By BILL WELCH
Morning News city editorIt was a chance meeting with an Erie man that saved Dick Carr's life in March 1945.
Carr was a Seabee on the island of Iwo Jima. Fighting still raged though the island had been invaded some
two weeks before on Feb. 19.
Sixteen men including Carr were sent by truck from the airstrip they were working on to the other side of the island to get supplies.
""I met this guy - a Marine - from Erie
and I stopped to talk to him. I told the rest of the guys to go without me; I'd work my way back,'' Carr recalled from his Fairview Township home.
Carr walked back.
""I got back to the rest of the unit and
these guys were in shock. "You're dead,' they told me.
""I asked them what happened and they told me. The truck that went back without me had blown up. Everyone on it was dead. They
figured I was on it, too, and thought I was dead.''
Those 15 men were just some of the buddies Dick Carr left on Iwo Jima in 1945. There were many more.
His unit was the 90th Construction Battalion, a Navy
unit whose job was to go onto an island right behind the first few waves of Marines and immediately start work on airstrips or whatever other job was assigned to them Carr was a surveyor with the unit.
In this case,
the Seabees as they were known, were to start work on an airstrip. It would be needed for crippled B-29 bombers heading back from bombing raids on Japan. The whole reason for going after the island was to build
that emergency airstrip. With it, bombers had a place to touch down if they couldn't make to all the way back to Saipan or Tinian an extra thousand miles away. Also, escort fighters could take off from Iwo
Jima and provide protection to the bombers.
Work on the airstrip did not begin when expected.
""They told us on the ship that the island had been pounded by bombers and ships, so that maybe this would just
be a clean-up operation,'' Carr said. ""Some clean-up. The ones who got cleaned up were us.
""I still cringe when I think about it. It was just so fierce.''
The Seabees landed a
few hours after the first wave of Marines hit the beach. The enemy fire was intense.
""We were stuck on the beach for a few days. All we could do was find a place to hide. I thought this was it,
that I'd never make it back home. Some of my friends were getting hit.
""We tried to dig in, but the black sulfur sand just filled back in. Then a couple of us crawled behind a bulldozer that had been
knocked out on the beach. We figured the Japanese wouldn't hit it again because it had been hit already.''
The enemy pillboxes on Iwo Jima had withstood all the bombing, all the Navy shelling. Now they
were cutting down the Americans arriving on the island. Movement was unsafe until the pillboxes were put out of action.
The Marines did that the hard way - attacking with satchel charges, grenades or
flamethrowers.
""We'd listen to Tokyo Rose at night. She would tell us the island was going to sink into the ocean. Well, we didn't really take that seriously.
""Then one night they hit one
of our ammunition dumps. What an explosion. I thought, "Oh, Jesus, they really are going to blow us into the ocean.''
Each night on that island was like the Fourth of July, he said. Tracers and explosions
constantly lit the sky.
Even with the area around the airstrip cleared of the enemy, it could only be so safe. Snipers would work their way over and start shooting.
""We'd have to lay low until the
Marines cleared them out. When they quit, we'd get up and get back to work.
""One day we were actually getting hot food after so many days on K-rations. I was in line when a sniper shot my mess kit right out
of my hands. We all hit the ground. The Marines went up there and got him. Then I went back and got my meal - finally - even if it was cold.''
Nature could take over where the Japanese left off. One of his
friends was working on a road near the airstrip when a huge boulder fell and landed on his lap, breaking both legs.
The airstrip was finished in a week. His unit lost half its men on Iwo Jima, Carr estimates.
His own luck continued after Iwo Jima was secured.
""One of the B-29 bomber crews that was on the island asked me if I wanted to fly over Tokyo. They said it'd be easy, no trouble. I said "No
thanks.'
""That plane never came back.
""I started to think someone up there likes me.''
That felling started to fade late in the summer. The 90th Construction Battalion, along with
hundreds of thousands of Marines, sailors and soldiers was preparing for the invasion of Japan.
""We all got sick at that.''
Then came the atomic bombing of two Japanese cities and the surrender in
September.
""It was the best news I ever heard.''
The war might be over, but his duties weren't. Carr didn't have enough time or points in to get home. He was sent to Japan as part of the
occupation force.
""They gave me 10 Japanese and an interpreter. I put them to work.''
He finally got home in March 1946. His first night back, someone walked into the unlocked Carr home - no one
locked the door at night then - and stole the hundreds of dollars he had brought home with him.
Carr went on to work for 40 years at Inland Container, retiring in 1987. Until recently he lived on W. 12th where
he and his wife raised three sons and two stepsons.
