Before the ships came to take them away, those men who were left in the Fifth Division went to their cemetery to attend memorial services for those who lay buried there. There were many speeches, but the man who spoke most eloquently was a Jewish chaplain from New York City, Lieutenant Roland B. Gittelsohn. These were his words:
This is the grimmest, and surely the holiest, task we have faced since D-day. Here before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends. Men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us, joked with us, trained with us. Men who were on the same ships with us, and went over the side with us as we prepared to hit the beaches of this island. Men who fought with us and feared with us. Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the man who could have discovered the cure for cancer. Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath a Jewish Star of David, there may rest now a man who was destined to be a great prophet to find the way, perhaps, for all to live in plenty, with poverty and hardship for none. Now they lie silently in this sacred soil, and we gather to consecrate this earth to their, memory.
It is not easy to do so. Some of us have buried our closest friends here. We saw these men killed before our very eyes. Any one of us might have died in their places; Indeed, some of us are alive and breathing at this very moment only because the men who lie here beneath us had the courage and the strength to give their lives, for ours. To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy. Of them too it can be said with utter truth: The world will little note nor long remember what we say here. It can never forget what they did here.
No, our power of speech can add nothing more to what these men and the other dead of our Division have already done. All that we can even hope to do is follow their example. To show the same selfless courage in peace that they did in war. To swear that by the grace of God and the stubborn strength and power of human will, their sons and ours shall never suffer these pains again. These men have done their job well. They have paid the ghastly price for freedom. If that freedom be once again lost, as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame will be ours, not theirs. So it is we the living who are to be dedicated and consecrated.
We dedicate ourselves, first, to live together in peace the way we fought and are buried in this war. Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores.
Here lie officers and men, Negroes and whites, rich and poor together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many men from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination, no prejudices, no hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest Democracy.
Any man among us the living who fails to understand that will thereby betray those who lie here dead. Whoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and of the bloody sacrifice it commemorates an empty, hollow mockery.
To this, then, as our solemn, sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: to the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of white men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the Democracy for which all of them here have paid the price.
To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory of those who sleep beneath these white crosses and stars. We shall not foolishly suppose, as did the last generation of Americas fighting men, that victory on the battlefield will automatically guarantee the triumph of Democracy at home.. This war, with all its frightful heartache and suffering, is but the beginning of our generations struggle for Democracy. When the last battle has been won, there will be those at home, as there were the last time, who will want us to turn our backs in selfish isolation on the rest of organized humanity, and thus to sabotage the very peace for which we fight. We promise you who lie here: We will not do that! We will join hands with Britain, China, Russia, in peace, even as we have in war, to build the kind of peace for which you died.
When the last shot has been fired, there will still be those whose eyes are turned backward, not forward, who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty and wealth in which the seeds of another war can breed. We promise you, our departed comrades: This too we will not permit. This war has been fought by the common man; its fruits of peace must be enjoyed by the common man. We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons, the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers, will inherit from your death the right to a living that is decent and secure.
When the final cross has been placed in the last cemetery, once again there will be those to whom profit is more important than peace, who will insist with the voice of sweet reasonableness and appeasement that it is better to trade with the enemies of mankind than, by crushing them, to lose their profit. To you who sleep here silently, we give you our promise: We will not listen! We will not forget that some of you were burnt with oil that came from American wells, that many of you were killed by shells fashioned from American steel; we promise that when once again men seek profit at your expense, we shall remember how you looked when we placed you reverently, lovingly, in the ground.
Thus do we memorialize those who, having ceased living with us, now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living, to carry on the struggle they began. Too much blood has gone into this soil for us to let it lie barren. Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth on which we stand. We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain!
Out of this, from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn, this will come we promise the birth of a new freedom from the sons of men everywhere. AMEN.
All of the above text was extracted from Uncommon Valor, copyright 1946 by the Infantry Journal. |
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... the 5th Marine Amphibious Corps (consisting of the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions) landed on Iwo Jima (Sulphur Island). When the battle was over, 6821 American Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers , along with an estimated 20,000+ Japanese defenders had died. This was Americas first landing on what was considered traditional Japanese territory.
In the following pages, I will bring this historic battle to the reader, at a level of detail and scope I have not yet seen. This s the battle of Iwo Jima as described by the 3rd, 4th, and 5th Marine Divisions.
 You are invited to search the database for servicemembers, read battle summaries and view the image gallery. However what we're really hoping you will do is register to add information about what you might know and then to tell others about this site. To support this site and to educate you more about Iwo Jima, click the image to the left and order your a copy of highly detailed Iwo Jima maps or CDs that contain 3100 web pages, 1700+ images, 100+ maps and a 39 PDFfiles to present personal accounts of The Assault of Iwo Jima, produced by Raymond C Backstrom
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Click here to see the record for a Marine named Don Kasemodel. What you should notice is how someone has "claimed" this service member which now provides a contact should anyone else have information about him. Also, comments can be attached to the record as was done here referencing the incorrect info.
If you want to find one of the 5000+ names we have in our database, enter the last name into the search field just beneath "Find Servicemembers"
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