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Flags of our Grandfather's · Deep Secrets

0:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Imagine being 19 years old, barely old enough to vote, and suddenly, you're standing on the deck of a transport ship in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, staring at a black sand island that you've only ever heard whispered about in mezzles.
0:16
[SPEAKER_03]: You would jima, the sky is gray, the air tastes like salt and smoke, and all around you boys who got the same haircut as you two days ago are trying to pretend that they're
0:31
[SPEAKER_03]: the boat drops, the ocean leaps up, and whatever childhood you had left is instantly replaced by survival.
0:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Because in 19, you don't think about dying.
0:43
[SPEAKER_03]: You think about the guy in your left and the guy in your right, and somehow that becomes enough to get you across a beach that no human was ever supposed to live through.
0:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Sand is erupting.
0:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The waves are red, metal cutting through the air.
0:59
[SPEAKER_03]: See, growing up, I always thought he was just quiet.
1:04
[SPEAKER_03]: Old school, a man who preferred the sound of windchimes to the sound of his own voice.
1:09
[SPEAKER_03]: But now, much later, we found something nobody in my family was prepared for.
1:16
[SPEAKER_03]: Turns out, surviving E. with Jima, was just the start.
1:28
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
1:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Suspicious is fuck.
1:33
[SPEAKER_03]: That sensual voice belongs to my friend Morgan J.
1:36
[SPEAKER_03]: So your grandfather was in the CIA.
1:38
[SPEAKER_03]: It was in the CIA.
1:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We found out, because when we started Googling him, a little pop-up would come up that said, we are emitting information to you on behalf of the US government, but you can know your rights as it pertains to the Freedom of Information Act.
1:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Suspicious is fuck.
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That sounds as spacious.
1:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Not your normal Googling.
1:58
[SPEAKER_00]: What else kind of like told you that?
2:01
[SPEAKER_06]: The operation coin, the term, can either confirm nor deny.
2:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Suspices is what?
2:07
[SPEAKER_00]: Neither can confirm nor deny.
2:10
[SPEAKER_00]: We just don't about why is this so?
2:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Why is this so?
2:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Suspices is what else?
2:18
[SPEAKER_03]: The submarine that they stole is a real life submarine that inspired the hunt for at our topper.
2:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Alec Baldwin, suspicious, is that Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out, is Sean Connery ain't out,
2:46
[SPEAKER_00]: You know what I'm talking about?
2:47
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes, I do.
2:47
[SPEAKER_06]: I was like, give me it.
2:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Put this women in their place.
2:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Hi.
2:51
[SPEAKER_06]: Don't wear your heroes.
2:51
[SPEAKER_06]: You know?
2:52
[SPEAKER_00]: This is fun.
2:53
[SPEAKER_00]: That's right.
2:54
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's something no one tells you when you're trying to get to the bottom of your grandfather's involvement with the CIA.
2:59
[SPEAKER_03]: There's no handbook.
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
3:01
[SPEAKER_03]: So your grandpa might have been a spy starter kid.
3:04
[SPEAKER_03]: You just wake up one day with a couple of cryptic stories, a stack of half-brindocuments, and a family member saying, huh?
3:11
[SPEAKER_03]: I guess he did travel a lot.
3:13
[SPEAKER_03]: So you start digging Google, newspapers, government archives with websites that look like they were built on a Dell computer in 1997.
3:20
[SPEAKER_01]: You email agencies who send back replies that basically say we can neither confirm nor deny that we're ignoring you.
3:26
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know what level of ops was asked questions here, but like can you go to like an archive and see all the
3:33
[SPEAKER_00]: like a DC or something like the National Archive and look up your grandfather and see what the missions he did was or what.
3:39
[SPEAKER_03]: So without getting anyone in trouble, I have talked to people in the government that have pretty much confirmed that our grandpa's in their system.
3:47
[SPEAKER_02]: Marco Rubio?
3:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Yep.
3:49
[SPEAKER_03]: Every lead you chase opens five more questions.
3:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Every story you think you've cracked, suddenly doesn't add up, and every time you think you've hit the bottom of it, you realize there is no bottom, just more silence.
4:00
[SPEAKER_03]: More shadows, more things he never said.
4:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, my grandpa avoided being found out the way my dad avoids saying I'm proud of you.
4:06
[SPEAKER_03]: It's confusing.
4:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's messy.
4:09
[SPEAKER_03]: It's like trying to solve a puzzle when half the pieces are still classified.
4:13
[SPEAKER_03]: But that's the thing about secrets.
4:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Eventually, something breaks loose, a document, a slip, a story he didn't mean to share.
4:23
[SPEAKER_03]: We didn't know where to start, so we figured we'd just start with the last time we saw him.
4:27
[SPEAKER_03]: His funeral.
4:29
[SPEAKER_03]: I remember my uncle's and I carrying my grandfather's casket out of that old church.
4:33
[SPEAKER_03]: An old sturdy master piece of masonry with classic red brick and a church bell that rang out through the town square.
4:40
[SPEAKER_03]: We met our way down the steps out front with an American flag draped perfectly across the top of his coffin and I felt proud.
4:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Honestly, it was probably the first time I'd ever felt patriotic.
4:54
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, outside of 9-11, but even that was a different kind of patriotic.
4:58
[SPEAKER_03]: That was fueled by aggression, like angry sex, this was something else entirely.
5:03
[SPEAKER_03]: This felt like being a part of something bigger than you.
5:06
[SPEAKER_03]: Something that existed before you and was going to exist long after.
5:10
[SPEAKER_03]: On the dryouts of the graveyard, I remember just being blown away by how big this guy was.
5:15
[SPEAKER_03]: It was just massive, it was like I was version of an IMAX screen.
5:19
[SPEAKER_03]: The cemetery was surrounded by corn fields.
5:22
[SPEAKER_03]: My grandfather was lowered into the ground under the shade of a big oak tree.
5:25
[SPEAKER_03]: My grandma Mary held his folded flag, tied to her chest as she cried.
5:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And marines in full dress stepped forward, raised rifles, and fired off a 21 gun salute.
5:37
[SPEAKER_03]: This sound cracked across the fields, like the whole town was standing at attention.
5:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And that's when three military planes flew over my grandfather's burial site.
5:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Our first thought was, well, that was pretty cool.
5:51
[SPEAKER_03]: And then our second thought was, hey, why the hell did that happen?
5:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so a lot of the research for this podcast has landed on the shoulders of my sister, Cannon.
6:03
[SPEAKER_03]: She's been here for the whole time, by the way, say hi.
6:05
[SPEAKER_06]: Hello.
6:07
[SPEAKER_03]: I want you to be a normal human being.
6:09
[SPEAKER_03]: But like, with what's the point of you being here if you're just leaning into the microphone and just saying, yep, you're still in the truth.
6:15
[SPEAKER_06]: No, no, no, no, no, I'm just...
6:18
[SPEAKER_03]: I've been here the whole time.
6:19
[SPEAKER_06]: When would like, like, what am I supposed to say?
6:21
[SPEAKER_06]: Especially with like the research.
6:23
[SPEAKER_03]: What has made this abundantly tricky is that there's a reason that missions don't become declassified until most of the members of that mission are dead or have dementia.
6:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And it is because it makes it extremely hard to fact check.
6:39
[SPEAKER_03]: anything.
6:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Even just like the planes flying over our grandpa's funeral, some of us adamantly remember the planes being there.
6:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Our sister Corey swears that they weren't.
6:48
[SPEAKER_04]: I think you guys are taking something that is a small interesting story and running away with it in a way that is absolutely insane.
6:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Our cousin Cara remembers the plane, but also pointed out that it was Memorial Day weekend.
7:04
[SPEAKER_03]: So maybe it was just a coincidence that the planes happened to fly over the one funeral in that cemetery completely in sync with the rifle salute and taps.
7:14
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah, in the beginning of this discovery, we talked to the family and everyone was like, yeah, the fighter jets, and then three months passes, and it's like, oh, wait, were there fighter jets?
7:25
[SPEAKER_06]: It's getting kind of confusing.
7:27
[SPEAKER_04]: It just doesn't track in my brain.
7:30
[SPEAKER_04]: But you're both as far as character witnesses go.
7:32
[SPEAKER_04]: You guys are both, you know, solid people you're both very smart, you're not somebody who would like, you know,
7:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Also, it's been really fun to watch killing aesthetically unravel and look like a crazy cat lady while still having the voice of someone who grew up in a mall.
7:54
[SPEAKER_06]: You can take the girl, the valley, but you can never take the valley out of the girl.
7:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Your voice gives me the same headache I would get at a bathroom bodywork.
8:01
[SPEAKER_06]: That's completely fair.
8:03
[SPEAKER_04]: I will say I thought that you would be more among my lines of thinking.
8:09
[SPEAKER_04]: I think that there's a spectrum of pragmatic to let things run wild and I am on the practical side and Kelen is on the woe you okay their buddy side and you're kind of somewhere in the middle.
8:25
[SPEAKER_06]: The whole thing sounds like a crazy conspiracy theory.
8:28
[SPEAKER_06]: And when you get into it, it pretty much continues to read like that.
8:33
[SPEAKER_06]: So when we're going to be telling this story, it's just, I go a little psycho because you have to question yourself constantly being, like, is this real?
8:43
[SPEAKER_06]: Like, I insane, like, I do not know what's happening right now.
8:46
[SPEAKER_06]: But then, you know, you just go outside and touch some grass and come back to the computer and continue your research.
8:52
[SPEAKER_03]: It's worth noting.
8:56
[SPEAKER_06]: like yourself.
8:57
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, but we need to get to the bottom of this.
9:00
[SPEAKER_03]: What does it say the requirements are to have planes fly over your funeral?
9:03
[SPEAKER_06]: Okay, active duty or currently serving air reserve component air sea rated officers pilots navigators air battle managers observers and flight surgeons.
9:11
[SPEAKER_03]: Was grandpa near force?
9:12
[SPEAKER_03]: No.
9:13
[SPEAKER_06]: and career enlisted aviators.
9:15
[SPEAKER_06]: He was not an aviator.
9:17
[SPEAKER_06]: This category.
9:17
[SPEAKER_03]: Did he wear aviators?
9:19
[SPEAKER_06]: Maybe, maybe a musical in that.
9:21
[SPEAKER_06]: This category includes those taking courses of instruction leading to an aeronautical rating, tree, RAC members, man, man.
9:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Air or nautical or aeronautical.
9:30
[SPEAKER_03]: That's a word, okay.
9:32
[SPEAKER_06]: active duty or retired USAF three star and four star general officers regardless of aeronautical rating active duty or retired chief master sergeants of Air Force.
9:41
[SPEAKER_06]: This is so boring.
9:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, so it's a really you either die in as a pilot in battle or your general or some famous.
9:50
[SPEAKER_06]: for the Marine Corps.
9:52
[SPEAKER_06]: It's funeral flyovers for aviators called an active duty are staffer decision to the deputy commandment of aviation.
9:58
[SPEAKER_06]: All others shall be determined by the military services.
10:01
[SPEAKER_06]: For example, Medal of Honor recipients, American heroes, etc.
10:05
[SPEAKER_06]: which require proper staffing to the assistant commandment of aviation for approval.
10:09
[SPEAKER_03]: So, you're either a pilot or they just think you're special?
10:14
[SPEAKER_06]: Yes.
10:15
[SPEAKER_06]: A war hero or Medal of Honor recipient.
10:17
[SPEAKER_03]: So what you're saying is Grandpa was an American hero.
10:22
[SPEAKER_06]: In my heart, yes.
10:24
[SPEAKER_06]: Yeah.
10:26
[SPEAKER_03]: My grandpa's funeral was in a place called Farley, Iowa.
10:29
[SPEAKER_03]: This is where my grandfather's story began before the medals, before the silence, before decades of him refusing to talk about what he saw or what he did after.
10:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It was probably the first American town that I'd ever been to.
10:49
[SPEAKER_03]: I'd spend time on my grandpa's farm, but that was remote.
10:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Farley was a place that you could envision a life in, and it was the town where our family started.
10:59
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, think stars hollow from Gilmore girls, but with less apples and more corn.
11:04
[SPEAKER_03]: I asked my dad how he remembered it.
11:06
[SPEAKER_02]: It's pretty special, you know, just the backdrop.
11:10
[SPEAKER_02]: I remember it being kind of like this shiny little town, you know.
11:14
[SPEAKER_02]: And the ironic thing about that is the funeral home is the same funeral home that my grandparents owned and the house that was there is the same house that my mom grew up in.
11:27
[SPEAKER_02]: It was crazy, right?
11:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, that's kind of weird, right?
11:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Meeting your special someone in a funeral home, just a couple of horned-up goth kids stuck in the Midwest, spending their hot hot summers in a cool freezer.
11:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Farley was super charming, which was a welcome distraction considering that we were all in town to bury our grandfather.
11:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Now I don't know if it's just my family, but in my experience, every funeral also happens to be a bit of a party.
11:57
[SPEAKER_04]: a hillfam reunion is bonkers.
11:59
[SPEAKER_04]: At some point, everybody gets drunk and starts singing some random obscure song.
12:03
[SPEAKER_04]: It's something where we cannot see each other for a year or two and then when we hang out, it's just like no time has passed you immediately fall into, you know, it's family, it's who you grew up with.
12:13
[SPEAKER_03]: With Start's Office crying and reflecting on what you've lost inevitably turned into celebrating and remembering what you had.
12:21
[SPEAKER_03]: After the funeral service, we drove to the wake where we were bombarded with information and stories about our grandfather.
12:27
[SPEAKER_03]: The same second cousins that happened to know everything about me seemed to know even more about my grandfather and his childhood.
12:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Ironically enough, most of what we know about my grandfather is made up of these little gems from his early, early life.
12:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He was a pretty private guy.
12:43
[SPEAKER_03]: I know that he served as a merchant marine and fought in the Battle of Yuvajima, a battle he never spoke of.
12:49
[SPEAKER_03]: After that, I know he went on to work as a Marine Engineer working for a company called Global Marine a job he never talked about.
12:56
[SPEAKER_03]: But it was at that wake that I learned about what his childhood was like growing up and farly.
13:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Not long after my grandfather was born, his story becomes a tragic one.
13:06
[SPEAKER_03]: At just one year old, my grandpa lost his older sister to an unknown illness.
13:10
[SPEAKER_03]: And at the age of three, everything changed for him again.
13:14
[SPEAKER_03]: When his dad walked into the family barn to light a carousene lantern.
13:18
[SPEAKER_03]: While smoking is cigarette, he accidentally knocked the lantern over and the entire barn went up in flames with him trapped inside.
13:28
[SPEAKER_03]: His dad did not make it, and his tombstone had just one word on it.
13:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Father.
13:35
[SPEAKER_03]: This blows my mind.
13:36
[SPEAKER_03]: This wrecks me not even just from the point of my grandfather, but also from the point of his mother.
13:42
[SPEAKER_03]: As a new dad, I can not imagine losing a child.
13:46
[SPEAKER_03]: And then on top of that, you're now left alone to raise three children at the very start of the great depression.
13:53
[SPEAKER_03]: Now you're alone.
13:54
[SPEAKER_03]: without your husband, without the person you signed up to build a life with.
13:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Walking straight into the most significant economic crisis our country has ever seen.
14:04
[SPEAKER_03]: All while you have three kids depending on you.
14:07
[SPEAKER_03]: Might my heart breaks for my grandfather, but I also can't wrap my head around what that does to your foundation as just a human being.
14:14
[SPEAKER_03]: What's your building blocks even look like after something?
14:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Like that.
14:19
[SPEAKER_03]: My oldest son is three right now.
14:21
[SPEAKER_03]: The same age my grandfather was when he lost his dad.
14:24
[SPEAKER_03]: And the way my son cries when I have to leave for a weekend of shows, it haunts me.
14:29
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes me question everything.
14:31
[SPEAKER_03]: I know I'm leaving to work to provide for my family to keep the lights on.
14:35
[SPEAKER_03]: But when those little arms cling to me and he just breaks down,
14:40
[SPEAKER_03]: It makes me wonder if I should just throw everything away and start from scratch.
14:44
[SPEAKER_03]: So I can picture my grandfather, the youngest of three being raised by a single mom during the depression.
14:50
[SPEAKER_03]: As the youngest child, I'm sure he didn't feel heard, didn't feel like he had a voice, and honestly, what room do you even have to complain when survival is the priority?
14:59
[SPEAKER_03]: There are stories of my grandfather and his siblings taking walks along the train tracks every night searching for pieces of coal that had fallen off passing trains.
15:07
[SPEAKER_03]: That coal was what kept them warm at night.
15:10
[SPEAKER_03]: Meanwhile, I don't even know how to reignite a pilot light.
15:14
[SPEAKER_03]: As a parent, I can't imagine what was going through my great-grandmother's head.
15:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you just shut down completely, emotionally?
15:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you out looking for work?
15:22
[SPEAKER_03]: Are you even capable of being present with your kids at all?
15:25
[SPEAKER_03]: Or are you just keeping your head down trying to make sense of any of it?
15:30
[SPEAKER_03]: And from the kids perspective, maybe some of it felt like an adventure.
15:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe those nighttime walks out like looking for treasure.
15:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Maybe searching for coal made them feel like they were contributing.
15:39
[SPEAKER_03]: Like they mattered.
15:41
[SPEAKER_03]: My three-year-old is constantly looking for ways to help.
15:43
[SPEAKER_03]: Any excuse to be involved around the house.
15:45
[SPEAKER_03]: So I wonder, as a mom back then, where you just trying to be strong, trying to make it feel like this is just how life is for everyone.
15:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Even with all the luxuries I have today, there are still been moments where I've gone out of my way to shield my son from something scary happening nearby, or from any kind of conflict, but hurt her.
16:05
[SPEAKER_03]: After losing so much, she must have wanted nothing more than to cling to her children, and instead she was forced to carry the entire world on her back.
16:15
[SPEAKER_03]: My grandpa never talked about any of this with us.
16:19
[SPEAKER_03]: He never made us feel guilty for complaining about our own little problems.
16:22
[SPEAKER_03]: And honestly, even if he had shared his story, I don't think I would have been mature enough to even know how to respond.
16:30
[SPEAKER_03]: You'll back in my day, trope, walking to school up hill, both ways in the snow doesn't exactly hold a candle, too.
16:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, back in my day, your sister and your dad died before you had to comb the train tracks for lumps of cold estate warm at night, Jesus Christ.
16:44
[SPEAKER_03]: I mean, where do you go from there?
16:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Keanu and I sat down with Uncle Mike to ask what he remembered about his dad's early childhood.
16:53
[SPEAKER_01]: If I was going to write a book, the title of the book would be I have no idea of what I'm doing.
16:58
[SPEAKER_01]: One of the, one of the chief sub chapters would be Mark Twain's sake of my life.
17:02
[SPEAKER_03]: There are school records from when my grandfather was a kid describing him as restless.
17:09
[SPEAKER_01]: During the summers as a boy, he would basically navigate barges with sticks across the Mississippi, and his boat was called the Mark Twain.
17:18
[SPEAKER_03]: which turned out as not a tugboat that specializes in racial slurs.
17:22
[SPEAKER_03]: From a grandfather working on that tugboat meant traveling up and down the Mississippi River, meeting service members, soldiers hearing their stories and their adventures, and he started craving that life.
17:33
[SPEAKER_01]: When World War II started, he was born in 25, so he was 15, and he tried to join twice flight about his age, got rejected both times, finally he was 17 and a half and 42, and he got in early.
17:45
[SPEAKER_03]: The Marine scooped him up and sent him to train at Camp Pendleton, just 40 miles north of San Diego.
17:51
[SPEAKER_01]: And then he went through his basic training and one of the things that they fell out during basic training is you have any special skills, so he put in that he had driven a barge across him as a sippy river, and that was the only one that was just checkbox on where he fell.
18:06
[SPEAKER_03]: And he must have felt like he won.
18:08
[SPEAKER_03]: The fucking lottery are you kidding me, growing up in Iowa, working a tugboat, and suddenly you're young.
18:14
[SPEAKER_03]: You're in Southern California.
18:15
[SPEAKER_03]: You're looking out at the Pacific Ocean for the first time, and you're training for every adventure you've ever heard about, every story you've ever fantasized living.
18:24
[SPEAKER_05]: Turns out, the CIA didn't just pop up out of nowhere.
18:27
[SPEAKER_05]: Before it was called the Central Intelligence Agency, it was the OSS, Office of Strategic Services.
18:32
[SPEAKER_05]: And before the OSS, most of Uncle Sam's off the book work fell on the shoulders of the merchant Marines.
18:37
[SPEAKER_05]: And at the age of 18, our grandpa was trained and placed in the third amphibious battalion, one of the earliest mentions of his back ops unit.
18:45
[SPEAKER_03]: I've found that he was stationed in Guam, I know he was stationed in the Philippines, and I know that in February of 1945, he and his battalion were sent to the Battle of Iwi Gima.
18:56
[SPEAKER_03]: Now, I've said it before, I am not the history buff, and I'm embarrassed to admit that most of what I knew about the Battle of Iwi Gima growing up came from video games.
19:06
[SPEAKER_03]: God, I hope there was never a moment where Teenage Me was bragging to my grandfather about how realistic the graphics were getting, because now, it feels sacrilegious to even play something like that for entertainment, knowing he was actually there.
19:22
[SPEAKER_03]: When I used to picture World War II, I thought of Normandy.
19:26
[SPEAKER_03]: I thought of saving private Ryan and
19:33
[SPEAKER_03]: Iwajima was something else entirely.
19:36
[SPEAKER_03]: This was a small volcanic island, eight square miles of black sand and sulfur.
19:42
[SPEAKER_03]: Literally, the whole place smelled like it was rotting before any of the violence.
19:47
[SPEAKER_03]: And that black sand, it didn't behave like sand, it swallowed your boots every step felt like you were climbing a mountain made of ash.
19:55
[SPEAKER_03]: There was nowhere to hide, no trees, no grass, just jagged rocks, and this massive looming volcano, Mount Serabachi, just looking down on you like it knew something you didn't and for good reason, because this island had secrets.
20:11
[SPEAKER_01]: the ships started firing.
20:12
[SPEAKER_01]: Now, during this time, they were told nothing.
20:15
[SPEAKER_01]: And for three days, he said the shells went off.
20:18
[SPEAKER_03]: Every reconnaissance mission the US ran before sending in the Marines showed the island to be under-defended, an airport with minimal troops defending it.
20:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Why'd beaches presumably making it easy to offload tanks onto?
20:32
[SPEAKER_01]: He had seen that the day before the first group of men had had the left, and they were
20:40
[SPEAKER_03]: This was supposed to be a cakewalk for the Marines.
20:44
[SPEAKER_03]: But the Japanese had secretly been fortifying the island for years.
20:49
[SPEAKER_03]: The Japanese soldiers weren't hiding in trenches.
20:52
[SPEAKER_03]: They were inside a tunnel system carved into the rock, 11 miles of underground bunkers artillery room sniper holes, and entire hospitals.
21:02
[SPEAKER_03]: I hate to say, but when the Japanese do something, they do it, right?
21:06
[SPEAKER_03]: The entire island, a weapon, pointed at the Pacific, when the landing crafts dropped their ramps, the first waves of Marines stepped into hell.
21:15
[SPEAKER_03]: machine gun fire ranking across the shoreline mortars erupting in the sand, men, sinking up to their ankles, sometimes their shins, trying to run for cover that didn't exist.
21:25
[SPEAKER_03]: While aerial reconnaissance missions had shown the island to be under-defended, there were 10,000 Japanese troops hiding underground the entire time.
21:34
[SPEAKER_03]: All of it hidden behind secret doors, turrets, trap doors, all of it completely invisible to the untrained eye.
21:42
[SPEAKER_03]: And somewhere in that chaos?
21:44
[SPEAKER_03]: My grandfather was there, an 18-year-old kid from Iowa, who grew up hunting for spare coal on the train tracks.
21:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Now crawling across sand under Mount Surabachi carrying a rifle, terrified, and probably unable to think about anything other than the next five seconds.
22:00
[SPEAKER_03]: The noise was deafening and constant, explosions, screams, metal, ricocheting off rock.
22:07
[SPEAKER_03]: The kind of noise that doesn't leave your body even decades later.
22:11
[SPEAKER_06]: Associated Pres photographer Joe Rosenball famously said that trying to not get shot the first day of the battle was like trying to run through the rain and not get wet.
22:20
[SPEAKER_03]: By the end of the first day of the 900 marines that have been deployed, only 100 survived.
22:28
[SPEAKER_03]: Our grandfather arrived at Iwojima with the first battalion and was stuck in a fox hole for two days without food or water.
22:35
[SPEAKER_01]: There's supposed to take a hill and then a jeep comes up in the
22:40
[SPEAKER_01]: and Dad's was one of them.
22:41
[SPEAKER_03]: They reposition him to help drive these amphibious tanks because of his time on the Mark Twain.
22:46
[SPEAKER_03]: So, in a weird way, I am only here because my grandfather used to work on a boat named after a comedian, which is just an interesting full circle moment for me.
22:56
[SPEAKER_03]: The battle was a hellscape.
22:59
[SPEAKER_01]: And they did not told why they just pull off and everybody else goes and takes off.
23:04
[SPEAKER_01]: Almost all those guys that went off that day were killed.
23:07
[SPEAKER_03]: It's really hard to understand or even paint the picture.
23:11
[SPEAKER_03]: That black sand is being met with these red rolling waves from all the blood of these soldiers.
23:17
[SPEAKER_03]: That you know, you train with, you've bonded with, you know their family stories, you're their friend.
23:23
[SPEAKER_03]: The red waves crashing up on that black sand, that's a nightmare.
23:28
[SPEAKER_03]: In fact, most Marines said that after this battle, they were no longer scared of hell, because they had already seen it.
23:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Here's a fun fact about the Battle of Yujima.
23:37
[SPEAKER_03]: There's a famous photograph, the one of the Marines raising the flag on Mount Surabachi.
23:42
[SPEAKER_03]: You've definitely seen it.
23:43
[SPEAKER_03]: It's this giant statue at the National Marine Corps Memorial and D.C. a bunch of soldiers straining together to hoist a flagpole.
23:51
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, that iconic image.
23:53
[SPEAKER_03]: It's actually the second flag raised on the island.
23:57
[SPEAKER_03]: A few days into the battle, the secretary of the navy landed on the beach looked up saw the first flag flying proudly up on the hill and decided he wanted to keep it as a keepsake for his office.
24:09
[SPEAKER_03]: Classic.
24:10
[SPEAKER_03]: When the Marines heard of that, they were rightfully pissed, because they were the ones who would bled for that island.
24:17
[SPEAKER_03]: They lost their friends, brothers.
24:19
[SPEAKER_03]: They weren't about to hand over the symbol of that sacrifice to someone who just drooled on in for a photo op, so the Marines quietly swapped the original flag with a larger, more official looking one.
24:30
[SPEAKER_03]: The Secretary of the Navy took his prize not knowing any better.
24:35
[SPEAKER_03]: Of all of the men that my grandfather was bunkmates with, he was the only one that wasn't a dad.
24:41
[SPEAKER_03]: He was also the only one that survived.
24:44
[SPEAKER_03]: It's kind of crazy to think of him as a 16 and a 17-year-old running to enlist in the military when most people were scared of being drafted.
24:54
[SPEAKER_03]: And now at the age of 18, he stood on a beach listening to a eulogy being given for his friends.
25:00
[SPEAKER_03]: Well, he felt guilty that it was him that lived and his friends were able to go home to their children.
25:05
[SPEAKER_03]: When Rabbi Roland Giddleson originally asked if he could perform the eulogy, he was told by the upper brass that it was likely going to be a priest that delivered it since most of the men were Protestants or Catholics.
25:15
[SPEAKER_03]: But then he shared what he had written and everybody knew that this is what everyone needed to hear.
25:19
[SPEAKER_03]: I'm going to read it now and it's entirety and if you want to fast forward five minutes you can.
25:26
[SPEAKER_03]: But I got to just say this eulogy is hauntingly timely.
25:31
[SPEAKER_03]: And I can't tell if it was written.
25:33
[SPEAKER_03]: in the 1940s or just last week.
25:37
[SPEAKER_03]: And I hope it connects with you the same way that it connects with me.
25:42
[SPEAKER_03]: This is perhaps the grimest and surely the holiest task we have faced since D-Day.
25:48
[SPEAKER_03]: Here before us, like the bodies of comrades and friends, men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us.
25:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Men who were on the same ships with us and went over the sides with us, as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island.
26:05
[SPEAKER_03]: Men who fought with us and feared with us, somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the individual who could have discovered the cure for cancer.
26:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Under one of these Christian crosses or beneath a Jewish star of David, there may rest now an individual who was destined to be a great prophet to find the way, perhaps for
26:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Now they like here, silently in the sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.
26:36
[SPEAKER_03]: It is not easy to do so.
26:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Some of us have buried our closest friends here.
26:41
[SPEAKER_03]: We saw these men kill before our very eyes.
26:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Any one of us might have died in their place, and these some of us are alive and breathing.
26:49
[SPEAKER_03]: At this very moment, only because men who lie here beneath us had the courage and strength to give their lives for hours.
26:56
[SPEAKER_03]: To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy.
26:59
[SPEAKER_03]: Of them too, can it be said with utter truth, the world will little note nor long remember what we say here?
27:05
[SPEAKER_03]: It can never forget what they did here.
27:09
[SPEAKER_03]: No, our poor power speech can add nothing to what these men and the other dead of our division who are not here have already done.
27:18
[SPEAKER_03]: All that we can even hope to do is follow their example, to show the same selfless courage and peace that they didn't warn, to swear that by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again.
27:33
[SPEAKER_03]: These men have done their job well.
27:36
[SPEAKER_03]: they've paid the ghastly price of freedom.
27:39
[SPEAKER_03]: If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours, not theirs.
27:48
[SPEAKER_03]: So it be the living who are here to be dedicated and consecrated.
27:52
[SPEAKER_03]: We dedicate ourselves.
27:54
[SPEAKER_03]: First to live together in peace the way they fought in our buried in war.
27:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Here are my men who love America because their ancestors, generations ago, helped in her founding.
28:04
[SPEAKER_03]: And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves were their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores.
28:13
[SPEAKER_03]: Here are my officers and private blacks and whites rich and poor together.
28:18
[SPEAKER_03]: You are a Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together.
28:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color.
28:26
[SPEAKER_03]: Here there are no quotas of how many of each group are admitted or allowed.
28:30
[SPEAKER_03]: Among these men there is no discrimination.
28:32
[SPEAKER_03]: There is no prejudice, no hatred.
28:34
[SPEAKER_03]: There's is the highest empirist democracy.
28:38
[SPEAKER_03]: Anyone among us, the living who fails to understand that, will thereby betray those who lie here.
28:44
[SPEAKER_03]: Whoever of us lifts his hand and hate against another or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice that commemorate an empty hollow mockery.
28:57
[SPEAKER_03]: To this, them, as our solemn sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves?
29:04
[SPEAKER_03]: to the right Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of all races alike to enjoy the democracy for which all of them here have paid the price.
29:12
[SPEAKER_03]: To one thing more, do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars?
29:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We shall not foolishly suppose as did the last generation of America's fighting.
29:24
[SPEAKER_03]: The victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of democracy at home.
29:30
[SPEAKER_03]: This war, with all its frightful heartache and suffering,
29:34
[SPEAKER_03]: is but the beginning of our generation struggle for democracy.
29:38
[SPEAKER_03]: When the last battle has been won, there will be those at home as there were last time who will want us to turn our backs and selfish isolation to the rest of organized humanity and thus to sabotage the very peace for which we fight.
29:51
[SPEAKER_03]: We promise you who lie here, we will not do that.
29:55
[SPEAKER_03]: We will join hands with Britain, China, Russia, in peace even as we have in war to build the kind of world for which you died.
30:03
[SPEAKER_03]: When the last shot has been fired, there will still be those eyes that are turned backward, not forward, who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty and wealth, in which the seeds of another war can breed.
30:16
[SPEAKER_03]: We promise you, our departed comrades, this too, we will not permit.
30:21
[SPEAKER_03]: This war has been fought by the common man.
30:24
[SPEAKER_03]: Its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man.
30:28
[SPEAKER_03]: We promise by all that is sacred and holy that your sons, the sons of minors and millers, the sons of farmers and workers will inherit from your death the right to a living that is decent and secure.
30:42
[SPEAKER_03]: When the final cross has been placed in the last ceremony, once again, there will be those to whom profit is more important than peace.
30:50
[SPEAKER_03]: We'll insist with the voice of sweet, reasonableness and appeasement that it is better to trade with the enemies of mankind than by crushing them, to lose their profit.
31:00
[SPEAKER_03]: To you, who sleep here silently, we give our promise.
31:04
[SPEAKER_03]: we will not listen.
31:05
[SPEAKER_03]: We will not forget that some of you were burnt with oil that came from American wells.
31:11
[SPEAKER_03]: The many of you were killed by shells fashioned by American steel.
31:15
[SPEAKER_03]: We promised that once again people seek profit at your expense.
31:19
[SPEAKER_03]: We shall remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly, in the ground.
31:24
[SPEAKER_03]: This do we memorialise.
31:27
[SPEAKER_03]: Those who have ceased
31:31
[SPEAKER_03]: Thus do we consecrate ourselves the living to carry on the struggle they began.
31:36
[SPEAKER_03]: Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren.
31:40
[SPEAKER_03]: Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand.
31:45
[SPEAKER_03]: We hear solemnly swear, this shall not be in vain.
31:50
[SPEAKER_03]: Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come we promise,
32:01
[SPEAKER_03]: And let us say, a men.
32:08
[SPEAKER_03]: Iwajima was a largest loss of life that the Marine Corps faced in all of World War II, and is also the battle that awarded the most medals of honor.
32:16
[SPEAKER_03]: That's what Iwajima was.
32:19
[SPEAKER_03]: Not a page in a history book, not a cutscene in the video game.
32:23
[SPEAKER_03]: It was a living nightmare, 40 days of it, fought inch by inch yard by yard, by kids who had barely lived enough life to know what they were even fighting for.
32:34
[SPEAKER_03]: And my grandfather was one of them.
32:36
[SPEAKER_04]: When we ended up going to Virginia that summer, we were like getting ready for dinner or something, and I said, hey, Opa, Dad said you were in like a really famous war, and he just gave me a really long hug and he just said, please don't ask me about that sweetheart.
32:49
[SPEAKER_04]: Please don't ask me about that.
32:51
[SPEAKER_04]: I could immediately tell like I couldn't even ask why.
32:54
[SPEAKER_03]: The truth is, it's hard not to get and I'm talking about any of this because it's impossible for me to put myself in my grandfather's shoes.
33:03
[SPEAKER_03]: The Battle of Iwajima lasted over a month and a half.
33:07
[SPEAKER_02]: He was discharged a little a year after the battle.
33:11
[SPEAKER_03]: And then his trail kind of goes cold.
33:14
[SPEAKER_03]: That battle changed him.
33:16
[SPEAKER_03]: And I don't know that because he ever talked about it, we never had those conversations.
33:21
[SPEAKER_05]: We know because of the letters, a box of them.
33:24
[SPEAKER_05]: We read every last one of them.
33:26
[SPEAKER_03]: The letters he went out of his way to write to the mothers and wives of the men who served beside him and didn't make it home.
33:33
[SPEAKER_03]: and in trying to learn anything about our grandfather's next steps and going through all of these letters.
33:39
[SPEAKER_03]: We stumbled across one where my grandfather mentioned that he was extremely shocked that one of those moms was able to get a letter to him.
33:47
[SPEAKER_03]: Because what he was working on was extremely top secret.
33:55
[SPEAKER_03]: Hey, thanks for listening to this week's episode.
33:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Be sure to follow Morgan J on social media or catch him on his world tour.
34:02
[SPEAKER_03]: While you're at it follow the podcast on social media deep secrets pod and I am Hunter Hill Comedy.
34:08
[SPEAKER_03]: This series is hosted by myself Hunter Hill, my sister Kaelan Hill, and is a nothing to see here production.
34:15
[SPEAKER_03]: Executively produced by Hunter Hill, Kaelan Hill, Ed Doesick, and produced by Jess Sonanfeld Jalis.
34:21
[SPEAKER_03]: Video interviews were produced by Ketamaskaro and if you're enjoying the show please be sure to follow the podcast leave us a review and subscribe wherever you are listening.
34:30
[SPEAKER_03]: It really does make a huge difference and helps other people discover the story.
34:35
[SPEAKER_03]: You can also join our sub-stack community for exclusive content including source documents, extended celebrity interviews behind the scenes updates and much more.
34:44
[SPEAKER_03]: And one last thing.
34:46
[SPEAKER_03]: Every episode that will be coming out has either been recorded in my tiny home office or running and gunning it while out on the road.
34:53
[SPEAKER_03]: So thank you so much for being here as my sister and I unravel this crazy story.
34:58
[SPEAKER_03]: Hope to see you next week as we dive even deeper into this secret.