Wayne Dewey Bellamy

  General Notes:

Wayne D. Bellamy's Account of the Battle of Iwo Jima

I landed at Iwo with A Co., 28th Marines, 5TH Marine Division. We landed in the 1st wave on green beach one. You will not see us, as photographers never got that far to the front. To identify us we landed in amphibious tractors. We were the spearhead to split the island in two. We crossed the island and then turned right towards Mt.Surabachi. After the first day I went with B Co. as I had their officers when I was in the Raiders and they wanted me to help them with some of the things such as taking out pill boxes and etc. I also did the reconnaissance behind and up the mountain. After I returned, A and B Co.s surrounded the mountain. The next morning about 30 or 40 of us went up the right side of the mountain. We stayed there that day and that night. After we secured the right side, I went to where the first flag was raised. When the second flag was put up, I got the pipe that was used. The next morning we came down and I again joined A CO. We rested for two days and then went north to fight on that end. At this time the part we took was secured. I lasted until the 13th day when I received a bullet to the right side of the head and was left as dead, but some of the machine gun section found me and sent me back to the field hospital. I regained consciousness briefly while there and was put aboard ship for Saipan. One more thing I should say is that I received a serious head wound the first day about 10 minutes after landing, but was unconscious for about an hour and then couldn't remember.

Memoirs of Wayne D. Bellamy


Wayne Dewey Bellamy was born August 26, 1925, the son of William D. Bellamy and Amanda Bertha Doering Bellamy. He was born at the home of his great uncle William on what is now the Saginaw Road. The home is about one mile north of the house on Brown Road where the Bellamy children grew up. A story goes ... About 2:30 P.M. the men were working in the field of beans, and someone came out to tell Bill, (Wayne's father) that he had a nice big boy!
Wayne's mother, Amanda, wasn't too well, and by the time Wayne was three years old she was diagnosed as having Tuberculosis (TB). About the time he was four, his mother had to be hospitalized at the sanatorium down state at Howell, Michigan. His sister, Catherine, was about eleven by that time, and the household duties were left on her shoulders. She and William by that time had Wayne and two other babies to look after. William's sister, Rose, stepped in and took the two babies to care for, and Wayne was left at home under Catherine's care. This was the arrangement until 1934 when Amanda was well enough to return home, where upon she had two more children by 1937. Ten months after the last baby was born, her health deteriorated and she again had to return to Howell, where she died in 1940. The last two children were raised by her younger sister, Helen, in Flint, Michigan.
William had to do quite a lot of logging to provide for the family, and he would dress Wayne warmly and take him out into the woods with him, packing a lunch, and stay out for the day. In the better weather William did road repair for the county with a team and wagon hauling gravel, with Wayne tagging along. Since he was four, some of the time Catherine took him to the little one room school that she attended. Wayne picked up on what the other children were being taught, and it gave him an advantage when he was old enough to attend school.
Catherine seemed to enjoy taking care of Wayne, but she had her moments ... She and her girl friends thought it was cute and taught Wayne to recite the alphabet backwards, and he really could do it fast, and just as well as most of us say it from the beginning.
A weekly highlight of Wayne's life would be every Saturday when William took Catherine to town for grocery shopping. Wayne was given a nickel for anything he wanted to buy. One time Catherine made a mistake and gave him a quarter, and he spent the whole thing, and she was furious at him.
Being a little boy, he was impressed with cars, and recalls his father's 1926 model T ford. Bill would hold Wayne on his lap and let him "drive" the car. This was the car that Bill drove his wife to Howell in. (Poor Mom, all that way on those old gravel roads, and feeling so badly.)
In 1930 (or 32) Bill bought a used Buick from a neighbor. He also was a great horse trader, and there were always horses to ride on the farm.
When Wayne started to attend a new school at the third grade level (the family had moved, putting them in a different township), Wayne discovered he could READ. The world really opened up to him at that point. He was always an excellent student and ahead of other children his age.
His favorite cousin was Ralph Bellamy, and the boys enjoyed hunting and often were allowed to "sleep over" at each other's home. Both boys owned their own shot guns before they were teenagers. He recalls uncles that came up from Detroit during hunting season, and he would get to go out in the fields and woods to hunt with them.
This was the age when homes were lighted by kerosene lamps, had outside plumbing and you were lucky if you had a pump inside the house. In the heart of the Depression the family afforded itself a radio, the high spot of every family. The REA hadn't been put into action yet, and the radio was hooked up to a car battery, and the family all gathered around each night to listen to favorite programs. A favorite in most families was Amos and Andy, sponsored by Campbell's soups. It was a comedy... serial type of show, and NO ONE would miss an episode! Another favorite was the Lum and Abner program... sponsored by Horrlicks malted milk tablets. There weren't many stations to choose from -- WLS out of Chicago "The Praire Farmer Station ... WJR Detroit, WBBM Chicago, and CBS New York. Saturday night naturally was the Grand Ole Oprey out of Nashville.
There were always aunts, uncles, sisters and brothers stopping off and visiting at the Bellamy's farms. Naturally there was always lots of home cooked meals, probably the encouragement to keep them coming back!
It was about 1935 when William and Amanda bought the Freeland farm on Brown Road.
The children were raised with a strong work influence. Wayne recalls digging potatoes in the fall, and would pick up the potatoes and put them into a crate which was equal to a bushel and received a penny a bushel. On an average day he would pick up 60 to 80 bushel. First the money was used to buy school clothes, and then the rest was his.
His little sister Marie entered his life when he was about ten. She would go to any length to follow him. One time he saw she had toddled out and sat down behind a 3 month old colt's hind foot and he scooped her up just in time before she got kicked.
There was always a dozen to dozen-and-a-half cows kept, and the milk was sold to the Detroit Dairy each day. Wayne helped with the feeding and milking of the cows.
His mother died when he was just 14. That was also the year when he got his driver's license, so he could help with the family errands.
Between that year and the age of fifteen, his father re-married, a woman with two daughters. She eased out the other children that belonged to Amanda and Bill. Wayne was just told he had better leave home, so Wayne went to live with his maternal grandmother and helped on their farm.
He worked for neighbors, cleaned out chicken houses, and mowed grass for 75 cents a day. Before Wayne went to high school each day, he would help a neighbor do his milking, walk three and a half miles to school and back, and then do the chores for the neighbor after school all for $3.00 a week. On the nights there was a basket ball game, he would run back to school for the game, or to catch the bus that was taking the students to the game. One year he did play center on the basketball team. Once the Superintendent of Schools, Mr. Strong, selected Wayne and a classmate, Don Plain to practice and work up a trapeze act. In the show the school put on there were tumblers, boxing and other gymnastic activities. He felt quite privileged to have been asked to train for the program.
By his senior year, his sister, Catherine had come back from her bout with TB, and would work toward her diploma. The world was engaged in the Second World War, and everyone's lives were upset. Wayne wanted to be a manly part of it, stretched his age and was hired to work on the railroad. The rest of his life he used the 721- number as his social security number. (The 7 numbers always indicated that you worked for the railroad.) He repaired the tracks, put in new ties, aligned the rails - very hard work for $.65 per hour. This was on the line through Vassar, Michigan. In the fall of that year he went to the big city of Flint to work. First he worked for an insulating company for $1.00 per hour, and then he worked for the Mabry Coal Company hauling/delivering coal, which paid .75 cents per ton.
He turned 18 in 1943 and went to Detroit and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. They were bussed to Chicago, and then boarded a train to San Diego, California. Back then boot camp lasted eight weeks. He volunteered for a specialty outfit called the Marine Raiders, and trained as a replacement for the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion. The CO of his outfit was the President's own son James Roosevelt. He was asked to sign up to go to officer's school but turned it down. In May, Wayne had a 15-day furlough and went back to Michigan to visit. When he returned, the Raiders had been disbanded and a new Division was being made up, and he was assigned to A Company, lst Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment. In all of the Marine history, this is the first time the USMC had ever had five Divisions. He trained at Oceanside, Camp Pendelton as a gunner on the 60MM mortars. In September 1944 the 5th Division shipped out to finish their training on the big island of Hawaii. There they lived in a tent camp at Kamuela part way up the mountain. There are many documents in print, and videos about the time spent in Hawaii available, but they are just too long to incorporate here. They left Hawaii after Christmas and stopped off at Pearl Harbor. New Years day 1945 they left, heading south toward the equator, then transferred to LST's toward Saipan where they joined up with the 3rd and 4th Divisions and formed a convoy to Iwo Jima. They arrived late Feb. 18th and the assault began early the morning of Feb. 19th, 1945.
Wayne was assigned to the code "green beach I" and was the first wave to charge upon the island. The back of the amphibious tractor wouldn't open, and the men had to go over the side, and up the beach, each carrying all their possessions plus 100 lbs. of ammunition, which amounts to 30 rounds of 60MM mortars. He didn't get more than 100 yards on the island before he tried to smother a grenade with his rifle butt, and as it exploded, the shrapnel went into his mouth and up in to his head. He was knocked unconscious for a time, and when he regained consciousness he got up and went back into battle. This concussion left him with a blank in his memory for a number of years. When he caught up with an outfit, it was B Company, and many of the officers were the men he had trained under at the Raider camp.
Meanwhile the U S Navy was firing a rolling barrage, landing just yards ahead of the Marines. The enemy was well entrenched, and had been preparing for this battle for over a year. Iwo Jima was just over 200 miles from Japan, and it was vital for both sides for a landing strip out in the Pacific.
The plan was to have the 27th and 28th Marines sweep straight across Iwo Jima from their landing point and cut the island in half, which they accomplished in three hours time. By then at least half of A and B Companies were either wounded or killed.
The second day Wayne was helping the company by firing the big Bazookas, when he wasn't taking supplies from the beach back to the company.
By the 4th day, Lt. Weaver of Company B sent him and two other men on a reconnaissance mission around the right side of Mt. Suribachi. He lost track of the others, and went on alone for a couple of hours. After learning all he could about the enemies' position, he returned to report to the Lt., and learned that the other two men were wounded. The rest of the Company then advanced where Wayne had scouted before them.
February 23rd about 9 A.M., the first American flag was raised. It was a small flag, and it was decided that a larger flag should replace it and one of the men was sent back to the ship for the new flag. So at about 11 A.M. the Marines on the mountaintop were scurrying around to find a longer pipe to attach the flag. Wayne had spent enough time there that he knew where there was a supply of Japanese pipe, and he and another fellow pried loose a 20 foot length of 1" ID pipe and handed it to the 6 men that had their picture taken raising the flag. By that time all the photographers clustered around and wanted pictures of the event. The Marine photographer was Louis Lourery, and the Associated Press photographer was Joe Rosenthal, from San Francisco. Somehow or other Joe's film got back to the states before the others, and the rest is history.
February 24th, the Marines came down off the mountain, and Wayne was able to rejoin A Company. Both A and B companies were given two days to rest up, and received their mail, and some much appreciated food was dropped to them.
On the 26th they started toward the North to join the 27th Marines again. The shelling and sniping was pretty steady from then on. March 2nd, in the middle of the night, there were a group of Japanese attackers firing on the foxhole that Wayne and another Marine were in, and as they ran toward the foxhole, they silhouetted themselves against the skyline. Wayne said it was just like picking off ducks in an arcade.
However they got their revenge on the morning of March 3rd. About 8 A.M. Wayne was shot in the right temple, the bullet lodging behind his right eye in the brain, along with other shrapnel scattered in his brain and scull. The Corpsmen didn't think he was going to make it, and due to the intense firing, they left him. About 1 P.M. a couple of machine gunners in a Jeep came past and heard him moan, and stopped. (Some time in the mid-1980's the one machine gunner told Wayne this story of how they put him on the Jeep and took him to the field hospital on the beach. His name is Warren Peters. He came home and became a teacher, and high school principal after the war.)
In Wayne's condition, I don't know how he can recount all of this, but he was taken from the beach via the USS President Jackson to a Saipan hospital. "While on board, two Navy personnel put me in a blanket to get me through a hatch way, and mid way through they dropped me over the bottom of the hatch way, and I feel they broke my back. After that I was flown to Pearl Harbor. We arrived at Aiea Heights Hospital at Pearl Harbor, and all the injured were being evaluated, X-rayed and etc. They put me in a wheel chair, and the pain was so intense I just broke down. The instructions were I was always to be transported on a stretcher.''
After a couple of weeks he was put aboard the USS Matsonian, one of a fleet of first class steam ships, headed for San Francisco, arriving April lst, and was sent to Oak Knoll Hospital. There were so many wounded, maimed and injured arriving that it was the custom to send them on to a government hospital closer to their homes. Wayne was put aboard a train, equipped with no medication, or doctors, and headed toward Chicago, Illinois and Great Lakes Navel Training Center, where there was a large hospital. Wayne had a relapse and by the time the train arrived in Chicago, he was almost dead. There were so many unconscious periods from Iwo Jima all along the way. In Great Lakes Hospital he was put in a private room with nurses sitting at his bedside around the clock.
The first chance he had when he was able to get up, he weighed himself, and he had lost 80 pounds. When he left California he was at 210 pounds, and at the hospital he was down to 130 pounds. After months of Penicillin, Sulfa drugs, and Codeine to dull the pain, good food, and eventually exercise, he was able to go on weekend leaves.
By December 1945 he was given a Medical discharge from the U.S. Marine Corp. and a 50% pension. There were no instructions or limitations on how he should survive, and since he came from the hard working background, he worked very hard for the next 17 & 1/2 years. Oh, one catch in the discharge was that everyone had a clause that said they were in the Marine Reserves for the next 10 years! Just 5 years later the Korean conflict broke out and many of the valiant men were called back to duty. Wayne's injuries kept him from being called up.
A summary of the injuries are: A carotid artery on his right neck. He was suppose to wear a black patch over his right eye, because of the double vision he has. He has terrible headaches most of the time. All of the doctors have told him not to let anyone try to remove any of the shrapnel, as it is just too dangerous.
Wayne rejoined the Mabry Coal Company, which in the mean time had started hauling fuel oil. He delivered to the homes and businesses around Flint, Michigan. T hey were also installing coal stokers and converting old furnaces into oil burners. He learned some of the trade there.
In 1946, he went back to the West Coast, and got a job with the MacDonald Douglas Air Plane Plant. There he was in charge of checking out all of the oxygen lines on the planes being manufactured. He didn't really like the coast and moved back to Michigan.
He worked for General Motors Fisher Body Plant for a while. Then he went back to Mabry's installing heating equipment.
In the spring of 1948, he and his old "Pen Pal" from 1944-1945 reconnected, and on September 4th they were married in South Bend, Indiana. 1949 brought about the adoption of their first son "Eddie", a beautiful little blonde curly-head. All BOY. Wayne enjoyed the antics of the toddler, and Ed had to try everything he saw Wayne do, even to the point that when he was 19 years old, he joined the U.S. Marine Corp.
Then on June 6th 1950, little sister Candice Carol joined the happy little family. True to the adage, she was "Daddy's little girl". Even at 2-3 weeks she wouldn't go to sleep at night until her Daddy held her for a few minutes and gave her just a little more milk.
Also in 1950 Wayne changed employment. He went to work for a heating company in North Flint called Flash Heating. It was there that he learned so much about installing complete heating systems and sheetmetal trade.
In 1953 Wayne moved the family to the North Woods and built a cottage on Mullet lake, south of Cheboygan, Michigan. We all loved it there, but it seems everyone left in the wintertime for Florida, and the poor man in the heating game didn't have any work. But the fishing was excellent.
1954 found us temporarily living in South Bend with Alice's maternal grandfather. Grandmother has just passed away, and it was good for us to fill the void. It was in South Bend that Lance Lane, our second son, was born. Wayne was so very proud. When Alice's mother saw him for the first time she said..."We won't even claim him... he is ALL BELLAMY,'' and laughed. He really does have a lot of Wayne's features. All of the children developed the hard work trait, and have each made us very proud of their accomplishments.
In 1955 Wayne was encouraged by the Timken Oil Burner franchise to move to Marinette, Wisconsin and establish a heating business there. He bought a small business building on the main street, and within a year had done so well he needed a larger building. He named the business Heating and Cooling Engineering. He sold furnaces for Torrid Heat, Timken Oil Burners, Republic Gas, Westinghouse, and some coal heating furnaces to name a few. At one point he had eight employees working on jobs.
In 1956 Wayne's father William passed away. There wasn't any estate to speak of, and the bank reclaimed the building he had.
Wayne's younger brother, LaVern, was studying in Milwaukee to become a minister, and was a frequent weekend guest in our home. He loved to hunt and fish as much as Wayne did and they spent many hours with their sport. Also this was something Wayne did with his sons. They both counted the years until they could be included in the deer hunting parties each fall. Another hobby Wayne enjoyed was tying his own flies to use when he went trout fishing in the streams around the area. He was very good at it.
In 1960 the Jaycee's came recruiting and Wayne became an active member. They were the "movers and shakers" of the little towns of Marinette and Menominee. They were always involved in some fund raising event to promote and better the towns. In 1962-1963 Wayne was elected President of the Jaycee's. They had ice-fishing events on Green Bay to raise funds to support a museum they were building that is still the talk of the tourists today. The Jaycee's had a bowling team, and Wayne was on that for a couple of years.
In 1962 Wayne's old injuries caught up with him, and his doctor sent him to Milwaukee to the Woods V.A. Hospital for evaluation. The government had not checked into his status for 17 years, and by then his working years were over... 36 years old. He enlisted the services of the Disabled American Veterans to present his case, and without any fight he was awarded 100% total disability. He was at Woods for 3 months that summer.
When he returned home, it was time to sell the business and at the same time not let the employees know what was going on. We wanted to sell it as a going business, and wanted the employees to head up the work force for the new owners. In 1965 we accomplished our mission ... Campbell Bruce Oil Company bought us out as a going business.
In the early 1960's Wayne struck up a friendship with a Mr. Allard, an older gentleman in Marinette, and learned a little about investing in the stock market. He learned to chart the stocks from his friend, and made quite a few good trades for a beginner. That remains one of his hobbies or interest yet today.
In 1967 after daughter Candice graduated from high School, and Ed was in the USMC, the family moved to Phoenix Arizona. We left the vacant business building in the hands of a couple friends to manage for us, which sold in less than two years. We rented a house in the Northeast part of Phoenix for a year just to get an idea of where we wanted to live. Candice entered college, and Lance started his high school years in Phoenix. Alice went to college as well, all on the extended arm of the GI bill, which Wayne was entitled to, being a 100% disabled.
We bought a nice home on the side of Shadow Mountain looking toward North Scottsdale, and have lived comfortably for the past 33 years.
We have been fortunate to have traveled to Japan twice, Korea once, and all over the United States. Wayne's Division from the Marine Corp. has a tradition of holding a reunion each year and it is seldom in the same place twice, so we get to see a lot of the country. We were able to see the Marine monument unveiled in Arlington, Virginia in 1955. On our second visit to Japan, we were privileged to fly to re-visit Iwo Jima in 1985. There was a documentary filmed called the Hand Shake of Peace on that trip, and was a very moving experience. The film is by Ira Shapiro, and is shown by the PBS stations near Memorial Day each year.
In 1984 we went to the big island of Hawaii, and took part in the unveiling of a monument at Kamulea, Hawaii that Wayne created between 1983 and 1984. The Exchange Club there provided the huge rock that the plaque that Wayne made is mounted on. There are many videos and pictures depicting the special day. The Parker Ranch donated the land where the monument was placed, paying tribute to the Second and Fifth Division's old tent camp, "Camp Tarawa'' where it stood in 1943 -1945. (Wayne just extended his sheetmetal experience and ventured into brass casting!) He really did a good job and it will be there for many decades to come.
On September 3rd 1998 the children started arriving home, and they surprised us with a wonderful 50th wedding anniversary celebration. One weekend we will never forget.

· For more history of Wayne's life in the USMC, there are video and audiotapes and printed interviews at his home.

Buied at National Memorial Cemetery of Arizona, 23029 N. Cave Creek Rd., Phoenix, Arizona.

  Noted events in his life were:

• Census, 12 Apr 1930, Dayton Twp., Tuscola County, Michigan. ¹⁰ #81 BELLAMY, William D., head, renting, farm, m,w, age 30, age 20 at 1st marriage, born Nebraska, father Mich., mother Mich., farmer, gen. farm
BELLAMY, Amanda B., wife, f,w,29, age 19 at 1st marriage, born Michigan, father
Germany, mother Germany
BELLAMY, Catherine M., dau., f,w,10, school, can read and write, born Michigan
BELLAMY, Wayne D., son, m,w, 4, school, born Michigan
BELLAMY, Melvin (ab), son, m,w, 2, born Michigan
BELLAMY, Lois (ab), dau, f,w, 1, born Michigan

Wayne married Alice Lorraine Cook.