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the headquarters company. I got that in Okinawa. We were one of the assault companies on Okinawa
as well. So I took headquarters company ashore. And then during the course of the battle to be,
Company Commander, A Company, Fifth Marines was wounded very severely. He was a real fine
officer. Julian Dusenbury. So all the time I was kind of complaining to the battalion Commander, "I want
to get back in the Rifle Company. I don't want this type of stuff." So he says, "Okay, now you are
bitching and moaning and you wanna get yourself back in the Rifle Company? Now's your chance." He
said, "You take A Company." So I got A Company. I had it through the rest of Okinawa. And then when
Okinawa was over and we were staging for Japan. And I saw exactly where I was going to take A
Company in Japan. Which was on the main island of Japan, right in Tokyo Bay area. And I knew there
were six Marine divisions plus about twice as many Army guys which would be a huge operation. And
until the Battle of Mazzola, I had a brother in the Navy. And he was the Chief Ship Fitter on an LST. So
we managed to get together a couple of times. I said to him, "This is the last time we're gonna see each
other." You feel like you start out real high, chips stacked in a poker game and you see them go down,
down, down. Not as many old friends and familiar faces around anymore. So I thought this just can't
continue. I just can't have this kind of luck. But anyway, not too long after that the atomic bomb was
dropped.
But now, on Okinawa, which we landed in the assault waves. We landed, our right flank was running
right side of the Bishi Yellow River. The Seventh Army Division was on the other side. And that was the
Yellow River. Now the Sixth Marine Division was to our left. Now they wheeled to their left and they
took the northern part of the island. We went right across the island. And we secured that. With
relative ease we hardly had a handful of casualties in the whole division I guess. Meanwhile the Army
was down in the south part of Okinawa. And I think the Army had the 7th Army Division, the 77th Army
Division and the 96th or the 27th. No, the 96th and the 27th had half of that southern sector. The
others two Army divisions had the other sector. 27th and 96th were a little bit older. So we, the 6th
Marines division had already secured the northern end. First rank divisions had crossed and taken the
central part. We relieved the two Army divisions. So the company that I had was A Company. That was
the company that I took over. We took Shuri Castle. Captain Dusenbury was Company Commander at
that time. I came as his Executive Officer. He didn't have the flag to put up, but he had the confederate
flag in his pack. He said, "Well we don't have the national colors, but this will have to do!" So we raised
the confederate flag. Well we got in a little problem over that because we really wanted the Army
sector to take the castle. They were supposed to take it. But they weren't, for one reason or another, I
guess there was a reason, they were held up. In the meantime we were getting a lot, drawing a lot of
fire from there. And we weren't going to sit there and take that. So we went over in the Army division.
We had intruded in their area and we took it. And after we took it they were quite disturbed about it.
But that was for somebody else to worry about. We took it. So then somebody complained about us
raising the stars and bars. So General del Valle said, "They're the ones that took it. They can raise any
damn thing they want." So that put an end to that. So from there we fought through Wana Draw, Shuri
Castle. And we went over the unapproved line. But then, we were taking a lot of casualties on Okinawa.
We took, really during the course of the battle, we took more casualties than we took in Pelelui but that
was over the course of about three months. It wasn't very concentrated. Whereas in Pelelui we took a
lot of casualties in such a short time there. Anyway, we went on my campaign called it, the designation
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