VETERANS REMEMBER IWO JIMA

There are probably more, but at least three men in the area know the feel of hot volcanic ash in their boots, the sound of mortar shells exploding and the sight of dead American soldiers -- common memories for veterans of Iwo Jima.

Iwo Jima is Japanese for Sulfur Island. Maj. Gen. Curtis LeMay said he couldn't bomb Japan effectively without it, so 50 years ago today -- Feb. 19, 1945 -- these three Marines and the first of over 60,000 others headed for shore in landing craft.

Their goal was to take the highest point on the island -- the 556-foot Mount Suribachi.

Al Hoskin of Cape Girardeau was a 27-year-old husband who wanted to serve his country as a Marine. He was overseas for two years, first fighting to secure Guam. That island later was used to train Hoskin and others for taking Iwo Jima.

"We knew we were being trained for somewhere, but we didn't know where until we got on the ship," he said. "We landed awfully close to Mount Suribachi, where the Japanese were dug in. We couldn't move at first -- they had us pinned under machine gun fire and mortars."

It didn't take long for the beach to be littered with dead Americans. Hoskin tried to dig deeper into the soft volcanic ash.

The island was terraced, so the Marines had to take one level at a time to reach the top of the mountain. The Japanese were one level higher every time, shooting down on them. Hoskin and his buddies slept in foxholes, waking every few hours to the sickening smell of dead bodies and sulfur fumes.

Hoskin lost a good friend early in the battle. The friend was trying to clear a mine field, but failed to disarm one properly. He was about 20 yards from Hoskin when it went off.

"We picked up his body in pieces," Hoskin said. "You could tell who it was from the hair fragments."

Elsewhere on the island, Charles "Sonny" Grojean, a 24-year-old father of two, fought the enemy for two days. The second night he was on Iwo Jima, a mortar shell landed in front of him. Shrapnel cut into both sides of his upper chest, and he was knocked unconscious.

Grojean awoke the next morning on a hospital ship packed tight with wounded. After a few days of spreading gangrene, the Navy doctors finally got to him.

"They took me to the kitchen and laid me down on a kitchen table," Grojean said. "Four sailors held me down while the doctors operated and cleaned my wounds. They had nothing to deaden the pain."

The doctors left two pieces of shrapnel inside his chest. It took six months in hospitals for Grojean to recover and be discharged.

He now lives in Gordonville.

But Marvin Jensen of Sikeston got through Iwo Jima relatively unharmed. He was 19, a radio operator assigned to different reconnaissance platoons.

On his fourth day on the island, the Marines of the 2nd Bn., 28th Rgt., 5th Div. took Mount Suribachi. It was Jensen's regiment. They raised a small American flag tied to a pipe, killing two charging enemy soldiers as they did so.

"I was about halfway up the mountain when the word came down that the flag was up," he said. "That flag was the most beautiful sight in the world."

The moment supposedly was immortalized in photo by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. Not so. Lt. Col. Chandler Johnson sent for a bigger flag off a Navy ship, and the photographer followed the party with the new flag up the volcano.

He shot a few pictures and sent the film to Guam for processing. One shot became immortal.

The battle didn't end with Mount Suribachi. Jensen said it took about 37 days of fighting to secure the island totally. The Marines could hear Japanese underneath them moving around in an intricate tunnel system.

In the end, 5,931 Marines were killed and 17,372 wounded. About 21,000 Japanese were killed or wounded.

The capture of Iwo Jima was important to America in the final stages of the war against Japan. American forces ended up using the island's airstrips to protect bombers flying from Saipan and Tinian to Japan. Iwo Jima fields also served as emergency landing sites for B-29 bombers returning from raids on Japan.

Jensen said he will be at a special ceremony today in Washington, D.C., at the United States Marine Corps War Memorial.

On March 14, he will travel to Iwo Jima with a group of ex-Marine officers who got permission to spend one day on the island.

"I only went halfway up Mount Suribachi the first time," Jensen said. "This time I want to climb to the top. Once I do that, I'll be done with it."

He added that he would like to shake a Japanese prisoner's hand, too.

"This observance is the final wrap-up, I'm sure. We should move on to other things," Jensen said.

Ex-Marine Al Hoskin has no desire to see Iwo Jima and former Japanese soldiers.

"I couldn't go back over there and shake hands," he said. "I saw too many American bodies stacked up like cordwood."

Hoskin and Grojean will be at Cape Rock Park at 1:30 p.m. today for an American Legion ceremony remembering the brave men who fought and died on the Sulfur Island.