Transcript of #348 Frank Wright - The Last Living Original Marine Raider From WW2

Mr. Frank Wright, welcome to the show. It's an honor to have you here.

Thank you very kindly.

So I just found out before, right before we sat down, that you are the last living original Marine Raider.

That's correct. That's right. I understand now.

That is incredible. I had a lot of friends. I have a lot of friends that are Marine Raiders, and I have a deep, deep respect, and I know they're going to love this interview.

We were a good group, but good Lord says they want them on pearly gates. They got them.

That's right. Well, let me start you off with an introduction. Mr. Frank Wright, you're a World War II Marine veteran who joined the Marine Corps at just age 16 following the attack on Pearl Harbor, later serving with the 4th Marine Raider Battalion, one of the Marine Corps' earliest special operations units. He fought in some of the most pivotal, pivotal campaigns of the Pacific War, including Guadalcanal, New Georgia, Guam, and Iwo Jima. later serving with the 21st Marines. You were wounded multiple times in combat, including a devastating gunshot wound on Iwo Jima that tore your chest, lung, clavicle, and left arm, ultimately earning you the Purple Heart. Among your other citations, Purple Heart with 1 star, Presidential Unit Citation with 2 stars, Navy Unit Commendation, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal with 3 stars, Fleet Marine Force Combat Operations Insignia with 4 stars, Marine Corps Expeditionary Medal, Combat Action Ribbon with 4 stars, World War II Victory Medal, and the Navy and Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal. After recovering from your combat wounds, you went on to serve as a Marine Corps drill instructor training the next generation of Marines. After the war, you built a successful career and a family that now includes children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.

Later in life, you wrote Battles in the Pacific to preserve your firsthand memories of the war and ensure the names and stories of the men you served alongside were never forgotten. You were married for 74 years. You're 101 years old. Most importantly, You're a Christian. Once again, welcome to the show. And

thank you.

I'd like to start off by just saying thank you for your service.

Thank you, kind sir.

So you joined right after December 7th, 1941, when Pearl Harbor happened, correct?

Yes.

Can you talk a little bit about

Well, first thing, I was sitting at the dining room table making airplanes out of balsa wood. In fact, it was a Fokker D.VIII, which is what I was looking— I was working on. And I heard this news. First, I said, well, that's pretty sneaky, you know, doing something like that. But I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. It was something out in the Pacific, is all I knew and really cared for. But then, Later on, I found out what it actually meant when it was, it was put on television.

How old were you when you joined?

16.

16 years old?

Yes. And they wouldn't take me.

Why wouldn't they take you?

I was too young and I didn't weigh much. So, but I took care of that by having my aunt, which was my mother's sister, fill out a belated birth certificate out of, and it was never certified. So, but the sergeant didn't care. He was a recruiting sergeant. He wanted me. That was it. So he didn't care about that. And then, as far as the weight was concerned, I had gone home and bought £5 of bananas and stuffed them in my blouse. And so I joined with £5 of bananas in my blouse, really. That's a lot of weight.

How much did you weigh? Do you remember?

No, I really don't, honey.

Do you remember?

It was £5 did it. That made me weigh enough to get in the service. And I still think that the recruiting sergeant fudged a little bit on his papers on it, but then who was I to question his great authority he had? So, but anyway, that was one of the reasons that were—

Why did you pick the Marine Corps?

The Marine Corps has a heck of a lot prettier uniform. As you can see. And I thought that was a great, well, we called it a chick getter.

A chick eater.

A chick getter.

A chick getter.

Yeah. In my day, the girls were chicks. And I needed help.

Don't we all?

So, but they got me in a lot of trouble a couple of times, though. But then when I was stationed in Tongue Point, Oregon, we had a bar that we used to go to. And I was way too young to be drinking. But the guys passed me brandy underneath the table and stuff, and so on. And doing so, one Navy guy, and I hate to really hate to say this, but the Navy and the Marines did not get along very good in 1941. So we had problems on it and we And why, I don't know, but of course I was going to join right in with the reason why. But a sailor came by and knocked my cover off my head. And I reached down and I picked it up and came up with my right fist and I decked him. And the fight was on. The Navy and the Marines both started fighting and stuff, and I was sitting down like that, and sometimes somebody hit me on the shoulder. I turned around, and just as I turned around, the beer bottle hit me right in the face.

Oh.

It was that sailor that I had knocked down. He got up and he took a nice swing and hit me across. I still have a little scar on my forehead where he hit me. Knocked me out. The rest of the guys on the table pulled me over and put me behind the bar, and then they went on fighting and stuff. And you were knocked out? Shore Patrol came by and closed the place down, locked the door. Poor little old Frank was still behind the bar. I stayed there and behind the bar out until about 2 in the morning, and I woke up. No one was around. I was still asleep. I tried the door, the door was locked. I couldn't get out that way. So I called the base, got a hold of one of the guys there that had a car, and they came over and picked me up, put a shoulder to the front door, got me up, put me in the car, and took me back to base.

I don't think much has changed between the Navy and Marine Corps since then.

Oh, you don't think so?

I don't think so. It's pretty much the same when I was in.

We didn't get along very well.

So what did you join the Marine Corps to do? Was there a specific job you had in mind that you wanted to do in the Marine Corps? Did you want to go

to war? I wanted to be an airplane mechanic.

An airplane mechanic?

Of course, I was building airplanes and stuff and stuff, and I had a lot of experience in that. And so I joined up and I asked for to be in the Air Force on it, the Marine Corps Air Force on it as a mechanic. It didn't work out. The closest I got to an airplane was when they took me into it and I saw them fly over. That was about it. Because they said, oh yeah, we'll put you in the Air Force. So that was good enough for me. Sergeant says that, that's true. But I never did get close to an airplane to do any work on them at all. Really, I'm still not that versed in it. I was a lot better fighting.

How did you find out you were good at fighting? You became a— you wound up becoming a Marine Raider very early on. How did they choose Marine Raiders?

The guy was— that was the head of, his name was A.H. Allen, and he turned out to be my senior drill instructor. He knew what I was. capable of doing when he was training us. So he put in his bid for me to be a Raider, and I was the 4th one, I think, the 4th one out of the whole company that was picked for Raider Battalion. And turned out that Jamie Roosevelt was my radar officer.

The president's son?

President's son. He was good. And the one thing he said that kind of impressed me, we were trained in boot camp to listen to our superiors. Of course, Sergeant Allen was one of the reasons that I remember because he kind of impressed us with his training methods too. So, but when Roosevelt came in contact with the 4th Marine Raiders, The first word he said to us, we were all hunched down on our butts, and he says, kill. That's what I want you to remember. Kill. We're not here to defend anything else but kill. And says, and I'll train you to make sure that you do that and you'll be able to do that. And he was true. Every time that he trained us in something, it was to kill them. It wasn't any— we didn't go for wounded or anything like that. And we, we We were taught to kill. And we did. And we used that method that he taught us.

Do you remember the method?

Very definitely so.

What was it?

Well, I could kill a guy with 2 blows. That's it. That's all I needed. I was able to break his nose. I was able to break his thorax. And I used that method that he taught us all the time. He was a good teacher. Of course, you know, I'm only at that time probably 16 or 17. You know, I go to church. Thou shalt not kill. But not the colonel. He was very adamant on it that That's what we were there for. And that's what kept me alive, going on some of the things that I was doing on it, and I had to do.

So— Do you remember the first man you had to kill? Yes. Who was it?

They were the Jap. Japanese, I guess, is what it is. I guess the Japs are a derogatory term, but they're still Japs to me. Mm-hmm. They were the enemy. That's it.

How did you do it?

I crossed up on his throat, used my hands, killed him with the sides of my hands. Like that. Across the throat. It only takes 2 times to do it and you become pretty, get pretty good at it. It's impressive when they They say, you're going to do that and you're going to be able to, you know, kill a person when you don't want to, but you're going to do it. Self-preservation. Anyway.

How old were you the first time you killed a

man? I think I was 17.

17 years old.

Yeah, it was from— the other guy was young as well, and he was, he was good, but not quite good enough.

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Our first place was on, uh, New Georgia.

Was New Georgia.

First combat there, and I didn't, I didn't kill anybody there. But boy, I sure learned a lot there though. Geez. Not only myself, but some of the other guys that had gone through a lot. And they got ambushed a couple of times, and I wasn't involved in it, but that was— What happened? On New Georgia, there's really jungle fighting and between tribes. Hmm. Different tribes. They had the natives against the natives. And the pride of the native people there on New Georgia, it was, they had black hair on the lower part of their skull, and on the top of it is about an inch and a half, 2 inches of red hair. That grows out. And so they, they were considered between Native groups to be the redhead of Native were a lot better. We found, and I didn't go through there, but I found out how they kill them. And what they did on it, they cut their heads off from the shoulders and placed them on little statues inside of our smokehouse. These guys that went through the smokehouse said, God, it stunk from the stuff. So that's how the headhunters used the— as I say, they were probably scared, number one.

Number two, I couldn't see. Them cutting the heads off and all that. They were headhunters.

What were you guys doing in New Georgia?

I wanted a tattoo myself. I wanted it on my upper right arm. And I wanted to get the Marine emblem on it, and they— it was against the rules, regulations, that we were not, and they would repeat, not to have any tattoos on our body at all, because the Japanese favorite thing was to skin that tattoo off of your Arm, shoulder, or wherever it was on it, and skin it and use them for lampshades.

They would cut off the tattoos.

I sure as hell didn't want my skin on one of those shades, so I adhered to the rules of no tattoos. Never did get a tattoo.

Did you take fire coming ashore?

No.

In New Georgia?

No, not on New Georgia. Uh-uh. No, we came in free and clear. No fire at all. There's a few elements in our group. I was one of the guys that didn't, and one of the reasons I didn't get any Fire at that time, I think, was because we were kind of protected in a way. It was the first time that they had the boys and the aircraft. That's not it, not the aircraft.

Tanks?

Yes. Boys, rifle, boys, and a tank. rifle on it, .55 caliber. He laid down covering fire for those in front of him. And we didn't have any fire at all coming in because we were— they wanted it. They being the Marine Corps wanted to know more about the anti-tank rifle. Okay. We were the first ones to put the anti-tank rifle in combat, and they wanted to see what we could do. And we had 5 guys in my squad on it, myself and 4 more. So I, I, I'm one of the— First ones. first Marines that had an anti-tank rifle. Wow. It was .55 caliber. And as I say, it was very good, but it was real heavy and it took 2 other guys to carry the ammunition for it. I had The opportunity to fire, fired in combat, but I didn't hit anything because, you know, there were no, we had no tanks there.

Could you see what you were firing at in the jungle?

Yeah.

You could?

You could see that, and we knew what it was, and we knew the vulnerable places to fire.

What were you firing at?

We were firing at the first track. And he hit that track, hit that track, and that knocked it off the, whatever it's called.

Tank?

Out of the tank. All right.

What were you doing at Guadalcanal?

Guadalcanal? We were first, On the way to Guadalcanal, we were instructed that we were there for safety to the troops that were fighting there. So they didn't have any— they didn't have to stand guard or anything like that after They were attacked, or after they attacked Henderson Field. And I think our orders read to stand guard on Henderson Field.

Do you remember clearing enemy positions and hunting holdouts with Major James Roosevelt?

Uh, well, there's one there. It held out for a long time, a couple of years I'd say it was. But anyway, we had some that were in coconut trees, and then we got a Japanese called 2 squads of Marines going through the coconut grove, and they didn't have a good scout. Scouts missed the ones that were in the depths that were in coconut trees, and they ran into a good group of them. How many of them? a good number of kids that were killed on that task force. Kids? They all started firing at one time, and our chaplain would come over there and he wanted to give those guys that were caught In this trap, I guess, that the Japanese had set on them. And anyway, I heard all of this commotion, so I told my squad that was still there on landing, told them to hang in there and stay hidden. Fire when you need to and whatever you need. I'm going to see what all that firing is. So I went down the road a little bit further and I came in contact with some Marines that were, had gotten and really running away from that particular trap that the Japs had set up.

And the chaplain got a hold of me and he said, turn these guys over. And so I can read the rights, burial rites or whatever they call it on it. So I did. I turned several of them over. And what did you see? And see their faces. Anyway, we— one of the guys I recognized. I turned him over and he was dead. And that shook me up quite a lot. I'm sorry to hear that. But the chaplain, Redmond, I think he was called, he turned, he read the rites to them. And I couldn't, I couldn't take any more of that. That was too close to home. So I stopped. And you were a chaplain? And of course he stopped even running. I guess there's something in their creed that they can't, but you have to see their face to give them the rights. I don't know. But anyway, we, that's what happened there. And the next day we went out and our group in Guadalcanal, and we got caught in the same position, same thing. We had 2 guys that were killed out of the— out of our 21st Marines. That was a— that was a That was hard to take.

And that's really the first time I'd seen dead guys that were, that I knew.

They were your friends?

Yes. Well, not close friends, but they were known to me. We were friends. cards, stuff like that together. But he's— they are good at camouflage. The Japanese are excellent in that particular field. In fact, the commander of the Of all 4 raiders made that recommendation to the warlords or whoever it is that one of the things that we had that the Marines had to be taught and boot camped on how to camouflage yourself. Better, because that was— then come to think of it, you know, I don't think I ever got any kind of a training on camouflage. It was always something physical that we had to do ourselves on it. But they were good at it, real good at it.

Let's go back to Guam. Do you remember, do you want to talk about the first time you landed on the beach in Guam?

Yes.

What was that like?

I was scared.

Why were you scared?

I was scared, honest, because we had, we had, they were shooting at us. And I didn't get wounded there. And it was the next day after that first landing on it. But I was scared, really, because when you look at those people and then you start thinking, you know, this is what they are released from. All their tyranny that they've had before on it. That was— later on, they had a lot of caves up against the area that we landed, and the Navy was Firing at those caves that were in there. That was one of the things that on my second trip to Guam, I was able to go over there and see and up close where the Navy had really pelted the The landing area where we had landed. That was good. We stood in— I was able to, on my second trip there, I was able to go in there and actually see the entrance of those particular caves on it. We had a lot of Japs, saw a lot of Japs there when the tanks, Japanese tanks came down the hill from Aton. And just as the tank battalion was landing, and so they were not able to, our troops were Our tanks were not able to get up there fast enough because the Japs were coming down and the Japs were following the tanks right behind them.

And just as they got down toward where we were bivouacked, they jumped out from behind the tanks and came and attacked us just where we were bivouacked. And you were in the middle of the night. Some of them ran past us, went on further down to the headquarters company and tanks that were coming in. And then some of them stayed there and fight, fight us guys. We had just gotten out of the foxholes. And I started fighting them as they came down.

There was 400 of them, plus.

Yes, a lot of them. And I got one who was a little feisty on it, guy, and got a hold of him, and boy, I wish I hadn't though. Anyway, he started charging me, and then I I jumped out of the way of his charge the first time. The second time on it, then I wasn't fast enough and I stepped backwards. When we dug our foxholes on it, we dug them and piled the dirt up around on the outside of it like a berm. on it. And as I was going backwards for the last trip, I fell. Just as I fell, the Jap lunged and he stuck me in the stomach with his bayonet. And I fell down backwards on it. And my— You were shot in the stomach? Neighbor next to me on it, I don't know, he either shot him or whatever, and the jet fell down on top of me while I was in the foxhole. He fell down on top of me. As he fell down, my hand As I fell down, my hand went out and I hit my gung-ho knife that was, that I had been using to dig into the dirt and recognized it and I pulled it.

My hand hit that. I pulled it out and on my And swap it, and I cut his head, his throat, and he started bleeding all over me and all over the place on it. And he was a, he was a little heavy. I couldn't move him. So I had this— What? Hole in my stomach, and that was beginning to get sore.

Where did the hole in your stomach come from? Did he stab you?

Yes, he stabbed me with his bayonet.

And you kept firing?

In the top part of my stomach like that. And as he went down, I turned evidently, and it turned, the blade turned. And it went in on a slant. And it hurt. So he just stayed there on there. He, of course, died and laid on top of me. We got And I guess the guy that shot him yelled something out. I don't know what it was. It must have been, I got him for you, Wright, or something like that.

He saved you.

Yeah. Yeah, he did. He really did. He either shot him or stabbed him or something. I don't know what it was, what it was, but yeah. I cut his head off. I didn't cut it off. I just swiped it across him. But anyway, it was enough to bleed him. So he bled, bled. And then, then that evening, that night, whatever it was, And kept bleeding. Next morning, they tried to count all the people that were wounded and things like me. Finally, they saw me then, and I was yelling and hollering. And you were bleeding. Get that bastard off of my stomach. And they pulled him off and he was dead. Then they got me out and saw what it was on it like that. It really wasn't that deep on it because it was, as I said, I turned just as I fell on it. And he— but it was, it was, I was more scared than, than, than I was hurt. They called, they pulled me out, and of course I had all kinds of blood on me, my blood and his blood. And you were bleeding? And so I went up there and I yelled over there for the corpsman to come up.

The corpsman came over and he cleaned me up to see that it wasn't a real deep cut. And so he put a big piece of tape on it and pulled it together. That's how I, I stayed. And that's why I didn't go in any further than that aid station there. There were guys that were a lot worse than me.

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All right, Frank. We're getting into— you wanted to talk about your second trip to Guam.

Yes. The governor of Guam had invited me to come to them on a reunion that they had. They wanted me to be the grand marshal of the parade that they were having. And I was able to see Some of the people that were in— that we released from prison.

This is after the war?

This is afterwards. This is way afterwards.

How did it feel being back there?

Oh, it was good. Really good. I was able to retrace the landing. area, retraced the steps that I had taken on Guam the first time, and it meant a lot to me. Later that evening, I was able to go to the colonel's I think it was a colonel. House for snacks and stuff. And we walked out to the, to the edge of the hill that we had climbed the first time on. We walked out and I was able to look over the At the hill that we climbed up on and we dug our first foxhole there, I was able to stand on the same spot that I was able to.

It looked the same? Did it look the same?

No.

Looks different now.

Green, had more green to it and stuff, you know, and stuff, but it was there. And it was just so real seeing those areas that we came in on. Then when we got up there before, this is before Before. And we released the prisoners on it. And the prisoners would come out like that and shake our hands. And now, if you want to see what freedom looks like, you look into the eyes of those who survived it. And they were treated so horribly. But the look in their eyes on it when they hug you and pull away from you, look down into the, especially on the little fellows. And you see their eyes, and it reflects hope, freedom from tyranny, and everything like that. They had furnished us a hotel. Hilton Hotel. We were on the 12th floor. And Marvin and our photographer was there. They came over to our room and they woke me up. He says, Frank, I want you to see this. So Marvin pulled me out on the patio deck out there and see the sunrise. And see the sunrise on there, just— It's beautiful. They were just out of this world on them.

And it started making me talk and say what was in my heart. And? So I gave her a little speech there. I was standing in my shorts. They were still filming me. But I looked over the side and there's 2 dogs down on the bottom of the— they were just standing there, just sitting there on their haunches. Oh, my God. Looking up toward me, and and I was talking, and I could see this beautiful sunrise and a flock of butterflies. Came up from underneath the balcony where I was standing and started coming up as a, as a flock, up right in front of me.

And— What do you think that was?

Just like they were standing there listening to me. I said, you can't photograph that feeling, but it was so real. And seeing those butterflies as a group, they flew up. Right in front of us, and he got it on film, I think. And it just disappeared. And there's down below, there was two dogs howled, and I just I. I just got carried away on it. It

was emotional.

Yeah, oh God, it was. Then later on, we're in the parade. I was leading the parade and the governor came down to the parade and She stopped the parade, came over and shook hands with me and thanked me for coming over and all that. And the thing of butterflies flew right in front of me and her and flew there and then they disappeared. Wow. And she said her thing. She presented me with a t-shirt. And she called me Liberator Frank. And they shook hands with me and— That's great. Well, we're going to have another meeting later on. But to go back, go back into the past and seeing all those people that were, had been in prison and the nicest of these is that the Grameenians showed up. Showed. Especially the Chamorros. They're great people. They, the Chamorros used to get over us and they'd bring a war canoe over and take a squad of us back in the back jungle, way back there. That's when we saw those There was places where they had headhunters and stuff. And then we'd get a little bit further on, deeper and deeper in that. And we'd come across places that they could smell the food that the Japs were building, that the Japs had going back in there, further back on it.

And they just pulled it in, let the guys out. We all went out in there looking for those people that were, that were the Japs that were cooking that meat or whatever it was that they were cooking on it. The Chamorros could smell it more so than we.

You went looking for them?

Yeah, we were really looking for those holdouts that were back there in the back. And we could hear them more so when they would yell at each other that we were coming or something.

Did you find them?

We found a lot of Japanese that had committed harakiri.

What is harakiri?

What do they call it? Self-destruct, I think they call it, on them.

With the sword?

And they have a ritual that they go through to stick a dagger in your stomach and to, uh, they can't face it. They can't face defeat. They can't face what we were doing. It's, uh—

Have you seen

them?

Yes.

Do it? No, no, not as— not— I didn't see what the results were.

You saw it afterwards.

Yeah, of course. But when we come through there, we see a lot of the, especially the officers on it, their hands would be still clutched to their sword. And that's if some officer hadn't gone by there first and and taken the dagger out and used it for a souvenir. And they usually, the officers usually got the better part of it. But I wanted to, I wanted to let the audience know that freedom is something other than just plain words. You look at their eyes and you see it. Then you know what freedom is and what it looks like.

Have you ever heard the, the saying, Freedom, those who fought for it, has a flavor the protected will never know.

That's a good saying. I never heard it before, but that's a good saying.

Do you remember Iwo Jima?

Yeah. We trained, I think it was 8 months. From the time that we were through with Guam, first it was, we got a little flak and stuff and bombs and different kind of ammunition thrown at us at our landing that we had not been before, and we didn't face it. Now, now this is entirely different. The landing was different. Everything was different. The ground cover was, you couldn't walk on it hardly because it was full of more like little the rocks, small rocks, and we headed for a place that we could stand and hide and out of sight from the guys that were on lookouts. This little building up on the right had a lot of cans and stuff like that, and I told the new recruits, I had 2 new recruits, One was a BAR man, the other one was a scout, and they joined my group. I told the guys, I said, when you get off, I says, get off on the left side. That building up there is a spotter, and he's got a gun on there, and he can shoot you. Use the LST or the Higgins boat, whichever one you're on.

Use it as protection. Get it off on the other side. And 2 of the guys, they got scared. The first thing they did, they jumped up on the right-hand side and they got shot. Oh, my God. Both of them got shot in the legs. Thank goodness we had our medical people.

They were able to get them?

They would jump off also and bandage them up at that time and tell them to wait here and get undercover. They stayed there and evidently they did survive because I didn't see them anymore, but they did survive. We were there, we started moving all those rocks and boulders, really.

Where did you go after you landed on the beach?

Had a good spot for it, but I got hit in the head with something. I don't know if it was a shell or what, but I got knocked out. I heard a lot of yelling and hollering and whooping and stuff like that, and that woke me up. What was that? Came out of my stupor, I guess. And that was on the 23rd of February. That's when they raised the flag up on Iwo Jima. I got up in time to see it. The second flag, I didn't see the first flag. The first flag was raised. Second flag.

You were able to see

it. We thought that the war was over. They— we won, the flag went up, we won, all that. The Japs did the same thing. They thought that they had won. And they were whooping and hollering because that was their troops up there on the hill. The 28th Marines were up on a hill. They're the ones that actually did the raising, the 28th of the 5th Marines. And then we got ready to go. As we were going, then further on up the ridge, Well, then the Japs realized that it was our troops up on the hill that were raising the flag, not them. And so they all started running back into their caves and into their places that they had been hiding before. And We, of course, followed as much as we could. There's several people went off on their own with a flamethrower.

Did you ever go off on your own?

No, no, no. I always followed my scout. My scout's And so I gave him a person, a job, then he did it. And so, and I knew that he would have done it. So I didn't, my BA arm was the same way on it. And you had a lot of people that you could rely on. I gave him a job to do. He did it and he did it right. He was the best BAR man, I think, in the 21st Marines. My opinion.

When you were knocked unconscious, when you got knocked out.

Yes.

Did you take another helmet?

That was something. I don't know what it was, if it was Around, or if it was a piece of rock boulder or something like that, because they were throwing different type of ammo at us at that time when we were all in a big hole, big kind of hole, I guess you would be called. And

did you lose your helmet?

Yes.

You did?

Yeah, knocked my helmet off, naturally. But that was— I got a helmet and I had—

Did you get a new helmet?

Yeah, from the— oh, it was Equipment all over the place, dead guys and stuff. So I don't know what it was or whose it was or anything. So

you just picked one up?

Yeah, I just picked it up and fit. That's where it stayed. I didn't, didn't need it at any other time on it too. So, but, uh, but I fought with my hands a lot.

You fought with your hands? Yeah. In Iwo Jima specifically?

Yeah, same thing.

It was that close?

It's really a habit. You get into the point, it's just a habit to do. Like some guys get— lead with your left or whatever, you know. It's a habit to get into when you're doing something that works the first time you try it again. And I didn't get a chance to do that on Able.

How close were you?

Well, we were the 5th, I think, the 5th time

5 times.

Yeah, I think it was the 5th time going up there. And we'd go up there and we'd fight like that, and then the order would be to retreat. So we'd retreat, go down, go back down there, and that would be on the 3rd, the 2nd, 2nd of March. And, uh, that's where—

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Did you get shot in Iwo Jima?

Yeah.

Where?

I got, I got machine gunned across my chest. The guy that shot me, he, he ran back into his pillbox, got a hold of a Nambu .25, .25 caliber, and just as I was coming over the hill, I had 2 corpsmen behind me, and we were carrying ammo, extra ammo for the BAR men. And just as I came over the hill, then the guy that ran into the pillbox, he grabbed it and opened fire. He fired the first round across my chest. The first 2 rounds went together. Oh, my goodness. On it and went through my upper right-hand side chest, went through, cracked my paver— clavicle, crossed my lungs. It came out on my left side, left a big hole in my left side as it As the rounds went through on it. And as it came out, I, I had raised my arm up to fire, and this is what I did. Then the rounds went— both rounds went through the muscle of my left arm and took all the muscle out of my left arm and Went someplace. And then I went down, and as I went down, the 2 corpsmen behind me had grabbed a hold of my pack straps, and they pulled me back, and then one of them pulled me down into a shell hole right below where I had just come from.

Oh, my goodness. I was there for, oh, not too long, but then about that time, well then, here comes McCoy, who was my BAR man. And he had a hand grenade that had gone off in his back, toward his back, and the hand grenade threw out a lot of shells on him. They ricocheted off of his back end, and he had, God, I don't know, 100 or so maybe from all these—

Wounds.

Missiles that came from that hand grenade into his back end.

The shrapnel.

He was shrapnel type. And he came, and so they told him and guided him down into the shell hole where I was. And while we were in there, the Japs were up on top of the hill dropping off hand grenades and stuff like that into the shell hole on us. About that time he was coming down. He said, he said, Wright, you know, this is— I could get hurt down here. Can you walk? I said, yes, I can walk, but I have to have someone hold on to me. And he said, well, let's walk. No, we'll go back to the aid station, honey, because I've got to A whole bunch of holes in my back. So I grabbed hold of one of his arms and we started back, walking back, and we went going back to the 8th, the 3rd Division aid station, which was just on the other side of Airfield Number 2. We saw, about that time, we saw an airplane coming down over there, right above us. And boy, that thing is big. It didn't land, but it was big. And so they, it went on to another field, which was number 1 field.

Number 1 field. We had passed number 2 already. We did that on a quarry across the airfield number 2. I led, I didn't, me and my squad led the 21st Marines across airfield number 2 until we came to the Sulfur pits. The sulfur pits are on the west side of Airfield Number 2, and that's where we got into a little trouble with a lot of pillboxes there, just on the other side, because we had been chasing them Finally caught up with them in there. We had one hell of a big fight there. Finally, we cleaned them out.

How did you clean them out?

All of them out. We cleaned all of the Japs out of the shelter pits. The Japs had kidnapped from different islands that they had been there, and they had kidnapped a lot of younger boys, younger men, to dig the sulfur pits. on it because that was Iwo Jima's main supplier of sulfur to Tokyo. And we chased them out and they went, and on those that we didn't kill, they went over to Hill 220. What was that? 7, which was the Moriyama, called Moriyama Village, and chased them over to there. And they were using Moriyama Airfield 2, 26 to 27. for the radio station, which was Iwo Jima's radio station, which was shown 228, I think it was. And the radio station would be broadcasting what was going on, but we were doing the spotting. What was the name of the radio station? that they had been chased over there and they were spotters for the other caves that were on the island. So this general that had confiscated us and told us to follow him and his orders to the Major General's orders were to clear, clear kill. That meant everything, everything, every living thing would be, in our language, were to be killed.

So that's what we did. There's only one way of doing it, to clear cut, as we called it. What was the mission? Was to go down the path along the— where the Japanese had made a path all the way down from top to bottom. Was to run down and throw hand grenades into the windows and kill everything that was in there. And what happened? And that's what we did. Boys, girls, women, they all went. God, that was terrible. But we cleared them all out of there. We went back up to the, up through the area that we had just tossed our hand grenades into and see what we had done and if there's any live ones in there yet. If they were, we'd shoot them. Henry got in there and got It was bad. So the women were in there. They killed them. Boys, they were killed. But it was a clear-cut. That was our orders. Get rid of them. So we did. And we got up to the top on it like that. And then what happened? Then we had the 228 to do the same thing too, over, just kind of like a neighbor area.

And we had to take them the same way. My BAR man went inside with his BAR gun. P-A-R. P-A-R. And he liberated, he liquidated everything that was alive and then got rid of all the radios that were on the shelves and stuff, which was a lot on it. They were using a Low-powered radios to broadcast what those kids and women had seen on the airfield and stuff.

How did you leave Iwo Jima?

It was terrible. Anyway, we cleaned those out. And it cleaned just as we were going off of the hill before we got into the 382, I think it was, was when I got shot. Anyway, he, we went through that same way. And all the women that were killed and stuff. And I think, my own opinion on it, Japanese used women as, they called them comfort girls. I think after we took 2 of those hills, I think our officers, head officers, Took them as comfort girls too. That's the reason that— that's one of the reasons, put it that way, that we had to do what they call clear-cut. They wanted them dead as well. And they did. That's not— and that wasn't a good thing. But later on in life, which is the Japanese have apologized for kidnapping all the guys and They have apologized for getting all those boys and stuff, kidnapping them and the women, but they have not— I repeat, they have not apologized. They have not apologized? For kidnapping the women to use as comfort girls. That's still on the docket. They've apologized now for just the boys and the men that they used for spies or reports or whatever you want to call it, plus the other things.

But I think that's one of the reasons that we were ordered to kill them all. Clear-cut. On one of them, we found Hey. As he was going through, my BAR man found one of the guys. Somebody was trying to crawl out of one of the caves on the bottom of the caves. So he just, he just Shot off about 4 or 5 rounds at them and finally found out that that was a guy and his girlfriend were digging themselves out of the bottom of one of those caves. And he shot them. What was your reaction? You know, that happens all the time. And I'm very opposed to it. Very opposed to it. And I was quieted down once. I was given an interview or a paper on Guam happenings. No, pardon me, that one. A regime was happening when one of the One of the things that we were asked to do when we went back to Iwo Jima, we were asked to describe what we had done. And at the time, it was still, I was still emotional. Tied to that second period of time, that time when I was— and I broke down and started crying.

And it— and I told that asshole, I'm that person that— He said, well, I want to know, how were you shot? I said, well, hell, man. I said, how is anybody shot? I said, I want to tell you what, how I got shot and why. And he wouldn't let me. He kept, kept buzzing me on it and buzzing me on it. Finally, I just couldn't take it any longer. I started busting out in tears, crying. What was your name? Marvin was a— he was away, but he was close by. He started to come over and get me, just pull me away from that newspaper guy. And— Right. I just couldn't help it. So he was— It was good he couldn't. He got— finally got a hold of me. They pulled me away and wouldn't let me talk. They wouldn't let me explain why.

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After I got shot, they pulled me over to— he and I, he and my BAR man walked back to the aid station. We got back to the aid station like that, and then I went, I He and I were together and we stayed together until finally they were looking for all the ambulatory, which he was ambulatory on, and I was too, but of course that, but I couldn't do it without help. So he took off and he went back on board hospital ship. And you stayed on? And I went back on a hospital ship. And I got on, they laid, they put me on a gurney and put me over to the hospital ship. I got laid down on the hospital ship. Yeah. Waiting for my time to go into the surgery room. And there's 2 doctors in the surgery room. I got in, they looked at my arm and that was really the only thing that was showing too much was my arm because it had all this, all the muscle was gone. It was all shot out. And so one doctor said, well, we're going to have to take it off and hope he can use it better with the Artificial arm, and that woke me up.

So he started grabbing for the saw to cut my arm off. About that time, I woke up real good, and I. I gave him a right cut through his throat. I was going to kill him. And he jumped back and I hit him and knocked him across the room, knocked over the surgical tray. About that time, 2 guards came in. They got a hold of me on both sides and they started notching. I kept yelling, you're not going to cut it, you're not going to cut it. So finally he said, that's all right, Sergeant, Corporal, or whatever it was at that time. And he says, we won't cut your arm off. Oh, thank God. And so that just all calmed me down a little bit. And so I thought it was pretty good that way. And I, they bandaged and rested my chest up and I had Still had my clavicle that was still bleeding, I guess. Anyway, put me back on the gurney and put me back down with the guys. Well, that takes care of that. About that time, I looked at my tag. See, whenever you get wounded or something like that and a corpsman takes care of you, he puts down what he did.

You know, you gave them a shot of morphine or 2 or whatever it was and bandaged it up and all that. And then that way, the next person that sees you, they know, they can just look at that and see what it is and what's happened and what they did so you don't get over Overmedicated. So I looked at it and medicated. I looked at my tag and I thought I was going to see GSWs, gunshot wound, right chest and left chest, but all it said was combat fatigue. That was it. I said, well, hell, that shouldn't be, you know. Anyway, 4 other doctors, 4 other hospitals. They put me back on a hospital ship and I went back over to Saipan. I went to— What hospital? another place, and then finally went over to Honolulu on an Army doctor. But all they would do, they'd take me off my gurney and put me on the deck, and then they'd look at my card. This is Combat fatigue. Well, move him over there with the other nuts. And they picked me up, put me over there with them. Now there were 4 different, 4 other different hospitals that didn't ask me or anything.

They just put me over there. Look at the card and that's what it said, combat fatigue. So they put me in the wrong ward. I got into the ward, the wrong ward, long ward, 4 or 5 times. How long were you there? And finally they gave me into the nut ward, as they called it. And the nightlight went on because it was getting dark by that time. And I thought, I thought I had been— I had peed in bed or something because I was getting laying there. It was getting kind of warm and liquidy. So I yelled for the night nurse. She came over, pulled the covers back, and then— What did she say? And she put the covers back on top of me and went in there and got a doctor and came back. And he had said previously that he was going to perform a tap because he could, with a stethoscope, he could hear the, the Water or whatever in my chest. So he wanted to perform a tap. That tap meant that he had to stick— after I asked one of the nurses what it was, and he said he'd stick a needle in your back or your front.

He's going to chest and drain all the liquid out of your chest. So I said, well, that would be pretty good. I thought that it would hurt like hell. Anyway, they came over and they pulled the covers off of me and I was laying there in blood. I was bleeding to death. How did you know you were bleeding to death? I wasn't laying in water or urine. My chest had leaned out and I was laying there in blood from this shot in the chest, in my clavicle or wherever it was. What did you do? Lungs or whatever. And they put something in there and he cleaned it off, cleaned it out. He said, well, we won't perform a tap on it. So he didn't. But no one has checked on it since then. I have a pain stuck to my chest since I left Iwo Jima. I have fluid— I have blood, I should say, in my stool. And I keep trying to tell them that anything but blood, check it. No one would listen to me. They still haven't listened to me. I was in 2 weeks ago and they all, they said, oh, you have, you have Blood in your stool.

I says, damn it, look at my chest. Well, that's another department. So I'm still sitting there with— I have to wear a diaper because of that. I still got blood in my stool. I said, why don't they check my chest? All right. So that's where I'm sitting now. I still got, as far as this thing, and of course, the breakdown I had in, and before I went in for the final on, there's another thing too.

Frank, want a drink?

Thank you.

Just take a drink. Cheers. Do you have a message for young Marines today?

I— the last time I talked to the Young Marines. I was with, well, one time I was—

Do you—

I was in the airfield office and waiting to go aboard a plane. And there's a lot of young kids that came over. And we were all standing in the line out there. Their commander was taking them to that place, and I told them, I says, one thing remember, always do what your DI or your trainer is doing. Yes, sir. They've been there, they've done that. Don't put that aside, but remember, remember what your DI says on it. I did that for one reason, because I was a drill instructor for 6 months of my life. I was a drill instructor for 6 months of my life. But for your tour, and I wanted them to know that that's what I told my kids. That's what their DI usually tells them. Remember what they said, honey. They train you. They've been there. They know how to handle themselves. Listen to them. Tell that to all of them, everyone that I've seen so far.

What message do you have for Marines that are seeking help?

That are what?

Looking for help.

Well, I'll tell you, uh, there again, listen to the patient. Patient knows his body. I knew something was wrong, but of course I can't tell them that. And it's hard. And it's hard when you're— or when you're trying to keep your cool and then— and Tell the doctor or officer he's wrong. You just don't do that in the Marine Corps.

I have a quote here from you.

What?

It says, if you need help, seek it out.

Oh, yeah. God, yeah. Don't take it yourself, son. Seek help. Ask someone. Make a difference who it is, but tell someone and let them know what you feel and how you feel. They can tell. Some of them can tell. But tell somebody. Don't do it yourself. God gave you a good body and he's going to keep it for you.

Frank, I just want to say it was an honor to interview you and thank you for your service. Seriously, it was, it was my honor. Thank you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you. You've got a rare handshake.

God bless.

Move on.

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