The Sands of Iwo

This AM, Don Imus interviewed James Bradley (son of John Bradley) on the 60th anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima. James Bradley burst onto the national scene as an author in 2000 with his New York Times #1 bestseller book Flags of Our Fathers. The New York Times called it "the surprise runaway nonfiction best seller of the season." Steven Spielberg acquired the movie rights. Clint Eastwood is currently directing. Imus hyped the Bradley book on his morning show since 2000 and this was the second time I heard James Bradley with the I-Man. Imus served in the Marines and he asked good questions of Bradley. The author talked about the six boys who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. The photograph is the most reproduced photo in history. James' father, John Bradley, was one of the six Iwo Jima flagraisers. All of this took me back to the grisly photos (made into postcards) of Japanese dead at Tarawa. My dad brought them home as souvenirs of WWII in the South Pacific. If Iwo was bloodier than Tarawa (and it was), Clint Eastwood will face the same dilemma in making a film about Iwo Jima that Spielberg faced with the Normandy invasion. Film audiences will not be able to stomach the truthful images of Iwo Jima. Imus closed this morning's show with a rendition of the "Ballad of Ira Hayes" by the next governor of Texas (Imus and I are on the same page about the Kinkster.), Richard (Kinky) Friedman. To this point in my life, I heard only the Johnny Cash version of the ballad. The Kinkster did the song proud. As James Bradley taught me this AM, Ira Hayes (one of the 6 flagraisers) suffered from Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome (as did a lot of the Iwo survivors) and no one knew what it was until years later. Ira Hayes drank (no meds available) because of guilt. He survived and a lot of good guys didn't and he drank himself to death. If this is (fair & balanced) patriotic gore, so be it.

[x DEPARTMENT OF THE NAVY -- NAVAL HISTORICAL CENTER]
Oral History- Iwo Jima Flag Raising
Recollections of the flag raising on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima by Pharmacist Mate Second Class John H. Bradley, USN, with the 5th Marine Division.

Adapted from John Bradley interview in box 3 of World War II Interviews, Operational Archives Branch, Naval Historical Center.

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John Bradley:
I was attached to the 5th Marine Division on Iwo Jima and I was a member of the 28th Marine Regiment who raised the American flag on the highest point on that island which is Mount Suribachi. The company that I was assigned to hit the beach, (we were in the 9th wave); we hit the beach approximately H-Hour plus 45, which would be 45 minutes after H-hour [H-Hour was scheduled for 9:00 a.m.; the first assault wave of armored tracked landing vehicles began landing at 8:59 a.m. on 19 Feb. 1945]. When we hit the beach I was a little bit too busy to do any sight seeing at the time because we had a lot of casualties around the beach. In our company we went right up in the front lines about 45 minutes after we bit the beach and we stayed there. The 28th Marines sector of that island was the southern tip of Iwo Jima which Mount Suribachi was on.

In the morning of D plus 4 [23 Feb.] we organized a patrol of approximately 40 men [from Company E]. And myself and another hospital corpsmen by the name of Zimik (?), Pharmacist's Mate, 2/c [Second Class] were the [medical] corpsmen attached to that patrol. At that time we didn't know if we were going to be able to plant the American flag on the top of Mount Suribach. but previous to that the Navy [warships] gave the mountain a terrific bombarding, assisted by the Navy, Army and Marine Corps fighter planes.

We started up the mountain immediately after the Naval barrage and plane strafing was over and we reached the top. And I might add that the reason we reached the top of Mount Suribachi without a single enemy shot being fired was because the Japs were still in their caves waiting for the bombardment to be lifted. When we reached the top we formed our battle line [the platoon moved from the column formation used to climb the mountain trail to one with the squads and fireteams on line] and we all went over the top [attacked] together and much to our surprise we didn't find a Jap in sight. If one Jap had been up there manning one of his guns I think he could have pretty well taken care of our 40-man patrol.

Well, the minute we got up on top we set our line of fire [defensive perimeter firing positions] up, the Lieutenant in charge placed the machine guns where he wanted them, had our rifle men spotted [positioned] and immediately we sent patrols to the right and to the left [on the slopes]. We went up the mountain almost in the middle so consequently we sent patrols around to the right and left to take care of any Japs that might come out. When we got there I was with the group that swung to the left and immediately the Lieutenant sent a man around to look for a piece of staff [i.e., a flagpole] that we could put the American flag on. And the Japs had some old pipes that were laying around there, they used these pipes to run water down below the mountain. And we used this Jap pipe and we attached the American flag on there and we put it up. And Joe Rosenthal happened to be there at the right time. He came up a little while after we were on top and much to his surprise the picture that is now so famous....the Flag Raising on Mount Suribachi.

After the flag was raised we went back to work taking care of [i.e., killing] the Japs that were here and there and we found many of them in caves. In fact in one cave we counted 142 Japs. And the flame throwers did a fine job on top of the mountain. We tried to talk them out. They wouldn't come out so then we used the flame throwers as a last resort. There were numerous caves all. around there and we didn't have one single casualty on top of that mountain. [Flame throwers were first used in modern warfare by the Germans in World War I. The flame throwers used by the Marines in this action were carried by one Marine on his back and shot a stream of flaming fuel - standard gasoline or thickened "napalm" gasoline - from 20-40 yards against enemy caves/pillboxes to kill the enemy by burning, suffocation, or shock.]

Mount Suribachi was a [volcanic] mountain approximately 560 feet high and at the top it was a hollow...it was hollow on top, with about a 20, oh, I'd say a 20-foot ledge that you could walk all a-way around before this crater sank in. This crater was, oh, I'd say approximately 50 to 60 feet deep and it was down in this crater that the Japs were honeycombed in these caves. They had the caves dug in all the way around this crater. Suribachi was inactive at the time but we noticed smoke, sort of a vapor coming out of the ground up on this crater but it was purely inactive. The surface of that crater down below was warm but according to the north end that our regiment went on later, it was cold compared to that north end because that north end was really hot. In fact some of the boys received burns just from sleeping on the ground.

Interviewer:
Bradley, in the picture which man are you?

John Bradley:
I'm the one that's second from the right as you're looking at the picture. And right next to me there you can see a man's helmet sticking up, that's Pfc. [Private First Class Rene A.] Gagnon [USMC]. The man bending over nearest to the ground is [Corporal Harlon Henry Block] [USMC]. And the one in back of us with the rifle slung on his shoulder is Pfc. Ira Hayes [USMC]. He is also a survivor. And the one in back of Hayes, is Pfc. [Frank R.] Sousley [USMC] who was later killed in action on the north end [of the island]. And there's two men that you can hardly see in the picture, they are from, the one on the right hand side is Pfc. Rene Gagnon who is a survivor of the flag raising. And the other one in back of Gagnon is Sergeant [Michael] Strank [USMC] who was killed later in action on the north end of Iwo Jima.

Interviewer:
Was this your first invasion?

John Bradley:
Yes it was, that was my first invasion with these Marines.

Interviewer:
Did you go up the seaward side of Mount Suribachi or the other side?

John Bradley:
We went facing the south....we went like I said before, it was in the middle of the mountain, it wasn't on the seaward side, [but the] land side.

Interviewer:
Some Naval officers that have been back said that the Naval ships let a great cheer or salute when they noticed the flag up. Could you hear anything of that demonstration or see anything of it?

John Bradley:
Well, at that time we didn't think of the significance of the flag raising but they've told me that they did and it seems to me that I can recall something of that. We men up on top of the mountain weren't thinking of anything like that at the time. In fact we were all worried.

Interviewer:
I understand this is the second flag raising that occurred there.

John Bradley:
That's right. The first flag was a smaller flag and it was put up by Platoon Sergeant [a Staff Noncommissioned Officer rank above that of sergeant] Ernest I. ["Boots"] Thomas of Tallahassee, Florida. He was the Platoon Sergeant in charge of the 40-man patrol [not factually correct - PlSgt Thomas was the senior enlisted man in the platoon and his duty was to assist the Platoon Commander, a commissioned officer]. He put up that flag about one half hour before this larger one was put up. It was so small that it couldn't be seen from down below so our Battalion commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson [USMC] sent a four-man patrol up with this larger flag which is the flag you see on the poster for the 7th war Loan Drive.

Interviewer:
None of these six men in the picture then actually carried the flag up?

John Bradley:
No sir, the flag was carried by the Lieutenant in charge of the patrol. That was the first flag. And the second flag that want up was carried, in the patrol, there was Sergeant Strank who was in the second flag raising and whose picture is on it and Pfc. Hayes and Pfc. Sousley, They were in the group of the four men that the Battalion Commander sent up with the second flag.

Interviewer:
Do you care to identify your Lieutenant in charge of your patrol?

John Bradley:
The Lieutenant in charge of that 40-man patrol was First Lieutenant [Harold] Shrier [USMC]. He is one of Carlson's Old Second Raiders [i.e., 1stLt Shrier was a former member the 2nd Raider Battalion, which was formed and commanded by LtCol Evans F. Carlson USMC from 1942-1943, when it was disbanded and the officers and men transferred to other Marine combat units] and he worked up from an enlisted man and he's now a First Lieutenant. And he happened to be Executive Officer [second in command] of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines.

Interviewer:
Do you care to tell us how you got hurt later?

John Bradley:
None of the boys got hurt or killed in action at time of the flag raising. All this took place when we received orders to go dawn to the north end [of the island, where the Marines were fighting to eliminate remaining Japanese-held pockets of resistance] and help them out with the fighting down there. My injury took place on March 12th which was the 22nd day of The operation. It was just about evening. I was getting things squared around my fox hole [a one or two-man fighting hole dug deep enough to protect the user from artillery fire and tanks and still permit him to stand within and fire his weapon over the top edge], getting my medical gear and personal gear arranged so that at night if we got the word to move out I'd know just where everything was and while I was arranging that--things were entirely quiet up to this time. While I was arranging this a Jap mortar shell lit [hit, or exploded] several feet from me and it caught four men and I happened to be one of them. I received wound fragments in both legs and one fragment hit my foot and it broke a bone in my foot. [Mortars are anti-personnel weapons designed to fire explosive or illumination shells at high angles over ranges up to 4,000 yards - the projectiles are fired at a high angle in order to clear obstacles between the mortar and the target, and projectiles plunge almost straight down into the target, thus hitting behind protective fortifications. Mortars were located in infantry company and battalion weapons platoons.]

I received very good medical care. Just as soon as I was hit the corpsmen were there to fix me up and the battalion surgeon sent his men up to evacuate me back to the battalion aid station, received supplementary treatment there and in a matter of three-quarters of an hour after I was hit I was back in the field hospital. The next morning I was put on a plane and flown to a rear area hospital which was at Guam. From Guam I was evacuated to Pearl Harbor. From Pearl Harbor to Oakland, California and then I received my orders to report to Washington, D.C. At this time I am a patient at the National Naval Medical Center at Bethesda, Maryland.

Interviewer:
How long were you on top of Mount Suribachi?

John Bradley:
We stayed there approximately three days, a little over three days and then we received our orders to go to the north end.

Interviewer:
How long did the flag stay up?

John Bradley:
The flag stayed up all the while. That flag was never taken down.

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Notes:

The first flag, measuring 54x28 inches, was obtained from attack transport USS Missoula (APA-211), and raised on a 20-foot section of pipe at 10:20 a.m. Several hours later, an 8-foot-long battle ensign, obtained from tank landing ship LST-779, was raised, resulting in Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's famous photograph of the flag raising. This photograph inspired the bronze monument to the Marine Corps by Felix de Welden located near Arlington National Cemetery.

For a detailed description of the struggle for Suribachi see: Garand, George W. and Truman R. Strobridge. Western Pacific Operations. vol.4 of History of U.S. Marine Corps Operations in World War II. Washington DC: Historical Division, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, 1971.

For the official US Navy history of the battle, including a description of the flag raising, see: Morison, Samuel Eliot. Victory in the Pacific, 1945. Vol.14 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1961.

Copyright © 2003 Department of the Navy

Money Talks, Bullsh Excrement Walks

Ah, teacher pay. Contemplating those magnificent sums makes me giddy. In 1965, with my newly minted MA in history, I broke new ground and secured a position as an instructor at the Collegium Pro Populo on the banks of the Mississippi River in western Ilinois. The method in my madness was pecuniary. I sought wealth beyond the dreams of avarice: the salary for a beginning classroom teacher in the public schools anywhere (CA was the land of opportunity with $5K starting salaries.) in CO or NM was in the $4K range. My pay at the collegium on the Big Muddy was more than any starting public school teacher could command. My colleague who started at this juco had fled an upscale high school in the north suburbs of Chicago; he gained in salary by coming to the juco. In addition, he got away from all of the nonsense that accompanies teaching in the public schools. After teaching 2 or 3 classes in the AM (usually), he (and I) were free to run and play. Teaching in grades K-12 is akin to being a guard in a prison: once in, no guard leaves until the end of a shift. Similarly, public school teachers arrive before 8:00 AM and leave after 4:00 PM. So, the juco paid better and afforded better job amenities. The distinctive feature of working at the Collegium Pro Populo was discretionary compensation. The prexy set each salary in a new contract. The entire institution was abuzz when contracts were distributed. Mainly, it was blah blah about who got what and why. The prexy and my chair were archenemies. Therefore, the salary increases in my department were less than increases in the departments of the prexy's cronies. That was my sole experience with individual contracts. After 2 years of the juco life, I got the itch for more bucks again. Off I went to Texas Technique (where I could have gone after completing my MA) and served for 5 years as a PTI (Part Time Instructor) and graduate student. I combined teaching 2 classes per term with enrollment in a maximum of 3 courses. I took a significant cut in pay, but the payoff from the cosmic slot machine of life was going make it all worthwhile. In my first 3 years at Texas Technique, jobs were plentiful. Grad students further along were going off ABD to fairly decent colleges and universities. One guy, a year ahead of me, took his prelims (oral exams over 5 history fields plus a minor field) and did poorly; the stock answer of "I don't know" didn't help. He left the exam room and went to an office and called the personnel office of the juco system in Dallas and got a job over the phone! I persevered and finished the PhD. By then, the job market was drier than the TX sand. The only job that was available was at the Collegium Excellens in Amarillo, 125 miles to the north. The Amarillo juco offered a starting salary that was on par with the salaries that my peers at Texas Technique were commanding at Western Kentucky, Wichita State, and the like. However, I was back at a collegium. This juco had begun as an arm of the Amarillo Independent School District. However, unlike the CA jucos that were the end of the line in K-14 school districts, the Amarillo juco was separate and distinct from the public school system. The school board met weekly and did public school business: awarded bids, hired and fired, and approved the budget. After completing the public school agenda, the board adjourned and reconvened as the Board of Regents of the Collegium Excellens. Unlike the public schools, the collegium had academic ranks and tenure. However, the Collegium inherited a salary schedule based upon years of service and academic accomplishment. None of that discretionary compensation with the wildfire of gossip that came with contracts. In fact, at the Collegium Excellens, we had no contracts. I received a letter of appointment when I was hired. Thereafter, I showed up for the General Ass(embly) that began each academic year. At that time, I received the new salary schedule. Most of the prexies of the Collegium in the Panhandle were believers in the "2% rule." Across-the-board increases were limited to 2%. In 32 years, I remember only a small number (fewer than 5) pay increases that exceeded 2%. The only other way to increase one's compensation was additional graduate hours of study. Here I was with a PhD in history, taking courses in political science and sociology (for overload course assignments in those fields) at the nearby teachers' college, West Teachers. I even (shudder) took a couple of grad courses in higher education. All for the sake of increasing my salary for a one-income family. As I look back on all of this nonsense, teacher salaries at any level (below major state and private universities: Harvard or SUNY-Albany) are a disgrace. If this is (fair & balanced) resentment, so be it.

[x Education Next]
All Teachers Are Not the Same
by Julia E. Koppich

It is by now a familiar story, often told as a lament: teachers in this country continue to be paid according to the single salary schedule.

They accrue better pay on the basis of years of experience and college units earned. Units may or may not be related to teaching assignment. Some districts have modestly tweaked this arrangement by paying a premium to teachers who earn certification through the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. But by and large, in thousands of school districts across the United States, the unvarnished standard single salary schedule prevails.

Teacher unions, among the staunchest defenders of the standard compensation arrangement, are often credited—or blamed—with inventing this salary calculus. In fact, the classic teachers’ salary arrangement is an artifact of civil service. Developed in the early 1920s, the system was popularized three decades later as a way of creating salary equity between elementary teachers, most of whom were women, and secondary teachers, most of whom were men. This was not a pre-feminist revolution so much as a necessary economic response to the post–World War II enrollment boom. Over time, to be sure, teacher unions have come to defend the standard single salary schedule in the name of employee equity and fairness.

The National Education Association assiduously avoids anything that might be construed as “merit pay.” The position taken by the American Federation of Teachers is less rigid, yet replete with caveats to protect against anticipated slights and abuses. The unions’ position is not unwarranted. Merit pay schemes that have been tried in education have an abysmal track record (see “Dollars and Sense,” p. 60, for one that had a decent record—while it lasted).

Part of the problem, however, has been that merit pay systems are rarely based on objective standards, a flaw that often created unhealthy competition for the usually scarce resources rather than cooperation among teachers. These insufficient funds all too typically forced many teachers to take their rewards solely in the form of psychic remuneration.

Compounding the compensation dilemma, policies promoted by both districts and unions have endeavored to maintain the fiction that “a teacher is a teacher is a teacher.” Compensation structures have failed to recognize that some teaching jobs are more difficult than others or that some teachers are more—or less—skilled than others.

Salaries for the Real World

The time has come for school districts and teacher unions to take a different tack. It is time to develop and implement a professional compensation arrangement that recognizes the complex nature of the work of teaching and that compensates teachers for both the difficulty of the assignment and the professional accomplishment that is part of it.

We need a compensation structure that utilizes multiple approaches. These should include paying teachers more for: 1) attaining knowledge and skills that demonstrably contribute to improving student learning; 2) mentoring newer and less skilled teachers; 3) teaching in hard-to-staff schools and choosing difficult-to-staff subjects; 4) producing higher test scores, using a value-added approach.

These ideas fly in the face of long-established tradition. But it’s time to reexamine that tradition. It’s time to acknowledge publicly that some teaching jobs are more difficult than others. And we must be willing to pay more for some fields than for others. In a perfect world, perhaps, a physics teacher is no more valuable than an English teacher. But we do not live in a perfect world. We live in a world in which physics teachers are at a premium, and for the foreseeable future supply and demand will need to prevail. The market must have its way.

Some will argue that what is suggested above is too complicated, that it is time to scrap the old salary schedule and pay teachers on the basis of their students’ test scores alone. After all, assert proponents of this argument, isn’t the true measure of a teacher’s worth her students’ test results? In fact, at the base of this argument lies the same fault line that threatens No Child Left Behind. Making judgments about student learning by simply examining test scores from one year to the next is hazardous at best. Tests provide a simple snapshot in time and may not be well aligned with standards or curriculum. Moreover, particularly in urban districts, given the rate of student transience, the cohort of students tested at the beginning of the year may be different from that tested at the end of the year, thus providing few useful comparative data.

The New Math for Merit

But there is a way to use test scores to gain needed information about the impact of teaching and the levels of student learning: value-added calculations. The value-added approach has the advantage of separating student effects (ethnicity, family background, socioeconomic status) from school effects (teachers, administrators, programs) since it examines test scores to determine if students are making anticipated academic gains each year. Measured on the basis of their progress from the previous year, students, in a sense, act as their own statistical control. Value-added programs calculate a projected test score for a student in a given grade or subject based on his or her previous academic achievement. The difference between the actual score and the projected score is the value added.

Value-added calculations, however, should not be used as the sole gauge of teachers’ compensation. They too are an imperfect technology. But they can, and should, serve as one important measure. Consistent value-added work by William Sanders in Tennessee has shown that several consecutive years of teachers’ adding measurable value to students’ learning provide a foundation on which students can continue to make academic progress. After several years of ineffective teaching, students may never recover academically.

Finally, it is not possible to discuss teachers’ compensation without taking up the issue of their evaluation. In most places, evaluation is done poorly, with checklists about behavior standing in for standards of good practice that should frame evaluation systems. Administrators typically in charge of the process have too little time or training to effectively help teachers improve their practice.

But there is an effective alternative to the ineffective evaluation as well. Systems of peer review, in place for a decade or more in a dozen or so districts—such as Toledo and Columbus, Ohio; Rochester, New York; and Montgomery County, Maryland—have shown remarkable promise. Beginning teachers are provided the support they need from specially selected experienced teachers, who are chosen jointly by the district and the union. Those individuals who were not meant to be teachers are soon out of the profession. Struggling tenured teachers are given the support they have long needed. Should that not prove adequate, they are encouraged to find other lines of work. Conventional wisdom notwithstanding, teachers, including unionized teachers, are able to judge their colleagues fairly but rigorously. Yes, some teachers are dismissed. More important, evaluation accomplishes the purpose for which it is intended: improving professional practice.

Working with Complexity

Marrying a well-developed system of peer review and value-added test scores could create a powerful framework for teachers’ compensation. Adding pay for knowledge and skills, compensation for mentoring, and pay for teaching in hard-to-staff schools and subjects will transform a pro-forma salary schedule into a professional compensation arrangement that better recognizes the complexity of teaching and offers teachers the kinds of incentives and options that professionals deserve.

Salaries by themselves, no matter how high or competitive, will not encourage teachers to remain at schools where the working conditions are poor. Competent, supportive administrators, a decent physical plant, and requisite instructional supplies are the sine qua non for maintaining a quality teaching staff, regardless of the rate of pay.

In sum, it is time to construct a salary schedule that gives teachers choices, opportunities, and options—pay for knowledge and skills, pay for mentoring, added pay for hard-to-staff schools and subjects, and added compensation for test scores calculated using a value-added approach.

The hope is that progressive unions and districts will take up the challenge to shape this new salary construct. They will come to see rethinking compensation as part of their obligation to promote quality teaching, and as the next step on the road to creating a true profession.

Julia E. Koppich is an education consultant based in San Francisco. A former high school teacher and faculty member in the school of education at the University of California, Berkeley, she is also coauthor of United Mind Workers: Unions and Teaching in the Knowledge Society.

Published by the Hoover Institution © 2004 by the Board of Trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University