Oral History Interview with Keifer Marshall, January 13, 2009 Page: 4
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So the next morning, we all got up and got ready to go. Captain Obanyan was lying in the
bottom of his foxhole and couldn't move. His eyes opened, just had complete combat fatigue.
So they had to take him off and I think he got the Navy cross for his, what he had done that day.
But then we were still trying to get rid of that Cushman's pocket is what Colonel Cushman was
our battalion command, and he ended up being a Commandant in the Marine Corps later on I
think. Well we finally got the thing secured after 20 some odd days, and then we had a lot of
mopping up to do. We were the last troops to leave the island and turn it over to the Army, by
the 9th Marines were the last ones off of there. So it was an experience you'll never forget and
you wouldn't take anything for it, but sure hate to go through it again. And my wife knows that
I've always been concerned about everybody in Vietnam and Iraq and everything, what they're
going through over there. The thing, the Falusia that upset me so much was that Marines were
ready to go and they kept 'em for two months or six weeks?
Yeah, they initially were gonna invade, then they pulled them back, and then _ months later.
Keifer Marshall: Pulled 'em back, yeah, and it's just horrible.
That was politics.
Keifer Marshall: Yeah, and it, that's not the way it ought to be run.
Sure.
Keifer Marshall: But Marine Corps is a great outfit and we had had very little training when
those of us that were in that replacement rep went in there, but we knew how to use a rifle and
use hand grenades. In hand to hand combat, that's all you need to know really. And we had first
time I had ever experienced rockets. We'd always been on artillery, you know, and that island,
the ships around it were everywhere, all kinds of ships with all kinds of weapons, and they just
bombed it, bombed it, bombed it. The Air Force bombed it for 80 some odd days. But the
Japanese were all underground.
Yeah, the catacombs and caves -
Keifer Marshall: That's right, the caves. And you had to dig 'em out, and there at the end we
were trying to get 'em to surrender and none of 'em would surrender. I've got great admiration
for the Japanese Army because they were dedicated and they knew at the end they didn't havemuch chance, but they never quit and -
Where were you when the infamous flag was raised? Could you see that?
Keifer Marshall: I could see it and it was a great experience. Every guy got out of what they
were doing and looked at it, all the ships blew their horns, their whistles, and it was euphoric.
But that was just, it was just beginning at that time. And it really got, but that was about the
fourth day I think, the flag went up.
Yeah, three of the six flag raisers died.
Keifer Marshall: That's right, before they could get the thing completed. But it was, that was a
great, that was a great photograph for the war boy drive that year, it really, it raised a lot of4
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Marshall, Keifer. Oral History Interview with Keifer Marshall, January 13, 2009, text, January 13, 2009; Fredericksburg, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1606772/m1/4/?q=%22~1%22~1&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.