Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition once
again is Don Graves, a US Marine Corps veteran of World War II and
the pivotal Battle of iwo Jima. Starting in February nineteen forty five, In
the first episode featuring Don Graves's story, we learned how basic training quickly turned
boys into men ready to kill. A short time after that, Graves was
blindsided by orders to serve as a flamethrower operator, a job he says he
got because he was short. It was not a job that many sought after,
probably because the average length of service for a flamethrower operator was four minutes.
The job was extremely dangerous. After a depl eployment to the South Pacific
was cut short so that Graves and other Marines could be folded into the new
fifth Infantry Division, the men eventually sailed for Ewojima, a small, rocky
island featuring volcanic ash instead of beach sand. Although small Ewojima was strategically significant,
Japanese air defenses were wreaking havoc on American planes and personnel and controlling the
airstrip on Ewojima. Would be essential for an eventual invasion of mainland Japan.
Graves also told us about his harrowing, amphibious landing under heavy Japanese fire and
making a vow to God if he could just survive the invasion. After finally
getting off the beach, Graves and other elements of the Fifth Division started fighting
their way up the mountains and over to their initial target, Mount Suribachi.
That's where Don Graves was witnessed to the Ikon flag raising captured in the famous
Joseph Rosenthal photo. That's where we paused in Don's story in the previous episode.
But there was still more than five weeks of fighting remaining before the Allies
could claim control of Ewojima, and Don Graves was right in the middle of
it all. As we will discuss in much more detail later on, America
paid a heavy price in precious lives to secure Ewojima. Graves had seen the
carnage on the ashy beaches and it fought hard to get up the mountains,
but the casualties were not just mounting on land. It was also happening on
the water. Just before the famous flag raising, Graves witnessed the Japanese attacking
and sinking the USS Bismarck C, a Casablanca class carrier escort. Yes,
I did. I saw it get hit on the fantail. Now this is
when we secured the next one. We stayed there of one whole day because
we had to get the other two division moving ahead of us for us to
get on there. I could see, well, these kamikazes were flying over
there and dropping them, and I looked. I didn't know that was the
Bismarck. I found out later, but I saw it, and he took
a dive and hit him right on the fantail and blew that ship up.
Three hundred some men would round three hundred Eighteen Americans aboard the USS Bismarck C
were killed that day. Soon graves attention was back on the ground combat as
orders arrived to take a nearby hill. Much like the full Battle of Iwo
Jima, The Marines accomplished their objective, but at an immense cost in lives
and leadership. Finally we got word that we're going to head on down the
hill and head for three sixty two number three sixty two way mountain on the
left side of the island. Now too far away and so that day we
moved over there fight. But during the night it got a little dark.
The Japanese came out banzai charges. They threw everything at us. I was
to the left. You see, I can't be actually on that front line
without help because if they grabbed me, I'm done and they can use it
on us. So I stayed right to the left by a cliff like and
I heard I heard on the walkie talkers. Lieutenant Johnson just got it.
So so just got Our officers were all killed on Hill three sixty two way
and a lot of our sergeants we were shot to pieces. We lost our
battalion there, but we fought all the way for six weeks. The ferocity
of the Japanese knocked the Marines back on their heels, but as Fleet Admiral
Chester Nimitz remarked later about the men on Ewo Jima, uncommon valor was a
common virtue, and that was true. The next day at Hill three sixty
two, as Great Waves and his flamethrower were called upon to decimate a Japanese
position, a mission they could only complete after surviving friendly fire. The next
morning, a fellow he was our music, played taps in them. He
said, Grace, we got a job, and I says, good,
what is it. We're going to go up there again and we're going to
shut that thing in. We're going to blow it in from the top.
I said, let's do it. So we took a can of five gallon
can of gasoline, Prime record everything we needed. And I was a demolition
expert. Marines have to know about demolition. So we crawled up and as
we got half way up on our bellies everything we had a tank. Our
tank moved up to our left and opened up on us with a fifty caliber
and right over my body. Right here traces were embedded in the ground burning.
They thought we were Japanese, and then all of a sudden they stopped.
Someone must have told them they're friendly. We finally got to the top
and there we got bodies all over the top. I think the air force
got them, but I counted twenty five dead Japanese. We had to crawl
over them to get to the mouth of the cave. When we got over
the top, we lowered a rope around prim We set it all up for
explosion. We dropped it over and we swing it like that and when it
came in. We set it off and Kaboui fire blew in that hole and
blew out. All they did was go to the north. They just went
to the north. But we closed it in Hill three sixty two eight.
That is sacred. Don't you can't go there. The Marines now controlled Hill
three sixty two A. But the battle was far from over, and as
Graves just said, his officers and many of his sergeants were killed there,
but the mission continued despite the loss of leadership, and Graves says marines were
trained for this possibility and knew exactly how to carry on. We lost our
offices, of course, as Hill three and sixty two. Way from there
on, I would say about to four weeks more. We fought all through
there, just each one of us helping one another. We know what to
do, we were trained to do it. We just didn't have any officers
commanding, but we had guys who were platoon sergeant. Once in a while
we'd have one here, one there, and they were experienced guys. So
we made it. We got through, We did the job, and I'm
assuming that it was that way when all three divisions. Graves has many vivid
memories from the weeks of combat that followed, including the terrifying belief that the
Japanese were using poison gas against them, much to their relief, that was
simply confusion manufactured in the fog of war. You know, we heard our
dads that fought in the First World War who were attacked by gas. That's
a horrible thing. And they disbanded that and we had a couple of kids,
new recruits, and right up at the top. He was up at
the top and motars were coming. Now, when these mortars hit, they
explode and it's like a yellow pickwick acid. Oh, it's a horrible smell.
It's terrible, and it's yellowish and it went off and this kid's gas.
Well, the sad thing is we took our gas mass off because we
couldn't move on the beach with it. With my flames, tore I had
to get rid of it. It's on your leg here and when you drop
on the ground, your back quarters is hanging up in the air. So
we got rid of it. And if that was gas, there would be
a scramble, it would have been a catastrophe. But it was only a
mortar, a yellowish pickwic acid. The Marines had their hands plenty full with
what the Japanese were really doing, putting constant pressure on the Marines by mercilessly
bombarding their positions with mortar rounds. But as Graves points out, after studying
the patterns of mortar fire, he knew what to expect when the shells came
in. Knee motors from the Japanese were lobbed. They bunced them. They
didn't go like that, they just lobbed. They'd come out tumbling, and
they could they could throw five or six at a time at you. You
can outrun them. I had. We had a few paratrooper fellas in my
company, and I used to watch him. We were buddies, and I
said, I noticed that you would keep looking up on the air. He
keep looking for the mortars. You can see him, you can count them.
And then all of a sudden he looks up his era. You see
what I'm talking about, And he jumped way over the lift and I followed
him and being bing, bang, banged. That's what it was. So
you have to really look in the air to watch them coming. You can
hear them come. That's Don Graves, US Marine Corps veteran of World War
II and the Battle of Ewojima, where he served as a flame thrower.
In a moment, Graves will explain how he used the tendencies of the Japanese
mortar strikes to orchestrate an effective counter attack. We'll also hear about the power
of the flamethrower against the Japanese and a very rare, lighthearted moment with the
enemy. Graves will also reflect on the magnitude of the American losses at Ewojima
and the pain of losing one man in particular. Plus he'll offer his thoughts
on the legacy of the Greatest Generation. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans
Chronicles sixty Seconds of Service. This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T
Mobile. T Mobile offers exclusive discounts for a veteran and military families and are
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to learn more about how they support our military community from the Miidji, Minnesota.
After one hundred years, the BAMIDGI Chapter of Disabled American Veterans is still
serving the community, going out on cold mornings and collecting donations that help veterans
in need. And their families found that in nineteen twenty fours, the seventh
chapter in the state. The organization's presence is most visible through its drop off
boxes, bright green metal containers that can be found outside of grocery stores and
on street corners that collect donations of clothes, shoes, and household items.
Twice a week in the early hours of the morning. Members of the DAV
often veterans themselves, collect the items and bring them back to the chapter's headquarters
on the edge of town, where they are met by another team of volunteers.
For more Great Veterans stories, just go to National Defense Network dot com.
This has Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition
is Don Graves. He is a US Marine Corps veteran of World War Two
and the Battle of Iwo Jima. In the second half of his story,
we've touched upon Graves witnessing the Japanese sinking of the USS Bismarck C and he
told us about the brutal fighting at Hill three sixty two a a moment ago.
We also heard Graves mention that the Japanese made life very difficult for the
Americans with their incessant mortar barrages. But like he said, there was a
pattern that he and the other marines could eventually figure out. And between those
observations and some other calculations and ingenuity, Graves was able to determine where a
critical Japanese mortar launch site was located. And after a few coordinates were given
out over the radio, that mortar battery was soon gone. We figured it
was a five hundred a five hundred millimeter. It was a big projectile,
and they launched it from the center of the aland over towards the left on
where we were. Nobody knew where that was, and the word was out
beyond the loocal where there were fireing that thing from. Well, when I
went up on top of Hill three sixty two eight, I forgot this buddy
of mine we had, I had my carbine, no friends were, and
I looked way over and I saw two or three Japanese jump down in an
opening and they fired a rocket out and that was it. I said,
I said, Beavers, I just found out where that big rocket. It
says, where where? And I told him. We both got on the
horn and called for aircraft, and both the aircraft came right in and blew
the head out of that place that we had that rocket at the opening of
Camp penduland for a while it's not there now, As the Marines learned that
Hill three sixty two A, the Japanese were fierce, relentless fighters. In
addition to the mortars, the Japanese frequently employed bonzai attacks, where large numbers
of fighters came rushing at the American positions, often under the cover of darkness.
The number of men and their screaming advance was unnerving, but it was
also not very effective because it made them sitting ducks for US guns. Banzai
attacks you wait for them. You can hear them come. They'll blow horns,
they'll whistles, whistles, everything. About three hundred would come at you,
and we'd just open up our machines, can beget them. We'd just
fire. I didn't. I had a forty five, so the other guys
kept firing their weapons. I just sat back and waited, you know.
And the only thing I could do if they got up to my hose,
I could use my cabar, Yeah, my cay bar knife. That was
it. I did have a forty five. I couldn't hit the broad side
of a barn with that pistol. I tried it. I could never use
that forty five. It was an awkward gun. That's what happened when a
man's eye charged had come. It scares the daylights out of you. As
we also saw a hill three point sixty two a. The flamethrower was a
very effective tool against the Japanese. That's because the Japanese were content to hide
in their caves and dare the Marines to follow them in or hunker down.
While the mortars took their toll on the Americans, but the flame throwers turn
the tables. The bursts of fire provided immediate and urgent incentives for the Japanese
to exit the caves and then face the choice of surrender or death. The
purpose of a flame tour is fire moves people. And when they got in
the caves there, we couldn't get them out. We'd fire in there,
we'd throw hand grays, but they just moved back. They could go eight
miles back, they could go just as short ways across. It was eight
square miles. I Regima all undergrown. We couldn't understand where they were during
the day, around supper time. Anytime after that till two or three in
the morning, they would come at you with banzai charges. That's when they
did the damage. During the day they fired rockets and now I say rockets,
mortars. Morars would come sailing through the sky at us. The Battle
of Ewojima raged on for six weeks. Marines like Don Graves did not bathe
the entire time, and many nights they went without any sleep at all.
But in the midst of all that killing, one lighthearted moment involving the enemy
did emerge, all thanks to the delicious smell of chocolate. We're sitting in
a hole there towards the north end. We've only got about a week left
ago, we figured, and we're sitting there and I said, dang it,
I'd like some hot chocolate. What do you think. Yeah, we
didn't drink coffee. We're a bunch of cat teenagers. And so I said,
let's come on, give me your chocolate bar. We had ration bars,
you know about that big night. I said, all up, put
it in a canteen cup. We had canteen, we had water. Blood
would get on the horn. They throw a gas can full of water and
I put fire unreath with demolition. It was set good and were setting back
shooting the breeze. Then all of a sudden I could smell it. Oh
my goshmell that. Yeah. Is it ready us? Not yet? Wait
a minute. Then all of a sudden I was going to pour it out
in canteen cups. Hey, Marie, very good, chocoleto You'll bring chocoleto
here, I said, if you want chocolatetter, you come and Getty's.
Oh no, you'll bring here. Everybody on the line laughed, he said,
Graves, knock it off. That's Don Graves, a US Marine Corps
veteran of World War Two and the Battle of Ewojima, where he served as
a flamethrower operator. In a moment, Graves discusses the end of the battle,
the toll in American lives and blood, and the impact that had on
the Americans who made it off Ewojima Alive. You'll also hear his thoughts on
the end of the war, the legacy of the Greatest Generation, and much
more. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles. This is Veterans Chronicles.
I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is Don Graves. He
is a US Marine Corps veteran of World War Two and the Battle of Ewojima,
just a moment ago, Graves shared a very rare, lighthearted moment with
the enemy. It was the exception to the rule. Virtually every other moment
was spent trying to defeat the Japanese, and given the Japanese soldiers almost universal
refusal to surrender, the fight kept going. Many thousands of Americans would die
on Ewojima, but there's one death that still haunts Don Graves the most.
This was the saddest thing that happened to me. And I'll never forget it.
I tell everybody I talk to, I'll never forget it. I think
about it, I dream about it once in a while. What happened was
that three of us were in a cave run the North Inn, and it's
getting close to the end, and was sitting there just talking, and I
said, I got to get up there and take a look, see what's
going on. So I got up there and put my elbow on the ground
my glasses looking for snippers. I couldn't find a thing. It was a
very calm day, nothing was moving. I was there about fifteen minutes.
I dropped back down I got on the horn my radio, and I said
Grave to CP Hey, go ahead, Graves, I said, And I
told him. I said, I've been looking. I can't see a thing.
Well, you'd better keep looking because our proof sergeant took around his leg
from out there. I said, okay, I'll keep looking. By the
way. You got a kid coming for a replacement. I said, good,
we need him, so I hung the phone up. Ten minutes later,
but he stood at the hole. He said, Graves, I said,
yeah, come on down. He jumped in the hole. He said,
what do you want me to do? I said, sit over there.
It would be a lot to do tonight when they come. I got
up and I'm looking. I was going to go look. He said,
hey, Graves, let me have the glasses. I'll look. And I
said, no, he gets yourself shot. My one buddy says, give
him the glasses. That's what he's here for. I threw the glasses.
He got up right where I had been. I know that that Japanese snapper
was waiting for me again. About ten minutes after we was sitting there shooting
the breeze, just talking. Whew. He fell back. He got shot
in the forehead and went through his helmet. His helmet flew up and landed
down by my feet. We were stunned, not that he got there,
but I was just up there. He knew I was going to go back
up there. He knew that. And I looked at that, and I
looked down in that helmet, and there was a beautiful girl sitting in a
chair, and on her lap was a beautiful baby. When I saw that,
I lost it, sad, I just lost it. I got up
and threw everything off, and I cursed Evejima. I cursed the Marine Corps.
And the worst thing I did is I cursed God because he let that
kid take my place. I didn't understand. The Marines had come ashore on
Iwo Jima on February nineteenth, nineteen forty five. They were told it would
be quick. It wasn't. The pre invasion bombing was far less effective than
expected, and the vast majority of Japanese soldiers refused to surrender. It was
several weeks later when the US forces finally got to leave, and it wasn't
because the Japanese had lost the will to fight. Don Graves says it was
a matter of simple math. They ran out of Japanese. Do you know
that we killed twenty two thousand Japanese soldiers. Twenty two thousand we killed,
so there were only a handful of them left. They were down by the
water. We had them right to the beach. You could see it down
there. They were all down hit in the edge. Now they could go
out in the water and swim and our boats had pick them up, or
they come at us and we'll kill them. They surrendered, not massive,
but every now two or three would come up with hands up. You know.
They didn't know what we would do. They figured we kill him.
The Japanese didn't understand it because they thought they were on a holy war.
They were not. They found out it was a political war. Now they're
going to surrender because he seated surrender in Japan as a soldier. It was
a disgrace. And it was there on the walk down the mountains and to
the beach where Graves and the other survivors were overwhelmed at the losses suffered by
the US forces over the past several weeks. And I'll tell you on the
sixth week we got we're going to be released, it was sad, you
know, the three hundred people I hit the beach within my company. Six
weeks later we were lined up. The Japanese are by the water. They
can go swimming and get shot by our boats, or they can come at
us and we'll kill them. Rendered. Well, we got we're going to
be released by the third division. They were in reserve for about three four
days. The third division came in and let us off the off, the
off the line. Out of the three hundred and eighteen of us walked down
to the beach by the by our cemetery when also were we'd board ship and
we lined up and lieutenant, our lieutenant Colonel Liversage said, men, I
want you to line up. I want you to go through that cemetery and
say goodbye to your buddies and your officers. Come out. We'll board the
Higgins, go out to our transport, head back to Heilo, Hawaii.
We'll train for Japan. They hadn't surrendered yet. And that was the story
on that. But I want to tell you something, and this is sad.
And everyone there looks at this video, everyone that can hear my voice,
it means them. It was given to them, It was given to
you. There was a letter tacked on the left arch of the pole eight
and a half by eleven. I saw it was there, but when I
got there, I read it like the other fellows, and this is what
it said. Fellas, when you go home, tell the folks we did
our best that they may have many more tomorrows. Every tier walked through that
gate and came out. We saw our buddies. I had saw three buddies.
I went to school, but we quit school and joined the Marine Corps.
They were in there, My officers were in there. We came out,
got aboard ship and as we crawled up the net. That's how marines
let. They crawled down, and they crawled up. We got up and
then they'dy'd be up there, help us climb over the side. And this
one kids's graves. I said yeah. He said you made it. Then
I realized who it was. We've spent time together. Co Golan there.
Well, he said, what's wrong with your eyes? I said why?
He said they're on fire. Well, I said, I don't know.
We haven't had any sleep. We have no sleep. You wouldn't dare sleep.
It'd have a bayonet or something, you know, we couldn't. You'd
be putting your other two buddies in a hole with the two arms way.
I said, we didn't have any sleep. Well, he said, man,
you look terrible. I soa, we haven't had any We have a
washed our teeth. We haven't had any water. And boy, we took
a shower. Oh that was so wonderful. In the end, the Marines
and the Navy suffered more than twenty four thousand casualties on Iwo Jima, including
more than six thousand, one hundred killed. And these weren't just numbers.
These were friends that Graves and others had trained with for years, and once
they were back in Hawaii, the survivors paid tribute properly to their fallen brothers.
It was sad. It was sad when when we got back to Pearl
Harbor. I'm not Pearl Harbor, Halo Hawaii. The big item we had.
We had a division program and medals were handed out, you know,
and ribbons and everything, and then their names were called out, and it
was sad. I all of us had tears coming down our cheeks. Our
buddies were gone, you know. It was just a sad situation. And
I can't forget them. I could still name a lot of them. I
could I think everything I'm telling you I talk. I think about it all
the time, all the time. But the personnel loss at Ewojima wasn't the
only devastating loss for Graves and his fellow service members. As soon as they
left Ewojima, they found out about another death of their commander in chief.
The day we left iwo Jima secured the bad we got aboard our transport and
then the announcement. The announcement came over all hands. Now hear this.
The President of the United States has died with the cerebral hemorrhage. Harry Truman
will be the president. We didn't know who Harry Truman was, but there
he was, and he became the president. And he died a very good
job. As those Marines were covered from several weeks of grueling battle, the
war in the Pacific raged on. Plans were already underway in Washington and in
the Pacific Theater for a full scale invasion of Japan that would have devastated American
forces and Japan itself. That's when President Truman decided to use his incomparable new
weapon, the atomic bomb. In August, the US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The Japanese then issued an unconditional surrender just days later, and the formal
surrender took place on September tewod. President Truman's decision to use the bombs remains
controversial today, but Don Graves has no doubt it was the right decision.
Harry Truman was Presidents had passed away while we were on the own, and
Harry Truman sent a note to the Pentagon. He wanted to know the immortality
rate would be if we invaded Japan. He got it back seven million.
He said, we'll drop the bomb. He did the right thing, he
stopped the war. Once the war was over, it was a waiting game.
Over one hour, service members could go home. Graves told us all
about the points system that was used and the men who rightfully got priority in
going home first after the war, and when the war ended and they began
to process this, Oh, we had to wait for points because the prisoners
are in Japan and all over there were all released and they had the transports
all clogged up, So we gladly waited for them to get home first.
Then we which had enough points by the points system, we were discharged and
we went back to the States. Now, almost eight decades later, Graves
reflects on the legacy that he and the other World War Two veterans have given
our nation. For nearly fifty years, many veterans had no desire to share
their stories of service, and some abjectly refused, but the nineteen nineties saw
a surge and interest thanks to the push for a national World War II memorial
films like Saving Private Ryan and Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation. Graves explains
what made them great. I see something there and I don't know something there.
I said, it's Saturday at sixty five young minute of breakfast. They
asked me to speak now to minium veterans somewhere. They're young, and I
told them, I said, you have to understand about the Greatest Generation.
It's we're losing it. There's not too many of us left, not too
many at all. We loved our country, we loved our flag, we
loved our national anthem, we loved everything that was patriotic in America. And
we feel very bad today because we've lost most of that. We lost it
and the American people have let it go, and we need to get together
and get back to being an American country again, and we need to have
good people leading it. That's the only hope of America. And when I
stopped to think of what our boys did during the Second War Europe and Pacific,
it's the same. Because there's so many today that weren't there. They
forget, and yet there are still some who love their country. And I
go to a breakfast at a restaurant every morning, and I know everybody.
They've got pictures of me up on the wall. They'll come and see mister
Graves, thank you for your service, and I'll thank you so much.
I did it for you, and I did it for everybody in here who
wasn't there. I did it for them. They said thank you so much.
There are people who care. But it's the younger generation that I'm concerned
about. They're the future of America. I tell high schools that some of
you young men here, you might be a president of the United States.
We don't know. You've got to take an interest in your country, I
tell them at the high school. The bottom line, says Graves, is
that his generation paid a terrible price to preserve our liberties and read the world
of Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and Imperial Japan, but he says the alternatives
were unthinkable and obviously unacceptable. There's nothing I like better than right here in
this building, the VFW. We gather around the bar, around the tables,
and we talk about the experiences we shared during the war, and this
is what we did. And whether it's it doesn't matter of Vietnam or any
of the modern day fightings included for the Second World War, we all agree
we did it to protect our country, and we lost a lot of buddies
in doing it. Was it worth it? Yes, yes, that's a
strong answer. But that's what America is all about, because that's how it
started. Revolutions. Men took old muskets and fought the British and drove them
out of our country and were killed, many of them. And it's that
thinking that led Graves to share what he was most proud of from his service
in World War Two. I think the most proudest thing I feel about is
when these when President Roosevelt introduced us into the war, I thought, our
dads did this the First World War. Now we've got to do it.
If we don't do it, they'll come here and take over. We've got
to fight them. That's what we all thought, because see, we were
taught that in school. You know, we saw First World War movies.
We could only go by what we saw there. Those were kids just like
us, all seventeen eighteen years old, and now at age ninety nine,
Don Graves is still speaking out to as many young people as possible to explain
why he served, what was at stake, and what today's kids need to
know about service and sacrifice. The one thing I think is very important that
the younger generation hear my story and I want to make it accurate, and
I want to make to where they understand it. And that's what I do.
That's Don Graves. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of World War Two.
He's also a veteran of the critical Battle of Iwo Jima, where he
served as a flamethrower operator. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles.
Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to Veterans Chronicles,
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