Heroes Walked Among Us

With America at war on two fronts, Europe and the Pacific, many young men and women patriots answered the call to military service. One of the many was James Robeson from Chewelah, Washington. Leaving high school, he traveled to Spokane where he enlisted in the Marines on December 9, 1943, his seventeenth birthday. Enlisting at the same time was a seventeen-year-old Native American from Wellpinit, Washington named Louis Adrian. The two struck up a friendship during their training at Camp Pendelton. Both were trained for combat with Browning Automatic Rifles (BAR) and assigned as riflemen to the Fifth Marine Division, Third Platoon, Easy Company. Because of his youthful appearance, Robeson was deemed to be the platoon’s youngest hatchling and given the handle of “Chick.” On February 18, 1945, at a time when others their age back home were engaged in sports and youthful romances, these two eighteen-year-olds along with thirty thousand other Marines were off the coast of Iwo Jima preparing for the next morning’s invasion of the island. While trained for battle, little did they know the Hell that awaited.

Sulfur Island, more famously known by its Japanese name of Iwo Jima, is a part of an archipelago of volcanic islands. Although it continues to grow in area each year due to subterranean uplifting, at the time of the battle Iwo Jima comprised an area of only eight square miles. By comparison, Puget Island is only slightly smaller at 7.5 square miles. The island lies 760 miles south of Tokyo, Japan. Shaped like a pork chop slanting from southwest to northeast, the island consisted of Mount Suribachi, a 554-foot dormant volcano at the slender southern end and hilly jungle at the meatier northern end. In the center portion, the Japanese had constructed two airfields used for fighters to disrupt and attack American bombers on their way to missions over the island of Japan. Appropriately named, the island was a constant source of sickening sulfurous gas emissions which arose whenever the ground was disturbed.

The Imperial Japanese Army assigned Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi the task of defending Iwo Jima and its two airfields. Kuribayashi was an out-of-the-box thinker. He understood it would be impossible to defeat an American invasion of the island. All his planning was focused on delaying the American forces and making them pay so dearly they would rethink any plans to invade his beloved Japanese homeland. He was willing to give his life for that cause and everyone under his command was indoctrinated to believe they were the last line of defense for their families and friends at home.

By the time of the invasion, Kuribayashi’s leadership had driven his soldiers to construct eleven miles of tunnels throughout the island. Gun emplacements strong enough to withstand direct hits and machine gun nests were strategically placed where they could be accessed by tunnels. Underground headquarters, barracks and fuel and weapons storage facilities were located as much as ninety feet underground. If there was a kink in the armor, it was that they had not yet had time to connect the tunnels of Suribachi with those at the north end of the island. As the American naval armada of 450 ships gathered along the coast of Iwo Jima, Kuribayashi and his troops silently waited and watched from their hidden underground lairs.

On the American side, intelligence reports mistakenly estimated the Japanese force on the island to be 13,000 combatants. Days of aircraft bombing runs and a barrage of fire from the warships were anticipated to have inflicted serious damage to the Japanese defense of Iwo. Further estimates resulted in a projection the invasion would take four days to accomplish. In fact, as Chick Roberson, Adrian and their fellow Marines were about to discover, none of this was true. No less than 20,000 Japanese soldiers lay in waiting and all of the bombing and gunfire had done little to damage the planned defense of the island since it was protected underground. Unknown were the eleven miles of tunnels and the damnable hidden openings from which defenders could spring with deadly force and then quickly disappear.

At 9 a.m. the next morning, the invasion began with 30,000 Marine and Navy personnel being transported by landing crafts to the shoreline. As the men and equipment began to pile up on the beaches, it quickly became apparent the volcanic ash, sometimes as much as fourteen feet thick, made landward movement almost impossible. Wheeled vehicles became mired and tracked vehicles were little better off. With the men and equipment stalled in their advance and concentrated in one area, General Kuribayashi knew it was the moment he had waited for. He ordered his men to open fire. It was a killing zone. Before the day ended, 2,500 Marines lay dead on the sand and the volcanic ash with numerous more wounded. But, despite his planning and his deadly trap, Kuribayashi soon came to understand these were not run-of-the-mill combatants who would turn tail and retreat at the slightest mishap. These were Americans and more importantly they were American Marines.

Under heavy fire with the enemy having the high ground, the Marines got into action. The force split into two groups with the larger force moving towards the north to capture the airfields. The remaining force began its drive to isolate the Japanese forces on Mount Suribachi. By the end of the day, the Americans had fought their way across the six hundred yards to the other side of the narrowest part of the island, cutting off Suribachi from the northern part of the island. It was ugly fighting with the enemy at the higher elevation able to pinpoint the location of the Marines and direct firing upon them. Japanese soldiers would pop up out of hidden underground spider holes to fire and then disappear from view. The Marines knew they had to put out the eyes of Suribachi that were pinpointing them and their comrades with such deadly accuracy.

As if the daylight fighting wasn’t bad enough, the nighttime fighting was even worse. The unseen enemy would slink out of their hidden tunnels under the cloak of darkness and lob grenades or sneak up to fire upon Marines hunkered in their foxholes. The Marine strategy quickly became, do not move at night and shoot anything that does.

The bonds of combat are even stronger than those of blood. You depend on your fellow Marine to watch your back, and they depend on you to do the same. It is love in the purest sense. A commitment to lay down your life if that is what it takes to save your brother or move the mission forward. Such was the bond between Chick and Louie Adrian. On Day Two, Third Platoon was attempting to silence a pillbox as they advanced toward the base of Suribachi. Chick’s buddy Adrian was firing his BAR into the pillbox as Japanese soldiers were scattering to avoid his bullets. As he was firing, he took a direct hit to the heart by an unseen enemy bullet. Killed instantly, his death grip on the trigger kept the BAR chug-chugging into the ground as fellow Marines rushed to finish the job he’d taken on. Louie’s death hit Chick hard, and he was forever saddened by the loss of his friend.

Throughout Day Two Chick and his brother Marines advanced under fire, inch by inch, foot by foot and yard by yard. At the end of the day, those of the Third Platoon who had not been killed or too critically wounded to fight had reached the base of Suribachi. On Day Three, following another night of terror, the platoon turned left along the foot of Suribachi attempting to mop up remaining pockets of resistance. At one point, they found themselves cut off and isolated as enemy soldiers crept back out of hidden tunnels after the Marines passed by. Fighting their way back, they made it back to their starting point. On the morning of the fourth day of the invasion, forty Marines made up of what was left of the Third Platoon along with reinforcements from Easy Company began the climb up the side of the volcano under the lead of platoon executive officer Lieutenant Harold Schrier. With them, they carried a 54 inch by 28 inch American flag from the USS Missoula with instructions to find a way to raise it if they could take control of the rim of Suribachi. Fellow Marines watched and attempted to provide a covering fire as the group inched its way up the slope careful to avoid trails which had been mined. In places, it was so steep they were forced to crawl upward on hands and knees using every possible handhold and foothold they could find. With the strength of youth and the desire to avenge the death of his friend Louie Adrian, Chick was able to advance up the slope despite of the weight of his sixteen-pound BAR and bags of ammunition. After the fierce fighting of the past three days, the Marines were thankful and amazed there was only occasional sniper fire directed at them during the climb.

Crouched just below the rim, they made their final plans. On signal, they went over the rim with weapons ready for any enemy they might encounter. Chick was the third man over the rim and quickly trained his attention and BAR on a cave opening from which the enemy might be prepared to spring. With Robeson and other riflemen standing guard, other members of the platoon searched the rubble finding a twenty-foot length of pipe which, serendipitously, had a bullet hole in just the right place for attaching the flag. Once the flag was attached, it was raised up at 10:20 a.m. and set in place on the rim with rocks and debris. At the moment it was raised, Sergeant Lou Lowery, a photographer for the Marine publication “Leathernecks,” snapped a picture. In the photo, third platoon members Lt. Schrier, Chuck Lindberg, Thomas, Hanson and Michaels can be seen holding the flag pipe. Chick Robeson, when asked to get in the picture, reportedly replied, “I’m no Hollywood Marine,” as he continued to focus his attention on the mouth of the cave.

The moment the flag was raised, the air exploded with a tremendous ovation of ship’s horns from the Navy fleet and hurrahs from the battle-weary Marines. It served to create a much-needed boost to the morale of the embattled Americans. At the same time, it served to infuriate the enemy who then rushed to eliminate those who dared to raise an American flag on what was considered to be Japanese soil. Robeson’s attention paid off as a Japanese riflemen rushed out of the cave. A quick shot from his BAR eliminated that danger. A Japanese officer with a sword raised in his hand charged the group and was dispatched with a bullet by a Marine with the moniker Snowjob Garret. Sergeant Lowery had just finished taking his photo of the flag raising when a grenade thrown by a Japanese soldier landed near his feet. Flinging himself over the outer edge of the rim he precipitated an uncontrolled slide fifty feet down the mountain before he could grab a bush and bring himself to a stop. The fall shattered his camera lens but, thankfully, he and his film remained intact.

Three hours later, with the Marines continuing to ensure the American flag was protected. A larger eight foot by four-foot flag was sent to the rim to be raised and provide a more visible sign of the taking of Mount Suribachi. It was during the raising of this second flag that war photographer Joseph Rosenthal shot his iconic photo which became famous as a symbol of the American fighting spirit.

On day 18, Chick Robeson’s role in the invasion came to an end. While engaged in the fighting at the northern end of Iwo, a Japanese bullet blew the BAR from his grip tearing away two of Robeson’s fingers and left permanent nerve damage in his right hand and arm. He was then airlifted to Guam for medical treatment. “I’ll never forget that flight,” Robeson recalled. “There was mail piled up in the middle and blood sloshing around in the mail. Everyone was bleeding.” From Guam, Robeson was transported to the Johnson Islands, Hawaii, California and on to Farragut Hospital in Idaho. He later reported, “I spent more time in the hospital than I did on active duty. I finished High School and got out May 21, 1946.” Upon his discharge, Robeson was awarded the purple heart.

James Robeson returned to Chewelah where he worked locally before being employed by the USDA Soil Conservation Service. He worked in the Cathlamet Soil Conservation office in the late 1960’s to mid-1980’s where he lived with his wife Maxine and their six children. Between 1979 and 1983 Robeson served as a Cathlamet City Councilman. He and Maxine travelled to many reunions of Iwo Jima veterans. In 1970, they traveled to Iwo for a reunion where he met with some of the few remaining members of the Imperial Japanese Army with whom he and his fellow Marines had fought. He expressed amazement and admiration that 20,000 Japanese soldiers could live on that stinking godforsaken island with rainwater being their only source of water. At the age of 76, James Robeson died on September 12, 2004 at the Veterans’ Administration Hospital in Spokane. He is buried in the Catholic Cemetery at Chewelah, WA.

The battle over Iwo Jima raged for five weeks before it was officially declared on March 26, 1945 that “Operation Detachment” had been completed and the island was finally secured. Of the 20,000 Japanese soldiers, only a little over 1,000 survived. So strong was the Japanese attitude of fighting until death that these few survivors were often ostracized by their fellow countrymen for remaining alive. Even General Kuribayashi refused to surrender, reportedly committing the act of seppuku rather than being captured alive. For the United States, the invasion of Iwo Jima came with an enormously high price. 6,800 Marines were killed which constituted one-third of all the Marines killed during the entirety of World War II. Another 19,200 were wounded. Many struggled for the rest of their lives with terrible memories of the sights, sounds, smells and unspeakable horrors from events that took place during those five weeks. Of the 46 Marines in Easy Company’s Third Platoon, only two survived the battle without physical injury. Fifteen were killed and twenty-nine were wounded. James Robeson reported that for a long time after returning from Iwo Jima he would suddenly wake up at night and throw his clock against the wall thinking it was a hand grenade.

The debt owed to these men who endured so much is overwhelming. On Veterans Day, every American should take a moment to bow their heads in reverence and silent reflection of the sacrifices these citizens-turned-warriors made to ensure the freedoms and rights enjoyed today. When passing by the newly constructed Veterans’ Memorial Monument being dedicated this Veterans’ Day of 2024 on the courthouse lawn, give pause for just a moment and mouth a quiet thanks for all who have served or will serve on your behalf.