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Click the graphic below to visit our forums.  *** WARNING *** The Squadbay discussion forums are for Marines and FMF Corpsmen ONLY! All others will not be allowed in the forums. So if you did not earn the title MARINE or were not a Corpsman who served with Marines stay out! *** All trespassers will be deleted! *** |
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This Month In USMC History | |
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The Japanese officially surrendered to the Allies on board the battleship MISSOURI in Tokyo Bay. With General Holland Smith transferred home in July 1945, the senior Marine Corps representative at the historic ceremony was LtGen Roy S. Geiger, who had succeeded Smith as Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific. 5 September 1956: Eleven Marines from the 9th Marines, 3d Marine Division, stationed near Naha, Okinawa, drowned while swimming, from an undercurrent caused by Typhoon Emma. The violent storm, with 140 mph winds, struck the Philippine Islands, Okinawa, Korea, and Japan, causing some 55 deaths and millions of dollars in property damage. 6 September 1983: Two Marines were killed and two were wounded when rockets hit their compound in Beirut, Lebanon. Heavy fighting continued for the 24th Marine Amphibious Unit peacekeeping force in the area near their positions around the Beirut International Airport. 8 September 1942: On Guadalcanal, the 1st Raider Battalion and the 1st Parachute Battalion, supported by planes of MAG-23 and two destroyer transports, landed east of Tasimboko, advanced west into the rear of Japanese positions, and carried out a successful raid on a Japanese supply base. 11 September 1992: Hurricane Iniki devastated the island of Kauai in Hawaii in one of the worst storms the islands had seen in over a century. Marines of the 1st Marine Brigade based at Kaneohe Bay, spearheaded Operation Garden Sweep, the massive cleanup effort. 15 September 1950: The 3d Battalion, 5th Marines landed on Wolmi-do Island in Inchon Harbor and secured it prior to the main landing. The 1st Marine Division under the command of Major General Oliver P. Smith landed at Inchon and began the Inchon-Seoul campaign. 16 September 1814: A detachment of Marines under Major Daniel Carmick from the Naval Station at New Orleans, together with an Army detachment, destroyed a pirate stronghold at Barataria, on the Island of Grande Terre, near New Orleans. 18 September 1990: A new 40-acre training facility for Military Operations in Urban Terrain (MOUT) was dedicated at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, by General Alfred M. Gray, Commandant of the Marine Corps. 20 September 1950: Marines of the 1st Marine Division crossed the Han River along a six-mile beachhead, eight miles northwest of Seoul, Korea. Five days later, the 1st and 5th Marines would attack Seoul and the city would be captured by 27 September. 24 September 1873: One hundred and ninety Marines and seamen from the USS PENSACOLA and BENICIA landed at the Bay of Panama, Columbia, to protect the railroad and American lives and property during the revolution. 27 September 1944: The American flag was raised over Peleliu, Palau Islands, at the 1st Marine Division Command Post. Although the flag raising symbolized that the island was secured, pockets of determined Japanese defenders continued to fight on. As late as 21 April 1947, 27 Japanese holdouts finally surrendered to the American naval commander on the scene. 30 September 1945: Marines of III Amphibious Corps, commanded by Major General Keller E. Rockey, began landing in North China to assist the Chinese Nationalist government in accepting the surrender of Japanese forces and repatriating Japanese soldiers and civilians. |
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| | For decades after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, survivors returned to retell their stories and recite their mantra: “Remember Pearl Harbor.” Now, the people who survived the surprise attack that killed more than 2,400 people and led to America’s entry into World War II are in their 80s or older. Dying or too frail to travel, they say this week’s reunion will be their last official gathering at the sacred site. “We’re getting to be fewer and fewer in numbers,” said Lee Soucy, 87, of Plainview, Texas. Soucy recalled treating injured sailors who jumped from flaming ships during the Dec. 7, 1941, attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet. He was in Hawaii this week for the last time. “Some of us are dying off and some of us are getting incapacitated,” he said. They have been meeting and swapping stories all week, and will observe an official memorial Thursday. The last reunion at Pearl Harbor was in 2001. About 650 veterans were there. This year, the number dropped to about 450, said George Sullivan, director of the Pearl Harbor Memorial Fund and chairman of the Arizona Memorial Museum Association. “They’re doing this because they’re aging and the travel is difficult,” Sullivan said. Their deeds and recollections will not be forgotten. The fund was created to raise $50 million for a new museum where oral history about the battle will be preserved for younger generations. Recordings and written histories are being collected at this week’s reunion and over the Internet. With the attack now 65 years in the past, even local chapters of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association are folding, said Norman Lancaster, 92, treasurer of the Arlington, Va., chapter. “We feel that we’ll come to a point where there’s not enough people.” Some survivors feel that sharing stories about the attack is a good way to ward off another sneak attack. “We got caught with our pants down,” Soucy said. “We thought we were invincible, the most powerful nation on Earth ... and that’s what worries me now.” The Japanese struck at 7:45 a.m. In less than two hours, nearly the entire U.S. Navy fleet in the Pacific — about 80 ships — was destroyed or disabled. Two waves of 353 Japanese aircraft took off from aircraft carriers that had arrived undetected. They hammered the military installation with torpedoes and bombs. “The significance of this battle is that it was really the birth of the aircraft carrier being the lead ship in the Navy today,” Sullivan said. “It was no longer a surface battle from ship to ship. It now was a battle where the aircraft became the main weapon.” Jack Evans, now 82 and living in Corcoran, Calif., had a great view of incoming enemy aircraft from his observation post in a crow’s nest on the battleship Tennessee. A torpedo plane crossed the West Virginia and the Tennessee’s bow, at the same height as Evans. “As he went by, the rear-seat gunner looked at me and I looked at him. He was so close I could see his eyes, and I could see his teeth, and it was just like being next door to each other,” Evans said. He watched as the battleship West Virginia sunk to the bottom of the harbor and the battleship Oklahoma capsized. A bomb struck one of the Tennessee’s turrets and shot shrapnel into Evans’ legs. Smoke from the burning fuel oil was so thick he had to breathe through his shirt. Lancaster, who was directing anti-aircraft fire on the light cruiser Phoenix, said he saw many men trying to get away from the smoke and the heat of burning fuel and exploding ammunition. “They were trying to jump from that crow’s nest into the burning water,” he said. “The battleships were quite broad, and quite a few of them didn’t make it.” Soucy, a pharmacist’s mate on the disarmed battleship Utah, swam to nearby Ford Island after torpedoes hit the Utah and calls rang out to abandon ship. He spent the rest of the day treating the wounded. Many of the injured service members were burn and bullet victims who had been pulled from the harbor. “Most had swum through oil, some through burning oil,” he said. “They swallowed oil and dirty water, and they were vomiting and gasping for air.” The following day, the U.S. declared war and embarked on a conflict that would span two oceans, cost a half-million American lives and end in the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany. “Strategically, the Japanese made a fatal error,” Lancaster said. Posted by admin on Wednesday 06 December 2006 - 06:22:10 | LAN_THEME_20 | |
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| | President Bush announced on Friday that the Medal of Honor, the nation's highest military decoration, will be awarded posthumously to Marine Cpl. Jason Dunham. In April 2004, Dunham was leading a patrol in an Iraqi town near the Syrian border when the patrol stopped a convoy of cars leaving the scene of an attack on a Marine convoy, according to military and media accounts of the action. An occupant of one of the cars attacked Dunham and the two fought hand to hand. As they fought, Dunham yelled to fellow Marines, "No, no watch his hand." The attacker then dropped a grenade and Dunham hurled himself on top of it, using his helmet to try to blunt the force of the blast. Still, Dunham was critically wounded in the explosion and died eight days later at Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. "As long as we have Marines like Corporal Dunham, America will never fear for her liberty," Bush said Friday as he announced that Dunham would receive the award. Bush spoke at the dedication of the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia. "His was a selfless act of courage to save his fellow Marines," Sgt. Maj. Daniel A. Huff of the 3rd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, was quoted as saying in Marine Corps News that April. "He knew what he was doing," Lance Cpl. Jason A. Sanders, 21, of McAllester, Oklahoma, who was in Dunham's company, was quoted as saying by Marine Corps News. "He wanted to save Marines' lives from that grenade." In various media accounts, fellow Marines told how Dunham had extended his enlistment shortly before he died so he could help his comrades. "We told him he was crazy for coming out here," Lance Cpl. Mark E. Dean, 22, from Owasso, Oklahoma, said in Marine Corps News. "He decided to come out here and fight with us. All he wanted was to make sure his boys made it back home." "He loved his country, believed in his mission, and wanted to stay with his fellow Marines and see the job through," Vice President Dick Cheney said when speaking of Dunham's heroism at a Disabled American Veterans conference in July 2004. The Scio, New York, native would have been 25 years old on Friday. In a letter urging Bush to honor Dunham with the Medal of Honor, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-New York, called the Marine's actions "an act of unbelievable bravery and selflessness." Dunham's story was told in the book "The Gift of Valor," written by Wall Street Journal reporter Michael Phillips. Dunham will be the second American to receive the Medal of Honor from service in Iraq. Army Sgt. 1st Class Paul Ray Smith was the other, honored for action near Baghdad International Airport in April 2003, in which he killed as many as 50 enemy combatants while helping wounded comrades to safety. Smith was the only U.S. soldier killed in the battle. | |
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Marine Of The Month | |
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Lance Cpl. James M. Gluff  20, of Tunnel Hill, Ga.; assigned to the 1st Battalion, 8th Marine Regiment, 2nd Marine Division, II Marine Expeditionary Force, Camp Lejeune, N.C.; died Jan. 19 in Ramadi, Iraq, while conducting combat operations. |
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