NATIONAL

Nimitz

MUSEUM

Interview

Education

Fredericksburg,

U.S.

Army,

with

and

OF

Peleliu

Fred

Research

THE

Texas

Fox

PACIFIC

Center WAR

Mr.

Int:

Mr.

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Mr. Fox: That’s what it was. Certainly they were trained Marines but because they were Black they were in a unit where that was their job.

Int: Has anyone said anything about them in the literature.

Mr. Fox: I’ve seen it written somewhere, and that’s why I know about it. Because I remember seeing them. And then I remember being in the hospital with them. They did bring us supplies. ml: What about, speaking of hospitals, what was it then, the second or perhaps the third day before things were calm enough for medical people to reach you?

Mr. Fox: The first day there was one of the amtrak that got in. Of the wounded, they tried to get on that amtrak. There were several wounded people who were wounded bad but they could still walk. And one, I think he got the Silver Star for it, walked ‘em out into the water and he got ‘em back by going out into the water, to bring them back. Because we couldn’t do anything wih ‘em. But most of ‘em just bandanged up and kept fighting. Those that were dead were dead. And I have a real problem with that, because my memory was blanked out, seeing a dead Marine. I

wasn’t sure, and I still don’t understand it. But even the guy who was right next to me, today 1 can’t tell you what his name is, and yet I knew what his job is, he was my assistant. But all of a sudden in my memory he disappeared. And that’s true of all of my friends that were killed, but the wounded I remember.

Tnt: Well perhaps that’s just a veil of protection.

Mr. Fox: Probably, probably. Although going back to Peleliu three weeks ago, 1 was with a sergeant that actually had became a platoon leader. He was the only guy left. Well, he was capable, but we’d lost the platoon sergeant and the lieutenant and the guide, and he was a squad leader and he took over the platoon and did a hell of a job. But he remembers the people but I don’t. We were there together.

:.L. 1-_. I III • .)LUi1Uii5 -. iLIL lJy 1UC.

Mr. Fox: Yeah.

Tnt: Well, each of us I think kinda has our own way of taking care of what we can handle and what we cannot handle.

Mr. For! Righ L He w;i.c a iiItle nider i n (I rnnre eperi enred; he’d been thrniigh Ci ia da1(;) na 1.

Int: And you were eighteen and your first battle.

Mr. Fox: Yeah. 5

Tnt: What was your feeling about when you went back, and there was no cemetery within the Punchbowl?

Mr. Fox: Well, I’m unusual. See, I went back thirty years ago. I guess I was the first combat man to

actually go back to Peleliu. I went back on September the fifteenth of 1964. 1 walked down the beach. There was practically nothing had been done. And I mean practically nothing, nothing except junk had been taken off.

Tnt: By Navy.

Mr. Fox: No. Scrap dealers. Micronesia’s islands of the Pacific that we had entrusted. Their greatest economic input of capital came through selling junk, for about twenty years. But it was tanks, or buildings, or Quonset huts, or Japanese material, guns, were sold back to Japan for scrap during the Korean war.

But anyway, I went back because my company commander had written this book, and I was part of it. And yet there were these gaps that I couldn’t remember, and I just wanted to see what it was like, and I’d been relatively successful in business and could afford it. And at that time the area was closed off to tourism. But because I was an ex-Marine I wanted to go.

It started me on a project in my life, I guess, one of the most interesting things, and that was, at the time, 1964, I had a friend, a Texan friend I’d grown up with, who was on President Johnson’s White I-louse staff. His name was Jack Valenti, the movie czar now? And I also had my company commander who’d written a book, who was managing editor of Life Magazine.

And with those two contacts 1 thought maybe I could do some good for the island. So I kinda became their lobbyist in Washington, and I would go back and forth to the islands. Not so much Peleliu, but to Saipan because, in 1965, the year I started kinda being an advocate at the White House, they allowed them to form their Congress. When their Congress would meet, they met in Saipan.

Int: And this is all in Micronesia.

Mr. Fox: Yeah. Peleliu, Pohnpei, Kosrae, Yap, the Marshalls, and the Northern Marianas. Now, these have all been separated out. The Northern Marianas has joined the United States. The Marshalls have become the Republic of the Marshall Islands, they have a seat at the United Nations. Yap, Pohnpei, Kosrae, and Chuuk joined together, formed the Federated States of Micronesia, and their President’s one of my best friends. Cause I’ve known him all these thirty years. And they’re now a member of the UN. And as of the first of October, Peleliu has become an independent nation and will he a member of the UN.

Tnt: I think that’s just wonderful. 6

Mr. Fox: And then most of all, the northern Marianas chose no, they wanted to join the United States, so they are now a Commonwealth of the United States.

Int: And you helped...

Mr. Fox: I hope so.

Int: . . . bring that along. Flave you ever run across Martin Clemens in your travels over there.

Mr. Fox: Martin Clemens? ml: He had a lot, he was instrumental in getting the memorial there on Guadalcanal.

Mr. Fox: On the Canal?

Int: Yeah, on the Canal. On Guadalcanal. He was a coast watcher on Guadalcanal, and he traveled that whole area.

Mr. Fox: Now see, that would be United Micronesia.

Int: I know, back farther, hut I thought that perhaps you had just crossed paths, because he’s very interested in that whole South Pacific area, and had done a lot. He’s an Australian.

Mr. Fox: Well, there was an Australian on Peleliu. And what did we get talking about, there was an Australian he said that was in the landing. And was either killed or wounded on Red Beach. I told him there wasn’t any Red Beach. He said, no, maybe Coral Beach. I said no, there wasn’t. And so he pulled out his map and he showed me there sure was. Well, we never used it ‘cause it was on the other side of the island. It was not an active landing beach. But for some reason or other, at some point in the battle, there was some activity in that area, but I’d never heard of it. I lacked knowledge of it.

Int: Just how much coral is there on Peleliu?

Mr. Fox: The Point, and that’s where I can talk about, is coral. We had no barbed wire to protect us from the Japanese when they would attack. But after walking back over the end, you almost had to walk on your hands and feet, and remember, these men had to attack across that at night. And they couldn’t see either, even though it was friendly terrain, it’s not that you know where every piece of coral is. And it’s like, have you ever been to Mexico City?

Int: Um-hum.

Mr. Fox: There’s a part of the city that’s volcanic, and you can see all this volcanic rock. Imagine moving across that. That’s what it was. Extremely rugged. A pair of shoes, combat shoes, 7

within two or three days would be cut up. It’s still like that. The amazing thing, when I went back this time, three weeks ago, becaue of the fiftieth anniversary, they had, the islanders had gone in and cut all the brush out that had grown up along the Point area. I didn’t even know they knew where it was. But they cut it out so you could see as it was, more or less, at the time we were there. ‘Course, then it was burned and destroyed by the shells. But they cleared it so you could at least get back and see how it was.

Int: Well, tell me about the islanders during the time. Of course, you probably didn’t stay, since you were wounded, you didn’t stay long enough to ever get to know anything about the islanders.

Mr. Fox: That’s right. And the Japanese had moved essentially all of the islanders, they’d moved them up to the main island of Babeithuap, and Koror. There probably were a few left there

Int: Perhaps some that worked the airstrip or something.

Mr. Fox: Well, they had names like National Guard, or the equivalent. Some islanders fought with the Japanese. But that’s the way it was. ml: Well, did they have a choice?

Mr. Fox: They didn’t have any choice, that’s what they grew up under, the younger people. The older people had less admiration for the Japanese because they were strictly second-grade citizens. But of course that was the way they were treated under the Spanish and under the Germans, and then under the Japanese too.

Tnt: Well, colonial peoples just got that .

Mr. Fox: Except we dont realize how many Japanese people had moved in there. at that time had about thirty-five thousand people, not military, but citizens, farmers. Japan was trying to develop their South Asian, South Pacific area into an economic creation. They moved farmers and shop keepers into these islands. SC) the actual island people became a minority and were more or less moved out into areas that weren’t important to the Japanese. Either that or they put them to war. They were not allowed to go to school past the equivalent of the fifth grade, something like that. Enough to learn .Japanese, and that was it, and not necessarily to read it but to understand it.

Int: Well now Irn going back on these two trips.

Mr. Fox: I’ve probably been back ten times. But the first and the last, of course, do make the biggest impression.

Tnt: Of course. Are there Japanese, does the Japanese population dominate now, or . . 8

Mr. Fox: Well, the population of Peleliu is half Japanese. A very good friend out there, Ichikawa, I’ve known him since the first time I went back in ‘64.

Int: So they stayed then, they stayed and multiplied.

Mr. Fox: Well, what happened after the war, all Japanese were sent back home. Now, if you were over, I think it was over fifteen, a child could choose to go with the father or stay. Younger they had to stay. Older they could choose either way. But if you were born there, even if your mother and father were both Japanese and they went back to Japan, you could come back. But what you find there mostly is a large percentage of the people is half Japanese and half islanders. And not large, I’m talking about fifteen, twenty percent. A particularly amount of educated people, well educated.

Tnt: On Peleliu, were there caves and was this mountainous terrain, or

Mr. Fox: Peleliu had a section of it, the southern section, was relatively fiat. That’s where the airfield was. But it was shaped, they called it like a lobster claw, and one portion of that claw, the largest one, went up from the airfield about the middle of the island, on up to the northern tip. And it was an unbelievably rugged mountainous, not altitude so much but three hundred feet, four hundred feet high. That coral rock material, and the Japanese had had time enough and insight enough to build in this very sophisticated fortifications. Although a lot of it was natural and they just modified it, but a lot of it wasn’t.

Tnt: They dug in well.

Mr. Fox: They had made a, after the battle of Saipan, it’s my understanding that they had decided that no more banzai charges, no more “Die for the Emperor,” it was to make the Americans die, pay for it. And hold ‘em back. And so Peleliu was an example of that. Although we took the airfield in two days and had it in operation in about a week. It took two months to clear the cave system. And by far the greatest casualties came in the cave fights in that two months time. In fact, the 1st Marine Division was pulled out and the 8ist Army Division was, well, they actually overlapped, when they were together. But then the latter month was fighting of the 81st and they had casualties. Substantial, too. ml: Lets see, that’s Smith, was it Smith, General Smith, with the 8ist in there? I’ve forgotten.

Mr. Fox: Smith was the Marine General over the whole operation. That whole area. Muller .

Tnt: Muller, that’s it!

Mr. Fox: The Division Commander. Fact, the reason I know a little about it, it happened when I came back after the war I went to the University of Texas, and one of the guys that lived in the 9

apartment unit where I did was a captain in the 81st. And I used to kid him a lot about, “Well, you guys came in and got the easy part.”

Int: (Laughs)

Mr. Fox: He says “No.” (Both laugh)

Int: Really. I guess there was just nothing to do except go to to the entry of those caves and spray ‘em and throw a grenade in and hope.

Mr. Fox: That, and then they took bull dozers and tanks with blades on ‘em and closed them in. And one indication, they laid a pipeline up and hooked diesel on it and filled it with diesel and set ‘em on fire. Whatever was necessary to do the job. We were limited by not being able to use nuclear weapons, and limited by not being able to use poison gas. But other than that, just about anything went.

Int: What about now. How do you feel about now in regard to what’s happening politically around the world that—what I’m trying to ask is, for one that at such a young age experienced what you did, how do you feel about modern society and their attitude towards war and peace?

Mr. Fox: Well, I don’t know about peace, but war seems to be something that historically is part of the human activity. I think that where we are today is that, whether we like it or not, we are the new Rome. Maybe we don’t want to accept that responsibility, but because of our military power, our economic power, our lifestyle, we’re more or less what the world wants to move toward, and underdeveloped nations and the major nations like China, and Africa, and the combination of people.

There is a blank portion of the tape here lasting 15 seconds.

Our country is so diverse that Latino, American Indian, Jew, Christian, Muslim, whatever, that we’re not identifiable by just looking at somebody and saying “You’re an American.” And therefore we don’t have that tie together, about being one race like, say, the Romans did. One community, one people. ‘Cause they came essentially from a city-state, building a Roman Empire. And therefore we don’t see that this is our role, and we keep trying to shove it off and hopefully this is great, this is the way it’ll have to work. And Truman made that decision, really, when he decided, when we were the only people that had the atomic bomb, that no, we’re not gonna be the world’s number one power.

I mean, we don’t mind being the number one power but not be the whole world’s dictator. We’re gonna abide by the UN and the UN that we set up. And this has gone through, and I think most of the Presidents, and certainly Bush, have tried to work that way. Although it could have been done another. And now the Soviet Union’s out of the way, or at least not out of the way but in turmoil trying to change over to a different economic base. And at the same Mr. Tnt: Mr. Tnt: Mr. Mr. Tnt: Mr. Mr. Mr. Int: Tnt: Tnt: Tnt: Fox: Fox: Fox: Fox: Fox: Fox:

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somebody said, “What do you think about these young guys out here?” And I said, “Well, to tell you the truth, they’re not near as young as I was.” And they’re just as good, maybe a little bit better. But, we had it very nice.

Int: Well, it’s been wonderful to meet you.

Mr. Fox: Well, it was good to meet you, Betty.

Int: And I’m so happy we have . . . (A very few second break here)

(Both laugh)

Mr. Fox: Well, the only thing is the, I said, “Well, what do you want me to say in seven minutes?” And this has kinda bothered me, because the only thing I know what they want you to say is, and I can say it, is in seven minutes all you can really say about the battle that they want to hear, is the first time you killed a man, what was it like, what happened the next time. And to me, in that battle in those days, a thousandth of a second, a hundreth of an inch, and that’s the difference between life and death. You don’t know it at the time, but when you set back a few hours later and begin to think what had happened, in my case, just that much difference in distance in one case would have been if you would have killed me. It wasn’t quite like that. And the same thing, within a fraction of a second, the difference between whether I was dead or not. Those little quantities, unknown quantities, you know, goddamnit, somebody was lookin’ at you. You don’t know how, but. And the other thing was, and it happened many times, even George Hunt mentions the premonition of somebody when they’re gonna die. And I never had that. Never entered my mind I was going to, at no time.

Tnt: You must have intuitively known there was a bigger plan for you.

Mr. Fox: I don’t know. I just, fear was not there. Oh sure, you didn’t do stupid things, hut I had the sergeant in the tent with me and he’d been through Guadalcanal and New Britain, and he’d been in the Corps maybe seven or eight before. He said, ‘I don’t wanna go. I’m not gonna make

this.” And he didn’t. He didn’t make it two minutes. And in Hunt’s job, which 1 didn’t know, but he wrote me a letter just before, a year or so before he died, and he told me about how he became company commander of K Company. He was on Guadalcanal and New Britain, he’d been an intelligence officer for the regiment, of division intelligence, and he said that K Company’s company commander was a good friend of his. And going in on the landing at New Britain, he said, “I’m gonna get killed.” And he said, “Please do me a favor. Take over my company, ‘cause I’m not gonna make it.” And the next day he was killed. And Hunt did what he asked and went up and got approval to take over the company, and he became Company Commander of K Company. Which then led to the Battle of Peleliu.

Which, I don’t know if you’re read some of this stuff about it, but the 1st Division had been at Guadalcanal, and then New Britain, and then later on Korea and VietNam. But for just plain 12

fighting, hand-to-hand, any way you want to put it, face-to-face, nothing compared to Peleliu. It was the chosen reservoir, the amount of people that were there in this little island, and the terrain. You know. you’re talking about an island that’s about two miles wide and about four miles long, that’s eight square miles or something like that. And you had maybe twelve thousand Japanese soldiers on it, all over the place, and you land another, oh, fifteen thousand Marines, you get twenty-eight thousand men mad at each other?

In the little area, this four acre or two acre place, when you start adding things up in that two days, there were over a thousand men wounded or killed, a thousand casualties, between what the Japanese lost. They must have lost, they counted four hundred and something, about four fifty, but if you count that many bodies you must have another at least a hundred and fifty wounded. And then we had a hundred and sixty casualties out of K company, and then you had A Company, B Company, C Company, L Company, all trying to close the gap. And their casualties in the first two days. They had a thousand within that four acres.

Int: And within that twenty-four hours.

Mr. Fox: Two days. It was just, like I say, a lot of it was blank. But you didn’t get to rest a lot.

Int: I’m sure you didn’t.

Mr. Fox: And I don’t recall being hungry, but goddamn, I was thirsty, though.

Int: Water was a real problem, wasn’t it.

Mr. Fox: Water was a real problem. And the water we got, when you did get water at all, they hadn’t cleaned those fifty-five gallon drums that they brought the water in. So, what we did, we’d just go out and crawl out and get ‘em off the Japanese. We’d cut their canteens off. And they had good water.

Tnt: Did they have wells?

Mr. Fox: They had some water well, or distillation unit, or something like that. But their water, I think there was some fresh water. Back in the island. Trapped water.

Tnt: Cisterns and things of that sort.

Mr. Fox: That was stuff we didn’t have access to.

Int: Golly, I know that must have been awful.

Mr. Fox: Still remember the taste of that water.

Transcribed

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