Iwo Jima: Theirs was not to Reason Why

Iwo Jima: Theirs was not to Reason Why

Including an Appendix with excerpts from Samurai by S. Sakai

by Professor Tom McMullen, Major, USAF (Ret.)

Based on an article published in the Statesboro Herald 20 February 2001

While preparing for Iwo Jima on Maui, Hawaii, Statesboro native HA 1/C John Darley Jr. wrote home that death "is something we must all face, so we should be ready to face it anytime." This was when John had learned about the deaths of an uncle and a friend whom he had worked with at Barnes Funeral Home.

Besides seeing death at the funeral home, John had encountered it crossing the Atlantic for the D-Day invasion. On board ship, he saw cargo boxes all stamped "expendable." John found out that the boxes contained body bags and headstones. The discovery made him realize that he and the others, too, were expendable.

On D-Day, John was a Navy corpsman aboard one of the many landing ships modified to carry 147 stretchers. After disgorging the invasion troops and equipment on the Normandy beaches, these ships evacuated the wounded, whom the medics treated.

Now John was ready to face death again, crossing the Pacific to Iwo Jima. Ship life was boring, but the food was good (steak and pineapple at one meal). John was attached to a collection section of Company A, 4th Medical Battalion, 4th Marine Division. This section was headed by Ferney E. Train, from Lindsborg, Kansas. Train was twice as old as John and was something of a father figure for him. Together they had attended every chapel service held aboard ship.

John's last letter was to his mother. There was no foreboding, no hint that his turn to meet death was coming. He asked his mother what she thought about changing the allotment on his government bond.

Iwo Jima

The man leading the defense of Iwo Jima was Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, a thirty-year veteran. Kuribayashi had been in both the U.S. and Canada in the late 1920s. He correctly assessed the U.S.'s industrial strength and its people. He wrote home that "The United States is the last country in the world we should fight." But now that Japan was fighting the U.S., this samurai determined that he would make the Americans pay in as much blood as possible. He ordered that counterattacks at Iwo would be limited because they cost too many Japanese lives. He interlaced the island with tunnels leading to protected firing positions. During the battle, fearsome spigot mortars were zeroed in on trenches and on shell craters. When these filled up with Marines, the Japanese opened fire, smashing men into the very ground they thought would protect them.

The first wave of Marines landed on Iwo at 9:00 a.m. on February 19, 1945. John went ashore in the second wave. He hit the beach shoulder-to-shoulder with Charlie Kight of San Angelo, Texas, at approximately 10:00 a.m. They started administering first aid to wounded Marines. Shortly afterwards, John was hit in the left arm by shrapnel. It was a "million dollar" injury, meaning he could have gone back to the hospital ship for more treatment. Train patched him up and suggested that John return to the beach to be evacuated. John answered that his injury wasn't that bad and he would stay and help with the wounded as long as he could. Kight said he had never seen a fellow "with greater courage and more faith" than John. Train later wrote the Darleys, saying "it's nerve and guts like that which made John the popular boy he was."

On Iwo there was no safe place, no "rear lines" where one could be safe. Kuribayashi had planned well. Enemy fire could reach any place, and it did. Everywhere the cry "Corpsman! Corpsman!" was heard. John and the others braved intense mortar and artillery barrages as they moved among the stricken men. One shell hit near John and deafened him.

At approximately 1:00 p.m. that same day, the team was working on the wounded in a shell crater. As Kight left the five of them there, he waved to John who was busy giving first aid. John waved back - that was the last Kight saw him alive. Shortly afterward, a large mortar shell landed near the crater. Having been rendered deaf earlier, John did not hear the shell coming that took his life. Because of the powerful concussion, John probably never felt the shrapnel hit that killed him. He took a few short breaths and died. He was twenty years old.

On that first day, the U.S. suffered 2,500 killed, wounded, or missing, and approximately another 100 cases of combat fatigue. Overall, the casualty rate at Iwo among the Fourth Marine Division Corpsmen was thirty-eight percent. John was initially buried on Iwo, and then later moved to Eastside Cemetery.

Bill Gerrald

Also killed at Iwo was PFC Bill Gerrald of the 12th Marines, 3rd Marine Division. He was more than a year younger than John. In June 1943 he graduated from Brooklet High School where he had driven a school bus the last two years. In September Bill entered the service and, after completing basic training in San Diego, was immediately sent overseas. From the time Bill left Brooklet, his family never saw him again. Bill was at Bougainville and Guam before arriving at Iwo. Originally, the Third Marine Division was to be held in reserve, but it ended up being committed to battle on the 20th of February.

Bill was killed in action on February 24, 1945, the fifth day of the assault on Iwo Jima. He and several other Marines were in a foxhole when a lone Japanese soldier crept up under cover of darkness and threw a hand grenade among them. The blast killed Bill and another Marine, and injured several others. Inexplicably, the Japanese soldier then killed himself. These details were relayed to Mrs. Gerrald via Bill's friend, Bargar Richards of Kentucky. Richards was also in the foxhole, and afterwards visited Bill's grave at Iwo.

Bill was nineteen years old at his death. When they had the opportunity, Bill's family moved his body to Emit Grove Cemetery. To add insult to injury, a burglar later broke into the Gerrald home and, among other things, took many of Bill's medals. It was a tough loss for a family that had never even seen Bill in uniform.

Iwo Jima is covered by volcanic ash and dotted with sulfur springs. According to legend, it was the "island of the demons." It was certainly that during the invasion. Approximately 21,000 Japanese were killed with a few captured. Marine casualties were 6,000 dead and 20,000 wounded. Their sacrifices for this forsaken piece of pumice bring to mind two lines from Tennyson's poem about the suicidal charge of the Light Brigade:

"Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die."

APPENDIX

On Iwo Jima, July 1944

Excerpts from Samurai by Saburo Sakai, pp. 245-273

Eight [American] cruisers and eight destroyers steamed leisurely toward the island. After a few probing salvos of shells which burst with tremendous concussion on the island, the warships moved in at point-blank range.

For two days we cowered like rats, trying to dig ourselves deeper into the acrid volcanic dust and ash of Iwo Jima. For forty-eight hours the warships cruised slowly back and forth, their sides livid with flashing fire, belching forth masses of screaming steel which shook the island from one end to the other.

Virtually every last structure on Iwo Jima was torn to splintered wreckage. Not a building stood. Not a tent escaped. Not even the most dismal shack remained standing. Everything was blown to bits. The four fighter planes which had returned from our last sortie were smashed by shells into flaming pieces of junk.

Several hundred Army troops and naval personnel were killed, and many more injured. We were virtually without supplies. We were short on ammunition.

Iwo lay dazed and helpless. The men's ears rang shrilly from the ceaseless detonations of the thousands of shells which had shrieked onto the small island. There remained on hand to defend the vital island of Iwo Jima less than a battalion of Army troops.

These men walked about in shock, stupefied by the terrible bombardment they had suffered. Their brains were addled; they spoke incoherently.

Iwo Jima lay naked.

It was obvious to us all that we could offer only token resistance, that within an hour or two after a landing the Americans would control Iwo. Who then, of all the men on the forsaken hump of volcanic ash, with its bubbling sulphur springs, could have foreseen the actual turn of events? Who among us would have dared to prophesy that the Americans would throw away their priceless opportunity to take the island with minimum casualties on their side?

(Many of Japan's military leaders stated later that the war would have ended sooner if the Americans had attacked Iwo Jima in July 1944, instead of waiting so long to do so. To these men the Philippines invasion was a vast and costly operation, highly successful for the Americans, but an insignificant campaign which did little to hasten the defeat which was already in sight.)