WWII vet finally steps off the island
By
ANDREW ABRAMSON
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 21, 2008
PALM BEACH — For more than 50 years, World War II veteran Don Mates wouldn't go near sushi, never dreamed of buying a Toyota and wanted nothing to do with Japan or its people.
"The only time I saw them is when we were trying to kill each other," Mates said.
Taylor Jones/Staff Photographer
Don Mates
So he surprised even himself when he agreed to participate in a Japanese documentary about the battle of Iwo Jima.
But that's what this decade has been about for Mates, now 82 and living in Palm Beach. He has been making peace with a dramatic chapter in his life. He even eats sushi.
"It's taken me years to have some closure," he said.
Mates, a native of Ohio, has become a fixture in television documentaries about the notorious battle in February and March of 1945.
He is sought out because he was involved in hand-to-hand combat at Iwo Jima and fought in an area called the "meat grinder" for its enormous number of casualties.
He also is alive to tell his story, despite sustaining severe wounds to his thighs and right foot during machine-gun fire and a grenade explosion. He received two Purple Hearts.
He was 18.
"If you look at the statistics, it's pretty harrowing," said Midori Yanagihara, the interpreter for the documentary.
'Gentle, average people'
Mates' perspective on the war began to change in 2000, when the History Channel invited him to Iwo Jima for the 55th anniversary.
"I met some of the survivors and saw that they were normal human beings, smaller than me, kind, gentle, average people," Mates said.
Mates was hesitant to participate in a Japanese documentary about Iwo Jima. He was worried he would be asked why the United States dropped nuclear bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Instead, the producer, who flew to Palm Beach last week for the interview, wanted to know how the Japanese fought.
About 1,000 Japanese soldiers survived Iwo Jima. Those who didn't die in battle were viewed as cowards when they returned from the war.
Some of them left Japan.
"Times have changed and those guys have been living with that black mark," Mates said. "So I personally think this program will help clear their name because they were ferocious, heroic, honorable men who were fighting for a cause. They were tough as nails."
When Mates returned to Iwo Jima in 2000, he took a mahogany box that belonged to a Japanese soldier he killed in the battle.
"He was falling toward me, and he had in his hand what looked like a stick of dynamite, some weapon," Mates said. "After I killed him, I took it out of his hand."
Later, he opened the box, which contained ivory chopsticks and a golden Buddha. It remained in his drawer for 55 years, and now it's in a Japanese museum.
"Back in the 1940s, every newspaper, every magazine, the movies, the radio, everything was geared that the Japanese were short, myopic, everyone wore glasses, they all had buck teeth, they were all interbred, they were rapists and they were just evil people," Mates said. "We had that drummed in our head. When I look at movies from the 1940s that I saw as a kid, they're absolutely ridiculous. You never saw such evil people."
Jack Cole, a seasonal resident of Boca Raton, is in the new documentary.
He said he didn't harbor such resentment of the Japanese, partly because he wasn't injured at Iwo Jima.
"I was one of the 10 to 15 percent of people who walked off the island without a wound," Cole said.
Cole, who had the harrowing task of recovering American bodies from Iwo Jima without gloves or masks, had his first real encounter with Japanese soldiers in Truk.
They communicated by sign language, and the Americans traded cigarettes with them in exchange for handkerchiefs with pornographic images on them.
"In person, they were not so fearsome," Cole said. "They looked to be like farm boys. Not too well-educated people; no more than we were."
The documentary will air in Japan in May, but it probably won't make its way to the United States.
Mates, who is retired from real estate and lives with his wife, Mary, will receive a copy of the documentary, another memento of the battle that defined him.
Although the United States ultimately won the battle of Iwo Jima, 26,000 American lives were lost. About 21,000 Japanese died.
"I don't know who are the victors and who are the vanquished. I really don't," Mates said. "You go in a garage and start counting Japanese cars and tell me who are victors. There are no winners. We're the best of friends."
WWII vet finally steps off the island
WWII vet finally steps off the island
For the first time I have seen "History" at close quarters,and I know that its actual process is very different from what is presented to Posterity. - WWI General Max Hoffman
