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thedrifter
09-03-07, 06:24 AM
denver & the west
"Hand Grenade Joe" finally given honors for war fought so long ago
By Howard Pankratz Denver Post Staff Writer
The Denver Post
Article Last Updated:09/03/2007 01:32:44 AM MDT


Far below him in the dense jungle of Guadalcanal, Colorado's Joe Espinosa could see the palm leaves stirring.

He couldn't see the Japanese, they were so well-hidden.

But the shaking of the leaves told him they were climbing the ridge to encircle him and his company of Marines, who were 30 to 40 feet behind him.

And that moment, the miner's son from Trinidad took action that earned him his nickname that remains today.

"Hand Grenade Joe" sprung into action.

He had two boxes of grenades with him on the point of the ridge.

In rapid succession, he rained the grenades down the hill - at least 24 of them.

"They retreated. A hand grenade going down a slope like that can cause a lot of damage," Espinosa, 87, recalled Sunday.

At reunions, the guys he fought with always call out: "How you doing, Hand Grenade Joe? and "Hey, Joe, you remember those grenades?"

Espinosa sat in his Arvada home and remembered how he volunteered to take point - lead man on a patrol.

"We didn't have room for too many people on the point - it was the size of an anthill," he said.

And Espinosa said he wasn't scared - not there on the Guadalcanal ridge or on Peleliu Island or Cape Gloucester on the island of New Britain.

He was just too busy, he recalled.

In the South Pacific, a Marine was either hustling across the water and sand of a landing beach or fighting his way inland.

"You had to do everything so fast, you didn't have time to think," he said with a slight smile. "You got to do what you got to do."

Espinosa was not only skilled in combat but was a jazz musician who blew - according to newspaper articles - a "hot trumpet."

Before he ever left the Marine base in San Diego, the Corps had put him in bands. When he and his buddies took a respite in Australia, he toured with both a "jive band" and a more formal orchestra. The grateful Aussies took the Yanks into their homes.

When he returned to Colorado, Espinosa got nothing - not a Purple Heart for a wound later in the war, not his campaign ribbons for Guadalcanal or Peleliu, not a presidential citation for serving in World War II.

He played in jazz bands across the state while holding down his real job at Gates Rubber, where he made rubber car hoses for 37 years.

But three weeks ago, he received the medal and the ribbons that he thought he would get 63 years earlier.

Two Marine Corps sergeants showed up at his front door.

His wife, Barbara, recalled the moment clearly.

"He said, 'How did you find me?' They answered, 'We are Marines, sir.' "

Joe Espinosa is unusual - a Marine who fought in the South Pacific who has enormous sympathy for the Japanese soldiers he faced.

"They didn't seem like they wanted to fight," Espinosa recalled. "They were just kids, just a bunch of kids, maybe 14 or 15. They'd sit down and cry when captured. They didn't want to be out there."

Espinosa also believes that war doesn't solve the world's problems.

"No one wins a war. Everybody's friends now. I don't think war is the answer to anything."

Although modest, there is one more thing Espinosa would like - a medal commemorating his hand grenade stand on Guadalcanal.

With his fortitude, he may get to see that.

Every morning, Barbara Espinosa says, her husband walks around a corner into the kitchen and says:

"I'm still here."

Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.

Ellie