Member Tom Walthaner, SLAC Secretary,
recommended publishing this article. He
will be speaking on WW II at the October 17th meeting
TALE OF SIX BOYS
& 13 HANDS - IWO JIMA
Each
year I am hired to go to Washington , DC , with the eighth grade class
from Clinton, WI. where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I
greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some
special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.
On the last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This
memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most
famous photographs in history -- that of the six brave soldiers raising
the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan,
during WW II.
Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and
headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of
the statue, and as I got closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?'
I told him that we were from Wisconsin. 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too!
Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'
James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the memorial
the following day. He was there that night to say good night to his dad,
who has since passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the buses pull
up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his permission to share
what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour the incredible
monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C., but it is quite another
to get the kind of insight we received that night.
When all had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words
that night.)
'My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is
on that statue, and I just wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers' which
is #5 on the New York Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of
the six boys you see behind me.
'Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground
is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in
the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They
were off to play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't
turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines
in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there
are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war.
You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and
19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home, never
even would talk to their families about it.
He pointed to the statue. 'You see this next guy? That's Rene
Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet off at the moment
this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find
a photograph... a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put that in there for
protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just
boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
'The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank.
Mike is my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him
the 'old man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike
would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese'
or 'Let's die for our country.' He knew he was talking to little boys.
Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your
mothers.'
'The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian
from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one who walked off Iwo Jima. He went into the
White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero.' He told
reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit
the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?' So you take your class
at school, 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything
together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your
classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in
his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead
drunk, face down at the age of 32 .. ten years after this picture
was taken.
'The next guy, going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop,
Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me,
'Yeah, you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General
Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down.
Then we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night. Yes,he was a
fun-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When
the telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop
General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The
neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those
neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
'The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley
from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but
he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers, or the New
York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry,
sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there,
sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or
even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table
eating his Campbell 's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out
fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press. 'You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad
didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes,
'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a
medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably
held over 200 boys as they died.
And when boys died in Iwo Jima , t hey writhed and screamed, without any
medication or help with the pain.
'When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was
a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said,
'I want you always to remember that the heroes o f Iwo Jima are the guys who
did not come back. Did NOT come back.''
'So that's the story about six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo
Jima, and three came back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on
Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My
voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.'
Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a
flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt
words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero.
Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero
nonetheless.
REMINDER:
Everyday that you can wake up free, it's going to be a great day.
One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is
not mentioned here is that if you look at the statue very closely and
count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man
who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th
hand was the hand of God.
C W
"Bill" Cutler
www.nansulator-rgv.com
956.827.4055