thedrifter
11-11-06, 10:55 AM
Grim story of Iwo Jima brought alive through World War II veteran's writing
By MICHAEL MOLITORIS
Mike Aaron's father never spoke about his service as a World War II medic with the U.S. Navy.
For sure, Melvin Aaron's story was too painful to relate.
The elder Aaron died in 1985 and Mike, a Vietnam veteran from Clarion, knew very little about his father's military service - just details he had spied when he was younger while looking through some of his father's papers.
But another story, the one the younger Aaron learned while absorbing Clint Eastwood's new motion picture, "Flags of Our Fathers," brought thoughts of his father, and what he must have experienced during the war, flooding back.
The movie relates the stories of the six men who raised the flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima - a February 1945 turning point in World War II.
The realistically graphic film has already driven scores of long-silent World War II vets to an emotional place that's allowing them to open up and share their experiences for the first time.
The night that Mike Aaron viewed the film in Clarion, he saw, firsthand, the effect it could have in luring pent-up emotions from the mental safe houses of soldiers who fought that war a lifetime ago.
"There were a couple older gentlemen behind me, and when the movie was over, they were just weeping," Aaron said.
The experience was a poignant illustration ironically timed to coincide with Veterans Day.
"They're not teaching this in schools anymore. Looking back on Iwo Jima and World War II, I think that future generations need to have movies and information like this before them to learn (what was sacrificed) for the freedom we enjoy and have today," he added.
Melvin Aaron, he believes, still would not have opened up had he seen the picture. But when the younger Aaron went back to his father's papers this fall (because of the film), he learned the grim story his father probably would have related.
Melvin Aaron, a lifelong Clarion County resident, accompanied the first wave of U.S. Marines as they stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima.
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It was D-Day, Feb. 19, 1945. We boarded our tractor and started into the beach, but it was not as easy as that, as we had to make two tries at the beach before we got in. The first time we drew so much Jap fire we could not make a landing, so we had to turn back away from the beach and wait till the ships started to lay down ... then we went in under their fire. That way we drew very little Jap fire.
After we did get on the beach, the Marines wanted us to go back to our ship, for the Jap mortar fire was so heavy that they did not know if they were going to hold the couple hundred yards of beach or not. But they did - with a loss of a great many lives.
The first day they worked their way up and across the first air strip which is known as Motoma Air Field. About four o'clock on D-Day, the (Landing Ship Tank) started to pull into the beach and unload heavy artillery and rockets mounted on trucks. That is when I (saw) the sight of my life, for the beach was just laying full of dead Marines.
It was bad enough seeing them laying there, but when they started unloading the LSTs, the trucks, tanks and all the other moving equipment that was being unloaded off the ships ... were running over the Marines that laid dead there on that volcanic ash.
It didn't bother me too much to see them blown apart as it did to see them being run over with tanks and trucks.
Like one captain said, 'We don't have time to think of the dead Marines. We have to think of the live ones.'
After about a week of fighting, the quartermaster went around in a truck and gathered up the dead, and by that time (they) smelled so bad and were bloated up so big you wouldn't know your best friend.
They were stacked into the truck one on top of the other. And what I mean (is that) he really had a collection of maybe an arm or leg, or maybe a body just from the stomach up. So you can imagine what kind of a job he had.
Then they were hauled up on the side hill right below Motoma Air Field where they were lined up in a row for identification. Then they were left to lay there till the Japs were (driven) back far enough to dig trenches so they could be buried. After the trenches were dug, the dead were placed in side-by-side and covered over. Then they made little mounds of dirt on the top like in a civilian cemetery (and) put a fence around it made out of whitewashed rock. The fence was about two feet high. Then at the opening to it, they put up a flagpole and at the base of it, they had 'Fourth Division,' and right next to that they had the Marine Corps emblem that was also made out of whitewashed rock.
Then, at the head end of each mound, they had little wooden crosses with their name on it. ... If there was someone they couldn't identify, they would just put 'Unknown' in place of the name.
Then when the island was secured, ... General (Clifton B.) Cates dedicated the cemetery. It was really a nice ceremony (and) each division had their own cemetery.
-------
Melvin Aaron, one of five brothers who served during World War II, was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation as part of the assault troops of the Fifth Amphibious Corps, Reinforced, U.S. Fleet Marine Force.
Mike Aaron also found a typewritten copy of an editorial from The New York Times tucked in with his father's documents. Titled "Bloody Iwo," the Fleet Marine Force headquarters directed on April 20, 1945, that copies of the piece be distributed throughout all commands.
"Enclosure (A) is forwarded as being typical of the excellent job the leaders of the American press and radio are doing in interpreting the war for the American public," wrote Capt. John H. Walter, of the U.S. Marine Corps.
The editorial related the numbers: 4,189 Marines dead; 15,308 wounded; 441 missing.
"In 26 days on the 8-square-mile island of Iwo, the Marines thus lost half as many men as they had lost in three years of war up to then. This was the most costly engagement in the 168-year history of the United States Marine Corps."
The writer identified the landing as "the toughest military assignment ever given to an amphibious corps."
-------
The strategic importance of Iwo is obvious. Its capture already has paid dividends in the air war against Japan, negatively by denying its uses to the Japanese as a fighter base and warning station, and affirmatively by providing a base for fighter cover for the B-29's and a halfway point for the landing of cripples en route to their home bases on Guam and Saipan.
It is difficult to follow the reasoning of the suggestions that it might have been bypassed. The alternatives were even worse. Chichi in the Bonins looks like an even more formidable fortress with its precipitous cliffs and heavy vegetation. Iwo had to be taken if the Japanese home islands ever were to be assaulted, and that is the only way the war can be quickly and completely won.
-------
A pledge to honor
Today, World War II veterans are dying at the rate of approximately 1,000 per day, Mike Aaron said. The number astounds him, and as a personal endeavor, he is part of the Clarion County World War II Veterans Memorial Committee.
The group has undertaken a campaign to raise enough funds to install a $16,500 memorial in Clarion Memorial Park across from the county courthouse in Clarion.
"The veterans of World War II may have prevailed on the battlefield, but will eventually lose the battle against the most insidious and relentless of all enemies: the passage of time," wrote committee chairman Donald Montgomery.
Aaron owns Clarion Monument Company and is working on the monument's final design. It will pay tribute to all Clarion County men and women - from all branches - who fought during the war.
"My purpose is to honor all World War II veterans for what they did," Aaron said. "And to honor my dad."
Donations for the memorial may be sent to the World War II Veterans Memorial Committee, in care of Donald Montgomery, 862 Moggey Road, Sligo, 16255; or Rita Wilson, P.O. Box 23, 249 Market St., Strattanville, 16258.
Ellie
By MICHAEL MOLITORIS
Mike Aaron's father never spoke about his service as a World War II medic with the U.S. Navy.
For sure, Melvin Aaron's story was too painful to relate.
The elder Aaron died in 1985 and Mike, a Vietnam veteran from Clarion, knew very little about his father's military service - just details he had spied when he was younger while looking through some of his father's papers.
But another story, the one the younger Aaron learned while absorbing Clint Eastwood's new motion picture, "Flags of Our Fathers," brought thoughts of his father, and what he must have experienced during the war, flooding back.
The movie relates the stories of the six men who raised the flag at the Battle of Iwo Jima - a February 1945 turning point in World War II.
The realistically graphic film has already driven scores of long-silent World War II vets to an emotional place that's allowing them to open up and share their experiences for the first time.
The night that Mike Aaron viewed the film in Clarion, he saw, firsthand, the effect it could have in luring pent-up emotions from the mental safe houses of soldiers who fought that war a lifetime ago.
"There were a couple older gentlemen behind me, and when the movie was over, they were just weeping," Aaron said.
The experience was a poignant illustration ironically timed to coincide with Veterans Day.
"They're not teaching this in schools anymore. Looking back on Iwo Jima and World War II, I think that future generations need to have movies and information like this before them to learn (what was sacrificed) for the freedom we enjoy and have today," he added.
Melvin Aaron, he believes, still would not have opened up had he seen the picture. But when the younger Aaron went back to his father's papers this fall (because of the film), he learned the grim story his father probably would have related.
Melvin Aaron, a lifelong Clarion County resident, accompanied the first wave of U.S. Marines as they stormed the beaches of Iwo Jima.
-------
It was D-Day, Feb. 19, 1945. We boarded our tractor and started into the beach, but it was not as easy as that, as we had to make two tries at the beach before we got in. The first time we drew so much Jap fire we could not make a landing, so we had to turn back away from the beach and wait till the ships started to lay down ... then we went in under their fire. That way we drew very little Jap fire.
After we did get on the beach, the Marines wanted us to go back to our ship, for the Jap mortar fire was so heavy that they did not know if they were going to hold the couple hundred yards of beach or not. But they did - with a loss of a great many lives.
The first day they worked their way up and across the first air strip which is known as Motoma Air Field. About four o'clock on D-Day, the (Landing Ship Tank) started to pull into the beach and unload heavy artillery and rockets mounted on trucks. That is when I (saw) the sight of my life, for the beach was just laying full of dead Marines.
It was bad enough seeing them laying there, but when they started unloading the LSTs, the trucks, tanks and all the other moving equipment that was being unloaded off the ships ... were running over the Marines that laid dead there on that volcanic ash.
It didn't bother me too much to see them blown apart as it did to see them being run over with tanks and trucks.
Like one captain said, 'We don't have time to think of the dead Marines. We have to think of the live ones.'
After about a week of fighting, the quartermaster went around in a truck and gathered up the dead, and by that time (they) smelled so bad and were bloated up so big you wouldn't know your best friend.
They were stacked into the truck one on top of the other. And what I mean (is that) he really had a collection of maybe an arm or leg, or maybe a body just from the stomach up. So you can imagine what kind of a job he had.
Then they were hauled up on the side hill right below Motoma Air Field where they were lined up in a row for identification. Then they were left to lay there till the Japs were (driven) back far enough to dig trenches so they could be buried. After the trenches were dug, the dead were placed in side-by-side and covered over. Then they made little mounds of dirt on the top like in a civilian cemetery (and) put a fence around it made out of whitewashed rock. The fence was about two feet high. Then at the opening to it, they put up a flagpole and at the base of it, they had 'Fourth Division,' and right next to that they had the Marine Corps emblem that was also made out of whitewashed rock.
Then, at the head end of each mound, they had little wooden crosses with their name on it. ... If there was someone they couldn't identify, they would just put 'Unknown' in place of the name.
Then when the island was secured, ... General (Clifton B.) Cates dedicated the cemetery. It was really a nice ceremony (and) each division had their own cemetery.
-------
Melvin Aaron, one of five brothers who served during World War II, was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation as part of the assault troops of the Fifth Amphibious Corps, Reinforced, U.S. Fleet Marine Force.
Mike Aaron also found a typewritten copy of an editorial from The New York Times tucked in with his father's documents. Titled "Bloody Iwo," the Fleet Marine Force headquarters directed on April 20, 1945, that copies of the piece be distributed throughout all commands.
"Enclosure (A) is forwarded as being typical of the excellent job the leaders of the American press and radio are doing in interpreting the war for the American public," wrote Capt. John H. Walter, of the U.S. Marine Corps.
The editorial related the numbers: 4,189 Marines dead; 15,308 wounded; 441 missing.
"In 26 days on the 8-square-mile island of Iwo, the Marines thus lost half as many men as they had lost in three years of war up to then. This was the most costly engagement in the 168-year history of the United States Marine Corps."
The writer identified the landing as "the toughest military assignment ever given to an amphibious corps."
-------
The strategic importance of Iwo is obvious. Its capture already has paid dividends in the air war against Japan, negatively by denying its uses to the Japanese as a fighter base and warning station, and affirmatively by providing a base for fighter cover for the B-29's and a halfway point for the landing of cripples en route to their home bases on Guam and Saipan.
It is difficult to follow the reasoning of the suggestions that it might have been bypassed. The alternatives were even worse. Chichi in the Bonins looks like an even more formidable fortress with its precipitous cliffs and heavy vegetation. Iwo had to be taken if the Japanese home islands ever were to be assaulted, and that is the only way the war can be quickly and completely won.
-------
A pledge to honor
Today, World War II veterans are dying at the rate of approximately 1,000 per day, Mike Aaron said. The number astounds him, and as a personal endeavor, he is part of the Clarion County World War II Veterans Memorial Committee.
The group has undertaken a campaign to raise enough funds to install a $16,500 memorial in Clarion Memorial Park across from the county courthouse in Clarion.
"The veterans of World War II may have prevailed on the battlefield, but will eventually lose the battle against the most insidious and relentless of all enemies: the passage of time," wrote committee chairman Donald Montgomery.
Aaron owns Clarion Monument Company and is working on the monument's final design. It will pay tribute to all Clarion County men and women - from all branches - who fought during the war.
"My purpose is to honor all World War II veterans for what they did," Aaron said. "And to honor my dad."
Donations for the memorial may be sent to the World War II Veterans Memorial Committee, in care of Donald Montgomery, 862 Moggey Road, Sligo, 16255; or Rita Wilson, P.O. Box 23, 249 Market St., Strattanville, 16258.
Ellie