Memories of a young Marine
I think I may have mentioned here some time ago that my uncle, late in his life, gave an interview to preserve his memories of taking Okinawa, including seeing Japanese residents throwing their infant children off a cliff and killing themselves, for fear of what they'd been told the Americans would do to them. This is the transcript, quite brief. When they left Okinawa they expected to be sent to Japan to do more of the same, but worse. Then suddenly the war was over.
My uncle was born in 1922, so he was 20 when he joined up and 23 or so at the time he recounts here. He died in 2013, aged 91. The first his children heard of these experiences was when he gave the interview in 2005.
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2 comments:
It is a wonder any of them came back sane. He speaks of artillery observers and the high casualty rate- I had a friend who was a Marine forward air controller in Vietnam -physically he came back OK, but something inside was hurt -like your uncle describes, I would see him sometimes with that thousand yard stare, just looking at his boots with a thin curl of cigarette smoke rising in front of his eyes.
My father was in the 77th, he said he never saw a shot fired in anger, although I wonder sometimes, looking at his discharge papers- Saipan, Okinawa, etc.
E.B.Sledge was a Marine mortar man who served on Okinawa, his book is a classic.
One of my father's friends had a similar story: he was one of the Marines who were scheduled to go take Okinawa the hard way. The atomic bomb probably saved his life, and likely the lives of many of those people in Okinawa. Iwo Jima was recent memory.
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