Welcome to Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest in this edition is
Royal Earl Junior, a US Marine Corps veteran of the Pacific Theater in World
War Two. He served during the invasion of the Marshall Islands, Saipan,
Timmian, and Ewojima. Royal Earl Junior was born one hundred years ago and
was the oldest of three children, and as he points out, those children
were spaced out quite a bit. I was born in Montclair, New Jersey,
and I was raised in a neighboring town of Bloomfield, New Jersey,
which is between Newark and Patterson and North Jersey. I had two sisters.
My mother used to hate me because the oldest and I have a sister.
I was born in nineteen twenty four. She was born in nineteen thirty one.
And then I had another sister born in nineteen thirty nine, which I
think was a mistake, but that's the way it was. And I always
used to tell my mother, now, that's planned pearenthood, and she almost
takes my head off. Unlike most World War Two veterans, Earl does not
have vivid memories of where he was and how he heard the news of the
Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor on December seventh, nineteen forty one. What he
does remember is heading down to the military recruiting office with a buddy to join
the Marine Corps, but their plan to sign up together got derailed. Believe
it or not, I don't remember very much about it. I was shocked,
along with the rest of the Americans. I was surprised, and as
I began to think about it and think how old I was, and I
guess I was going to be in it. That next summer, when I
was talking with my friends and so on, we all decided we were going
to be in service, whether we liked it or not, because we'd probably
be drafted. And my best friend and I decided we would go and enlist.
I did not tell my folks, and we went down. We had
to go to Newark to enlist, and we went down there, and we
both decided we were going to do the Marines. So I walked down the
hall to the recruiting office, and he was behind me, I thought,
and went down and I went into the recruiting office office. I didn't shut
the door because I thought he was right behind it behind me, and I
noticed that a sergeant got up and closed the door, but they had my
attention in the front door. I talked to them and they enlisted me,
and then they told me I would get a postcard that told me what day
I was to report right here at the enlistment area. And when I turned
around, it congratulate my buddy. He wasn't I said to the sergeant that
was saying, didn't a friend come in with me? And he said no.
I said, wait a minute, and I went out and went down
the hall and he's sitting in the Navy recruiting station. And I opened the
door and went in and I said, hey, what are you doing here?
You said you were going to join the Marines, And one of the
sailors said yeah, but we saw him first, so he joined the Navy.
But why did he choose the US Marine Corps earl says it came down
to finding the service that was most ready to take the fight to Japan.
I know it sounds silly now at my age, I was only eighteen years
old. I was so mad at the Japanese that I wanted to get back
at them. And from all I read and heard and everything. The only
one that did in there the fighting were the Marines, and the Marines were
fighting in the Pacific, and they had landed on Guadcanal by that time,
and so I figured, my god, if you want to fight the Japs,
because they're the Germans hadn't gotten wet into the Germans jet but we were
involved with the Japanese. And I was pretty mad at the Japs for dropping
the bombs and so on was found in German. I was going to look
back at them. That's why I joined the Marine Corps. As mister Earl
mentioned, he was told that he would be notified about when to report for
duty. He would be sworn in on the Marine Corps birthday in a ceremony
that he would not soon forget. I was told to report the tention to
November back at the recruiting office. And when we got my dad took me
down and dropped me off, and there was a bunch of guys I think
there was around thirty of us. Finally got it and they took us over
to New York City and there was a picture of this in the New York
Daily News in the middle spread, and we all stood on the steps of
the US Treasury Building in New York City, and that's where we were sworn
in. And who do you think took part in the swearing in? Fiorella
La Guardia. Soon it was off to Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island,
South Carolina. Mister Earle says he was already physically fit before entering the
Corps, so most of the physical demands were not too challenging, except for
one obstacle on the course that was just too tall for him, so he
relied on the brotherhood of his fellow Marines to get the job done. During
the training, the only thing that I had trouble with was we had to
run all the time. That was no problem. And I went down the
hill and here was a ten foot board and you ran down this little slope
and you had to run down and run up there, grab the top,
pull yourself up over in the town. I'm only five or six. I
run down there and top it's up here. In my him would go pump,
and I'd have to go back up there, and I'd run down there,
boom, And I finally went around and the sergeant folded his arms.
Get back there, get back there, now, get over the top.
I couldn't get home. But the guys that were with me saw what's happening.
He said, come on, we'll give you a toe hold. And
they made a thing with my with their hands and I put my foot in
their and nation one, two three, and they put me up. I
don't think I touched the top of that board. I went sailing up over
and everything, and the sergeant is standing looking at me and on the board.
He said, how did you do that? I said, I made
it. I got up. After Paris Island Royal, Earl was off to
the West Coast for more training at Camp Pendleton. He was trained in communications
as a switchboard operator and wireman. But what he remembers most at Camp Pendleton
is a mystery involving personnel who vanished while on guard duty, and finding out
what happened to them was just as shocking as their disappearances in the first place.
We ended up in Pendleton and they put us an area of fourteen and
we were there for a while, and then they moved us out the area
seventeen and that's right on the edge of the canyon Aslido. They had a
guard every night walked around. It was at barracks, two floors. We
were on the first floor. Now along about this time. All of a
sudden, one night, while it was still dark anyhow, the corporal of
the guard came to check him out. It was no guard. Oh.
He went in and they told him back to that hit. The sack didn't
went to the head, Nope, looked all around. I'll see if he
were sitting down in any place. He wasn't. He wasn't there. He
said, well, he'll show up in the morning. He didn't. Then
they said, ah, he probably went over the hill area seventeen is fifteen
miles from the main gate. We didn't see him. He didn't show up.
So maybe two days three days later and they've got another guard's missing.
Wow. The corporal guard called the sergeant guard again. The sergeant guard called
the od, well, we're gonna have to do something about that. The
od says, I got an idea. We're gonna send one this way,
and we're gonna send one this way, and they're gonna pass each other twice,
and we're not gonna have any more. Two days later, they're both
missing. Boy, you should have seen that outfit. Some of the guys
didn't wanna go the guard duty. They didn't know what was happening. What
was happening. The raiders were in the canyon carl We found out it was
Carlson's raiders and they were practicing their craft. And what do they do.
They go on these islands and they capture the jabs, They crapture the guards
and so on, and they were practicing and they were picking off our guards.
About a day or two later, up comes the first guy. He
had a little stick with a white handkerchief. I don't know where he got
it, because all of ours were Kaki got it. We was gonna come
up. We ran over, Hey, what are you doing? Where were
you? He says, I'll be right back. I have to go see
the captain. So he went then see the captain. What he had was
a uh thing of if you want your men back, They said what we
want? It was all food and they had a whole big list of food.
And so this was fine. And the next day they laid their food
out there at night. So we got it going and we had the guard
going and everything. Then notice said we went to food, and if we
don't get the food, we got four new raiders. So that they got
the food and we got the raiders back. And you should hear the stories
they tell of their raiders training. That's the US Marine Corps veteran Royal Earl
Junior. He served at the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima.
When we come back, it's off to the Pacific and service in the
Marshall Islands and Saipan. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is Veterans Chronicles sixty Seconds
of Service. This sixty Seconds of Service is presented by T Mobile. T
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This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbas. Our guest in this edition
is Royal Earl Junior, a Marine Corps veteran of World War Two and operations
in the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian and Iwo Jima. After nearly a
year of training at Paris Island and Camp Pendleton, Earl and his Marine Corps
unit were sent to the Pacific. He says they were a rarity in that
they were shipped straight from the US to service. In his case, the
Marshall Islands it was about as gentle of an introduction to warfare as he could
possibly want. And the Marshalls the two big islands were roy and the Moor
Roy was with the airstrips, and the moor was where they stored all the
stuff in the living quarters, et cetera. And then there were a bunch
of islands that were smaller than those islands, but they still had jabs on
them. So they broke up. The twenty fifth in the first battalion addition,
the second battalion addition and a third battalion AD one and I was in
the third battalion. And we were right off the shore of Numu. We
hit that island, A boy, we were ready. We covered that island.
Or wasn't a Jap on the island living or dead? The boy were
We surprised and that led to a lot of laughing and stuff, and we
watched them. We were day ahead, so we watched land. The twenty
fourth landed on the moor and we watched the whole battle. After securing the
Marshall Islands, Earl and his fellow marines next saw action at the Battle for
Saipan in June nineteen forty four. Earl explains what that invasion was like for
him and what his duties included. I was in an outfit called JASCO Joint
Assault Signal Company. I was a wireman and switchboard operator, and so I
was designated in the next few battles as a switchboard operator. Wasn't my buddy,
And so we landed on Saipan on the fifteenth June, and actually it
really wasn't much because they shall I was in the second wave and the fourth
wave on Saipan, and it's five minutes between waves. So they the first
wave landed at nine and I landed nine fifteen. But we went right in
and everything and we set up. Our job was to set up a switchboard
and attach all the units to it so that they all had command of their
area. And the the guys had handled the dump. I can't think of
his name right of him, uh like the medival supplies food mo et cetera,
was given a wire so that he could call if he needed any And
then there was a short party commander. He was Navy. He knew what
was in all the cargo ships out there. He evidently had a book or
something. And if the uh, the beachmaster needed supplies, he would call
the short party commander and say, we're running out of Mortner ammunition. You
better get them in. The more you get short party Commander knew what cargo
ship it was on. He'd call him tell them, Hey, we need
forty millimeter or sixty millimeters or whatever it was. Uh m, Mortal Ramo,
better send it in. And then he told him what beach to bring
it into. And that's what we did for the first few days. And
after that, oh, i'd say maybe three days, four days, all
the companies took over their own communications. We were just set up to get
them started, and so we went in with these soul waves in each one.
Sipan would also provide mister Earl's most terrifying moments of the entire war.
He experienced the serious threat posed by the Japanese and the ferocious firepower of his
fellow marines. Well, we were up a ways and all of a sudden
we ran into some fields where they were growing stuff, and there were railroad
tracks and it was a little small railroad, I don't know what you call
them, like the miniature railroad, but there were tracks there. It went
lan over here and there was a big cave there, and we went up
the tracks. That night when we stopped, Fourth Division always stopped at four
o'clock. Four o'clock. It didn't get dark until nine I gave it was
five hours to set up our defenses. And boy did we set them up.
And do you know that, at no time in any battle that I
was in right through a regima. As many times as we were attacked singlely,
doubly or bonzai attacked, they never broke or broke through. And we
had fifties on the side, thirty machine guns and thirties in the middle,
and bars along the sides here and then in between were riflemen, and right
and back of them we your sixty millimium mortars. And boy, I'll tell
you, when the DAPs hit, we let him have it. Oh we
put barboys out there, and when we had them, we hooked plates,
tin plates or anything to make noise on the wires. And when in the
night when Japs hit the wires, we call out to the destroyer and they
started putting the flares out, and boy, that was just like daylight up
there. And of course the Japs wide open there and our machine guns just
opened up. That's Royal Earl Junior. He's a US Marine Corps veteran of
World War Two and the battles of the Marshall Islands, Saipan Tinian and Ewojima.
When we come back, mister Earl takes us with him to and through
the Battle of Ewojima. I'm Greg Corumbus, and this is Veterans Chronicles.
This is Veterans Chronicles. I'm Greg Corumbus. Our guest today is Royal Earl
Junior, a veteran of World War Two and the battles for the Marshall Islands
Saipan, Tinian and Ewogima. In February nineteen forty five, it was time
for the Marines to invade Ewojima, a critical location in the Allied island hopping
campaign. The island also contained an airfield that would provide the US a significant
strategic position to attack mainland Japan. As we mentioned earlier, mister Earle served
as a switchboard operator and wireman to facilitate communications during combat. So when it
was time to come ashore at Ewojima, mister Earle had some very important cargo
that turned into a makeshift shield. Oh lordy day. That was something that
just proved why I was a private first class right. I had the switchboard
and they had a candle on eachside and weighed seventy five pounds. I'm a
little guy. All right, I put that down to start to run up
the beach. You don't run walking rapidly, and my knees kept hitting it.
Er, that's crazy. What do you think I did? I took
it and put it up on top of my helmet because it would ride very
easy on my head, and I ran up to me. Can you imagine
me landing on the beach with the switchboard on my head and the Japs looking
and saying, what's that? That looks important? Boom, They're going to
shoot me. Never got a thing. I never got shot, I never
got even missed. Nothing came close. And so we went right in,
found a spot, set up the switchboard, and we were all set to
go. The American sacrifices on the beaches of Iwo Jima were immense for those
who survived. The black Sands were yet another challenge to navigate while under withering
fire from the Japanese. Mister Earle says he did not personally get slowed down
by the black sands as he ran with the switchboard on his head, but
he saw plenty of others who did have trouble, including men in his own
unit. We didn't, but everything else coming into us did and all vehicles
did. My lord, yes, they ran into trouble and he we had
a jeep with us. We couldn't get it. They got off the ramp
and sk right into the hub cap and then he couldn't go and we left
the jeep down on the beach because we couldn't get it out and we couldn't
spend time with it, so we had to go and do it otherwise.
From the beach, Royal Earl and the other members of the switchboard crews moved
out to set up their communications and get the different units connected. For the
most part, he was able to advance unscathed, but as he soon learned,
many others on the wire team were not so fortunate. Well, I
had to switch for as I say, and so my buddy and I the
other guy that was the operator, we went up. There were five levels
of the beach, and we went up the first one, and so we
went up the second one and there's a big shell holder. It must have
been from a battleship or something, and we said, this is it.
And we went right down to the bottom and we set up our switchboard and
said to the guys, okay, send us the wires, and that's what
they did, and we eventually hooked up all the wires, and we had
to hook with our left flank, which was the twenty sixth Marines because we
were the end unit. And then at the end of the day and everything,
we got a report that we were the third battalion next to us,
we were Yellow Beach one, Yellow Beach two of the second battalion, and
they hadn't heard from him. And so my buddy now is the switchboard operator.
And it sounds like I was some hotshot or I wasn't. But I
wasn't scared because I had no clothes, course or anything. And so I
said I'll go, and I did, and I just walked down to where
they're supposed to be and I got into this opening a field area, and
his body's all over the place. And I see a guy in the foxhole
very close by, and I said, hey, where's a wire team.
He says, you're looking at them. They had cap come off the LCBB
and the shell in it right in the killed them all, so they lost
their whole wire team. So I said, well, where did the switchboard
go? And he says, I don't know. I have to look around.
He said, probably over now, Sectioneer, and I did look around.
I found it and again put it up on my head and walked back,
and I said, look, when somebody comes down to find out what's
happened in communication, tell them that the third battalion had her switchboard. And
we began to give it back. But in the meantime, bring your wires
in them we'll set up your program. And they did, and then pretty
soon they came and got it. As Earl explained earlier, the most harrowing
moments of the war for him came on Sipan, but there is one brief
moment of sheer terror that he remembers vividly on Ewojima. It all started with
the need for a wire repair, continued with one of the biggest shocks of
his life, and ended quite unexpectedly. I went out, I finally found
it and I spliced. This is mid night. This is why we practiced
in the dark. But I had to make this splice. So I had
a pair of splicing and I took the extra wire with me when I went,
and I spliced it in and I got the wire and he didn't bring
enough. And so I got there and I saw where he was, and
but I had quite a bit of wire I was missing. And I went
over and I said, you know, you didn't bring enough wires, and
he just looked at me and he said, okay, okay, I'll go
get it, and he did and came back. Well, now I'm there
on my haunches right. All of a sudden, it was just the light
and boom, and it was practically took me off the ground. And boy,
I went down real quickly. Didn't near me and nothing hit me.
But I went down there and my years were ringing, I'll tell you,
and uh, I don't what the heck is going on. I laid there
a minute. Nothing else happened. I went through the bit of your tryed
toes, your ankles, your feet, your knees, your fingers, et
cetera. Okay, I was fine. I get back up on my hunches
to start trying to find where I was, and I could hear laughing,
and I thought, oh boy, this really must gunt me laughing out in
the middle of a battlefield, and about ten feet away or so, I
through the night, I could see this wall and then I just stared at
it for a while, and all I could see it's at the top of
the wall, these arms. There's a whole bunch of guys there watching me,
and they're laughing. I was sitting right under the muzzle of a one
oh five or three repeats and we fired. It was outgoing, not incoming.
Royal Earl knows he is fortunate to have survived multiple invasions in the Pacific
theater during World War II. He is proud to have served in the Marine
Corps and extremely honored to serve his country in uniform. It's a devotion to
duty that he remembers rushing back to his mind and heart as he attended the
opening of the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia, back in two thousand
and six. It's an emotional event that he says is impossible to forget.
When I was here for dedication of the museum, and without going through the
whole story of why we were there, it was a dozen of us there,
and the dedication night we were there before, but the dedication night we
were lined up against the wall and a commandant was speaking, and while he
was speaking, but they opened all the doors and anything, And don't forget
in those days there was nothing in the whole area there, And when he
finished, it was just like his last word was bumped and the drum and
bugle chorus started playing the Marines hymn and came right inside the museum. Oh
my god, imagine all that brass inside. It just shook you. And
that the twelve of us. Honestly, God, we just snapped to attention
cause they were playing the Marines him right, and we watched and I just
looked down. Would you believe everyone that I could see tears were running right
down his cheeks. Mine too. We were just so damn proud to be
Marines. Oh, I'll tell you I never forgot the That's US Marine Corps
Veteran Royal Earl Junior, a veteran of World War Two who served in the
Marshall Islands, Saipan, Tinian and Ewojima. I'm Greg Corumbus and this is
Veterans Chronicles. Hi, this is Greg Corumbus, and thanks for listening to
Veterans Chronicles, a presentation of the American Veterans Center. For more information,
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