It may be a long way from Iwo Jima to Kinsale, but for World War II veteran Don Graves, it was a journey worth making, as it fulfilled a life-long ambition and helped trace his Irish ancestors
ALMOST 80 years on from surviving one of the bloodiest battles of WWII, a happy American got to fulfil a long-held dream of drinking a pint of Guinness and singing Danny Boy in a West Cork town.
A descendant of Irish emigrants, Don Grave’s wish to visit his ancestral homeland became a reality after he revealed his desire to see Ireland on award-winning US Air Force photographer, Jeremy Lock’s podcast Last Letters, where participants write a letter as if they had only one more day to live.
‘I have always wanted to go to Ireland, sit in an Irish pub, order a beer, and sing Danny Boy,’ said Don, and just a few months later, the dream became a reality when people from all over the world chipped in and raised over $14,000 to send Don to Ireland to celebrate his 98th birthday.
After visiting Collins Barracks Museum in Cork and St Finbarr’s Oratory in Gougane Barra, Don and Jeremy hit Kinsale where, thanks to the kindness of Michael Frawley of The White House, a birthday cake and party was organised with local chanteuse, Sharon Crosbie, singing Danny Boy for Don.
But amid the celebrations and revelry, Don took time out to tell how, as a 19-year-old flame thrower with Company D, Second Battalion, 28th Marines, fifth marine division, he survived six weeks of ferocious fighting on Iwo Jima when the average life span of a flame thrower was just 10 minutes.
One of just 18 men from his unit of 335 marines to survive the battle, Don recalled how on February 23rd 1945, six men from his unit, including his friend, Ira Hayes, raised Old Glory on the summit of Mt Suribachi with the moment immortalised forever by photographer Joe Rosenthal in his iconic shot.
‘There were 500 American ships in the bay and when they saw the guys raise the flag on top of Mt Suribachi they left go with rockets and tracer fire and our boys up in the north, clearing the airstrips left go too, it sure was some spectacle,’ he said, with a beam of pride undimmed by the years.
For Don, his journey to Iwo Jima began four years earlier when, with some friends in a car in his native Detroit they heard, over the radio, US President Franklin D Roosevelt deliver his famous ‘Day of Infamy’ speech, just a day after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour.
Don can recite the opening lines of Roosevelt’s speech verbatim. He was only 16 at the time and he had to wait until he turned 17 before he could follow in his father’s footsteps and sign up and join the Marine Corps.
Don landed in Iwo Jima on the third wave, on February 19th, only to find himself stuck on the beach as 20,000 Japanese troops under General Tadamichi Kuribayashi dug in and forced the marines to fight every inch of the way in one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific, if not the entire Second World War.
‘I knew immediately it wasn’t going to be easy – we couldn’t get up off the beach, every time guys would go over the top, they would drop. I was two hours on the beach, and it took us three days to make Suribachi, inch by inch, foot by foot, shell hole by shell hole.’
As he lay on the beach with nowhere to go, and saw what was happening, he was scared. He put his face in the sand and said ‘God I don’t know much about you, but if you can do for me what people tell me you can, I will serve you the rest of my life.’ It explains his decision to later become a pastor.
Almost 7,000 young Americans and over 19,000 Japanese lost their lives in six weeks of ferocious fighting for a tiny island that America wanted to use as a base for air raids on mainland Japan. Time and again, Don found himself in the frontline of the conflict clearing Japanese pill boxes.
After the war, Don settled first in Wisconsin but his work as a pastor brought him all over the United States, including to South Dakota and Arizona. Now widowed since the death of his beloved Rebecca, with whom he reared two sons and two daughters, he lives in Keller, Texas.
Currently liaising with Dunmanway historian Michelle O’Mahony of OM History Consultants to trace his Irish ancestors, Patrick Daugherty and Catherine Shevlin, Don has thanked Michelle for helping Michael Frawley host the birthday party and, in the process, making Don’s dream come true.
‘It’s always been my ambition to come to Ireland and hear someone sing Danny Boy – it’s taken me a long time to get here but it’s been worth it, and everyone has been so welcoming and interested when I tell them about Iwo Jima and the buddies I lost there. I think about them every day.’
