I was shipped off to Basic Training within a week, and it was everything I expected: yelling, shooting, beating, physical training, everything the media tells you is true. I found out early on that everything in the military exists based on tradition; your schedule is dictated by someone else, when you eat is dictated by someone else, your hairstyle is dictated by someone else, damn near everything Haircuts is out of necessity or tradition. Basic Training consisted of a lot of aspects: digging, yelling, screaming, jumping, shooting, even more screaming, even more digging, polishing, you get the gist. 12 weeks of this, you’re trained to lose any trace of empathy, any excess emotion will get you killed, they drill this into your head early on. I was taught from a young age to be orderly, follow orders, don’t talk back, et cetera – the transition from civilian to military life wasn’t as hard as it was for others. Within the first few days, you learned quickly that talking back would only land you a beating. James, a real joker, had a hard transition from city life. Joker was a term attributed to being stupid, breaking formation, acting out of line, et cetera, this would land you with the title of Joker. (a title you really do not want) James spoke up during attention on multiple occasions, spoke back to drill instructors, all of which landed us day-after-day of physical training and testing, (something debilitating the first time, but even more-so the sixteenth time), you could tell everyone in the platoon had pent up rage, you’re constantly being yelled at, beaten by instructors, told to man up, it gets in your head. We had been ordered to our bunks after the evening briefing, and it was clear what was going to happen. About six of the more outspoken and rageful men in the platoon had their heads set on James, you heard rumors about what happened to jokers like James, but to see it firsthand is another experience. At about midnight, you’d hear the commotion begin, him getting beaten, the punches hitting him as he screamed, the kicking, it was horrible; but if you tried to stop it, you’d only get beaten yourself. You had to let it happen, there wasn’t anything you could do. We woke up next morning to James dead – his green-beige garbs now a dark shade of red in, his face beaten so ferociously you could see the imprint of their boots in his cheeks. We were all lined up the morning after the incident, the Drill Instructor his Corporal hand, solemnly announcing his death. No investigation was put into place, James’s cause of death was presumed unknown, and that was that, the Marines felt no necessity to press further into the matter. Training beatings were commonplace, if you acted up, you’d find yourself being beaten to pulp in the middle of the night. No-one dared act up, perfection was a necessity if you wanted to live to the next wall, you kept your head down, acted only as ordered and you’d make it to the next day. Basic seemed like an eternity for this reason – repetition was commonplace, you did practically the same thing every goddamn day, over and over and over again.

After I completed Basic Training, I was shipped off to Hospital Corpsman School; somehow even more boring then Basic Training. Drab white walls for every room, hallway, office, the entire building and the men inside it were uniform. You wore Sailor overalls everyday, all day, this was part of the program. We were taught basic medical procedures, most efficient ways to apply pressure, the necessity of sulfur, tourniquet usage, bandaging parameters, et cetera. The program was about 6 weeks long, I would be assigned to a division afterwards, it was the last step before I could begin my “official” service to my country. I went into Corpsman School with the ideologies from Basic Training, but they didn’t coincide. Instructors were strict, but not to the extent of Marine Drill Instructors; your freedom of expression was restricted, but not outright oppressed and removed. The weeks went by, (albeit slowly), and I graduated Corpsman School on June 4th, 1944.

I was almost immediately assigned to the 2nd Marine Division, a division with its fair share of combat experience. I was shipped from MD, San Francisco out to the USS California, stationed just off the coast of Magicienne Bay, and was scheduled to arrive on June 8th, 1944th. I had been assigned to the 16th Rifle Platoon, a platoon I would remain in for the remainder of the war. Straight off the bat, I noticed that everyone in the platoon had a varied amount of experience, although predominantly on the low end of the experience scale. I had become close with our radio operator, Vince, (who I presume was Italian?), he acted similar to James, and even though I grew to hate so-called “jokers” like him, but he grew on me quickly; Vince was someone who managed to retain their humanity through the trials of Basic Training, something I admire to this very day. Vince and I had limited interactions, but the few I did felt like a restored piece of my humanity, but these moments were short lived. I was also one of two combat medics assigned to my platoon, the other being Charles Davis, he was a hardened veteran, having fought in the Guadalcanal Campaign, and at the Battle of Peleliu. (both battles which I knew little about at the time), I can remember that he wasn’t particularly talkative, always sort of methodic, deep in contemplation; whenever he spoke, you listened, y’know? Within my first two hours on-board, I had to got to know most of the platoon to varying extents, I tried my best to familiarize myself with the people who I was going into hell with. Information was given to us sparingly, most of the information you get prior to an operation come from the dinning hall. You hear snippets of information, something big occurring tomorrow morning, a beach landing, meat grinder, et cetera. They drill into your head that you take everything you hear that isn’t from an officer with a grain of salt. Operations are always changing, it’s best to believe what is told to you directly then making off with the “daily gossip”. I remember waking up early, immediately being called to the briefing room. A dimly lit classroom with a projector, as we crammed in 3 platoons worth of men (48 people) into a cramped space, we were briefed on our portion of the invasion. We were planning a full stage invasion on the island of Saipan, (an island every man in the room hadn’t heard of before, but was still planning to go into head-on regardless), we had been assigned to a stretch of beach designated Red 1, the furthest west of the 15 landing points. It was a 2 kilometer stretch of land, supposedly loosely fortified, resistance would get stiffer the further inland we got, but we needed a beachhead before we could even begin to deal with that. Our three platoons were the forefront of this beach engagement, being the third wave of the seven prepared waves of men.

After finishing the briefing, it was waiting time. Johnathan, our radio operator would give us brief comm snippets from the first wave, and we knew it wasn’t good. Five platoons had landed on the beach, a support weapons platoon, and four rifle platoons. At 0900, the first landed, at this point, the 4th Marine Division had been fighting to the east of their position for at least a couple hours, but they were bogged down. Johnathan gave us snippets of their radio chatter, quickly turning it off before the Lieutenant saw, then turning it back on when he left. We listened silently as the radio chatter echoed, they were being demolished. The Jap’s were dug in deep, supposedly hundreds of machine gun, mortar, artillery, and anti-tank placements were strewn across the beach head. Their men were wiped off the face of the Earth as they landed, being torn to shreds by the dug in Japanese forces. Naval Bombardments had come 2 hours earlier but did very little to the heavily fortified Japanese positions. The first wave was sitting ducks, all we could was listen. The 2nd wave planned was pushed forward, launching 30 minutes earlier, our platoon was issued to be on the ready in case more reserves were needed.  The 4th Marines had secured a ridge line just to the east of their position, and were flanking the beach defenses, but had also taken heavy casualties and had become bogged down in the constant chaos. This is where we came into play. The 2nd Wave, landed at 09:15, to find a deeply entrenched beachhead. They understood what they were up against this time, and used cover more effectively, but still sustained relatively high casualties. We were radioed in to reinforce, acting as an auxiliary force for the second wave. An hour before our planned landing, (10:30), we were in the landing craft, gliding into the rough sea. The anxiety you feel being pulled by the ocean, feeling it tug and weave as your landing craft is helplessly twisted and pulled by the waves is indescribable. I felt my anxiety, my fears, the roughness of the waters all manifested in one action: vomiting. I felt my body collapse in on itself as I hurled over the side of the landing craft, I felt no relief, only wanting to vomit again. The waters were rough, the rations I had earlier sat in my stomach like bricks, constantly being thrown around my body. All the emotions building up felt so visceral – this was it; this is what I was waiting for, what we as a platoon were waiting for. I heard the rumble of the landing craft gate as it screeched open, and we poured onto the wide span of beach.

Shots pounded our unit as soon as we landed, the 1st and 2nd wave hadn’t done shit. We tried to get as much cover as we could behind tank traps sat spattered around the beach, it was our only facet of cover in the wide expanse of the beach. I still remember the screaming, Johnathan our radioman, instantly killed, as his body was peppered with bullet holes as he left the landing craft. Charles Davis, the second combat medic who I had met just an hour earlier, shot in the stomach twice, died instantly. I clung to the tank trap, watching both of their bodies float hopelessly in the water as machinegun fire blasted around me. A mortar blast hitting the ground around 20 feet from me shook me from my daze, returning me back to reality. The machine gun fire seemed to only get louder, as it scraped through the air, screaming. I felt my stomach turn as I heard screaming of mortar shells coming overhead, we were pinned, bad. Vincent was waving rapidly at me from a nearby tank trap, yelling incoherently at me as my ears rung. He motioned at a corpse by my feet, mouthing “Help him!” I registered what he was saying, pulling the corpse from the sand, assessing his wounds. The mortar blast from earlier had blown off his arm, sending it spiraling into the ocean. His face was covered in ash and blood, and in that moment, my ears stopped ringing. I originally assumed he had died – but his death-defying screaming changed my mind. I couldn’t treat his wound; he had bled out severely; the most I could do was administer a morphine shot. A quick shot to his chest, that was all you could do. Take the ammunition off their body, move on, it’s better to help as many people as possible then get stuck on one person; that’s what they taught you in Corpsman School. Within 20 minutes of fighting, I realized the extent of desperation we were at. Of the original 48 men we had, I counted maybe 20 men, all split around the beach.

We held out for another 20 minutes before the 4th wave would arrive to resupply and re-arm the remnants of our platoons. It became evident the Japanese were running out of ammunition, constant machine gun fire dissipated into short controlled bursts at us as we advanced; much easier to deal with. As the 4th Wave moved in, they gave us the new orders from Battalion Headquarters. They told us to leave the wounded, it was too dangerous to save them; “take their ammo, fill your canteen if you need it, do not stop to save them, we can’t spare the time.” Moments like these are what destroy a man, I watched them squirm, clinging onto their wounds as they scream at me, begging me for anything, morphine, bandages, but I had to ignore them. The more they screamed, the more their screams eventually turned into white noise, my training in Basic now paying off. We had slowly but perpetually trudged our way up onto the beachhead, the 65th Special Weapons Platoon clearing out most of the pillboxes ahead. I watched as the flamethrowers threw their fire into the pillboxes, watching the japs erupt into flames, frantically patting out the fire on their uniforms as they squirmed out of the pillbox; only to be then peppered with bullets by our men outside. We made our way up the beachhead, admiring the area surrounding the ferocious warfare. It was beautiful, I felt a moment of tranquility, admiring the huge rice paddies strewn across the fields, dark green foliage contrasting with the dark gray mountains, this island, it was gorgeous.  A moment of tranquility which was quickly interrupted by Lieutenant Baker shouting, issuing our new orders from Battalion. We were on clean-up duty. Pillboxes filled to the brim with wounded, pleading for forgiveness in Japanese, asking to be shot in the head. Pillbox after pillbox, it became appallingly clear how brutal the warfare was. A family of four, seemingly Korean, their father not wanting them to be captured tried to bargain with us. Their two sons were severely malnourished, they begged us for food, to be rescued. Everyone that remained in our platoon were un-empathetic, we had witnessed the worst of the war, it just wasn’t something we could register in that moment. The man spoke partially broken English, “Sir, we not with the Japan, please, we not with the Japan!” We brought him and his family to Lieutenant Baker, the commanding officer of the 65th (also the only alive CO at this time), he assumed they were Japanese perpetrators. “I know a jap when I see em’, all the’um Asians are the same.”, he said, “Robert, Calvin, take them into the forest.” We did as we were told, guiding the family into the forest, lining them up against a rock. The father instantly went into a panic, he frantically begged us not to do it, just to let them go; I remember his desperation so vividly – he knew what was going to happen. He made a desperate attempt at our rifles, but he didn’t get far. Robert fired twice into his chest, and I watched him fall to the ground. I watched the mother and her sons scream in desperation as they saw him fall, but I felt no empathy for them. “They’re Japs, they fought against us.” This thought was reoccurring, it’s what drove to me to what I did next; to avenge my fallen comrades, an act of patriotism. I watch as they looked at me in horror, but I felt no empathy. This was my duty, to serve my country. I fired three shots in quick succession: bang, bang, bang.