By JERRY TRAMBLEY
Erie Times-News writer (1995)Because news photographer Joe Rosenthal was there that February day in 1944 and his photo was wired around the world, the
flag raising on Mount Suribachi, a little bump of lava on a volcanic rock called Iwo Jima, is one of the most famous images from the Pacific Theater in World War II.
Roy Christensen of Harborcreek, who fought his way
across the island as a member of the 4th Marine Division, says the flag raising, while picturesque, happened as the battle was still raging on other parts of the island, and didn't portray the entire story of the
carnage that it cost to liberate that one little rock in the Pacific.
Christensen was 25 when he was one of the 40,000 Marines who went ashore on the first day of the American struggle to get the Japanese forces off
the island. Another 20,000 American troops were to follow.
Christensen had joined the Marines in 1942, right after graduating from what was then Edinboro State Teachers College. He was sent to the Corps' training
center at Quantico, Va., and was commissioned a 2nd lieutenant in 1943.
Within a short time he was at Camp Pendleton, Calif., where the 4th Marine Division was being organized and he shipped out of San Diego, heading
for the battle to liberate the Marshall Islands. After that he returned to Hawaii for retraining and replacements and took off for the Marianas and the invasion of Saipan.
"I got shot through the hand by a sniper on
Saipan," he said. "I went from 195 pounds down to 128. I had dengue fever, malaria and a bad case of dysentery."
His wound and medical problems qualified him as "walking wounded," Christensen said, but it didn't
disqualify him from the next invasion for the island-hopping 4th Marine Division, at Tinian. "It was tough, but not as bad as Saipan,"' he said of that invasion.
When he shipped back to the Hawaiian island of Maui
for retraining and replacements, Christensen and his comrades didn't know where they would go next and, he said, he felt sorry for the new recruits, because he and the veterans of Saipan and Tinian knew what it cost to
dislodge the Japanese from the fortresses they'd built on the Pacific islands.
While the Marines were on Maui preparing for their next battle, American B-29s were taking off at Tinian and Saipan and making bombing
runs on Japan. As they headed back, they sometimes out of fuel about half way or were so badly damaged they could not make it back to base, he said.
Just about at that halfway point sat Iwo Jima. So the generals and
admirals decided that was the place to build a landing strip for the bombers on their way back.
Christensen was a 1st lieutenant with Company G, 2nd Battalion, 24th Regiment when the 4th Division set sail for Iwo
Jima. Company G landed in the second wave of the first day's assault on the powdered black lava beaches of the island, which he described as about the same size as Presque Isle.
"We ran into a terrible situation with
mortar, artillery fire, machine guns, snipers, you name it," Christensen said.
"We sank in the volcanic ash up above our shoes when we tried to run. It reminded me of standing in a wheat silo," he said.
Christensen said the Japanese general on Iwo Jima had a standing order: "Kill as many of the enemy as you can before you, yourself are killed."
He said the Japanese troops followed that order "to the letter." There
were 22,000 Japanese defenders when the Marines landed and the Americans only took about 200 prisoners, he said.
There were also 23,000 Americans killed, wounded or missing after the battle was over, and in some
units, like Christensen's, the carnage was horrible.
"G Company landed with 254 ... the first day," he said. "The fifth day, we got 60 replacements because we were shot up so bad. This made a total of 314 Marines. I
got wounded the 15th day and, at that time, Gunnery Sgt. Flynn showed me the list. We had 32 men left; 90 percent casualties."
Christensen was executive officer to Capt. Joseph McCarthy, whose exploits were recorded
in a recent issue of Parade magazine. McCarthy was awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism on Iwo Jima. Christensen received a Bronze Star for Valor.
Christensen said the worst time he had was the taking of "Hill
382," which the Marines dubbed "Meat Grinder Hill" because of the casualties.
It was in the battle for 382 that Christensen was shot in the dog tags. The tags bent out of shape, but he was OK.
"That night, I took
a couple of machine gun bullets in through my arm and right shoulder," he said. "There were no broken bones. I was lucky."
"Iwo Jima was an island fortress," he said. "It was like the Alamo in reverse, multiplied by
100, because we were on the offense. They had more than 400 pillboxes, dug-in artillery, mortar and rockets. We were under constant, accurate sniper fire and mortar fire."
One incident that stands out in
Christensen's mind and still makes him choke up with emotion and pause in silence when he tries to talk about it, is the damage caused by what he referred to as a kind of Japanese rocket used on Iwo Jima.
"They had
huge rockets they shot. sometimes several times a day. It was like several 55-gallon drums together. It was unbelievably effective, but not accurate," Christensen said. "We called them the Tokyo Express. They sounded
like 50 screech owls at the same time when they took off from a site built inside a mountain.
"I saw it one morning when we were marching up to relieve E Company. I heard the screech, looked up and knew it would hit
right where I was standing, just like you know where the ball is going to land in baseball.
"I yelled for the men to take cover. I jumped and got behind a small Japanese tank that had been knocked out just as the
thing hit, right in line where I thought it would," he said. "It killed five, including my medical corpsman. I got the corpsman's kit and tied tourniquets on bad wounds. Two of the men asked me to kill them.
"I couldn't."
Later, on the 15th day of the battle for Iwo Jima, Christensen was wounded again. It was the third time he was injured in battle, and that earned him a trip back to the states.
Actually, Marines were
supposed to be returned home after two injuries in battle, Christensen said, but he didn't report one of his injuries.
"I told the doctor from the 2nd Battalion I wanted to go back to my company. He said, `Hell, no,
you're not going up there, you're going home,"' Christensen said. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart.
Christensen has other memories relating to that battle. On the
hospital ship that was taking him home, Christensen was once more among the "walking wounded," able to move about the ship.
"There was a Navy petty officer with field glasses watching the action from about a half
mile offshore," he said. "He had been watching with these powerful field glasses since the battle had started. He didn't know who I was, I just had dungarees on. He put down the glasses and said, `You know, if I ever
hear anybody saying anything against the Marines again, I will kill them."'
Christensen said he looked out from that hospital ship and saw the piles and piles of destroyed American and Japanese equipment along the
beach.
"I thought, `This looks like 100 Max Silver junkyards rolled into one,"' he said, referring to an old Erie scrapyard. "About 100 yards down, in the midst of all this junk, there was a huge crane with the words
`Bucyrus-Erie' on it."
Some of Christensen's other memories are sad ones.
"I remember playing pinochle on the way over and we could never finish that game. It was four-handed and I think I was the only one who
came back."
Christensen said Iwo Jima looms strong in the memories of the men who fought there "because it was that much worse. There was so much more tragedy right near, right next to you. Saipan was quite a bloody
battle, but it wasn't nearly as bad as Iwo.
"It makes such an indelible imprint on your mind that it never leaves. Never a day goes by that I don't think about it. I used to have nightmares, at first, after I got
out," he said.
"Even now, when I'm reading a book, I discipline myself, go maybe a page, and then I'm reading between the lines about Iwo and have to go back and read the page over," he said.
Christensen, after
the war, became a husband, father, singer and artist. He was born in the Erie area and went to what was then Millcreek High School. He went on to Edinboro, where he played football. He has been married for 49 years to
Jean Culver Christensen and they have two sons and two daughters.
Christensen said he didn't want to go into a school to teach art after the war, so he started his own sign and display company, Chris Signs, in
Harborcreek. Right after the war he lent his bass voice to a group called the Hofbrau Quartet. For years, Christensen said, the quartet sang at the East Erie Turners every Saturday night and at the South Erie Turners
every Friday night. Later on, he sang with Rita Doubet and the Four Men of Song.
One of Christensen's war memories is not about himself, but about his mother. She had four sons serving during World War II --
Christensen in the Marines in the South Pacific and his brothers, Walter in the Army infantry in Europe, John doing anti-submarine duty with the Navy in the Atlantic, and Al, stationed with the Air Force in Nome,
Alaska.
"That's what my mother had to go through during the war," he said.
All the brothers survived the war.
