Maj. Richard T. Spooner recalls the day the Americans stormed the beaches of Saipan.
The WWII veteran, who was on Saipan last week for the first time since coming here in 1944, tells Variety that it was the first time they faced mass Japanese artillery and noted the presence of civilians. “It was a different campaign.”
Up to this day, Spooner remembers the terrifying experience.
He admits, “I don’t like to say that we were fearful but we were. It’s human nature.”
Major Spooner recalls that fateful day 67 years ago.
“The experience of coming into the beach was a bit terrifying because of the sounds overhead and what was going on around us,” says Spooner.
The amphibious tractors, he says, were not covered. “It was dangerous riding in them. Several were not knocked out before they got to the beach.”
“When we arrived at the water’s edge we expected and hoped to stay in the amtraks and go ashore. But almost all were stopped right at the water’s edge,” he says.
Those that managed to reach the beach, he says, led them to a frightening sight and scent of dead bodies.
Although he says there are pictures taken of the beach; however, these do not compare to what they saw. “I know there were some pictures. But I had never seen one that showed the beach as we saw it at that time.”
As they head to shore, Spooner says what was predominant in their minds was to stay alive.
As much as they wanted to stay alive, Spooner says they had to move and move fast, drop to the sand, roll, so they could get up in a different position and run some more.
The day they stormed the beaches and tried to recapture the island from the Japanese, Major Spooner says it felt like “it was several lifetimes.”
From the beach, they were able to take the fighter strip in Susupe in Chalan Kanoa.
On July 24, Spooner says they moved to Tinian.
“We went aboard ship which was really exciting because we took our clothes off and they issued us everything new,” recalls Spooner.
He says they wore the same clothes from June 15 to July 24, 1944. “So they gave us all new dungarees, socks, and underwear. The Navy was really good to us. They had saved us much fresh water as much as possible. So we could all get a freshwater bath, shower, and hot food. It was like paradise for one to two days.”
Now more than six decades down the road, coming back to Saipan where he witnessed intense fighting and courage, he says, “I have mixed emotions. I feel emotional about my buddies who lost their lives as teenagers here because there were many of them. I come back and I find the smell of the islands was beautiful. There was no death.”
Gone was the permeating stench of death that welcomed them at the beach where 3,100 Americans and close to 30,000 Japanese including Chamorros, Carolinians, Koreans and Okinawans spent their last breath fighting.
“Now I come back and it smells clean. The lagoon looks nice. It’s a beautiful color. It breaks my heart that my buddies could not see it as it is now.”
He says he marvels at the island’s diversity, how various ethnic groups manage to live together in peace and harmony.
“I think the sacrifices made had to be worthwhile.”
His son and namesake, Rick W. Spooner, also a Marine, revels at the experience of him joining his father on the trip back to Saipan.
“It was tremendous. It was a great experience to be able to see what dad went through. To read his first book, and then be able to go back, now I understand it all,” he says.
The younger Spooner says it was an amazing experience to travel back to Saipan and “be able to do it together.”
Rick says his father also served during the Vietnam War for three years. Growing up in a Marine Corps family and with all his friends’ fathers deployed too, he was aware of the situation.
He tells Variety that despite his father being gone for three years, “he came home and picked up where we left off.”
Major Spooner, who retired from the Marine Corps in 1972, says, “You never stopped being a Marine. It’s not a job, it is a vocation. When you retire, you are still a Marine.”
In retirement, he spends his time at his Globe and Laurel Restaurant in Virginia where they serve “great” steaks, and where he gets to speak with young Marines.
What began as a hobby in 1968 has turned into a full-time undertaking for the Major Spooner.
When he gets home from work, he writes books and he is on his third one—a novel set in Shanghai, China in the 1930s.
In his books, Major Spooner explains that he never made war sound “glamorous” “because it was not.”
“There are always two sides to the war. No war is glamorous,” he says.
Major Spooner, who had decided he wanted to become a Marine at the age of five, continues to share with the young generation of Marines in conversations or by example, the spirit of “Semper fidelis” —one thing that binds them together in war and in peace.
