Joseph McCarthy

     Following the initial assault waves, the 2nd Bn, 24th Marines arrived on the beachs of Iwo Jima in the afternoon on D-day, Feb. 19, 1945. The battalion found itself in the midst of a battle on an island unlike anything it had encountered before. Casualties began mounting immediately as the battalion began its push inland. Beyond the beach waited a barren wasteland teeming with enemy pillboxes, bunkers and underground command centers, all connected by underground tunnels and covering each other with interlocking fields of fire. Through this killing field, the Marines assaulted toward Motoyama Airfield No. 2.

     On the third day of the battle, the attack stalled in the face of withering fire. Marines attempted to find cover in the shallow bomb craters dotting the landscape. Finding himself and his rifle company pinned down, Captain Joseph J. McCarthy organized a plan of attack.

     A member of the Chicago Fire Department and former Marine first sergeant, McCarthy was not unaccustomed to stress in battle. He had fought as a company commander with 2/24 through Roi-Namur, Saipan and Tinian. On Saipan, he earned a Purple Heart, and later a Silver Star for leaving his covered position under intense fire to recover a wounded corpsman and carry him to safety. Upon returning to his position, McCarthy found the corpsman had been shot and killed in his arms.

     Now on Iwo Jima approaching the airfield, McCarthy moved from cover to cover, organizing a combined arms team to destroy the pillboxes that were halting his advance. From their concealed and fortified fighting positions, the Japanese defenders observed McCarthy's movements and zeroed in on him with their machine guns. Having been constructed of steel-reinforced concrete, many of the enemy pillboxes withstood the intense aerial bombardment prior to D-day. Marines found the only way to affectively neutralize one was through direct assault.

     McCarthy led his team across 75 yards of open ground through rifle, machine-gun and antitank gunfire to charge the first pillbox. Reaching the fire port, McCarthy pulled the pins on his grenades and tossed them through the opening. While directing the followup attack of his riflemen and flamethrower team, he spotted two enemy soldiers escaping out the back of the pillbox. With rounds cracking overhead, McCarthy moved from cover into the open and shot them both.

     Approaching the next pillbox, McCarthy again directed the demolitions, rifle and flamethrower attack. The ruined fortification now silenced, he found an entrance and went inside. He stumbled upon a Japanese soldier taking aim at one of his Marines. Without hesitation, McCarthy tackled and disarmed the enemy soldier and shot him with his own weapon.

     The destruction of the two pillboxes created a gap in the Japanese line that McCarthy could now exploit. He reassembled his company and resumed the attack, destroying the enemy and capturing a ridge beyond the fortifications. For his "brilliant professional skill, daring tactics, and tenacious perseverance," Capt McCarthy was awarded the Medal of Honor. "I was scared all the time," he would later say of his experiences in battle. "Any man who tells you he wasn't scared was an imbecile. But you dealt with it." McCarthy later was wounded in the battle, earning his second Purple Heart.

"He was not a one-shot hero," stated a Marine who served with McCarthy. "He was a hero at every campaign and everything he did."