Uncommon Valor: Three Winona Marines at Iwo Jima, 1945 (10/25/2006)

by Bill Crozier and Steve Schild

“The Battle of Iwo Jima has been won. Among the Americans who served on Iwo, uncommon valor was a common virtue.” Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, CINCPAC (Commander in Chief, Pacific) Communiqué No. 300, March 17, 1945.

Fifty-five years after the bloodiest battle in U. S. Marine Corps history, three Winona men who lived through it remember it in details murderous and mundane. They remember wholesale slaughter; they remember being dead tired, being willing to put their lives on the line to fetch drinking water. They went in little more than boys; one came back wounded, all three came back decorated, all three came back certain about their sense of mission, confident it had to be done. They came back knowing first hand, by the way it felt and smelled and sounded, the battle the world knows from that famous photo of the U.S. flag being raised on Mount Suribachi. They came back not knowing why they came back when so many who were so much like them didn’t.

“I just couldn’t believe we had made it . . .There were guys laying all over. Some were crawling, just trying one way or the other to get off that strip. I can still remember that day and those guys. It just gives me the shivers when I think of it now..”--Darol “Lefty” Lee.

Lee’s account of that hellish sprint across an airport aptly captures what he and fellow Winonans Charles Kubicek and Harold Libera experienced on Iwo Jima.

Lee and Kubicek joined the Marines immediately after graduating from Winona Senior High School, Lee in 1942 and Kubicek in 1943. Lee was in boot camp and advanced infantry training at San Diego and Camp Pendleton. Then he was assigned to Company C, 21st Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. Besides Iwo Jima, he fought at Guadalcanal, Bougainville and Guam.

Kubicek was assigned to the 4th Marine Division after boot camp and advanced infantry training. He took part in the Saipan and Tinian campaigns as a member of a mortar company and was transferred to a machine-gun company before the Iwo Jima invasion.

Libera joined the Marines in July 1942 after completing two years of pre-law at Saint Mary’s College and two years of law school at the University of Minnesota. He attended officer training school at Quantico, Virginia and was commissioned a second lieutenant in March 1943. He was assigned to the 3rd Marines and led an 81 MM mortar company at Guam. Promoted to first lieutenant he was an intelligence officer and assistant operations officer in the Headquarters Company of the 3rd Battalion, 9th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division at Iwo Jima

The shape of Iwo Jima has been compared to a pear, a pork chop, a dripping ice cream cone, a leg of mutton and South America. About five miles long and two and a half miles wide, it is about 8 square miles in area but its significance in the declining days of World War II in the Pacific was clearly understood by the American and Japanese military and naval strategists. Just over 700 miles from Tokyo, the Japanese base at Iwo Jima provided two hours early warning of American bombers on their way to targets in Japan. It was also a base from which the Japanese could attack bombers going and returning from raids on Japan. Japanese aircraft bombed nearby American installations and ships from Iwo Jima. U.S. war planners needed Iwo Jima as a forward base for fighters to accompany B-29 bombers to raids on Japan and as an emergency landing field for damaged aircraft.

The decision to land on Iwo Jima was made in the fall of 1944 and the United States Marine corps organized its largest Amphibious force of the war — Amphibious V made up of the 3rd, 4th and 5th Marine divisions compromising approximately 60,000 men. Daily bombing of the island began in November 1944.

The Japanese force commander on Iwo Jima was Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi. He knew he could not defeat the large American force but he could delay their conquest of the island by utilizing its ideal geography and geology for fighting a defensive engagement. He built miles of tunnels in the soft island stone, which connected pill boxes and defensive sites to be used for artillery, mortars and troop emplacements. He buried his tanks and some artillery in the deep sand to hide them from the enemy and to protect them from air and sea attacks. Most of Kuribayashi’s defensive emplacements survived the extensive pre-landing assault mounted by the United States Navy and Air Force. Kuribayashi also decided not to meet the enemy on the beach but to allow them to land in the soft sand and work their way up the terraces from the beach to the plain where his fire from his positions on the high ground could concentrate on the Marines as they moved onto the plain. He had preregistered his artillery and mortars on the beaches and approaches to his defensive emplacements so that his gunners could pin down the Marines with accurate fire. He also decided not to use Banzai attacks, which were terrifying, but not an efficient use of his limited manpower. Kuribayashi’s tactics were criticized in Japan because they seemed timid to his detractors but it was these tactics which turned a battle scheduled to last approximately ten days into an extended campaign lasting over five weeks.

Amphibious V was the largest Marine landing force created in World War II. It included three Marine divisions the 3rd, 4th and 5th and supporting units. The combined Marine force eventually comprised over 80,000 men. The accompanying naval task force was made up of over 450 ships. The island was attacked by naval and air force planes and shelled from sea by battleships, cruisers and destroyers before the landings began.

Kubicek was among those who landed on D-Day February 19, 1945, as part of a machine gun company of 52 men in the 4th Marine division. Lee and Libera, both in the 3rd Marines, were in the “Floating Reserve” and they embarked from the transport ships to Higgins boats on February 20 and cruised off shore. The sea was so rough, however, that they were recalled to the transports to wait until they were required and a landing could be attempted. Due to the fierce fighting on the beach, Marine headquarters soon realized that the “Floating Reserve” must be committed. The 3rd Marine Division landed February 21st and moved into position between the 4th and 5th Marines.

Kubicek recalled his part in the landing, “We were supposed to take the fat part of the pork chop, that was the 4th Division’s objective. I remember on board ship and they would bring out the relief maps and brief you on what your jobs were and what was going to happen, saying this was going to last about four days. All we had to do was to take this little corner and that’s going to be it because, what the heck, we got 60,000 guys hitting the beach and we got just this little corner to take. We landed sometime after noon. We got ashore and we were in the soft volcanic ash and you couldn’t run, I mean it was just miserable trying to gain any ground, it was a pretty steep slope going up to the flat part and when we made it up we were facing Motoyama Airfield No. 1 and that’s where we spent the first night. Some of our guys made the turn and went up towards the Stone Quarry Ridge which was our objective.. We got up there the next day we sat there till the flag went up so we were there four days at least. We tried to get off the ridge and gain some ground, we would gain a hundred yards and then we would have to fall back up on the ridge where we had some protection. A hundred yards was a big move back then.”

For many Americans the most memorable event in the Iwo Jima campaign was the image of a group of Marines raising the flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945. There were in fact two flag raisings and contrary to popular belief neither was staged, yet the most memorable one was the second raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi and the subsequent controversy continues even today. Mount Suribachi is just over 500 feet high but it dominated the southern end of the Island. It was the main objectives of the 5th Marines and was supposed to be secured in the first day. The flag raisings took place after four days of tough fighting. A squad of men was ordered to climb to the summit and hoist a flag there, which they did with relatively little opposition but with some difficulty because the flag was placed in a heavy and awkward iron pipe and forced into the rock surface. As the first flag was raised Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, who was present on the island, observed it. Standing next to Lieutenant General Holland M. Smith, Expeditionary Troops commander, Forrestal said, “Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years.”

These men who raised the first flag are among the forgotten heroes of the Iwo Jima campaign: Louis C. Charlo, Henry O. Hansen, Charles W. Lindberg, James Michels Harold G. Schrier and Ernest T. Thomas, Jr. The photographer was Sergeant Lou Lowery, USMC.

Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson realized the significance of this flag and decided to preserve it as a symbol of the battle. He also wanted a larger flag on Suribachi so all the troops could see it. He ordered Dave E. Severance his assistant operations officer to get a larger flag from one of the landing craft on the beach. This second and ultimately most famous flag was raised about four hours later. Joe Rosenthal, one of the photographers assigned to this battle, had accompanied the men ordered to hoist the second flag to the summit of the mountain and took a picture of the event that won the Pulitzer Prize. It was probably the most memorable photograph of World War II.

Kubicek remembered the event vividly. “We were sitting on the Stone Quarry Ridge when the flag went up…it is just a straight shot to Suribachi …all of a sudden our old southern platoon sergeant hollers, Lookee yonder flies Old Glory!!! And Jeez I’ll tell ya everybody really got excited--that was the first one.” Kubicek remembered thinking that, “now that we’ve got the high ground we can start moving, when all of a sudden down the flag went. Oh, oh the Japs got the hill again--but that’s when they took down the small one [flag] and put the big one up so we did actually witness both flag raisings.”

Lee did not see the either of the flags until sometime after they were hoisted. He and his comrades were too busy to notice. “I didn’t see the other mission, I think we were kind of busy …I was a rifleman and I had a B.A.R. (Browing Automatic Rifle) it was just a continual fight to keep alive. We were in an assault, we were trying to dig in to hold what we had and it was just sort of a touch and go thing by the minute really.” Lee’s company was unable to move because of the deadly machine gun fire poured upon them from a group of mutually supporting pillboxes that stopped their advance. “We got into these pillboxes over there we were hemmed in with these pillboxes and we couldn’t move at all. The Japs were madder than the devil that we got across that airstrip so they were really throwing it at us. We were pinned down pretty well and that’s when Woody came up. We had nine flame throwers in the battalion and Woody was the only one left he came in with the flame throwers.” Herschel Woodrow Williams was a demolitions specialist who volunteered to attack the pillboxes with his flame thrower. Accompanied by four riflemen Williams wiped out the network of seven pillboxes. Williams was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for this action. Lee was one of four riflemen who accompanied Williams in this four hour attack. He was mentioned in the medal citation and named in the Marine Corps Combat Correspondent’s dispatch dated May 17, 1945. Lee received a Presidential Letter of Commendation for his part in this heroic act.

Motoyama Airfield Number two lay in front of the 3rd Marine Division front. The runways provided clear fields of fire for the machine guns and anti-tank guns on the flanks. These runways were commanded by high ground, which lay a few hundred yards to the north. This position dominated the southern end of the island and appeared to be the main Japanese battle position. As long as it was held the enemy would be able to direct accurate artillery and mortar fire on the Marines’ rear and reserve positions.

Due to the heavy losses his regiment suffered since landing, Lee was now leading a platoon. He was called to a meeting at battalion on February 25 and told that the next morning after an artillery barrage the battalion would move across the runways and take the high ground. “So I got back to my outfit. I was only a corporal then but I had charge of a platoon or what was left of it. I got back to my outfit. Another NCO said to me, I don’t think I’m going to tell my guys that we’re going to be moving out in the morning across that airstrip,” he said, “they won’t sleep, it will be a very bad night; so I didn’t tell my bunch--in the back of my mind I’m thinking all that evening I think tomorrow morning is going to be it one way or the other so be it. So early the next morning I passed the word down at 0600 there is going to be a big barrage. I said after that’s lifted we’re taking off. At 0600 they laid down a barrage you wouldn’t believe. I had a radioman right next to me in the hole I was trying to talk to him, yell at him, and he couldn’t even hear me. The barrage--they were shelling from the ships, you couldn’t believe it So I figured when they finally quit I think it was about fifteen or twenty minute barrage not a half hour like they said. We took off across that airstrip it’s just amazing. I still remember that morning and the sun was coming up, you know over on our right, it was coming up it was sort of a peaceful morning and it was all quiet after the barrage. We were taking off at high port across that airstrip and we looked down the line right and left and we could see these guys moving and of course by now the Japs were coming out and they were nailing us and there would be a guy falling here and a guy falling there but we got across. I jumped in a hole across the airstrip out of breath crossing the airstrip was about the width of a football field we got over there and I just couldn’t believe it I just sat there in the hole out of breath of course and my radio man was piling in behind me I just couldn’t believe we had made it you know. Then we looked back on the airstrip, there were guys laying all over, some were crawling, just trying one way or the other to get off the of strip. I still can remember that day and those guys. It just gives me the shivers when I think of it now. I thought then after I got over there maybe I am going to make it. I think this was about the fifth or sixth day.”

At night the Marines usually dug in and remained there hoping to get some sleep but they weren’t always successful. Kubicek recalled, “When we finally got into the Meat Grinder and the Amphitheater around Turkey Knob one night we got caught by an artillery and mortar barrage I don’t know how long we were under that and when that ceased and we got organized again. We spent the day and the night there. We didn’t sleep well. We had some sleep the night before we didn’t sleep at all that day, we didn’t sleep at all that night because we had infiltration going on all the time. What they were doing was they were getting uniforms off of dead marines and dressing themselves up and they would come in carrying a litter with another body on it, another Japanese on the litter. They would come through the line because everybody would let them come through you couldn’t tell at night and they would get behind you and they would try to get down in the ammo dumps and on the beach, we had that going on all night long.”

Lee was wounded on February 28, 1945. “There were five of us in this group, a fire team, we were moving up…and we were running across an open area. I don’t know if it was a Jap rocket or if it was an artillery shell, never heard it of course, it landed and the thing that saved me was that sand--it landed and it buried itself … into the sand and when it exploded it blew me up into the air I think I was blown 20-30 feet--I don’t even remember, of the five three were killed and two of us were blown into the air I remember I was bleeding from the nose mouth and ears and couldn’t hear, couldn’t hear a thing. When I came to I was just peppered with little slivers--like the corpsman said when we got back to Saipan, we thought they were freckles. Didn’t get it in the eyes, just amazing but the concussion knocked out my hearing, when they hauled me back then I remembered the corpsman, what a guy, he crawled up there and pulled me back into a hole and all I can remember is his name Harris, his name on his dungarees-I often wonder if he ever made it.” When Lee was evacuated to a hospital ship there were only 18 men left in Company C with whom he had landed on Iwo Jima with 160 men. Only he and Herschel Williams still survive from that company.

Kubicek and Libera continued the difficult campaign fighting for each foot of territory hole to hole, pillbox to pillbox, cave to cave, ridge to ridge. General Holland Smith characterized the nature of the struggle for Iwo Jima in his after action report. “There was no hope of surprise, either strategic or tactical. . . . The strength, disposition, and conduct of the enemy’s defense required a major penetration of the heart of his prepared positions in the center of the Motoyama Plateau and a subsequent reduction of the positions in the difficult terrain sloping to the shore on the flanks. The size and terrain of the island precluded any Force Beachhead Line. It was an operation of one phase and one tactic. From the time the engagement was joined until the mission was completed it was a matter of frontal assault maintained with relentless pressure by a superior mass of troops and supporting arms against a position fortified to the maximum practical extent. “

Over half a century later the ordinary, day-to-day events of that long campaign dominate the Winonans discussion of their wartime experiences; ordinary subjects like water and sleep. Kubicek recalled a humorous story about water. “It was just before we went into the Meatgrinder, we were in kind of a wooded hilly area there. We needed water so they asked for a couple of volunteers so another guy and myself, we decided we’d go back and bring back some water --now its getting toward dusk so we went down and we each picked up two five gallon cans of water and of course there heavy in themselves and I’m carrying a carbine and I put it on my shoulder and of course I’d be carrying it and the thing would be sliding down. On our combat jackets we had a flap up there so I unbuttoned the flap and I put the strap from the rifle, the sling underneath and buttoned it down. I got back and thought now how stupid could you be because the Japanese they had spider traps and stuff--they could come up out of the ground from anyplace and be behind you and I thought what would have happened if they had popped up? I couldn’t have fired a shot, I could have thrown water on em maybe.” Lee interrupted, “That sounds like rear echelon.” Kubicek agreed, “Yah, That sounds like rear echelon--but we had to get the water back and I was having trouble keeping that rifle handy so I buttoned her down and boy I never did that again either.”

Sleep or the lack of it was another common topic. Kubicek remembered an almost sleepless night. “We had a lot of activity that night, it was March 10th or 11th. I didn’t get any sleep for a day and a night and the next day. When we got dug in that night. . .off to our right was a Marine with a war dog. He would say ‘watch’ and then he would curl up and try to get some sleep --the minute the guy curled up the dog would curl up and this went on and finally I fell asleep--I was dog tired, I fell asleep and I didn’t wake up until morning. I was totally out of it. I woke up and out in front of us were a couple of dead Japanese and I swore they weren’t there the night before. I never heard any shooting. I didn’t hear anything. They could have come in and carried me off if they wanted. Oh, God I was never so tired in all my life. And that was a few days before they secured the island.”

Although he was never wounded at Saipan, Tinian or Iwo Jima the losses in Kubicek’s company were severe. “When we landed on Iwo there were 52 guys in our machine gun platoon and a when the battle was over there were only 12 of us left. All twelve were veterans of the campaign--there wasn’t a replacement left.” He revealed his secret of survival. “I was never wounded. I went through three campaigns without getting wounded.. . . That’s one of the perks of being skinny, you see, you stand sideways and you don’t make much of a target. Either that or I was moving too slow and they were leading me too much. When we left for Iwo there were four guys that I knew of who had never been hit, I was one of em, my old platoon sergeant. was one, and my foxhole buddy was one, and he and I both came through without ever getting hit but the platoon Sergeant did get hit on Iwo. So I think that probably out of the original bunch from when I first joined there were about two of us that weren’t at least wounded once.”

Libera was also in three campaigns and while not unscathed was not wounded. He was one of only four out of the thirty-six officers in the 9th Regiment to get through Guam and Iwo Jima without being wounded or killed.

Libera was Assistant Operations Officer to Colonel Howard W. Kenyon. He was his “right hand man.” Libera will never forget a time Colonel Kenyon said, “ Come on we’re going on a reconnaissance. I want you along and a radioman, and we went up into where the front lines were and we got pinned down and were in a dugout over night and that was the scariest damn night I ever had. There were just the three of us; if the Japs had known we were there we wouldn’t have survived.”

Another incident Libera recalled vividly was an action in which the Japanese defenders took their own lives instead of surrendering to superior forces, an act they believed disgraceful. “It was getting dark, we dug our foxholes right along side a cliff, there was a big hump in it was maybe thirty feet high or so a little cliff of some kind. We made our foxholes right behind it . . . we were unaware of it but that cliff was loaded with Jap caves and they realized they were surrounded --in the middle of the night they blew the damn thing up blew this little mountain hill and it covered us with that volcanic ash --I remember I lost my helmet because we usually slept with our helmets off I finally got out of that volcanic ash and we didn’t lose anybody but it just covered us with that stuff it must have killed everyone of those Japs inside of there, it just blew. I think it was an ammunition dump underneath that hill. I think the Japs intentionally blew it up.”

Libera received a Letter of Commendation from Graves B. Erskine, Commanding General of the 3rd Marine Division, which stated in part, “For meritorious service while serving with a combat team…First lieutenant Libera, as assistant operations officer, most capably assisted in the forming and executing of plans relative to difficult offensive operations carried out by our troops against strongly defended enemy positions . . .His devotion to duty was a distinct asset to his commanding officer and contributed materially to the defeat of the Japanese on this strategic Japanese stronghold. . . . The services rendered often caused his life to be endangered by enemy operations.”

After years of campaigning without leave and with only a few short rest periods between deadly campaigns in exotic spas like Maui and Guam the last battle was won. Iwo Jima was declared secured on March 17 but there was continued combat until March 26 when the Marines left the island.

Lee was evacuated to a hospital ship on February 28, treated for his wounds at Saipan and transferred to a U. S. Naval Hospital in Corvallis, Oregon. By late summer, 1945 his wounds had improved enough so that he could be transferred nearer home for convalescence. In August he was transferred to the US Naval Hospital, Great Lakes, Illinois. His first view of Winona since leaving home in 1942 was from a train passing through Winona Junction about two o’clock in the morning on its way to Illinois.

Lee attended Winona State College for two years then took a job with the Post Office. He returned to college part time and earned a degree in social studies and education. He retired from the Post Office the same year he graduated from college. He was a substitute teacher in Winona and Fountain city for fifteen years.

Libera returned to Guam with the 3rd Marine Division in March, 1945. Colonel Kenyon wanted him to make the Marines a career. He offered him an immediate promotion to Captain and promised, “he would make him a General.” Libera chose to return to law school at the University of Minnesota. After a difficult transition from the battlefield to the classroom he graduated and practiced law in Winona.

Kubicek returned to Maui with the 4th Marine Division in March 1945. He was discharged from the Marines and returned to Winona in December 1945. He worked for fifteen years in the retail jewelry business and then went to work for the Prudential Insurance Company until he retired.

Analysts and historians have studied the actions and tactics of the island campaigns in the Pacific, in particular those fought in the last year of the war, to try to understand if the strategy implemented was successful. Was it worth the struggle, pain and loss of life? Were lives saved by the sacrifice of those who fought at places like Iwo Jima?

The first crippled B-29, “Dinah Might”, returning from a raid on Tokyo landed on Iwo Jima on March 4, 1945, while the battle was still raging. It was repaired quickly and took off for its base further to the rear. As early as April 7, 1945, fighter escorts took off to accompany B-29’s to Japan. 2, 251 crippled B-29’s made emergency landings at Iwo Jima through the end of the war. 24, 761 men made up the flight crews on those planes. If the airfield at Iwo Jima had not been available many of those planes would have crashed into the sea. One of the pilots of these crippled planes acknowledged their debt, ‘whenever I land on this island I thank God for the men who fought for it.”

The cost of victory for the Americans at Iwo Jima was 24,053 casualties the highest single-action losses in Marine Corps history. These casualties included 6,140 men who were killed in action or died of wounds. Approximately 22,000 Japanese Marines, soldiers and sailors were killed in this battle; few surrendered. The Japanese force sought to live up to its “Courageous Battle Vows” which were posted in their battle stations ordering them to maintain their positions and to kill ten Americans for every Japanese death.

General Graves B. Erskine in dedicating the 3rd Marine division on the island said, “Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was. What was in doubt, in all our minds, was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end, or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gunner.”

Colonel Joseph H. Alexander, USMC, a 29 year veteran of the Marine Corps who made two tours in Vietnam, summed up the legacy of Iwo Jima. “We Americans of a subsequent generation in the profession of arms find it difficult to imagine a sustained amphibious assault under such conditions. In some respects the fighting on Iwo Jima took on the features of Marines fighting in France in 1918, described by one as ‘war girt with horrors.’ We sense the drama repeated every morning at Iwo, after the prep fires lifted, when the riflemen, engineers corpsmen, flame tank crews and armored bulldozer operators somehow found the fortitude to move out again into ‘Death Valley’ or ‘The Meatgrinder.’ Few of us today can study the defenses, analyze the action reports, or walk the broken ground without experiencing a sense of reverence for the men who won that epic battle.”