Longtime Onalaska Barber Fought at Guam and Iwo Jima

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A little more than a year after graduating from Onalaska High School, Darrell Dee Dow found himself digging a foxhole in a clearing on the island of Guam after his unit was cut off from others in the 3rd Marine Division by a lieutenant who didn’t believe in using compasses.

“We’d better not stay here in the opening,” Dow told him. “We’d better get back in the brush.”

His lieutenant wouldn’t allow them to move into the jungle.

After dark, a man shouted. “Japs!”

“I looked up just in time to see one crawl into the foxhole toward me. He stabbed me here in the side.” Dow gestured under his right arm, where the knife penetrated, barely missing the top of his lung.

“There he was on top of me,” Dow, 92, recalled during a Veterans History Project interview in 2017. Holding his fist to his chest, he continued. “I had my knife out like this, and pulled him down on it and killed him. There I was with that hilt right in there … and I was having a hard time breathing. Well, then one of the guys did pull him off.”

He and several others told the captain he needed to get rid of the lieutenant. A few days later, a new lieutenant arrived.

“First thing he did was have us all fall out, full pack, ready for a march,” Dow said. “He says, ‘Now fellas, I’m one of them 90-day wonders.’ He says, ‘I don’t know nothing. I need all the help I can get.’ So we would have done anything for him. He was a great one. We had him and Captain McFadden for the rest of the war. They were great officers.”

A medic who patched Dow’s wound told him he’d be all right in a few weeks, and he was.

Dow, whose father worked 22 years at the Carlisle Lumber Co. mill, had tried to enlist in the Marines after graduating from high school, but they rejected him because of color blindness. A few months later, he reported to Seattle for a physical and the Marines selected him. When asked why now, the fellow told him his color blindness made it possible for him to see through camouflage, which Dow described as “a bunch of baloney.”

He entered the service Dec. 15, 1943, and boarded a train in Chehalis with blacked-out windows for the four-day journey to San Diego, delayed a day because of a snowstorm near the Oregon-California border. He knew one man in the car, Loren Estep, who had accompanied him north to Seattle for his physical and joined the Navy.

At the San Diego Marine Corps base, they were given haircuts and issued clothing, rifles, sea bags and shoes.

“Had an awful time with shoes,” Dow said. “You told them what size and they just threw something out there, and you had to pick through it and find what you wanted. Then you’d start trading shoes with guys.”

After three months of boot camp, he spent a month at Camp Matthews 15 miles from San Diego for demolition training before heading overseas. Although he had blasted tree stumps with his father in the past, demolition training was new.

“They told you how to do it, but they didn’t tell you how long it took repeaters to burn down to the cap,” Dow said. “So the first time I was on Guam, I had a bunker to blow up. Well, I threw my charge in and got it thrown right back at me. Too long a fuse. That was the last of that. Before I ever threw my charge in, I threw a hand grenade in first.”

He wrote home to his parents and his sweetheart, Naomi Davis, who compared notes. Censors blacked out any mention of Naomi’s best friend, Pearl, because of Pearl Harbor.

When they left on a Norwegian troop ship, where they were served tongue three times a day, Dow didn’t know where they were going. He was assigned to the 3rd Marine Division’s 3rd Engineer Battalion, C Company, combat engineers.

They stopped at Pearl Harbor, which was a mess, for only a day. They stood at attention in the heat on a parade ground for a woman who spoke to them.

“Some of the guys were passing out from the heat,” Dow recalled. “Finally she came out and said, ‘Do you Marines know what you’re fighting for?’ And some joker yelled out, ‘Yes, 50 bucks a month.’ Well, anyway, we stood there for a long time at attention. They were trying to find out who said it.”

Finally, they shipped the Marines to Maui, and from there to Saipan.

“We got there and half the island was already secured.”

Then, on July 21, 1944, they launched the Second Battle of Guam to retake the largest island in the Marianas from the Japanese, who prevailed in the first battle during 1941.

“It’s all very confusing,” Dow said. “Half the time you didn’t know whether it was your outfit or not. After the battle was over and you made your tent, then you got to know everybody there.”

The Marines killed more than 5,000 enemy soldiers and secured the island for Allied forces by Aug. 10. By then, nine Marines were missing, 3,626 wounded, and 677 killed.

Dow remained on Guam for 16 months. He recalled a few lighter times during his military service. He enjoyed loading up on candy at the PX, and visiting the Marvin House on Guam for dancing and piano music.

After he had been on Guam, he ran into Joe Pitts, a friend from demolition training.

“Are you my squad leader?” Pitts asked.

“Yep, I’m it.”

Pitts threw his hands in the air and dropped them, saying, “Jesus Christ. We’ve lost the war!”

One day he and Pitts were returning from the PX and passed the toilet, which swarmed with flies. They saw the lieutenant enter the “head” to use the toilet, so Dow plucked a long piece of grass, stuck it through a hole, and tickled him on the butt.

“He jumped up. Slapped his thigh. ‘Damn flies!’ He sat down again, and I did it again. Everyone was laughing. Anyway, I looked up and here stood Captain McFadden. The lieutenant, he was coming out half mad, and I handed the  piece of grass to Captain McFadden, and the lieutenant came around the corner and he looked and, ‘Oh.’”

The captain told Dow he’d get him. And he did. He assigned him to burn paper in the head using diesel. “Well, I was about half mad and I poured too much and burned the toilet,” Dow said. “I was in hot water with everybody then.”

“It’s things like that kept you going.”

 

One day the captain informed them they’d be going into battle again. They hiked 5 miles across Guam to a ship. They had no idea where they were going; officers opened orders only at sea. But Tokyo Rose, the voice of Japanese propaganda, knew.

“One day out of Guam we were listening to the ship radio and Tokyo Rose was on it, playing good music,” Dow told people gathered Dec. 4, 2011, for the World War II dinner at the Veterans Memorial Museum in Chehalis. “Then she says, ‘The 3rd, 4th and 5th Divisions, I’m sorry you’re heading for Iwo Jima and you’re all going to be killed.’ She was right. She told us where we were going, what beach we were going to hit, what time we were going to hit it.”

As they reached Iwo Jima the night of Feb. 18, 1944, Dow said, “you could feel the ship slow up and the engine quit and they dropped anchor.”

The 4th and 5th Marines were scheduled to launch the initial attack Feb. 19, 1945, while the 3rd remained in reserve for three days. But about five o’clock in the morning, the ship’s radio blared. “Now hear this. Now hear this. C Company, 3rd Engineers, 3rd Marine Division, Private Dow and Private Martinez, prepare to disembark.”

When he saw Iwo Jima, the island that’s two miles wide and four miles long looked like it was on fire from all the Navy bombardment.

“Lieutenant, what’s going on?”

“Well, the 5th Marine Division is short of demolition men. They need someone to clean the beach.”

Dow joined the first wave to hit the Yellow Beach 1; Munez was on Yellow Beach 2. They were ordered to probe for tank mines.

Dow landed about 8:30 a.m., started probing for mines, and found three tank mines.

“With luck I unscrewed the detonators by hand,” Dow said. “I didn’t need a wrench to do it, just left them there. Threw the detonators in the ocean.”

The Marines hauled in trucks, tanks and troops to the beaches.

“Everyone got on the beach without anyone getting hurt,” Dow said.

Then the Japanese fired artillery.



“Around 10:30 all that beach exploded. You could see parts from the jeeps and the tanks and men just flying in the air.”

An artillery shell landed in the water behind him, Dow said, “and liked to drown me. I mean, I was just soaking wet, and the next one landed 20 feet from me.”

Covered with ash and sand, he was “just a mud ball. I looked at my rifle, and it was useless. It was just covered. So I just laid there and I watched it. The artillery would move up and down the beach. They had it all zeroed in, and then the mortars took over. It was the same thing, bodies flying, body parts ..."

Dow, who struggled to maintain his composure at times during his 2011 presentation, recalling how the Marines near the airfield were sitting ducks without anywhere to hide. At night the Japanese wielding knives would come out of their pillboxes, concrete dug-in guard posts from which they fired weapons.

“In daytime you could use your rifle, but you don’t fire at night,” Dow said. “Cause you shoot that rifle and there’s a flash from it, and you’re zeroed in. I was in my little foxhole, and they needed a demolition man, a fire-thrower. I was qualified in that and demolition, so I grabbed a flamethrower and across the island I went.”

He was ordered to destroy the pillboxes, which were arranged to cover the airfield. 

“You had cover firing over you, and you were crawling on your belly just as fast as you could, and then you had to raise up to put the nozzle into the hole,” Dow recalled. “It went on and on like that, trying to burn them out, but the next day you’d have to go through the whole thing again. There was no outside entrance to those pillboxes. They were all underground.”

The Marines trying to take Mount Suribachi finally arrived at the base. Dow said he couldn’t see them ascend the mountain from his location.

“Tommy Munez, he showed up one day and he said they need some demolition down in the crater.” Dow and Munez packed up and headed out, but a machine gun shot the bag right off Munez’s back. He tumbled downhill, and Dow caught him. Dow told him to go back and climbed to the top of Suribachi and then circled down toward the volcano’s crater, where he saw other flamethrowers.

“A Jap came out of the cave, and he had broken his sword in two, and got down on one Marine, and the Marine caught it in his hands.” Dow paused to regain his composure. “I could still see the blood flying from as far as I was. But he took it away from that Jap and he killed him. And the flamethrower men went in and they burned out the cave and they sealed it up.”

As Dow prepared to climb back up, someone said, “We need something to put the flag on.”

The Japanese had rigged a reservoir with a pipe to catch drinking water and transport it to the cave. They pulled a thirty-foot section and tied the flag to it.

“They tied the flag to it, but the wind was blowing so hard it kept blowing over so we packed rocks to put around it, and they raised the flag,” Dow recalled.

“You’ve never seen anything prettier than our flag. It’s quiet. There’s not a sound while that was done. We’re all saluting the flag.”

Ships blew their whistles and the island erupted in cheers. “Some Japs, they broke out of caves and they started shooting at our flag,” Dow said. “Now they put holes in it, but it was still standing there.”

As Dow returned to his foxhole with a full pack, he started locating the firing pockets and sealing them. Someone said, “Look at that.”

“Here came an airplane in, a B-29, coming in from bombing Japan. The wheels were up and he made a belly landing. He skidded to a halt right at the end of the runway.”

A couple of days later, Dow saw another plane make an emergency landing, its right engine on fire.

After Americans captured Iwo Jima, more than 2,200 B-29 bombers made emergency landings there, which saved the lives of 24,000 airmen, according to a National WWII Museum fact sheet.

After Dow returned to his hole on the beach, a sergeant told him he needed to drop charges into a breathing hole, but it ran from one end of the tunnel to the other. Later, it was discovered the Japanese had built a seven-story hospital and command post under the volcano.

Returning one day to his little hole on the beach, Dow felt a guy pull on his shirt near his regimental patch.

“What are you doing here?” the fellow asked.

“What are you doing here?” he responded.

“You’re the third division,” he said. “Your outfit went home yesterday. Get out of here.”

Dow returned to the Yellow Beach 1 for a ride back to Guam. He approached an LST (landing ship, tank). The sailors aboard said they’re leaving in a few hours. “But you ain’t going with us.”

“Why?” Dow asked.

“We’ll have to tie a rope around you and drag you to clean you up.”

Dow was filthy.

“Well, did anyone stop to think where you go to the bathroom when you’re in battle?” Dow asked. “Yeah, it’s right in your pants. There’s no place to go. So I picked up my pack that I had stashed away and I went back up to the sulfur springs. I took me a bath and changed clothes. I threw all my clothes away, buried them there, because my knees were out, my elbows were out, the tips of my shoes were out, and no buttons on the front of me.”

He returned to the beach and boarded the LST, but rather than resting, he remained sick the entire time traveling on one of “those flat-bottomed devils.”

“I was lucky,” Dow said. “I got through 30 days there and never got a scratch from enemy fire.”

 

At Guam, he hitched a ride back to camp. The captain and lieutenant greeted him with hugs. So did the men in his tent. “In our company, we had 175 in our outfit, and I was the last one to come back to camp, and I was number 15,” Dow said. Not everyone died; many were injured.

Altogether, the United States lost 6,800 servicemen at Iwo Jima, with 20,000 others wounded, and Japan’s death toll there topped 22,000.

When he heard about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Dow said, “they should have dropped more bombs.”

“We had our training already to hit Japan,” he said. “Of course, in another way, you can’t blame the people. They were doing the same thing that we were doing. They had to fight for their country like we had to fight for ours.”

Dow had enough points to return home, so while his unit left for China, he returned to the states. After a 30-day leave, he traveled to Bremerton, where he was discharged April 1, 1946.

Upon his return, he took a train to Chehalis and a bus to Onalaska. He was whistling as he walked up Leonard Road, where his parents were milking at the time. They said Dow’s dog, Blackie, stood up, listened, and then raced from the barn and down the road to him. 

“Isn’t that something?” Dow wiped his damp eyes. “A dog will make you cry?

Naomi had joined the Nurse Cadet Corps, and she was halfway through the training when she learned of Dow’s discharge. She couldn’t marry him and remain in the corps, so she quit March 18, 1946. The two were married April 13 at her home in Cinebar, and they’ve been married 71 years. They have three grown sons.

Dow was sitting on the front steps in Cinebar on a warm day when a man asked if he wanted a job. He started building the Highway 508 bridge over Cinebar Creek. The last day of October 1946, Dow stood knee-deep in water, pulling big boulders from the ditch, when the boss asked him how it was going.

“If I had any brains, I’d go down and see what kind of schooling I can get under the GI Bill,” Dow said. “He made me get out of the ditch. He said, ‘You go find out.’ He gave me a full day’s pay too.”

Scanning a list of school opportunities, he saw one that said “barbering, six months.” He and Naomi moved to Tacoma, where he completed the training in four months, 19 days. While there, the Onalaska barber shop was up for sale, so his father took his son’s bank account book and bought it for them. He worked there 42 years until retiring.

Dow’s uniform is displayed in a case at the Veterans Memorial Museum. He’d like to see more patriotism among future generations.

“They should honor our country a little bit more than they’re doing,” he said. “I hope the Seahawks lose every darn game they play. If they don’t want to stick up for our country, they have no right living here.”

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Julie McDonald, a personal historian from Toledo, may be reached at memoirs@chaptersoflife.com. She’s also a columnist for The Chronicle. See her most recent commentary about the 20th anniversary of the Veterans Memorial Museum in today’s Opinion section.