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This interview is being conducted on April 18, 2002, in Richmond, Indiana, with Mr. Don Longfellow, who was a Marine in World War II in the Pacific Theatre. He enlisted in February 1942 and served until February 1946. He enlisted at the age of 17. His date of birth: December 8, 1924. He was born in Wayne County, Indiana, and he's being interviewed by Angie Roman of Senator Lugar's Indianapolis staff. Mr. Longfellow, if you'd like to begin.
Well, this was the biggest amphibious operation the Marine Corps ever took. And the amphibious tanks were - weighed 12 1/2 tons each, and they had -- they had a travel speed of 7 1/2 mile an hour on the water and about 20 - about 20 mile an hour on land. And there was 482 of them. They took eight battalions ashore.
482 tanks.
Yeah.
Okay.
Each one held about 15 -- 15 troops and four crew members. And when I come up on topside that -- that morning, there was the awfulest mess of ships out there you ever saw. There was over 450 of them. And -- and around 9:00 o'clock they started these - started going ashore. Well, actually, the battleships and the bombers all come in and started bombing the hell out of the island. And after that, well, they started going in in waves; about every few minutes for a wave of these LVTs would go in. And there was very light resistance. There was a little bit of rifle fire and stuff like that going on. And all the Marines got ashore, all eight battalions. The -- the -- the LSTs started unloading the artillery and tanks and trucks and all the gear that we needed to take the island. About 20 minutes after they was all ashore, well, all hell broke loose. And the -- the 5th Marine Division was on the right and the 4th Division was on the left at the southern point of Iwo Jima. And that was around 9:00 o'clock in the morning. And it was about 20 minutes after they landed is when the Japs opened up on us. I don't know in the hell they come from. They come out of their damn rat holes or their bunkers or their caves. The whole damn island was undermined with tunnels.
Uh-huh.
And we was about two to 300 yards inland when we got pinned down. And there was dead Marines everywhere. And after the -- by the end of the second day, we were at the foot of Suribachi. And on the fourth day the -- that was about the 23rd of February -- the 2nd Battalion of the 28th Marines put the flag on the top of Iwo Jima. And they had a big to-do with all their cameras and all that.
What do you remember about that?
Huh?
What do you remember most about that?
Well, they handpicked these here six guys to raise the flag. One of 'em was an Indian by the name of Ira Hayes -- he lived longer than the other five -- and a corpsman. He was killed two days later. And if I remember right, two more of the Marines lived to walk off the island, and that's all I can remember.
Did you see the flag?
Oh, yeah.
What did you feel when you saw the flag? Can't even tell me, can you?
Well, after seven days -- of course, that was -- that was just the beginning of -- really, the beginning of the fightin'. After seven days, we lost half our strength from the 5th Division and the 4th. I mean, 50 percent of 'em. 40 to 50 percent of 'em. And they brought the 3rd Marine Division in in between these two; the 5th and the 4th. And they went on to take the first airstrip. That took several days to do that -- to do that. Actually, the fighting only lasted from the 19th of February until about the 28th of March, when what was left of the Japanese finally gave up. There was a little over a thousand of 'em left. There was 23,000 of 'em on the island. So I don't know what in the hell they did with all the damn bodies; either Marines or the Japs. But after they took the airfield -- I think it was around -- around the 9th of March or something like that, I think. Well, this here first B-29 was all shot up and made an emergency landing there. And after they -- the island was secured about the 28th of March. Well, they brought in 108 or so P-51s, and they made their first flight with the B-29s to Tokyo and back; escort. And all together after that, they said there was about 850 some B-29s would have crashed in the ocean if it hadn't been for that island to land on. A lot of 'em did crash in the ocean that was shot up pretty bad. And about 850 all together -
Wow.
-- made it -- made it -- made it to that island and landed. So even though we paid a big price in Marines taking the damn island, we saved a lot of the Air Force. It was late in April when I left -- left the island, and I never wanted to ever return there.
Let's talk about when you enlisted. You enlisted in February after you were 17 years old.
Yeah.
You turned 17 the day after Pearl Harbor was bombed?
Right. My dad didn't want to lose a good hand on his farm. That's why he didn't want me to enlist.
Why did you enlist in the Marine Corps?
What?
Why did you choose the Corps?
Well, I was in the 10th grade in school, and somebody through a damn piece of chalk at the teacher, and it splattered right in front of her face. And she whirled around. "You, you're outta here." So she kicked me out of class. It was algebra. She kicked me out of class. I hated algebra, anyway.
Ha, ha, ha.
So about 10 days after that, or a week or so after that, she wanted me to -- she met me out in the hallway and said, "You can come back to class." I said, "I ain't goin' back to class." I said, "I don't like algebra. I don't like it a bit, and I don't understand it, and I'm not goin' back." She said, "Well, you won't graduate if you don't take algebra. You won't graduate." So that's one of the reasons why I thought, well, the hell with it. I'll join the damn Marine Corps. So after we got to San Diego -- it took us about five days on the damn train, on the Sante Fe Trail. And them trains was all pulled by coal-burning locomotives. And the suit I was wearing, it was plumb blue -- I mean, it was black. It was blue, but it was black. And I threw all my clothes away. They marched us to the front of this here warehouse, and they had these round pieces of fence tied together. You throwed your coat in one; throwed your trousers in another; and throwed your shoes in another. When you walked out of the other end, you was naked as a jaybird.
Ha, ha, ha.
Of course, there wasn't -- didn't have no women there. They marched us -- we fell back in out in front.
A naked formation.
Yeah.
Ha, ha, ha.
They marched us from there over to the warehouse where they issued us our clothes. And as we went in the door, there was a guy looked at our feet and called off number 9. You might be a number 10, but he called off a number 9, which was my case. I wore 10s. And I wore them number 9s all through boot camp; eight weeks marching out there on that parade ground. And we carried our clothes out the back door in our arms, and they marched us to these here board-up huts. They said afterward hold 'em -- each one of them would hold a platoon.
Uh-huh.
There we got our clothes back on, and they was givin' us our final exam. This corpsman looked at me and he said, "You don't look too good. Let me take your temperature." He took my temperature, and I had 103. I had a good case of tonsillitis. He put me in the damn sick bay for five days. When I come back to the barracks, or the hut where all the other guys was, they had their hair -- head all shaved. Looked like a bunch of cucumbers.
Ha, ha, ha.
I started laughing. I said, "Look at the bald-headed son of a bitches." And somebody was hollering, "Let's get him. Let's get him." About a dozen of them jumped on me, got me down, took scissors and whacked -- whacked my hair up all over. And I said, "Hell." I said, "Go ahead and cut the rest of it off." They said, "No." They said, "You look just fine".
Ha, ha, ha.
You're all right. So a couple days later the platoon sergeant, he sent me over to the barbershop and got it all shaved off. I looked like a damn idiot.
They chopped you up, didn't they?
Yeah. Now everybody was laughing at me. And we just had eight weeks of boot camp. It had been 13. We had to learn everything in eight weeks they had been teaching in 13. And...
They were pushing people through --
Yeah.
-- for the war?
We had to learn by heart our serial number, our rifle number, the general orders. We had to learn them general orders by number. And I graduated with 59 out of 63.
What did you miss?
Huh?
What did you miss?
I didn't miss nothing.
Oh, I figured you would remember. It would just be, like, an easy question or something.
Anyway, well, them four guys -- I don't know what happened to 'em. They couldn't make it. They got kicked out. They probably went in the Army.
Now...
They probably did.
Ha, ha, ha.
The Army probably grabbed 'em up.
They may be honor grads from Army basic training.
Yeah.
So after you got done with basic training or boot camp, did you have any more training? Did you have infantry training, or was that --
Oh, yeah.
-- all part of your boot camp?
Oh, yeah. No, the boot camp was just - just taught us how to march and how to use a rifle. We had bayonet practice and we practiced with hand grenades, and we had to qualify with that rifle. That was one of the - one of the things; you had to qualify with that rifle or they'd kick you out.
Then you went to infantry training after boot camp?
They sent me up to Camp (Belheten) That was a camp just north of Marine Corps base. And for 30 days up there I did -- chased prisoners. We had 2,600 prisoners in a stockade up there. And old Walter Winchell on the radio, he said 2,600 Marines can't be wrong. But they was in there for being overlate, gettin' drunk, fightin', and you name it. Anyway, all of 'em, probably 10 days to 30 days. And the way they got rid of a lot of 'em, they put them aboard ship and give 'em all their equipment and shipped 'em overseas. So where they went, I don't know. But that's how they'd get rid of 'em, probably a thousand of 'em at a time. But in the meantime, we had to -- they give us about 12 prisoners. And one day we'd take 'em to officers' quarters and they'd clean the officers' quarters. And we didn't like that very much. And --
Ha, ha, ha.
-- other times we had a stick with a nail on the end of it and pickin' up trash in the streets. And when they'd run across a cigarette butt, the whole bunch of 'em would dive on it, try to get a puff of smoke out of that cigarette. So I went to the PX, and I bought a whole carton for 50 cents. So every day I'd put a pack in my shirt pocket and I'd give them guys a smoke. Boy, they loved me for that one. Them guys was hurtin' for a cigarette. And we had two boxcars full of Maine potatoes. And I had to take that -- very day I had different prisoners. March them down there and they'd unload these potatoes in six-bys, and they'd haul 'em off. And after a day of that -- they was hundred pound bags of potatoes -- them guys was tired. And, well, after 30 days, well, got transferred up to Camp Pendleton. And I went overseas with a -- what they call a replacement battalion. And this was late in winter of '42. And a hundred and fifth of us - a hundred and 50 of us replaced Marines in the First Joint Assault Signal Company to bring 'em up to the strength that they was supposed to be. I think they had about 300, and was supposed to have about 350 men in that company. I come back from overseas then in December '43 and went on liberty -- my first furlough I ever got -- for 30 days. And I spent six days going from Los -- Los Angeles to home. And it only took me three days to go from home back to Pendleton, so I got back a couple days before my furlough was over. And...
What did you do while you were on furlough?
Played with the girls. Ha, ha, ha. Especially them cheerleaders in high school.
Uh-huh. And there you were in your Marine uniform looking all sharp?
Yeah. When I walked in the gym at a ball game up at Jackson, Ohio, just outside of Union City, east of Union City, well, Union City and Ansonia was having a ball game. And it was my class, senior class guys, that was playing that night. And there were these cheerleaders from both teams. When they saw me, here they come.
Ha, ha, ha.
They gathered all around me, and them damn ball players didn't like it at all.
When you came back -- what did you do after -- after you came back from Japan in the Marine Corps?
I never went to Japan.
I mean, when you came back from Iwo Jima, what did you do in the Marine Corps then?
Well, they -- me and this here Loenger (ph) here, they transferred us to the 1st Marine Air Wing down in the Philippines. And they were gettin' ready for the invasion of Kyushu. Hell, we knowed we was all gonna get killed right there. But we didn't know what island they was gonna hit until after they dropped the damn bomb. In August they dropped a bomb, and the Japanese surrendered.
Uh-huh.
Then we were loading these LSTs for that invasion of Kyushu, and they just abandoned that and sent us to China, Tsingtao, China. And I spent the rest of my time in Tsingtao, China, until I had to either re-enlist or enlist again. Withdraw -- I had to re-enlist or sign a paper that I want a discharge. So I didn't want to re-enlist while I was over in China, 'cause I hated it. I hated that damn China duty.
You were with the Air Wing, though.
Yeah.
And what did you do there while you were in China?
What?
What was your job? What did you do?
They put me in charge of the officers' mess -
(Achoo)
-- drawing food for officers' mess. And I only did that once every five days. And they gave me a Jeep. Go in the main camp -- there was -- officers' quarters was in the little town outside of the main camp. Where we camped at was an old Japanese bombardier school, and they had these here -- instead of showers, they had these here, like, swimming pools without much water in 'em, about 20 feet square. You'd get in one and you heated and soap up and climb out and you go over and get in the other one and rinse off. We liked that. And that's the way the Japanese did it; they -- they bathed together. And the officers gave me quarters out there in their -- I lived in the officers' quarters. I was a sergeant. And we had all Chinese cooks and waiters. And I can't remember exactly how many officers was in there. There were pilots and -- and non-pilots up to a major. And they all had quarters out there in this compound. It was completely -- it was just like a city inside of the walls. It had a main gate, and each one of them had quarters. And they gave me a -- a houseboy. And I told them I don't need no damn houseboy, and I kicked his ass out. I wasn't gonna pay him and feed him and take care of him like they did. And -- but they gave me a houseboy. And I done that clear up until they called me in to re-enlist. And I said, well, if I re-enlist, it'll be when I go back to the States.
When you were on Iwo Jima as part of the signal company, your responsibility was primarily keeping, what, ground lines -- land lines open or installed?
Well, I was in a headquarter -- a headquarters company.
You were in support order?
Well, we -- I tell you what: We had to bag the dead. They was mostly dead. And I don't know where they took 'em, but they had truckloads after truckloads of 'em. Tagged them and bagged 'em. And pieces of bodies. All of them was unidentifiable.
Did you -- when you were working towards Mt. Suribachi, were you pretty much -- your headquarters pretty much on the beach, or were you inland?
We were behind -- we were behind the lines. Did about all the damn dirty work behind the lines.
Most of you -- when you moved, it was mostly on foot or...
Yeah, yeah. Well, the island was only five mile long and three miles wide. Hell, you can -- before I went in, I run five miles from the farm into town every Saturday, so I could run from one end of that damn island to the other.
Was most of your communications by wire or wireless?
Radio and field telephone.
Did you have people stringing wire for the field telephones?
Yeah.
So the companies -- were the companies hooked back to the beach, hooked up back to the beach?
Yeah, yeah. And most of the trains or tanks and artillery was almost useless. About all the fightin' was with rifles, bayonets, flame throwers, and grenades. That's why it took us so damn long to take the damn island.
Did you ever have any close calls?
Yeah. A good friend of mine in the same -- within -- was standing within three or four feet of me, and his head exploded. I don't know what the hell hit him, but I had blood, brains, and bone all over me.
Were you under attack, or was that just a stray round?
Well, no, that was in the first 20 minutes after we'd hit the beach is when the Japs opened up on us and everything. Mortars and artillery, small -- small arms fire, machine guns. You name it, they had it all.
Most everybody was standing up then?
Yeah.
Not long after, you got down, huh?
That's when I run and found that bomb crater or shell or whatever it was, and I dived in it. And somehow my rifle barrel hit the back of my wrist there right where my watch is and took a -- burned a piece of skin off about -- I was stuck to the rifle barrel. I run about two clips of ammunition through that rifle and --
What were you carrying? An M-1?
Yeah, yeah. I lived with that M-1 from day one until I got discharged.
Never had any trouble with it.
No, no. Well, I had several of them issued to me.
Were they damaged or...
No. Every time I transferred or , they give me -- I had to turn the rifle in and they'd give me another one. And on the rifle range, I did a positive all 16 shots in the bullseye on the 500 yard line. None of the other guys in the platoon ever did that.
They were probably from the city. They couldn't see that far.
Ha, ha, ha.
Well, it like looked like a pencil dot.
Oh, yeah.
Now, that target was as big as the center of this table here; about four feet square-four round. And it looked like a pencil dot. I had 17 clicks of elevation and two clicks west windage.
Ha, ha, ha.
And I put them all right into the bullseye. And I didn't do that good on the 200 yard one.
Did you ever have to use that after the first day or so? Did you ever have need of that rifle again on Iwo Jima?
No.
Didn't have to defend yourself?
I never had to fire that rifle one more time after that. They was pretty well -- by the time we got down there -- it took me two days -- me and Norm here two days -- to go down there on a C-47. And we were the only ones on the C-47 until we landed at (Mangalvin) Bay. And we transferred to another C-47 that was loaded with freight, and there was even a Jeep aboard. And that thing was all gassed up, and we took off. And they landed somewhere up in the damn mountains at a mountain camp up there somewhere. An Army -- this is an Army transport service. And we got out. And flying at 10,000 feet with khaki on, we got pretty damn cold. And they gave us time to walk around and warm up. But I know that wasn't the only reason they landed there. We was there a couple hours and we took off again for Mindanao. This was on Luzon. We took off for Mindanao and we got out there over that ocean, and every once in a while you see a little island down there. I looked around, and the port engine wasn't working. We just had one engine. So they turned around and they headed back toward Luzon, and the old C-47 was still flying. It only had one engine. And when we come in over Tarlac, we just brushed the top of the tree tops and landed there at Clark Field on a cement runway. It had a lot of cracks and stuff in it. And there was Japanese planes lined up on both sides of the runway, and we landed right in between 'em. And when the pilot cut the engine, it just dropped like that and it bounced. Bounced up -- bounced up, tilted this way, and come down. That dead engine wing hit the payment, and we cartwheeled down that -- slid and cartwheeled down the damn runway. And it told me that that pilot, he had to really know what he was doing to land that damn thing like that. But, anyway, they put us up there overnight. And the next day they had all this gear transferred to a DC-3. And we went back aboard that thing and flew on down to Malabang, Mindanao. And there wasn't any fightin' goin' on down there. It was just about over with. But I guess these -- I went into a dive bomber squad. BMSB 244. And they were still flying air strikes down there somewhere until the war ended. But they was loadin' these LSTs, gettin' ready to move to Kyushu.
Close call.
Huh?
Close call.
Hell, we never even -- we never expected ever to go to Japan and ever come back. That atomic bomb saved-saved us all.
Yeah, it sure did.
Give old Truman the credit for that. Well, they bypassed a lot of light truck. They bypassed that. The planes bombed the hell out of it, and they wouldn't let nothing come in or go out. The same way with Rabaul. McArthur wanted the Marines to take Rabaul and Admiral Nimitz, I believe, he overrid - overrid him and said we'll just bypass that damn place. It ain't gonna hurt nobody. Just leave it. That would have been a slaughter, too. And I don't know why they ever took Okinawa, 'cause they didn't need it. They already had what they needed for - for -- for the fighter planes to go with the B-29s to Japan and back. I don't know why they ever bothered to take -- to take that island. They wanted Okinawa, and they paid a hell of a price for it, too. And we figured that if we had to take them islands, the ^ Solomon Islands, there wouldn't be none of us left. There was more Japanese than there were Americans. The same way with China. Hell, they said they could march them into the ocean for years and never run out of Chinese.
That's a lot. What did you do -- what was the first thing you did when you came back when you got out of the Marines?
Played with the girls.
At least you're consistent.
I did. I did that for eight years until I met my wife. And I never mentioned to her that I had even been in the damn Marine Corps because she hated Marines. She dated one one time and he was mean to her, so she hated Marines.
So how long until you told her?
It was after we got married. I come carrying -- come home and come carrying my uniform in the house. She said, "Well, who does them belong to?" And I said, "Me". She said, "Well, I didn't know you was in the Marines." And I said, "Well, I was." And I said, "Anything ever happens to these uniforms I'll divorce you." And she took good care of them.
Do you still have them?
I still have my greens. I had three, three green uniforms and I had a blue. And I got the blue uniform on display down there at the Marine Corps --
The Marine Corps ?
-- in the corner. If you've ever been in there, you probably saw it.
I have been in there. It's been a while, though.
All that stuff in that corner cabinet belongs to me; all but the rifle and bayonet. They moved it from the other display case over there to make more room in the display case. I come back with a Japanese helmut, Japanese bayonet, and a Japanese personnel flag. All around on the white part is where you -- you had people to sign, you know.
Uh-huh. What did you do as a vocation after the military? How did you make a living?
I went to every place between here and Dayton and all the surrounding towns trying to find a damn job. And the most I ever got offered was 67 cents an hour up at the body company, Union City. Every place else was 50 cents an hour. So I come down to Richmond. A friend of mine told me that the Bell was hiring. Everybody that come along, he said, "Get down here." He said, "They'll hire you right off." I went down there. I stood in this here long line. Probably 25, 30, who people ahead of me. And they hired them all. Made my damn discharge papers down there and this here employment man -- a big guy, about like him, his size -- sittin' there. And he looked at my discharge paper and he said, "I see you been in the South Pacific. Have you ever had malaria?" I said, "Yeah." I said, "I still got it." He said, "Well, you'd be sick and laying off. We couldn't put up with that." I just picked up my discharge papers and I told him what to do with the place and went across the street. Old J. Derrick over there, he hired me and put me to work the next day.
Avco.
Avco?
Yeah. At a dollar five an hour. It eventually went to --
A dollar five an hour. That was good money then, wasn't it?
From the Crosley Corporation, it went to Avco. It was Avco and Crosley for a long time. Then Crosley finally figured out in, I think, '56 it went to Avco.
That sounds about right.
And I -- from '56 -- well, from '52 'til the last part of '56 we built -- it was the tails and turret section for the B-47s. And then -- I think we built about 600 of them. When that was gone, well, we built the ball section of the turret for the B-52. It was all radar controlled guns in the tail of a B-52, and they're still flyin'.
What do you do now to keep busy?
Well, I have a hard time trying to keep my damn house clean. I lost my wife in May of '95.
Uh-huh.
She had a massive heart attack.
And you're not much of a housekeeper, huh?
I do pretty good washing dishes. Course, I got a dishwasher.
Ha, ha, ha.
I hardly ever use it, though. I eat out most of the time.
That's why you buy paper plates and paper cups; so you can just throw them away.
I could, but I hate paper plates and paper cups.
We're just about to run out of tape.
I use my coffee cup until it gets pretty cruddy inside, and then I go and wash it.
Then you just rinse it out and it will be okay.
Yeah.
Well, I...
[Conclusion of Interview]