My mind kind of blocks out most of the happenings on Iwo but I believe that we cut Surabachi off from the rest of the island by February 23rd, the day of the famous flag raising photo on top of Surabachi. I believe it was announced by the navy and marine corps that Iwo Jima was secured on that day. This was actually not the case. There was at least a month’s more of intense fighting with heavy shelling of the island by the Japanese from various parts of the island and from our troops also.

There were many days of resting in shallow fox holes that were so hot from the volcanic heat below the ground that we would have to turn our bodies every few minutes. I’ve seen many marines killed by snipers. One day when we were under heavy bombardment by the Japanese as we were going forward, I was knocked to the ground and concussion seemed to cause my brain to feel like it was exploding but it didn’t. I got up and walked over to a large shell hole in the ground in which 5 marines were sitting as though they were resting but on inspection, all five had been killed by the concussion. On another day I was sitting on the ground with my helmet in my lap and a bullet landed in the helmet and spun around and around. I’m only telling of these incidents for the purposes of the family blog so people will know something about what it’s like in combat. At night we settled down. We would surround our area with wires to trip flares so that when the Japanese would try to sneak up on us they would hit the trip flares which would ignite flares of light and it would alert us and we would begin firing at the approaching enemy.

I truly don’t remember sleeping any of the 36 days I believe I was on the island. Several of our men were killed when they stood up to go to relieve themselves. I recall one day running down to one of our tanks to try to get the tank to come up to give us some help but the occupants of the tank were all dead or else they didn’t want to comply with my request. I remember one day we had several enemy in the cave which we surrounded . We could see several of them standing near the front of the cave, talking. Our marine interpreter yelled to the Japanese to come out with their hands up and they would not be harmed. This the interpreter kept repeating but then the Japanese all rushed out of the cave waving swords and yelling “Banzaii” and they were all killed. We existed on sea rations and water which was brought forward to us. The sea rations were pretty good. There were many dead marines and dead Japanese all over the place. We constantly heard shells going overhead and hoped they didn’t drop on us. They would make a hissing sound while going over our heads and we always waited for the sound of the explosion. I heard that many Japanese committed suicide by jumping over the cliffs into the ocean. At night we occasionally heard Japanese planes flying over to bomb the ships that were supporting us. My mind blanks out on most of the situation on Iwo but I don’t remember being afraid at any time or doing any particular heroic act, just plugging along.

Most of the officers in my company were wounded or killed. I was the youngest officer in the platoon and I wound up being company commander for a short time at the end of the battle. I recall one evening our trip flares were lit by incoming enemy and we began shooting and firing hand grenades that I got hit in the forehead by a piece of metal but I don’t know if it was a piece of our hand grenades or the Japanese. It only scratched me and I needed no treatment whatsoever. I may have left a lot out but it is all I can remember at this time and I think it’s enough anyway. At the end of the battle on Iwo the army troops came in and we went back to the Parker Ranch on Hawaii for further training and replacement of the marines we lost. We continued our tactical training until the atom bomb ended the war. A peace treaty was signed aboard ship off of Japan and our division was sent to Japan immediately and I believe we were the first troops to land after the treaty signing. We went on as though we were going to assault Japan with all our weapons and ammunition because we didn’t know what to expect. When we got on we had no problem but we did notice there were no woman or children around. We took over the quarters at the Japanaes Sasebo navel barracks on the southern part of Japan. Living there was quite rugged. When it was seen that we were not there to terrorize woman and children they came out of hiding. Some of the things that were different for us was we had to use unisex bathrooms at the base and the fact that in the morning Japanese women would come with a long pole and a bucket over their shoulder to clean out the excrement to load on trucks to fertilize Japanese fields. This is probably why we were told not to use Japanese vegetables or fruits and we pretty much stuck to American rations.

At one point we stayed on a Japanese ship in the sea of Japan. We explored a little bit away from Sasebo at various times. I remember being invited to a Japanese home and being given slices of sweet potatoes as a treat. I remember going to a Geisha house several times as we were invited by the mayor. We were each assigned a young Geisha girl the first time we entered and if we entered again the same girl would always come up to us. We watched the Geisha dancers and drank saki each officer with a Geisha girl sitting on the floor beside him who kept filling the glasses of saki. I think I went two or three times to a Geisha house. A few of the mariens did sellleep overnight there.

One of the U.S. navel officers assigned to our marine unit bought a Geisha girl from the house for several thousand yen and began living with her somewhere near. He had a wife back home. After I had been there a couple of times the head Geisha wondered and so did the girl assigned to me why I did not sleep over--was there something wrong with the girl? I said no nothing wrong but that I was recently married and had a wife in the navy back home. That was accepted by the Madam or head Geisha of the house.

What kept most marines from sleeping with prostitutes outside of the Geisha house was the fact that there were many diseases rampant. All of the marine company officers were ordered to give each marine going on liberty five condoms. I was in Japan about six months and crossed the international line twice (on the way to and on the return). I remember having two Christmases and two Easters, and went through one hurricane aboard ship on the way back to San Diego. As we pulled into San Diego harbor many days later I was leaning over the railing looking at hundreds or many thousands of navy ships with my battalion commander, Tolson A. Smoak, a very likeable southern young man. He said to me "Woods if I owned those ships I could rule this world".