NARRATOR: It is remembered
as one of the pivotal battles of the Second World War, and
the bloodiest in the history of the US Marine Corps. For 36 days, nearly 16,000
Marines and 20,000 Japanese engaged in a merciless
fight to the death for just 7 and 1/2 square
miles of godforsaken rock, sand and volcanic ash. The assault on Iwo Jima. Next on Dangerous Missions. [music playing] In February 1945, the remote
Pacific island of Iwo Jima was being called the
perfect battlefield-- a killing ground of
unprecedented purity. Perfect because months
before the invasion, the Japanese soldiers
had evacuated the native inhabitants
and civilian laborers, so there was no risk of innocent
bystanders getting in the way. On Iwo Jima, it was
warrior against warrior where everybody and every
square inch was a target. CHUCK TATUM: My biggest
concern was that I'd run out of luck, run out of chances. How many days can you stay
there and not get killed? GENE TAPIA: You just have
to take it as it comes. And if you're strong enough
to stand it, you can stand it. If you're not strong enough,
you're going to crack. TED SALISBURY: If you didn't get
wounded, you were going to die. That's just about
the size of it. There was no getting off the
island without getting hit somewhere. NARRATOR: The battle for
Iwo Jima really started months earlier on the airfields
of the Marianas Islands of Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. By the end of 1944, hundreds
of giant Boeing B-29 super fortresses, the state-of-the-art
and strategic bombers were taking off from these island
airstrips to bomb Japan. For each 11 men air crew, it was
a grueling 15-hour, 3,000 mile round trip. Their only obstacle was Iwo
Jima, a small island shaped like a pork chop about
halfway to Japan. Japanese fighter planes based
at the two airfields on Iwo, launched attacks on
the American bombers. And a radar station
atop Mount Suribachi, a 550 foot volcano
at the southern tip, gave the Japanese
homeland two hours warning of an impending
bomber attack. The Air Force wanted
Iwo Jima neutralized, and it was up to the
Marines to do it. [suspenseful music] Codenamed Operation
Detachment, the plan to invade Iwo Jima called for
two divisions, the 4th and 5th Marine divisions
to lead the assault and land along a two-mile
long stretch of beach. The 3rd Marine Division,
held in reserve, would follow up as
soon as possible. Each division of
20,000 to 25,000 men had its own artillery, its
own tanks, combat engineers, communications, and
medical personnel. Collectively, this was a tough
combat savvy landing force, as lethal and amphibious
spearhead as the Marine Corps had ever fielded. On February 16, the Navy
kicked off the attack with three days of
heavy bombardment. On Monday, February 19
at 6:30 in the morning, the order was given to
land the landing force. And the curtain rose on the
Marine Corps greatest battle. LOUIE TORLONE: We thought it
was going to be fast in and out, 'cause it wasn't that big. We were three divisions
against 20,000 Japanese. We thought it was
going to be a cakewalk. FELTON OWENS: I never saw
so many ships in my life before or since. They were just all over the
place, all kinds of ships. Everything that
you could think of was in the water
and very visible. GREG EMERY: Now you're only
one of many landing craft that are going to hit that beach. You keep going in a circle as
other landing craft join you in an ever widening circle. When that particular
wave is completed, then it becomes
no longer a circle but it stretches out
in a straight line. And at a given signal, that
wave heads toward the beach. [gunshots] [drums] MIKE MERVOST: From my
landing craft, what I've seen was just a big mass
of dust and clouds and everything like that. I said, there's no way that
no one could lived through all of that. This is going to
be a piece of cake. CHUCK TATUM: The Japanese
had this supposed plan. They had all these drums of
gasoline moored in the water. And when we got
to certain places, they would explode this
on the Amtraks coming in. And as a consequence
of that, we were issued a white, protective
screen, a cream that you put on your face. Kind of like Super Duty
sun lotion, the way I would describe it now. And it was perfectly white. It's like quite clown makeup. Pretty soon all your buddies
looked like Halloween ghoul. TED SALISBURY: We had
a lot of replacements from other campaigns and
this was our first time. And they were hot to trot. They wanted to get in
there and do their thing, but the old guys, they knew
it wasn't going to be easy. I was beyond being
scared to go in there, but you got to go do
what you gotta do. They trained you to
do this, and there's no way you can back out. How are you going to tell the
guys you're not going to go? TRUMAN PATTERSON: Everybody
depends on everybody else. And you feel like you can
depend on the guy on the right, on the left of you
and behind you. And you want to make very
sure you do not failed them. GENE TAPIA: We had
never experienced this frontal assault business. We'd always had a jungle to
work in or heels and whatnot. When we looked at what we were
going into, your life just, you had to go right down into
that cauldron and work on it. There was no other way. FELTON OWENS: You're so
frightened that you tend to operate as if you
are someone else. You fall back on the
training, the discipline that you have been going
through for the last few months. That's the fuel that keeps you
going in the face of your fear. [suspenseful music] HERSHEL WILLIAMS: I dropped the
front of the raft of Higgins boat and there's just
Marines everywhere. There's equipment everywhere. Gear everywhere, scattered. It just looked like somebody had
dropped a whole bunch of junk. [laughs] RICHARD BONNET:
But I was thinking, this is a first and only landing
I ever made in the Marine Corps. Both friendly and full that
I didn't get my feet wet. That just rode a wave up
there, and I just bounced out and I was dry and I'm
thinking, boy, I'm not even wet this time. [laughs] TED SALISBURY: My first
thought was, I don't know. Where can we go
through this sand? [gunshots] You'd step and go up this
ramp, and it's go up one step, and you go back
down to half a step. And that-- what kind
of an island is this? CHUCK TATUM: We talk about
sand, but they weren't. They were volcanic crystals. And they didn't
adhere to each other. They didn't compact
or anything like that. That is like digging in
a wheat bin, you know? [laughs] You dug in it, they
would just fill back up. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: It's
like walking on BBs. And trying to run in
it was impossible. It got all over you. And it was sticky,
you were sweaty. Just hot and sweaty and
sweating everywhere. NARRATOR: Within 45
minutes, thousands of men, all sorts of vehicles, and tons
of supplies jammed the beach. The Marines were met with
only sporadic small arms and artillery fire. For a short while, it looked
like the invasion would indeed be a cakewalk. [suspenseful music] [explosion] Then a little after 10:00
AM, the Japanese defenders opened up with all they had
and turned the black sand beach into a butcher shop. [suspenseful music] Many Marines that came
ashore on Iwo Jima on D-day, February 19, 1945 expected
that the island could be taken in about a week, but
their optimism abruptly vanished under an intense
artillery and mortar barrage. The Marines had underestimated
the Japanese defenders and their commander, General
Tatamichi Kuribayashi. With 30 years of distinguished
service to his emperor, Kuribayashi accepted
his new assignment to organize the defense
of Iwo Jima in May 1944 as nothing less than
a death sentence. Shortly after arriving
on the island, he wrote home to his wife,
do not plan for my return. [suspenseful music] For the next nine
months, Kuribayashi's men dug miles of underground tunnels
to link hundreds of hidden gun emplacements, caves,
pillboxes, and command posts. The Japanese had turned Iwo
Jima into one giant fortress. The Marines didn't
know about the tunnels, and they also didn't know that
Kuribayashi had told his men that it was their duty to
kill 10 Marines before dying. Each Japanese soldier, he said,
should think of his defense position as his graveyard. Gene Tapia was 20 years old
and had never been in combat. GENE TAPIA: Noise is
contagious in a real battle. Noise of some type screaming,
hollering, orders being flashed around, cannons going off,
mortars exploding all around. From a fire popping off about
your ears, but you learn quick. Get your butt down
as low as you can and try to hang on to your hat. And your officer
tell you, sic 'em! That's what you do. You go sic 'em. NARRATOR: Richard Bonnet was
21 when he landed on Iwo. This was his third
Pacific invasion. RICHARD BONNET: Mortars
never put forward. They were just coming down
somewhere all the time. Sometimes real heavy,
maybe they let up a little and down, they would come. Around ship like it
had an earthquake. There was so much
firing going on. NARRATOR: Truman Patterson
was 18, and a mortar man. TRUMAN PATTERSON: It's not
a question in your mind. Are you going to get a bullet? You know in your heart. It's just not a question
of if, but when. NARRATOR: Alvin Dunlap
was 19 and a rifleman. ALVAN DUNLAP: The shells
are firing all over. The fragments are coming
from any direction. If your buddy gets killed
and you don't, well, it's not your fault. It's just the
luck of the cards or whatever. Of course everybody,
I think, feels that it's going to
be the other guy. It's not going to be me. It tries you on that you think,
OK, we're in this, and so on. And I know I'm going
to come out of it, but I'm not so sure about you. NARRATOR: One of the thousands
of Marines fighting to get off the beach was a 29-year-old
Gunnery Sergeant named John Basilone. His friends called
him Manila John, and he was the pride
of the Marine Corps. Three years earlier in 1942,
on Guadalcanal, the New Jersey native single-handedly
stopped a Japanese attack with his 30 caliber machine gun. For that, he received
the Medal of Honor and was ordered
back to the States for a morale boosting bond tour. Sergeant John Basilone, I'm
very happy to welcome you, the first enlisted Marine to
receive the Congressional Medal of Honor. And we're very proud to
have you in New York City. Can you tell us
something about how you happened to get this medal? You must have mauled them down. Yes, sir. I was in a good
outfit with good men. I just happened to be there, and
anyone would have done the same in my place. Spoken just like a Marine. NARRATOR: The Marines offered
to make Basilone an officer, but he refused. He wanted to rejoin his unit. And on February 19, Gunnery
Sergeant John Basilone was back in action on Iwo Jima. For many other Marines
like Chuck Tatum, an 18-year-old machine
gunner, the assault on Iwo was their first experience
under enemy fire. CHUCK TATUM: Now everybody
else, including myself was attempting to dig to
China with their hands. [laughs] And I looked back,
and here's a guy standing up, walking on the beach. And I'm thinking,
Jesus, [inaudible].. And I realized it's Basilone. And the people who stopped
never even got to the terraces, kicking him saying,
get up or you're going to die on the goddamn beach. Get going. NARRATOR: Chaos reigned. A Japanese field gun
hidden in a bunker had pinned down the Marines. I can see the muzzle
of a field piece shooting down the beach
into the fourth Marines. And Basilone gave me the signal. I started firing at it. And of course, they slammed
the steel doors closed. Somewhere, Basilone
found a demolition man. NARRATOR: Basilone
ordered the Marine with a satchel of explosives
to knock out the bunker, and directed Tatum to
lay down covering fire. CHUCK TATUM: Whenever the
guy got to the right place, Basilone whacked me on the head,
on the helmet to cease fire. So I quit. And this guy runs with this 10
pound charge of Composition C2, and he throws it the
aperture of this fields. Of course, 10 pounds of
C2 could open up anything. So it blew the doors
off of this block house. And then Basilone
gives me the signal to commence firing again. And he's kneeling
down beside me, and then he sends a guy
up with a flamethrower. The demolition guy
with the flamethrower goes in, gives it a couple of
squirts of that deadly napalm into the aperture
of the field beach. I'm thinking, Jesus Christ,
I've only been here an hour and this is really
exciting, dangerous. And Then Basilone stood up
a straddle off my body. I'm laying down on the sand
firing, and he reaches down. And he unhook what's called
a pinhole hook, which leaches the gun from the tripod. And he leaned over and screamed
in my ear, get the belt! And he grabbed the machine gun. He started running up this
area leading to where the gun housing was, and if we get
to the top of this rig that metaphor this area, the Japanese
start running out of the back, and they're got this napalm
all over them on fire, and he takes a machine
gun as they run out he shoots them all. And they just fall dead. And that was our first
experience in combat. And he gave them a
signal, follow me. He started leaving
this across the island. NARRATOR: Basilone led a charge
toward the first airstrip. He ordered the men to take
cover in a shell crater and hold the ground. He then headed back to the
beach for reinforcements. And we look across the area
that we just came across, I can see it's Basilone. We can see all of a sudden a
mortar shell that's among them. And kill Basilone and five
other Sea Company Marines. So he was dead within the
first hour and a half. America's hero. NARRATOR: Later,
Sergeant Basilone's bloodstained haversack was
found on the battlefield, a poignant reminder of
every marine's mortality. I thought, boy, nobody-- [laughs] don't
count on anything. Anyone's game here, you
could be go in a flash. NARRATOR: By the end of the day,
Marines from the 5th division had crossed the narrow
neck of the island and reached the Western shore. Men of the 4th
division were fighting in the rocks and gullies
along the right flank. They had succeeded
in cutting off Mt. Suribachi from the
rest of the island. With reinforcements from the
3rd Division already on the way, the Marines consolidated
their positions, dug in, and braced for a Japanese
suicidal banzai attack that they thought
was sure to come. By the end of the first
day of the invasion, it was clear to the Marines
that taking Iwo Jima 7 and 1/2 square miles of dirt,
rock, and volcanic ash was not going to be easy. On D-day, the
Marines had counted 566 of their men killed,
and another 1755 wounded. As for the Japanese
defenders, the Marines had no idea how many they
might have killed or wounded. The well hidden
underground tunnels allowed the Japanese to
strike suddenly and then disappear undetected. The Marines couldn't see their
enemy, but they could hear. RICHARD BONNETT: That first
night, the island was shaking. And I can remember hearing
this rumble underneath us like a dog on a
train of some kind. And they were pushing their
goal from winning the island to the other underneath. What they were doing, I guess
the whole animal cares listen. That's all we really
realized, boy, they're down there somewhere. We found out real
quick that they weren't on top of the ground. NARRATOR: Ted Salisbury was
an 18-year-old squad leader and a rifleman
looking for a target. TED SALISBURY: You didn't
see too many of them, and you didn't see
too many places where they could fire from. But they had them places
pretty well camouflaged. We just hope they didn't have
you lined up in their sights. NARRATOR: Greg Emery was a
19-year-old Navy corpsman, a medic assigned to a
Marine rifle company. GREG EMERY: The rule
throughout that whole battle was that night we did not move. If somebody moved
above ground at night, we stood a pretty good
chance of getting shot by one of your own men. CHUCK TATUM: We expected
the banzai charge. In fact we got set up for it. because we knew they'd done
this all the time before, and it'd be a banzai
charge that night. There wasn't one. They didn't do that. They changed their tactics. I was really relieved to
wake up the next morning and find I was still alive. [laughs] NARRATOR: At sunrise, the
Marines dressed their attack on Mt. Suribachi. Their heavy artillery opened
fire at point blank range on the 500-foot volcano. Amphibious trucks called ducks
have brought their heavy guns ashore and across the soft sand. The crews unloaded the guns
out in the open, exposed to Japanese snipers. Louis Torlone was a 19-year-old
corporal and a gunner, part of a 10-man howitzer crew. The way we had
it rigged up to do was we had an a frame on the
back of one of the ducks. And you had the backup that
duck with A-frame against a duck with a half circle and
use a three-point sling to pick the howitzer up. And then when you took the
howitzer up out of the duck, the duck pulled out
underneath the howitzer. And you set the howitzer
down the ground and all at the same time we were getting
sniper fire, machine gun fire. [gunshots] NARRATOR: The 105
millimeter howitzer had a range of
nearly seven miles. From their gun pits,
the crews could hit just about any place on the island. LOUIE TORLONE: The
thing that impressed me was our rate of
fire on our artillery. The 105 Howitzer manual says
105 Howitzer rate of fires, three rounds a minute. One morning we fired 50
round barrage in 10 minutes. The thing we had to be real
careful about as a front line move forward was
walking wounded. They would put tags on these
walking wounded, most of them were battle fatigues, and you
could see 'em wandering around. They couldn't follow
the trail back. We had to stop and go after
him and lead them by hand get them behind us. The word would come down, have
this gun coop since I made it down, pick up the
rations for the gun crew. I started to go down,
pick up our rations, but we got a fire mission. So we and the gun
had to stay there, and I sent David Gonzalez
down to pick up the rations. He went down, pick
up the rations, started back towards the
gun, pit and a mortar landed almost beside of him. In time, the guys went
out and checked on him, he was already dead. So we wrapped him up in a
poncho and stuck him out on the road where the ambulance
jeep come by and pick up dead. We still had the fire mission. Every time we'd fire, the
concussion that Howitzer made the poncho stand
up. and I thought, sure, he was trying to
stand up, trying to get up and I almost lost it there. [drums playing] NARRATOR: In the
midst of the battle, Alvin Dunlap exhausted from the
continuous fighting, stopped to help some forward observers
spot a hidden sniper. ALVAN DUNLAP: So, I
bought a binoculars and searched the
area for the sniper, and I found the pillbox. It was was actually a
machine gun that was spitting out a few rounds at a time. That's when one of
those forward observers went around and took my picture
when I was there with them. And I thought, well, the
guy's taking my picture at the wrong time
with my mouth open. [laughs] It was on the cover of the
magazine the Army magazine. And it's calling the range. I wasn't calling any range. I was yawning. Army They called it something
else, but I was really yawning. I mean that's a good sign that
I wasn't getting enough sleep. [laughs] NARRATOR: By D-Plus 3, the
Marines had encircled Mt. Surabachi. Artillery, tanks,
and other weapons relentlessly slammed
its jagged face. On the morning of D-Plus
Friday, February 23, the Marines prepared
to climb Surabachi. A 40-man detachment from
the 28th Marine Regiment, part of the 5th Marine Division,
carefully snaked its way to the summit. A Marine Staff
Sergeant Louie Lowery, a photographer for
Leatherneck magazine, accompanied the patrol. They reached the rim of the
crater by about 10:00 AM. At 10:20, they
raised a small flag. The first foreign flag ever
to fly over Japanese soil. Photographer Lowery
documented the moment. Private Hershel Williams
was on the beach when he caught a glimpse
of the stars and stripes. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: All
of a sudden, people jumped up and started firing
their rifles into the air and yelling and screaming
and just going wild. And the boats and ships
out here in the bay are firing and blowing
their horns and whistles and all that sort of thing. NARRATOR: A second
larger flag was put up to replace the smaller one. A Marine combat cameramen
Sergeant Bill Genaust captured the action on
16-millimeter Kodachrome movie film. Standing next to Genaust, a
civilian still photographer working for the Associated Press
named Joe Rosenthal snapped the shutter of his large
format speed graphic camera. Rosenthal's picture of
indomitable Marines raising the stars and stripes
boosted the morale of a war weary American public. But for the grunts fighting
in the shadow of Suribachi, the sight of an American flag
fluttering in the brisk breeze had a more practical meaning. CHUCK TATUM: It meant
immediately to me that we wouldn't be
shot at from both sides. This strip of land we ran there
now had removed the menace from one side of it. GREG EMERY: I
remember especially at night lying in my foxhole
or lying in the shell hole, Mount Suribachi took on
an almost human presence. Like it was staring
down at us, and it was a frightening feeling. So it meant a lot to me when the
flag went up and I realized Mt. Surabachi Is ours, and it's
not going to be staring down on me anymore. A lot of people believe that
the flag raising signified the capture of Iwo Jima
when indeed it was only the capture of Mt. Surabachi. You might say the
worst laid ahead of us. NARRATOR: Of the six men,
the five Marines and one Navy corpsman, immortalized
in Rosenthal's image, only three would
survive the battle. Even Sergeant Genaust, the
38-year-old Marine cameraman, will be killed nine days later
while helping rifleman clear a cave on the north
side of the island. The Marines had taken
Suribachi but in many ways, the assault on Iwo
Jima had just begun. On February 23, 1945, while five
Marines and one Navy corpsman hoisted the stars and stripes
atop Iwo Jima's volcanic cone, other Marines were
fighting for their lives against the tenacious enemy. [suspenseful music] [gunshot] [shouts] Hershel Williams was
a 20-year-old farm boy from Quiet Dale, West Virginia. He was a corporal trained
to operate the 70 pound M2 flamethrower. Anytime that you fire
that you always had smoke, because diesel fuel has black
smoke associated with it. So anytime that you
fire the weapon, you wanted to think ahead and
say, well, as soon as I fired I want to move over
here or over there because it gave
away where you were. So you were taught
fire and move. Fire and move. Find another hole someplace. We were trying not to fire
the thing all at one time. Just don't go up
there and open it up and let it go,
because you've got about 70 seconds of this stuff. So we were trying to fire in
two and three second blasts. NARRATOR: As the Marines
move toward the center of the island, Williams
outfit ran smack into a line of Japanese gun
emplacements called pillboxes. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: And
when we were trying to break through this
reinforced line of pillboxes, we were losing men
very, very rapidly. The company commander
and what Lieutenants he had left we're
having a meeting. They were trying to
figure out some strategy to get through those pillboxes. That's when I was asked if I
thought I could do anything about those pillboxes. So I strapped on a
flamethrower and tried going toward the pillboxes. My lieutenant said to four
other Marines, go with him and give him protection. And their job
basically was as I'd try to crawl up to a pillbox is
to fire in the aperture to try to keep the Japanese from
looking out or firing out of that pillbox. NARRATOR: For four hours
Williams worked his way along the line of pillboxes. Sometimes crawling within feet
of the enemy emplacements. When he emptied
one flamethrower, he crawled back for another
and continued his fiery attack. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: Out of around
the corner of the pillbox, there came a group of Japanese. And I can remember seeing them. They got their bayonets. They've got rifles, and
they're coming at me with fixed bayonets. And I'm lying there on the
ground just a few yards away. And I just got up and had it,
opened up the flamethrower. And a great big ball of
orange flame hit them. I can remember their movement. They were coming, charging
as hard as I could charge. And all of a sudden,
they're slowing down. And they get slower,
and they just fall off. And they're dead. It's terrible stench. Just terrible. NARRATOR: Williams knocked
out the seven pillboxes, and his battalion continued
its advance across the island. For his bold and
conspicuous gallantry, the West Virginia farm boy later
received the Medal of Honor. By D-plus 5, 1,034 Marines
had died, 3,741 were wounded, and 558 were taken out of
action due to battle fatigue. But, despite the heavy
losses the Marines had managed to secure
Mount Suribachi and the two airfields. They had cleared the way for the
Navy's construction battalions, the Seabees, to repair
the runways in case any crippled B-29 needed to
make an emergency landing as they returned from
bombing raids over Japan. As the battle turned
north, the Marines encountered a line
of Japanese defenses called the Meat Grinder. Progress was slow and painful. Felton Owens was 20
and a machine gunner. FELTON OWENS: We
would move sometimes as little as 50 yards, and we
would be stopped by enemy fire. You keep going, because
you're supposed to. You going, because
you've been trained to. You keep going, because you
have your buddies on the left and on the right. CHUCK TATUM: Every day, you had
to just gather up your courage and go, because
there's no way you're going to let these guys down. There's no way you're going
to flake out on him or not go. When they say, saddle
up, you got ready to go. RICHARD BONNETT: Our
company went from 332 we had when we went to Iwo,
down to 12 in the first 15 days. In one 36-hour period, we
lost six different company commanders and all of
our other officers. NARRATOR: The
assault on Iwo Jima was the fourth invasion for
21-year-old Mike Mervost. When he landed, he was
a platoon Sergeant. When his superior officers
were killed or wounded, he found himself in command. MIKE MERVOST: Here, I was a
company commander of C company, I had a little more than 50 men. 230 of us plus
landing on the island, and we had roughly 50 men left. NARRATOR: Replacements,
many inexperienced men fresh out of boot camp,
were brought forward to fill the depleted ranks. MIKE MERVOST: I didn't even
get to know their names, and they became casualties. And we had something
like 70, 80 replacements. I felt remorse at that
time, what have you. But I felt more angry. I-- angry. And I showed that to my troops. And I'm really angry. Peeled. You know what I mean? And I want to blow up
their encourage, especially these replacements. NARRATOR: The veteran
fighters kept their distance from the newcomers. CHUCK TATUM: I didn't
want anymore friends. I didn't dislike
them or anything, and but they came
up as ammo carriers. And I didn't want
to know anything about their girlfriend. I didn't want to see their
mother or pictures of anybody. I didn't want to lose them
like you lost other people. NARRATOR: On March
4th, D-plus 13, during a rare lull
in the fighting, the Marines watched a
B-29 super fortress land at Airfield number one. The bomber had developed
mechanical problems on a raid over Tokyo. For the aircrew, Iwo
Jima meant salvation. The bloody sacrifices
made by the Marines were beginning to pay dividends. Three weeks into the assault on
Iwo Jima, the 60,000 US Marines had pushed what remained
of General Kuribayashi by defense force into
the rugged cliffs, gullies, and ravines on the
northern tip of the island. [suspenseful music] By now, the outcome
seemed inevitable. But the general and
his loyal warriors showed no signs of surrendering. [boom] [gunshots] Bitter and bloody
fighting continued. The only solace the
Marines found on Iwo came from knowing that a
corpsman was always close by. Although technically
Navy personnel, corpsmen were assigned
to Marine companies. And for all intents and
purposes, they were Marines. Like the Army's medics,
corpsman would stop bleeding, dress wounds, apply splints,
call for stretchers, and see that their wounded
men reached the aid station. GENE TAPIA: I've seen them
crawl to help wounded people, facing almost certain death. It takes some kind
of bravery to go work on a wounded man knowing that
a sniper has just put him down over there. And you're going to go back
right in that same situation. You're talk about bravery now. That's it. NARRATOR: Navy
corpsman Greg Emery fought to save lives during some
of the toughest battles on Iwo. You know what your duty is. You know what's expected of you. You're not going to
let your buddies down. You're not going to
let your Marines down. You're part of a team. NARRATOR: All too often, the men
were beyond treatment with what he carried in his medical kit. GREG EMERY: And I
know those cases. All you can do is give them
a few comforting words, tell them that
boy, you're lucky. It could have been a
lot worse, but you're going to be all right. We're going to get
you out of here. That's all you can say. Be as comforting as you can. And if you have to lie to
them, so you lie to them. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: It
still rattles around in my mind where our
guy would get hit, and he would yell, corpsman. Just a bagging kind of a plea. It wasn't a command,
like, corpsman come here! Or that, I'd say. It would be a plea, come. And he's show up. NARRATOR: Marines reported
that English speaking Japanese soldiers would shout,
corpsman in hopes of luring the medics into an ambush. Some front line Marines
foiled the Japanese trick by shouting a code name
instead of corpsman. CHUCK TATUM: Tallulah
Bankhead, I guess, was a famous Broadway
singer actress at that particular time. So they used her name
to call for a corpsman, because the Japanese couldn't
pronounce the Ls very well, apparently. And I call for the
corpsmen, Tallulah. He came over there
to where this guy is. And I said, Jesus, look. And he's looking at him
and he starts crying. And I said, what's wrong? He said, I can't
fix anybody else. I can't look at any
more blood, he said. I'm through with this. I'm never going to do
this again, he said. And he just-- and I
tried to comfort him, and he was crying, sobbing. And somebody hollered
out, Tallulah. And he hears it. He jumps up and grabs his bag
and runs to the next thing. Angels and dungarees. NARRATOR: 23 doctors
and 827 corpsmen were killed on Iwo Jima. And of the 27 medals of honor
awarded during the battle, four the recipients
were Navy corpsman. [soft music playing] [suspenseful music] [gunshots] On March 26, D plus 35
in one last ditch attack, the remaining Japanese emerged
from their caves and bunkers and rushed the airfield. In a desperate melee, the
attackers were annihilated. The next day, the battle for
Iwo Jima was declared over. And the exhausted Marines
headed back to the beaches. They turned over the island
to an Army Infantry Regiment and prepared to board
waiting transport ships. GENE TAPIA: We were used up. We were wrong out. There were no more left, but
you have a day or sort of rest. And it makes a
lot of difference. And then you start
thanking your maker. GREG EMERY: My
ship and other ship had to take some of
the wounded aboard. Three of our Marines have died,
and so it was necessary to bury them over the side. And that was one of the
saddest moments of my life, to be there while three
bodies were placed over the [inaudible] on board,
covered with an American flag. And at the signal, the bodies
slide out from under the flags and into the ocean. Taps are sounded
as a rifle salute. There was not a man
topside that morning that did not have
tears in their eyes. It would be
impossible not to cry. NARRATOR: What had been assumed
would be a straightforward assault turned into the most
desperate and most costly battle in the history
of the US Marine Corps. You know? 5,885 Marines were killed,
and 17,272 were wounded. LOUIE TORLONE: Why them? Not me. Why them and not somebody else? Was at their turn to go? Maybe a man upstairs
could answer, but I can't. You know? I'm just thankful I'm
here in the shape I'm in. TED SALISBURY: There isn't a
day goes by that I don't think of some of my boys, you know? I know their names just
like it's yesterday. I guess you never get over that. HERSHEL WILLIAMS: It saddens me
that it was necessary to make that type of a sacrifice
to preserve the freedom that others had given to us. NARRATOR: When asked if the
assault on Iwo Jima was worth it, the veterans often cite
a remarkable statistic. On March 4th 1945 when the first
B-29 landed in distress on Iwo until the end of the war,
more than 2,200 bombers made life saving emergency
landings on the island. That's about 24,000
men who would have otherwise crashed
and perished at sea had it not been for the
sacrifices and the valor of the US Marines. [epic music playing]
