It took him almost a century, but American second World War veteran Don Graves finally made it to Ireland to celebrate his Irish heritage on his 98th birthday.
During the trip, he recalled the day 78 years ago when he thought he would never survive one of the deadliest battles of the entire war.
One of just 18 men from his unit of some 350 marines to leave Iwo Jima alive, Graves remembers watching, as a 19-year-old, men from his unit raising Old Glory on the summit of Mount Suribachi on February 23rd, 1945, a moment immortalised by photographer Joe Rosenthal.
“There were 500 American ships in the bay and when they saw the guys raise the flag on top of Mount Suribachi, they left go with rockets and tracer fire and our boys up in the north, clearing the airstrips left go too, it sure was some spectacle,” he said proudly.
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His journey to Iwo Jima began four years earlier. He recalled being with friends in a car in his native Detroit and hearing US president Franklin D Roosevelt deliver his famous ‘Day of Infamy’ speech over the radio just a day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Graves can recite the opening lines of Roosevelt’s speech verbatim, but was only 16 at the time and had to wait a year to turn 17 before he could follow in his father’s footsteps and join the Marine Corps.
Dug in
A flame thrower with the Second Battalion, Graves landed in the third wave on February 19th, 1945 only to find himself stuck on the beach as 20,000 Japanese troops under Gen Tadamichi Kuribayashi dug in and forced the Marines to fight every inch of the way in one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific theatre.
Almost 7,000 Americans and some 19,000 Japanese lost their lives in six weeks of ferocious fighting for a tiny island that the US wanted to use as a base for air raids on mainland Japan. Time and again, Graves found himself in the frontline of the conflict, clearing Japanese pill boxes.
“I landed in the third wave, and I knew immediately it wasn’t going to be easy,” he said. “We couldn’t get up off the beach, every time guys would go over the top, they would drop. I was two hours on the beach, and it took us three days to make Suribachi, inch by inch, foot by foot, shell hole by shell hole.
“As I lay on the beach with nowhere to go, I saw what was happening. I was scared. I put my face in the sand and said, ‘God I don’t know much about you, but if you can do for me what people tell me you can, I will serve you the rest of my life’,” he said explaining his decision to later become a pastor.
After the war, Graves first settled in Wisconsin but his work as a pastor has brought him to all over the US, including to South Dakota and Arizona. Now widowed following the death of his beloved Rebecca, with whom he reared two sons and two daughters, he lives in Keller, Texas.
Online appeal
Graves traces his Irish ancestry to his grandmother Susan Doherty, who hailed from Cork. He credits US military photographer Jeremy Lock for enabling him to make his first visit to Ireland after Lock posted an interview on social media and set up a Go Fund me page that elicited a huge response.
“It’s always been my ambition to come to Ireland and hear someone sing Danny Boy,” he said. “It’s taken me a long time to get here but it’s been worth it, and everyone has been so welcoming and interested when I tell them about Iwo Jima and the buddies I lost there and how I think about them every day.”
