BC Cook
“EVEN after all these years it is clear in my mind, like it happened yesterday. It was the most important day of my life.” Most veterans have echoed these words. Sometimes that day becomes not only their most important, but the most important for many others, sometimes an entire nation. Can one person change history? Can the death of one person alter the course of events for hundreds of millions? Or will someone else occupy that person’s place in history, so that events remain unchanged? Are we prisoners of history, or makers of it?
In the final days of the Second World War in the Pacific, in what was to be a routine mission to destroy an enemy target, things went horribly wrong for a group of airmen. As American and Japanese forces fought one of the war’s bloodiest battles on Iwo Jima, a group of pilots were assigned to attack nearby Chichi Jima. The Japanese built a powerful radio transmitter there, from which they could communicate with their vast forces spread around the ocean. The Americans attacked the island from the air in February 1945, hoping to take out the radio and towers. They ran into a well-prepared defense, as one pilot, George, found out the hard way.
His plane crippled by the withering anti-aircraft fire coming from the island, George chose to ditch in the sea. He turned the plane slightly to give his crew members a better chance to bail out, then headed for the end of the island where he was told a friendly submarine would be patrolling to pick up survivors. After splashing down, George inflated his small life raft and checked himself for injuries. He realized the current was pushing him toward the island, right at the Japanese soldiers who were waiting to kill him. He tried to think of an escape but there seemed to be nothing to do but throw himself on the mercy of the enemy. Close enough to see the soldiers on the shore, he sensed agitation in the water. Just then, George saw a most welcome sight: an American submarine surfaced and rescued him from certain death.
It was learned later at a military trial that of the pilots shot down and captured that day, all were killed and some were cannibalized. The Japanese ritually killed them and ate their livers. Had George been captured, had that submarine not come to his rescue at the last moment, he would have shared their fate.
Imagine the consequences of that series of events. Had Lt. George H. W. Bush been shot down over the island and captured, or had he crashed into the ocean and died, he never would have gone into a career in politics, become Director of the CIA, then vice president of the United States in 1980, then president in 1988. He would not have been in the White House when Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, sparking the Gulf War. His son would never have become president in 2000 and the War on Terror would have taken on a very different complexion. Without those events, would we know Colin Powell, Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Barack Obama? Oh, how history has turned on the outcome of one mission nearly 80 years ago.
BC Cook, PhD lived on Saipan and has taught history for over 30 years. He is a director and historian at Sealark Exploration.
