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FREEDOM HAS A COST!
The battle of Iwo Jima-fought in the Pacific in World War II from February 19 to March 26, 1945 was one of the fiercest and bloodiest battles in World War II. My father, Cpl. Jasper Pizzolato, Sr., of the U.S.M.C., served in a battalion for the 13th Marines artillery regiment of the Fifth Marine Division and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for meritorious achievement in that battle.
D day plus 9: Shortly after 0200, the 5th Marine Division ammunition dump blew up and the lieutenant was wounded, Cpl. Pizzolato took charge of the 13 men of L Battery, 4th Battalion of the regiment while acting sergeant in charge of ammunition. “Some of them were just kids,” he would tell his children decades later. “I had to grab one by the shoulder and calm him down.” Cpl. Pizzolato was 28 years old in 1945, older than the average enlisted men, and was fulfilling a life-long dream to join the U.S. Marines after he found a brochure about the Corps in his school desk. The men of his battery scrambled to salvage as much ammo as possible and get the ammo to the front lines in a highly important support mission. They had to grovel on the hot sand when the ammunition began exploding, pulling the ammo carts by a rope with their teeth. My father talked once about how hot the forsaken ash of Iwo Jima was, like “walking on fire.” Cpl. Pizzolato got the ammo to the front lines on the final leg. He had organized, dug in and kept ammo moving to the guns throughout the assault and capture of the island and was given up for dead at one point, but he returned to his battery alive and well. One of the men had remarked, “Well, I guess Pizzy's dead.” The men went weeks without food and had little water. When I asked him about this, he said, “We didn't eat much.”
He also talked about the famed flag-raising on Mount Suribachi and how the ship's horns blared and the cheers from men could be heard “all over the place.” Still, the flag raising was early on in the battle and much fighting was still ahead. There was actually two flag raising on Iwo Jima which Cpl. Pizzolato witnessed both.
After Iwo Jima, the Fifth Marine Division was part of the plan to establish a beachhead to invade the Japanese home islands in “Operation Downfall,” where fighting was expected to be so fierce against Japanese soldiers and civilians alike that nearly 2 million Purple Heart Medals were minted. My father was not expecting to survive the beachhead, and he was always grateful to Harry Truman for dropping the bomb which saved countless American lives, including his own. August 16th, 1945, instead of facing certain death on the invasion of Japan, Cpl. Jasper A. Pizzolato, Sr., was awarded the Bronze Star Medal for his actions on Iwo Jima. The medal was pinned on him in a ceremony by Col. J.D. Waller, a fellow Louisianian from Haynesville. The story and the picture of him receiving the medal was carried in the local newspapers back home in Shreveport. If you read about the exploits of the men of Iwo Jima, you will find that heroism like what my father and the men of K Battery did was common among every soldier fighting and dying on the island. Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz offered the tribute, "Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue."
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