Published June 2, 2007, as part of a HonorAir article
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20070602/NEWS/706020340/0/search

Vet recalls Battle of Iwo Jima

By Jennie Jones Giles
At the Battle of Iwo Jima, the average life expectancy of a Marine heavy-machine gunner was 30 seconds, from the time he set up the weapon.
J.D. Tweed of Hendersonville beat those odds. He returned home to Henderson County.
Today, Tweed is among 100 of the county’s World War II veterans flying to Washington, D.C., on the fifth HonorAir flight.
County residents have raised $280,000 to send more than 500 World War II veterans to visit the National World War II Memorial.

Early years

Tweed, 81, participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima, the most costly battle in Marine Corps history. He served with the 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division as a member of Easy Co., the platoon that raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi.
Tweed was 4 when he moved to Henderson County.
“Dad brought us across the mountains from Greeneville, Tenn.,” he said.
He grew up working in his father’s furniture store, doing furniture repair and restoration. In 1943, at the age of 17, he quit school at Hendersonville High to join the Marines.
“I didn’t want to be drafted,” he said. “I just liked the idea of being in a good outfit.”
After basic training at Camp Pendleton in California, Tweed joined other Marines on Hawaii.

Battle of Iwo Jima

It was early January 1945, that Tweed boarded a ship heading for the volcanic island of Iwo Jima.
“It took us 45 days to get there,” he said. “We traveled in a convoy with all the battleships around us.”
Tweed was among the Marines to storm the beaches of Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. He was in the fifth wave. It was about 9:15 a.m. when Tweed boarded the boats for the beach.
“We just pulled up within sight of the island, got on Higgins boats and headed for the shore,” he said. “It’s hard to describe it.”
Tweed said the best description was one he read years ago: “Getting across the beach and terrace was like walking through a rainstorm and not getting wet.”
“With the good Lord’s help, I got on the terrace,” he said.
Tweed was an assistant gunner on a 37mm anti-tank gun. The gun crew survived the beach landing. The gun did not.
“A Japanese mortar shell hit the gun as it was coming in on a Higgins boat,” Tweed said. “The Higgins boat was sunk.”
Later in the day, the crew found another gun.
“That gun made it ashore, but the crew didn’t,” Tweed said. “We got that gun up in position and used it for the next 36 days.”
The Marines began the long fight to the north side of the island. The Japanese army positions were heavily fortified, with vast bunkers, hidden artillery and 11 miles of tunnels, according to military history texts.
It was difficult for the Marines to advance due to the terrain, which consisted of volcanic ash. Yard by yard, the Marines advanced.
“We were advancing a few hundred yards at a time, from Japanese pillbox to pillbox,” Tweed said. “We just took it day by day. Whatever happened that day, we’d try to forget about it and move on to the next day.”
At night Tweed and the other five members of his gun crew, including the truck driver, moved in front of the infantry to fire the gun at the Japanese troops. At daylight, the infantry began to move forward and the gun crew moved to the rear.
“We supported them with gunfire,” Tweed said. “It was most dangerous at night when we were in front.
“I don’t remember sleeping,” he said. “But I must have slept. If at least one person didn’t stay awake, we might not wake up the next morning.”
Digging foxholes was not an easy task in volcanic ash, he said.
“Steam from the volcano heated the fox holes,” he said. “By morning, they were hot.”
Navy ships firing “star shells” at night to light up the area also kept the Marines awake, he said.
Only one member of Tweed’s six-man gun crew did not survive the battle.
“He was carrying ammunition and ran over a mine in the road,” Tweed said. “We got him out of the carrier, but he died later.”

Raising the flag

It was the 34th day of battle.
“I was at the foot of the volcano,” he said. “We were supporting the troops with our gunfire. It was our platoon that went up to raise the flag.”
Marine Col. Chandler Johnson had called for the platoon of Marines to climb Mount Suribachi. With them, he sent a small American flag to fly if they reached the summit. The Marines reached the top of Suribachi without incident. Using a length of pipe they found among the wreckage atop the mountain, the Marines hoisted the U.S flag over Mount Suribachi, the first U.S. flag raised on Japanese soil.
“Somebody said they raised the flag,” Tweed said. “We could see it. It made us feel good, knowing we accomplished that much.”
As the flag went up, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had just landed on the beach. He wanted the flag as a souvenir. Chandler then sent a Marine to find a second flag, and sent that one up the volcano to replace the first. As the first flag came down, the second went up, and it was then that Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal took the famous photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” of the replacement flag being planted on the mountain’s summit.
“Then they turned us north and we stayed on the move,” Tweed said.
Of the six men who were in the famous photograph, “three were killed before we left the island,” Tweed said.
“I knew Ira Hayes (one of the Marines in the photograph),” Tweed said. “We were attached to his outfit. They took those boys off and flew them to the states to go on bond tours. Ira Hayes came back to us.”
During the next few days of fighting, Johnson was killed.
“There was a place in one of the cliffs that Col. Johnson wanted some direct fire,” Tweed said. “We had trucks pulling our guns across an open field, all the while being fired on with mortar shells.
“After taking the gun off the truck, I sat down and leaned up against the truck,” Tweed said. “A mortar shell hit the other side where Col. Johnson was. All I saw of him was his two boots. It killed him and quite a few of the gun crew. Col. Johnson was a fine man.”
After taking Iwo Jima, the Marines were scheduled to go to Okinawa.
“We were beat up so bad and lost so many men, we went back to the Hawaiian Islands,” he said. “We began training for the big invasion scheduled for November.”
Of the more than 22,000 Japanese soldiers on the island of Iwo Jima, 20,703 died and 216 were captured in the battle. The Marine Corps sent 40,000 Marines onto the island of Iwo Jima. Marines and other Allied forces suffered 27,909 casualties, with 6,825 killed in action.
Over a quarter of the Medals of Honor awarded to Marines in World War II were given for conduct in the invasion of Iwo Jima. The Marines were commended with 24 Medals of Honor. An additional five Medals of Honor were bestowed upon five Navy servicemen and reservists.

After the battle

The training on Hawaii was never used. The Japanese surrendered after atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Tweed served six months in Nagasaki.
“We were the first troops in Nagasaki,” he said. “It was just a bunch of twisted buildings and steel.”
In February 1946, Tweed was discharged with the rank of corporal. He returned home to Hendersonville, met and married his wife, Marion Cagle Tweed, and continued working in the furniture and repair store.
He still works at the shop on Kanuga Street, about seven hours a day, he said.
“It doesn’t feel right, not working,” he said.
Tweed’s brother Vincent was also a Marine, serving during the Korean War and receiving two Purple Hearts. Another brother Gary served in the Marines with a helicopter crew in the Vietnam War.
Tweed has two sons, Terry Lee and Jaimy. Terry Lee Tweed was in the Army’s Green Berets, serving in Germany. Tweed has two grandchildren.

HonorAir

The HonorAir flight today will take the veterans to the National World War II Memorial, the Korean and Vietnam War memorials, and Arlington National Cemetery.
The chartered buses will drive slowly by the Iwo Jima Memorial at Arlington.
Tweed waited for the fifth HonorAir flight to sign up.
“It just didn’t seem right going and not paying my way,” he said. “Mike Murdoch (veteran service officer for Henderson County) talked me into going on this one. I was stubborn.
“It’s a grand thing they’re doing (HonorAir flights),” Tweed said.
Jeff Miller of Hendersonville, the founder of HonorAir, said the idea of taking World War II veterans to see their memorial in Washington has spread to at least 19 states since the county sent the first flight last fall.