Presentation Date: February 28, 2002
Charles W. Chuck Tatum
USMC, Bronze Star recipient. In the first assault-wave at Iwo Jima. Fought alongside his hero, SGT. John Basilone. USMC, Bronze Star recipient. In the first assault-wave at Iwo Jima. Fought alongside his hero, SGT. John Basilone.
Red Blood, Black Sand
On the 28th of February, 47 years ago, Marine Chuck Tatum was facing his tenth day on the volcanic, sulfurous, death strewn island called Iwo Jima.
"On the tenth day we didn't even own half of it yet. The 'landlords' held more of it than we did. As I reflect back on it... I think Iwo Jima was more than a battle. It was a thirty-six day descent into hell on earth... an apocalypse in the Pacific."
Speaking at the February Golden Gate Wing meeting, Chuck Tatum reflected back on his experiences on Iwo, focusing on the lineage of Marine heroes who have been awarded the nation's highest award, the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Of 81 Medals of Honor given to Marines in World War Two, 27 were awarded at Iwo Jima. Twenty two Marines and 5 Navy Corpsmen received the award.
In terms of the history of the Medal of Honor, on June 21, 1921 Marine Private Albert Smith braved fire to rescue an injured Navy aviator from his crashed aircraft at Pensacola. His Medal of Honor award, one of the very few in peacetime, would take 21 years 6 months and 6 days before it was followed by another.
On August 7, 1942 , eight months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the First Marine Division invaded Japanese-held Guadalcanal. Ten days later, a diversionary attack on Makin Island in the Solomon chain went awry. Col. Evans Carlson's 2nd Marine Raiders launched a surprise attack on Japanese forces, rafting in from submarines to the island. But the accidental discharge of a Browning Automatic Rifle alerted the Japanese, who met the Marines at the beach. Sgt. Clyde Tomlinson, killed in the ensuing fight, was posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroic actions, the first such Medal for a ground soldier in World War Two.
Tatum says that meanwhile, on Guadalcanal, a Marine named John Basilone was leading a machine gun platoon, defending Henderson Field. The airstrip was the hinge pin not only to holding the island, but also to gaining an upper hand in the offensive against all Japanese forces in the Solomon Islands.
Basilone and his gunners fired at point blank range to stop wave after wave of sake-fueled banzai charges against the field. After two days and nights, Henderson Field was safe. Basilone, credited for the virtual annihilation of a Japanese regiment, was awarded the Medal of Honor.
Other Marines at Guadalcanal who earned a Medal of Honor included platoon Sgt. Mitchell Paige, and aviators Pappy Boyington, Joe Foss, Jeff DeBlanc and Joe Hansen.
When Basilone was sent stateside for a war bond tour. When that was completed, he requested and was granted a return to the war zone.
Chuck Tatum was 18 years old in August, 1943. He'd been badgering his mother for two years to enlist with the Marines after seeing at the Stockton post office a recruiting poster of a Marine in dress blues on the deck of a battleship.
Tatum was in for culture shock when he arrived in San Diego for boot camp. "You can imagine my disappointment when I found out that dress blues had been discontinued for the duration."
Chuck suffered a setback when he came down with an illness similar to pneumonia called "cat fever". It hit him in his sixth week of camp and forced him to repeat boot camp. He was assigned to Camp Pendleton and the forming of the new 5th Marine Division.
"I was the first man to report on board. On the second day I had company, platoon Sgt. John Basilone. By this time Basilone had become a living legend in the Marine Corps... I was very pleased to have a living marine icon as my platoon sergeant."
Tatum learned about machine guns under Basilone's tutelage. In August, 1944 the 5th Division was shipped to Camp Tarawa, Hawaii for more training.
In December, the 5th sailed on its first combat mission.
Arriving in Saipan and transferring to LSTs (Landing Ship Tank), the 5th Marines sailed for Iwo. Tatum's LST lost it's steering en route, but Navy sailors jury-rigged the steering and rejoined the convoy for the invasion.
February, 1945, brought the toughest battle the U.S. Marine Corps had ever fought, on an eight square mile volcanic rock in the Pacific Ocean. It was a battle with an extraordinary toll, especially for the size of the real estate. 6821 Americans died in Iwo's conquest, with another 20,000 wounded. 21,000 Japanese soldiers died in defense.
Tatum reflects, "That was the price for this bloody battle, this eight square miles of volcanic crap". Iwo Jima had become a strategic necessity by 1944. With the capture of Saipan, Guam and Tinian, these Marianas islands had become home bases for B-29 Superfortresses used in the strategic bombing of Japan. Iwo Jima, only 675 miles from Tokyo, and the only land mass between the B-29 bases and Japan large enough to support B-29 airstrips, was also of strategic value to Japan, supporting radar and communications.
Iwo was also home to fighter planes, which rose up from Iwo Jima to attack B-29s, landed, refueled and rearmed, and then rose to attack again. Fighters were costing about twenty percent of B-29 losses on each raid. "It couldn't be bypassed and it couldn't be isolated. It had to be taken in a conquest of arms," says Tatum.
February 19, 1945. 09:31 hours.
U.S. Marines hit the beach at Iwo Jima. Chuck Tatum was one of them. Tatum says the first danger that came his way on the beach was from a crippled Navy fighter. Apparently its pilot had been killed and slumped over the controls, triggering the machine guns. The plane then slammed into one of the amtracs, showering the beach with aircraft parts.
Then, Chuck's attention returned to the task in front of them. "Steve Evanson, my assistant gunner, and I were in the first wave. We were fighting our way up the steep black sand terraces, hampered by 65 pounds of combat gear. Gasping for breath, we struggled up to the top, where the Japanese gunners could see the whites of our eyes. They opened fire on all the Marines trapped on the black sand beaches of Iwo Jima. They had us in their sights. We were zeroed in on their killing fields."
"I looked back on the beach and only saw one lone Marine standing up. The rest of us were hugging the ground in the prone position. That Marine was Gunnery Sgt. John Basilone. He was kicking butts and telling Marines to get up and advance or they would surely die on the beach." Tatum says the invasion had ground to a halt, and Basilone's leadership by example had gotten the assault back underway.
The Gunnery Sgt. next came to where Tatum and Evanson had set up their machine gun. Tatum says they'd seen blasts from a Japanese field piece on Tatum's right, shooting down the beach. Basilone pointed out a giant Japanese pillbox for the two gunners to target, and directed them to slide over to increase their field of fire.
Meanwhile, another Marine made his way to the blockhouse and tossed a ten pound satchel of plastic explosives through its open aperture. After a terrific explosion, another Marine with a flame-thrower shot searing napalm into the bunker.
Tatum says, "Next Basilone stood astride my back and unsnapped the pintel hook and picked up my machine gun, and he was hollering in my ear, 'get the belt.' We took off running up the slope that led to the back of the blockhouse. At the rear entry, the Japanese gunners tried escaping the furnace their blockhouse had become. Basilone mowed them down, firing the machine gun from the hip. It was a mercy killing, because I believe those men were already dead. They tried wiping the napalm from their bodies to no avail."
Tatum says Basilone returned the machine gun, signaled "follow me" and led eighteen marines towards Motoyama Airfield Number One, the main airfield.
At the edge of the airstrip they set up the machine gun in a deep shell hole from a 16 inch gun, where they drew both enemy fire from Suribachi and friendly fire from U.S. Navy ships. Tatum says Basilone told them to hold the position at all costs and then moved on, to lead other Marines across the plateau.
"We looked on in disbelief as a Japanese mortar shell exploded among Basilone and his machine gun platoon. It killed Basilone and and five of his men."
Before Iwo was fully secured, fifteen days after he'd landed on the beach, Tatum was removed from battle due to combat fatigue. Out of his original eight man squad, only Chuck and one other Marine survived the battle. B Company of the 5th marine division had landed at Iwo with 157 men, including eight officers, and left the island 32 men and one officer.
Tatum says the capture of Iwo Jima and the improvement of its air strip allowed B-29s to refuel, extending their range to bomb targets further north in Japan. Iwo also provided a field for long-range fighter escorts. As the safe haven it was intended to provide for bombers taking off from the Marianas, it is estimated the lives of 25,000 airmen were saved because Iwo had a friendly landing field.
The spirit of John Basilone lives on. The 29 year old Gunnery Sergeant was awarded the Navy Cross for his actions on Iwo, the only Marine enlisted man receive both the Medal of Honor and Navy Cross in World War Two.
Today, in honor of John Basilone, a U.S. Navy destroyer carries his name, as does an annual September parade in his New Jersey home town. In California, a seventeen mile stretch of Interstate 5 alongside Camp Pendleton has been named after the brave soldier.