>> Announcer: Funding for this program provided by... ♪♪ Additional support provided by... ♪♪ Support for this program also made possible by... ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Narrator In the distant western Pacific Ocean, a 100-year-old U.S.

marine revisits a place that, for him, symbolizes both beauty and overwhelming fear.

♪♪ In 1944, Frank Wright arrived in Guam, an American territory, to help retake the island from the Japanese, who had controlled it since December 1941.

Frank stays focused, returning here today without his trusty rifle, which is no longer needed.

>> Wright: I stepped out and I was just overwhelmed and I yelled out right quick, "I'm home again."

>> Narrator: He returns to this vibrant green island with its turquoise waters, to revisit the past and honor his fellow Marines who fought and died on these shores.

Wright will reunite with the Chamorro people, the islanders who reside here.

They will welcome him back not as a tourist but as a liberator, acknowledging his enduring bond with the island.

>> Wright: I love this place.

I love the people.

♪♪ [ Gunfire ] ♪♪ ♪♪ >> Narrator: Growing up in Arkansas, Frank Wright knew what he wanted to do when he realized that America was now involved in World War II.

>> Man: From the NBC newsroom in New York, President said in a statement today that the Japanese have attacked the Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from the air.

I'll repeat that.

President Roosevelt says that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii from the air.

>> Wright: I heard over the radio while I was building airplanes, balsa wood airplanes.

And that Pearl Harbor had been, shelled and bombed, and that made me super mad, so I felt I got to go help my country.

>> Narrator: Wright's patriotism was unquestioned, but his age was not.

Frank was just 16.

The minimum enlistment age was 18, although 17-year-olds could join with parental permission.

Either way, Wright was too young to serve.

>> Wright: They said something in there about -- about the Marines were going to be the first and all that, which was strictly the purpose of advertising the Marines and purpose of getting more people into the - into the service.

>> Man: From every kind of job, from every part of the country, you men have been pouring in to recruit depots, swelling the ranks of the Marine Corps.

You chose to serve in the Marine Corps from all the other branches of the United States fighting forces.

Congratulations.

You made a good choice.

The Marine Corps welcomes you aboard.

>> Wright: And I tried to get in, and I couldn't get in the service at that time.

I was too young, and I didn't weigh very much, and so I had to fib a little bit.

The recruiting sergeant told me that I was too light and need to put on some weight.

>> Narrator: Like millions of other young men After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Frank Wright was eager to begin repaying the Japanese for their December 7, 1941 sneak attack in Hawaii.

The 16-year-old was determined to become a marine no matter what.

He used his older brother's birthday to enlist in the military, and gained some extra weight by utilizing tropical fruit to bulk up his slim frame.

>> Wright: I manipulated, got some bananas and put them in my pocket and my back pocket and a couple of them in the front part of it.

>> McManus: In World War II, among a lot of young men and teenagers, of course, it was a kind of peer pressure because it was a popular war.

And I think that many, many males at that point felt that this was an emblem of of manliness, of maleness, that it was expected of you that you should be in the fight.

There were, of course, many people who were just simply angry at the Japanese or the Axis powers in general, and wanted to get in the fight.

So if you were the kind of guy who was angry at the Japanese, who wanted to test yourself, wanted to prove that you were a man, and wanted to get into the fight before it ended, or, you know, that kind of mindset, a lot of times the Marines were your best place to go, and they were a little bit less, less leery of underage people joining than were the other services.

♪♪ >> Head: I know of boys that were in combat at 16 and 17.

They lied about their age.

And I think at the beginning of World War II, we needed people so bad they would take just about anybody.

>> McManus: It was never easy, to be honest with you.

I mean, we highlight, you know, young guys like 15, 16-year-olds who lie about their age.

That did happen.

It was unusual, but it happened.

But the Marines tended to be an easier place to get to.

If you were a 16-year-old wanting to get in the fight, you'd know that the Marines are probably going to be in a fight somewhere, so that's why you're joining, and it's probably easier to slip through the cracks a little bit as a young -- as an underage guy to get in.

>> Wright: I had a good line all set up to -- to lie about my age and my weight.

And what I wanted to do and how I wanted and why I wanted to go into the Marine Corps.

>> Narrator: In early 1942, Frank Wright officially enlisted in the United States Marines.

He reported for boot camp in San Diego, California, in January, and soon found himself not only in the Marines, but also assigned to one of its elite units, the 4th Marine Raider Battalion.

>> Wright: I had never had any physical training, weightlifting and all that.

They were trying to build me up to, to make sure that I was -- I was fit, and they weren't going to take anyone that really wasn't fit.

You had additional training to go into the -- to the Raiders.

The longer hikes, going without food, physical training, fighting, and night training, the infiltrating the enemy lines or aligning behind the enemy lines and harassing their supply lines and -- and attacking key military positions that, unfortunately, the Raiders weren't used to their full extent during World War II like this, but they were used at times.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Narrator: Frank Wright and the Marines fought in the Pacific against an enemy that refused to follow the rules of warfare.

The Japanese had allied with the Germans and Italians, and these Axis powers aimed to conquer as much of the world as they could.

>> McManus: You know, Japan sees itself as having some commonality with fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, because these were the sort of the dissatisfied powers with the outcome of World War I. So World War II is kind of an imperial war on some level.

Of those who felt they had gotten the short end of the stick in World War I, wanting to change the balance and basically go and conquer and grab what they felt they should have.

Hitler in Europe, you know, Mussolini in Africa, wherever else.

And, of course, the Japanese, who had been on the Allied side actually in World War I, still felt that they had kind of gotten a raw deal.

And they -- they felt they were -- they were heading toward an existential crisis in which if they didn't get access to resources, they could no longer keep up economically and militarily with the Western powers.

So in that sense, they feel they have common cause with the Germans and the Italians and Europe, plus those who really controlled the Japanese government, mainly a military dominated government by the end of the '30s or whatever, tended to have ideas that we would associate with fascism.

The belief in the Japanese as a kind of master race, the dehumanization of other peoples, the belief in nationalistic kind of conquest and all this kind of stuff.

And so, they have a lot more in common than -- with -- those who have similar ideas in Europe than they would with the Western powers who are comfortable with the status quo.

The Japanese want to upset the status quo, and that's ultimately what helps lead to conflict.

[ Man speaking in Japanese ] >> Narrator: The Japanese not only attacked Pearl Harbor in Hawaii in December 1941, but also targeted other American possessions in the Pacific.

>> Martinez: Well, the attack on December 7th was to neutralize the Pacific Fleet, which they accomplished that.

But the next step was to attack American possessions, in particular, the ones that were, that were strung out from Wake Island all the way through the area of Guam and Saipan.

And so, there -- there were stations there of American troops and -- and a, you know, a very small force of American Navy.

But what was important to them was they needed to control that so they would not have any of these possessions, turn on them and attack them.

And in doing so, they had to make sure that they were in possession of it, because they were going to now establish their own air bases and their own military presence.

>> McManus: Japan enters this war trying to -- to gain resources primarily.

Japan was not a resource-capable country in terms of oil, in terms of a lot of other things you needed to have a modern industrial country.

Japan was inevitably behind the United States and the Western colonial powers that had grabbed a lot of these resources in Asia and the Pacific.

So Japan basically embraces a two-front war in World War II, especially the army.

The Imperial Japanese Army had begun a war in China, thinking this is where we'll have resources and create an empire in the Asian mainland.

We will have a great Japanese empire that is continental.

The Navy, like the idea of a war that encompassed the Pacific because in what is today Indonesia, in those days, the Dutch East Indies, you had all sorts of the resources they need -- oil, rubber, tin, magnesium, bauxite, you name it.

The average Japanese serviceman in this war was quite idealistic at the beginning of the war, thinking this is a war of liberation, of fellow Asians and non-whites from white colonialism.

And you can understand that.

And the Americans are colonialists too, because they've got the Philippines and Guam, and they're part of the open door in China and all this kind of stuff.

So what is reality, though, is Japan is just coming as a new conqueror for their own empire.

And they're much worse in most cases than -- than the white imperialists ever were.

So that's what a lot of the locals are going to figure out as this war goes on, especially in the Philippines.

And, you know, so many of them are going to be quite anti-Japanese.

>> Man: Although we were far out in the Pacific, we were proud to be under the American flag.

We were content.

It was a good life.

>> Narrator: Besides Hawaii, the Japanese also attacked Guam, an American territory along, with the Philippines, Singapore, and Malaya and other locations.

[ Gunfire ] ♪♪ >> Martinez: In order to achieve the goal of the possession of these islands, which were key to their -- their opening plan across the Pacific.

They didn't take any chances.

They brought in more than enough force, and unfortunately, they used it rather ruthlessly.

The Japanese really threw the hammer down by using overwhelming air power.

♪♪ >> Narrator: Frank Wright and millions of Americans flooded recruitment centers, eager to respond after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

>> McManus: There was a sense that we'd been attacked.

And so, there's a -- there's a sort of revenge side to that, certainly, against the Japanese.

But of course, the Germans and Italians had declared war on us.

So, you know, fair -- all fair now, right?

I mean, there's a sense that the war has to be fought and it has to be won, that it was a job that has to be done.

That's how most Americans saw it.

>> Narrator: Neither Wright nor any other American boys realized just how relentless their new enemy would be.

The Japanese military had been fighting in Manchuria since 1931.

>> McManus: Makeup of the Japanese soldier tends to be someone who believes in the emperor and Emperor Hirohito as probably a god on earth and someone who must be obeyed.

The Japanese soldier has great concepts of honor and family and heritage and tradition of himself as the carry on and the progenitor of the Japanese race, which they see as either -- either superior or great, whatever it would be, someone who's dedicated to the -- to his country, and to doing what is his part.

He doesn't want to be away from his family any more than you or I would.

But he realizes this is his -- his calling and what is expected of him.

And he's a really, really tough fighter.

But I think it's also important to understand in the end, he may seem fanatical, he may be suicidal, self-sacrificial.

That's all true a lot of times.

But in the end, he's still a young guy who has hopes, dreams and aspirations and a family he loves.

He's just as human as the Americans, of course.

He's just seeing it through a different cultural lens.

In all too many cases, with that said, he's going to be prone to atrocities, carrying out atrocities.

But I think the Japanese soldier is -- is a really formidable fighter.

He's pretty well trained, reasonably well armed.

He's not as well fed and equipped as the Americans going forward.

And that's a great advantage for the U.S.

>> Narrator: Guam is the largest and southernmost of the Mariana Islands and the biggest island in Micronesia, located about 3,800 miles west of Hawaii.

It became an American territory in 1898 after being captured during the Spanish-American War.

>> McManus: Guam is a really interesting, you know, place by this point in time.

It had been a Spanish colony way back when, the Americans had inherited control of Guam during the Spanish-American War late 19th, early 20th century.

So you'd had about a, well, half a century of American presence there.

The Japanese took it in 1941, early in the war, and were basically there as occupiers for -- for the rest of the war.

So it's a sizable island from one end to the other, you know, several dozen miles, something like that.

And, you know what?

A dozen something miles from -- from east to west, something, you know, something along those lines, Sizable.

They've got a garrison of about 3,000-plus soldiers who are going to defend Guam.

And by 1944, they have inflicted, like, martial law on the -- on the Guamanians.

And there's heavy rationing.

So many of the locals are really quite hungry at this point.

Some are worked as basically slave laborers in -- in a labor camp at this stage.

So, the population tends to be very pro-American.

So this had been American soil.

We're there to liberate it.

That's one purpose of this invasion.

But the larger purpose is to get a major base, a naval anchorage for subsequent operations.

>> Man: Now we were ready to smash at Japan's front door, the Marianas Islands.

Saipan, Tinian, and Guam.

D-Day, the battle for the Marianas.

>> McManus: The initial attack and liberation of Guam is overlooked because you had this earlier battle at Saipan, which of course, is an enormous battle, a very costly battle that had gone on in June 1944 and was still carrying on in July 1944 when -- when Guam happened.

So Guam tends to get overshadowed there in that sense.

And then not too long after that, we're going to have the invasion of the Philippines, you know, then Iwo Jima, Okinawa.

Guam is just one of many invasions that's going on in the course of the war.

And not that it's a small one, but it doesn't quite measure up in terms of size and scale and actual, like, ferocity.

>> Man: Nothing can stop the amtracs except direct hit.

>> Narrator: The Marine Raiders were highly elite.

By the time Frank Wright joined them, they had already taken part in some early hit-and-run battles in the Pacific.

The Raiders were led by Major Jimmy Roosevelt, the son of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

>> Wright: The Raiders came over to where I was stationed at Tongue Point.

And they had a man that was out looking for different, physical fit Marines.

And he interviewed everybody at -- all the Marines at the -- at Tongue Point.

And they wanted good solid Marine Corps, service people.

And they said that if I joined that I'd be actually trained on more things than just regular boot camp.

And --and my officer, commanding officer would be Jimmy Roosevelt.

And that he was forming a new outfit called the Marine Corps Raiders.

And that sounded appealing to me rather than just guard duty.

So I -- I signed up for it and they looked at my record and I was a very efficient with the bayonet and I was very efficient with the training of the -- the rifle.

>> Hiott: The Raiders were at the beginning of World War II.

Of course, by this time, President Roosevelt had became friends with Winston Churchill and admired the things that the English were doing.

And when we went into World War II, one of his pet desires was to have a unit that would correspond with the British Commandos.

People of that time were well aware of the British commandos making strike into Europe over the English Channel at different places, hitting and relieving and -- and harassing the enemy.

So, he decided that he would like to have the Marine Corps organize such an organization as that.

>> Wright: My attitude was I wanted to -- I wanted to defend our country, and this was first in.

And that was the motto of the Marine Corps.

>> Narrator: Training with the 4th Marine Raider Battalion at Camp Pendleton in California was tougher than Marine boot camp.

>> Wright: I got off the train and these three guys were standing out there and they started yelling at us.

God, they yelled at us and they called us everything in the book and some out of the book and told us that, you know, that we weren't human, that we're going to be made into a Marine and Marines are the best and all that.

They could call us anything they wanted to, and we were their baby and that was it.

>> Hiott: And they all had the same outlook on life, on combat and on death.

So we all had the specialized training that was a little different.

And in that training, the -- the psychological training that you were the best that there was of anything.

As we like to say, the Marine Corps was the best and the Raiders were the best of the Marine Corps.

>> Man: On August 7, 1942, we landed Marines on Guadalcanal.

We surprised the Jap and the landings were easy.

>> Narrator: In August 1942, the United States carried out its first offensive in World War II on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands.

Frank Wright arrived there in February 1943 after the island was secured.

While on Guadalcanal, he prepared for more upcoming amphibious invasions in the Solomon Islands.

>> Wright: We had a type of training there, the 2nd Raiders and the 1st Raiders.

They were 1st and 2nd Raiders, Raiders that they caught, and they were the main force on Guadalcanal.

The 3rd Division was a late comer, really.

We were trained more or less in looking for stragglers in Guadalcanal.

>> Hiott: When we got to Guadalcanal, I went into the Raiders in the 1st of November.

And when I went into the Raiders, I was put into the 2nd Raider Battalion.

>> Narrator: Wright's first combat experience took place on New Georgia, a heavily forested island in the western Solomons.

It was July 1943.

>> Wright: And that was more or less in jungle fighting.

And so, and the Raiders were real good at jungle fighting.

♪♪ >> Narrator: The Japanese fought the Marines with a ferocity unlike anything these young Americans had ever seen.

They followed what is known as the Bushido code when it came to fighting.

>> McManus: Bushido code is a kind of code of honor that had become prevalent in Japan by the 20th century, and it has to do with a lot of traditions in Japan in terms of warrior culture, but also to on the positive side that you live your life by a code of honor that calls for you to defend those that can't defend themselves.

It calls for you to -- to live up to the heritage and honor of your family, that calls for you to serve Japan, to serve the Emperor as the Emperor's subject, All of those things.

But by the 1940s, it had also taken on a very negative dimension too, a belief that anyone who surrendered had no honor and was thus not a man, and could be treated any way you wanted.

And so it leads a terrible, wanton cruelty.

It's exploited sometimes by what we often call Japanese warlords, the kind of warrior cults that had captured the Japanese government by this point, wanting this aggressive war.

♪♪ >> Narrator: In November of 1943, the Marine Raiders engaged in combat on Bougainville, another unforgiving jungle island in the northern Solomon Islands.

By early 1944, it was decided that all these commando-style raider units, including Frank Wright's 4th Marine Raiders were no longer needed.

The Marine Raiders were disbanded.

Wright was transferred to the weapons company of the 21st Marines, which was part of the 3rd Marine Division.

Frank Wright's next mission would take him to Guam to help liberate the island from the Japanese, who occupied it since December 1941.

>> Man: The LSTs unload their amtracs.

We attack again a joint assault force of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard.

>> Narrator: It was now July 1944, and 20,000 Japanese soldiers awaited the Americans on Guam.

>> McManus: The Americans have decided they have to have control of the Key Islands and the Marianas Island chains.

They're right smack dab in the Central Pacific.

And the biggest reason that they're important is we could have air bases there from which we could bomb the Japanese home islands, and so basically prosecute a major strategic aerial campaign against Japan itself, which ultimately is somewhat decisive.

There are three main islands that we want in the Marianas, Saipan, which is basically a Japanese colony, and another little island called Tinian, which is like right next door to Saipan.

Guam, which is a former U.S.

colony that we now want to liberate.

the operations in the summer of 1944, which are the largest to that point that the Americans have had in the war against Japan are kind of analogous to Normandy in Europe.

This is really kind of the pivot point on which the war will hinge.

So Saipan happens.

The invasion on June 15, 1944, Guam five weeks later.

Tinian is happening in July as well as a kind of subplot.

And oh, by the way, there's a major naval battle too called, confusingly, the battle of the Philippine Sea, which is actually a sea battle for the Marianas to boil that down.

And that is a major, decisive American victory.

So when the Americans get control of those islands in the Marianas, it's a total game changer in World War II because of their ability to build air bases there that they will use to bomb Japan.

>> Man: We secure our first foothold in the Marianas.

Another D-Day to the south.

Another joint assault force smashes at Guam.

[ Cannons firing ] ♪♪ >> McManus: Fighting on Guam is really intense, so the -- the invasion day is called W-Day and that is July 21, 1944.

You have the entire 3rd Marine Division.

And then the better part of a Marine brigade come ashore at different beaches and Japanese opposition is really quite intense.

They've got some pillboxes overlooking like cliff-side beaches and whatnot that make it very, very costly.

There is intense fighting that goes on that first day.

Once the -- the -- the Americans are sure, then the pattern is you're going to have this kind of rolling advance across grasslands and some of the high ground and whatnot.

>> Martinez: In July of 1944, the invasion of Guam in particular, the Americans had to use overwhelming force themselves because the Japanese now have dug in.

They've got bunkers, they've got areas that machine guns are set up to literally annihilate any forced landing.

And they also have geography.

And the geography of Guam, in particular, is you have heights.

And along those heights was dotted with machine gun nests, mortar pits, and guns at the top.

So when you land in Guam, you're going to pay a price to do it.

The Americans would neutralize that for the most part by overwhelming bombardment from our forces, particularly cruisers and battleships.

>> Hiott: All the artillery and all of the bombs in the world, unless it's a nuclear bomb, cannot destroy the people who are dug in.

So we went -- when we landed in the amtracs, we were under fire from artillery ashore, the Japanese artillery.

And when we hit the beach we were under fire from the Japanese, there were dual landings.

There was a peninsula that juts out at the center of the island on the west side, and the 3rd Division landed to the north of that peninsula, and the 1st Brigade landed to the south.

We had support from the 77th Army Division who came in as backups.

We watched the big guns of the ships powering that island in the morning, all during the night.

and in the morning, the planes bombing and strafing.

There had to be a million rounds of ammunition dropped on that land.

You would almost think that nothing could live there.

But the strange thing is that when you hit the beach, they were there.

>> Man: And in the northern sector, the 3rd Marine Division invaded.

At 8:20, the first troops landed.

Then 15 minutes later, the Japs attacked with mortar fire.

They struck some amphibian tanks, but they didn't damage a single transport, nor did they hold up our schedule.

19 warships fired a stream of shells right over the assault waves.

>> Narrator: Guam was another crucial island to secure as part of America's island-hopping campaign toward Japan.

Frank Wright wasn't thinking about the bigger picture of World War II at this moment, only his narrow view of fighting in his foxhole with the enemy right in front of him.

>> Wright: When you dig a foxhole, you're at, of course where I was at that particular time on it, there was a lot of -- still coral, I guess you'd call it coral patches or something, real hard to dig with.

And so I always carried two knives with me to help dig, dig in into the stuff.

And you build up a little berm right across, right in the front, you know, and that's what I was -- had been doing when the tanks were coming up like that and the Japs were coming down.

>> Hiott: That night, we had rifle fire and opposition all day.

And that night the Japanese mounted a massive counterattack, which was led by a column of four tanks coming down the road.

So we were there, and we had to battle the tanks and repeated assaults by the Japanese enemy, trying to retake the ridge that we were on and throw us back.

A couple of places on the line, they broke through for a while.

That was a hard battle.

It lasted for -- it seemed to me like it lasted forever, but it probably lasted for two to three hours.

>> Hall: It was a fight there, Back and forth, back and forth, shooting all kinds of things.

And finally about dawn, it was kind of quiet, and I'm looking over there and I see a guy standing on the top of that hill with his hands on his hips, looking our way, and he had a Japanese hat on.

They had a soft hat that was kind of distinctive.

So I grabbed my BAR, which I had picked up at the beach.

That's a Browning automatic rifle, and it fires 20 rounds in a hurry if you want it.

And I aimed at the guy, and I got him.

It was on semi-automatic.

I didn't know it.

And it had a tracer bullets in it, which I didn't know.

So when I aimed at the guy right here and figured if there's a rise when you fire an automatic weapon, it rises a little bit.

So I said, well, I'll get him this way, see?

And he was about 150 yards away, quite a ways.

And it hit him right -- Tracer went right through.

It went exactly where I aimed it, I was amazed.

>> Man: We start across the beach.

The Jap throws everything he has at us.

Many of us are hit.

>> Narrator: On a dark, rainy night on Guam, Frank Wright was about to face what every Marine in World War II dreaded, a frontal Banzai attack.

Japanese soldiers burst out of the thick jungle shouting.

Frank Wright fought to kill as many of them as he could, but he ran out of ammunition.

>> And as I was fighting the guy on it, that I slashed him and I slashed down at his arm and he pushed me backward.

And when I went down on my back in my foxhole, but then he -- he made a stab at me.

That's when he hit it, and he hit it on the slab.

It didn't hit it right straight down into me.

I fell down backwards and fell on my back.

He fell right down on top of me.

And, of course, I started bleeding and all that stuff on it.

And then when I cut his throat quite -- quite proficiently and all over me.

The first crew that looked down in there and looked down in the foxhole, and they see a Jap there and they see his blood was all over my jacket.

And so they said, well, here's one here.

Says, I don't know.

It looks like two guys.

They're dead.

Well, they pulled the one guy off of me, and then I started yelling, and they pulled me up out of there on it.

And so, And then I walked up to where the -- the Corp men were.

And he looked at me and he put some kind of a bandage on -- on my stomach.

♪♪ >> Head: They would start hollering, and they would holler [speaks Japanese] I don't know what that means, but we knew they were getting ready and they'd holler, "Banzai!

Banzai!"

And start coming in in mass.

And, of course, like I said, fortunately, most of the time We had enough firepower with machine guns and BARs and M1s to fight Banzai attacks off or annihilate so many of them that it's over.

♪♪ >> Wilkerson: But it's like Patton said.

You're not supposed to die for your country.

You're supposed to make the other guy dies for his.

And that's what we were doing.

We were helping them out to commit suicide.

♪♪ >> Narrator: For Marines on Guam, the memories of the close and personal fighting never fade.

>> Wright: I think about it a great -- a great deal, but -- but I'm -- I'm talking about it a lot on it.

And -- and I -- I think -- I think that's a good thing for me.

I have pain.

>> Narrator: The fight for Guam, like other battles against the Japanese in World War II, was combat with no rules.

American forces also realized early on that the war in the Pacific would be completely different from confrontations in Europe against the Germans and Italians.

>> McManus: When you took on the Germans, you knew you were in a pretty tough fight.

If you -- you had most of the advantages over them, they probably would surrender.

So they do have that element, And of course, there's going to be mass surrenders and all that.

By contrast, the Japanese, there's a great kind of cultural stigma to surrendering, a great dishonor associated with that.

So the peer pressure for most Japanese was to fight to the death.

And that made the Japanese soldier a very formidable adversary.

And in many cases, he wanted to die.

And that was tough for the Americans to come to terms with.

So there's sometimes a suicide element to that.

But I should also qualify it and say, remember, these are everyday young men.

And in a larger sense, they want to live.

They want to survive the war and whatnot, but also too, if all the peer pressure around you is that you have to go and sacrifice yourself and die, you're going to fight to the death, you're probably going to do that.

That would be how the Japanese often fight.

They -- they observe no rules of war as the Americans would want them.

So like the Geneva Convention for warfare, not shooting medics or whatever.

No, they will shoot medics.

They'll shoot anybody.

They'll try any trick.

They will fight to the death.

So they have been by, you know, by 1944 when the invasion of Guam happens, you know, you've established that -- that firm reputation on both sides as a kind of kill or be killed kind of war.

At this point, we have in our custody only a few thousand Japanese prisoners.

So that tells you something.

There's been a lot of fighting that's gone on up to this point in time, but they are generally going to -- to -- to fight to the death.

♪♪ ♪♪ >> Wright: The feeling that you developed first for the Marine Corps, but also for the men that you serve with, uh... There's -- there's a bond between all Marines, but there is a -- a closer bond with the one that you actually served with than with all Marines.

Because they had been the Raiders, they thought they were better than anybody else.

>> Narrator: By the end of August 1944, Guam was finally secured, although about 7,500 Japanese still held out in the mountains.

>> Keene: Japanese were around, but they were all people who had given up on the war, thrown their rifle away.

But they were just going around finding -- finding food.

>> Wright: We found two cases of sake in the area.

And so, but we were traveling, only was coming on a little bit further up the line, and so we couldn't handle it.

We had to hide it or something.

So we decided to do that.

So we hid it.

We dug a hole and hid it and left a little marker there and went about our business.

We came back to that particular area looking for where we had buried it, and the CBs -- And then they found this -- this hole that we had built.

They found it and they drank it.

So that's why I say that they stole our -- our -- our -- our party.

♪♪ >> Narrator: After the battle on Guam finally ended in late 1944, Frank Wright's 3rd Marine Division started training on the island for what would become one of the most famous battles in history.

On Guam, the local people suffered harsh treatment during the Japanese occupation.

>> Wright: I associated with the Chamorros so many times on it, and they helped us so many times when you go out in the jungle, and they'd show us where our enemy was, and we would take care of the enemy at that time.

We did our part by helping back and -- and free them from their tortures that they had had before.

>> Narrator: Chamorro villagers regarded Frank and his fellow Marines as their heroic liberators.

♪♪ In February 1945, the 3rd Marine Division left Guam to head to a remote island called Iwo Jima.

Iwo was only 760 miles south of Tokyo, Japan.

Iwo Jima was regarded as Japanese territory.

It was essential for any future invasion of Japan.

It also had Japanese airfields and radar systems that could detect American B-29 bombers heading to attack Japan.

Allied bombers also required a place to make emergency landings on their return trips for missions to Japan and Iwo Jima was closer than American airfields on Saipan.

♪♪ It was February 19, 1945, when the American 4th and 5th Marine divisions landed on the dark volcanic shores of Iwo Jima.

♪♪ >> Femino: They said it had to be taken.

It was just a little four and a half miles wide to eight and a half miles long.

It was just a spot in the Pacific, but it was -- it was disrupting the bombing situation.

So they figured it was a good, good operation for the 5th Division.

We were the newest division, but we had more training time than any of the other divisions.

So we were well trained and they said, this is a three-day operation and it's a good baptism before they go and land on Okinawa and then Japan.

So when we got there, we found out different.

♪♪ >> Man: You never saw a Jap, but fire was coming out of every hole and every rock.

>> Femino: It was 22,000 Japanese on the island, all on the ground, all tunnels back and forth across the island.

Was over 11 miles of -- of tunnels with gun emplacements, machine gun emplacements, pillboxes, and they had that island zeroed in.

They could hit any spot on that beach or on that island at will They had it so well fortified.

It was shaped like a pork chop, and the small part of the island was the volcano That was the dormant.

It hadn't been active at all.

It was only 550 feet high.

And in that volcano they had disappearing guns, very well fortified.

And they could -- They could pinpoint any point on the -- on the beach.

The general of the Japanese, Kurabayashi, he didn't have any beach emplacements at all.

His theory was let the Marines land and crowd the beaches.

You know what I mean?

Wait until they get a good supply of Marines on the beach.

And that's when they opened fire.

That was the first time they opened fire, and we were all struggling to get up off the beach because the plateau was a high plateau from the beach.

Very, very scared.

So you're shaking, like, and praying.

I did an awful lot of praying on the island.

Believe me.

>> Bourgault: The first wave, the captain came on the ship and said, "The first wave has hit the beach.

There is no opposition."

"Oh, yeah!

It's going to be a piece of cake."

And we went over the side and got in the landing craft, and we headed for the beach, and then we started to surf.

And then we headed for the beach, then we started circling.

And we did that all damn day long.

We found out later there was no room on the beach for us.

The beach was just a disaster.

>> Narrator: Frank Wright's 3rd Marine Division was kept in reserve.

They would come ashore on February 21st in time to see two American flags planted atop Iwo Jima's dormant volcano, Mount Suribachi, two days later.

>> Wright: I saw the, not the actual raising of the flag itself on it.

I had been hit in the head with either a shell or shrapnel or something like that.

And it knocked my helmet off, and knocked me out.

And so, I had been actually out on the 23rd when the flag was raised.

It -- everybody was hollering and yelling and all like that.

And that I saw that old glory up there, and man, it -- it affects you to see something that you're fighting for.

Now you've got it.

You've got it.

And there it is, you know?

Well, we -- we thought that we had won the war.

>> Femino: We heard the sirens go off on the ships and the bells.

I turned around just as the flag went up.

So I saw the flag at that angle.

I saw her actually go up.

That was something else that I -- I know I never will forget.

It was really inspiring.

You know what I mean?

And we figured when that happened, the campaign was over.

We won, you know?

We had no idea we had another 20, 32 more days of hell.

It was really, really bad.

>> Narrator: Frank Wright was wounded in early March on Iwo Jima when he was hit by a Japanese Nambu machine gun.

He was taken to Saipan aboard a hospital ship.

American Marines suffered 26,000 casualties on Iwo Jima, with almost 7,000 losing their lives.

After 36 days, well beyond the three-day estimate by battle commanders, Iwo Jima was finally taken at a high cost.

♪♪ In 1968, Iwo Jima was handed back to Japan.

Today, Japanese hosts an air base on the island, now renamed Iwo To.

The memories of these brutal battles on these remote Pacific islands are etched into the minds of those who experience them and sacrificed so much.

For some people, the scars of war fade as history progresses.

The relics and rusted remains are all that are left of battles fought many years ago.

>> Martinez: One of the things that amused me when I went to Guam and Saipan was the amount of Japanese tourists that were there and lavishing like it is Hawaii.

And for them, I think it is.

It's a shorter trip.

It's relatively inexpensive and they enjoy the -- the climate.

And I think that very few of them think about the military past.

That's their grandfather's past or grandmother's past.

But for them, they probably think of themselves as the new Japan, not the Japan of the past.

And so, they go there to enjoy the climate, a place and maybe get a lesson of history they were unaware of.

>> Narrator: Visions return for Frank Wright today.

Nightmares of what happened at Iwo Jima, and especially that Banzai bayonet attack on Guam.

>> Wright: Well, one thing, it really was the first time I had ever exposed myself to things on it.

I had not thought about those for a long time on it.

And then I did.

And it was it -- it hurt me to know what I had really done, and that was one of the things.

And I had never heard myself explain to others on it, that how I felt on it.

And that's the things that helped me with my PTSD on it.

>> Narrator: Frank Wright returned from Saipan to Pearl Harbor in March 1945 to undergo surgery for his wounds on Iwo Jima.

Later, he went back to the United States and became a drill instructor.

>> Wright: Well, I was a good, good drill instructor really.

I'm a talker, and I like to talk and tell people, you know, really about how well the Marines were, and which they, by that time, they know.

And I get the guys together, and we'd sit down and -- and have a -- have a good conversations about different things.

And I could tell them, you know, yes, you know, when you're doing bayonets on and fighting for your life, I says, "Is this a little bit better?"

And I'd give them, you know, what they want to do to save their butts.

I felt we had to discuss it a little bit.

I had been there,m and I had been through all this, all that stuff.

I was the first drill instructor that had been through the battles at that time on it.

I had -- I could -- I could show them my scars were I had been wounded.

And they know that that was something real, something they could see.

And it made a difference to them And the training.

>> Man: In New York City as throughout a rejoicing nation and world, vast throngs of grateful, happy people celebrate the end of fighting, the dawn of peace.

Two million New Yorkers jammed Times Square.

It's official.

>> Narrator: World War II officially concluded in early September 1945, when Japan unconditionally surrendered aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

>> Wright: And I want to thank everybody and the stuff that they've done for me.

This year is a special year for me when I finally made my sergeant stripes.

What I did to earn them, I don't know, but I thank the good Lord and the Colonel and the commandant.

>> Narrator: In 2025, 100-year-old corporal Frank Wright was honorably promoted to sergeant in the Marine Corps.

Wright served as a Marine during World War II, lying about his age to join the fight.

He was only 16 years old.

Frank Wright wouldn't want it any other way.

>> Wright: Now, a lot of guys have things happen to them.

And you got to remember that this is -- it's war and it isn't for games and it isn't for a, you know, a red and the blue all at it.

It's war, and it's something that a human being doesn't do.

Of course, you know, you get together and kill people and they kill you.

It's something that's got to be -- got to get rid of on it.

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