Column: Thoughts from Dr. Joe: A salute to a World War II survivor who battled at Okinawa
The old Marine sipped on his black tea, and while he did so, he told of the 1945 battle to retake Okinawa, an effort referred to as “typhoon of steel.”
“Don’t write that,” he’d tell me, after sharing a vivid memory. He’d explain a little more, and then again would repeat, “don’t write that.”
I understood that Bob Martin believed the horror of battle was too ghastly for this column’s readers to be subjected to, but it was also too ghastly for his memory. He became emotional as he explained that he was the lone survivor of his machine gun squad, that his buddies died on top of him, and how he cradled them in his arms.
Today, when we lose a soldier and it cuts to the bone for many of us. Yet Martin pointed out that several thousand Americans were killed in the battle. I find it difficult to comprehend such catastrophic loss. It’s easy to cite numbers, but as Martin expressed, those numbers are lives and those lives affect other lives. When soldiers die in combat, the living go with them.
Bob Martin, one of La Cañada’s eminent residents and member of the Kiwanis Club, was 18 years old when he joined the Marines. Eighteen is the advent of the rite of passage, a time for frivolity, yet Martin was not destined to experience the burgeoning of youth. Maybe it was the luck of the draw, or maybe it was his destiny, or maybe it was neither, but Martin would spend his rite of passage clinging to life.
I did not find it unusual that he remembered each moment of the battle. Subsequently, I understood author Eugene Sledge’s rationale as his chronicles of death, mayhem, and war’s catastrophic effects attests as to why those who experience it can never forget.
Of course, Martin must have known that by joining up, he’d have one destiny: combat. He went from San Diego to Guadalcanal for staging, and then on April 1, 1945, he landed on Okinawa with the Sixth Marine Division.
The Marines expected to be slaughtered at the beachhead, but Japan’s 32nd army, some 130,000 men strong, waited inland. They had the Americans just where they wanted them.
It is rare that victory is what is most memorable to the soldier; it’s those elements that are incidental to battle. Martin recalls crawling from his foxhole toward enemy lines, attempting to rescue Okinawan children who were forced into front-line service. The children were called the Blood and Iron Imperial Brigade, and in the coming suicide attacks, they were destined for slaughter. Martin attempted to sneak as many children as he could into American lines.
“How many did you save?” I asked.
“Eight,” he answered.
Because of his selflessness and his affiliation with the people, he was called uchinanchu, a term of endearment meaning ethnic Okinawan.
Martin recalled comforting the Marines who became catatonic as a result of the battle and the concussion of the artillery. “They were psychoneurotic, shell-shocked,” he said. “I remember helping those guys in the draw under constant mortar and machine gun fire.”
Martin was at the Sugar Loaf, a tall mound barely 50 feet high and 300 yards long. It was the final strong point of Japanese defenses. His unit was ordered to take the Sugar Loaf. After the fight, the body count was 1,656 Marines killed and 7,429 wounded. “Everyone was wounded but me,” he said.
I know my questions were painful, but I only asked because it was from one Marine to another. There was a pause and I knew where his mind was.
“I never flaked,” he said.
Veterans Day is this week. I want to honor the Old Marine. Here’s to you, Bob Martin, and those like you. Damn few left.
We finished lunch, I left, and he smiled as I said, “Carry on, Marine.”
JOE PUGLIA is a practicing counselor, a retired professor of education and a former officer in the Marines. Reach him at doctorjoe@ymail.com. Visit his website at doctorjoe.us.
