Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire The boys at 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 capital, 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 were 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.'

It was James Bradley who 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 had 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, DC, 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 Iwrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers'. 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 mlittle 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 of them who lived to walk 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, drowned in a very shallow puddle, 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 combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they 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 of 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.

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.

































6

That is an awesome story, thank you for sharing it.

I have tears in my eyes after reading that. I have read "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Flyboys", also written by Mr. Bradley. Both should be required reading in every classroom in every school in America.

I read that book some years ago. It is heart-rending.

I see red when I hear idiots today complain that the flag-raising photo was "staged" and therefore somehow trite. Bullschit. Those six guys - and the photographer - fought their way to the top of that damn volcano. They survived days of horror to get there. And they were raising a big flag so their brothers down below could see their sacrifice was not in vain. They were still in extreme danger while doing it, maybe even more so because any Japanese nearby would have been infuriated to see it happening.

All of them deserve being memorialized. And all of them were better men by far than the whiny schits who today try to demean them.

They are all heroes to me.

The greatest generation. They did what was necessary without thinking about what it would cost them. Our Generation that is that age now would have never pulled it off. How sad we have fallen so far in so short of time.

And now days so many of our young people want to throw away our country and freedoms.

Amen to the above.

While it wasn't the original flag raising, it wasn't staged, either. A small flag had been raised but they wanted a bigger one so the men below could see it. The photographer got there just in time to see it raised and got a lucky shot. Not shown in the photo is the smaller, 1st flag being lowered, just off camera.

over most of my professional career, i have worked in a retirement community filled with WWII vets, most gone now. Through the years i have been given a number of things they acquired or used in the pacific, some knives, asaki sights, a rifle, the list goes one. I have a navy knife one guy was wearing on a subtender at pearl when the japanese attacked. In one case i have a set of navy dog tags. For some reason, quite a few have shared their stories with me. Stories that are not known at all by the current generation.
I wish i had been smart enough to use a tape recorder.
At one time i had three clients all there on the same day for a beach invasion. One in the air, one in the navy, and one hitting the beach.
Another stupid thing was not inviting all three to a lunch.
My brother in law who was envolved in those landings use to say the same thing. The hero's were the ones that didn't come back. I corrected hi on this, to me they were ALL heros.
regarding the dog tags, they were given to me years ago. this year in cleaning up the estate of his widow, i found a picture of his boot camp graduation picture, with Sargasso sea writen on the back. He was on a destroyer during that last big great battleship confrontation, and survived it, many did not.

Excellent post, I thank you sir.

God Bless these Great Warriors!

From the warriors that gave the ultimate price and never returned home to the ones that returned home and paid the ultimate price, Every damn one of them is a Hero to me.

Replies are much appreciated....thanks to all

Great read. Thank you for posting

For a good read about a man who was at Iwo Jima and did come back---without all of his butt (literally), check out Hell Yes, I'd do it Again! by T. Fred Harvey. It's an autobiography, and very easy reading that you'll want to finish before you put it down again.

Mr. Harvey was the head football coach at my high school until 1970 and a member of our church. I may compose a longer post when I have access to my PC, but in a nutshell his life was (and still is---he's living still but in his 90s) intertwined with a number of people who were well known in the football world, and my own family. It's really just too coincidental!

The boys who fought on Iwo Jima were giants, but I'd wager that none of them knew it before they set foot on that island. I'm sure each and every one of them would deny it, but that would make it no less true.

What kind of a dirtbag would send a barefoot boy to deliver that kind of news? Not a decent human being, certainly not a 'man'.

That's a wonderful story. We will never see men like them again, heros all.

They, and all of the men that they represent, are deserving of any and all honor that can be given to them. As previous threads have pointed out, two of the men in the picture (Bradley and Gagnon) have been re-identified. As I pointed out in one of those threads, perhaps it would have been better to have left all of the men in the picture unidentified as a tribute to everyone who fought on the island.

Yes, you will.

It is just that the media will do it's level best to cut them down.

Same. Very moving and I thank the OP for sharing it with us.