Local veterans remember battle at Iwo Jima
Twenty-year-old Marine Cpl. John Bedner and a buddy were taking turns sleeping in a foxhole on Iwo Jima. “You slept an hour and he stayed awake. Then he slept an hour and you stayed awake. We must have both fallen asleep,’ recalled Bedner.
That’s when a Japanese soldier jumped into the foxhole, in what Bedner called his worst experience on the island.
“That’s his rifle there,’ Bedner, now 80, said as he pointed to a long gun, propped upright against the back of an easy chair next to his Marine dress uniform in his Perryopolis home. “He didn’t make it.’
To say life was tough at Iwo Jima is an understatement.
“After a while, you got so depressed you didn’t care. You were tired of living,’ said Bedner. “Sometimes you’d say, I wish I’d get it today because then it would be over.’
A rocky island in the Pacific Ocean with beaches of black sand, Iwo Jima became the site of a 36-day battle between the United States and Japan that began Feb. 19, 1945. The United States wanted the island as an emergency landing strip for bombing raids. But the fight proved one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, with more than 26,000 American casualties, including 6,800 dead. Of the 20,000 Japanese defenders, only 1,083 survived.
“Only two of all of us guys in my platoon walked out. Only one wasn’t wounded. I was wounded, but I walked out,’ said Nick Barone, also 80, of North Union Township.
Barone, then a 20-year-old private first class, received the Purple Heart at Iwo Jima after being hit March 15 in his left leg by shrapnel from a shell that killed his friend as the two lay in a foxhole.
As the United States commemorates the 60th anniversary of the battle, both Bedner and Barone plan quiet days at home.
Bedner was in Washington, D.C., 10 years ago for the 50th anniversary commemoration, when President Bill Clinton addressed the veterans in a public ceremony at the Iwo Jima Memorial. Barone has been to the White House twice, invited by President Ronald Reagan for a cookies-and-coffee reception in the Blue Room and to an outdoors ceremony hosted by President George Bush.
While they don’t call themselves heroes – “I’m just a Marine,’ said Barone – their family and friends do.
“When I served during the Vietnam era, the Iwo Jima Memorial was a symbol we all looked up to,’ said Dan Martin, commandant of the Marine Corps League, Laurel Highlands Detachment 732.
Barone has remained good friends with many of his fellow Marines, having them over to his house and attending conventions with his wife, Kathryn, where they reminisce about the war.
“My first reunion was in 1948 in Detroit, Michigan. A buddy of mine showed up in the lobby of the hotel, and my wife said, ‘I think that’s one of your buddies.’ He heard her and he said, ‘That’s not my buddy. That’s my brother,” recalled Barone. “That’s the way we felt about each other. We all do.’
A native of Point Marion, Barone enlisted in the Marines in 1943 and was a rifleman assigned to H Company, 3rd Battalion, 26th Marines of the 5th Marine Division when he found himself on the way to Iwo Jima. Officers told the young Marines the invasion would be a cakewalk.
They were wrong.
Sitting in his living room with memorabilia that includes photographs, books and a Japanese sword, Barone recalled the horror of the battle: “That first day was just a nightmare with bodies lying around. We couldn’t move. Every time you tried, they shot at you. They tried to pin us down.’
Bedner arrived two days later.
He could have earned an exemption because he was a farmer, but Bedner enlisted in the Marines when he was 18. He arrived on Iwo Jima, stationed with the Third Marine Division, 9th Regiment, L Company, and was seasick from the waves that tossed the boat bringing the men to shore. In fact, the waves were so rough that some men didn’t make it. Their boats upset and they were drowned.
“From the ship on the ocean, we could see where they were blowing the island up. We thought there would be nothing left for us to go in. But it was not that way at all,’ said Bedner. “The Japanese were underground in caves.’
Bedner carried a rifle and was also a flamethrower, shooting flames into the caves to deplete the oxygen so the Japanese would suffocate.
The Marines would also take souvenirs from the Japanese they killed. Besides the rifle, Bedner has a collection of Japanese money.
“Now I look back, I wished we wouldn’t have done it,’ he said. “He was somebody’s husband, somebody’s son, somebody’s father. They were waiting for them at home.’
But it was war, and life was stressful.
“Living in a foxhole for four or five weeks, you don’t brush your teeth or take a shower,’ said Bedner. “You don’t do anything but eat out of a can.’
A Catholic chaplain, however, went foxhole to foxhole, distributing Holy Communion. Bedner also found time to write letters home. And officials also sent Bedner to the rear to be treated to a movie, but the Japanese shot holes in the screen.
On Feb. 23 Marines raised an American flag on Mount Suribachi, a moment captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and later recreated into the national memorial.
Barone recalled: “It felt like now, we’re looking down their throats. It lifted everybody. You could feel the emotion going through everyone.’
The battle continued for weeks before its finish. Barone said his last day on Iwo Jima was “very sad’ because the Marines visited the graveyards before they boarded ship.
But it would be another year before both men were discharged, with Barone sent to Japan and Bedner to China before going home.
After the war, both men raised families. Barone moved to North Union Township and worked as a heavy equipment operator, retiring in 1988. Bedner went back to farming and took a job in a mill. Eventually, he joined the Army Reserve and was activated for stateside duty during the Korean War. After two years in the Army, Bedner came back to Perryopolis and took a job at Fisher Body in West Mifflin, retiring in 1985.
Today, Bedner has grandsons in the military, including one who served time in Iraq. Bedner speaks at local schools and serves in a VFW honor guard for funerals. His daughter Becky said patriotism is a part of life in Perryopolis.
Sixty years after the start of the bloody battle in the Pacific, both Barone and Bedner are proud of the work they did at Iwo Jima and the men with whom they served.
Barone said he simply would like people to remember those who fought at Iwo Jima for “how great they were.’