A Final Landing on Iwo Jima

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Anybody that wasn't scared was he either a damn fool or idiot.

I don't think there was a time when -- when there wasn't fear there.

I did an awful lot of praying on the island.

There was no place for for a Marine to hide.

The Japanese there, they had one thing in mind -- to kill everybody for the Emperor.

There was a chaplain and another guy doing nothing but taking dog tags off of the dead.

And they had them piled up.

7,000 honored Marines paid the ultimate price for that island.

United States World War II Marine veteran Ed Cavallini has been in constant motion for decades.

This time, Ed's daughter Jane is trying to keep up with her dad on a journey far from their Northern California home.

Come on up.

The two are crossing thousands of miles of the Pacific Ocean.

Ed wishes to return to an island in the far western Pacific where none of his memories are good.

Iwo Jima was Marine Ed Cavallini's first and only taste of battle in World War II.

I was in the 4th Division.

It was just another operation for most of those guys.

Of course, it was my first operation.

Everyone was so confident that I was confident, too.

Charley Dickey, from Seattle, is also on his way to Iwo Jima for his own reckoning with the island.

My name is Charley Dickey, and my father served in the 5th Marine Division on Iwo Jima.

Charley's wife, Sheila, is also on the trip.

Charley Dickey is putting the puzzle pieces of his father's war together.

Iwo Jima veteran Charley D. Dickey Jr. shared very little about the fight on the island with his son when he was alive.

He was an aerial photographic interpreter.

Meant that he had to go out and confirm grid coordinates that were taken initially by the flyovers, the reconnaissance planes that flew over prior to the invasion.

And they required constant sort of visual confirmation by forward observers such as my father.

So he would go out -- He was pretty free to roam around the island.

I knew he was in Iwo Jima.

I lived through 50 years of my life in sort of radio silence on Iwo Jima.

Like Ed Cavallini, Iwo Jima Marine Charley Dickey Jr. was caught up in a shockingly brutal battle.

Famed war correspondent Robert Sherrod labeled it "a nightmare in hell."

It was a small place, less than 8 square miles.

It was just desolate.

It's terrible.

Nobody knew anything about Iwo.

Never heard of it.

Charley Dickey has seized on bits and pieces about Iwo Jima on the rare occasions his father felt like talking.

I could read about Iwo Jima and kind of imagine what it was like, but, honestly, I didn't really know what he did there.

And this was, remember, after a couple of reunions that he would talk about.

My mother would go to these reunions, but even she didn't know that much about what he did.

I think some of those memories were just honestly repressed.

He and many of his contemporaries just simply dealt with it by not talking about it.

Charley Dicky's dad was familiar with the island Iwo Jima before most Marines.

My father learned about in, really, a very top-secret environment, the news that they were going to be landing on Iwo Jima.

In October 1944, a map of an ugly, pork-chop-shaped volcanic island in the far western Pacific was laid on a desk in Washington, D.C.

The island of Iwo Jima is roughly 700 miles south of Japan and is considered Japanese soil.

It's just a spot in the Pacific.

[ Ship guns firing ] In the fall of 1944, American military leaders decided that the island of Iwo Jima needed to be taken for strategic reasons.

An early-warning radar site on the island gave the Japanese time to prepare Japan for attacking American B-29 bombers based on Saipan.

And out of the vast stretches of the Pacific roared the mightiest bomber the Army Air Forces had ever dreamed about, the B-29 Superfortress, with the dust of the Kansas plains still embedded in the shiny silver wings.

This was the bomber that was designed to carry the war directly to Japan itself.

The zenith of the long range plans for victory in the Pacific was in sight.

Once taken, Iwo Jima, halfway between Tokyo and Saipan, could serve as an emergency landing airfield for damaged American bombers and fighters.

The island would also make an excellent staging area for the eventual Allied invasion of Japan, scheduled for November 1945.

There were two operational Japanese runways on Iwo Jima.

A third still needed to be completed.

The amphibious landing on Iwo Jima was codenamed Operation Detachment.

It would be spearheaded by the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions and supported by the United States Navy.

30,000 Marines would land on day one, D-Day, February 19, 1945.

Elements of the 3rd Marine Division were in reserve and would land two days later.

And they said, "This is a three-day operation."

Working from the sand tables, military planners wrongly estimated that 13,000 Japanese soldiers awaited them on Iwo Jima.

The number was over 21,000.

[ Alarm blaring ] [ Speaking Japanese ] The dormant volcano Mount Suribachi remains the ugly head of Iwo Jima.

It is peaceful here today, unlike the violence of decades ago.

[ Waves crashing ] The invasion began at 9:00 a.m. on February 19, 1945, following three days of United States Navy shelling.

[ Ship guns firing ] 450 ships were now off the 8 square miles of Iwo Jima.

There was hundreds of ships around that island.

It had been bombed and bombed and bombed.

To where they thought there wouldn't be many people left there.

The Japanese plan to defend Iwo Jima was simple.

To wait until the beaches were crowded before they unleashed all their heavy artillery.

Wait for the inevitable traffic jam of Marines and vehicles.

Well, they had let the whole beach get completely full of Marines, and they let a mortar barrage down that beach and killed hundreds of us.

It was a slaughter.

When we got to the beach, it was chaos.

I thought the end of the world was coming.

The shells and bullets were coming in and landing in the volcanic sand there, and, uh, wounded people, the dead people were all around.

[ Men shouting ] Most of the fire was coming from Mount Suribachi, which is the volcanic part of Iwo Jima.

We had a ringside seat.

We could see the battle lines going on.

And so they had every area planned out so they could fire their artillery or their mortars.

[ Cannons firing ] American military strategists not only underestimated the number of Japanese on the island but also the difficulty of Marines moving inland off the landing beaches.

As soon as they landed, they were running up a ramp, not down a ramp.

Because the way the beach is, it's -- it's slanted towards the sea.

The volcanic gravel on the beaches was almost like quicksand, but a quicksand made up of small, black pellets.

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.

Marines couldn't dig foxholes or run.

Weighted down, most sank into the volcanic sand.

It looked like little cinders, but every time you took a step, you went down about 6 inches to a foot.

Some volcanic sand embankments the Marines had to crawl over were 15-feet high.

Then you're footing is sand, and that sand can be up to your knees at one point.

Now you're crawling.

You're not running.

Speaking to you now on the island of Iwo Jima, the sulfur island, after the 4th and 5th divisions of the United States Marines landed to arrest this island from the Japanese and give Uncle Sam another base only 660 miles from the Japanese mainland itself.

The fighting is going on now on a ridge just in front of us.

You can probably hear the noise of the shelling and the planes overhead as they drop their bombs, and every once in a while, you hear them strafe and send rockets down.

Once inland on Iwo Jima, machine-gun bullets, mortars, and shells rained down from everywhere, but nobody could see the Japanese or their guns.

This battle would be fought a yard at a time, from cave to cave, with knives, grenades, flamethrowers, bayonets, and rifles.

More than 800 Americans died for every square mile taken on Iwo Jima.

My greatest asset on Iwo Jima was the individual spirit and toughness of my individual Marines.

Didn't matter what the odds were.

It didn't matter how many people we lost yesterday.

Tomorrow morning, we're going to move forward as far as we can go.

We're going to try to get to this objective line.

Some days, we made it.

Some days, we made 200 yards, some days, no yards.

By the end of day one of the invasion, Mount Suribachi and its Japanese guns and troops had been cut off by the 5th Marine Division.

It didn't take Marine generals long to discover that 21,000 Japanese troops were not on Iwo Jima.

They were in Iwo Jima.

The Japanese had been preparing for an invasion since early 1944.

Japanese Army general Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who had taken control of the island in June of 1944, ordered an extensive 11-mile underground tunnel system built on the island.

Part of the intricate defense that the commander of the Japanese forces there was to dig tunnels.

So when they say, you know, the Japanese were in Iwo Jima, they really meant it.

They had a very interesting system of tunnels that went for miles, and they would allow them to just pop out and take advantage of an oncoming enemy, the American Marine.

And so they could move ammunition, they could move supplies that they needed.

But, eventually, the advances of the American forces will start to understand that these tunnels are something we're going to have to go into.

Every inch of the island had been pre-mapped by the Japanese into killing zones.

They had machine-gun nests out of Mount Suribachi.

They had caves that were very elaborate.

They had electric power there.

They had fresh water.

They just stayed in the caves and shot at you from the caves.

And the cave system was their way of taking advantage of the terrain and making the Marines pay for every square foot of Iwo Jima they fought for.

Iwo Jima's defenders, willing to die for their emperor, would let the Marines come to them.

The Japanese realized that they weren't going to be able to keep us from taking the island.

Their philosophy was to kill so many Americans that we would agree to a negotiated peace treaty with Japan.

Pat Femino landed with the 5th Marine Division on February 19th.

I was a bazooka man.

I was in the engineers, and we had -- we cleared minefields.

The biggest job we had was closing caves.

[ Explosion ] To seal them up.

When we can't dig them out, we burn them out.

They used to sink down into the tunnel.

There was an opening in the -- in the pillbox, and they used to go underneath this and come out in back of us.

They killed a lot of guys that way.

So we learned that the hard way.

You know what I mean?

They draw a bead on us again.

[ Explosions ] United States Marines gained just 4,000 yards of the island during the first nine days of the unrelenting fight on Iwo Jima.

In just over a week, there were already 7,000 American casualties.

And you know what really got me is when these grown men, when this fierce fighting is going on, they would cry and wanted their mothers.

And that's a hard one to -- to take when they do that.

That's the worst thing I ever seen.

You see your friends fall, and you feel bad, but you got to keep going.

Ladies and gentlemen, this spot from which we have been broadcasting tonight, tomorrow, or in a week or month, these men will be on their way, on the road to Tokyo.

This is a dreadful, desolate, ugly island.

The dirt is sort of a grayish, yellowish volcanic ash, very soft and crumbly.

And when you dig a foxhole, the sides keep coming in on you.

There is very little vegetation because practically nothing grows here.

It has to struggle.

It has to great a struggle with the volcanic ash.

Iwo Jima is a challenging destination.

Especially for a 100-year-old like Ed Cavallini.

In Guam, this veteran of the 4th Marine Division and his daughter Jane soldier on.

What do you say, Ed?

You ready to do this?

Joining up with a group of travelers, they are all headed back to Iwo Jima.

Each has the reasons for making the trip.

Ed wants to recapture a sense of place.

I wasn't as scared as I should have been because -- because I was very -- like I said, I was so fortunate to have been with the best Marine veteran organization.

The guys, most of the guys said they'd been -- this is their fourth operation.

And they knew -- you know, they knew what to expect.

So I was really lucky to have -- be with an organization like that.

Meanwhile, Iwo Jima has existed only in his mind for Charley Dickey.

At this point in the trip to Guam, Charley can only imagine what he'll experience and feel when he finally gets to the island.

Ed Cavallini has some jitters, too.

He was thinking about the men, all his men, that everyone was either killed or wounded in all of his platoon.

The name Iwo Jima carries a tone of awe today.

When everybody thinks of Iwo Jima, they think -- the first thing that comes to mind is the savage violence.

And into the firing port and embrasures of the Japanese caves.

Talk about a lot of other conflicts in World War II, but savage violence, in capital letters, was Iwo Jima, and yet my father didn't talk about that savagery.

March 23rd.

Dear Mary, I don't know how the Japs expected to write on this stuff, but until we get away from here, it's the best available.

Many thanks for your V-mail, which showed up a few days ago.

Although the place is tactically secured, there is still plenty of Japs in a gorge in the northern part who are anything but secured.

They have nothing big left but plenty of machine guns, knee mortars, and snipers.

They've been trying for 10 days to liquidate them, but the men on the lines are so damn tired they haven't got much left.

And the Japs have to be handled by infantry, as nothing else can get at them.

The weather has been good, although pretty cold at night at first.

It is an extraordinary island.

In many places, the ground is so hot you can cook by merely burying the can in the sand.

There are sulfur pits everywhere that smell like Yellowstone Park.

Give my regards to everyone.

Best love for the family.

I hope the next couple of months slide by pretty fast for you and that you end up in a decent slot.

Love, Charley.

I'm gonna be trying to imagine, when I'm near the beach, what it was like to carry your weapon and 30, 40, 50, 60 pounds, whatever it is, on your back.

Do I -- do I creep ahead?

Do I stay where I am?

Do I -- uh, do I look to the left?

Do I look to the right?

And I see somebody else moving, I see somebody else there.

Should I help them, should I not?

It was just Russian roulette on the beach.

Platoon leader Ed Cavallini's history on the island was violent and short-lived.

Ed landed on the black sands of Iwo Jima with the 4th Marine Division on February 19th.

It was just sort of like watching a movie.

You sort of -- it's interesting.

I wasn't as overcome as I thought I'd be, you know?

I thought, "Well, this -- I guess this is the way war really is, you know?"

And just a few days into the fight, his number came up.

It was in the morning.

I was checking the guys looking for a hole to dive in, and I got hit.

[ Explosion ] It was a mortar round.

Ed's dented dog tag saved his life.

I still have a piece of shrapnel in my heart.

He never did see the flag go up on Mount Suribachi.

Ed Cavallini had earned a golden ticket home.

Sort of passed out, I guess.

Then I woke up, I realized, uh, that a couple of corpsman had carried me down to the beach, and I was laid out on a stretcher with a bunch of other guys.

While I was there waiting, I got hit in the knee by a piece of shrapnel.

They made a big effort to get everyone off the beach that was wounded.

Americans were easy targets for the Japanese on Iwo Jima.

There was so much flying around, a Marine was likely to get hit by something.

A mortar went off right at the top of the foxhole and buried me alive.

But I wasn't hurt.

But that tells you how close we were to being killed all the time.

It's just amazing that I survived.

Demolition Sergeant Woody Williams arrived with the reserve 3rd Marine Division on Iwo Jima on February 21st, two days after the invasion began.

We were the Reserve Division.

The 4th and 5th would be the Assault Division, and, of course, most of us knew how many people were in a division, something like 20,000 people in each division.

Well, no one ever dreamed that you would need more than 20,000 people to take a little old rock that's two and a half miles wide and five miles long.

None of us who were on the island of Iwo Jima wanted to be there.

We didn't ask to go.

We were sent there by our military and civilian leaders.

And once we were there, we each did what we had to do.

Nights on Iwo Jima were incredibly nerve wracking, cold, and dark.

Every Marine on the island knew the Japanese preferred to fight in darkness.

During the night, they would come up behind you and... that was shocking.

[ Gunfire ] Iwo Jima was alive and deadly all hours of the day.

An artillery duel develops at night.

One of our ammunition dumps goes up.

In two weeks, we've cleaned out plenty of Japs between here and Suribachi.

The island of Iwo Jima was returned to Japan in 1968, and has since been renamed by the Japanese as Ioto.

But what irritates me so bad is that the United States gives a damn thing back to the Japanese.

Everybody that I talked to who's in the service, that irritated the hell out of us, when after all that fighting we did and lost all the men we did over there.

I'd let the thing that sunk in the ocean before I'd give it back to them.

I don't even want to see that damn place again.

Foreigners, including both American and Japanese, are allowed as a group to visit Iwo Jima once a year around the anniversary of the battle.

Ed Cavallini is one of those passing through Guam on his way to Iwo.

Ed holds no grudges towards the Japanese.

Charley Dickey holds no bitterness, either, despite the horrors his dad experienced on Iwo and took home with him after the war.

Both are ready for their 815 mile flight back into World War II history.

We've seen pictures of the sands.

It's probably one of the few places in the world where we're going to go back to, which really honestly hasn't changed that much in time.

I have these sort of protected images in my mind about what it's going to look like.

And I don't expect it to look that much different than it did in the imagery that we're all familiar with.

Marine fighter planes just passed overhead.

And there's a scene of violent activity there as these Marines are going up and down that ridge, carrying supplies up to the men on the front lines and bringing casualties back out.

There are casualties, too.

There are plenty of them.

The battle on Iwo Jima was punctuated with so many acts of courage and bravery that a record 27 Medals of Honor were awarded to American Marines and United States Navy personnel for this one fight.

Hershel Woody Williams, that flamethrower in the 3rd Marine Division, earned his nation's highest military award on Iwo.

On February 23rd, at the first Japanese airfield, Williams and his flamethrower fought out front for four hours with rifle support from four fellow Marines.

Woody and his 70 pound flamethrower silenced Japanese concrete bunkers, blockhouses, pillboxes, and the troops inside.

He returned to Marine lines five more times to get additional flamethrowers.

But I was getting close enough that I could get my flame into the pillbox, and they came charging.

There was five or six came charging around the side of the pillbox, and they had rifles and bayonets.

And I just opened up.

And the flame hit them.

I stopped, took all the oxygen out of the air, and they just fell over.

On the same day of Williams' heroic attack on the Japanese and about a thousand yards away, two flags were raised on the top of captured Mount Suribachi.

The second, larger flag raising on Mount Suribachi, captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and Marine Corps cameraman Bill Genaust, later killed on Iwo, made history.

Little did the Marines who saw the two flags go up realize that the fight on this ugly island was only beginning.

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 everybody had lost their mind there for a second.

I couldn't figure out what was going on.

And then I caught on to 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, firing a weapon in the air and jumping and screaming.

I didn't have a flamethrower at that point.

So I just turned around, and I could look right up and watch them raise the flag up when that famous picture was from.

It was an amazing sight.

I just couldn't help but think how fortunate I was at that moment.

And it's just like the photograph.

And I happened to catch it just at that right time.

That was day four.

So there was a lot of action after that.

Following the capture of Mount Suribachi on February 23rd, the rest of Iwo Jima still had to be overcome.

It eventually took over 70,000 Marines to root out and kill almost every one of the Japanese dug into every crevice, cave, and hole on Iwo Jima.

The flag raising on day four on Mount Suribachi seemed a lifetime ago to those Marines who had to assault the rest of the island.

But ahead, the main strength of the Jap garrison was entrenched in steel and concrete.

The show was just beginning.

Navy and Coast Guardsmen rushed supplies ashore for the big push north.

Sammy Bernstein was in the 5th Marine Division, assigned to A-Company, second platoon of the 5th Pioneer Battalion.

Everybody was just laying there, taking the barrage, and all you had to do was pray.

Bernstein was scheduled to leave Iwo Jima aboard a US Navy transport on March 25th or 26th.

The Marines were told Iwo Jima had finally been secured.

The next morning, they took our ammunition away from us because the law says that naval ships -- Captain will not allow you to come aboard ship with ammunition.

But that's all right.

They said it's all over.

Don't worry about it.

So I gave all my ammunition away.

Except a 20 year old, what does he do?

He saves something for a souvenir, so I saved two rounds in my pocket for a souvenir.

Monday morning at 4: 00 in the morning, 26th of March, 1945.

250 Japanese came out of the ground.

It was more like 300 Japanese.

An all out horrific banzai charge began a savage hand to hand 90 minute fight.

[ Shouting, gunfire ] The banzai means they come out about 4:00 in the morning, and they will commit Harry Carey.

When the sun comes up, they will die, kill themselves.

The theory is that they're to take 10 Marines with them before they die.

My senior said, "Sam, you stay with the guns.

I'll go out and see what's going on.

He didn't move about 10 feet away.

He was hit with a saber by a Jap.

I put the two cartridges in the -- into my rifle.

Fired twice.

I hit him, but he kept coming and fell on top of me.

And I had to use a KA-BAR, but I really didn't know what I was doing.

But I fought him off, and I survived.

Here, by the grace of God.

When it was over, all the attacking Japanese were dead.

American casualties numbered 300, including pilots, Navy, Seabees, and Marines, but the fight was finally over.

21,000 Japanese were dead on Iwo Jima.

Only a couple of hundred were ever captured or surrendered.

American losses totaled over 27,000, with 6,800 dead.

For the very first time in the Pacific War, American casualties outnumbered the Japanese in a battle.

Well, most of you haven't said much about the war.

Even your wives don't know much about it.

Said, "Why don't you open up a little bit?"

After World War II, I spoke nothing of my invasions of Iwo Jima.

Never said a word about it.

Never spoke about it.

I, uh, think about it I would say most every day.

Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth to their memory.

Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich men and poor.

Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews.

There's a new flag On Iwo Jima You can see Old Glory is lying there Following departure from Guam and on the flight to Iwo Jima, Ed Cavallini sits with Jane.

Both quietly reflect on what lays ahead.

It's the same for Charley Dickey.

I've studied the assault plan and the beach designations.

Ladies and gentlemen, on the right side of the aircraft, Iwo Jima.

And as we go down the beach in order, there's Blue 2 beach.

Blue 1, Yellow 2, Yellow 1.

Red 2.

Red 1 beach.

Green beach.

And after green beach, you'll see Mount Suribachi.

Any time we go to a place we don't know, we try to imagine what it's going to be like.

We build up a picture in our minds.

It struck me that it had its stark beauty, and it's a haunting place even to this day.

In that picture, he is giving a briefing to the troops on the hatch cover of the troop transport ship that took them from, Saipan to Iwo Jima.

Got a pretty good idea of where my father landed.

He didn't reflect that much about what it felt like to see blood and guts.

He did reflect a little bit about what it was like to see piles of corpses of Japanese.

It was easier for him to talk about that.

But when it came to seeing the aftermath on Marines, he was clearly hesitant to talk about it, but it obviously was on his mind.

Hollywood has kept the ferocious fight on Iwo Jima alive, from television series such as HBO's "The Pacific" to feature films.

Actor Jon Seda portrayed Medal of Honor recipient Gunnery Sergeant John Basilone in "The Pacific."

John was all about getting the mission done, you know, doing what you had to do.

And if I can be part of that, just got to do the mission.

Tell me, Sergeant, are those Japs really tough?

Yes, sir.

The Japs are tough.

But the Marines were tougher.

Marines are always tougher.

Yes, sir.

Is this the ribbon of your Congressional Medal of Honor?

Yes, sir.

I was in a good outfit with good men.

I just happened to be there.

And any man would have done the same in my place.

Spoken just like a Marine.

Basilone was awarded his medal for heroism on Guadalcanal with the 1st Marine Division and returned to Iwo Jima later in the war, attached to the 5th Marine Division.

John Basilone was killed on the very first day of the fight on Iwo Jima.

John Basilone was a guy who loved his family, loved being a Marine, loved his country.

Wanted to do his part.

Garry McCarthy is the former police superintendent of Chicago.

Garry's father James originally served on Guadalcanal with John Basilone.

James McCarthy was a highly decorated Marine and had been alongside Basilone since Marine boot camp.

John Basilone, as we all know, is a legend in the Marine Corps.

And my dad, I have pictures of him before the war, screwing around like kids do with bayonets and bricks and things like that in New River, North Carolina.

He served under John Basilone as his platoon sergeant.

My dad was a machine gunner.

Basilone was in charge of two of them on the right flank of the Marine line at the Battle of Bloody Ridge on Guadalcanal.

James McCarthy landed on Iwo Jima on February 19th, the same day his former gunnery sergeant, John Basilone, was killed.

When John Basilone got killed on Iwo Jima, my dad actually traversed the island to actually see his body.

McCarthy's dad, a corporal, was critically wounded on the island on March 19th.

You know, he came home with a lot of scars.

He was 25 years old by the time he came home.

And he had some very serious PTSD.

Iwo Jima is an unnerving island today.

Ed Cavallini steps into the 100 degree heat and down the stairs of his flight from Guam.

The Marine veteran is back on Iwo Jima soil.

Sir, how are you?

One of the original airfields on Iwo now supports a modern Japanese military base.

Charley Dickey and his wife Sheila immediately head for their most anticipated stop on the island.

It's a five mile walk to reach the beach area where Charley's father landed on February 19, 1945.

Experiencing the enormity of that day is, of course, impossible for Charley Dickey on this trip.

But he will hear the roar of the crashing waves on Iwo, smell the acrid sulfur, sweat in the searing heat, and eventually touch the black volcanic sand.

Charley Dickey understands the real images of Iwo Jima belong only to those who were here in early 1945.

This is a challenging place to fight a fight.

That was what was in my mind as we rolled down the beach.

The beach seemed as long.

Mount Suribachi seemed as high.

The shape of it, the pork choppiness of the island seemed real.

What doesn't seem real right now, as I said, is the nature of this beach.

The width of the beach that he had to get to unprotected.

And it's just hard to imagine what it was like coming off the Higgins boats and dropping on to this beach with all the various inclines that they had to negotiate to get up there.

And here we are on a relatively calm day at Iwo Jima, and they're just being bombarded with every single kind of mortar and various explosives, which were blowing up every which way, all around them.

It's just incredible that anyone could survive this.

Forward march!

[ Military band plays ] 4th Marine Division veteran, Iwo Jima survivor Ed Cavallini is part of a ceremony on Iwo Jima honoring the sacrifice of thousands of young men on both sides who fought here in 1945.

Ed isn't much for conversing while on Iwo Jima.

He is deep into his thoughts, not focused on the now, but on memories of the then.

A great experience.

But it's not one that I recommend to anybody.

I can say that because I'm a survivor, you know?

I want them to remember how these men went out and fought for our freedoms, that we wouldn't have, the freedoms and we wouldn't enjoy the freedoms that we do today without these men fighting all the battles, all the wars, really.

For Ed Cavallini, it's time to leave Iwo Jima once again.

He won't be on a stretcher this time, bleeding, and the owner of two new Purple Hearts.

Add takes in Iwo one last time from the island's best vantage point, the top of Mount Suribachi, overlooking the American landing beaches.

A beautiful memorial built by Navy Seabees sits on top of the volcano and recognizes the 5th Marine Division, which took Suribachi.

And just imagine what it was like seeing this, all the troops, and then coming here and seeing the guts and the gore.

For the Dickeys, there's time for a final look at Mount Suribachi from the beaches.

And one more glance down this awe inspiring stretch of the Iwo coastline, within eyesight of where his dad, Charley Jr., landed.

Touching the sand and bringing some of the sand home to my siblings, who are very much looking forward to having that tactile moment with this place that has been lying in mystery in their heads and minds.

On February 19, 1945, Charley Dickey's father had little time to reflect on much of anything.

There was death everywhere.

His mission was his survival, and that was getting 200 or 300 or 400 yards up the beach any way he could.

The impact of that beach, he does refer to the sand and unable to be able to dig a protection for himself.

And he did talk about the lottery of life on the island.

And yet he would look around and obviously saw the kinds of things that shocked him.

[ Rumbling ] I feel his presence actually here.

He's a little bit alive with me at the moment.

I almost hear his voice.

I certainly see his image.

There is a sacredness to this space that I'm in right now because of what this spot on the earth meant to him.

I don't really know what my father was like prior to Iwo Jima, but I can only imagine that, in some ways, how he interacted with me was a throwback to what he learned as a Marine, not just in Iwo Jima, but in training.

He was a grin and bear it kind of guy, and that wasn't unusual for many of the fighting forces that lived, lucky enough to survive those experiences.

He would say, "Charley, I want you to remember one thing.

Never feel sorry for yourself."

That piece of advice was not uncommon from that generation.

I can only guess based on his experiences in Iwo Jima, my problems paled in comparison to what he experienced firsthand there.

I kind of like to imagine all of the 25,000 that were coming on the beach on that day stretched out, prostrate under the ground, digging in, just squirming in to reduce their profile to the forces that were fighting them with everything they had.

My dad did refer to several times having incoming that landed within feet of him.

Yeah.

And it does give you pause when you think that I'm here because he was lucky enough not to have been the object of one of those incoming rounds.

The Iwo Jima visitors begin their journey home under a beautiful western Pacific sunset.

Charley Dickey now has his sense of place when it comes to this desolate island.

For Iwo Marine veteran Ed Cavallini, it was his wish to visit this God awful piece of lava rock in the western Pacific Ocean one last time.

The spot where his own life changed forever.

Ed is more than aware that every day he lived after fighting and being wounded on Iwo Jima was a gift.

Happy birthday to you Happy birthday to you Happy birthday, dear Ed Happy birthday to you [ Applause ] Ladies and gentlemen, this is for United Airlines Flight 2591 with service to Iwo Jima.

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