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♪ ♪ Support for this program was also made possible by... ♪ ♪ ♪ >> Iwo Jima, now called Iwo To, is an uninviting and unsightly island in the far western Pacific.
The World War II battle here is long over.
There are no more bodies to be buried and no more blood covering these black sandy volcanic beaches.
Dormant volcano Mount Suribachi still remains, as does the continuous symphony of waves crashing onto the island's dark coastline.
Today, the sounds of the Pacific Ocean are the same as they were on February 19th, 1945.
Of course, now there are no screams of wounded and dying Marines.
No sounds of artillery, mortars, and machine guns.
Just turbulent whitecaps crashing against black volcanic rock that is the foundation of this desolate island.
Americans landed here in the thousands at 9:30 that morning.
The Japanese were entrenched in miles of underground caves and tunnels, waiting with one purpose -- kill as many of the American invaders as possible.
Today, volcanic steam still rises here from deep fissures on the gloomy landscape.
A reminder that this eight-square-mile island is still alive in many ways, like some old monster that won't ever die.
♪ In early 1945, Iwo Jima needed to be taken and held.
It was the most valuable piece of oceanfront real estate in the world.
And the price paid per square foot here would be staggering.
The fight was supposed to take days, but Americans would be here for 36.
The hellish fight that once echoed here involved Marines and sailors.
But there were also other men who fought here heroically.
Many were much older than their fellow Americans who landed.
Their battalion's distinctive motto in World War Two was, "We build, we fight."
And nowhere with those four words become more important than here on Iwo Jima in early 1945.
[ Man speaking Japanese ] ♪ >> In this island paradise war planes of the most treacherous of enemies savagely and without warning shatter the peace of almost a century.
America has been attacked without warning.
♪ >> Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States found itself dramatically lacking in the size of its military.
>> We had makeshift supplies, makeshift equipment, stovepipes for cannon, bags of flour for bombs, and trucks were labeled "tanks."
>> It also was severely deficient in skilled men who could build the infrastructure in faraway places once battles had been won.
The bases, the runways, the ports.
Between the World Wars, it was an idea just on paper, but now, in mid-December of 1941, essential to winning World War II.
This new branch of the military would come to be called Navy Construction Battalions.
But that sounded too formal.
So these thousands of hardened and tough men would simply be called Seabees, the C and the B taken from the first letters of the words "construction battalion."
They had one of the war's most distinctive patches.
The Seabees' "We build, we fight" motto would be severely tested in the final two years of World War II.
Construction experience needed.
Millions of America's laborers eventually applied.
Men, some 30, 40, 50, and even 60 years old, answered the call.
They would build the runways, bases, Quonset huts, hospitals, docks, ports, and the infrastructure needed in Europe and the Pacific.
Oh, by the way, they were also told they needed to learn how to fight and kill, too.
>> The Seabees were part of a unit of engineers that went in and provided the services to support whatever military effort that was going on in in a particular area.
Let's take, for instance, an airfield -- they're the ones are going to build it.
♪ They're the ones that are going to supply all of the equipment, all the skills to get those up and running.
They did it throughout the Pacific and they did it here in Europe.
They were also ones that would be able to construct bridges or put mobile bridges into effect, to repair roads.
What people don't understand about this, many times they're doing it under fire.
>> We shipped out fast through a West Coast port.
You want to know how it was?
It was hurry up, hurry up and load.
Carry our victory with us in wooden boxes.
>> Just weeks after Pearl Harbor, the first official military trained Naval Construction, or Seabee, Battalion shipped out for overseas duty.
They headed for the Pacific, where new bases and runways were desperately needed.
The United States Pacific Fleet was still reeling from Pearl Harbor.
Marvin Nottingham was 18 years old.
>> So I was a principal appointment to US Naval Academy.
I tried to get in, and I was partially colorblind, and they wouldn't take me.
And I checked on the Seabees, and they didn't care whether I was colorblind or not.
>> When the war started, teenager Ned Connor was hoping to work on airplanes, but the Navy had other plans.
>> Got notice of being drafted and hoped to get into the ground forces of the Air Corps.
But at that time, they were looking for the lowest-level-rating people, the youngest, for the Navy Seabees.
>> Remember the good old days?
We were using American engineer equipment to build our skyscrapers and roads and bridges and dams.
Big, slow-moving stuff.
Nice to look at on a lazy afternoon.
Digging the foundations for the skyscrapers.
From 17-year-old boys just out of trade school to gray-haired veterans of World War I, the skill that helped to build our country goes to war.
>> Recruiting efforts at home focused on America's labor unions.
Charley Teague ended up in the 3rd Special Seabee Battalion, a unit expected to load and unload ships at a pace never seen in American military history.
>> When the war broke out, you know, most everybody wanted to go do their part.
So I didn't want to be a foot soldier in the Army, so I decided I'd join the Navy.
And we went to California, to the Port Hueneme US Navy Seabees Training Base.
♪ >> Construction worker Ira Rigger also wanted to get into action in the Pacific.
>> Because of my experience in the construction industry, I didn't go in as the bottom of the ladder.
I went in as a Seaman Second Class.
Wow, that's big time.
>> Seabee bases sprung up all over the United States, at Camp Endicott at Davisville, Rhode Island, at Camp Peary in Williamsburg, Virginia, and in California at Port Hueneme.
It was not uncommon for locals to hear bulldozers and backhoes in the morning and rifles and machine guns firing in the afternoon.
>> But in eight tough weeks, the Navy teaches the civilian craftsmen to be a fighting builder infused with the Seabees spirit -- We build, we fight.
>> ♪ We're the Seabees of the Navy ♪ ♪ We can build and we can fight ♪ >> A normal-sized Seabee battalion had over 1,000 men and officers.
Seabees are more associated with the Pacific.
But in the early years of the war in Europe, they were also building bases in North Africa, Sicily, and in Italy.
>> But those Seabees responsible for setting up the beachhead, marking off the spaces for the LSTs and LCIs to come in and directing the traffic that had to drive onto the beach in the face of that terrible enemy fire.
>> The Germans were in awe of America's new military labor force.
The Nazi war machine would continue to encounter the building and infrastructure work of the Seabees through D-Day in 1944 and beyond.
Seabee workmanship proved a huge advantage for the allies in Europe.
>> Those crazy American engineers, they could build a two-lane highway right into the front line.
We could, too.
>> But it's in the Pacific where the Seabees found their most challenging environment and enemy.
It's also where their work turned the tide of the fight against Japan.
It's where they became legendary.
Their efforts began quickly, less than a year after Pearl Harbor.
Seabees with rifles slung over their shoulders and riding bulldozers began coming ashore at Guadalcanal.
They arrived one month after the August 7th, 1942 landings by the 1st Marine Division.
>> Yes, when you say Guadalcanal, you say Marines.
But those Marines will be the first to tell you that, if they made history at Guadal, those Seabees working and fighting shoulder to shoulder with them made something more tangible than history.
They made a thriving base out of the flaming wreckage that was left.
>> A Japanese runway on Guadalcanal was captured and completed by the Americans.
It was later named Henderson Field.
The Japanese wanted it back and bombed it daily.
The Seabees would rebuild the airstrip every day.
Sometimes under heavy fire.
>> Their weapons are not far away.
And in particular, in the Pacific Theater, they could be attacked -- under attack immediately.
They happened in Guam and it certainly happened in Tinian and Saipan and Iwo Jima, and even at the start, at Guadalcanal.
♪ >> Henderson Field was strategically important, as the United States finally went on the ground offensive against Japan in the Pacific.
>> The Seabees, digging into that airfield with the same fighting spirit as the Marines that hit the beach, repaired 53 shell and bomb craters in 48 hours.
>> After Guadalcanal, there would be many more Pacific islands for the Seabees.
>> November 30th, 1942.
Dearest Mary, this is a good day to write.
It's Sunday and raining cats and dogs.
We haven't really too much to complain about except the complete lack of liberty.
We haven't had a chance to get away from any of this since we landed 10 months ago.
I guess we aren't so bad off.
Again, we have been promised that we will be sent home.
It was a lonely Thanksgiving, but the meal was good.
Each one of us received candy and cigarettes from some carpenters local in Baltimore.
I have a necklace for you, but will keep it and hope I can deliver it in person soon.
Your loving husband, Dee.
♪ >> Wayne Faulkner was an Ivy League student at Cornell University when the war broke out.
Since he was studying civil engineering, he was allowed to finish his college studies.
Soon after that, he found himself a Navy Seabee.
>> At that time, they took all of the guys, fellows they had in the program who were civil engineer graduates, and sent us to Camp Peary, Virginia, for midshipman school.
>> Most Seabees could handle any job assigned to them thanks to their varied backgrounds in construction.
>> About that time, they were building a thousand-man drill hall on Camp Peary, and they needed the restroom -- all the plumbing done in a restroom.
I was the plumber they chose to do it.
And of course, I wasn't a plumber.
>> The United States Navy wanted carpenters, construction workers, heavy equipment operators, concrete men, craftsmen, and builders, men who could handle hard work but also teach and instruct new Seabee recruits, people like Clint Trefethen.
>> Just before I graduated, I went up into Cordova, Alaska, on a job.
It was a defense job building an airport.
Lunch hour and stuff, I'd get on an old Cat and make a few passes, and that's how I learned how to run equipment.
>> About the last three days after we had finished basic training, they'd give us aptitude tests.
And it was about 27,800 2nd Class Seamen.
And they woke us up with a loud speaker system the next day and said, "Wake up, all you Seabees."
I knew very little about the Seabees.
In fact, I'm not even sure I knew about the Seabees when they told us we were going to be in the Seabees.
I was really, really thrilled to get in it, yeah.
♪ >> Marvin Nottingham was also assigned to the 133rd Navy Seabee Battalion.
Nottingham's destiny lay a few years down the road on that island, made up of volcanic sand, a place which would eventually define the rest of his life.
Like Clint Trefethen, Marv Nottingham was a bulldozer driver in the 133rd Battalion.
Over 50,000 of these bulldozers were produced during the war.
At 15,000 pounds of solid steel and in the hands of a Seabee, these bulldozers could also be used as a weapon if needed.
♪ >> Well, when I was a kid in Wyoming, I worked on ranches frequently, so I knew how to drive tractors.
So I got training.
>> At Port Hueneme, they put me on a Cat.
This guy said, "Hell, you know more about running a Cat than I do."
[ Chuckles ] >> And of you were a carpenter, they of course wanted you in.
If you were a steel worker, they wanted you as a steel worker.
>> The Seabees needed men like Clint and Charley.
Heck, if you could dig a hole with a shovel or hammer a nail, you were sought after.
>> They recruited a lot of older men, and they took a lot of them in the Seabees, and then, they'd put these young guys under them, and they'd teach them how to do a lot of stuff.
>> Sometimes it was all just in a name as far as what job you were given in the Seabees.
>> We were put on a ship, and the ship went to Hawaii.
They needed two riggers on the -- to load the ship.
So I got on the rigging crew.
My name is Rigger.
>> For Seabees heading to the Pacific War, just getting to far-flung islands was enough to make them consider their new career choice.
>> I was on a ship from Hawaii to Iwo Jima for 50 days and 50 nights.
It was the smallest oceangoing ship the Navy had.
In storms, I can remember being in a typhoon.
The ship leaned over so far, the conning tower was almost touching the water.
I thought we were going to capsize.
It a very scary place to be.
And one of the Cats broke loose from its mooring, so it slid across the open deck and crashed into the wall.
And then, it slid back to the other side and crashed in that wall.
♪ >> [ Speaking German ] >> The Germans open unrestricted submarine warfare.
>> Japanese submarines and German U-boats in the Atlantic kept many Seabees up at night.
Men wondered if the bottom of the ocean would be their final resting spot.
>> It took us 45 days to get from California to the Philippines, which is unusual because we had to zigzag.
They did that to evade any submarines.
>> Billy Bryant graduated high school in the middle of the war in 1943, and that's when he joined the Seabees.
>> At that time, you didn't know where you were going.
You could not contact anybody at home and tell them where you were.
>> We never knew where we were going.
They didn't tell us.
We just went wherever the ship went or wherever we were supposed to go, however we were supposed to go.
>> Long before anyone heard of Iwo Jima, the Seabees found themselves caught up in some of the Pacific's most legendary battles along with the Marines and Army.
In addition to Guadalcanal, the fighting on Bougainville and in the Solomon Islands also became part of American newspaper headlines in 1942 and 1943, places most Americans never knew existed.
>> Here, 22,000 Japanese troops are cut off from further supplies.
>> Bougainville was the next step up the line.
One of the problems there was the terrain was so tortuous that there was a problem where to build airfields and how to build the airfields.
But the problem there was we usually would capture an island with a Japanese airfield already built, so we would just take it away from them and improve it.
But here we had -- we had to literally build airfields in swamps and, you know, atrocious jungle and so forth.
So that even makes the whole operation even more incredible.
You know, the logistical things that we're able to accomplish and build those airfields there.
♪ >> After seeing their work firsthand, turning jungle islands into thriving military bases, Marine Corps veterans began to hold the Navy Seabees in high regard.
Hershel "Woody" Williams was one of those.
Williams enlisted in the Marines in 1942.
His job was in demolitions and then operating a flamethrower.
>> Being the flamethrower operator, I had an assistant.
You had to have an assistant with a flamethrower operator because you were carrying the flamethrower on your back, and you had no room for anything else -- your pack, nothing.
And they gave you a .45 as your weapon.
>> Once the Marines had secured other islands such as Guam, Saipan, and Tinian, the Navy Seabees went right to work building huge air bases, accommodating planes such as the massive B-29.
The Superfortress bomber could take the fight right to Japan's doorstep.
At the same time, the Seabees were also building deep water harbors for American ships and aircraft carriers.
Across the Pacific, the Seabees worked at incredible speed, building the infrastructure for America's strategy of reaching Japan by so-called island hopping.
Island hopping identified the best strategic locations to build bases and runways while bypassing other less important Japanese outposts.
>> We had docks to maintain, rebuild.
We had ships to load and unload.
We had matériel of such a variety to store in outdoor areas and to keep intact, and then, reload ships that would take it further to where the campaigns had achieved by this island hopping.
♪ >> Building airstrips on coral sandy islands was a challenge the Seabees met head on.
For runways, the American construction crews laid down what's called Marston Matting.
The metal perforated sheets were produced in Marston, North Carolina.
Using Marston Mats, the Seabees could lay down a jungle airstrip just about anywhere in record time.
The steel sections of hooks and slots required only a sledgehammer and some strong men.
By war's end, the Seabees had built an amazing 111 major airstrips across the Pacific, where before only jungle and coral had existed.
>> May 12th.
My dearest Irenka, The first V-mail I wrote was from Guadalcanal, where we stopped for a breather.
Now I have another chance, but there's no telling where the next letter will come from.
You can rest assured that I'll write at the first opportunity.
Please do not worry, because I promise everything will come out all right.
Prayers are good, you know.
I pray for a soon return to you, for I love you endlessly, and we've been away much too long.
Regards to everyone.
Ever yours, Nat.
♪ >> A landing strip then was -- You just leveled out the ground and, in a few days, we had it where they could come in and land.
>> Well, we were building all types of storage facilities.
They called them Quonset huts, but we built those.
We built water facilities, sewage facilities, anything in the construction.
We had somebody that knew what they were doing as far as construction was concerned.
And they were older men than I was, and they sort of took me under their wing and... >> Banzai charges and the elements, nature in the raw.
>> Two typhoons, two of them hit the island, and they were kind of scary things.
The wind blew so hard, it blew most of the tents and things that the men were living in over.
Just made a mess of things.
You know, typhoons are just hurricanes.
In the Pacific, they call them typhoons usually.
>> The Seabees faced many of the same challenges as the Marine and Army colleagues in the Pacific.
Lack of food, rain, disease, rats, reptiles, and insects were a constant battle, not to mention Japanese snipers and enemy banzai attacks.
Even the Pacific sun itself was a constant adversary as the ever-expanding American supply chain nudged closer to Japan.
>> It was physically very hard, and it couldn't have been done by other than young, healthy people.
♪ >> In September of 1944, Seabee Ira Rigger found himself involved in some of the fiercest fighting in the Pacific war on an island called Peleliu, 500 miles east of the Philippines.
>> The shelling of the island continues, supplemented by fire from landing craft.
[ Explosions ] >> Peleliu was a bloodbath for the Marines and Army, which meant the Seabees also experienced the horror.
>> They had chosen a small group of us, said, "Load up tools, don't bother with any food or shelter.
It'll all be there when you get where you're going."
The landing craft were charging into the beach, and because there was no food and there was no shelter and we hadn't brought any with us, so the first thing we had to do was to find some way to deal with that.
And since we were right on the heels of the Marines, their bodies hadn't been removed yet.
So we went and took the sea rations and the ponchos off of the dead Marines and lived for quite a while on the sea rations and built shelters out of the ponchos.
Now, we lost eight men on Peleliu, but that was to malnutrition.
And we were in sight of -- most of the time -- within about a half a mile of a huge supply dump of food.
But Peleliu was an island under MacArthur's command, and it was Army.
And Army didn't feed the Navy.
So we were on our own.
We got our revenge with the Army.
And they were bringing a barge in full of canned bacon and flour and sugar.
They miscalculated the tide and the barge got stuck out on the reef out from our camp.
We very helpfully walked out and unloaded the barge for them.
After that, every night for a long time, you could smell bacon cooking in our camp.
And we didn't have trouble with malnutrition for a while.
>> You know, they called 'em a requisition if we find something.
I say "we."
I never did get involved in it, but if we needed something and we knew where it was stored, we would kind of confiscate it, so to speak, rather than using the word "steal."
[ Chuckles ] >> Access to food seemed to be a constant worry on most Pacific islands during the war.
Incredibly, however, unlike the Marines and the Army, drinking water was not a major issue for the Seabees.
Their can-do work ethic and ingenuity invented a way to turn ocean saltwater into crystal clear filtered water.
>> We made our drinking water.
It was a unique piece of equipment.
Basically, it was like an automobile engine.
Water was in this vessel that had this vacuum on it.
It boiled at a lower temperature.
Then the steam comes off and it became water again.
But this time, it didn't have the salt in it.
♪ >> December 25th.
Dearest Mary, Well, it's Christmas Day and nothing to do.
It's raining again.
I would have preferred to work today because the time passes so much quicker.
And this Christmas would have been over before I had time to think too much about it.
There was quite a celebration at the movie hut last night.
We didn't have taps until 12:00.
I would celebrate, too, if I had anything to celebrate.
If a person can only keep going and keep his mind occupied, he can get by all right.
Your loving husband, Dee.
♪ >> On the morning of February 19, 1945, United States Navy Seabees, along with Marines of the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions, found themselves heading toward an island roughly 760 miles from the Japanese mainland.
Iwo Jima, or Sulfur Island in Japanese would become one of World War II's most horrific battles.
Eight square miles of landmass lay flat under the watchful eye of a dormant volcano named Mount Suribachi.
Japanese airfields needed to be taken and rebuilt for use by damaged American bombers and fighters returning from attacks on Japan.
20,000 well-armed Japanese defenders were locked and loaded and waiting in miles of underground caves and tunnels on Iwo.
Three Naval Construction Battalions were assigned to the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions for the invasion as shore support.
>> And then, there it was, Suribachi, Iwo Jima.
Then the Marines move in and we start moving.
>> Marvin Nottingham and Clint Trefethen were two of 1,100 Seabees of the 133rd Battalion who went ashore aboard of Landing Ship Medium, or LSM, in the initial assault.
>> We went in the first wave.
>> We headed to the beach at 9:30.
On the way in, we went by a battleship that shot off all of its cannon at the same time.
I thought it was going to blow us out of the water.
As we approached the beach, I saw another LSM, and it had five shell holes going down that way to the water level, and it was backing away from the beach.
So, obviously, it had been shot at by the Japanese.
♪ They had an armored bulldozer right in the bow of our LSM.
And we went in and dumped him off.
♪ >> The doors opened.
The ramp went down.
And we started unloading, and we unloaded in about, oh, I would say 15 minutes.
I was on a bulldozer with a with another operator, and his name was Abernathy.
And Abernathy and I went off on the beach and turned parallel to the water, and a mortar shell went off, and a piece of shrapnel hit Abbey in the hand, wounded him.
So we jumped off.
And I was going to try to help his wound.
I tried to tear his shirt, but it was new and I couldn't hear it.
So I said, "Let's get back on the ship."
And I left him there and went ashore.
♪ >> They let the first wave go in, and they didn't bother us too much.
When that second wave come in, they let us have both barrels.
[ Man shouts ] [ Guns firing ] ♪ ♪ I'd see Higgins boats coming in that it'd hit on those Higgins boats, and then, bodies be a-flying every direction.
And there were several of them I saw, you know.
But a lot you didn't see.
>> I should tell you that I saw people killed in every possible way you could imagine, from blown into pieces that big to having a bullet hole in their heads.
I lost friends to people stepping on mines and having both legs blown off.
>> You know something, I'd seen young Marines, they'd been in four different invasions before they hit Iwo Jima.
And I seen some young kids that was completely white-headed.
Just their hair would just turn white overnight, practically.
♪ >> And a colonel in the Marine Corps came by.
And he said, "Who's in charge of this damn thing?"
Of course, I had to raise my hand.
He said, "Here's what I want you to do.
Clear off that beach because we can't get the landing craft ashore.
There's too much wreckage in there.
So I want you to move it out of the way."
So that got me started on what I was going to be doing for the next few days.
I was one of the few pieces of equipment that could operate in that sand because our tracks were wide as opposed to most other vehicles.
Most other vehicles need to be towed out of the sand and up to solid ground because they couldn't get any traction in that loose sand.
A bulldozer was an exception to that rule.
It's why we were so important.
>> On February 21st, Corporal Woody Williams arrived with the 21st Marines of the 3rd Marine Division.
Williams' 1st Battalion assaulted straight across the middle of the island with tanks.
Just getting off the black, sandy volcanic landing beaches became a foot-by-foot nightmare for both Marines and Seabees, as well as anything with a motor, wheels, or tracks.
>> When we finally got ashore, got up the bank from the beach.
And it was just like -- I've said this many times.
It was just like walking on BBs.
You just couldn't make any headway.
You'd step and your feet would just keep rolling out from under you.
So you actually crawled more than you actually walked.
But once we got up to this airfield, the first airfield then it was flat.
A lot of shell holes in the first airfield 'cause they just bombed that thing to smithereens.
But there was no cover and no nothing to get behind or under.
So the only thing you could do is run to a shell hole, which was basically below ground.
>> It wasn't just the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Division taking fire from the Japanese.
The 31st, 62nd, and 133rd Seabee Battalions on the beaches were targets, as well.
Anything that moved pretty much got hit with bullets, artillery, or mortars.
>> No, I never really heard any bullets 'cause that old motor's awful loud, you know.
But you could see the tracers go by.
>> The Japanese had every inch of Iwo Jima zeroed in.
The American Navy offshore tried to lend a hand.
>> They were blasting the island from the big ships.
There was obviously fierce fighting going on.
My outfit went ashore at a place called Blue Beach.
But there was also a bluff right near there that had tunnels in it.
And they would come to the mouth of those tunnels and shoot at us.
We couldn't see them, but all of a sudden, the sand would start to erupt around us that we'd know somebody was shooting at us.
>> I got so used to mortar shells, I could tell how far away they were.
And the reason is, when they hit the sand, they made a little noise like tick.
And then the explosion.
And if the explosion was far enough away from the tick, you were okay.
But if the explosion and the tick came together, you were probably dead.
I was close to that because I was dug into a foxhole and I heard a tick-bang because a mortar went off right at the top of the foxhole and buried me alive.
But I wasn't hurt.
So I shook for 3 minutes and then dug myself out.
♪ ♪ >> On the fourth day of the fight is when one of the most enduring images of World War II was captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal, the raising of the second American flag atop Mount Suribachi.
Marines and Seabees were overjoyed, but it was just the start of the long, bloody fight for Iwo Jima that would last 36 days.
>> Yeah, that was on the fourth day.
And I watched the flag go up on Suribachi.
And the response among the people around me was it stopped them in their tracks.
It was an amazing sight.
>> But, suddenly, Marines around me raised up, jumped up and started firing their weapons into the air, screaming and yelling and that kind of stuff.
And I really thought I'd lost my mind after a second.
I couldn't figure out what was going on.
And then, I caught on what was going on because they were looking at Mount Suribachi.
And then, I looked, and there's Old Glory up on top of Mount Suribachi.
So I jumped up and started doing the same dumb thing they were doing.
>> It made us feel pretty good, but there was still a lot of fierce fighting going on at that time.
It wasn't -- You know, they said it was secured, but sure in hell wasn't, you know.
>> When my grandchildren ask, Grandpa, what did you do in the Big War?
I'm just going to answer, stevedore, son.
>> On the swing shift.
Seabee special.
>> On that same historic day, a section of the 23rd Special Seabees, an all-African-American stevedore outfit attached to the 5th Marine Amphibious Corps, also hit the beach at Iwo Jima.
The 23rd would support the Marines for the rest of the fight on Iwo Jima.
♪ The Americans knew over 20,000 Japanese were defending Iwo Jima.
What they didn't realize, and what the Seabees and Marines found out quickly, was that the Japanese weren't really on Iwo Jima.
They were in Iwo Jima, hunkered down and firing from miles of caves, supported by a vast network of tunnels.
The enemy was mostly unseen, yet still raining down a huge amount of death and destruction.
>> The whole island is a mine.
>> They draw a bead on us again.
>> I went in with some Marines and I'd take a dozer and I'd doze these caves full of dirt, and they'd put smoke bombs in there, and then you'd see smoke come up another place.
I would go up there, I'd cram it full of dirt until, you know, smoke come out.
And all those guys did is they just lived underground like a bunch of gophers.
They had gun emplacements on tracks, and they would push them out, and then they'd shoot three or four times and then drag them back in.
♪ >> And all of that 70 days of bombing probably didn't kill more than 200 of them because they were all buried in caves.
I was in a cave that you could drive a truck through.
♪ They'd put out little red flags wherever there was a mine.
They go around with mine detectors.
They had lots of mine detectors.
And this particular area was, well, you know, I kept my on where these things were.
Some lieutenant, he told me to go knock a terrace down to get a little tank over it, It couldn't get up.
So the second pass I made, well... [ Explosion ] ...I blew the damn thing up.
So I was about half, I guess, knocked me out, rumdum, and just split the skin under my leg.
And I could get by this side, but I couldn't walk with this side for a while.
So they put me back on the LSM I was on.
And there was a seagoing tug that towed three of us back to Saipan.
So I stayed there a month and a half.
>> Later, after healing, Clint Trefethen returned to Iwo Jima to reunite with the 133rd Seabee Battalion.
Woody Williams, meanwhile, was busy making Marine Corps history on the island.
>> It was at the end of the first airfield where most of these 800 pillboxes were.
They were made so that they would protect the first airfield as well as the second one that they were building.
And they had holes in their pillboxes.
Now these pillboxes were reinforced concrete with rebar in 'em, covered over with sand.
You could drop artillery or a bomb or whatever.
On the top of that thing, there was three or four foot of sand on top of it.
It'd blew a lot of sand out, but it certainly did not penetrate the pillbox.
The captain, having lost most -- a great number of his Marines, called for a meeting of all NCOs and officers.
We only had a couple officers left.
Somebody else told me that he looked over at me and he said, "Do you think you can knock out some of those pillboxes with a flamethrower?"
"I'll try."
And I got to strap a flamethrower on my back and start crawling toward the pillboxes.
We had pole charges already fixed up.
Bring a pole charge because once we burned the pillbox out, we wanted to blow it up so they couldn't use it again.
And the closer I got -- he had a Nambu in there stuck out the aperture.
And he was firing.
I gonna try to get close enough that I can get the flame in there.
That apparently was my purpose.
And I can remember that Nambu's bullets ricocheting off of my air tank on my back, hitting the tank.
So I just crawled faster and closer.
He could only lower his weapon so far out of the aperture.
But I was getting close enough.
I can get my flame into the pillbox.
♪ And they came charging -- five or six or whatever of them -- came charging around the side of the pillbox.
And they had rifles and bayonets.
All I did was look up, and here they are charging toward me.
And I just opened up and the flame hit them.
They stopped 'cause it just took all the oxygen out of the air and they just fell over.
♪ Seven pillboxes I got that afternoon in four hours.
Don't ask me how I did it.
I don't have any idea how I did it, and I never got touched.
>> Woody Williams was later presented the Medal of Honor by President Harry S. Truman for his heroism on Iwo Jima.
>> We called for artillery.
An artillery duel develops at night.
>> I was rolling along at probably 5 or 6 miles an hour.
The grade foreman was waving his arms at me, running toward me, and then he turned around and ran the other way.
So I figured something was wrong, so I pushed in the clutch and put my feet on the brakes.
And he came over and he said, "Nottingham, get down off that thing.
I want to show you something.
The track and put a scratch in a 500-pound bomb.
And it had a little blue -- red flag on it, which I didn't see.
But bombs were all over the place.
You never knew when you were going to run into one.
♪ >> By mid-March of 1945, following a lot of building and fighting by the Seabees in support of the United States Marines, two airstrips had been secured on Iwo Jima and were being repaired.
Soon after, American P-51 fighters.
And shattered B-29 bombers began to safely arrive, even as fighting was still ongoing between the Marines, Seabees, and Japanese.
>> The 29th would come from Guam, Tinian, and Saipan and fly over Iwo Jima to Tokyo, drop their bombs, and come round and come back.
Many of them were damaged.
Some were only slightly damaged and could land on Iwo Jima.
Some of them were damaged to the point where they had to be abandoned.
♪ ♪ >> The carnage on Iwo Jima had cost the Navy Seabees.
Hundreds were dead and wounded, the Seabees' highest casualty rate of World War II.
Marines killed approached 7,000 with 20,000 wounded.
Almost 21,000 Japanese were dead.
Many American dead were buried in the 5th Marine Division cemetery, even as the battle raged.
A memorial on Iwo Jima, built by the 31st Seabee Construction Battalion, honors those men of the 5th Marine Division who were killed on this inhospitable island so far from home.
♪ >> We are now prepared to destroy, more rapidly and completely, every productive enterprise the Japanese have in any setting.
♪ [ Man speaking Japanese ] >> Unconditional surrender.
Victory over our last enemy, Japan.
From coast to coast, the nation hailed the coming of peace and the return of happier days.
>> "Japs Surrender."
We said, "Oh, we're going home."
Well, we didn't go home for another four or five months.
Because somebody had to take all this material and either get it ready for shipping back to the States, but in most of it, we pushed it off into the water.
>> Sent us back to Guam, and we worked there for about a month and a half, and then they shipped us back over to San Diego and got my discharge.
>> I was sent to Japan as part of the occupation forces.
What was interesting to me about that is you go from a position of absolute hatred, I suppose you would say, at least you're trying to kill every Japanese you can see, to the point where you accept them as human beings again.
>> What irritates me so bad is the United States gives the thing back to the Japanese.
Everybody that I talked to that's in the service, that irritated the hell out of us.
I don't even want to see that damn place again.
♪ The people nowadays don't know what a Seabee means.
We know what it meant -- confused bastards.
[ Laughs ] >> No, but it was a great experience.
It was -- I'm proud that I was part of it.
>> I don't think I could have got in a better outfit to really have it easy, you know, not have a bad life.
I feel so sorry for all the foot soldiers.
It's very disheartening to see what they had to go through.
I just thank God that...
I credit him for getting me in the Seabees.
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