Reliving the war in the Pacific

On the same March day each year, George Paulson of Omaha sits with an empty shot glass and a bottle of Early Times whisky and pours himself a drink.

He remembers buddies. He ponders the lonely hours hunkered alone in a shell hole with his right leg severed at the knee by a Japanese bullet. He salutes the Navy corpsman who found him and saved his life.

The personal ceremony is Paulson's annual tribute to commemorate the day — March 9, 1945 — when World War II ended for him on a remote island in the Pacific Ocean.

“I'm just grateful that I'm alive,'' he said.

Paulson was a member of the 28th Marines' 1st Battalion. His C Company was 250 men strong when it stormed the volcanic island. Five walked off the island when the fighting ended more than a month later. The rest were seriously wounded or killed. Of the five who left on their feet, only two hadn't earned a Purple Heart.

This was Iwo Jima, where one of WWII's bloodiest battles was raging 65 years ago. The horrific 36-day fight in February and March 1945 was one in a series of battles on tiny islands across the Pacific that created waves of casualties at rates among the worst recorded in the global war.

Fighting on Iwo Jima claimed 6,281 American and 21,570 Japanese lives.

Like the conflict against Germany in Europe, the sand, rain and hell of the war against Japan in the Pacific had its bands of brothers — comrades forever bonded by extraordinary shared experiences.

But these were unique — and the stories of the Marines who fought in the Pacific are making a new beachhead in the public's consciousness this spring.

A new HBO miniseries, “The Pacific,'' premieres Sunday. Like HBO's “Band of Brothers'' (2001) miniseries about a company of Army paratroopers in the European theater, “The Pacific'' follows the intertwined stories of several Marines on the other side of the world.

Also, a series of programs at the Strategic Air & Space Museum west of Omaha will give people the opportunity to hear and meet several dozen veterans of the Pacific war, especially Marines who fought on Iwo Jima. The first museum event is a March 26 dinner celebrating the end of fighting on Iwo Jima on that date in 1945.

Among the museum's special guests will be six Marines who served in the company whose members raised U.S. flags atop Mount Suribachi on the fifth day of fighting.

An Associated Press photograph of five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the second flag became one of the most recognized images of the war.

Retired Col. Dave Severance of LaJolla, Calif., the captain of 2nd Battalion's E Company at Iwo Jima, said events like “The Pacific'' and the museum programs are important to veterans and the public, even after 65 years.

“It's just interest in history,'' said Severance, now 91. “We all became very close fighting in the military and then we all went our own directions. It's good to get together once in a while and talk about old times. There's still a few of us kicking around.''

Severance's company suffered about 75 percent casualties on Iwo Jima. When he started looking for company members for a reunion in the 1980s, he located 125 men. His list is down to about 44 now.

One of them is Ralph Griffiths of Girard, Ohio, who said he and many others never saw the Stars and Stripes flying atop the dormant volcano. They were patrolling near the base of the hill and couldn't see the summit. Not until Griffiths was wounded March 1 and taken to a hospital ship did he see the flag.

Griffiths said the flag represented a terrible toll. Three of the men who hoisted the first flag and three who raised the second were later killed in fighting on the island.

Joe Griffin of Denison, Iowa, a 26th Marines veteran, said the flag was an inspiring symbol for those fighting across the tiny island.

Griffin, a machine gunner, was wounded about 3 a.m. March 15 by a Japanese hand grenade.

“Four of us were in a little ditch and we heard some activity behind us,'' he said. “Our leader said to find out what's there and then all hell broke loose.''

The Marines and Japanese soldiers lobbed grenades at each other from about 20 feet apart. Griffin suffered intestinal wounds.

“That was the end of the war for me,'' he said.

John Dickinson of Omaha, a 23rd Marines veteran who made earlier invasion landings at Saipan and Tinian, said he recalls the day the U.S. flag first appeared atop Suribachi on Feb. 23, but fighting and other duties were so intense that he doesn't remember anything else that happened until March 8.

That's the day Dickinson and a friend came under sniper fire while in a fox hole.

“He ran the wrong way and I ran the right way,'' said Dickinson, 84. “He got shot up.''

Dickinson's regiment arrived at Iwo Jima aboard three ships. It left the island on one ship.

Paulson said his annual bourbon treat started in a Quonset hut at Pearl Harbor, erected to serve as a hospital for wounded troops. The surgeon who mended what remained of Paulson's leg ordered nurses to serve the Marine a shot of whiskey at 4 p.m. daily.

“The damn corpsman would bring the shot on a tray with a white towel,'' Paulson said. “Guys were hollering and screaming. We knocked the ward out. Those are good memories.''

Paulson was 18 years old.

Now 83 and retired from his Council Bluffs commercial contracting company, Paulson said falling into a shell hole when the 60-caliber bullet destroyed his knee sheltered him from receiving other wounds.

He was in a low area of the island nicknamed Death Valley. Thousands of U.S. and Japanese troops died there.

“I really didn't know how badly I was hurt,'' Paulson said. “I felt blood flying around. I didn't have that much pain. I was numb.''

After a while, a Marine jumped into the hole and Paulson asked him to put a tourniquet on the wounded leg.

“He looked down, said, ‘Jesus,' and got up and ran,'' Paulson said. “So I thought maybe I better take a look.''

His leg was hanging by a piece of skin. Paulson removed his canvas belt, tightened it around his thigh to slow the bleeding and drank two canteens of water to stave off shock.

“A lot goes through your mind,'' he said. “I started realizing maybe I wasn't going to live.''

That night, a corpsman came looking for Paulson, dressed the wound and told him he was going to be OK. Then the corpsman lifted Paulson over his shoulders and carried him to safety.

Paulson, a past national president of the 5th Marine Division Association, has made two return visits to Iwo Jima with other veterans — American and Japanese.

He said the lessons of the Pacific war are complicated and difficult to explain.

“The world could be more tender-hearted than it was during World War II,'' he said. “We were pretty intent on destroying our fellow man back in those days — more so than we should have been.''

Paulson said he's not being judgmental. Japan had to be defeated and the war won.

“The animosity developed against the Japanese people during the war was really bad on our part,'' he said. “I suppose it was bad on their part, too. It's just too bad that hatred has to become part of the deal. It just shouldn't be. But it did and it was.''

Contact the writer:

444-1127, david.hendee@owh.com

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