Munkel guarded Iwo Jima in WWII

CRESCO - Sometimes it is hard to imagine a gray-haired man in a wheelchair as a young man in the Army walking among the dead on different islands in the Pacific during WWII. 

But that is exactly what Harold Munkel witnessed over 70 years ago, and his memory of those experiences is as vivid today as it was then.

When Pearl Harbor was bombed on Dec. 7, 1941, Munkel was looking forward to graduating from  Lime Springs High School the following spring and making his mark on the world. After graduation, he did work at Hormel in Austin, Minn. for a while, but then “Uncle Sam wanted me!”

Munkel joined about 30-35 other young Army draftees. He was assigned to the 752nd AAA (Anti-Aircraft Artillery) Gun Battery. He spent three months at Camp Callan, Calif. before he was shipped to Oahu, Hawaii. The trip from Oakland took nine days.

He stayed in Hawaii for about a year-and-a-half, when he went to Saipan, the largest island of the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean. “Our outfit was sent in to protect the islands after they were secured. The Marines and Army took Saipan. We didn’t have much action there but took some bombs when we were on Iwo Jima.” The trip to Saipan took 17 days and another three days to Iwo Jima on an LST. He ended up being on the water for 57 days during his enlistment.

As the saying goes, “War is Hell.” And Munkel can attest to that. On Saipan, he said Japanese soldiers told civilians the Americans would treat them horribly if captured. 

 

 

 

Their words influenced the women to throw their babies off Suicide Cliff, and then jump themselves, rather than be taken prisoner. His battalion was there about 3-4 months.

After the Marines took the island of Iwo Jima, Munkel’s battalion went there. They had to wait to land with their equipment and unload, since their guns weighed 31 tons! “We were about the first ones to use them out in the Pacific. The guns could shoot 12 miles. They were 4.7 120 mm. That is like a rifle shell, only four foot long!”

That moonless night, the Japanese bombed them. Munkel was watching the bombers coming. “If that one bomber had a few more bombs to drop, I wouldn’t be here today. The airplane was straight over my head.”

He and a couple other guys were in a hole, about four-and-a-half feet high and 10 feet across, with their equipment inside. “We were tracking their airplanes. If it wasn’t for the pitch black night, the bombers wouldn’t have gotten in.”

He was on Iwo Jima for 4-5 months. He saw a lot of things he won’t discuss with civilians, shielding them from the visions he remembers. “When I spoke with a class of school kids, I told them, ‘I saw a lot of Japanese who weren’t going to cause us any harm.’” That is a gentle way of saying there were bodies all over the island. 

“When we first got there, we’d open our K-rations and heat them up with the fires that were still burning,” Munkel recalled.

There was still some fighting, but only in little spurts. One night, a group of about 150 enemy soldiers came out of the caves at night and attacked the maintenance area. “They all got killed.”

The island was full of caves and tunnels. Other soldiers would use flame throwers in the tunnels to flush out the enemy. If the Japanese did not burn to death, they would suffocate as the flames would suck the oxygen out of the underground passages.

Besides the possibility of running into enemy soldiers, the men on Iwo Jima had to maneuver around unexploded shells. The island also  contained a volcano that spewed ash on the ground, making it very soft. When the duds fell, they didn’t explode. “I hit one with a shovel, but it didn’t go off,” Munkel smiled. “But there was a 500-pound bomb sitting about 20 feet away from our tent. We didn’t bother with it.

Another not-so-pleasant memory was while he was eating dinner. A fly landed on his arm. He swatted it and killed it. “I learned my lesson to never do that again. It smelled like a hog house. It was feeding off the Japanese.”

Altogether, Munkel spent 34 months in the service, 30 of those in the Pacific.

During his time in the service, the Army sergeant kept track of the dates of significant happenings. “My last entry in my little black book was ‘Los Angeles. Hurray!’”

“I never got home until I got discharged. I got discharged from Ft. Leavenworth and took the train to Waterloo. From there, I was on a bus going to Cresco. I got off at Davis Corners and hitched a ride the rest of the way to Lime Springs. I walked in and surprised them!” He commented it was different then, with no easy way to get in touch with family members. There were no cell phones.

After his discharge, Munkel continued to serve his community by being a very active member of American Legion Post 545 in Lime Springs. “I held every office except chaplain,” he stated. He was so active, he stopped accepting honors. “I quit taking trinkets that went on my Legion cap. There wasn’t room for it!”

After coming home, Munkel continued with his plans before being drafted. He met and married Betty Robinson, and the couple had four adult children,  three girls (one has passed) and a boy. They also have eight grandsons and one great-granddaughter.