Camarillo grandfather at last revisits World War II
Memories of Iwo Jima vet; unforgettable imprints

By John Mitchell
jmitchell@VenturaCountyStar.com
Sunday, May 27, 2007

"Once a Marine, always a Marine. It's true."

The words, spoken quietly after some reflection, came from former Marine Pfc. Johnnie Beach.

For 36 days in February and March 1945, Beach lived through bullets and explosions on Iwo Jima. His unforgettable imprints of that experience remain sharp and disturbing.

Beach, 83, and living in Camarillo with his wife of 63 years, Grace, began talking about his time in World War II only in recent years. His silence, he said, ended with a question from grandson Eric, who was curious about his family's history.

On Feb. 19, 1945, Marines and sailors landed on the beaches of Iwo Jima. The Japanese defenders held their fire until the shoreline was loaded with Americans, then opened up with everything they had.

Many of the Japanese were dug into the slopes of 546-feet-high Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano. The view gave them a clear field of fire at the unprotected shoreline where men from three Marine divisions slipped and slid and frantically burrowed into loose volcanic ash as others raced from landing craft.

Thousands of Marines and sailors were caught in the open. Some got a measure of protection from the sides of amphibious and land vehicles. They were the lucky ones.

Water and ash at the shoreline turned red. Hundreds of bodies and body parts mingled with the living. Screams from the wounded mixed with gunfire and explosions.

Beach watched the fury from an LST, a large, cargo-carrying landing ship, several hundred yards offshore. An artilleryman with Mike Battery, 4th Battalion, 13th Marines, 5th Marine Division, he was a replacement driver for a DUKW (amphibious truck).

'Nobody even spit at us'

That day he had expected to ferry ammunition ashore for his outfit's 105 mm howitzers.

"But it didn't happen," he said as he and Grace sat at a table in their home. "They held me back. I saw some black soldiers taking ammo to the beach that first day."

The black Marines were members of the 8th Ammunition Company. They delivered supplies and ammunition from ship to shore and established ammo dumps during the battle.

On the second day, with Marines barely inland from the waterline, Beach drove a DUKW loaded with 105 mm ammunition toward the beach.

"I landed at midmorning, and because the (volcanic ash) beach had practically no traction for wheels, they hooked a line from a tractor and pulled you in," Beach said.

"I'll never forget it."

As Beach remembered, he suddenly stopped and fought back tears. Slowly, he shook his head, then said, "The worst part of it was that I know I ran over some bodies and parts of bodies when the tractor pulled me to shore."

On the beach, he was told he had to get the DUKW up a small rise on which the Japanese had trained their guns.

"A DUKW in front of us went to the top and was blown up," he said. "Then we went up and nobody even spit at us. I figured that was an 'attaboy!' for me."

After unloading the DUKW, he and a buddy turned the vehicle over to the black Marines and went to their artillery piece, one of 12 howitzers in a line.

'We didn't get much sleep'

For the next month, Beach's crew fired their howitzer at Japanese positions.

"We didn't get much sleep," he said. "We drew straws to see who would get to sleep for four hours."

Over the course of the battle, Beach's outfit took few casualties.

"That's because we were able to dig a basin in the sand and put a lot of the dirt all the way around," he said. "I stayed behind that and didn't move around. One time a B.A.R. (Browning automatic rifle) man decided to get a souvenir. They cut him in half.

"In all the time I was on Iwo Jima I never saw a live Japanese. But I did see a few dead ones."

When the war ended, Beach became a military policeman and did six months of occupation duty in Japan, which included Nagasaki, the city destroyed by an atomic bomb.

On April 1, 1946, three years to the day after he had enlisted in Walterboro, S.C., Beach was discharged from the Marine Corps.

Over the years, he worked a variety of jobs, the longest being 22 years as an agent for Prudential Insurance.

He had met Grace in 1944 at the Palladium in Hollywood when he was on liberty. He was in uniform.

They clicked. "I thought she looked pretty sharp," he remembered.

"He always looked tip-top to me," Grace said with a broad smile. "We got married on Aug. 26, 1944, in Oceanside."

Today, the couple have three children, six grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

Beach said he will observe this Memorial Day as he has those in the past.

"I don't do anything special," he said, "except, of course, put the flag up outside."

As for his "always a Marine" feelings, he drives with semper fidelis and the Marine Corps emblem stickers on the back window of his car.

Ellie