St. Charles ex-Marine shares memories of Iwo Jima

William Faulkner was 21 when he landed on Iwo Jima for what would become one of history's bloodiest battles.

Sixty-five years later, the St. Charles man says he still can't explain how he survived 18 days on the tiny Pacific island where so many of his fellow troops died.

"I had a lot of friends right next to me get killed," he said. "You often wonder, How does that happen to them and not to you?"

Faulkner rarely speaks about his service in World War II but agreed to do so in commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, which ended after 35 days of intense fighting on March 26, 1945, and was forever memorialized in an iconic photo of six U.S. troops raising a flag on Mount Suribachi.

Faulkner said he wants people to know that "war is horrible."

"The Japanese fought for their country just like we did. They just had different ideologies," Faulkner said. "It's not the people that make war; it's the governments."

Born in downstate Belleville, Faulkner followed in the footsteps of an uncle and enlisted in the Marine Corps upon graduating from high school in 1941.

After several campaigns as a paratrooper in the Solomon Islands, he was among the first wave of troops to go ashore at Iwo Jima shortly after 9 a.m. Feb. 19, 1945.

The battle, during which nearly 50,000 American and Japanese troops were killed or wounded, was the first U.S. attack on Japan's home islands, and U.S. citizens largely viewed a victory there as indicative of the overall war effort in the Pacific.

"We had no idea how bad it was going to be," Faulkner said. "They told us three days, but we all knew that was a lie."

Faulkner's company landed near Mount Suribachi, along Iwo Jima's southern tip. He said an initial calmness greeted Americans, but the Japanese were only lying in wait.

"They didn't start firing and shelling the beach until probably an hour after we landed," he said. "We crossed the island in 90 minutes under all that intense fire."

In the following days, Faulkner's group faced "constant shelling and fighting" as they overtook Japanese forces on miserable terrain, which was covered in volcanic ash and sand and had been obliterated of all vegetation in prior bombing campaigns.

He said men slept on the ground and in foxholes when they weren't fighting. For fresh drinking water, he said, troops had to retrieve canteens from the bodies of the fallen.

"I never ever once thought that I wasn't going to make it, that I was going to die," he said. "You don't have time to worry about that."

At times, he said, survival seemed like a matter of chance.

"One day, we were caught out in the open and pinned down pretty bad," Faulkner remembered. "Something told me to move, and I got up and moved. About that time a hand grenade landed right where I was at. If I hadn't moved when that little voice told me to move, I wouldn't be here today."

Faulkner didn't witness the historic moment captured in Joe Rosenthal's iconic photograph of five Marines and one Navy Corpsman raising an American flag after overtaking Mount Suribachi five days into the battle, but he said he did know Ira Hayes, one of the men setting the flag.

"All we knew was the flag must have been raised because all the ships out in the ocean were firing their guns and blowing their whistles," he said. "The word spread like wildfire that the flag had been raised."

Faulkner's service on Iwo Jima ended on his 18th day, when he was injured in a mortar attack that left pieces of shrapnel embedded to this day in his right arm and leg.

He said the attack happened right after his company overtook Hill 362, a major strategic point on the island.

"They tell me I was standing up helping the sergeant direct new people as to where to get going and what to do when a mortar shell landed right in the middle of us," he said. "I was so nervous and scared I couldn't even shoot myself with my morphine. I remember a sergeant grabbed it and said, 'Give me that, I'll give it to you,' and jammed it in my leg."

Later, while recovering in a military hospital, Faulkner learned the battle had ended.

"I stood in the street and cried," he said, fighting back tears at the recollection. "Wouldn't you? If you knew you weren't going to get your butt shot off anymore?"

After the war, Faulkner returned home, earned a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, and started a family.

He went on to own a land surveying business in Decatur, where he worked until he suffered a stroke last year at age 85. Since then, he's been recovering at Delnor Glen, an assisted living center in St. Charles, where he's near a daughter who lives in Elburn.

Looking back, Faulkner said it's "hard to believe" 65 years have passed.

"Iwo Jima was a very fierce, bloody battle," he said, "but there were other battles in the Pacific that were more horrible. Iwo Jima just got all the credit."

Last March, Faulkner returned to Iwo Jima for the first time since his military days.

The trip came courtesy of Portillo's Restaurants owner Dick Portillo, a Marine veteran and self-described "history buff" who heard Faulkner's story after taking another World War II veteran to revisit the Pacific island of Guadalcanal.

Portillo, who accompanied Faulkner on the trip, said it was "quite an experience" revisiting some of the places where Faulkner had fought, and hearing his stories firsthand.

"Not enough can be said about these men," Portillo said. "The freedom we all have now is because of what they did more than 60 years ago. Most people will never understand what it took."

<!-- Start of Brightcove Player -->

<div style="display:none">

</div>

<!--

By use of this code snippet, I agree to the Brightcove Publisher T and C

found at http://corp.brightcove.com/legal/terms_publisher.cfm.

-->

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://admin.brightcove.com/js/BrightcoveExperiences.js"></script>

<object id="myExperience73705321001" class="BrightcoveExperience">

<param name="bgcolor" value="#FFFFFF" />

<param name="width" value="300" />

<param name="height" value="205" />

<param name="playerID" value="18011347001" />

<param name="publisherID" value="1659832549"/>

<param name="isVid" value="true" />

<param name="optimizedContentLoad" value="true" />

<param name="@videoPlayer" value="73705321001" />

</object>

<!--

This script tag will cause the Brightcove Players defined above it to be created as soon

as the line is read by the browser. If you wish to have the player instantiated only after

the rest of the HTML is processed and the page load is complete, remove the line.

-->

<script type="text/javascript">brightcove.createExperiences();</script>

<!-- End of Brightcove Player -->