Each year
I am hired to go to Washington, D.C., with the eighth grade class from
Clinton, WI where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I greatly enjoy visiting
our nation's capitol, and each year I take some special memories back with me.
This fall's trip was especially memorable.
On the
last night of our trip, we stopped at the Iwo Jima memorial. This memorial
is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the most famous
photographs in history -- that of the six brave soldiers raising the
American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima,
Japan, during WW II.
Over one
hundred students and chaperones piled off the buses and headed towards
the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at the base of the statue, and
as I got closer he asked, 'Where are you guys from?'
I told
him that we were from Wisconsin . 'Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come
gather around, Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story.'
It was
James Bradley who just happened to be in Washington, D.C. to speak at the
memorial the following day. He was there that night to say
good night to
his dad, who had passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw the
buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his
permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to
tour the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C. but it is
quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night.
When all
had gathered around, he reverently began to speak. (Here are his words that
night).
'My name
is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and
I wrote a book called 'Flags of Our Fathers'. It is the story of the six
boys you see behind me.
'Six boys
raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is
Harlon Block.
Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps
with all the senior members of his football team.. They were off to
play another type of game. A game called 'War.' But it didn't turn out to
be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I
don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand
in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to
know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and
it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to
their families about it.
(He pointed to the statue) 'Do you see
this next guy? That's Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire If
you took Rene's helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked
in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph... a photograph
of his girlfriend Rene put that in there for protection because he was
scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo
Jima. Boys. Not old men.
'The next
guy here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is
my hero. He was the hero of all these guys. They called him the 'old
man' because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would motivate
his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some Japanese' or
'Let's die for our country' He knew he was talking to little boys..
Instead he would say, You do what I say, and I'll get you home to your
mothers.'
'The last
guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira
Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into the
White House with my dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero' He
told reporters, 'How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the
island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?'
So you
take your class at school, 250 of you spending a year together having
fun, doing everything together. Then all 250 of you hit the beach, but
only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had
images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes carried the pain home with him and
eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle,
at the age of 32 (ten years after this picture was taken).
Jim's
note: Johhny Cash did a song about Ira Hayes and a movie was made about him.
'The next guy,
going around the statue, is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky. A
fun-loving hillbilly boy. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah,
you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store.
Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then we
fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.'
Yes, he was a
fun-loving hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the
telegram came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop
General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The
neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. Those
neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
'The next
guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad, John Bradley, from
Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would
never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York
Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my
dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there,
sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or
even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at
the table eating his Campbell’s soup. But we had to tell the
press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the
press.
'You see,
like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these
guys are heroes, because they are in a photo and on a monument. My
dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat
caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when
boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication
or help with the pain.
'When I
was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a
hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, 'I
want you always to remember that the heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys
who did not come back. Did NOT come back.'
'So this is
the story about six nice young boys.. Three died on Iwo Jima, and three came
back as national heroes. Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst
battle in the history of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will
end here. Thank you for your time.
Suddenly, the
monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out
of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a
son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the
reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.
One thing
I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is
not mentioned here is . . . that if you look at the statue very closely and
count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who
made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand
was the hand of God.
No comments:
Post a Comment