Title: Genaust,Sgt. William H. Feb/Mar, 1945
Description: Iwo Jima (World War II Marine)
Description: Iwo Jima (World War II Marine)
burnsjl2003 - June 23, 2007 10:00 PM (GMT)
msnbc
U.S. searches for Marine behind Iwo Jima film
Team looks for body of man who filmed flag-raising on Japanese island
Updated: 8:19 a.m. ET June 22, 2007
TOKYO - A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
The seven-member search team — the first on the island in 60 years — is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle — one of the fiercest and most symbolic of World War II.
“This marks the first time since 1948, when the American Graves Registration Service recovered most U.S. service members killed during the campaign, that a team has been able to return to Iwo Jima to account for those who are still missing,” the Joint POW/MIA Accounting office said in a statement before the team left its base in Hawaii.
The current search was prompted by what officials said was a valid lead from a private citizen in connection with the of Genaust.
The island was occupied by the United States after Japan’s 1945 surrender, and returned to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968.
“The team is finding caves that have been cleaned out, and some that have collapsed,” JPAC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Brown told the AP.
Brown said the team is looking for as many American remains as it can find, including those of Genaust.
He said 88,000 U.S. service members are missing from World War II, including about 250 from the Iwo Jima campaign.
Brown said the search is a preliminary one, and that if a high probability of recovering remains is determined, a full recovery team will be sent in.
“Our motto is ‘until they are home,”’ Brown said. “‘No man left behind’ is a promise made to every individual who raises his hand.”
Genaust, a combat photographer with the 28th Marines, used a movie camera to film the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He stood just feet away from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of the moment won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the Pacific War and the struggle of the U.S. forces to capture the tiny island, a turning point in the war with Japan.
Genaust didn’t live to see the end of the battle.
Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with JPAC, said Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine-gun fire as he was assisting fellow Marines secure a cave.
Highest percentage of casualties
Iwo Jima was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after 31-day battle that pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured — the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle.
Only 1,033 Japanese survived.
Many of the missing Marines were lost at sea, meaning the chances of recovering their remains are slim. But many also were killed in caves or buried by explosions, and Brown said they are optimistic that the current search for Genaust and other servicemen will prove useful.
“We are looking at several caves,” he said. “‘We are looking for a number of service members, including Genaust. We have maps dating back to World War II and even GPS locations. So far, everything seems to be where it should be.”
Accounts of Genaust’s death vary, but he was believed to have been killed in or near a cave on “Hill 362A.”
On March 4, 1945, Marines were securing the cave, and are believed to have asked Genaust to use his movie camera light to illuminate their way. He volunteered to shine the light in the cave himself, and when he did he was killed by enemy fire. The cave was secured after a gunfight, and its entrance sealed.
Genaust was 38 when he died.
“We decided that the only way to determine if his remains were there was to work on the ground,” Webb said. “We believe his remains may be in there, along with the remains of the Japanese.”
From Iwo Jima to Iwo To
Separately, Japan on Monday returned to using the prewar name for Iwo Jima at the urging of its original inhabitants, who want to reclaim an identity they say has been hijacked by high-profile movies like Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima.”
The new name, Iwo To, was adopted by the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute in consultation with Japan’s coast guard.
Brown said the mission “has been under study for quite some time.”
Webb added the command received information from a “private citizen” regarding the remains of Genaust, and that the information was deemed valuable and helped prompt the current search. He did not provide any further details about what that information was.
“We try to check up on every valid lead,” Brown said.
Sending a team to Iwo Jima requires close coordination with the Japanese government and support from the Japanese military, which maintains a base on the otherwise uninhabited island.
“Logistically it is a big challenge,” he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19366345/
U.S. searches for Marine behind Iwo Jima film
Team looks for body of man who filmed flag-raising on Japanese island
Updated: 8:19 a.m. ET June 22, 2007
TOKYO - A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
The seven-member search team — the first on the island in 60 years — is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle — one of the fiercest and most symbolic of World War II.
“This marks the first time since 1948, when the American Graves Registration Service recovered most U.S. service members killed during the campaign, that a team has been able to return to Iwo Jima to account for those who are still missing,” the Joint POW/MIA Accounting office said in a statement before the team left its base in Hawaii.
The current search was prompted by what officials said was a valid lead from a private citizen in connection with the of Genaust.
The island was occupied by the United States after Japan’s 1945 surrender, and returned to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968.
“The team is finding caves that have been cleaned out, and some that have collapsed,” JPAC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Brown told the AP.
Brown said the team is looking for as many American remains as it can find, including those of Genaust.
He said 88,000 U.S. service members are missing from World War II, including about 250 from the Iwo Jima campaign.
Brown said the search is a preliminary one, and that if a high probability of recovering remains is determined, a full recovery team will be sent in.
“Our motto is ‘until they are home,”’ Brown said. “‘No man left behind’ is a promise made to every individual who raises his hand.”
Genaust, a combat photographer with the 28th Marines, used a movie camera to film the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima’s Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He stood just feet away from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of the moment won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the Pacific War and the struggle of the U.S. forces to capture the tiny island, a turning point in the war with Japan.
Genaust didn’t live to see the end of the battle.
Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with JPAC, said Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine-gun fire as he was assisting fellow Marines secure a cave.
Highest percentage of casualties
Iwo Jima was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after 31-day battle that pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured — the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle.
Only 1,033 Japanese survived.
Many of the missing Marines were lost at sea, meaning the chances of recovering their remains are slim. But many also were killed in caves or buried by explosions, and Brown said they are optimistic that the current search for Genaust and other servicemen will prove useful.
“We are looking at several caves,” he said. “‘We are looking for a number of service members, including Genaust. We have maps dating back to World War II and even GPS locations. So far, everything seems to be where it should be.”
Accounts of Genaust’s death vary, but he was believed to have been killed in or near a cave on “Hill 362A.”
On March 4, 1945, Marines were securing the cave, and are believed to have asked Genaust to use his movie camera light to illuminate their way. He volunteered to shine the light in the cave himself, and when he did he was killed by enemy fire. The cave was secured after a gunfight, and its entrance sealed.
Genaust was 38 when he died.
“We decided that the only way to determine if his remains were there was to work on the ground,” Webb said. “We believe his remains may be in there, along with the remains of the Japanese.”
From Iwo Jima to Iwo To
Separately, Japan on Monday returned to using the prewar name for Iwo Jima at the urging of its original inhabitants, who want to reclaim an identity they say has been hijacked by high-profile movies like Clint Eastwood’s “Letters from Iwo Jima.”
The new name, Iwo To, was adopted by the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute in consultation with Japan’s coast guard.
Brown said the mission “has been under study for quite some time.”
Webb added the command received information from a “private citizen” regarding the remains of Genaust, and that the information was deemed valuable and helped prompt the current search. He did not provide any further details about what that information was.
“We try to check up on every valid lead,” Brown said.
Sending a team to Iwo Jima requires close coordination with the Japanese government and support from the Japanese military, which maintains a base on the otherwise uninhabited island.
“Logistically it is a big challenge,” he said.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19366345/
burnsjl2003 - June 23, 2007 10:05 PM (GMT)
Debt of Honor
For a Slain Iwo Jima Cameraman He Never Knew, Man Asks U.S. to Move Remains to Arlington Cemetery
By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 9, 2007; Page B01
Bob Bolus has a gold nameplate on his office desk that says "President" and a panoramic view of a junkyard. Above the filing cabinet there's an old World War II artillery map, and on a recent afternoon, Bolus stood inches away, peering deeply into its contour lines, searching.
"There it is," he said, as if pointing to an 'X' on a treasure map. "That's Hill 362A."
Marine Corps Sgt. William H. Genaust, shown in a bunker on Saipan in 1944, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star. (Courtesy Of U.s. Marine Corps)
It wasn't much of a landmark. Hill 362A is a squat, unremarkable ridge, 362 feet at its highest point, on the northwest corner of Iwo Jima. Like much of the island, it was bombed, shot, burned and generally blasted to bits in 1945, when U.S. forces fought to drive out the Japanese from a network of tunnels and caves that crisscrosses its base. Entombed somewhere in those passageways, among the rocks and the rubble and the unexploded ordnance, are the remains of a Marine Corps sergeant and cameraman named William H. Genaust.
Bolus is not related to Genaust, but for the past two years he has been fixated with the Marine's fate. He has lobbied generals, politicians and ambassadors on Genaust's behalf. He has traveled to Hill 362A and drafted surveyors, archivists, military historians and forensic anthropologists to his cause. Bolus is resolute on recovering Genaust's remains from his anonymous grave. He calls this "my mission."
"He belongs at Arlington," Bolus said. "And I'm not going to stop until he's home."
Bolus's persistence has prompted Pentagon officials to begin consultations with the Japanese government about a recovery operation. It would be the first time the United States has searched for missing service members on Iwo Jima since returning control of it to Japan in 1968.
But perhaps what is most unusual to the Pentagon is that someone who is neither family nor a fellow service member has become so engrossed with a long-dead serviceman's remains.
"I believe he's the first," said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office."He has demonstrated a lot of energy and a lot of commitment to this."
Bolus, 64, is the owner of Bolus Truck Parts, Scooter's Hot Dawg Hut and a slew of other business ventures in Scranton, Pa. Over the years, he has been a Democrat, a Republican, a trucking tycoon, a felon, a race car driver, a philanthropist and a failed mayoral candidate, among other things. Then, one Sunday morning in February 2005, Bolus read an article about Genaust in Parade magazine, and he was seized.
"I must have read it three or four times," he said. "I just couldn't believe that the man who gave us that image had been left behind."
Genaust was among the Marines and journalists who climbed Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima's highest point, on Feb. 23, 1945, four days after U.S. forces landed.
Genaust, who was trained to fight -- and film -- at Quantico Marine Corps Base, captured footage for training videos, propaganda efforts and other military purposes. On that day, Genaust went up Suribachi to capture a flag-raising.
At the summit, he stood with a friend, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, cranking his Bell & Howell camera as a makeshift flagpole was heaved into the wind.
Rosenthal took the photograph that would become the iconic image of the war -- and the Marine Corps -- and win him a Pulitzer Prize that year.
Marine Corps Sgt. William H. Genaust, shown in a bunker on Saipan in 1944, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star. (Courtesy Of U.s. Marine Corps)
Within weeks, Genaust's color footage appeared on newsreels and in movie theaters across the United States. When skeptics claimed that the Rosenthal photograph was staged, Genaust's recording was used to confirm its authenticity.
But Genaust never saw the film. Nine days after the flag-raising, he was killed, shot dead in a cave on Hill 362A.
Bolus Trucks Parts is a graveyard of rusting hulks and cannibalized diesel engines along the highway outside Scranton. "Bolus for Mayor" signs still decorate the sides of two freight trailers at the back of the junkyard, along with the campaign slogan: "Common Sense and Accountability."
Bolus has lived in Scranton all his life. He came from a trucking family and started a towing operation after a brief stint in the Army in 1960. By the 1980s, he had built one of the largest hauling operations in Pennsylvania. But his trucking empire ground to a halt in 1991 when he was caught buying a stolen Caterpillar loader. Bolus served four months of work release. The conviction has nagged him ever since, most recently when he was deemed ineligible to serve as mayor, losing multiple court battles along the way. "I've been on the top, and I've been on the bottom, too," he said.
The endeavor to bring Genaust to Arlington National Cemetery is Bolus's new fight. To him, Genaust is a neglected hero with whom he associates his earliest patriotic inklings. "I don't know how many times I saw that image of the flag-raising at the Saturday matinees as a little kid," he said. "Every time I see it go up, I get a chill."
The postwar Scranton of Bolus's childhood was a different, more perfect place, when families of all nationalities seemed to share a single flag-loving American culture, and, to him, Genaust is the embodiment of that. "We've lost that camaraderie," Bolus said. "Look at all these computers now. Everyone is so goal-oriented and money-oriented."
To Bolus, Genaust's sacrifice is rivaled only by the injustice of his unceremonious end. And this is the wrong he wants to set right. "Sgt. Genaust knows that Bob Bolus is coming for him," he is fond of saying.
After reading the article on Genaust, Bolus loaded up on World War II books and became steeped in Iwo Jima lore. Then he started making calls. He found out that the United States and Japan hold a ceremony on the island commemorating the battle, and in March, Bolus got permission to travel there with a group of veterans and their families. He met three-star generals, diplomats, Iwo Jima veterans and even the grandson of Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who commanded Japanese forces during the battle. He talked about Genaust to anyone who would listen.
A sympathetic U.S. officer dispatched a group of Marines to take Bolus to Hill 362A. Access to the area was restricted, but Bolus went anyway. He pushed a path through thorny brush, tracing the route Genaust's 28th Marine Regiment probably followed March 4, 1945.
Genaust and another Marine had entered a cave that day along the base of 362A, looking for Japanese holdouts. The Marines' flashlights gave them away, and they were easy targets. When the shooting stopped, Genaust's unit demolished the cave's entrance. The opening was later sealed. Genaust was never seen again.
A hand-held global-positioning satellite device led Bolus to the base of 362A, but it was Genaust, he said, who was telling him where to go. "I'm probably the least superstitious guy in the world," he said. "But he's guiding me."
Bolus said his team has narrowed Genaust's location to a 150-yard area. "Two weeks," Bolus said. "I'd have a team and equipment ready in two weeks if they'd let me back on that island." Money is no obstacle, Bolus said, estimating that he has spent more than $20,000 on the Iwo Jima trip and the consultants he has hired.
Renewed interest in Iwo Jima generated by Rosenthal's death in August and the release of two Clint Eastwood films, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima," didn't help Bolus as much as he'd hoped. He's still waiting for Eastwood to call him back.
There have been other obstacles. For one, the U.S. military does not allow private citizens to disinter its dead, especially on foreign soil. That responsibility lies with the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command, and it has a long queue of servicemen to search for, mostly from the war in Vietnam.
"We have thousands of cases being actively investigated," said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the command. Genaust is an "open case" for the agency, she said, but one of many. "We can't quantify any one sacrifice as greater than any other."
But Bolus's research and lobbying efforts led the Pentagon to begin a study last summer into the possible whereabouts of Genaust's remains, according to Larry Greer of the prisoner of war office. The agency is analyzing the 362A site to determine whether other remains could also be recovered there and has consulted with the Japanese Embassy, U.S. diplomats and the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command.
"We have to be sure we have a reasonable opportunity to conduct a legitimate investigation," Greer said.
Genaust would be 100 this year; he was 38 when he died. He and his late wife, Adelaide, had no children. A few months after his death, she received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts on his behalf.
"He was one of the most decent and honorable men I've ever known," said Tedd Thomey, who met Genaust on a battleship en route to Iwo Jima. Thomey later worked at the San Francisco Chronicle with Rosenthal and wrote a memoir about Rosenthal and Genaust's moment on Suribachi. In 1995, he helped add a plaque honoring Genaust to the U.S. memorial atop the mountain.
"He deserves to be at Arlington," said Thomey, 86, who lives in Long Beach, Calif. "That would be my wish."
A memorial to Genaust also decorates the American Legion Post in Effingham, Ill., thanks to his cousin Billy G. Genaust, who has handed out about 1,400 souvenir pens depicting the flag-raising scene, lest anyone forget his cousin's role. "Everyone in our area knows about him," he said.
"Mr. Bolus said he was going to bring him back," said Genaust, 75, a retired state trooper. "I think that would be the greatest thing."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7020802151.html
For a Slain Iwo Jima Cameraman He Never Knew, Man Asks U.S. to Move Remains to Arlington Cemetery
By Nick Miroff
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 9, 2007; Page B01
Bob Bolus has a gold nameplate on his office desk that says "President" and a panoramic view of a junkyard. Above the filing cabinet there's an old World War II artillery map, and on a recent afternoon, Bolus stood inches away, peering deeply into its contour lines, searching.
"There it is," he said, as if pointing to an 'X' on a treasure map. "That's Hill 362A."
Marine Corps Sgt. William H. Genaust, shown in a bunker on Saipan in 1944, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star. (Courtesy Of U.s. Marine Corps)
It wasn't much of a landmark. Hill 362A is a squat, unremarkable ridge, 362 feet at its highest point, on the northwest corner of Iwo Jima. Like much of the island, it was bombed, shot, burned and generally blasted to bits in 1945, when U.S. forces fought to drive out the Japanese from a network of tunnels and caves that crisscrosses its base. Entombed somewhere in those passageways, among the rocks and the rubble and the unexploded ordnance, are the remains of a Marine Corps sergeant and cameraman named William H. Genaust.
Bolus is not related to Genaust, but for the past two years he has been fixated with the Marine's fate. He has lobbied generals, politicians and ambassadors on Genaust's behalf. He has traveled to Hill 362A and drafted surveyors, archivists, military historians and forensic anthropologists to his cause. Bolus is resolute on recovering Genaust's remains from his anonymous grave. He calls this "my mission."
"He belongs at Arlington," Bolus said. "And I'm not going to stop until he's home."
Bolus's persistence has prompted Pentagon officials to begin consultations with the Japanese government about a recovery operation. It would be the first time the United States has searched for missing service members on Iwo Jima since returning control of it to Japan in 1968.
But perhaps what is most unusual to the Pentagon is that someone who is neither family nor a fellow service member has become so engrossed with a long-dead serviceman's remains.
"I believe he's the first," said Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office."He has demonstrated a lot of energy and a lot of commitment to this."
Bolus, 64, is the owner of Bolus Truck Parts, Scooter's Hot Dawg Hut and a slew of other business ventures in Scranton, Pa. Over the years, he has been a Democrat, a Republican, a trucking tycoon, a felon, a race car driver, a philanthropist and a failed mayoral candidate, among other things. Then, one Sunday morning in February 2005, Bolus read an article about Genaust in Parade magazine, and he was seized.
"I must have read it three or four times," he said. "I just couldn't believe that the man who gave us that image had been left behind."
Genaust was among the Marines and journalists who climbed Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima's highest point, on Feb. 23, 1945, four days after U.S. forces landed.
Genaust, who was trained to fight -- and film -- at Quantico Marine Corps Base, captured footage for training videos, propaganda efforts and other military purposes. On that day, Genaust went up Suribachi to capture a flag-raising.
At the summit, he stood with a friend, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, cranking his Bell & Howell camera as a makeshift flagpole was heaved into the wind.
Rosenthal took the photograph that would become the iconic image of the war -- and the Marine Corps -- and win him a Pulitzer Prize that year.
Marine Corps Sgt. William H. Genaust, shown in a bunker on Saipan in 1944, was posthumously awarded a Bronze Star. (Courtesy Of U.s. Marine Corps)
Within weeks, Genaust's color footage appeared on newsreels and in movie theaters across the United States. When skeptics claimed that the Rosenthal photograph was staged, Genaust's recording was used to confirm its authenticity.
But Genaust never saw the film. Nine days after the flag-raising, he was killed, shot dead in a cave on Hill 362A.
Bolus Trucks Parts is a graveyard of rusting hulks and cannibalized diesel engines along the highway outside Scranton. "Bolus for Mayor" signs still decorate the sides of two freight trailers at the back of the junkyard, along with the campaign slogan: "Common Sense and Accountability."
Bolus has lived in Scranton all his life. He came from a trucking family and started a towing operation after a brief stint in the Army in 1960. By the 1980s, he had built one of the largest hauling operations in Pennsylvania. But his trucking empire ground to a halt in 1991 when he was caught buying a stolen Caterpillar loader. Bolus served four months of work release. The conviction has nagged him ever since, most recently when he was deemed ineligible to serve as mayor, losing multiple court battles along the way. "I've been on the top, and I've been on the bottom, too," he said.
The endeavor to bring Genaust to Arlington National Cemetery is Bolus's new fight. To him, Genaust is a neglected hero with whom he associates his earliest patriotic inklings. "I don't know how many times I saw that image of the flag-raising at the Saturday matinees as a little kid," he said. "Every time I see it go up, I get a chill."
The postwar Scranton of Bolus's childhood was a different, more perfect place, when families of all nationalities seemed to share a single flag-loving American culture, and, to him, Genaust is the embodiment of that. "We've lost that camaraderie," Bolus said. "Look at all these computers now. Everyone is so goal-oriented and money-oriented."
To Bolus, Genaust's sacrifice is rivaled only by the injustice of his unceremonious end. And this is the wrong he wants to set right. "Sgt. Genaust knows that Bob Bolus is coming for him," he is fond of saying.
After reading the article on Genaust, Bolus loaded up on World War II books and became steeped in Iwo Jima lore. Then he started making calls. He found out that the United States and Japan hold a ceremony on the island commemorating the battle, and in March, Bolus got permission to travel there with a group of veterans and their families. He met three-star generals, diplomats, Iwo Jima veterans and even the grandson of Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi, who commanded Japanese forces during the battle. He talked about Genaust to anyone who would listen.
A sympathetic U.S. officer dispatched a group of Marines to take Bolus to Hill 362A. Access to the area was restricted, but Bolus went anyway. He pushed a path through thorny brush, tracing the route Genaust's 28th Marine Regiment probably followed March 4, 1945.
Genaust and another Marine had entered a cave that day along the base of 362A, looking for Japanese holdouts. The Marines' flashlights gave them away, and they were easy targets. When the shooting stopped, Genaust's unit demolished the cave's entrance. The opening was later sealed. Genaust was never seen again.
A hand-held global-positioning satellite device led Bolus to the base of 362A, but it was Genaust, he said, who was telling him where to go. "I'm probably the least superstitious guy in the world," he said. "But he's guiding me."
Bolus said his team has narrowed Genaust's location to a 150-yard area. "Two weeks," Bolus said. "I'd have a team and equipment ready in two weeks if they'd let me back on that island." Money is no obstacle, Bolus said, estimating that he has spent more than $20,000 on the Iwo Jima trip and the consultants he has hired.
Renewed interest in Iwo Jima generated by Rosenthal's death in August and the release of two Clint Eastwood films, "Flags of Our Fathers" and "Letters From Iwo Jima," didn't help Bolus as much as he'd hoped. He's still waiting for Eastwood to call him back.
There have been other obstacles. For one, the U.S. military does not allow private citizens to disinter its dead, especially on foreign soil. That responsibility lies with the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command, and it has a long queue of servicemen to search for, mostly from the war in Vietnam.
"We have thousands of cases being actively investigated," said Lt. Col. Rumi Nielson-Green, a spokeswoman for the command. Genaust is an "open case" for the agency, she said, but one of many. "We can't quantify any one sacrifice as greater than any other."
But Bolus's research and lobbying efforts led the Pentagon to begin a study last summer into the possible whereabouts of Genaust's remains, according to Larry Greer of the prisoner of war office. The agency is analyzing the 362A site to determine whether other remains could also be recovered there and has consulted with the Japanese Embassy, U.S. diplomats and the Joint POW-MIA Accounting Command.
"We have to be sure we have a reasonable opportunity to conduct a legitimate investigation," Greer said.
Genaust would be 100 this year; he was 38 when he died. He and his late wife, Adelaide, had no children. A few months after his death, she received a Bronze Star and two Purple Hearts on his behalf.
"He was one of the most decent and honorable men I've ever known," said Tedd Thomey, who met Genaust on a battleship en route to Iwo Jima. Thomey later worked at the San Francisco Chronicle with Rosenthal and wrote a memoir about Rosenthal and Genaust's moment on Suribachi. In 1995, he helped add a plaque honoring Genaust to the U.S. memorial atop the mountain.
"He deserves to be at Arlington," said Thomey, 86, who lives in Long Beach, Calif. "That would be my wish."
A memorial to Genaust also decorates the American Legion Post in Effingham, Ill., thanks to his cousin Billy G. Genaust, who has handed out about 1,400 souvenir pens depicting the flag-raising scene, lest anyone forget his cousin's role. "Everyone in our area knows about him," he said.
"Mr. Bolus said he was going to bring him back," said Genaust, 75, a retired state trooper. "I think that would be the greatest thing."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...7020802151.html
wv171 - February 6, 2008 03:00 AM (GMT)
Hickam-based team searching for Iwo Jima Marine
TOKYO — A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press today.
The seven-member search team is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle — one of the fiercest and most symbolic of World War II.
The team is the first from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting office, which is headquartered on Hickam Air Force Base on Hawai'i, to conduct a search on Iwo Jima since 1948, when most of the American remains were recovered. The island was occupied by the United States after Japan's 1945 surrender, and returned to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968.
"The team is finding caves that have been cleaned out, and some that have collapsed," JPAC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Brown told the AP.
Brown said the team is looking for as many American remains as it can find, including those of Genaust.
He said 88,000 U.S. service members are missing from World War II, including about 250 from the Iwo Jima campaign.
Brown said the search is a preliminary one, and that if a high probability of recovering remains is determined, a full recovery team will be sent in.
"Our motto is 'until they are home,"' Brown said. "`No man left behind' is a promise made to every individual who raises his hand."
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHER ALSO PART OF HISTORY
Genaust, a combat photographer with the 28th Marines, used a movie camera to film the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He stood just feet away from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of the moment won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the Pacific War and the struggle of the U.S. forces to capture the tiny island, a turning point in the war with Japan.
Genaust didn't live to see the end of the battle.
Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with JPAC, said Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine-gun fire as he was assisting fellow Marines secure a cave.
Iwo Jima was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after a 31-day battle that pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured — the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle.
Only 1,033 Japanese survived.
SEARCH FOR SERVICE MEMBERS CONTINUES
Many of the missing Marines were lost at sea, meaning the chances of recovering their remains are slim. But many also were killed in caves or buried by explosions, and Brown said they are optimistic that the current search for Genaust and other servicemen will prove useful.
"We are looking at several caves," he said. "`We are looking for a number of service members, including Genaust. We have maps dating back to World War II and even GPS locations. So far, everything seems to be where it should be."
Accounts of Genaust's death vary, but he was believed to have been killed in or near a cave on "Hill 362A."
On March 4, 1945, Marines were securing the cave, and are believed to have asked Genaust to use his movie camera light to illuminate their way. He volunteered to shine the light in the cave himself, and when he did he was killed by enemy fire. The cave was secured after a gunfight, and its entrance sealed.
Genaust was 38 when he died.
"We decided that the only way to determine if his remains were there was to work on the ground," Webb said. "We believe his remains may be in there, along with the remains of the Japanese."
Separately, Japan on Monday returned to using the prewar name for Iwo Jima at the urging of its original inhabitants, who want to reclaim an identity they say has been hijacked by high-profile movies like Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima."
The new name, Iwo To, was adopted by the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute in consultation with Japan's coast guard.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/...8045623791.html
TOKYO — A U.S. search team on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima is zeroing in on a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, officials told The Associated Press today.
The seven-member search team is looking for the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust, who was killed in action after filming the flag-raising atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi. The team is also searching for other U.S. troops killed in the battle — one of the fiercest and most symbolic of World War II.
The team is the first from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting office, which is headquartered on Hickam Air Force Base on Hawai'i, to conduct a search on Iwo Jima since 1948, when most of the American remains were recovered. The island was occupied by the United States after Japan's 1945 surrender, and returned to Japanese jurisdiction in 1968.
"The team is finding caves that have been cleaned out, and some that have collapsed," JPAC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Brown told the AP.
Brown said the team is looking for as many American remains as it can find, including those of Genaust.
He said 88,000 U.S. service members are missing from World War II, including about 250 from the Iwo Jima campaign.
Brown said the search is a preliminary one, and that if a high probability of recovering remains is determined, a full recovery team will be sent in.
"Our motto is 'until they are home,"' Brown said. "`No man left behind' is a promise made to every individual who raises his hand."
COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHER ALSO PART OF HISTORY
Genaust, a combat photographer with the 28th Marines, used a movie camera to film the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He stood just feet away from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of the moment won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the Pacific War and the struggle of the U.S. forces to capture the tiny island, a turning point in the war with Japan.
Genaust didn't live to see the end of the battle.
Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with JPAC, said Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine-gun fire as he was assisting fellow Marines secure a cave.
Iwo Jima was officially taken on March 26, 1945, after a 31-day battle that pitted some 100,000 U.S. troops against 21,200 Japanese. All told, 6,821 Americans were killed and nearly 22,000 injured — the highest percentage of casualties in any Pacific battle.
Only 1,033 Japanese survived.
SEARCH FOR SERVICE MEMBERS CONTINUES
Many of the missing Marines were lost at sea, meaning the chances of recovering their remains are slim. But many also were killed in caves or buried by explosions, and Brown said they are optimistic that the current search for Genaust and other servicemen will prove useful.
"We are looking at several caves," he said. "`We are looking for a number of service members, including Genaust. We have maps dating back to World War II and even GPS locations. So far, everything seems to be where it should be."
Accounts of Genaust's death vary, but he was believed to have been killed in or near a cave on "Hill 362A."
On March 4, 1945, Marines were securing the cave, and are believed to have asked Genaust to use his movie camera light to illuminate their way. He volunteered to shine the light in the cave himself, and when he did he was killed by enemy fire. The cave was secured after a gunfight, and its entrance sealed.
Genaust was 38 when he died.
"We decided that the only way to determine if his remains were there was to work on the ground," Webb said. "We believe his remains may be in there, along with the remains of the Japanese."
Separately, Japan on Monday returned to using the prewar name for Iwo Jima at the urging of its original inhabitants, who want to reclaim an identity they say has been hijacked by high-profile movies like Clint Eastwood's "Letters from Iwo Jima."
The new name, Iwo To, was adopted by the Japanese Geographical Survey Institute in consultation with Japan's coast guard.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/...8045623791.html
monkalup - July 20, 2008 03:45 PM (GMT)
Sgt. William Genaust
monkalup - July 20, 2008 03:50 PM (GMT)