US Marine Bill Quinn. “Landing on Iwo Jima.”

Bill Quinn was 96 years old when we first met. We spent the afternoon together as he reminisced about being a US Marine during WWII and wearing his Iwo Jima sweatshirt. His eyes were sharp and his memory amazed me with details. As always, video camera running so you get his story first-hand. Following is an excerpt from our conversation, you’re now a fly-on-the-wall.

A replacement division for the 4th Marine division that had already been through several battles. After Tinian and Saipan, they joined the 4th Marine division while in Maui Hawaii in 1944.

“My son’s wife father was with me on Iwo Jima. He was with the army, after we got off the island he stayed for another 5 months. He took pictures of all the graves and stuff that was never published.”

By then, Bill was an old 24 year old Marine. On January 1st, 1945 he sailed off from the shores of Pearl Harbor. The wrecks were still there and a strong reminder of what their job was headed for. Leaving to an unknown destination until far out to sea (after buying all the supplies from Merritt Supply site), Quinn and his mates were informed of their destination: Iwo Jima. Arriving February 19, 1945. Although supposed to arrive on January 20th, Commander of the South Pacific General McAuthor was having trouble in Leyte and decided to hold up the marines at sea for 30 days. “In case he needed us to go in.”

They didn’t know much about it, “It’s only a small little island and should take 4-5 days to take. They didn’t expect much opposition. We were all happy about that. They had told us the air force had bombed the place for 4-5 months, everything should be all flattened out there. But it didn’t happen that way.”

The 4th and 5th marine division invaded Iwo Jima simultaneously. The 5th heading for Mt. Suribachi while Quinn and the 4th headed for the flat black sands beach.

Quinn went in about 3 hours after the first wave. The battleships would be pounding Mt Suribachi, they’d stop long enough to allow the troops to invade. “Once we went ashore, all the Japanese came out with their mortars and had us all sized in. Utter havoc on the beach. My division, the 4th division was on the beach we got heavy heavy casualties. We lost nineteen-hundred and four marines to death.”

“They were still dropping bombs on the beach, the 4th division were get hit pretty hard. My job was to help pull the ammunition cart for the 81MM mortars and we couldn’t pull the carts up Black Sands Beach. They (Japanese) had pushed all the black sands onto the beach and made a high hill. We couldn’t go through the sand. We got orders to pick up the canisters of mortors and hand carry them in.”

“The bombs were still dropping but we all went in. We got to the top of this hill and I noted to my right, there must have been 10-15 marines, aiming their rifles towards the beach, none of them moved. They were all dead. I didn’t recognize that because until we all started to move and they didn’t. They were all cleaned and just like nothing had happened, they wasn’t any blown up parts or anything. They must have all been killed by some kind of concussion bomb. Just like that.”

“We started down with these canisters under our arms, and other equipment, the canisters of mortars, they carried three rounds in each cannister,” Said Quinn. “Never thinking about it, but if any of us were hit, it would have blown us to pieces. But we didn’t think about that, we just thought about ‘How do we stay alive?’ We started to cross the beach, the bombs were still dropping, but close to us, they were more inland. We stayed about fifteen yards apart from each other going in.

“Then, a bunch of Marine fighter pilots came down with their planes and they hit the cliffs where all the mortars were. The right side where the Japanese were set up was being hit with napalm bombs and rockets. That gave us time to get across safely. We lost a couple guys, my Lt got killed. But it was crawling from bomb crater to bomb crater with a big thing under my arm, plus my rifle, back pack, canteens, ammunition, grenades hanging on me. Anyhow, we finally got across the beach, but I had to almost crawl on my knees. After a while jump from bomb hole to bomb hole to get to us but we made it OK.”

“ We went right up a graded spot to get to airport #1. Thats where we were supposed to go, that was our detail for the day. We were safe because all the bombing was happening on the beach and they [Japanese] didn’t have us under their guns. We dug holes there and set up our trip-flares* for the area and settled in. The next day, we were still settled in and we heard digging under our foxholes. They were digging tunnels or what have you, we hear them digging all the time. We don’t know where the hell they’re digging for. Digging these tunnels. After awhile you ignore it because they are doing it all over.”

“anyhow, we’re in our foxholes and it rained like hell and got cold as hell. Freezing cold and all we had was our ponchos over our light denims and we froze. But some core-man came by and he dropped us off some blankets so that saved us all from getting pneumonia. We got over that night. By the fourth day, in the morning there were a lot off explosions going on down at the beach. It was the 5th division, they had raised the flag over Iwo Jima. We were all very happy, meanwhile the ships were all blowing horns and sending up flares and everything else. So we were all very happy saying the war must be over. In 3 or 4 days as they indicated it should only take that amount of time. But they were wrong. 22

* “ Trip flares, we’d put them on everything around our circumstances so they can’t walk up to us and catch us unaware. It’s our alarm.