Fred Houda, 2007
- Branch of Service: United States Army
Listen to the following sections by scrolling forward to the timecode.
0:00 - Introduction (witnessed history)
1:00 - Sent overseas; shelling Iwo Jima; Japanese soldiers were underground; guns brought up with hydraulics
5:00 - Charged Iwo Jima from the ship, scared; lost friends on the island; describes the size of the small island
7:10 - Bloody battle; bodies laid for 15 days on the sand, gathered into piles; some soldiers assigned to remove their belongings; Japanese soldiers dug in, difficult to take
11:50 - We wanted the island for an airstrip
14:44 - Enola Gay, which dropped the 1st atomic bomb, landed on the way to Hiroshima
15:48 - Did not think about the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima; too busy; guns firing 24 hrs/day; leaflets dropped encouraging the enemy to surrender - one soldier surrendered and was killed, no one else surrendered
23:00 - War ended; Japanese soldiers were encouraged to surrender, but they would not come out of the ground; water was difficult to get
25:52 - Mount Suribachi flag raising
Fred Houda Obituary
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