Ep.9 - Sand in Our Shoes: Island Hopping in the Pacific Theater

As the Allies embarked on their island hopping campaign growing ever closer to the Japanese mainland, they soon discovered that their enemy in the Pacific was adept at presenting new challenges on every island.  Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian, Peleliu, Leyte would all forever be ingrained in WW 2 veterans memories - and in their nightmares.  Richard V. Morgan remembers Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman,, who stood atop a heavily garrisoned Japanese bunker directing demolition charges despite his being mortally wounded.  Bonnyman would receive the Medal of Honor posthumously.  For Dennis Olson, his poems helped him cope with the horrible losses he endured at Tarawa.  Later, at Peleliu, 19 year old Arthur Jackson volunteered to secure a position in the shallow enemy trench system wiping out 12 pillboxes and killing 50 Japanese soldiers.  He would receive the Medal of Honor for his actions from President Truman himself one year later.  In the Philippines, a young L.W. Clark and his buddies lose their appetite as 100 Filipino villagers stumble across the rice fields towards their dispensary seeking medical help after having been bombed by the 11th Airborne, who believed Japanese soldiers were still hiding in the village.  Amongst them, a soldier carried a still baby whose guts were hanging over the side of his body, his stomach ripped open by a mortar shell.  James Spaulding recalled Manilla was torn to pieces when they finally liberated it.  Leo "Red" Gavitt was instructed to pick up "Just the live ones boys" as he helped pluck 150 American sailors from the sea after the Battle of Leyte Gulf.  Roy Parks returned from the Pacific with a souvenir he never asked for - jungle rot - which left blisters all over his hands, and made his finger nails and toe nails fall off.

 

Richard V. Morgan

Lieutenant Alexander Bonnyman, Jr.

Dennis H. Olson

Arthur J. Jackson

L.W. Clark and his wife Ella

James Spaulding and his wife Eva Mae

Roy and Penny Parks