John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis. Cold War Oral History Project Interview with James B. Naughton by Cadet Daniel N. Regan, February, 2006

©Adams Center, Virginia Military Institute

About the interviewer:

Cadet Daniel Regan, a Spanish major and IS minor, is from Chicago. He plans to go into fire fighting after graduation.

Regan: The following interview is being conducted for the John A. Adams ’71 Center for Military

History and Strategic Analysis as part of the requirements for History 391 – History of Sea Power in 20th Century. The interviewer is Cadet Daniel N. Regan. The interviewee is James B.

Naughton. This is a phone interview from VMI.

Hello, Mr. Naughton. How are you?

Naughton: I’m doing pretty good I guess. It’s turned cold. Can you hear me O.K.?

Regan: Yes, that’s perfect.

Naughton: When I have hearing aids on, sometimes I don’t talk loud enough so if I don’t you’ll have to tell me to speak a little louder.

Regan: O.K. No problem there. To start, if you could just give a brief description of yourself and your family background, where you grew up and went to school, etc.

Naughton: My father passed away when I was 3 ½ years old so I never really knew him. My mother was a widow who raised three children in the depths of the Depression. I don’t know how she did it. I went to a Catholic grade school and a Catholic high school – Marmion Military

Academy. I’m 80 years old today and served three years in the Marine Corps – in World War II. 2

After the war I went to college in Philadelphia and then I went to graduate school at the University of Chicago. None of that was in accounting, so when I finally decided I wanted to be an accountant, I had to go to Northern Illinois University and take about 140 hours in accounting. I started my own accounting firm about 35 to 40 years ago and it is still flourishing As to my family background. My father came over here from Ireland. My mother was also Irish. Her maiden name was Healy. I had two sisters and they both attended a Catholic grade school and a

Catholic high school – Mt. St. Mary’s, which is no longer in existence.

Regan: Would you tell me what prompted you to enlist in the Marine Corps and if the attack on

Pearl Harbor, at all, influenced it or was it independent of that?

Naughton: Well, in those days they had the military draft – I think it was started in 1940. We all knew we were going into the service after we graduated. I just thought the Marines were the best.

I’ve never changed my mind on that. They looked so great in dress blues, which unfortunately, I never got to wear. I guess that’s it. I just asked for the Marine Corps. They stamped “Navy” on my hand in the recruiting office and I said, “Wait a minute. I don’t want the Navy.”

They said, “Don’t worry, that washes off.” I didn’t realize that the Marines were part of the Navy.

Regan: What unit did you serve with while you were in the Marines?

Naughton: It was H Company, 3rd Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division, F.M.F. The Fleet

Marine Force. The 28th Marines were the ones that put the flag up Mt. Suribachi on Iwo. When you first go into boot camp, of course, you’re not in any organization except the recruit platoon you’re in. Ours was Platoon 1119. We arrived at the recruit depot in San Diego, after a train ride from Chicago that lasted about 3 ½ to 4 days. The train, they said, broke down some place in

Mexico and we sat there for hours. Now I realize the reason was that they wanted to make sure we arrived in the middle of the night. I think they do that in both the boot camps (San Diego and 3

Paris Island) so the recruits are completely disoriented. They took us from the train station in a bus over to the San Diego Marine Corps base. The corporal in charge said, “I want complete silence in here and if there isn’t, you people are going to be cleaning this deck with a toothbrush.”

That didn’t sound very good to us. Anyway, we were there for a couple of hours and were given lots of instructions – about what, I can’t quite remember. He did say, “It’s “04 hundred now and there’s some blankets over in the corner and you can wrap up in them and lie down on the deck.

Reveille goes at 0530.”

We couldn’t sleep, of course. And later we saw boots in dungarees, wearing big boon-dockers on and with shaved heads and I thought, “This looks like a prison.”

Regan: Do you think your experiences in boot camp and your training later on helped prepare you for the combat that you were going to see?

Naughton: Well, I don’t think boot camp really prepared us for combat, but it taught us discipline.

There’s no question about that. Discipline is the biggest thing in the Marines. And the unit is more important than the individual. It was our platoon, our company and our regiment – that’s how we felt. I think our training prepared us for combat. Later on, when I was sent to Camp

Pendleton and was assigned to the 5th Marine Division. Iwo Jima was something that I don’t think they anticipated at all. Our intelligence was very poor about some of these islands that we invaded, and it certainly was at Iwo. Iwo Jima was an underground bastion. We hardly ever saw the enemy. The only time we knew where they were was when they fired at us.

Regan: Was Iwo Jima your first battle?

Naughton: Yes – first and only. The 5th Division was made up of men who had been in the raider battalions (elite troops). Also we had some former parachute troops – para-Marines, they called them. We had post-troopers that had been on guard duty at naval bases. All of these became 4 part of the 5th and then there were people who were right out of boot camp. The 5th Division had

25,000 men in – roughly that. We trained very hard. I was a Marine runner. You take messages from the platoon commander to other Marines – the squad leaders, or from the platoon commander to the company commander

Regan: Prior to the invasion, or during it, did you have any experience with naval gunfire support or close air support from Navy or Marine pilots?

Naughton: We had great support from the Navy and from the Marine wings. We had brightly colored panels which we put out so that these Marine Consairs would know where we were. We had to go out, in front of our lines, and very carefully put these panels out so the pilots could see them. The Marine Consairs started bombing, etc., right after that line of panels which was

Japanese territory. Unfortunately, most of that sort of thing just didn’t work because the

Japanese were completely underground in fortifications that kept us from doing any kind of damage to them.

Regan: How did you think of the Japanese soldiers? Were they good soldiers or were they lacking?

Naughton: In our opinion, the Japanese aren’t what they are today and they were not the same kind of people. They were very vicious and unbelievable in what they did. They were really tough guys – no question about it. I mean, giving their life up for the emperor was nothing for them, whereas, of course, none of us thought that way. We wanted to protect ourselves if we could and keep on living. But they were told they were not going to get off of there and they were to take 10 Marines with them, each one of them. I sure think they tried to. They were sneaky and infiltrated our lines at night. Only twice did I ever see any live Japanese and that was about the third day when our platoon commander had been wounded. I turned to the platoon sergeant, who we always just called by his last name and I said, “Bull, there are some Japs back there,” and he 5 said, “Nah, that’s I Company coming to reinforce us.” I don’t know why I thought they were

Japanese – just the way they ran. It was pretty dark, but I was right – they were Japanese. Later on, I think it was on the 14th day, we had this banzai charge and they came at us and we saw a lot of them then. Other than that, you hardly ever saw them. You might see where they were firing from and throw a grenade in there or something, but you just never knew where they were.

Regan: How long were you actually on the island in combat before you were wounded?

Naughton: Fourteen days. We landed on February 18th, according to our calendar, but Iwo was over the international date line so they were a day ahead of us, so now it’s called the 19th and I was wounded on the 3rd (actually the 4th) of March so it was about 14 days. During all of that time we lost a lot of men – killed and wounded. You had to leave your own dead there awhile before they got a chance to get them in and put them in the graves, etc. You saw your own guys getting wounded. That’s one thing about combat. You always think you’re going to be a unit. We knew each other. We’d been in H Company for probably a year and a half at least. We knew all the guys 24/7 as they say today. We were all buddies. You always thought, when the thing was over with, you’d all get back together again as a unit. Well, we never did. We never got back because there were so many killed and wounded and our company sustained 80% casualties and that was true of most companies of Marines on Iwo.

Regan: If you’re comfortable with this question, could you tell me how you were wounded and how you were able to stay alive throughout that experience?

Naughton: The morning of the day that I was wounded the Japanese made a banzai charge from our rear. I don’t know how many there were, but they ran at us hollering, firing rifles, swinging swords, tossing grenades. There was just myself and a sergeant, who was now acting as platoon sergeant, and a lieutenant, who had been with our company but had not been in charge of our platoon, and what was left of our platoon who were several yards ahead of us. The banzai 6 charge of the Japanese came from our rear and it was a surprise. But we did not sustain any casualties. Later, at about 8:00 a.m., we were ordered to move out – advance against the enemy. I got hit. I wasn’t expecting it, but it was either a mortar or a hand grenade, and when it hits you, it is unbelievable. You feel like you were just hit by a truck. Your whole body vibrates like it was an electric shock of some kind. A corporal group leader pulled me back into a depression, and then after a while the Navy corpsman was there, whom I knew really well. We’d been together in H Company. He bent over to try to do something for me, and he said, “Oh, I’m hit!” and he was hit in the groin and the abdomen – about three shots – from a sniper. He said,

“I’m going back.” He thought he might lose a lot of blood or I might lose a lot of blood, so he went back. On the way back he stopped to tend to another wounded Marine and the corpsman was killed. He received the Congressional Medal of Honor for his action.

I was there a long time. I don’t know how long. I’d say I was there about 12 hours but I had no watch. We weren’t allowed to wear watches. I was wounded in the early morning, and it was dark before anybody came out to bring me back. The pain was intense. I really had very strange thoughts. I thought if I only had a knife I could cut that leg off so it wouldn’t hurt any more. I heard a tank several times and I thought, “If they come in here, they’ll crush me to death in this hole.” It was a long time, but some H Company Marines finally came out and got me. I was taken down to a battalion aid station. A priest was there and gave me the last rites of the Catholic

Church. I was operated on, and they told me that they had to amputate my leg. I figured it would be gone when I saw what a mess it was while I was lying out there before they got me. After the operation, I was put in a boat that took me out to a ship. It wasn’t a hospital ship. The ship lowered its boom and brought the wounded up on the deck. We were placed in sick bay aboard that ship, and they were going to take us to the naval hospital on Guam.

That first night they told us we had to be quiet because we had a submarine under us, so we were running silent. “Don’t do any talking unless it is absolutely necessary.” That was rally a shocking thing to hear. But we made it to the hospital. The way they amputate a leg – I don’t 7 want to get gory about it, but it’s just like a guillotine thing. They don’t sew your leg up or anything. The bandages adhere to your flesh, and when they take those off for the first time, I want to tell you, it’s something else. Your leg is always so tender that they had to put a small tent over it to keep a sheet away from it. You couldn’t even bear that touching it.

Anyway, we were in that hospital on Guam a couple of weeks, I guess. Then I was flown to

Hawaii. It was a 22 hour flight in those days. We landed one time at the Johnston Islands in order to refuel and then went on to Hawaii, as I said, to a naval hospital there, Aiea Heights, which was on the island of Oahu. I was there a couple of weeks and then was flown to Oak Knoll naval hospital in Oakland. I was then transferred to Mare Island naval hospital in San Francisco.

I was there a couple of weeks, and it was decided to take the amputees from east of the

Mississippi River to the Philadelphia naval hospital.

When I got to that hospital and had been there several months, I met my future wife there. Mary came down with some Mercy nuns to the hospital to try to see if they could buoy up the wounded men. A lot of us were rather “down” since we had been in there so long.

Regan: What was it like coming home from combat like that, especially after being wounded?

Naughton: Well, it was difficult to come home. You’d never thought about it, but that’s when the real trouble and difficulties start. The swelling in what we call the stump area was terrible, so you had a lot of problems to carry on a regular life. I didn’t want people to know that I had an artificial leg. I never told anybody and didn’t even want to tell anybody about it. If they ever noticed that I was walking badly, they’d say, “What did you do?” and I’d say, “Oh, I guess I hurt myself or hurt my ankle,” so I didn’t have to get into a big discussion about it. But it was difficult.

I was in the hospital for a long time because most of our wounds were infected. They just couldn’t stop them from what they called “drainage” then, so most of the guys were there a long 8 time. I was in the hospital from – well, I was wounded in March 1945 and was released in

December 1946 – it was a long time.

Regan: Is it even possible – just going back to the assault on Iwo Jima – to describe the emotions you felt as a young Marine about to go on that beach?

Naughton: Well, I think everybody was apprehensive, no doubt about that. It was very tense aboard ship the night before we landed. Everybody was thinking the same thing – tomorrow’s the day. We were on an APA – amphibious personnel assault ship. Reville was at 4:30, and they gave us a great meal, which nobody wanted to eat. Some guys said, “The condemned men ate a hearty meal.” That’s the way you felt. You knew you had to go there – that’s what your duty was.

But to say you weren’t afraid would be foolish.

H Company was out in the water in the Higgins boats for about four hours, but we couldn’t get in because the beach was so messed up, which meant that the Marines who were on Iwo were quite concerned that they were going to get trapped there and not have any help. That’s what they said when we finally got in and saw some of them. We all were worried, there’s no question about it. Especially if you’ve never been in combat. You didn’t know what to expect so you were going to fear it. Is there a Japanese soldier right there? Are they going to kill me or what? We practiced landings, going down the rope ladders into the boats and making a landing time after time so that we’d know what to do. We practiced just like it was the real thing. We made a lot of landings so we could almost do it with our eyes closed. Even then, we were concerned when we hit the beach at Iwo. It was just chaos on that beach because there was a lot of wrecked equipment that was in our way. Also, there was a sand embankment, 15 to 18 feet high. The sand was very coarse. You could hardly walk in it, much less run – something that nobody, for some reason, knew about. We had no idea that the Japanese were dug in like they were. We didn’t know where they were. You kept hearing these things coming at you, and you finally realized they were bullets making noises coming toward you. Iwo was an underground fortress. 9

The other runner was either wounded or killed on the beach, and I had to go back and get his gear – his radio gear and things like that. But I couldn’t find anything in the mess back there.

When I returned to where I thought we were, they were gone, so I was a whole day without my own outfit. I got up to a shell-hole, and there was a sergeant there and some other Marine. I didn’t know what outfit he was with. The sergeant said to me and this other Marine, “I’m going to count to three and you guys get the hell out of here and get moving,” so we did. What you did, of course, was run zig-zag. The nambu machine guns the Japanese had were firing cross-fire so it was a hell of a thing to run against. You zig-zagged all over and ran close to the ground and got maybe 25 or 30 yards, hit the deck and then got going again until, hopefully, you were out of the range of fire. Then I saw my group over to the left, and that was it for the night. I could give you some experiences at Iwo, but maybe you don’t care to hear those at this stage.

Regan: You had quite a few experiences. Maybe you could share one with us.

Naughton: Well, the first time we were close to what you would call the front line – although you were always on the front line at Iwo – we had to replace G Company which was one of our brother companies in our 3rd Battalion. We walked by those Marines, and there they were in bandages and there was blood plasma going into some of them and some of them were dead with ponchos pulled over their heads – pretty grim sight to see.

We replaced G Company, and probably in about a half hour, there were five of our company wounded, including our lieutenant, and my close friend whose name was Johnson. A tank had come up and he went behind the tank. There’s a telephone there and from there he directed the tank to where he thought the Japs were firing from. There was a 75mm cannon on the tank. The tanks came right up where we were and the Japs were firing mortars all over the place because that’s what they used to try and hit a tank. My buddy Johnson gave the tank the right location, and our tank got the Japanese, so we were able to move forward. But we also ended up with five 10 men wounded. It’s just attrition all the time, and some guys getting killed or wounded and you never saw them again. You don’t know where they went – to a hospital or where. Rough deal all the time.

There was no water on Iwo Jima. Our supply lines gave us some cans that had been used for gasoline full of water, but you couldn’t drink it because it tasted like gasoline. But they didn’t have a federal investigation – just tough stuff – you didn’t have any water. And the rations – we were short on those. We didn’t have anything to eat for a couple of days after we landed, but that’s just the way it goes. I mean, you’re in combat. You’re not sitting down to a dinner table, you know.

And you felt like – I don’t know – there were burned Japanese bodies and parts of bodies. Some of our own dead were lying there and we hadn’t had a chance to get them back. Iwo was a horrible looking place to begin with. It was certainly bad after all of the bombardment. I think that’s about it.

Regan: Would you say that faith has played a larger role in your life after your experiences in the

Marines?

Naughton: I don’t know how the other guys did, but I know that most of the Catholic guys went to confession to a priest. The priest was on board ship. He would minister to those on another ship as they told him what they had been through. We went to mass, even on Iwo. There was a priest who said mass right there in that horrible place. I think most of the guys were pretty much prepared for what the future might bring them in that regard. And I think it made you a better person from that standpoint.

One night we had a fierce artillery barrage. The shells sounded like a freight train. One landed right in back of the hole that I happened to be in. It was a dud, but I figured the next minute I was going to be in eternity. No question about it. I think it probably makes you better in that way. Of 11 course, I was lucky in attending LaSalle College – a good Catholic college – and I think that was something good for me.

Regan: Looking back on your time in the Marines, how does it feel to know that you participated in probably the most famous and, at the same time, most costly battle in Marine history?

Naughton: Well, we didn’t know that it was famous, you know, when we landed there. We knew it was tough. I knew some guys said, “I never knew it was this bad in combat.” Well, a lot of battles were bad, but they weren’t that bad. I’ll tell you one thing. When I look back at some of those battles in Guadalcanal and Saipan and Tarawa and places like that – they were pretty bad.

But Iwo Jima was just unbelievable. We never thought it would be like that. I mean, most of us didn’t know. And I can say that I’m glad I didn’t have to go back into combat again, after having been on Iwo. You’d have second thoughts about it, no question about that. It was only later in life that I realized it was a great battle. We just thought it was a snafu all the way and that we just didn’t do the job we should have, I suppose – although we sure tried. Now I understand that we did do it very well, but you never know it at the time. It was just a tough place. We would go into a cave wondering whether a Japanese soldier would be there ready to blow us to pieces. But you had to go in. I remember Marines talking about Guadalcanal and they didn’t know where the

Japanese were until they fired at you or maybe wounded or killed the guy in front of you – then you knew. We never knew where the enemy was. I don’t think we thought it was that great, but I guess it was. And, of course, the flag raising on Iwo Jima – there’s been a lot of talk about it, and it sure was a tremendously welcome sight to us. Unfortunately, we thought that the battle was over when that flag went up, and I think an awful lot of people in the media did, because they left the island and missed a lot of stuff. There were very few pictures after that, and very few stories about Iwo because they were gone. We had our Marine correspondents who were still there because they were Marines – they had to be there.

Regan: When did they raise the flag? Did you actually see the flag raising itself? 12

Naughton: Well, it was the 5th day. We landed on the 18th of February and it was the 23rd and we looked up and thought “Fantastic!” They said there was a lot of celebrating, but I don’t know who was celebrating because we were on the front line. We didn’t know where the Japs were at any time so we didn’t want to be horsing around, patting ourselves on the back. Easy Company of our 2nd Battalion went up there, and they were the ones that did the flag raising. We didn’t know they put up a second flag. It’s not really important. The picture was the genuine thing. It happened that way and that’s what Joe Rosenthal shot. I think it’s deserving and it’s outstanding.

I’ve got a picture of it on my office wall. I probably haven’t answered the question yet.

Regan: Was there one rank – platoon commander, platoon sergeant, or squad leader – that really was pretty integral in your daily life, especially in combat?

Naughton: Well, of course, Marine officers are – I think most of them are idolized by their men. I mean, in the morning, when we’d get ready to go out in the field, the company was formed by the gunnery sergeant who got them all together and would report if there were any that were not there for any reason at all. Of course, the officers would wait out there and then they’d come in and take over the company and the gunnery sergeant would report to the company commander – all present or accounted for. Then we’d go out in the field. Every guy loved our lieutenant -

John Leslie. He was just a great guy. I don’t know from their demeanor or whatever it was, but when you first go in the Marine Corps you are in boot camp and you have to call everybody “sir” – everybody with a Marine uniform on, but after that you only call officers “sir.” I never saw an officer until we formed the 5th Division. I was in the Marines probably four or five months before I ever saw an officer. I thought, “Look at that!” Actually it was a lieutenant or a captain – so we really thought they were something and most of them were. They did a great job. Platoon sergeants ran the platoons, and when our platoon leader (our lieutenant) was wounded, the platoon sergeant was in charge. They were enlisted men. They lived with us, etc., whereas the officers lived in an area called Officers’ Country. You couldn’t go over there unless you were 13 invited over there or were going on a work detail when you’re in camp. We just called the platoon sergeant by his last name: Bull. He was William Bull – his last name was Bull. I mean we obeyed him. We did that, no question about it, but we didn’t hold him the same – I don’t know how you’d call it – the same way we would an officer.

The squad leaders were sergeants, too, and they had 12 or 13 men in a squad – not counting themselves. So they were pretty good guys, most of them. They knew what they were doing and how to handle their men and what they were to do. There was no question of what to do when you got into combat. They were well-trained and got along pretty well.

Regan: What was your final rank before you separated from the Marines?

Naughton: I was a PFC when I was in the Marines. We had to pass a test in boot camp to get there and that’s what I was when I finally left the Marine Corps, although they elevated it one rank, so I was a corporal for one day. I don’t know whether that gave you a little more pay at one time or not. A private, I think, got $45 a month, and a PFC got $54. I don’t know what the corporals and some of those got because I never reached that rank when I was there, other than that last day I left. They took us over to the Philadelphia Navy Yard and we were disbanded at that point. They handed us our discharge papers and that was it.

Regan: Knowing everything that you know now, would you still go into the Marine Corps over the other services, if you had it to do over gain?

Naughton: Well, yeah, I would never go into any other service. The Marines are more in my heart now than they were even then, I suppose. I often don’t talk too much about it because I didn’t want anybody to know I was wounded, but I often thought about being in the Marine Corps and being with those great guys. They were really gung-ho type people. (Gung-ho is a motto adopted by the U.S. Marine Raiders in World War II – it means “work together.” It also means, 14

“We’re ready to go!”). They were a lot of fun to be around. I love the uniform. I really love the

Marines. I would go back if I had to – that’s where I’d go.

Regan: Well, I appreciate this very much. Is there anything else you’d like to add before this is concluded?

Naughton: This went pretty fast, didn’t it?

Regan: It moved along.

Naughton: Well, you had a lot of nice questions, and I hope I answered most of them. I don’t know. I’m glad that I did what I did for the country and I think most of the guys thought it was essential and we had to beat the Japanese. The reason that the Japanese are what they are now is because General McArthur did a tremendous job in Japan. He turned their thoughts about us around 100% so they really became allies of ours and are much nicer people. If people read the history, they will see that Japanese soldiers were absolutely vicious. They conducted these death marches and mistreated prisoners of war. They had no feeling for life at all. Now they’re not that way. They seem to be fine, gentle people and live much like we do. So I think it was a great thing to do. We had to do it. Too bad the world is like it is now. I guess all I can say is I’m a Marine right from the word go. I feel the same way now as I did all those years ago. That’s it.

Regan: Okay. Thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it and for sharing your story with everybody.

Naughton: I hope it all goes okay.

Regan: I think it will go through just fine. Thank you very much again.

15

Naughton: You’re welcome.

Regan: Good-bye.

Naughton: Good-bye.