Memories of Iwo Jima

By Bill Wichert
Herald Staff Writer

The sand on the beaches of Iwo Jima was the first major battle for Warren Fredericks to overcome. Coming under attack from Japanese forces embedded in the island caves, Fredericks and his fellow Marines struggled to dig trenches, and get their wounded comrades to safety. The volcanic sand was not something they were prepared for.

“We were supposed to take that island in three days. Three days, we were still on the beach”, Newton resident Fredericks said. “A real massacre.”

Sitting in the recliner at his Bristol Glen apartment recently, the 87-year-old former Sparta postmaster remembered what it was like to be a part of one of the most famous battles in World War II history.

As the more than month-long battle approaches its 62nd anniversary tomorrow, the conflict – and the photo of Marines raising the flags on Mount Suribachi – has been celebrated in a pair of Clint Eastwood films, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima.”

The 1949 John Wayne classic, “Sands of Iwo Jima,” includes actual combat footage shot during the battle, including the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi.

For Fredericks, the Iwo Jima battle was one of the last campaigns in a military career that began after he graduated from high school in Butler in 1939. Joining the Marines – partly because “they had a fancy uniform” – Fredericks initially spent a few years traveling around the world on a light cruiser called the USS Brooklyn, from the Panama Canal to Australia and Hawaii. When Pearl Harbor was attacked on Dec. 7, 1941, Fredericks had been reassigned to Picatinny Arsenal in Dover. A day later, he was sent to Chicago to be a typist at a recruitment office. When the Marines learned he could not type, Fredericks was sent to Detroit to drive around and pick up new recruits. “I said, ‘I’m not used to this kind of traffic,’” he said.

His next stop was the recruitment office in Bay City, Mich., where he enlisted local men in the Marines without the burdens of typing or driving in a busy city. An old photo shows Fredericks and another Marine standing aside a sign that reads: “Join The Marines, And Be On Your Way.”

Another significant event occurred in Bay City: Fredericks met his wife, Marion, through mutual friends. The two were married less than a year later.

From Bay City, Fredericks went to Camp Pendleton in California and then onto Maui for additional training. A gunnery sergeant, Fredericks rose to First Sergeant in Company C, 5th Medical battalion in the 25th Regiment, 5th Marine Division.

When the regiment arrived at Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945, Fredericks’ battalion was one of the last to arrive on shore. The beach was too crowded and the water was too rough to make a safe landing, forcing him to wait at sea overnight. Once on the beach, his battalion tried to dig foxholes as they were instructed to do, but the volcanic sand made it difficult. The Marines on the beach were an easy target for Japanese soldiers shooting from Mount Suribachi. “If you got on the beach, you were going to get stuck,” Fredericks said. “Mount Suribachi (was) looking right down on the beach on us. So we had to get the hell off the beach.”

For several days, Fredericks and his battalion fought to transport wounded soldiers to nearby airfields, where planes took them back to the ship for treatment. One time, a plane with one propeller broken landed before his eyes. “I can still see that thing coming,” he said. “The landing was so short they had to land right away.”

As the Marines made their way across the island, Fredericks has to find wounded soldiers and bring them back to the main camp to be operated on. Sometimes, he found dead soldiers, retrieved the information on their dog tags and retuned them to where graves were being dug. “I didn’t like that job,” he said. I didn’t get much closer than that. Pulling the dog tags was enough for me … Some of them I’d been with for a couple of years.”

Then there’s the story of the photo. Lt. Colonel Chandler W. Johnson had ordered a small flag to be raised atop Mount Suribachi, but after noticing that not all the soldiers on the island were able to see it, Johnson told the soldiers to get a larger flag from one of the ships on the beach. Fredericks, who was one of Johnson’s most trusted men, was told to return the smaller flag to the colonel and escort Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal to the top of the mountain. With Fredericks standing a few feet away, Rosenthal snapped the famous picture of the second flag-raising. A photo taken with Fredericks’ own camera shows him in the corner of the frame while the soldiers secure the flag.

“I took Rosenthal up there. I’d never been there myself,” Fredericks said. “All of a sudden he (said), ‘Hey, the flag’s going up! The flag’s going up.”

The battle of Iwo Jima was among the fiercest of World War II and possibly in U.S. military history. It was the only time during the war in the Pacific that the Marines took more casualties than the Japanese, although on Iwo Jima, 20 times more Japanese were killed than captured.

The island, just over nine square miles and shaped like a pork chop, is just a speck in the ocean. But it was a strategic plum for American plans and for the Japanese, it was a piece of the homeland. The island was, after all, considered part of the same district as Tokyo. On the island were two airfields, both used by the Japanese to launch Kamakazi attacks. The fields were also critical to the United States because American fighters did not have the same range as bombers. By using Iwo Jima, the fighters were close enough to accompany the bombers over the Japanese main islands. The Japanese also had many years to perfect defenses on the island, from setting up withering fire zones for machine guns and mortars, to building reinforced concrete bunkers, tunnels and whole storage complexes underground. In fact, the extent of the underground network led American planners to underestimate the number of Japanese on the island because most of the soldiers stationed there were hidden from sight.

Following the battle of Iwo Jima, Fredericks later visited Hiroshima and Nagasaki about a week after the atom bomb was dropped – an experience that caused medical problems for him years later. Fredericks was discharged in November 1945.

After living for a while in Michigan, Fredericks and his wife moved to Sparta, where he temporarily joined the township police force and later served as tax collector, and then as postmaster for more than 20 years. In 1980, Fredericks became a court clerk with the Sussex County Sheriff’s Office before retiring five years later to take care of his parents. All through the years, the story of Iwo Jima has been special for the Fredericks family, said his daughter, Debbie Matyas. They have collected books, commemorative coins and soon they will get a DVD copy of “Flags of Our Fathers” for Matyas and Fredericks to watch together. “These particular stories have always come down through our family,” said Matyas, before turning to her father, “We’re proud of your service.”