On Feb. 23, 1945, four days into the bloody month-long battle of Iwo Jima island, U.S. Marines raised the American flag on Mount Suribachi, the first time it had flown over Japanese territory. From his position farther inland, Ed Donnely, a Fourth Division Marine sergeant from Cincinnati, looked south through his binoculars and saw the flag waving atop the 556-foot hill.
"It didn't really mean much to me then. I thought, well, the Fifth Division did their job by securing the island's highest point," says Mr. Donnely, now 77.
"Little did I realize that picture would become so famous." The award-winning Associated Press photograph of the flag-raising inspired the design of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va. Earlier this year, the memorial, dedicated in 1954, was a point of contention and verbal sparring.
First, many Marines objected to announced U.S. Air Force plans for an aluminum-and-concrete memorial on a grassy area near the Marine memorial. "A desecration of hallowed ground," they said. A group called Friends of Iwo Jima, headed by Rep. Gerald Solomon, R-N.Y., a former Marine, filed suit May 15 in federal court in Virginia to block construction of the proposed memorial.
Second, a 4-year-old document was found in which the chair of Washington's Fine Arts Commission, which oversees public monuments in the nation's capital, referred to the design of the Marine Corps War Memorial as "kitsch," or tacky.
To many Marines, these are fighting words, an insult to the sacrifices made on Iwo Jima, the costliest battle in Marine Corps history. Its toll of 6,821 American dead, 5,931 of them Marines, accounted for nearly one-third of all Marine Corps losses during World War II. More than 17,000 Marines were wounded, and another 2,600 disabled by "combat fatigue."
Victory at Iwo Jima made Japan's industrial cities more vulnerable to U.S. bombing raids and accelerated the end of the war.
As for critics of the memorial, Mr. Donnely says, "They don't know what the hell they're talking about. It's ignorance. The memorial is great. If somebody wants to argue with me, I'll argue. They weren't there or they wouldn't be talking that way."
Mr. Donnely was there, from start to finish.
Memorial Day stirs his patriotism and brings memories of friends who died on the volcanic island, 750 miles south of Tokyo.
"I dislike people who don't remove their hats when the flag passes by at a parade," the retired factory foreman says in the basement den of his Sharonville home, "but you can't expect other people to think like you do because they didn't experience what you did.
"Some young people don't know the sacrifices that were made to make this country what it is. Freedom is not free. Thousands of boys are lying over there on Iwo Jima. It's because of all those young men who died that we've got the freedom we've got."
Destination airstrip
Invasion day, Feb. 19, 1945, started at 4 a.m. That's when Marines were awakened aboard troop ships and fed a steak-and-eggs breakfast. "Many of the boys knew it was their last meal," Mr. Donnely says. Other troops sought out military chaplains and were baptized in the ocean's waters.
The first men hit the shore in a hail of artillery and small arms fire. The men who weren't hit found the going slow and difficult. The wet volcanic sand "made you feel like you were going two steps forward and one step back."
Sgt. Donnely huddled in a fox hole on that cold and rainy night. All around him, he saw other men from the Fourth U.S. Marine Division lying dead on the gray sand. Heavy artillery fire overhead turned the night into day.
His division's objective was to secure the first airstrip, about 400 yards inland, within the first day. They were fortunate to get on to the beach, Mr. Donnely says.
That first night ashore, the Marines awaited a Japanese counterattack that would not come.
"They probably could have pushed us back into the water. Our guns were bogged down in the wet sand." says Mr. Donnely, who's 6-foot-2 frame carried 212 pounds in combat. "The big shots said it would be a two-day operation."
Japanese ready
The eight-square-mile island was important to Allied efforts to close out the Japanese. U.S. bombers flying missions over Japan from Saipan and Tinian islands -- 700 miles farther south -- encountered Japanese fighters stationed at Iwo Jima's two airfields.
After Iwo was captured by the Americans, U.S. fighter planes used its airstrips to protect B-29 bombers, which could also use Iwo Jima for emergency landings.
The island's strategic importance was obvious. The Japanese were well prepared for the inevitable U.S. attack.
More than 60,000 Americans were part of the invasion force. Some 24,000 Japanese troops -- of whom about 23,000 died -- waited in carefully constructed tunnels and bunkers, aiming big guns toward the east. Big Naval shells were dug in as land mines. They didn't just kill; they blew Marines into pieces.
U.S. planes bombed the island for 72 consecutive days leading up to the invasion. The Navy attempted to further soften the Japanese with three straight days and 8,000 tons of offshore shelling.
Iwo Jima was the last outpost of the shrinking Japanese empire. They would not give it up without a fight to the death.
Burn them out
Sgt. Donnely was a forward observer, responsible for finding concentrations of enemy troops and directing artillery fire toward them. His group of a dozen men pulled an artillery gun on wheels. A radio man was connected by wire back to the shore.
As the Allied forces advanced inland, Japanese resistance grew less intense.
"But you still had to be alert," he says. "It was so frustrating. You had to shoot or burn (using flamethrowers) them out of their caves."
As they advanced, American casualties mounted.
"It's not something that's pleasant to talk about, but we'd put some of the bodies in front of the fox holes to use as shields," Mr. Donnely says.
The order remained the same: "Take land and kill the Japs," he says.
The weeks passed slowly. The second airstrip -- at the center of the island -- fell. So did a third, under construction a few hundred yards farther to the west. Finally, on March 16, 26 days after Marines landed, Iwo Jima was secured by the Allies. On March 26, victory was declared.
Before leaving the island to return to base on the Marshall Islands, Sgt. Donnely met with a company doctor.
"We had some of those small bottles of whiskey," he says. "He told me what I was going through (post-traumatic stress disorder) was normal. He said every guy was going through it."
No Toyotas here
Mr. Donnely would not be a part of joint American-Japanese memorial or anniversary services on Iwo Jima. It was OK for other guys, he says, but not him.
There are too many pictures of dismembered friends and brothers-in-arms in his head. There are images of paralyzed Marines aboard the hospital ship.
"It's hard to explain how I feel about being on Iwo," says Mr. Donnely, whose neat hair and appearance suggest military experience. He sips a can of caffeine-free Diet Pepsi in a basement decorated with Marine Corps and Cincinnati Reds memorabilia.
His driveway leads to a patio behind his house, where he flies both the American and Marine Corps flags.
"Toyota is a good car, but not for me," he says. "I still see so many of the boys killed and mutilated. I've shot people, but I don't want to talk about it. It was kill or be killed.
"I was no hero. I did my job."
