William manchester goodbye, darkness a memoir of war (v5 0)

COPYRIGHT © 1979, 1980 BY WILLIAM MANCHESTER ALL RIGHTS RESERVED EXCEPT AS PERMITTED UNDER THE U.S COPYRIGHT ACT OF 1976, NO PART OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE REPRODUCED, DISTRIBUTED, OR TRANSMITTED IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, OR STORED IN A DATABASE OR RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER BACK BAY BOOKS / LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY HACHETTE BOOK GROUP 237 PARK AVENUE, NEW YORK, NY 10017 VISIT OUR WEB SITE AT WWW.HACHETTEBOOKGROUP.COM First eBook Edition: April 2002 Lines from “We'll Build a Bungalow” by Betty Bryant Mayhams and Norris the Troubadour, copyright Robert Mellin Music Publishing Corp Used by permission Lines from “On the Sunny Side of the Street” by Dorothy Fields and Jimmy McHugh, copyright 1930 by Shapiro, Bernstein & Co., Inc., copyright renewed 1957 and assigned to Shapiro, Bernstein&Co., Inc Used by permission Photographs on pages 2, 8, 14, 158, 214, 348, and 392, U.S Marine Corps photos; page 118, Mark Kauffman, copyright 1951 by Time Inc.; page 36, U.S Navy photo; page 54, United Press International; page 76, J R Eyerman, © 1980 by Time Inc.; page 190, Bruce Adams; page 254, 7th AAF; page 304, U.S Army photo; page 323, Robin Moyer; page 394, © 1980 by George Silk All other photographs are courtesy of William Manchester ISBN: 978-0-316-05463-8 Route March Illustrations PREAMBLE: Blood That Never Dried PROLOGUE: The Wind-Grieved Ghost ABLE: From the Argonne to Pearl Harbor BAKER: Arizona,I Remember You CHARLIE: Ghastly Remnants of Its Last Gaunt Garrison DOG: The Rim of Darkness EASY: The Raggedy Ass Marines FOX: The Canal GEORGE: Les Braves Gens HOW: We Are Living Very Fast ITEM: I Will Lay Me Down for to Bleed a While … JIG: …Then I'll Rise and Fight with You Again Author's Note Acclaim for William Manchester's GOODBYE, DARKNESS A MEMOIR OF THE PACIFIC WAR “Never have the fighting men been better caught in their talk, fear, pride, misery, pain, anguish Never have the savagery, madness, ferocity, violence, guts, crud, gristle, and gore of war been better put down on paper … Goodbye, Darkness belongs with the best war memoirs ever written.” — Los Angeles Times “A storyteller of uncommon gifts and imagination … The reviewer is hard put to describe this intelligent, beautifully crafted but complicated work in a nutshell.” — Clay Blair, Chicago Tribune “Unforgettable … A deeply felt attempt to exorcise ghosts and reclaim the integrity of the spirit … A page-turner that is raunchy and moving by turns and very well written.” — Publishers Weekly “A very moving account … Manchester's war wasn't subtle His memoir is powerful, painful.” — People “Masterful.” — Seattle Times “Weaving recollection with research, Manchester lets the war unfold like memory itself, in concentric circles rising from the subjective sensations to historic events The sensations dominate, especially those of terror, loss, revulsion, remorse, and, beneath them all, love, the unchosen love shared by fighting men amid the horror and sacrifice of honorable war.” —J.S Allen, Saturday Review “An extremely personal memoir of World War II that will appeal to persons with traditional values and with which many veterans will be able to identify It should also be interesting to young people seeking to understand the patriotic fervor that once was not only accepted but expected from Americans of all ages … Manchester neither preaches nor apologizes as he presents a graphic picture of the war and of the young men who fought and died.” — James Simon, Library Journal “A compelling account of the war in the Pacific: its strategy, geography, tactics, fighting, its leaders … No one has looked it over from so many merging or intersecting perspectives … The campaigns for Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan and Tinian, Guam, Peleliu, Iwo Jima, and Okinawa — gory, in no way understated, movingly rendered and authentic.” — Washington Post Book World “This is the most moving memoir of combat in World War II that I have read Manchester has done for that greatest of conflicts what the English poet Siegfried Sassoon did for the First World War; brought home the misery and horror of combat and what it is like to fight and be wounded and die in hell and confusion and blood of modern battle It is a testimony to the fortitude of man This is quite different from the other books that Manchester has written It is very personal: a quest to find what he has lost as a youth during the fighting in the Pacific and to come to terms with that young man who slogged it out as a foot soldier in the Marines It is a gripping, haunting book.” — William L Shirer Books by William Manchester BIOGRAPHY American Caesar: Douglas MacArthur, 1880–1964 Disturber of the Peace: The Life of H L Mencken The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory: 1874–1932 The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone: 1932–1940 One Brief Shining Moment: Remembering Kennedy Portrait of a President: John F Kennedy in Profile A Rockefeller Family Portrait: From John D to Nelson HISTORY The Arms of Krupp, 1587–1968 The Death of a President: November 20-November 25, 1963 The Glory and the Dream: A Narrative History of America, 1932–1972 A World Lit Only by Fire The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance: Portrait of An Age ESSAYS Controversy: And Other Essays in Journalism, 1950–1975 In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers FICTION The City of Anger The Long Gainer Shadow of the Monsoon DIVERSION Beard the Lion MEMOIRS Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War The author in 1945 To Robert E Manchester Brother and Brother Marine Your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions — Joel 2:28 War, which was cruel and glorious, Has become cruel and sordid — Winston Churchill But we … shall be remembered: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he to-day that sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother; be he ne'er so vile, This day shall gentle his condition — Henry V, Act IV, Scene iii Illustrations The author, 1945 frontispiece Lance Corporal William Manchester, Sr 17 Malinta Tunnel, Corregidor 66 Red Beach, Guadalcanal 172 The Ilu, Guadalcanal 185 Bloody Ridge, Guadalcanal 190 Sergeant Major Vouza 204 Wading ashore at Tarawa 226 The pier at Tarawa 226 Enemy guns at Tarawa 227 Suicide Cliff, Saipan 272 Banzai Cliff, Saipan 272 Japanese tank, Guam 299 Cave with gun emplacement, Guam 299 Bloody Nose Ridge, Peleliu 312 American tank, Peleliu 319 Japanese gun, Peleliu 321 American monument, Peleliu 323 Japanese monument, Peleliu 323 Where MacArthur came ashore, Leyte 330 Filipino monument to MacArthur, Leyte 330 Makati cemetery, Manila 336 Iwo Jima 345 The view from Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima 345 Sugar Loaf Hill, Okinawa, then and now 392 The author, 1979 394 Maps Pearl Harbor 42 Bataan and Corregidor 59 New Guinea 82 Guadalcanal 164 Tarawa Atoll 216 Saipan 264 Guam 285 Peleliu 308 The odd thing, or odd to those who have never lived in the strange land of combat, is that I never had a clear view of Sugar Loaf I was on its reverse slope, on the crest, and eventually on the forward slope, but there were always coral dust, high-explosive fumes, and heavy clouds of bursting ammunition on all sides It would be interesting to see a study of the air pollution there I'll bet it was very unhealthy In that smog, grappling with whatever came to hand, we were like the blind man trying to identify an elephant by feeling his legs After the war I saw a photograph of the hill, but it had been taken from a peculiar angle and was out of focus That was also true of my memory, which was blurred because, I think, there was so much that I did not want to remember There, as in the months following my father's death, I suffered from traumatic amnesia Some flickers of unreal recollection remain: standing at the foot of the hill, arms akimbo, quavering with senseless excitement and grinning maniacally, and — this makes even less sense — running up the slope, not straight up, but on a diagonal, cradling the gun of a heavy machine gun in my left elbow, with a cartridge belt, streaming up from the breechblock, draped over my right shoulder The gun alone weighed forty-one pounds Nobody runs uphill with such an awkward piece of machinery And where was the tripod? I don't know where I had acquired the gun, or where I was taking it, or why I was there at all Mostly I remember a lot of scampering about, being constantly on the move under heavy enemy fire, racing from one company CP to another, always keeping an eye open for the nearest hole Usually I was with either Alan Meissner, skipper of Easy Company, or Howard Mabie, Dog Company's CO until he was hit There were dead Japs and dead Marines everywhere Meissner's company went up the hill with 240 men and came back with On the slopes the fighting was sometimes hand-to-hand, and some Marines, though not I, used Kabar knives, the knives being a more practical implement for ripping out a man's guts than a rifle or bayonet At close range the mustardcolored Japs looked like badly wrapped brown-paper parcels Jumping around on their bandy legs, they jabbered or grunted; their eyes were glazed over and fixed, as though they were in a trance I suppose we were the same Had I not been fasting I'm sure I would have shit my pants Many did One of the last orders before going into action was “Keep your assholes tight,” but often that wasn't possible We were animals, really, torn between fear — I was mostly frightened — and a murderous rage at events One strange feeling, which I remember clearly, was a powerful link with the slain, particularly those who had fallen within the past hour or two There was so much death around that life seemed almost indecent Some men's uniforms were soaked with gobs of blood The ground was sodden with it I killed, too By sundown of May 17 we had just about lost heart, ready to withdraw from the hill because we were running out of ammunition There wasn't a hand grenade left in the battalion; E Company had used the last of them in two futile charges As it happened, we not only stayed; we won the battle That night Ushijima tried to reinforce his troops on the opposite slope, but our flares lit up his counterattack force just as it was forming, and twelve battalions of Marine artillery laid down so strong a concentration that he withdrew Our battalion commander called Whaling on the field telephone and said, “We can take it We'll give it another go in the morning.” His faith was largely based on news that other Marines had captured Horseshoe Ridge, while our Third Battalion — Baker's, beefed up with replacements and back on the line — was digging in on the slope of Half Moon At 8:30 a.m on Friday, May 18, six U.S tanks tried to reach the hill but couldn't; all were destroyed by enemy mines New tanks arrived, however, and maneuvered their way through the minefield At 10:00 a.m a combined tank-infantry assault, half of Mabie's D Company swarming up one side of the hill while the other half lunged at the other side, sprang at the top It worked There was a terrific grenade battle at close quarters on the summit, and the Japanese sent a heavy mortar barrage down on our people, but the remnants of D Company, with the fire support from F Company, which was now on the forward slope of Horseshoe, didn't yield an inch As night fell on the embattled army, the Twenty-ninth Marines held the hill The Twenty-ninth holds it still Newsweek called Sugar Loaf “the most critical local battle of the war,” but I felt no thrill of exultation My father had warned me that war is grisly beyond imagining Now I believed him Bob Fowler, F Company's popular, towheaded commander, had bled to death after being hit in the spleen His orderly, who adored him, snatched up a submachine gun and unforgivably massacred a line of unarmed Japanese soldiers who had just surrendered Even worse was the tragic lot of eighty-five student nurses Terrified, they had retreated into a cave Marines reaching the mouth of the cave heard Japanese voices within They didn't recognize the tones as feminine, and neither did their interpreter, who demanded that those inside emerge at once When they didn't, flamethrowers, moving in, killed them all To this day, Japanese come to mourn at what is now known as the “Cave of the Virgins.” So my feelings about Sugar Loaf were mixed As I look back, it was somewhere on the slopes of that hill, where I confronted the dark underside of battle, that passion died between me and the Marine Corps The silver cord had been loosed, the golden bowl broken, the pitcher broken at the fountain, the wheel broken at the cistern Half the evil in the world, I thought, is done in the name of honor Nicht die Kinder bloss speist man mit Märchen ab I now caught the jarring notes in the “Marines' Hymn” — which, after all, was a melody lifted from an obscure Offenbach operetta — and the tacky appeals to patriotism which lay behind the mass butchery on the islands I saw through the Corps' swagger, the ruthless exploitation of the loyalty I had guilelessly plighted in that Springfield recruiting station after Pearl Harbor On Sugar Loaf, in short, I realized that something within me, long ailing, had expired Although I would continue to the job, performing as the hired gun, I now knew that banners and swords, ruffles and flourishes, bugles and drums, the whole rigmarole, eventually ended in squalor Goethe said, “There is no man so dangerous as the disillusioned idealist,” but before one can lose his illusions he must first possess them I, to my shame, had been among the enchanted fighters My dream of war had been colorful but puerile It had been so evanescent, so ethereal, so wholly unrealistic that it deserved to be demolished Later, after time had washed away the bitterness, I came to understand that On May 19 the Fourth Marines relieved the bleeding remnants of the Twenty-ninth Wet as it had been, it now became wetter; eighteen inches of rain fell in the next nine days, and twice the weather was so poor that the fighting simply stopped Nevertheless, the Fourth mopped up Half Moon and Horseshoe and then moved on Naha, or its ruins Enemy artillery, even back where we now were, continued to be heavy One new piece was a mammoth eight-inch rocket mortar whose shells shrieked when launched but approached their targets silently They were variously called screaming meemies, box-car Charlies, and flying seabags, because if you happened to be looking at the right place you could actually see one coming, tumbling end over end They were launched from crude V-shaped troughs: the propelling charge was detonated by striking it with a mallet We were told that they were wildly inaccurate, that their sole purpose was to damage our morale In my case they were a stupendous success Every time I heard the shriek I hit the deck Most of the men ignored them, saying, as I'm sure fighting men have said in every battle since the arrows of Agincourt, “It won't hit you unless it's got your name on it, and if it does, you haven't got a prayer.” Having broken through the Machinato Line, we thought we had won The Japanese, as usual, refused to concede Six days after we took Sugar Loaf, Ushijima launched a daring airborne attack on Yontan and Kadena airfields, sending giretsu (paratroopers) tumbling down Both sides suffered casualties; U.S planes were destroyed Two American fuel dumps, containing seventy thousand gallons of gasoline, were set off Kamikazes, launching their seventh major kikusui assault, ravaged the Allied fleet and its shore stations But the Fourth Marines had already waded through the waistdeep waters of the Asato Kawa and entered Naha Okinawan bodies were everywhere — in shops, in gutters, hanging from windows Once a city of sixty-five thousand, Naha now teemed with Jap mortars and machine guns In Tomari, the city's suburb, white phosphorus was fired into the frame buildings to destroy enemy positions, and on May 30 the Twenty-second and Twenty-ninth Marines, strengthened by reinforcements, drove through the Shichina area to the Kokuba estuary, isolating the island's capital Three days later, on Saturday, June 2, I suffered my superficial gunshot wound I remember asking a corpsman, “Will I get a Purple Heart?” He nodded, and I thought of my father: We're even So I had my million-dollar wound, the dream of every infantryman I was moved back to a field hospital where the only reminder of combat was the rumble of artillery on the horizon I was served hot chow on clean plates, and even heard rebroadcasts of radio programs from the states, including, that Sunday, Jack Benny, Charlie McCarthy, and the Great Gildersleeve Then I learned that General Shepherd, determined to avoid a repetition of Garapan and Manila, had decided to bypass the city and outflank the enemy with an amphibious landing on Oroku Peninsula, behind Japanese lines So I left my dry bunk, went AWOL, rejoined what was left of the Raggedy Ass Marines, and made the landing on Monday It went well There were a few perilous moments at a seawall, but then the Japs pinning us down with Nambus were rolled up from the right, and we had our beachhead, which rapidly expanded during the day In the late afternoon I, shamed by the example of others, temporarily abandoned my timidity and stayed on my feet when a screaming meemie screamed The shell landed close enough to knock me down, thereby renewing my respect for the big mortars and, as it turned out, saving my life Early the next morning several of us were standing in a tomb courtyard when we heard the familiar shriek We were on a reverse slope from the enemy; the chances of a shell clearing the top of the hill and landing on us were, we calculated, a thousand to one, and the Nips, we now knew, had no way of controlling the flight of these missiles I crept into the doorway of the tomb I wasn't actually safe there, but I had more protection than Izzy Levy and Rip Thorpe, who were cooking breakfast over hot boxes The eight-incher beat the thousand-to-one odds It landed in the exact center of the courtyard Rip's body absorbed most of the shock It disintegrated, and his flesh, blood, brains, and intestines encompassed me Izzy was blind So was I — temporarily, though I didn't know that until much later There was a tremendous roaring inside my head, which was strange, because I was also deaf, both eardrums having been ruptured My back and left side were pierced by chunks of shrapnel and fragments of Rip's bones I also suffered brain injury Apparently I rose, staggered out of the courtyard, and collapsed For four hours I was left for dead Then one of our corpsmen, Doc Logan, found I was still hanging on He gave me two shots of morphine and I was evacuated to an LST offshore which served as a clearinghouse for casualties All the beautiful white hospital ships — Solace, Relief, and Comfort — were gone There were just too many wounded men; they couldn't handle the casualty traffic So I sailed off for Saipan on an APA Goodbye, Okinawa, and up yours The gravest Marine cases, of which I was one, were sent to Saipan by ship and then flown in stages to San Diego's Balboa Park I was on and off operating tables, beginning in Hawaii, until midautumn, when the surgeons decided that some of the shrapnel was too close to my heart to be removed It was safe where it was; they would leave it there I remember wondering, one bad night, whether the old saw — that men were likeliest to succumb with the coming of dawn and at the turn of the tide — was true For me the worst part of the day was the doctors' prodding and poking for the shrapnel They gave me a piece of wood to bite while the long steel instruments probed around I think I screamed just twice But that was the only bad part In Honolulu's Aiea Heights Naval Hospital I even made a friend, a chief petty officer named Claude Thornhill, who had been a bandleader in civilian life and whose band had, in fact, played at my last college prom I was still in an Aiea Heights ward when I first heard the voice of the new President, learned that Okinawa had been secured and that 207,283 people had died there In San Francisco the news of the Hiroshima bombing was read to me And I was napping in San Diego when I was awakened by church bells ringing all over the city A nurse ran in, a starched white dragon of a woman I asked what had happened She cried, “The war's over! The Japs have surrendered!” I said, “Thank you.” I meant it I was really very grateful, though why, and for what, I didn't tell Returning to Okinawa today is like watching a naked priest celebrate mass It is so incongruous, so preposterous, that indignation is impossible Solemn memories suppress the urge to laugh, so you simply stand stunned and helpless, unable to respond or even move Luckily, two Marine friends of friends, Lieutenant Colonel Jon Abel and his Top Sergeant, Arnold Milton, are there to assure me that I haven't lost my sanity, that there's no need for that stiff drink I've begun to crave Of course, I could get it immediately On today's Okinawa one quickly becomes accustomed to instant gratification Everything on the island seems to be for sale, including female inhabitants Thus, the greatest of the island battlefields, more precious than Gettysburg — or at any rate more expensive in American blood — at first glance appears to be covered with used-car lots, junkyards, stereo shops, pinballmachine emporiums, and vendors of McDonald's fast food, Colonel Sanders's fried chicken, Shakey's pizza, and Dairy Queen sundaes All-night drive-in restaurants prosper, including one overlooking White Beach Three, where the Ninety-sixth Division landed that April In an Apollo Motel you and a girl you've just met and will never meet again, with whom you have nothing in common but convexity, concavity, and a few dollar bills, can rent a bed for an hour The Okinawans who once moved slowly and gracefully among their lovely terraced rice paddies now sweep around cloverleaf intersections in their souped-up Hondas and Toyotas, and race into neoned Naha — which has become a metropolis the size of Indianapolis — on a four-lane freeway The Okinawan Expressway carries you from Motobu to the central part of the island in two hours On the peninsula, by a seawall on the Ie Shima side, Top Milton says: “This is Route Fifty-eight You probably knew it as Highway Number One.” How can I explain that I knew it as an unnumbered path of earth a yard wide? Off Motobu, Japanese scuba divers disappear under water and reappear triumphantly holding aloft exotic shells The Americans have built two golf courses, countless tennis courts, and athletic fields The Japanese enjoy them very much Sometimes they play against Americans When they win, they crow The Americans are good losers, and they are acquiring a great deal of experience in that Out in the boondocks you can still find rice paddies, but with rice selling at ten dollars for a twentyfive-pound blue plastic bag, the magnificent hillside terraces which once supported thousands of paddies have disappeared; sugarcane and pineapple plantations, which need far less irrigation, are far more profitable And though many of the old lyre-shaped tombs still stand, the new mausoleums lack the lyre design Instead they are small, and, being built of cinder blocks, cheap One entrepreneur is erecting three hundred of them on Motobu Reportedly he is giving serious consideration to a suggestion, made in jest, that he call it Forest Lawn East There are about thirty-five thousand Americans on the island, ten thousand of them in the Third Marine Division Okinawa is considered good duty Since Vietnam-bound B-52s are no longer serviced there, it is also light duty, and now that the old DUKWs have been replaced by the more efficient LBTP-7s as amphibious workhorses, landing maneuvers are far easier The U.S PX complex at Camp Butler, a small city in itself, is more impressive than any shopping center I've seen in the United States Local entertainment is provided by bullfighting, sumo wrestling, and habumongoose fights Bullfights aren't bloody The matador carries a heavy rope His job is to loop it around the bull's horns and pull, persuade, or trick the animal out of the ring Sumo wrestling, subsidized by local businessmen, is very popular with GIs and Marines It is more psychological than physical Two grotesque, 350-pound Japanese men circle one another again and again, making little movements and twitches which, one is told, have enormous symbolic significance The actual struggle, the period of contact, lasts no more than thirty seconds, and the wrestler, like the bull, loses when he is forced to leave the arena The popularity of the fights between mongooses and habus — the habu is a poisonous snake, much feared — is peculiar, because the mongoose always wins But the Americans love to watch them, too The more they like it, the more they try to integrate themselves into the local culture, the more the islanders exclude them Before the war, Okinawa's inhabitants, like Korea's, were little more than colonial subjects of the emperor Since the spring of 1972 the island has been the forty-seventh prefecture (ken) of Japan, with a bicameral legislature which swarms with political activity Although the U.S victory in 1945 paved the way for this, Okinawan politicians and intellectuals resent the American presence among them When they say “Us,” they mean themselves and the Japanese; when they say “Them,” they are talking about Americans From time to time they stage demonstrations to remind the world of their hostility toward Them, though they know, as everyone who has mastered simple arithmetic knows, that an American departure would be an economic disaster for the island, ending, among other things, the $150 million Tokyo pays Okinawan property owners as rent for land occupied by U.S forces This paradox, of course, is not unique in history The British learned to live with it, realizing that the world's most powerful nation is the obvious choice for anyone in need of a whipping boy When I recall the sacrifices which gave the Okinawans their freedom, the slanders seem hard Then I remember the corpse of the girl on the beach; our patronizing manner toward a little Okinawan boy we picked up as a mascot and treated like a household pet; the homes our 105-millimeter and 155-millimeter guns leveled; the callousness with which we destroyed a people who had never harmed us The Americans of today may not deserve the slurs of the demonstrators, but the fact remains that more than seventy-seven thousand civilians died here during the battle, and no one comes out of a fight like that with clean hands That night in the Okinawa Hilton I dream of the Sergeant, the old man, and their hill It is a shocking nightmare, the worst yet I had expected irony, scorn, contempt, and sneers from him Instead, he is almost catatonic He doesn't even seem to see the old man His face is emaciated, deathly white, smeared with blood, and pitted with tiny wounds, as though he had blundered into a bramble bush His eyes are quite mad He appears so defiled and so miserable that on awakening I instantly think of Dorian Gray I have, I think, done this to myself I have been betrayed, or been a betrayer, and this fragile youth is paying the price Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa And for this there can be no absolution But I cannot leave it at that Despite my disillusionment with the Marine Corps, I cannot easily unlearn lessons taught then, and as the youngest DI on Parris Island can tell you, there is no such word as impossible in the Marine Corps There must be more on this island than I have seen And there is Next morning I explore the lands beyond the neon and all it implies, and find that the island's surface tawdriness is no more characteristic of postwar Okinawa than Times Square is typical of Manhattan Hill 53, for example, once an outer link in the coast-to-coast chain of the Machinato Line, is now shared by an amusement park and a botanical garden The peak provides a superb view of modern Naha Looking in that direction through field glasses, it is satisfying to see that the city's tidal flats, where we trapped a huge pocket of Nipponese after Sugar Loaf had been taken, have been filled in and are part of the downtown shopping center The city's suburbs reflect quiet good taste: flat-topped stucco houses roofed with tiles and shielded for privacy by lush shrubs The pleasantest surprise is Shuri, the Machinato Line strong-point which was second only to Sugar Loaf in Ushijima's defenses Japanese tourists seem to prefer visits to the Cave of the Virgins, or a descent of the 168 sandstone steps that lead to the Japanese commanders' last, underground command post on the island's southern tip, but to me Shuri is more attractive and far more significant Commodore Matthew C Perry first raised the American flag over Shuri Castle on May 26, 1853; the Fifth Marines did it again on May 29, 1945 Since 1950 the ruins of the castle's twelve-foot-thick walls — some of which have survived, curving upward with effortless grace — have enclosed the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa being the largest island in the Ryukyu Archipelago, and dotting the ridges flanking the university are modest, immaculate, middle-class homes The castle-cumuniversity is on Akamaruso Dori, or Street, on the opposite side of which are swings, jungle gyms, and sandboxes Under the shade of a tree in one corner stands an old Japanese tank, rusting in peace None of the children in the little park pay any attention to it, and neither, after all I've seen, I Before leaving the island I want to pay my respects to scenes once vivid to me This seems a recipe for frustration, because most of them are gone Green Beach Two, where my boondockers first touched Okinawan soil, is remarkable only for a silvery petroleum storage tank and two fuel pumps My leaking cave near Machinato Field is gone; so is the field; only a renamed village, Makiminato, remains, and there is nothing familiar in it The seawall on Oroku Peninsula and the tomb where I nearly died have completely vanished; a power station has replaced them Motobu Peninsula, still clothed in its dense jungle, is the least-changed part of the island The trouble here is not the absence of memorabilia It is, once more, in my aging flesh Precipices I once scaled effortlessly are grueling Nevertheless I make it up the peninsula's peaks, Katsu and Yaetake The pinnacles there provide firstrate views of the peninsula, and my presence on them attracts inquiring guards I have been trespassing, once more, and I have been caught But the guards are more curious than punitive, and presently I am talking to a voluble Japanese technician, Mr Y Fujumura He explains that the peaks are used for Japanese and U.S Signal Corps equipment which relays long-distance telephone calls, monitors radio traffic, and eavesdrops on phone conversations as far away as North Korea He provides details I understand none of them We part, and on my way once more, checking my notes, I conclude that I have touched all bases on Okinawa I am wrong I left the United States believing that a revisit to Sugar Loaf was out of the question because it had been bulldozed away for an officers' housing development In La Jolla, General Lemuel C Shepherd, Jr., the retired Marine Corps commandant, said he had been in the neighborhood recently; he assured me that the hill just wasn't there any more But I ask Jon Abel and Top Milton to join me in a visit to the development anyway There we pass a teen center, turn from McKinley Street to Washington Street, and, as I give a shout, come to a complete stop There it is, a half-block ahead I am looking at the whole of it for the first time It is the hill in my dreams Sugar Loaf Hill Jon and Top, almost as excited as I am, begin digging out old maps, which confirm me, but I don't need confirmation Instinctively I look around for patterns of terrain, cover and concealment, fields of fire To a stranger, noticing all the wrinkles and bumps pitting its slopes, Sugar Loaf would merely look like a height upon which something extraordinary happened long ago That is the impression of housewives along the street when we ring their doorbells and ask them They are wide-eyed when we tell them that they are absolutely right, that those lumps and ripples once were shell holes and foxholes Now a mantle of thick greensward covers all I remember Carl Sandburg: “I am the grass … let me work.” Up I go — no gasping this time — and find two joined pieces of wood at the top, a surveyor's marker referring to a bench mark below I take a deep breath, suddenly realizing that the last time I was here anyone standing where I now stand would have had a life expectancy of about seven seconds Today the ascent of Sugar Loaf takes a few minutes In 1945 it took ten days and cost 7,547 Marine casualties Ignoring the surveyor's marker, I take my own bearings, from memory Northeast: Shuri and its university Southeast: Half Moon; officers' dwellings there, too South-southwest: one leg of Horseshoe visible, and that barren Southwest: Naha's Grand Castle Hotel, once a flat saucer of black ruins And beneath my feet, where mud had been deeply veined with human blood, the healing mantle of turf “I am the grass.” I the Lord am thy Saviour and thy Redeemer “Let me work.” Sacred heart of the crucified Jesus, take away this murdering hate and give us thine own eternal love And then, in one of those great thundering jolts in which a man's real motives are revealed to him in an electrifying vision, I understand, at last, why I jumped hospital that Sunday thirty-five years ago and, in violation of orders, returned to the front and almost certain death It was an act of love Those men on the line were my family, my home They were closer to me than I can say, closer than any friends had been or ever would be They had never let me down, and I couldn't it to them I had to be with them, rather than let them die and me live with the knowledge that I might have saved them Men, I now knew, not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction They fight for one another Any man in combat who lacks comrades who will die for him, or for whom he is willing to die, is not a man at all He is truly damned And as I stand on that crest I remember a passage from Scott Fitzgerald World War I, he wrote, “was the last love battle”; men, he said, could never “do that again in this generation.” But Fitzgerald died just a year before Pearl Harbor Had he lived, he would have seen his countrymen united in a greater love than he had ever known Actually love was only part of it Among other things, we had to be tough, too To fight World War II you had to have been tempered and strengthened in the 1930s Depression by a struggle for survival — in 1940 two out of every five draftees had been rejected, most of them victims of malnutrition And you had to know that your whole generation, unlike the Vietnam generation, was in this together, that no strings were being pulled for anybody; the four Roosevelt brothers were in uniform, and the sons of both Harry Hopkins, FDR's closest adviser, and Leverett Salton-stall, one of the most powerful Republicans in the Senate, served in the Marine Corps as enlisted men and were killed in action But devotion overarched all this It was a bond woven of many strands You had to remember your father's stories about the Argonne, and saying your prayers, and Memorial Day, and Scouting, and what Barbara Frietchie said to Stonewall Jackson And you had to have heard Lionel Barrymore as Scrooge and to have seen Gary Cooper as Sergeant York And seen how your mother bought day-old bread and cut sheets lengthwise and resewed them to equalize wear while your father sold the family car, both forfeiting what would be considered essentials today so that you could enter college Sugar Loaf, then and now You also needed nationalism, the absolute conviction that the United States was the envy of all other nations, a country which had never done anything infamous, in which nothing was insuperable, whose ingenuity could solve anything by inventing something You felt sure that all lands, given our democracy and our know-how, could shine as radiantly as we did Esteem was personal, too; you assumed that if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity, respected as well as adored by your children Wickedness was attributed to flaws in individual characters, not to society's shortcomings To accept unemployment compensation, had it existed, would have been considered humiliating So would committing a senile aunt to a state mental hospital Instead, she was kept in the back bedroom, still a member of the family Debt was ignoble Courage was a virtue Mothers were beloved, fathers obeyed Marriage was a sacrament Divorce was disgraceful Pregnancy meant expulsion from school or dismissal from a job The boys responsible for the crimes of impregnation had to marry the girls Couples did not keep house before they were married and there could be no wedding until the girl's father had approved You assumed that gentlemen always stood and removed their hats when a woman entered a room The suggestion that some of them might resent being called “ladies” would have confounded you You needed a precise relationship between the sexes, so that no one questioned the duty of boys to cross the seas and fight while girls wrote them cheerful letters from home, girls you knew were still pure because they had let you touch them here but not there, explaining that they were saving themselves for marriage All these and “God Bless America” and Christmas or Hanukkah and the certitude that victory in the war would assure their continuance into perpetuity — all this led you into battle, and sustained you as you fought, and comforted you if you fell, and, if it came to that, justified your death to all who loved you as you had loved them The author in 1979 Later the rules would change But we didn't know that then We didn't know My last war dream came to me in Hong Kong's Ambassador Hotel, in a room overlooking the intersection of Nathan and Middle streets The dream began in a red blur, like a film completely out of focus, so much so that I didn't have the faintest idea of what I would see Clarity came slowly First: broad daylight, for the first time in these dreams Second: the hill No mystery about that now; it was Sugar Loaf down to the last dimple The old man appeared on the right and began his weary ascent But there was no figure rising on the left to greet him, though he didn't know that until, breathing heavily, he reached the summit and peered down the reverse slope He saw nothing, heard nothing There was nothing to see or hear He waited, shifting slightly this way and that with the passive patience of the middle-aged A cloud passed overhead, darkening the hill Then the old man grasped what had happened Embers would never again glow in the ashes of his memory His Sergeant would never come again He turned away, blinded by tears Author's Note THIS BOOK IS LARGELY A MARINE'S MEMOIR, NOT A BALANCED HIStory of the war with Japan Those who want versions of air and naval engagements during the conflict must look elsewhere; descriptions of Douglas MacArthur's campaigns, for example, may be found in American Caesar, my biography of the general That is the first breath The second, which must quickly follow, is that my reminiscences are not chronological Any attempt to impose structure upon the chaos of personal history, with the intent of attracting and holding the reader, necessarily involves some distortion It may be as great as a Mercator projection's — for instance, Daniel Defoe's Journal of the Plague Year, a riveting account of a disaster which struck when the writer was five years old — or as slight as H L Mencken's genial caveat that his autobiography was “yarning” and “not always photographically precise,” that “there are no doubt some stretchers in this book,” though “mainly it is fact.” So here too After thirty-five years, any man who suffered a head wound (my medical discharge papers note that, among other things, I had sustained “traumatic lesions of the brain”) can never be absolutely sure of his memory But everything I have set down happened, and to the best of my recollection it happened just this way, except that I have changed names to respect the privacy of other men and their families But I have resorted to some legerdemain in the interests of re-creating, and clarifying the spirit of, the historical past Here and there I use the pronoun “we” in its allinclusive sense, as in “We won the war.” More specifically, although I enlisted in the Marine Corps shortly after Pearl Harbor, I was ordered back to college until called up Thus, although I spent seven months on Guadalcanal, I arrived after the Japanese hegira and saw no fighting there No infantryman fought on all, or even many, of the Pacific islands Deployment of troops, casualty figures, and tropical diseases laid down impossible odds against that My own combat experience occurred on Okinawa, where I fought for over two months, during which I was wounded twice, was ordered off the line once, and was ultimately carried off the island and evacuated to Saipan I have drawn from that bank of experience for flash-forwards in earlier chapters, introducing each episode at a point where it seems fitting Writing them was extremely difficult My feelings about the Marine Corps are still highly ambivalent, tinged with sadness and bitterness, yet with the first enchantment lingering But by mining that tough old ore, and altering the order of those personal events, I have, I believe, been able to present a sequential account of a war which still confuses most Americans This, then, was the life I knew, where death sought me, during which I was transformed from a cheeky youth to a troubled man who, for over thirty years, repressed what he could not bear to remember Expressing gratitude to those who helped me along the way during this long journey into the past is an occasion for both pleasure and frustration — pleasure, because my memories of their kindnesses are still warm, and frustration, because my appreciation can never be adequate I hope I have omitted no one It is possible Jungles are poor places to keep files If I thus err in omission, I trust I shall be forgiven Forgiveness is also asked for my failure to identify individuals by their military, diplomatic, civilian, tribal, and ecclesiastical titles Generals are here, and monsignors, and ambassadors — all in different hierarchies, so varied and often so defiant of classification that I have resorted to that weak crutch, the alphabet I honor each source; I thank each; I am deeply indebted to all; and I believe that they will share my doubt that rank will count for much when we cross that dark river to the far shore where all voyages end and all paths meet My Samaritans, then, were: Jonathan F Abel, Aguedo F Agbayani, Consul Alberto, C W Allison, Norman Anderson, John A Baker, Itaaka Bamiatoa, Kabataan Barangay, Carmelo Barbero, Susan Bardelosa, Ieuan Batten, Bill Bennett, Homer Bigart, Al Bonney, Baltazar Jerome Bordallo, Madeleine M Bordallo, Ricardo J Bordallo, Robert L Bowen, Edward R Brady, Margaret A Brewer, Paul H Brown, Stanley Brown, Robert Byck, George Cakobau, Oscar Calvo, Carlos S Camacho, Anthony Charlwood, Donald Chung, Martin Clemens, Andrew W Coffey, Jeremiah Collins, John P Condon, Paul Cox, Elfriede Craddock, Jerry Crad-dock, R Don Crider, Horace Dawson, Beth Day, Judy Day, John deYoung, Rodolfo L Diaz, Mack R Douglas, R E Duca, Rodolfo Dula, Jim Earl, Florence Fenton, Y Fujumura, Robert B Fowler, Jay Gildner, John R Griffith, Samuel B Griffith II, John Guise, James Gunther, Robert Debs Heinl, Jr., Ernest S Hildebrand, Jr., Frank W Ingraham, Osi Ivaroa, Sy Ivice, Emilie Johnson, Robert Jordan, Timothy Joyner, Bruce Kirkwood, Jackson Koria, Isirfli Korovula, Joiji Kotobalavu, Maura Leavy, Har-land Lee, Theodore Lidz, Chester A Lipa, Arthur C Livick, Jr., Ichiro Loitang, Haldon Ray Loomis, Fijito Oshikawa, Howard Mabie, P D MacDonald, Luis G Magbanua, Pio Manoa, P F Manueli, Ferdinand Marcos, Imelda Romualdez Marcos, Ann Marshall, Tim Mauldin, Alan Meissner, Mike Mennard, Ross Milloy, Robert Milne, Arnold Milton, Yoshida Mitsui, Ben Moide, George E Murphy, Satendra Nandan, Beretitaro Neeti, Dave Ngirmidol, Praxiteles C Nicholson, Homer Noble, Myron Nordquist, Russell E Olson, Jeremiah J O'Neil, Noah Onglunge, Hera Owen, Robert Owen, Ted Oxburrow, Katsy Parsons, Lester E Penney, Harry W Peterson, Jr., Raymond Pillai, Eugene Ramsey, Asasela Ravuvu, John E Reece, Garth Rees, Thomas Remengesaw, Carlos Romulo, Tessie Romulo, Pedro C Sanchez, Frank Santo, Frans Schutzman, Tom Scott, Charles S Shapiro, Lemuel C Shepherd, Jr., George Silk, Harry Simes, E H Simmons, Gus Smales, Kalista Smau, Hinao Soalablai, Kerrie Somosi, Robert Somosi, Laura M Souder, Patrick Spread, Taute Takanoi, Jay Taylor, John Terrance, Ian Thompson, Joe Tooker, Jean Trumbull, Robert Trumbull, Fred Turner, Richard Underwood, Mae Verave, Mariano C Kersosa, Jacob Vouza, Mike Ward, R J Wenzei, Roger L Williams, William Wilson, Adrian P Winkel, Anne Wray, and Stanton F Zoglin Although this tale is personal, certain books were useful in the telling of it and are recommended to those interested in reading more about the battlefields it cites These are Rust in Peace, by Bruce Adams (Sydney, 1975); The Pacific: Then and Now, by Bruce Bahrenburg (New York, 1971); A Complete History of Guam, by Paul Carano and Pedro C Sanchez (Rutland, Vermont, 1964); History of the Sixth Marine Division, by Bevan Cass (Washington, 1948); The Battle for Guadalcanal, a superb account of that struggle, by Samuel B Griffith II (Philadelphia, 1963); History of the Second World War, by B H Lidell Hart (New York, 1971); Soldiers of the Sea, a history of the Marine Corps, by Robert Debs Heinl, Jr (Annapolis, 1962); The Long and the Short and the Tall, by Alvin M Josephy, Jr (New York, 1946); The Old Breed, a history of the First Marine Division in World War II, by George McMillan (Washington, 1949); The Fatal Impact, by Alan Moorehead (Middlesex, England, 1966); History of United States Naval Operations in World War II, volumes III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, XIII, XIV, by Samuel Eliot Morison (Boston, 1948, 1949, 1949, 1949, 1951, 1953, 1959, 1960); Untangled New Guinea Pidgin, by Wesley Sadler (Madang, Papua New Guinea, 1973); Tin Roofs and Palm Trees, by Robert Trumbull (Seattle, 1977); The Pacific Way, edited by Sione Tupouniua, et al (Suva, Fiji, 1975); Tarawa, by Robert Sherrod (New York, 1944); World War II: Island Fighting, by Rafael Steinberg and the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, Virginia, 1978); and World War II: The Rising Sun, by Arthur Zich and the Editors of Time-Life Books (Alexandria, Virginia, 1977) Readers of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock may find the second italicized sentence on page 391 familiar It is a paraphrase of two sentences appearing in different acts of that splendid play In this, as in previous books, the author is profoundly grateful to the staff of Wesleyan University's Olin Library, and in particular to J Robert Adams, University Librarian, and William Dillon, Suzanne H Fall, Peg Halstead, Alice Henry, Joan Jurale, Erhard Konerding, Steven Lebergott, Edmund Rubacha, and Elizabeth Swaim, for their generous help, thoughtfulness, and understanding Once more my invaluable assistant, Margaret Kennedy Rider, has proved to be loyal, tireless, and understanding And I am again indebted to Don Congdon, my literary agent; Roger Donald, my editor; and Melissa Clemence, my copy editor — three peerless professionals whose patience and counsel never failed, never flagged, and who saw to it that everything attainable was attained W.M Wesleyan University May 1980 Look for these other books by William Manchester A World Lit Only by Fire The Medieval Mind and the Renaissance “Lively and engaging, full of exquisite details and anecdotes that transform this period — usually murky — into comprehensive tableau.” — Dallas Morning News “Manchester persuasively argues that the Middle Ages ended September 7, 1552, the day that a few surviving members of Ferdinand Magellan's crew returned to Spain, having circumnavigated the earth By taking readers along on Magellan's voyage, Manchester provides them with easy access to a fascinating age when our modern mentality was just being born.” — Chicago Tribune Available in paperback wherever books are sold The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Visions of Glory: 1874–1932 The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill; Alone: 1932–1940 “Manchester is not only a master of detail, but also of ‘the big picture.’ … I daresay most Americans reading The Last Lion will relish it immensely.” — National Review “Churchill and Manchester were clearly made for each other.” — Chicago Tribune “Told with skill and vivid anecdotes … Manchester introduces us, by way of new and dramatic emphases, to many startling things we thought we knew.” — Time Available wherever books are sold “Gripping … It is impossible for an American to read this book without pride in what his country accomplished in those days of enormous challenge.” —J G HARRISON, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR In this intensely powerful memoir, America's preeminent biographer-historian, who has written so brilliantly about World War II in his acclaimed lives of General Douglas MacArthur (American Caesar) and Winston Churchill (The Last Lion), looks back at his own early life and offers an unrivaled firsthand account of World War II in the Pacific, of what it looked like, sounded like, smelled like, and, most of all, what it felt like to one who underwent all but the ultimate of its experiences “Compelling … No other living author could have gotten it all down so well.” —NEW YORK DAILY NEWS “When Manchester speaks of the awesome heroism and hideous suffering of the Marines he lived with and fought with, he is reverent before the mystery of individual courage and gallantry.” —BALTIMORE SUN “A strong and honest account … Mr Manchester's combat writing is one of his book's strengths and stands comparison with the best.” —TED MORGAN, NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW William Manchester is one of America's most celebrated biographer-historians His bestselling books include The Last Lion, a multivolume biography of Winston Churchill; American Caesar, a biography of Douglas MacArthur; The Death of a President; The Arms of Krupp; and A World Lit Only by Fire He is Professor of History Emeritus at Wesleyan University ... Ridge, Guadalcanal 190 Sergeant Major Vouza 204 Wading ashore at Tarawa 226 The pier at Tarawa 226 Enemy guns at Tarawa 227 Suicide Cliff, Saipan 272 Banzai Cliff, Saipan 272 Japanese tank, Guam 299... the man in front, and that was pretty much the case with me (The only native woman I saw on Guadalcanal had a figure like a seabag She was suffering from an advanced case of elephantiasis Hubba... in a Hawaiian hospital by an audience of wounded Marines from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, men who had had macho acts, in a phrase of the day, up their asses to their armpits To be sure, I was not an