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.