Published Feb. 19, 2001
Hendersonville Times-News

http://www.blueridgenow.com/article/20010219/EXTRAS02/102190304/0/search?p=1&tc=pg

On 56th anniversary, Marine recalls Iwo Jima

By Mitch Sandos
Hauling troops onto the beaches of Japanese-held Pacific islands during World War II was a frightening experience, said W.A. “Bill” Moffitt. But there was no use being nervous about a job that had to be done.
Moffitt drove amtracks in the Marines’ 10th Amtrack Battalion. Amtracks were amphibious vehicles propelled by tracks, much like tanks. They were designed to haul troops from offshore ships across the coral reefs and lagoons that surrounded many of the Pacific islands. It was a good match, Moffitt said, because the 17-ton amtracks “love to cross coral.” He delivered troops from the 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions to beachheads, carried out wounded and then returned to the beaches with fresh troops and supplies, he said.
As an amtrack driver, Moffitt, 75, was in the first assault wave of Marine invasions at Saipan and Iwo Jima and the fourth assault wave at Tinian. The Iwo Jima invasion began on a cool, clear Monday morning 56 years ago today.
According to the U.S. Marine Corps Story, by J. Robert Moskin, the islands were critical to the Americans’ war strategy. From Saipan and Tinian in the Marianas, B-29s could reach Japan for bombing missions. Iwo Jima lies halfway between the Marianas and Japan, close enough for P-47 and P-51 fighters to provide escort and make bombing strikes of their own. The island was also close enough for damaged bombers to make emergency landings. The Japanese understood the importance of Saipan, wrote Moskin, and were sent a message from Emperor Hirohito himself ordering them to hold the island.
Moffitt said enemy soldiers knew what the amtracks were carrying. Thus the vehicles drew heavy artillery, mortar and machine gun fire as they approached island beachheads. Driving a vehicle into the face of such firepower was a gut-wrenching experience, he said.
“The fourth wave meant you were 28 minutes behind the first wave, so the enemy had time to raise up and take aim at you. I’ll take the first wave any day,” Moffitt said during an interview at his Hendersonville home.
“There’s not anything on an invasion that’s not frightening,” he said. “That’s just the way it is. These people who tell you they were never scared – it makes you wonder whether they’ve really seen it or not.”
Drivers of amtracks were targeted “real good,” said Moffitt. The driver’s compartments on amtracks were supposed to be armored, but Moffitt said a .30-caliber bullet could easily go in one side and out the other.
On Saipan, Moffitt said drivers were told to drive the amtracks about a half mile from the beach – “the longest half mile I ever traveled” – to a top of a hill to drop off troops. On his first trip, Moffitt dumped the troops and began the return trip, with mortar rounds following him as he went down a road through some rice paddies. Then, all of a sudden, the mortar rounds began hitting in front of him.
“We had been taught that if it ever passed you and got in front of you, that the next one would hit you, so I veered off of the road and hit a tombstone and broke a track. So I spent most of D-Day on Saipan hunkered up behind a tombstone,” said Moffitt.
Because Moffitt was in radio contact, the unit knew where he was, he said. Eventually, Moffitt worked his way back to the beach, where he was picked up and returned to a landing ship offshore. The next day, the track was repaired and the amtrack was back in service, Moffitt said.
Other than that, Moffitt called his stay on Saipan routine. The vehicles would draw mortar and artillery fire any time they got within range of Japanese gunners. But Moffitt said few of the rounds ever did any damage.
Other Marines didn’t have it so easy. The 4th Division had the roughest assignment, taking the island’s main town, Garapan, after fighting its way through the streets. The division had already been hit hard in the first days of fighting at another town, Charan Kanoa. Moskin wrote in his book that a lone Japanese soldier, acting as a spotter from the smokestack of the town’s ruined sugar refinery, was directing devastating mortar and artillery fire on the Marine’s beachhead.
Moffitt said a friend of his, Frank Drake of Horse Shoe, a sharpshooter with the 23rd Marines, a part of the 2nd Division, was brought in to shoot the enemy out of the smokestack, and he did. Drake went on to see combat action in other battles in the Marianas and on Okinawa, but he doesn’t talk about the experiences much, said Moffitt.
“Franks vows and declares he doesn’t remember anything about the Marianas and Okinawa, but he remembered enough to tell me about the sniper,” said Moffitt.
The Japanese were fighting insurmountable odds. Four days after the June 15, 1944, U.S. invasion, the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 58 engaged a Japanese fleet steaming to the Marianas. In what has become known as “the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot,” U.S. carrier pilots shot down 476 Japanese planes and U.S. submarines sank two carriers. Carrier pilots sank another carrier and heavily damaged several other ships. The Japanese had to flee instead of reinforcing embattled forces on Saipan.
Still, it took 28 days to secure Saipan at a cost of 3,426 American dead and 13,099 wounded. It was even costlier to the Japanese. An estimated 32,000 soldiers and sailors died there. But once Saipan was secure, Tinian, defended by only 9,000 Japanese, was easy work. It was only three miles south of Saipan, within easy reach of Marine and Army artillery and planes from Saipan’s Isely Field.
Moffitt drove amtracks for that invasion as well, but it went more easily, partly because the U.S. forces pretended to land on more obvious beaches by sending empty amtracks within 400 yards of shore. That held Japanese troops in place while the real landing force went ashore on narrow beaches that appeared too small for a big assault force.
The subterfuge worked. Wrote Moskin, “The overwhelming preinvasion bombardment and the decision to land on unexpected beaches cut down casualties and knocked the island’s defenders off balance.” The invasion began July 24, 1944, and by Aug. 5, the last Japanese resistance had been wiped out. Casualties were lighter on both sides. Only 317 Americans were killed and 1,550 wounded; about 5,000 Japanese troops were killed.
Although things went more easily on Tinian, Moffitt still had some nervous moments. “We had J-Night on Tinian, and they were running short of artillery ammunition. We took an amtrack load of artillery shells onto the beach. The most welcome command I ever got was when they told me to ‘get that amtrack with its load of shells the hell out of there,’ ” he said.
Now American forces set about making the airfield on Saipan and Tinian’s three fields ready for the B-29s. With the Japanese navy in ruins and its air power practically destroyed, U.S. naval and air superiority in the Pacific was assured. The end was drawing near, and the Marianas had been the pivotal battle. Moskin wrote that a Japanese admiral said after the war, “Our war was lost with the loss of Saipan.”
On Nov. 24, 100 B-29s from Saipan flew the first bombing strike over Tokyo since Doolittle’s famous raid in 1942. And it was from Tinian’s Ushi Field that the Enola Gay took off on its way to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.
After Tinian, Moffitt’s unit went back to Maui in Hawaii to repair, regroup and get replacements for their next operation, the invasion of Iwo Jima. The fighting there was to be the most savage of the campaign. Moskin wrote that military analysts compared the job facing Marines on Iwo Jima to “throwing human flesh against concrete.” Dug into well-concealed pillboxes, caves and bunkers, the Japanese were determined to fight to the last man, and they did.
“We didn’t take any prisoners on Iwo Jima,” said Moffitt.
All told, American forces suffered 25,851 casualties, including 5,931 dead Marines. All 23,000 men in the Japanese garrison perished. The fighting went on for 36 days before organized resistance was overcome March 26, 1945. Still, according to Moskin, Marines killed another 1,600 Japanese on the island in April and May.
In the meantime, U.S. Seabees quickly remade the face of the island. By the time the war ended, Moskin estimated, 2,500 Superfortresses made emergency landings on the island. He wrote that Army fighter planes flying from Iwo Jima made 1,191 escort sorties and 3,081 strikes against targets in Japan.
Moffitt said he was there when the first B-29 attempted an emergency landing at the airfield. He said ground crews didn’t think the runway was long enough for the bomber, but the pilot told them he didn’t have any choice.
“He got it stopped with the front end in a field at the end of the runway. They had to bring out a tractor and pull it back onto the runway before the crew could get out,” said Moffitt.
He also recalls being at the airstrip when the first P-51 fighters came in.
“They all landed but one. He couldn’t get slowed down enough. He tried twice and on the third try he held it down, and right on over in the field he went. But it was soft dirt and the plane was unharmed,” said Moffitt.
Moffitt said Naval intelligence warned his unit that the Japanese at Iwo Jima would pump gasoline into the water and set it afire. He said the amtrack drivers were issued ponchos with which they were supposed to cover troops. “That would have lasted about two minutes,” scoffed Moffitt.
He said the ponchos were never needed. Pilots had bombarded Iwo Jima for 72 days before the invasion. “They had done such a good job that the Japanese didn’t have any gas to pump into the water,” said Moffitt.
Still, the heavy fighting on the island devastated Moffitt’s unit, too. An amtrack battalion had 535 of the vehicles. His unit had only 10 serviceable amtracks after the assault. While Moffitt’s buddy Frank Drake and his unit went on to Okinawa, Moffitt’s unit was too shot up to be of use in that battle.
The unit was sent back to Maui to regroup. Moffitt said it was packing for the expected assault on Japan itself when the war ended. His unit would have been headed for Honshu, the main island of Japan. Commanders were warning them to expect heavy casualties. Moffitt said that to say he was happy the war ended before that invasion became necessary “would be right much of an understatement.”
Moffitt was born in Etowah and raised in Mills River by his grandparents. When war broke out, he tried to persuade them to sign so he could join before age 18, but they refused. “The day I was 18, I went in and signed up,” said Moffitt.
He was sent to boot camp at Parris Island and to amtrack training first at Camp Lejeune and then at Camp Pendleton in California before being shipped to Hawaii. In the 30 months he was in the Marines, he attained the rank of corporal, a battlefield promotion, but could never rise higher,
“Every time I got on the promotion list for sergeant, I did something to get off of it,” he said, laughing.
He was on the list for sergeant after Iwo Jima, but once the war ended, all promotions were frozen. “If I’d made it to sergeant, I’d still be in the Marine Corps, if I could,” said Moffitt.
Instead, like many World War II veterans, he returned home. In 1948, he met his wife, Jean. They have three sons. The youngest followed in his father’s footsteps, joining the Marines out of high school.
“I want you to know,” said Moffitt proudly, “they made a man out of him.”