Veterans Day 2014

The long, hard fight for Iwo Jima

Bellmore war hero recalls one of WWII’s fiercest battles

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Navy Lt. Louis Camilleri signaled to his navigator to abort the landing. Camilleri had spotted a beach officer ahead. He was waving off Camilleri’s 36-foot landing craft, called a Higgins boat. Japanese bullets and mortars rained down on the beach. It was too “hot” to land.

The navigator ignored or mistook Camilleri’s orders, however. He sent their boat, full of weapons and ammunition, hurtling onto the beach amid one of World War II’s fiercest firefights, on Iwo Jima, a speck of an island in the Pacific Ocean, 750 miles south of Tokyo.

“Now we’re in the middle of a battle,” Camilleri recounted during an interview last Thursday at his family-run business, Dear Little Dollies, in Bellmore Village. “I said we were just going to be beautiful targets.”

Camilleri, who moved to North Bellmore after the war and is now 90, sat down with the Herald as Veterans Day approached to recall his experiences in one of the Second World War’s most terrifying battles, in which 6,800 American troops were killed and 19,200 wounded. He is among a handful of surviving personnel who served on the U.S.S. Logan, an attack transport ship, during the war.

The battle for Iwo Jima
Iwo Jima, a rugged jungle island, measures just eight square miles, but its military importance during World War II could not be overstated. It was to become one of the final staging areas for the U.S. Army Air Forces’ bombardment of Japan.

American forces, which surrounded Iwo Jima in 450 ships, began their 36-day assault on the island on Feb. 19, 1945, according to the Navy Department Library. Allied forces were simultaneously fighting their way across the Pacific and Europe. The Japanese Empire was losing the war, embittering Imperial troops and steeling them in their resolve to defend their positions. They would not surrender.

Iwo Jima, which lies amid the Volcano Islands chain, means Sulfur Island in Japanese. Much of the terrain is composed of the yellow element, and its foul smell filled the air as the battle raged.

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