Veteran Remembers Iwo Jima
(Editor’s Note: McIntosh State Bank will again salute area veterans with a special section in The Monticello News next week. The section, which will be published in conjunction with the November 8 newspaper, before the November 11 holiday, recognizes the sacrifice made by these veterans and acknowledges them with appreciation. Today’s feature is about one World War II veteran.)
On June 1, 1954, the Armistice Day Holiday was changed to Veteran’s Day to honor all U.S. Veterans and now as we approach that momentous occasion (Sunday, Nov. 11), It’s time once again to pay honor to all those heroes.
One particular battle in World War II that produced a lot of heroes, along with the icon of the marines raising the U.S. flag, was The Battle of Iwo Jima, and Jasper County resident Lamar Hipps was right there when that famous flag was raised.
During the war Mr. Hipps was in the eleventh grade when he saw all his buddies going into the service. He was 16 at the time, but by fibbing about his age, he left school in Miami, Fla. and entered the U.S. Marines.
He served in Company E, Second Battalion, 28th Marines, and Easy Company was the company from which a group of Marines raised the flag on Iwo Jima that became the famous icon we still revere today.
Mr. Hipps served alongside the famous Native American, Ira Hays, whose hands were outstretched when that famous photo was taken. Of the six men caught in that photograph, three of them died shortly afterwards. Of the 250 men in Easy Company, only 27 escaped death or injury.
“I knew Ira Hays and I liked him,” Mr. Hipps said. “You know in the military everything is always in alphabetical order, and with me being Hipps and him Hays, I was always right behind him. He was a loner, but I liked him. I knew all the boys who raised that flag.”
The Battle of Iwo Jima took place between the U.S. and Japan in February and March 1945 during the Pacific Campaign of World War II. The U.S. invasion, known as Operation Detachment, was charged with the mission of capturing the airfields on Iwo Jima. The battle was marked by some of the fiercest fighting of the campaign.
The Imperial Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with vast bunkers, hidden artillery, and 11 miles of tunnels. The battle was the first American attack on the Japanese Home Islands and the Imperial soldiers defended their positions tenaciously. Of the 21,000 Japanese soldiers present at the beginning of the battle, over 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoner.
By now Mr. Hipps was all of 17 years old, carried a Browning Automatic Riffle and was a corporal.
“We left San Diego and stopped over at Pearl Harbor. We didn’t know where we were going when we left there. Later on they showed us a big scale model of Iwo Jima and told us that was where we were headed.
“I remember listening to songs by Tokyo Rose on the radio. She also talked, and while we were cleaning our weapons, she said the Marines had landed on Iwo Jima and been defeated and we hadn’t even gotten there yet.
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“We got a good meal before the battle. It was steak and eggs. After that we assembled on the landing crafts and when we hit the beach I was never so scared in my life. There were dead Marines and Japanese laying everywhere. I found myself a hole and got in it, but soon someone called down to me and said, ‘lad, you’re not afraid, are you?’ I looked up and saw it was my captain. I said to myself, if he’s not scared then I ought not to be because he’s important. It wasn’t long after that when I got hit with shrapnel, but they bandaged me up with some sulfur and I kept going.”
Mr. Hipps received the Purple Heart Medal for that wound.
“After we finished putting the flag up we went on up to the northern part of the island for 14 or 16 days and it got really rough. That was the time I lied to God. When I got pinned down by machine gun fire I told Him if He would just get me out of that mess I would go to Sunday School and church everyday for the rest of my life. He knew I wasn’t going to do that, but I said it.
“There was another time when three of us were walking with me in the middle and a sniper under a canvas peeked out and shot the Marine on my right. I always wondered about that. If it had been me under that canvas I would have shot the man in the middle. We got that sniper.
“The first thing I did when I got home was go see my momma. The second thing I did was meet my wife, whom I’ve been married to for 61 years. We have three sons, 10 grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.”
After the war Mr. Hipps worked as a carpenter and helped build some of the grand hotels on Miami Beach. The Hipps retired to Jasper County in 1984 and have kept busy since by being extras in movies. The next time you watch “My Cousin Vinny,” they play the parts of the mother and father of the man who was killed and sit behind Joe Pesci the whole time in the court room. They’ve also had parts in “In the Heat of the Night,” “Grass Roots,” “I’ll Fly Away,” “Sudden Fury,” “Gordy,” “Carolina Skelton,” and “Arly Hanks,” and they raise some mighty good Granny Smith apples too.
But once a Marine, always a Marine, and Mr. Hipps said, “When I die I would like these words on my tombstone, ‘Another Marine reporting for duty, Sir. I have done my time in hell.’ “
