Photo By Lance Cpl. Carlos Chavez-Flores | Don Graves, a retired Marine and combat veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima, tells his...... read more read more
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MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII – In December 2024, MCBH had the honor of hosting veterans of the Battle of Iwo Jima. After the veterans paid respects at the Iwo Jima memorial, Marines from across MCBH had the unique opportunity to learn about their firsthand experience of the battle.
Don Graves, a former flamethrower operator, recalled his time in the Marine Corps. He told his story to the Marines, sharing a message that has stuck with him to this day.
Graves recalled watching President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” address to congress, in which he asked congress to declare war against the Empire of Japan following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
“So help me God,” said then sixteen-year-old Graves. “That's it, tomorrow I’m skipping school and going down to the federal building in Detroit. I’m going to sign up for the Marine Corps!”
Following recruit training and time spent in the Pacific Theater, Graves was assigned to the 2nd Anti-Tank Battalion, doing training exercises in New Zealand and San Diego. What they were training for, however, was a mystery to Graves.
“We did all this training, day in and day out. We simulated a raid on San Clemente Island, but the thing was that nobody knew what we were training for. We were moved to Hawaii and were eight months into training when they gave us orders to load onto a ship in the Honolulu area.”
The battalion never learned where they were going until they were a day out from Iwo Jima.
“They brought out a clay model and explained: ‘Here is Iwo Jima. You’re going to assault the beach in waves, take Suribachi, and then join the rest of your division going north.’ That’s what we did.”
Graves landed on Iwo Jima in the third wave at 8 a.m. on February 19, 1945. On the beach, he could tell this wasn’t going to be easy as there was constant machine gun fire coming from the base of Mount Suribachi; nobody could move, nobody could get up.
“If you moved, you were dead. We struggled moving up with little cover, but let me tell you, the pilots of the Army Air Corps made the best foxholes a Marine could crawl into. It took us three days to move from the beach to the base of Mount Suribachi, which was about 540 feet away from where we landed. It was a bloody battle to the base; I burned a few pillboxes. But when we finally made it to the top, we looked out there and we saw the American flag going up.”
Graves was just a few feet away from the iconic flag raising on Iwo Jima. He remembered going up to it and seeing that the pole the flag flew on was nothing more than a drainpipe. Despite its makeshift flagpole, the flag raising symbolized something greater to the Marines at this battle.
“It renewed our morale. It was a symbol of a turning point in this war. We lost a lot of great men in just three days. We had 335 Marines in Second Battalion going in. Only 18 of us made it out. I think about my buddies all the time,” said Graves.
Graves recalled his last day in Iwo Jima, a day that he would never forget. It started off with a formation in front of a cemetery on Mount Suribachi. They were ordered to march through the gate and say their goodbyes to their comrades and officers. As they marched inside, Graves saw a note nailed on the left arch of the entrance to the cemetery that Marines were reading as they walked by.
“I walked over to that note, and this message just stuck with me. It read: Fellas. When you go home, tell our folks that we did our best. That they may have many more tomorrows.”
| Date Taken: | 12.30.2024 |
| Date Posted: | 12.30.2024 16:46 |
| Story ID: | 488465 |
| Location: | MARINE CORPS BASE HAWAII, HAWAII, US |
| Web Views: | 35 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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