Iwo Jima Memorial
Each year I am hired to go to Washington,
DC, with the eighth grade class from Clinton, WI where I grew up, to videotape
their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take
some special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially
memorable.
On the last night of our trip, we
stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial is the largest bronze statue in
the world and depicts one of the most famous photographs in history -- that of
the six brave soldiers raising the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on
the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, during WW II
Over one hundred students and
chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a
solitary figure at the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, 'Where
are you guys from?'
I told him that we were from Wisconsin.
'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell
you a story.'
(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
I wrote 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 little boys.. Instead he would say, 'You
do what I say, and I'll get you home to your mothers.'
'The
last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira
Hayes was one 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.
Let us never forget from the
Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism and all the wars in-between
that sacrifice was made for our freedom...please pray for our troops.
Remember to pray praises for this
great country of ours and also - please pray for our troops still in murderous
places around the world.
REMINDER: Everyday that you can wake up free;
it's going to be a great day.
One thing I learned while on tour
with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is - that if you
look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the
flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were
13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God*.
The
above-quoted article was written in October 2000 by Wisconsin resident Michael
T. Powers (whose name has been omitted from most of the Internet-circulated
versions), transcribed from videotape he made of a talk given by author James
Bradley at the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. Bradley, whose
father John, was one of the six men pictured in the famous photograph of the
flag-raising on Mt. Suribachi in February 1945 (and is thus depicted in the
monument’s sculpture), had earlier that year published Flags of Our Fathers, an
account of the life stories of those six men. [Source: Snopes.com]
The
sculpture does not include a thirteenth hand – there are only twelve. The rumor
about the 13th hand has been around for dog’s years, though, spread
both on the Internet and by amateur tour guides. [Source: Snopes.com]
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