"[Man] When people think about war, they quite often think of D-Day as being Normandy and Utah Beach, 'cause those are the ones that got the most play in the media." "But there were at least 40 in the Pacific, some of them just as bad, if not worse, than the D-Day casualties in Normandy." "[Morinaga] The beaches were calm, and there were palm trees." "I remember looking down at the palm trees and wondering... if I was about to die in this peaceful place." "[Ambrose] At Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7, it was Sunday morning, an awful lot of the men had liberty the night before." "Some were having breakfast, getting ready for church, many were sleeping it off." "The Zeros, coming off of the Japanese carriers, began to appear in Hawaii, and they found us completely unprepared." "[Fiske] We couldn't believe what was happening, it happened so fast." "[Taylor] I was getting madder by the minute, because not only were they knocking our ships out, but they were knocking out a major part of our airpower." "We were looking toward the U.S.S. Arizona, and there was this tremendous explosion." "I've never seen anything like it in my life." "It was just one big ball of fire." "[Abe] I never thought about dying or anything like that." "I was only focused on my target." "[Taylor] Everything was on fire." "Everything looked like it was exploding." "I knew what I was supposed to do, and it was to knock this plane down in front of me; to get on his tail and shoot him down." "And I managed to do that." "You see all of that, and then this hate starts to come in." "And damn it, this is war." "This is war." "The Imperial Army and Navy, before daybreak on December 8th went into battle against the U.S. And British forces in the West Pacific." "The precision of the attack was perfect in every way." "We lost 2,400 people at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941." "Everybody wanted revenge." "Total revenge." "I know I did." "I wanted to destroy the whole nation of Japan." "I hated them." "Everyone hated them." "They made the American people so mad that there was never going to be any compromise in this war." "We're going for unconditional surrender." "The American people, in their righteous might, will win through to absolute victory." "[Clapping]" "[Kaneko] We just knew that we were the enemy." "We were considered the enemy, because Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor." "I didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was." "My father was born on the 4th of July, and he made sure we all put the flag out and everything." "We were brought up to be Americans." "There was a feeling in Pearl Harbor that the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii had been giving information to the Japanese forces in Tokyo." "So we were afraid they would do this on the West Coast." "But there had been not a single incident of sabotage or spying." "None of that happened." "The Japanese-Americans from the West Coast were interned into ten internment camps across the United States." "We were told that we could only bring what we could carry, and so most of our things we had to leave behind." "[Ambrose] They were rounded up and put into camps that they were guarded in." "[Sakai] When we arrived and saw the buildings, it was very depressing." "How would you like to be taken away without your things?" "How would you like to know people are watching you all the time?" "How would you like to know your letters are being read, and that you can't communicate with people?" "My brother used to put it this way:" "It's like you've been raped by somebody you trusted, and so you can't talk about it." "It was your country that did this to you, so you couldn't talk about it for years." "[Ambrose] Young Japanese-Americans volunteered for the Armed Services of the U.S., even as their families were being held in these camps." "[Sakai] My utmost thought was, "They've stripped me of my citizenship,"" "which was most valuable to me." "And therefore, when they gave me a chance to join the military, that was my liberation." "That restored my citizenship." "It was one of the happiest moments of my life." "The little town that I was in, they went en masse to sign up." "So a lot of the guys that used to hang around the filling station weren't hanging around there anymore." "They were in the service." "[Russell] There was no problem getting volunteers." "Everyone was willing to go." "They had recruiting lines two and three blocks long." "[Ambrose] All of the services were taking in thousands of recruits a day." "Most people who volunteered had a choice of Navy, Marines, Army." "I liked the Army." "I didn't feel like a sailor, didn't feel like a flyer." "Even the Marines didn't appeal to me." "Too much PR." "The Marines had great public relations." "Every time someone would ask, "Are you in the Pacific?" and I'd say "Yes,"" ""Oh, Marine?" "No."" ""Navy?" "No."" ""Army." "Oh, were you in the Pacific?"" "Yeah, damn right I was in the Pacific." "[Swann] I went into the U.S. Navy." "The Navy was segregated." "At that time, blacks could only be steward's mates." "You waited on the officers, cleaned their rooms." "Things of that nature." "I could not think of anybody who did not have just one objective:" "Let's pay them back for this little job and get it over with." "[Snowden] There was no question about what we had to do." "We had seen signs in recent months saying, "Uncle Sam Needs You!"" "[Ambrose] And now, all of a sudden, America would rank 16th in the world in the size of its armed forces, right behind Romania." "Now we were in the war." "Within a couple of years, the American Armed Forces were number one in the world." "[Fennell] All of the services were going full tilt." "The Coast Guard had expanded tremendously because they had to guard the whole coast of the U.S., and the rivers as well." "The Navy, of course, had to worry about two wars." "[Snowden] The war in Europe had been going on for several years, but things were happening in the Pacific world with the Japanese." "They were saying they didn't have any resources and had to enlarge their empire, in order to gain the resources necessary to support their people." "They were already deeply involved in a war in China that was a big drain on the Japanese army." "Korea was already a colony." "They were taking on the whole of the Pacific world." "[Abe] As long as the U.S. Navy had a large presence in the South Pacific," "Japan's military was not able to succeed." "That's why the decision was made to attack America." "Who's going to command in the Pacific was a big question for the Americans." "Who's going to command in the Pacific was a big question for the Americans." "They decided to divide it." "Douglas MacArthur would command in the southwest Pacific," "Admiral Chester Nimitz would be in command in the central Pacific, and the Americans were now beginning to build." "We had carriers being built at the shipyards, we had started a draft that brought millions of young men into the Armed Forces." "They had to be trained and equipped, of course, and America was gearing up for war." "[Man] This is a GI jive Man, alive" "It starts with a bugler blowin' Reveille over your bed [chorus] When you arrive Jack, that's the GI jive" "Over the training periods, we developed a lot of camaraderie with the people we worked directly with." "The training, first of all, put tremendous emphasis on physical conditioning." "It was hard physically, and they'd just drill you constantly." "Here's people, when you say, "Rear march,"" "you got one going one way and another going the other way." "They took us through the firing ranges." "They took us tank training." "They even gave us tank training." "We were taught how to use every weapon that an infantry has in its force." "Everything from machine guns, mortars, rifles, carbines, pistols..." "In hospital course school, we learned basic human anatomy and physiology." "We learned the number of bones, where they were located in relation to each other, and "knee bone's connected to the thigh bone." All that type of thing." "Our forces were adequately trained." "There's no question about that in my mind." "They were physically well conditioned, and knew how to use their weapons." "Teamwork had been built into them very well." "I think they were very well-trained troops." "That training did prepare me to do, professionally... my job." "But it didn't train me... to do the biggest job." "And that's to not be afraid." "I was scared to death, I tell you." "[Sakai] Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto was the top admiral in the Japanese navy, responsible for laying out the strategy of how to win the war." "[Ambrose] What Yamamoto thought would happen was the Americans would be disheartened, and they would negotiate." "That all came crashing down as the American people went to work." "The whole country went to war." "They rolled Red Cross bandages, sorted buttons." "You wanted to be a part of the war effort, because they had attacked us." "[Snowden] The folks at home turned out ships, and planes and bullets in record numbers." "It was the first time this many women had come out of their homes and gone to work." "My wife was a welder, and she worked in the bottom of a ship 40 feet down." "We built 741 ships, and we built one every four days." "We sent them out to sea." "We felt like we were building ships to bring our husbands home in." "We wanted to go to work." "We wanted to help to win the war." "[Ambrose] One of the most important things that happened was building the landing craft." "You could run it right on into the beach, drop that ramp, a platoon of fighting men come out and they're right there on the beach and were fighting as soon as they came off that Higgins boat, as it was called." "They made nothing except war stuff." "Whatever you had, that's it, and you didn't get any more until the war's over." "[Ambrose] You can't get butter, you can't get sugar, and it was very difficult to get new shoes." "[Mrs. Grant] The tires were rationed, gas was rationed." "You were only allowed so much gas a month, and we all worked with it." "[Ambrose] Everybody was sacrificing to make this military that could undertake an offensive in both theaters." "And we did." "[Snowden] The Philippines was a complete loss to us because this was one of the chain of islands that was key to us in the Pacific." "[Ambrose] We lost the Philippines, they overran Bataan and then they took Corregidor, and then the Bataan Death March." "We lost Guam." "Everything was loss." "And then came the Doolittle Raid that bombed Tokyo." "[Stork] Jimmy Doolittle was appointed to head the raid and he was definitely the man for it." "We took off about 8:00, and were over the target about 12:30." "We hedgehopped in right on top of the water, and pulled up to our bombing altitude of 1,800 feet." "If you're dropping bombs at 1,800 feet, you just can't miss, period." "It was the first raid on Japan, and it did give the U.S. A shot in the arm." "[Ambrose] It didn't do much damage to the Japanese." "It wasn't a big operation." "But it lifted spirits across America." "Perhaps the biggest decision in the Pacific war was island hopping." "Perhaps the biggest decision in the Pacific war was island hopping." "We weren't strong enough yet to go directly to Japan and leave all these islands out in the Pacific." "So we island hopped the islands in the Pacific, just as you would cross a stream and there's a whole bunch of rocks, and you jump from rock to rock to get to the other side." "And eventually get close enough to Japan to launch our aircraft, to bomb Japan." "That was the strategic decision that guided the whole war in the Pacific, and was one of the best decisions ever made." "[Snowden] When we were aboard ship, there were a lot of hours where there wasn't much to do." "[Henley] It was a long time aboard a ship." "You lay out on deck in the day, and we had some fun and games." "It mostly was boredom." "You got up, ate, worked and went to bed." "The problem of keeping troops on ship is that they don't have room to run." "So you run in place, and then you give them physical exercises." "We didn't know where we were going until about two weeks out at sea." "After we got out at sea, they started to brief us as to what our mission was and where we were going." "[Merrill] People had all kinds of thoughts about what might happen, naturally." "There was a great deal of praying, a lot of people soul-searching... and the anticipation of a battle, never having been in it before." "And wondering exactly what they were getting into." "[Ambrose] In order to make an invasion work, the Navy's job is to go in before the invasion and soften up the beach." "You destroy everything, all of the enemy, on that beach." "And the planes are bombing, and everybody's doing the best they can to make sure there's not an enemy soldier alive when we get there." "[Thomas] The night before D-Day, we were very nervous." "We'd go up and watch the bombardment." "[Furuiye] I looked around and said, "Are you scared?"" "He said, "Damn right, I'm scared."" "And I said, "Who the hell isn't scared?" "If you're not scared, you're not human."" "[Snowden] I remember waking up at dawn and all of a sudden, this is for real." "At about 5:00 a.m., after little sleep, if any, we had chow call, and we had steak and eggs." "That was the first time ever, of all the time I've spent overseas, that I got steak and eggs for breakfast." "It was a very eerie experience, having breakfast in civilized fashion and realizing that day we were going to shore and might all be killed." "[Snowden] We began at about 6:00 a.m. Getting ready for the assault." "We clambered down these cargo nets, and I was nervous with all this gear." "[Merrill] One thing they did not tell us, that boat can come up under you very quickly." "You gotta hit that just right or you're gonna knock your knees out." "[Merrill] In fact, we had one boy break a leg." "We started rendezvousing out in the ocean area probably about four miles off of the beach." "[Thomas] The circle broke and formed parallel lines and we were moving in, and D-Day, H-Hour, was there with us." "[Snowden] There were over 100 D-Days in the Pacific, on big islands and small islands." "But always the objective was to begin the process of taking that island." "[Merrill] As we approached the beach," "I could feel a real tenseness in everyone aboard that craft." "It was complete quiet." "[Nuernberg] While you're going toward the beach, you're doing an awful lot of praying." "Some of the guys got a little sick." "I watched the guys around me." "They were scared;" "I was scared." "I don't think we had any reason to be otherwise." "[Henley] You don't know what's waiting for you." "They could wait 'till you're on the beach, then cut loose, or start firing right away." "Anything like that." "You don't know." "[Fiske] When we were getting close to the beach, then you begin to feel, "God, this is real."" "Then as soon as they drop that ramp, and you're exposed, you feel like the nakedest person in the world." "And you knew darn well they'd start shooting, which they did." "[Merrill] Soon after that, all hell broke loose on the island." "[Snowden] There was tremendous fire coming from the offense's positions." "I had never seen anything like this in my life." "Absolute hell." "There were about 6 to 800 ships out here." "I was on one of them." "We took landing craft and came into the reef." "On the other side, we changed from the landing craft to amphibious tractors." "The reason for that was in the lagoon, the water's so shallow we couldn't get landing craft in here." "[Merrill] So we went over the side in about three feet of water." "I had 100 pounds on my back, a flame thrower, a bed roll, all of my ammunition... and I distinctly remember sinking into the sand a good four or five inches as I crossed the beach." "[Shouting orders]" "It was a bloody mess on that beach." "People were getting blown to pieces." "The beach was full of bodies." "Just full of bodies." "Chaos, absolutely." "It looked like the biggest junkyard in the world." "Chaos." "There's bombs being dropped, there's shells being fired." "It was chaos." "There were just hundreds of people moving, and one reason we had to get off the beach was there were people behind us one after the other, group after group." "[Russell] Boats from the prior landing turned upside down." "There were bodies floating out into the water." "[Merrill] I had never seen a dead person, even at a funeral, and as I hit the beach, I saw bodies and body parts all over the beach." "We started to go up on the sand, we'd go up two feet and fall back one." "We were just laying on the beach, and there were bodies all over." "[Braun] Guys were dying." "Everywhere you looked, somebody was dying." "[Merrill] Wanted to cross the beach quickly, because it was being raked with 88's, machine guns, and there was a lot of sniper fire as well." "You only got one way to deal with it." "Look for a place to get out, get cover by jumping into a hole or digging one." "And that's hard, because that sand flows back in as soon as you shovel it." "At this time, a young Marine, I'd estimate about 17 years old, he was running by and a sniper shot him in the head, right above his left eye." "He was dead, and I looked at him, and he had blood running down... then it... come down..." "I didn't know this kid, and I still remember him today." "Once in combat, I don't believe any of us had any difficulty doing what we had to do." "I certainly didn't." "The only thing we wanted to see was the Japanese, dead." "I was anxious to see the first Jap I was going to kill." "That's what I went there for." "It was very easy to shoot a Jap, believe me." "I don't care if it had been a woman, child, baby." "I could shoot." "[Russell] I wanted to destroy the whole nation of Japan." "We were immediately up against these reinforced blockhouse bunkers that were reinforced concrete." "They were extremely formidable defensive positions." "This was for a anti-tank, anti-boat." "47 millimeter." "It's obviously been hit quite a bit." "Against this type blockhouse in other locations, the flame thrower was our most effective weapon." "The flame thrower not only burned them up, but if it didn't, it sucked all the oxygen out and they died instantly of suffocation." "There wasn't any way to breathe." "[Merrill] However, it was used directly on the enemy as well." "At times, because they would run out of air, partly of fire." "And if you had anymore left, you certainly would use the charge." "It was a very brutal way to go, believe me." "This looked altogether different than it is now." "Mostly everything was scorched earth." "We used so much napalm, and burnt the grass and the trees." " Did you volunteer to be a flame thrower?" " Yes." "It's the only way you could be one." "Crazy, but that's the only way." " How old were you?" "22?" " I was 22 years old, yes." "To avoid the constant attacks, we hid in underground tunnels." "The caves were dug about 30 meters deep, so it was very hot." "It was around 104 degrees Fahrenheit." "So, it was not a comfortable position for them." "Water was in great demand and they had very little of it." "A number of the defenders died of thirst." "We had to lick each other's sweat." "When there was no more sweat, there was urine." "But then we began to urinate blood." "[Snowden] The engineers would come up and seal the caves." "Put a big charge on top, shoot it down and cause it to completely close off, and if there was anybody in there, they were trapped in there." "The branch of American military service I was in was called MIS." ""Military Intelligence Service."" "The main thing was to translate military orders or diaries, and interrogate prisoners." "They were very careful not to put us in harm's way because we could've been shot by our own men." "Some people have asked me how we felt fighting the Japanese." "I'm not sure what I would've done if I had come face-to-face with my uncle, whom I loved dearly but, to me, I was not fighting the Japanese people." "I was fighting the Japanese military government which started the war." "[Merrill] During the assault, the tanks were able to roam at will and not really be in any danger, unless a Jap got some kind of a charge on back." "We had nothing else, so we came up with the Nikaku attack plan, which was to put explosives underneath the tanks and destroy them." "The Japanese would do anything to destroy a tank, including putting the demolitions on their body and crawling under the tank." "They had a lot of man and booby traps set up." "Bouncing Betties." "You had to watch where you were stepping." "[Nuernberg] You can't see the wires on the booby trap." "It looks like a piece of grass." "And when you kick it, it pulls the pin, boom." "You have a casualty or two." "[Distant explosions, gunfire]" "[Merrill] The wounds themselves were horrid." "People blown all to pieces." "Arms and legs all over the place." "My specialty in the Pacific was being a corpsman to wounded Marines." "[Merrill] Corpsmen were Navy individuals trained to apply first aid to the wounded." "They were the greatest bunch of guys you ever saw in your life." "Talk about bravery." "If it hadn't been for them, most of us wouldn't have come back." "They were like a priest or a minister, they consoled you." ""Yeah, I know it hurts, but goddamn, just think if it was worse!"" "But that's part of our duty, to keep the guys as alive as possible for as long as possible and get them back as quick as possible." "[Dolan] I was called in by my lieutenant commander one day." "She said, "From 24 Naval bases in the United States," ""they're choosing 24 girls, one from each base," ""to form the Navy flight nurses," ""and would you consider it if you were chosen?"" "And I said, "Oh, I'll have to call my mother!"" "We were to fly on the airplane, and bring back the badly wounded passengers." "I had no idea what I was getting myself into, really." "I had no idea I was going to see what I saw." "It was quite an eye-opener, because the ground was shaking from bombs going off." "It was a mess." "All I can say is you saw blood." "And the odor." "It was the smell of war, really." "[Hudnall] But when I looked over and saw the boys on the ground," "I figured, "Never mind these side effects here." "Pay attention to these boys."" "I couldn't wait to get them out of there, 'cause I wanted to get out of there, too." "[Dolan] We were always talking to them, holding their hand." "[Hudnall] Some had their eyes closed because they did have a lot of pain." "Some were just keeping their eyes closed and praying they would get out of there." "There was a patient from lwo Jima I had on my airplane." "He asked me if I would take a small bottle of sand from lwo Jima." "I said, "No, you keep it." He said, "No, I'm not gonna make it," ""and I want you to tell people to never forget what we did here" ""and what we went through." And he didn't make it." "[Dolan] I was checking this one boy, and I saw tears coming down his face." "I said, "Am I hurting you?"" "He said, "No." "I'm just thinking about all the people I killed."" "That's what he said to me." "[Man] We'll meet again" "Don't know where, don't know when..." "[Tate] I wrote my mother a letter practically every day." "I just told her the everyday things I did." ""I took a shower today," ""and we did this and that," and so on." "They had to walk a long ways to get to the mailbox, and I didn't want them to go to the mailbox and not get anything." "Everyone was glad for the mail to run, but yet there was a fear." "Afraid you would get the telegram." "My sister received a telegram when her husband was killed." "They had a little boy ride a bicycle and bring the telegram to her, and my sister just passed out from shock." "But when we got a letter saying they were well and still alive, what a great joy." "[Ambrose] Back home, you kept up with the war through newsreels that preceded the main feature at the local theater." "[Newscaster]... the first offensive drive to hurl the Jap enemy from conquered land." "[Mrs. Grant] We would go to the Sunday movies to see what was going on overseas, but I always looked to see if I could find him on the battlefield." "[Ambrose] You saw cartoons, and the racial hatred against the Japanese had no bounds to it." "The big buck teeth and the slant eyes were a common feature of all these propaganda films." "And the American people were propagandized into hating everything that was Japanese." "You are enjoying a "crr-ub."" "We were taught that the Americans and the British were animals." "We were afraid of the big American soldiers." "The Japanese told the Okinawans we would rape and murder every one of them, so they committed mass suicide off the cliffs." "[Ambrose] Just as at Saipan, the Japanese civilians threw themselves off of the cliff." "Women took their infants and threw them into the sea." "We thought that we would be subjected to horrific deaths in the hands of the evil Americans and British." "We thought that men would have their ears and noses cut off." "Women would be raped." "We thought that we would be run over by tanks." "Therefore, we would rather be killed by our own families." "We didn't know where our father was." "My older brother and I had to assume the role of killing our family." "The first family member we had to kill was our mother." "At first we tried to strangle her with rope." "But finally, we had to use a more dependable method." "We bashed our mother's head with a rock." "I made sure that our mother was dead." "Then we had to kill our younger brother and sister." "Afterward, it was time for me and my brother to die." "We realized that the Americans were near, so we hid." "When we came out, we were found by the Americans." "[Fennell] The Okinawans fared a lot worse from the Japanese than they did from us." "We weren't out to rape and murder." "All we were out to do is get the Japanese soldiers that were there." "I felt honored to fight against the Americans... such a great military force." "I think the Japanese soldier was mean, treacherous, tricky... and, according to American standards, he wasn't a real good person." "He might've been a tough soldier, but he did things Americans wouldn't do at first." "But we learned to." "We learned to be just as tricky and dirty as he was." "Many Japanese were shot running away from us." "Of course we didn't mind shooting them in the back, either." "At that point in time, it was dog eat dog." "The Americans were better equipped." "But the Japanese were courageous and strong." "The Japanese relied on as their number one weapon the willingness of the men in the Armed Forces of Japan." "Every one of them was willing to give up his life for the emperor." "At that time, Japan was fighting against the A, B, C, Ds." "A for Americans, B for British, C for Chinese, and D for Dutch." "We could not win man for man." "One of our Kamikaze pilots had to crash into a ship full of a thousand men to equalize the war." "A Kamikaze suicide squad was a special attack corps." "Soldiers who were prepared to die would throw themselves with bombs at the enemy ships and planes." "[Nakamura] The pilots were trained to fly planes and hit their target but they never learned how to land." "The training was short." "[Mitsuoka] Kamikaze pilots are unique to Japan's spiritual beliefs in "Kami" or God... where they believed their Emperor was God." "It was an extreme concept." "To give your life for this God was the most noble thing to do." "[Swann] A suicide plane hit my guntub and exploded, killing ten of the 20." "We shot his wing off and we shot his tail off, and they were just like a bomb coming." "My buddy was trapped in the third gun, burning to death." "I tried to get him out, and then there was an explosion." "I fell backward over into the fire, and they came right in and got me." "[Ambrose] To the Americans, a Kamikaze was unbelievable." "These guys were willing to give up their lives." "The Americans were, too, and many did." "The American soldier would go out on patrols that were pretty clearly suicidal, but they weren't anything remotely like those Kamikaze attacks." "The conditions on the islands varied because the islands were so varied." "Some of them were jungly, and some were almost desert-like." "With all these mosquitoes coming down, bringing malaria." "With floods." "The rain came, and it came and it came." "[Grant] We didn't take no bath or anything like that." "But the monsoon rains were sometimes a blessing." "We could do a little bathing, or catch water in the helmet." "Where we were was very inhospitable because of the vines and the brush and all." "But all the coconut trees were planted row on row on row." "That was very pretty, to see that." "[Man] On a coconut island I'd like to be a castaway with you" "On a coconut island There wouldn't be so very much to do" "I would linger awhile and Just gaze into your lovely eyes of blue" "Then I'd walk for a mile and Come running back to be with you" "There the waves would make A pair of willing slaves of you and me" "Forever, and for days we'd never gaze Out where the ships go sailing by" "On a coconut island I'd like to be a castaway with you" "On a coconut island" "Where we could Make our dreams come true" "[Ambrose] Bob Hope and the USO would come to these islands." " Where you going?" " Fishing." " What do you got in your mouth?" " Worms." "[Ambrose] What it meant to the men was, "They do remember us back in the States." "We weren't forgotten." "On a coconut island I'd like to be a castaway with you" "Coconut island, baby We could make our dream come true" "[Russell] The Marines had war dogs." "Every one of those war dogs was a hero." "I wouldn't want to go back into combat again without one of those dogs." "[Putney] Our dogs were family dogs, they didn't come from kennels." "They didn't have any police training." "They were just from your average family wanting to help the war effort by enlisting their dog into the Marine Corps." "They have senses that we don't possess." "They can hear and smell things that we never knew existed." "[Russell] You'd watch that dog when he was working, watch his tail and his head, and he'd pick up the scent and go after them." "The dogs and the men were together all of the time." "Particularly, when in combat, they were together 24 hours a day." "[Russell] They ate together." "He would give him a drink out of his canteen." "They ate out of the same mess kit." "I saw men, when their dogs got killed, take the body of the dog in their arms and rock them back and forth with tears in their eyes." "They lost not only a dear friend, but perhaps somebody who saved their lives." "Attacking at night was a traditional Japanese tactic." "We stayed at our posts during the day." "In the evenings, we attacked." "[Grant] The Japanese were very crafty about crawling around into fox holes and slitting your throat at night." "Just the idea that someone's crawling around out there that can do this to you, you don't get much rest." "You could hear a guy saying, "I'm hit!"" "And you couldn't do nothing." "We had a password on the island, and it was usually a word that the Japanese couldn't pronounce properly." "Like, "clear weather" or "clear day,"" "and that'd be the password." "Each night we had a different password." "When we shouted "Kesshi" and if they didn't reply "Kanto"" "whoever threw the grenade first would live." "One of them tried to trick us, 'cause he'd learned a little English and said, "How'd you make out, Joe?"" "Of course, our sergeant knew that wasn't one of us and so he mowed him down with a tommy gun." "[Thomas] Come the very earliest glimmer of daylight, the island was littered with the dead from the day before, with a hand sticking up here and a foot sticking up there." "The one that hit me the most, I remember, was a friend of mine who was buried." "Most of his face was sticking up, and his body was buried and his shoulder was sticking up." "And with the waves coming in, he was right at water's edge, and that arm moving with the water, like this." "And I remember thinking, "He's beckoning me to join him in death."" "I found one of my sergeants lying there with a leg so badly wounded" "I thought he'd lose it." "And he said to me, "Captain, please help me."" "And I said, "I'll give you a shot of morphine, then I got to go."" "Because I'd been trained as all Marine officers were trained, that when you have a single casualty like that, you give him quick attention, call for someone else, and then go, because I had another 220 Marines to worry about." "Oh my God, here I am facing death three or four feet away, and I can't fire anymore." "But as I'm looking at my rifle, trying to unjam this thing," "I see grenades to my right." "I dove for them and covered them with my body, shoving the grenades into volcanic ash to try to save the lives of the three buddies with me." "And it blew me over on my back." "My guys left me." "They thought I was dead." "Another outfit moving up discovered me." "They picked me up and took me to a place where a lot of others were lying on cots." "Wounded." "Later I woke up when they were moving me to a big hospital ship headed back to Honolulu." "[Braun] My radio man was a 6'2" cowboy, Avery, and we went out on patrol." "A Japanese shell landed right next to us, and it cut Avery's leg off at the groin." "He did not lose consciousness." "There was no way to put a tourniquet on it, and he cradled his own leg and kept saying to me, "Do something." I sat with him until he died." "You soon learn that..." "you're gonna lose your buddies." "The question is, which ones and when." "And when's it going to be your turn?" "When it was your buddy, you would sit down and cry." "It really was tough on you." "You hated to have to go off and leave his body." "If your buddy gets killed, you've got to have a detachment there and say, "Well, it's just a thing in the war." ""I really had nothing to do with it."" "'Cause if you let it eat your guts out, you're endangering your own life." "You gotta be practical about it." "It was our duty to fight the enemy." "It was war." "If we didn't kill them, they would have killed us." "There was no time to regret our actions." "We went there to kill Japanese, and that's what we were doing." "And they were trying to kill us." "People were getting blown to pieces on the beach, evaporating some of the bodies." "They were direct hits." "What are you going to do about that, lie down on the beach and cry about it?" "Back out and get out of the water?" "Swim back to the boat?" "You came to fight." "It's either kill or be killed, no joke about it." "There's no use in trying to dress it up." "Didn't worry about who he was, or how many kids he had, who his granddaddy was..." "He was just somebody to blow away and save myself." "[Nuernberg] When I pulled the trigger, it was a target." "It was afterwards that the impact of what I'd done, taking a life, that..." "That things started coming back to me and I thought about them." "The hate in you begins to dissipate because you've realized that you've taken somebody's life, and... it affects you." "I had to talk to somebody, and I talked to our sergeant." "And he said, "You get used to it after a while."" "That was an answer, I guess." "You get used to it." "I never did, never did get used to it." "On the 4th of July, we had killed 350." "I had three men wounded." "That is 350 dead bodies, and when the sun comes up, the gas in the body expands." "The bodies were covered with white maggots and black flies." "And you got your cold ration, and try to eat with flies coming in your mouth." "And then, as the gas expanded, it would pass over the dead vocal chords." "And you'd hear the sound of these dead bodies making weird groans as the gas went over the chords." "We used to go to the caves with a bullhorn with a speaker on it." "We went out there to see if we might talk any of the Japanese into surrendering." "Every morning... the Americans tried to entice us with chocolates and water to come out." "I don't think any of us had any hope we could get them out alive." "But we thought we'd try." "What have we got to lose?" "[Grant speaking Japanese]" ""Come on out." "Don't be afraid." "Take off your uniform."" "[Stork] We would say, "You fought honorably." ""We will take care of you and your men."" "We thought it was honorable to not leave our underground positions while the Americans thought the opposite." "There was no food to eat or water to drink." "So we all decided that, since we hadn't seen the sun in three months we would go outside and get killed." "And when we went out, we were captured by the Americans." "[Kanai] I was so weak." "I couldn't even hold up my arms to surrender." "Then I realized there were others captured before me." "When I looked around, there were quite a few other men I knew." "I thought we would all be machine-gunned to death together." "I was glad I was not alone." "That's how I was captured." "We were out of medical supplies" "so the Americans treated our injured." "Life in the prison camps was much better than I expected." "[Henley] People that got killed, we'd come back later and pick up their remains." "And that would be transferred to the rear area, where a temporary cemetery was set up." "[Merrill] Before we loaded ship, hey had a big ceremony at the cemetery." "It was probably the most heart-wrenching time of all." "We all had an opportunity to go view all the crosses, pick out our buddies." "Then a chaplain gave a service there, and it was the most solemn scene of the whole operation." "We went aboard ship, and were told there would be a beautiful meal for all of us." "[Stork] The bakers had baked a fresh loaf of bread the night we got there." "Another buddy of mine went over and got this wonderful loaf of bread, hot out of the oven, and I never had anything as good in my life." "It was just a plain loaf of white bread, but I tell you, it was good." "That's when we learned that President Roosevelt had died." "That's when we learned that President Roosevelt had died." "[Ambrose] On April 12, 1945, President Franklin Roosevelt died." "For most of the fighting men, he was the only President they'd ever known." "Now Harry S. Truman, the vice president, became their leader and the ending of this war fell to him." "So they took us way back to our base on the island of Hawaii." "We re-formed and were getting ready for the next operation, which would've been landing on Japan mainland." "The plan was to land a large number of Marine and Army divisions on the west coast of Kyushu, Japan on 1 November, 1945." "There were going to be millions of people involved in this because we knew the Japanese would use their women, children, anyone to kill us." "In preparation for the arrival of the U.S. Forces we made swords, spears, and sickles to fight with." "They were digging out foxholes all across Japan." "They brought their best troops back into Japan to defend the home island." "And it was going to be this horrendous battle." "It never happened." "And the reason it never happened was because of the atomic bomb." "[Ambrose] The culmination of the American production process in the Second World War was the atomic bomb, which the Americans had started working on in 1942 and had completed by the summer of 1945 and President Truman ordered it used." "We're now at the bomb pits where the atomic weapons were loaded on the B-29s." "This is where Paul Tibbets took off in the B-29 that he named Enola Gay for the bomb at Hiroshima and it came up out of the pit, right here and then Tibbets flew that mission." "I put out of my mind anything that had to do with morality, religion, anything like that." "War is hell, and I wanted to get the killing over as fast as I could." "The airplane was quiet." "Normally, you'd fly with crews and they're telling dirty jokes and all that." "There was none of that this time." "It was dead silent because they were all determined, just as I was, to get that bomb on the target for what good we thought it might do." "And I thought, the first day I heard it was that weapon, that if we could do that, we'd certainly help the war effort along." "I could see, over the instrument panel, the island." "It was Hiroshima." "[Tibbets] I didn't see it." "All I saw was the sky light up in front of me, of beautiful pink and red colors." "And in the end, there were 31 l2 square miles of Hiroshima devastated in one blow." "That's how terrific it was." "Rest of the trip going back, everyone was relaxed." "Tension was over with." "I told Bob Lewis, my co-pilot, to take it over so I could get a couple hours sleep." "And that's what I did." "All of a sudden, the report came in about the bomb over Hiroshima." "And we just sat there in stunned silence." "And of course, we cheered and had a little rejoicing." "But the next day, we were training like we were gonna keep going, because nobody said it was over." "The feeling in Japan was, "The U.S. Dropped the bomb but we'll continue."" ""Hiroshima is not a military target, the Americans didn't weaken our strength" ""with the bomb on Hiroshima, we're gonna continue to fight on."" "And Truman decided to go ahead with a second bomb." "I could hear the distant hum of planes." "[Sakita] About 500 meters above, I saw a large red fireball as large as the sun." "And from this fireball, multi-colored sparkles flashed everywhere." "And these sparkles came down like rainfall." "This light pierced my face and I immediately felt pain and heat." "I touched my face with my left hand and slid it down my face." "The skin on my face peeled off and was hanging down to here." "For as far as I could see, houses and other buildings were destroyed." "The town was in ruins." "And at that point... the Japanese military just had to give up." "We can't do anything against atomic bombs." "We can meet Marines at the beaches, we've got an air force left that can go out there with the Kamikazes and sink a lot of American ships." "We can force them to pay a high price if they want to invade Japan." "But what were they gonna do about an atomic bomb?" "Many people have debated the use of that bomb over the years, but I'd say that it was probably the best decision ever made because we would've lost many men." "Over a million probably would've been lost in trying to invade Japan." "The atomic bomb surely made the war end quicker." "But I think the Japanese would have surrendered without it." "The treachery that Japan had thrown upon us." "I had no pity, and still don't, for the Japanese." "The Americans I'm sure felt that... casualties are a result of a long fought battle, like in Vietnam." "But I wish the Americans had come up with something different instead of the atomic bomb." "Tell them if there had never been a Pearl Harbor, there would've never been a Hiroshima and a Nagasaki." "We did that to save lives not only of Americans, but a million Japanese." "I think it was a mistake." "I think it could've been demonstrated elsewhere without harming people." "A demonstration bombing with the atomic bomb would've been rather futile, because I don't think the nature of the Japanese would've yielded to anything less than the holocaust we put on Japan." "The pilots of the Enola Gay should go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to apologize for what they did and never speak of the positive effects of the atomic bomb." "I've been asked time and again," ""Don't you feel terrible about killing all those people?"" "No, I don't feel terrible." "I'm sorry they were there and had to be killed, but what had to be done was bigger than those people, bigger than me." "It ended the war." "And it brought us home, what was left of us." "[Ambrose] The surrender took place in Tokyo Harbor on the battleship Missouri." "Let us pray that peace... be now restored to the world... and that God will preserve it always." "The end of the war was like a load taken off your chest." "Everything was going to be okay now." "We won the war." "Everything's going to be okay." "[Ambrose] VJ Day, as it was called, "Victory Over Japan" Day when they surrendered, led to the biggest celebration America has ever known." "Crowds were just filling the skyscrapers and throwing out confetti." "[Woman] Kiss me once, Then kiss me twice," "Then kiss me once again" "It's been a long, long time" "Haven't felt like this, my dear Since can't remember when..." "And I was trusting that my husband was one of them that would get to come home." "And what a great day when he did come in." "[Grant] We pulled into San Diego Harbor." "There was a huge sign that said, "Welcome Home,"" "and for the next seven days they fed us like kings." "I had been injured, and when I came home, my mama grabbed me and was feeling all over to see if I had any missing parts." "She was so happy I was in one piece." "My dad met me at the train station, and I was as brown as a brown paper sack." "I saw my dad there, looking around trying to find me amongst all the other passengers." "I walked up to him and looked him in the eye, and he looked around me." "I said, "He don't know me." "He just doesn't know me."" "So I walked around and came up behind him and tapped him on the shoulder." "I said, "It's me."" "He grabbed me and gave me a big hug." "[Kaneko] My brother came back from the service." "He wanted to see his parents, of course." "So he came to the internment camp." "It was after hours, and he could only touch my mother through the barbed wire fence." "[Sakai] My father and mother remained in camp until the end of the war." "They didn't know where to go or what to do." "They heard that a few who tried to get back had a very bad reception." "Their homes were burned down, or they were chased out." "[Swann] I received a Navy Cross in San Francisco, California." "That night, they came and took the document from me because I was black, and black steward's mates weren't supposed to get Navy Crosses." "The Medal of Honor is the highest decoration awarded by the United States government." "The President of the United States decorated me at the White House." "I stepped forward to, "Jack Lucas."" "Harry Truman hung that medal around my neck." "He said, "I'd rather have this medal than be President of the United States."" "I said, "Sir, I'll swap you." He just laughed." "So it was great to be in the United States of America, and to be welcomed, and for them to tell us, "Job well done."" "When the war ended" "I was disappointed that I hadn't died for my country." "I thought I would have to live my life in dishonor." "This was my fear." "I was more afraid of living in dishonor than dying at war." "[Ambrose] Japan immediately became part of the American Anti-Communist Alliance." "The Americans went into Japan with Douglas MacArthur as the head of the occupation to bring about a democracy in Japan." "To reshape Japan." "[Sakita] I was able to overcome my feelings of hatred." "I suffered immensely from radiation poisoning and was hospitalized many times, with many surgeries." "A few times a year I get the urge to commit suicide." "I must resist this urge and continue to live." "I must continue to fight for my cause which is to abolish nuclear weapons." "This gives me a reason to live." "Some of these hills you're looking at here haven't changed, have they?" "The hills haven't changed, but there was no property." " There was nothing left, no." " Nothing up there?" "[Grant] The importance of going back to Okinawa with my family was to show them where their uncle was killed, and to show them where I fought." " This is Kanishu Ridge off to the right." " There's a road that crosses the valley." "You can drive up on the edge of the ridge." "Can you make it up there?" "[Grant] My brother was fighting on Kanishu Ridge." "He was only 200 yards from me where he was killed." "[Mrs. Grant] Standing at Kanishu Ridge, I can envision in my mind the battles 'cause I saw the newsreels." "I could see my husband, a young man, fighting through the war." "And knowing that at any moment he could've been killed." "And what courageous young men we had, to fight and risk their own lives." "[Grant] We went to the Memorial Gardens where the granite stones have everyone's name that died, on Okinawa or off Okinawa." "My children took a rubbing on the stones of the name of my brother." "To be able to have my children there and for us as a family to experience that was the most rewarding part of the trip to Okinawa." "A dead soldier is a basic hero, I think." "A man that died for his country, he's the one who's the real hero." "[Merrill] It's a great sacrifice to a person to give his life." "For those young men and women who had so much to look forward to and are gone," "I just hope that people never forget what they did for freedom." "[Russell] That's the part that really hurts me, the young guys that never had a chance at life." "[Abe] In olden days, there were no surprise attacks." "You woke up the enemy before dueling." "That was the way of the Samurai warrior." "Japan's sneak attack against the U.S. Was not a fair fight." "If war had been declared" "I wouldn't mind having risked my life in battle." "But since it was a sneak attack, I feel guilty about what I did." "I've carried this guilt for fifty years." "On December 7th of 1991, a group of the Japanese pilots from various different ships, I think about 24 of them came." "I met Mr. Abe, and we were drawn to one another for some unknown reason." "Mr. Fiske was a good man." "He was a signal man and a bugler." "He was a bomber pilot off of the aircraft carrier, the Akagi, and he bombed our ship." "So we were saying our last goodbyes at the hotel, and he said, "Richard-san, please, do me this special favor."" "He said, "Would you please buy two roses, one rose for me and one for you," ""and would you please go out to the Arizona and play taps for me?"" "And I've been doing that every month since 1991, and he keeps replenishing me with money." "[Taps plays]" "It is my way of expressing my apologies to the people who lost their lives as a result of our sneak attack." "That is why I bow my head and pray, and dedicate a rose." "What you'll find, if you talk to older veterans, they don't talk about their war experiences to their families." "When these fellows get together at reunions of this kind, they exchange war stories with each other, confident both parties understand what they're really talking about." "Oh, my goodness!" "I finally kissed a nurse!" "I kissed a nurse, first time!" "I go to the Marine conventions every few years to stay in touch with old friends." "And we like to keep those friendships going, because we did have three years, at least, together, under very dire circumstances." "[Snowden] The ones who return to lwo Jima will experience a great emotional period when they get down to an area they recognize on the island." "It really is an emotional experience to stand there and think about what you were doing when you were there." "That immediately brings on thoughts of your friends that you lost." "So it's a matter of revisiting a difficult period in a life, and expressing appreciation for the fact they're here to do it again." "[Shouts] Hoorah!" "That's the way you do it." "How do you like my "I'm a walking advertisement for the corps?"" "You are the Marine Corps poster child here." "[Thomas] I've been wanting to go back to lwo Jima for an awful long time." "I decided that I had to go now, if I was ever going." "I'm looking forward to it as I look forward to going to the dentist." "I know it's something I must do, but I'm not really all that eager to have that tooth pulled." "I know it's going to be painful." "Ready?" "One, two, three!" "30 or 40 years from now, you'll be proud that you were a Marine." "You will be proud, if you're not already." "[Thomas] In particular, one of the things I want to see is the top of Suribachi, where the flag was raised." "Down there is where I spent most of my first day." "Just right down there, within 20 to 30 yards of the beach." "Of the water's edge." "I wanted to see the beach, and the beaches haven't changed." "For over 50 years, I've had nightmares that I just can't describe." "I'm hoping to put these ghosts to rest." "[Laughter]" "[All] Hoorah!" "There they go." "One of the reasons I'm going back to lwo Jima is to take my wife back there and let her see where I fought as a very young man for my country's freedom." "Come on, let's get a picture of this over here." "Anyone wanna get in the picture?" "Come on over, I wanna take a picture with you." "You all look gung-ho and ready to go to war." "Yes, sir." "Need a hand going up?" "[Thomas] Now, I think... maybe I'll be able to spend a year or two of all-night sleep... without these nightmares." "Before I die, and I can die a rested old man." "I kissed you on the beach where I landed 56 years ago." "Isn't that so sweet?" "I met a retired U.S. Veteran and he told me he was sorry." "It brought tears to my eyes." "I told him it wasn't his fault or mine." "We were enemies at war time, but friends now." " 17 in lwo Jima." " 17!" "I was 17, too." "When I'm asked about the war... it's so intolerable to think about it even now." "The loss that comes through those things you can be sure changes your attitude about things forever." "And those of us who are lucky enough to be here today know that we're the luckiest of the lucky." "[Over microphone] Those of us who stood on this island in 1945 find it almost unbelievable that we stand here together once again, to honor our fallen comrades." "We continue to ask for the comfort of their souls." "We seek relief of the sadness for their families." "May they now, and forevermore, rest in peace." "[Marine] Right, face!" "Flank ammunition, load!" "Ready... aim... fire!" "[Shouting orders]" "[Marine] Aim..." "Fire!"