supply dumps of ammunition and gun emplacements. The fact is, we, we found ringing Sasebo Harbor, these big, big, I mean looked like thirty-inch mortars, damnest looking things you ever saw, it looked like the Civil War, 124:00and they, they all ranged right down in the harbor. If we had to try to go in there--I don’t think we would have but... man it would have been tough. But we found--we saw enough and found enough to indicate Russ that... invading Japan would have made Iwo Jima look like a piece of cake. We’d, we, a lot of us would still be laying over there.Harris: With... firing positions already mapped out.
Wright: Already mapped out and supplies--talk about tunnels, I’ve seen, I’ve
seen whole towns under, under... in a mountain. Power supplies, d... hospital supplies, cobblers, anything you want, it, it was all underneath, and they had double held doors you know, and big b... bunkers outside, and it’s just sitting there waiting for... you know, to for, to get back in and wait it out, you know. And... 125:00but we found loads and loads of arms and ammunitions and, and I had a fellow, a southern fellow at one time to, to blow up some, some--det... detonate some, some hand grenades or ammunition, or whatever, and, and while you’re over there, dismantle that tank. It was out by an airfield. So the damn fool [Chuckling] put all the, wired it all up and put it in, in the tank and blew it all up at once, there was [Laughter – Watts and Interviewer] shrapnel flying around for two miles. That colonel came out and said “what the, the hell was that?” [Laughter – Watts and Interviewer] you know, that was... so... so they had enough ammunition left, they, they weren’t, they, they weren’t ammunition... rich, but they sure had some left, put away, they didn’t ship it all out to the troops. But... and I'd went to… Hiroshima and, and to see where the bombs had fallen, 126:00I did go over there to look at that. That was pretty... pretty graphic.Harris: What did that look like?
Wright: Like that [Laughing] just like that, right there, like Iwo after we got
through with it.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: It was leveled. I remember one looked like almost had cut through, like
you take a knife through a pile of sugar and c... or not sugar but maybe dough, and cut down and scoop half of it away and the other had caves and, and for utilities and wires and stuff still stuck in it. It was really strange, the way that bomb worked, and, once in a while you see a whole building standing in right out in the middle of nothing and, and everything else was gone. It was a strange situation.Harris: Were you warned about radioactivity?
Wright: No, no. We weren’t there that long though.
Harris: Oh.
Wright: My hair's always been perfect [Laughing] Harris: [Chuckles –
Interviewer] No, I mean, we... it was, 127:00by the time you got there was what, the bomb dropped in August and you probably went to Hiroshima in...Wright: Just not long after, yeah, yeah.
Harris: ... two months.
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: Three months?
Wright: Yeah.
Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But we, no we weren’t warned. Nobody would want to stay around there
unless you had to, you see.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: I guess that’s what saved a lot of us. But it was, it was devastated,
just cleared everything out. People still, people at that point in time were wondering around still dazed, you know, and looking for things and people, I guess, I don’t know.Harris: What were the Japanese civilians like?
Wright: Well (Clears throat)--excuse me--we didn’t know going in, we, we went in
combat ready and down each side of the streets just check the book, you know, and expecting anything, we didn’t, we didn’t get anything. There were no, there were no women, no children, there were only men and they weren’t visible, and 128:00several days, or maybe a week later, they all, the women and children started coming down out of the mountains and with carts, and all they stuff loaded on carts and things went back to normal, and... I know I came upon a place and I had a, a Jap talking with me and I said, “what’s that?” He says, “it’s a bank,” I say, “well let’s go in there and make a withdrawal.” So we went in there, we didn’t, didn’t withdraw anything but I wanted to know if they had anything in there but just to look around and it was, looked just like our banks, about the same. But they, they were leery of course, they, I guess they were trying to figure what they would do if they’d taken San Francisco or Los Angeles, you know, and they’d be in there tearing things up. But, and I’m sure we had cases of where the, and our troops did things they shouldn’t have done. But then, sometimes you, 129:00you get your revenge in a, in different ways.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: But I was, I was there I guess in October until April maybe or
something--August--September to April something like that. And then I was transferred into the Fourth, then they disbanded the... the Fifth Division, we were transford--transferred into the Second Division. I was discharged out of the Second Division to come home, and that was in... March of... forty-five.Harris: Yeah.
Wright: No, forty-six, March forty-six. March forty-five I was somewhere else
[Chuckles – Wright and Interviewer] Harris: After you got home, what kind of a reception did you get?Wright: Well, let’s see. I was discharged from... the naval training station
130:00in Chicago, spent the night with a friend that lived in Chicago, and took a train home, and I think my granddaddy met me at the station, and I went home, and the people that hadn’t died were still there and, they were happy to see me back, but there weren’t any, you know, there weren’t, there weren’t any celebration [Chuckling] or anything like that, that’d already been done, I guess.Harris: I just wondered about where there parades or...
Wright: No-no.
Harris: ... stuff like that.
Wright: No-no. Nothing, no.
Harris: Did... did the period, say the next two or three years, was that
difficult to adjust to civilian life again?Wright: Well, no, not really. I got, I, I went to...
131:00I’d played football, of course in high school and then a little junior college in Mississippi and Bear Bryant had just come to Lexington over here, Coach Bryant, and (Hermal Alan?) who was from... one of his stalwarts over there in those years, came down to see me and said, Coach Bryant wishes you’d come up to Lexington to talk to him. So I went up there and, and, and, and got a scholarship and went to school up there for a while. Then I got a chance to go to the University of San Francisco, and I took that. But I should have stayed in Lexington, but... I don’t think I had time to... I didn’t sit around and dwell on it, let’s put it that way. No, I, I didn’t have any problem.Harris: Just...
Wright: I, I have, I still have the problems then--I mean now--than I had then,
which for these reoccurring dreams, 132:00but I guess everybody has those.Harris: Yeah, Dad sure did.
Wright: Yeah, I think that’s just part of the price, you know.
Harris: (Clears throat) Yeah, I just wondered, some of the... some of the other
veterans I have talked to have had enormous problems... getting back to civilian life, but it, part of it is individual difference, and part of it depends on what happened to you. I have, I guess it’s...Wright: Well, I...
Harris: ... come to more points.
Wright: I don’t know, maybe a--yeah, we’re coming right now.
Third Party: It’s time, buddy.
Wright: Okay.
Third Party: You’re going to miss that ham and gravy.
Wright: Oh hell no, no-no, don’t do that, I’ll be...
Third Party: The won’t do it when they got a crowd in there and the crowd starts
getting there...Wright: Good by Russ [Laughing] Harris: Okay. Well, I just want to thank you for
your time.Wright: Well, listen I thank you for your time and what you’re trying to do here.
133:00It’s... it’s great and I just hope you have a lot of success with it, and as last time, you can have that tape back and see if you can understand it. I can’t understand it.Harris: I’ve, I can barely understand part of mine. I’ll try to make another
copy of...Wright: I would appreciate it.
Harris: ... of this one, since the...
Wright: Listen, would you like to have those pictures? [Pause] Harris: The
following is the text of the citation for the medal of honor awarded posthumously to Jack Lummus.‘For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and
beyond the call of duty, as leader of a rifle platoon attached to the Second Battalion Twenty-seventh Marines, Fifth Marine Division, in action against enemy Japanese forces on Iwo Jima in the volcano islands, eight March, 1945. 134:00Resuming his attack with bold decision after fighting without respite for two days and night, First Lieutenant Lummus slowly advanced his platoon against an enemy deeply entrenched in a network of mutually supporting positions. Suddenly halted by terrific concentration of hostile fire, he un-hesitantly moved forward of his front lines in an effort to neutralize the Japanese position. Although knocked to the ground, when an enemy grenade exploded close by, he immediately recovered himself and moving forward despite the intensive fire barrage, quickly located attacked and destroyed the occupied emplacement, 135:00instantly taken under fire by the garrison of the supporting pillbox, and further assailed by the slash and fury of hostile rifle fire, he fell under the impact of a second enemy grenade but courageously disregarding painful shoulder wounds staunchly continued his heroic one-man assault and charged the second pillbox annihilating all the occupants, subsequently returning to his platoon position, he fearlessly traversed his lines under fire, encouraging his men to advance and directing the fire of supporting tanks against other stubbornly holding Japanese emplacements. Held up again by a devastating barrage, 136:00he again moved into the open, rushed a third heavily fortified installation and killed the defending troops. Determined to crush all resistance he led his men indomitably, personally attacking foxholes and spider traps with his carbine, and systematically reducing the fanatic opposition until stepping on a landmine he sustained fatal wounds. By his outstanding valor, skilled tactics, and tenacious perseverance in the face of overwhelming odds, First Lieutenant Lummus had inspired his stouthearted marines to continue his relentless drive northward, thereby contributing materially 137:00to the success of his regimental mission. His dauntless leadership and unwavering devotion to duty throughout sustained and enhanced the highest traditions of the US naval service. He gallantly gave his life in the service of his country. [END OF TAPE 2002OH12.3c] [START OF TAPE 2002OH12.3d] Wright: You made, Russ sound calm and orderly and nothing from day one was less than bloody guts and parts of bodies, such as twin brothers in our company, one trying to hold his guts in, the other going into chica... into shock because there was nothing he could do, it was just terrible, terrible scenes wherever you looked. I told you I, I have nightmares 138:00about old Jack Lummus and, and (Middlestat?) of course, but I didn’t mention the, the... scores of other dreams which wakes me up sweating, such as the six or eight times that I know of, when I could have been, well maybe should have been killed. On Tape two, Side one, I talked to you about the... the possibility of us receiving short fire, and in fact I was caught in it, and the near misses I had in the, in the loose sand... under any other conditions would have, would have been certain death. As it was, I had a concussion and... pretty much bleeding from every port in my body. 139:00Another time I was (clears throat) squatting down talking to an old fellow named Smith, and he was about... three feet away from me, directly in front of me and a shot came over my left shoulder and struck him right between the eyes. I think I’ve mentioned that to you but... half a foot the other way would of got me right in the back of the head. One time I was moving up with a friend of mine, (Rondero?)... side-by-side, up through this little draw and he took a round between his helmet liner and helmet, right over his... right in to, at his forehead line and it, the liner deflected the round up and around the inside of his helmet and curved it around and came out on the other side 140:00and took the top of his... top of his ear off, and he had been looking right at this, these rocks dead ahead of us about fifty feet or so, and he said, “my God, Riley,” he says, “I saw where that came from,” so it, it, right in those rocks. We went up there and there was a hole and we stuffed a grenade down in that hole and, and... of course we couldn’t get into it, but hopefully we killed the guys. They had drilled in underneath and hollowed out the rock and got up in there and put a little... sniper cork through there where they would fire out. One time, walking through a, along in a little trench, a mortar round hit right in front of me. Well there was a turn there it was about three feet in front of me, and just blew away the guy in front of me, and because of the sharp 141:00turn in the trench, I missed... missed it by about three feet there, once I was up on the tank turret glued to it to keep, keep a low profile, trying to direct some fire on a--from a tank onto a... a, a position, and a round hit right in front of beyond the tank and shattered paint and little pieces of metal into my face and didn’t hurt that much, I bled a little, but of course I rolled off and got to... got out of there pretty quick. Then I had a couple of artillery... shellings that were pretty, pretty disasterly, one of--which I told you about earlier, and the... the other one which simple keep your head down but in those instances... any, any wrong move will... a lucky move by them will get you killed. 142:00These things are in your subconscious except at times like this, when you get to thinking about them, and, and, and of course at night when you dream about them and they, they... flash through your, your mind and, and of course, a lot of these people you see and hear about say, well you didn’t see any Japs on, on the… on Iwo Jima, for instance around Guadalcanal, or some of these other islands. Well, if you were in the front of the groups moving out... you, you, you saw them because you flushed them... people say that you never knew, you never could count the number of Japs you, you shot. Well, you can actually count the number you shot... if you, if you, as I say, were moving through them at the time they were trying to hold a position, 143:00and I can very readily tell you, on the beach, I got two running out of a... out of a... emplacement, a concrete emplacement... I got one in a spider trap, I got... four machinegun troops in two different emplacements, I got one at the well on the west coast, we were, we were shooting at that night, and then I, I cut, almost cut one’s head off with my K-bar, so... right away there is... six or eight... that I can, I can remember them vividly and I still remember vividly. [Pause] And of course there, and there are times that... that you don’t know if you killed them, or if they were killed by the guy right beside you shooting the same target, the caves up at the north end when we were flushing 144:00all those guys out and... hell, I imagine they might have taken ten hits before they died... so you really, but, but the ones you actually got to have a bead on and look him right in the eye and, and shoot, or get him going away, you don’t, you don’t forget those, those shots. [Pause] Russ, it’s obvious this is going to be rambling as things come to my mind, I’ll just try to tell you. For instance, I, I just remembered a... you showed me a picture of five or six Japs laying around where they had been, been killed and I suggested that it had been caused by a... a shell, a, a, artillery shell or, or heavy mortar shell, reminded me just now of, of, we had some troops laying up against 145:00the side of a big... mortar emplacement which had been hacked out of the soft rock, and it made a hell of a good, a good hiding place, but the mistake was that they were too many troops in there. I, fortunately I guess, was laying out to one side looking off toward the front around the side of the rock, and I looked back toward these troops, and as I did, I saw, actually saw, a... what they called a knee mortar--it’s a small, oh, about a sixty-millimeter, I guess, fifty maybe, coming in, in to over in, it sounds silly that you can see it but there again I saw it, so it’s not a, it’s not, there is no doubt in my mind. I yelled... to the troops 146:00and, and sort of dou... dove back the way I was coming and it hit, if it had hit and bounced, it would have probably caused more damage, but it hit right on the floor of this thing and exploded on the floor. I got a few inches off of that in my legs and, and whatever, but I think that shell, as I recall... injured about five or six troops, created a lot of dust and we got them all out of there and moved back about fifty feet to regroup, and we found there was one, one guy, by the name of Smith (Burger?) that wasn’t with us so four of us got together, got a, I don’t know how we got it, but there was a liter there, and went up there and rolled him on that thing and, and brought him back out, 147:00but... there was just another chance, you see, that thing could have... could have killed a bunch of people but it, it didn’t, really, but it just, it wounded a bunch. So that’s, that’s the type thing... that happens that you don’t think about until you... until you get to, get to talking about them. There are a couple of corrections to get off on another subject for a minute, a couple of corrections I wanted to make. You asked about specific on terrain and I said, well it was mostly sand and rock. Well, by the time we got there that, that was the case, but prior to that, as I understand, and, and after looking and reading a little bit there, there even... evidently was a, an oak forest over on the northeastern shore up, up in the foothills there. Of course when we got there, it’d all been cut down 148:00and, and used as a... to the battlements, you see, construction and so forth. Also, I think I told you that the, in my opinion the sand was black and loose all over the island. Well, on reflection there, and, and on the, on the west side where we went, it turned into sort of a whitish sand, it was packed a little better, but it did change color. I’ve also since found that the, the reason the sand was hot in the north and, and middle of the island was because there is a, a, an, an old volcano up there that keeps the sand literally hot enough to... to cook... you know, warm your, your tins of, of food, which some of us did. I don’t, I don’t remember ever staying around long enough to do it more than 149:00once or twice, but, but I do remember being able to do that. So, I’m going to turn this off now and gather my thoughts a little bit more. [Pause] Another item you brought up, Russ, was the, the matter of communications. I supposed I have been watching too much television, I see what the t... the type of communications the troops have in our days. We of course didn’t have anything like that, we had walkie-talkies, the platoon leader and maybe the, the guide or platoon sergeant would have one, the company commander would be tied in with the battalion commander and so forth up and down the line, on the, the second or third day, I think, I think we found and cut the main... communication link from Suribachi 150:00to the... to the headquarters to the north, it was a inch-and-a-half, or two-and-a-half-inch cable, so that, that took their communication like that away. As I understand, they were in, in communication with, with Tokyo by radio, and we did in fact intercept some of that traffic. Tokyo was about seven hundred miles north of cu--of course. Also, I’d said in there that, the fifty-four was, came back from the second battalion, well that of course was not so, it’s from the, from Company F of the Second Battalion. There were probably two hundred or two-hundred-and-twenty troops in the... in the fully, fully... manned 151:00company, and out of that... there were fifty-four of us came back, which of course included… a dozen or two replacements. So you can see... they... the casualties were pretty heavy. I also don’t think I was in Sasebo for a year, it was more likely eight months--not that that makes a lot of difference, but... you just don’t remember those things at all times. [Pause] Now, Russ, you may take this next item I am about to tell you was, with a grain of salt, but, and you find it hard to believe, possibly but again, I assure you it’s a fact. Some troops 152:00came upon... a Jap that had been burned by... flamethrower, and all his clothes were off, and he, you know, it sealed up his body pretty good and laying there in the heat for a day, it, it had swollen up and his, his penis was sticking up in the air like a s... a little stick, you know, and, and... as I told you also previously they, they, the Marine Corps was made up partly of some pretty, pretty... wild folks. Well of course there was immediately a bet set up as to who could, could... hit the target and, and of course they did. Now, another thing that I remember vividly was... [Chuckling] we were sitting on the beach. It may have been before 153:00we went north or it may have been when we were just waiting to board the, the LCIs to get off, and we noticed this guy down the beach about fifty yards or so. He was--had something on a piece of (foamar?) throwing it out into the surf, and he’d let it stay out there, a rock around and he’d drag it in and look at it and throw it back and somebody wondered out loud, I wonder what so-and-so is doing, and, and the... the reply was, who the hell cares, he can swim off if he wants to. Well, it turns out, we found out the hard way that the guy had taken a, his knife and had... separated a Jap from his, from his skull and it, it turns out he had promised his girlfriend back in the states that he would bring her a Japanese skull, but he didn’t want to take it home with all the hair and meat and everything on it, so he had put it in a, in a can, a five-gallon can of something 154:00and had built a fire and was trying to boil the, the thing to get the meat off of it. And it didn’t work totally, so then he got some telephone wire and strung it in through an ear and out an eye, and, and was putting it out in the surf to... to clean it up. Well, that didn’t work either, so he said well, he wasn’t going to leave it, so he found a piece of canvas or tarpaulin somewhere and wrapped it up and carried it aboard. Well, you can imagine it wasn’t too long before everybody knew that there was something amiss, and we found out what it was, so we said, look bud, you got to throw that damn head overboard, that’s just too, too rank, it stinks like hell. He said he wasn’t going to do it and so I was pretty good size fellow, as I told you, and I, there were some in there bigger than me and bigger than I was, so we said, well, it’s simple, either you throw that over, or we’re going to throw it over and we’re going to threw--throw 155:00you and it over. And he didn’t believe that, so a couple of us just grabbed him up and walked him toward the rail and had him halfway over and I guess he realized we, we weren’t joking, so he let it drop. But, that’s, that wasn’t... the, the way the majority of troops acted, but there were some crazy, crazy people in, in the Marine Corps and I’m sure other services at that, at that point in time. I think I cleared it up, what I said about villages. I, I still don’t remember seeing any except that I, I remember they, where they were, and there was maybe one little shed, shed down there that may have been the part of a village, but I don’t remember any, any villages down there. 156:00Russ, as far as that steak and egg thing on--the breakfast before we boarded the amtracks, that was principally done to, to... to build the morale. Everybody is aware, I suppose that the fact that it’s easier to get shot in an empty gut than a full one, but, but that’s what the troops wanted so that’s what the, that’s what they got. Also, I mentioned on those tapes about coming in, in the invasion back in the, the... fourth, fifth, or tenth wave, they were coming in on Higgins boats, I don’t believe they were Higgins boats, they were those square-type boats, probably an LCVP which was a landing craft 157:00vehicle personnel. I also remember saying to you that (clears throat)--excuse me--that, that (clears throat) normally you would attack in company strength, well that’s not really so on, on... thinking about it. We would move forward and lots of times, as a platoon and, and, and then even a squad wouldn’t move out in, on one target or another. Company attack would be if we were attacking on a wider front or moving in to help another company, or to feel in on a, with a battalion on our right or left and, and so forth. Now, we discussed the fact that the first wave didn’t receive 158:00a lot of fire on the beach. Well, that’s true. We didn’t, there was fire on the beach, there was fire from Suribachi, machinegun rifle fire, and there was mortar fire, but the first line was probably about a hundred yards inland, so all that allowed it to do was (clears throat) allowed you to do was to get your troops off the beach, in fact, I think it helped us rather than hurt us because they thought they were going to suck us into a trap and it didn’t work that way, and it allowed us to get some troops of the... off the beach. I will wait a minute. [Pause] Well Russ, I’m sure there 159:00is other things, there are other things that I could tell you that would, would be of interest to you, but at this point in time, I can’t really think of anything, I, there... (sighs) I thought of something about when we went into Japan that was of interest, that one point in time I was... put in charge of a trainload of Korean, for lack of a better name, I’ll call them Korean slaves, to take them to a port on, from Sasebo to an island, to a fort over on the other side of the island to ship them back, back home to Korea. And it was interesting to me because they, there were win--women, 160:00men--when--men, women and children and some very small children and some very old men and women, and the, there was a two or three-day trip, as I recall, because it was slow moving and the, the numbers were changed everyday because we’d have some who would die, who would have to be taken off and some who would be born and, but, so the Japs at that point in time were, were... using slave labor from the, from Korea, and I’m going to sign off now and... I hope this will be of help to you and, again, I appreciate all your interest and, and work you’re putting in on this thing and that if there’s anything more I think about, I’ll certainly get to you. In the meanwhile... God bless you and good luck. [Pause] Okay, continue please. 161:00Russ, I thought of a couple other things. One about the civilians... namely... biologists, botanists, whatever, and children on the island at the time of the invasion. I really feel that it’s not possible because on further reading and thinking, the... civilians were taken off of there maybe back in the middle of nineteen... forty-four, the fall of 1944, and it was hard to get on and off of the island... for soldiers or military people much less civilians. I, I’m not questioning you, I just question... maybe the dates, hopefully you can find out something about that because I, I 162:00would be interested, to hear what you find out finally, but I will say this, I’d certainly heard nothing whatever about any civilians, and certainly not women and children being, being on the island when we... were there. Another thing, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned to you, there was a, well for a lack of a better name, I’ll call it a, a... a rocket, it, it, it was a, a very scary thing to me. I remember sort of late in the campaign, we were closing in on the north, I believe... and heard this rattle coming across the... the horizon from the north east 163:00and we looked up and it was a, a flying missile. I, it, it appeared to be sixteen, eighteen inches diameter, six to eight feet in length and... it sort of rumbled and sputtered and, and... made funny noises and... it looked about the size of a boxcar, really, although I am confident that my size estimate was closer than a boxcar, the, the size estimate I gave earlier of fifteen by sixteen to eighteen inches and six to eight feet, I judge it was flying at the time it crossed our position... probably eight hundred feet in the air, six to eight hundred feet in the air. Once it got beyond us, we figured well, it’s not, they’re not trying to hit 164:00us, they, they must be shooting at, at Suribachi. Well, it went, it was still climbing when it passed over Suribachi, and it went way out into the ocean. There was estimates of twenty miles, but I think that’s a little far, I would say probably certainly more than five miles, and went into the water and blew up, and I, I’ve questioned other people, and they have no recognition of, of that, although I know it happened, and I just wondered if you’ve heard any of your people say anything about any kind of rockets on, on Iwo Jima. The... I, I don’t know that they were fired accurately at all on Iwo Jima, I heard later that, that there was a woody, wo... a wooden 165:00troth a V-shaped troth formed out of wood which these monstrous weapons were fired at of. I, I never saw one of them blow up except way offshore in the water, but I thought it might be of interest to you. I’ll sign off again now and, and I imagine this will be the last, unless I come back again. [END OF TAPE 2002OH012.3d] [END OF INTERVIEW] 166:00