Speaker 1: Bushkin picture of Winter's Day in nineteen forty one. At
Speaker 1: Willapa Valley High School, a pale stone building in the
Speaker 1: little town of Menlo, nestled in the southwestern corner of
Speaker 1: Washington State, Excitement was running high in the classrooms, more
Speaker 1: than the usual amount of chatter. Was a Monday in December,
Speaker 1: December eighth, to be exact, the day after Pearl Harbor,
Speaker 1: there was a lot to talk about. The atmosphere was
Speaker 1: thick with anticipation and fear. As the teachers urged the
Speaker 1: students to settle down, a voice came across the PA system.
Speaker 1: It was the school superintendent. The whole building leaned in
Speaker 1: to hear him speak. It's official. He told them, We're
Speaker 1: going to war. Robert Eugene Bush, a ninth grader with
Speaker 1: a thick shock of dark hair at a somewhat devilish smile,
Speaker 1: listened intently. He was too young to fight, just fifteen
Speaker 1: years old, living at home with his mom and sister.
Speaker 1: But in the months that followed he watched as friend
Speaker 1: after friend left Willipa Valley to serve, and he mourned
Speaker 1: with the rest of the little community when they got
Speaker 1: the news that some of those teenage soldiers would never return.
Speaker 1: So the moment Bob turned seventeen, the age when you
Speaker 1: could enlist with parental permission, he joined the military. He
Speaker 1: and another football player both signed up for the Navy Reserves.
Speaker 1: He would be a medical specialist, a corman. Like so
Speaker 1: many of the characters we'd met in this series, he
Speaker 1: wanted to do something that would save lives, but he
Speaker 1: had no real sense of what it was actually like
Speaker 1: to be a corman in combat. He was a teenager,
Speaker 1: caught up in the patriotic spirit, full of energy. He
Speaker 1: made an impulsive decision that would change the shape of
Speaker 1: his life, and just a handful of months later, Bob
Speaker 1: would make another split second decision, one that would forever
Speaker 1: change someone else's life too, him Malcolm Glawell. This is
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor Stories of Courage. The Medal of Honor
Speaker 1: is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded
Speaker 1: for gallantry and bravery in combat the risk of life,
Speaker 1: above and beyond the call of duty. Each candidate must
Speaker 1: be approved all the way up the chain of command,
Speaker 1: from the supervisory officer in the field to the White House.
Speaker 1: This show is about those heroes, what they did, what
Speaker 1: it meant and what their stories tell us about the
Speaker 1: nature of courage and sacrifice. Bob Bush would leave that
Speaker 1: little town of Menlo, Washington, and by the age of eighteen,
Speaker 1: he would find himself at the Battle of Okinawa, the
Speaker 1: bloodiest and fiercest battlefield of the Pacific Theater. His story
Speaker 1: is about bravery and heroism, but it's also the story
Speaker 1: of a kid, one of the youngest recipisdiance of the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. He wasn't the only kid at that battle,
Speaker 1: and in this episode, I want to think about that,
Speaker 1: what it means to send someone so young after fight,
Speaker 1: How they forged lives for themselves after that service, how
Speaker 1: it shaped them, what they learned. In a way, this
Speaker 1: is a story about inheritance. Herbert Hoover famously said, older
Speaker 1: men declare war, but it is youth that must fight
Speaker 1: and die, And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation,
Speaker 1: the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.
Speaker 1: How do we reconcile those things. To get a sense
Speaker 1: of why Bob Bush went to war as young as
Speaker 1: he did, you have to know a little bit about
Speaker 1: his family situation. He was brought up by a tough
Speaker 1: and hard working Irish Catholic mom.
Speaker 2: I was raised by my mother, a single parent who
Speaker 2: was a registered nurse, and during the course of my upbringing,
Speaker 2: my sister and I lived in the hospital that she
Speaker 2: ran in a small lumbering town.
Speaker 1: He watched his mother tend to patience and take care
Speaker 1: of her family as best she could. But Bob to
Speaker 1: hear him tell, it was a handful.
Speaker 2: I had an unruly life, you might say, because of
Speaker 2: the lack of a father, but that put a little
Speaker 2: chip on my shoulder.
Speaker 1: He played football for the team at his tiny high school, Willipa,
Speaker 1: only had about twenty five kids per grade. He had
Speaker 1: a girlfriend, an adorable blonde named Wanda spoot Well. Wanda
Speaker 1: had two boyfriends, both vining to go steady with her.
Speaker 1: He kept Bob on his toes. But humming underneath all
Speaker 1: of these small town teenage goings on was the war.
Speaker 1: It was happening thousands of miles away, but it felt
Speaker 1: personal to Bob. He knew all those friends and teammates
Speaker 1: who were going off to fight.
Speaker 2: I lived in the community that had sixty seven young
Speaker 2: man killed in World War Two, and the total population
Speaker 2: was less than ten thousand and always young men. They
Speaker 2: came from my schools. The full back on our football
Speaker 2: team died on the Bataan death Marks.
Speaker 1: As his seventeenth birthday approached, he started thinking about getting
Speaker 1: out there with them. He would have to ask his
Speaker 1: mother's permission to enlist that young but his mom, as
Speaker 1: I mentioned, was a no nonsense lady.
Speaker 2: I was in the third year of high school and
Speaker 2: my mother said, Bobby, you're not the smartest kid in
Speaker 2: the class. And I kind of chuckled, so I said, well,
Speaker 2: maybe I'll go in the service. Her feeling was that
Speaker 2: if I wanted to go, that was fine, and my
Speaker 2: feeling was that we were in a war, so I
Speaker 2: could go out there and I could make it a
Speaker 2: little difference.
Speaker 1: I can imagine his mother staring into the deep set
Speaker 1: eyes of her only son, thinking, maybe this will be
Speaker 1: the thing that gives him responsible ability structure. She must
Speaker 1: have been filled with equal parts hope and terror. Wouldn't
Speaker 1: any parent feel that way. Bob certainly wasn't worried. He
Speaker 1: was a teenage boy. They feel invincible, blindly optimistic. He
Speaker 1: was running on adrenaline and a testosterone.
Speaker 2: I just thinking about this would be an adventure. Of
Speaker 2: course you're looking for fun. Seventeen.
Speaker 1: In the late fall of nineteen forty three, Bob and
Speaker 1: a friend from his football team went to enlist together.
Speaker 1: They both chose the Naval Reserves.
Speaker 2: The Navy was always my service of choice, and also
Speaker 2: I thought, well, if I go on the Navy, I
Speaker 2: can sleep in clean sheets every night. Well it didn't
Speaker 2: work out that way, but that was my plan. And
Speaker 2: then by living in the hospital and having jobs to
Speaker 2: do in hospital, and decided that the Medical Corps might
Speaker 2: be for me.
Speaker 1: His medical training with the Navy Hospital Corps lasted less
Speaker 1: than a year before he was sent to Camp Pendleton
Speaker 1: in California to join a Marine battalion as their corman.
Speaker 1: There he learned to handle weapons.
Speaker 2: When you're talking about rising guns and Thompson submachine guns
Speaker 2: and air cool machine guns and water cool machine guns
Speaker 2: and drowning automatic rifles and him one rifles, I mean,
Speaker 2: these are big stuff for a kid seventeen years old.
Speaker 1: You can still hear it in his voice, the excitement
Speaker 1: of a kid with a bunch of fun new toys.
Speaker 1: But this training also drove home the point that he
Speaker 1: wouldn't just be saving lives. He might be taking them too.
Speaker 1: That became all the more clear a few months after
Speaker 1: his eighteenth birthday, when he got on a ship with
Speaker 1: the rest of his battalion. They were headed to Okinawa, Japan.
Speaker 1: Okinawa is one of the Ryuk Islands, located southwest of
Speaker 1: the Japanese mainland. The Allies saw it as a lynchpin
Speaker 1: to the war in the Pacific, which by nineteen forty
Speaker 1: five had been dragging on for nearly four years. Okinawa
Speaker 1: would give the Allies an air base close enough to
Speaker 1: bomb the Japanese home islands, plus an ideal place to
Speaker 1: station the Allied naval fleet, and possibly even plan and
Speaker 1: invasion of the Japanese homeland.
Speaker 3: Okinawa will provide an offensive base against Formosa, the China coast,
Speaker 3: or Japan itself, only three hundred and sixty five miles away.
Speaker 1: Okinawa hadn't always been a part of the Japanese Empire.
Speaker 1: It was only an ex in the late nineteenth century.
Speaker 1: Many Japanese considered the people of Okinawa to be inferior,
Speaker 1: second class citizens of the Empire. Once the war began,
Speaker 1: the Okinawans had been pressured to prove their worthiness to
Speaker 1: the Japanese cause, so they had been pressed into service.
Speaker 1: Adult men joined the Japanese Army or the local defense Corps.
Speaker 1: Some two thousand high school students were drafted to The
Speaker 1: boys went into the Blood and Iron Student Corps and
Speaker 1: were ready to fight. The girls became nurses members of
Speaker 1: the Himiurikorps. Some were as young as fifteen. In other
Speaker 1: battles of the Pacific, civilians weren't part of the action.
Speaker 1: Gauadalcanal had been a military base, and the civilian population
Speaker 1: on Iwojima had been evacuated before that battle began, But
Speaker 1: in the spring of nineteen forty five, almost five hundred
Speaker 1: thousand civilians were living on Okinawa. They would be in
Speaker 1: the middle of whatever conflict was to come. On April first,
Speaker 1: Easter Sunday. It came that morning. Bob Bush was on
Speaker 1: the first wave of transport boats. Everyone in the American
Speaker 1: fleet knew what this kind of invasion looked like. Normandy
Speaker 1: had happened the previous summer, Ewojima had just been the
Speaker 1: month before. In both cases, the Allies had faced an
Speaker 1: enemy with dug in defenses. The Americans had been mowed
Speaker 1: down just as quickly as they landed for Okinawa. The
Speaker 1: command expected and eighty percent casualty rate at minimum.
Speaker 2: The night before, we were told that the entire first division,
Speaker 2: the first Marine Division, was expendable. That means that we're
Speaker 2: going to lose everybody, and that really didn't make for
Speaker 2: a happy camper.
Speaker 1: As the sun rose on that Easter morning, Bob and
Speaker 1: the rest of his company and marines looked out on
Speaker 1: what would be the largest amphibious assault ever mounted in
Speaker 1: the Pacific. There were fifteen hundred ships and half a
Speaker 1: million men. About sixty thousand would go ashore on that
Speaker 1: first day.
Speaker 2: As far as you could see, there were ships. And
Speaker 2: I gave you a certain amount of confidence when you
Speaker 2: could see this amount of transports and aircraft carriers and
Speaker 2: battleships and unit cruisers and just innumerable amount of them.
Speaker 2: And so we thought, well, there's going to be a
Speaker 2: piece of cake.
Speaker 1: The troop transports skipped across the surf towards the island.
Speaker 1: As land got closer, Bob was filled with dread.
Speaker 2: I noticed that our boat was a boat length in
Speaker 2: front of everybody else, and I told the squad leader
Speaker 2: stand next to me, I said, why don't you tell
Speaker 2: him to slow this thing down. We don't need to
Speaker 2: be the first one there.
Speaker 1: But when the men landed on the island, there was
Speaker 1: weirdly nothing, no barrage of fire, no hailstorm of motor shells.
Speaker 2: There wasn't a shot fire on the beach.
Speaker 1: It was eerily quiet. It seemed so easy, But that
Speaker 1: peaceful landing hit a horrible secret.
Speaker 2: The Japanese had elected to let us on board and
Speaker 2: then nail us after we got there.
Speaker 1: They would wait and let the Allied forces work their
Speaker 1: way inland.
Speaker 2: There.
Speaker 1: The terrain gave the Japanese troops an extraordinary advantage. The
Speaker 1: island was covered in ridge lines, and each one of
Speaker 1: those was poked with concrete tombs, bunkers, and dozens of
Speaker 1: volcanic caves. They could pick the Americans off from the
Speaker 1: high ground. The Japanese soldiers also used the caves as
Speaker 1: foxholes and living spaces. They turned him into hospitals. That's
Speaker 1: where the teenage nurses in the himiurikorps were sent to work.
Speaker 1: So civilians were often indistinguishable from the enemy. Bob learned
Speaker 1: that on his very first day in Okinawa. In fact,
Speaker 1: the first war casualty he saw was a civilian.
Speaker 2: We had a Japanese person run across in front of us,
Speaker 2: and of course we were all trigger happy, and the
Speaker 2: platoon leader ordered him shot, although he wasn't threatening us
Speaker 2: at that point. I checked the guy and he didn't
Speaker 2: have a soldier uniform on.
Speaker 1: The American who killed him was a rifleman named Clyde Petty, who,
Speaker 1: by total coincidence, would also die just hours later. Bob
Speaker 1: saw it happen and tried to save him.
Speaker 2: And I went to Petty's support, and he was and
Speaker 2: I left lunge. I'm out there working on this guy.
Speaker 2: And as soon as I got him that I knew
Speaker 2: I was in trouble. I just scared the hell out
Speaker 2: of me, really, and I looked up and I could
Speaker 2: look into a twenty five caliber Japanese Bold Action rifle.
Speaker 2: I was close enough to see that he was pointing
Speaker 2: that thing right at me.
Speaker 1: Bob was in the crosshairs, but somehow he was still
Speaker 1: able to retreat to safety. He couldn't figure out what
Speaker 1: kept the sniper from shooting at him.
Speaker 2: We found out later that before we got to them,
Speaker 2: a woman came out of that same cave and picked
Speaker 2: up a Japanese soldier that we'd shot and pulled him
Speaker 2: back in and while the woman came out, we didn't
Speaker 2: fire on her because she was giving medical attention to him.
Speaker 1: It seemed like the two sides had some kind of understanding.
Speaker 1: The US soldiers didn't shoot the female medic who emerged
Speaker 1: from the cave, who was most likely of the girls
Speaker 1: from the Himayuri Nursing Corps, and the Japanese snipers didn't
Speaker 1: shoot at Bob For at least a moment on that
Speaker 1: first day of fighting, the teenaged medics on both sides
Speaker 1: of the conflict must have felt safe, maybe still full
Speaker 1: of that youthful exuberance and hope. But that was just
Speaker 1: the first day, and both the Japanese command and the
Speaker 1: Allies had already decided everyone on the island was expendable.
Speaker 1: May nineteen forty five, the Battle of Okinawa had been
Speaker 1: going on for a month. It was proceeding exactly as
Speaker 1: the Japanese had planned, a war of attrition, with casualties
Speaker 1: ticking up on both sides and a resolution desperately out
Speaker 1: of reach.
Speaker 3: Campaign to win Okinawa soon developed into a desperate and
Speaker 3: prolonged struggle. And you were both caves and hidden pill boxes, Honeycomb,
Speaker 3: the island ridges, the Yanks cannot advance until every cave
Speaker 3: is filed and every pill box smashed.
Speaker 1: It was a crushing, demoralizing battle, constant bombardment from artillery
Speaker 1: and mortars, the smell of death everywhere. Thousands of bodies
Speaker 1: American military, Japanese soldiers, local civilians lay where they had fallen.
Speaker 2: You have to be almost walking over them because there's
Speaker 2: so many of them that are dead.
Speaker 1: And the Americans had to grapple with the grim realization
Speaker 1: that Okinawan families and children were being caught in the crossfire.
Speaker 1: Bob remembers how hard it was to differentiate between the
Speaker 1: enemy and the terrified, starving civilians.
Speaker 2: If somebody comes out and hungry, they fed them. If
Speaker 2: they come out and they needed medically, we wouldn't usually
Speaker 2: fire on anybody unless they fired on us first. I mean,
Speaker 2: if they had a weapon that was even pointed vaguely
Speaker 2: toward us, so they got it. But if they weren't firing,
Speaker 2: then we didn't.
Speaker 1: Bob's days were nothing like the wild adventure that he'd
Speaker 1: envision back home in Menlo. It was just a long,
Speaker 1: rainy slog, forcing the men in his company to take
Speaker 1: their malaria medicine, which everyone hated eating beans out of
Speaker 1: a can. But he felt like his marines were watching
Speaker 1: out for him, which of course they were. He might
Speaker 1: have only been eighteen, but he was the first line
Speaker 1: of medical care on the battlefield.
Speaker 2: We knew how expendable we were, and everybody kept their
Speaker 2: cool and they kept fighting, and they just did a
Speaker 2: beautiful job of keeping us protected to.
Speaker 1: Thirty two days into the invasion, on the day that
Speaker 1: changed the course of Bob Bush's life, it became clear
Speaker 1: that really no one was safe.
Speaker 2: The morning of May second, nineteen forty five, it was
Speaker 2: a typical morning of fighting on Okinawa. Our patoon leader,
Speaker 2: Lieutenant James Roach, elected to make the statement that he
Speaker 2: would take a squad of men because our mission that
Speaker 2: day was to take a certain hill by eight thirty
Speaker 2: in the morning. Well, my feeling was he should have
Speaker 2: taken the whole team down or to fight that hill,
Speaker 2: rather than take one squad of nineteen men out on
Speaker 2: a hill and do the things that he did. But
Speaker 2: that was his decision. So that left two thirds of
Speaker 2: our people up on the ridge looking so they could
Speaker 2: see everything that was going on. I was like a theater,
Speaker 2: and we set up our machine guns up on the
Speaker 2: hill and He went down with his nineteen men down
Speaker 2: through the ravine and got to the base of the hill,
Speaker 2: and all hill broke loose.
Speaker 1: The nineteen men, with Jim Roach at the lead, were
Speaker 1: immediately surrounded by Japanese troops. They were massively outnumbered. Bob
Speaker 1: was up in the ridge watching it all happen.
Speaker 2: Where the hell they came from? Nobody. But in the meantime,
Speaker 2: Jim Roach got hit and the platoon sergeant said, well,
Speaker 2: Roach is hit out there. What are you thinking. Well,
Speaker 2: the rules of the road where the Navy coremans are
Speaker 2: that if you're going to threaten your own life to
Speaker 2: go out and get him, you're better off to reserve
Speaker 2: that because you got fifty seven war men to take
Speaker 2: care of. And I never adhered too much to that,
Speaker 2: but that was the rule, that was the teaching.
Speaker 1: Bob had to make a split second decision. Should he
Speaker 1: put his own life in danger to go to Roach
Speaker 1: down in the ravine. He wasn't supposed to risk everything
Speaker 1: for one person, but he was sure Roach was alive,
Speaker 1: maybe not for much longer.
Speaker 2: So I said, I can get out there to him.
Speaker 2: I ran across the field rapidly and I got to
Speaker 2: him in a foxhole in a shell hole. I took
Speaker 2: a can of albumum, which is a blood plasma, because
Speaker 2: his eyes were dilating and he was slipping away. I said, Jim,
Speaker 2: you're in good shape. Can see that. We're going to
Speaker 2: fix you right up, and we're going to get you
Speaker 2: out of here. So I got him going with a IV.
Speaker 2: And then I looked up on the hill and not
Speaker 2: thirty feet away I saw a Japanese head, a superior
Speaker 2: private with a helmet.
Speaker 1: Bob was holding the blood plasma high up with one
Speaker 1: hand so that it would flow into the IV. With
Speaker 1: his other hand, he started grasping for Roach's rifle, all
Speaker 1: the while refusing to let that can of plasma drop.
Speaker 2: I was feeling for his carbing, because I know my
Speaker 2: forty five that's in my shoulder rolls to you. It
Speaker 2: won't work too well when you're trying to get a target.
Speaker 1: The enemy's soldier was taking aim, but Bob grabbed the
Speaker 1: rifle with one hand, raised it and pulled off the
Speaker 1: first shot, still holding the plasma, still tending to Roach.
Speaker 2: And then another head came up.
Speaker 1: Bob swung the gun around and fired again.
Speaker 2: Another head. I don't know what I was thinking. About,
Speaker 2: but I was thinking one thing that if they're going
Speaker 2: to take me, by God, they're going to pay the bill.
Speaker 2: By that time, I had Jim Roach kind of coming around.
Speaker 2: He had a bad shoulder injury, and if we put
Speaker 2: compresses on it, and I did, I got him kind
Speaker 2: of going in a manner that we could get him
Speaker 2: off the battlefield.
Speaker 1: The Marines brought Jim Roach up to safety, but Bob
Speaker 1: was still stuck down in the ravine, and those shots
Speaker 1: had drawn more attention.
Speaker 2: The Japanese looked down and saw me there, and they
Speaker 2: threw hand grenade down. As soon as that came down,
Speaker 2: I threw my arm up like that and it protected
Speaker 2: my left eye, but I lost my right eye, and
Speaker 2: he hit me with three hand grenades.
Speaker 1: Three grenades one would have been enough to kill him,
Speaker 1: but he was unbelievably lucky. Yes, he had shoppnel in
Speaker 1: a lung and an arm. He lost an eye, but
Speaker 1: I probably Bob was alive. In fact, he attempted to
Speaker 1: walk back up the ridge to the battelaid station by himself.
Speaker 1: He refused medical treatment until he was sure that Roach
Speaker 1: had been safely evacuated. Finally Bob collapsed. He saved Jim
Speaker 1: Roach's life. With the plasma in one hand and a
Speaker 1: rifle in the other, he had made a split second
Speaker 1: decision that was remarkable in its bravery. He was eighteen
Speaker 1: years old. Bob Bush's grand teenage adventure hadn't quite turned
Speaker 1: out the way he'd hoped, but war rarely does.
Speaker 2: I said, will you gotta get me patched up? I
Speaker 2: got to get home, and then I was thinking of home.
Speaker 1: He was still a kid. He wanted to go home,
Speaker 1: and now he could. When Bob Bush joined up, he
Speaker 1: thought about war the way he would have thought about
Speaker 1: a football game, two sides, one winner. I can imagine
Speaker 1: that the teenagers serving on the other side envisioned it
Speaker 1: in the same unambiguous way. But the young medics of
Speaker 1: the Himiuri Corps were facing a sa situation that was
Speaker 1: even more dire. Trapped in the caves with little training
Speaker 1: and even fewer medical supplies, unable to keep the Japanese
Speaker 1: soldiers and their fellow okinawan's from dying. In the book
Speaker 1: Japan at War and Earal History by Haruko Taya Cook
Speaker 1: and Theodore Cook, the authors interviewed Miagi kuk Kuko, one
Speaker 1: of the Hymnayuri girls. She was sixteen when the Battle
Speaker 1: of Okinawa began. She remembers it this way quote, Wounded
Speaker 1: soldiers were being carried into the caves in large numbers.
Speaker 1: Some didn't have faces, some didn't have limbs. At first,
Speaker 1: we were so scared that we wept. Soon we stopped
Speaker 1: outside was a rain of bullets from morning tonight. There
Speaker 1: was no time for sobbing or lamentation. Miyagi and Bob
Speaker 1: shared something important, a belief in a cause and a
Speaker 1: hope that they could save lives. They both had that
Speaker 1: optimism of youth save a life in an extraordinary heroic way.
Speaker 1: Then he got to go home. Miyagi wasn't so lucky.
Speaker 1: Her home was the battlefield. She would have to be
Speaker 1: there until the bitter end. The Battle of Okinawa lasted
Speaker 1: a total of eighty two days. Ultimately, the Allies were victorious.
Speaker 1: Many Japanese soldiers who survived the battle committed suicide instead
Speaker 1: of being captured, and civilians did the same thing. They'd
Speaker 1: been convinced that the Americans would treat them barbarically. Miyagi survived. Later,
Speaker 1: she remembered, quote, We'd been taught and firmly believed that
Speaker 1: we Okinawans must never fall into the hands of the enemy.
Speaker 1: I could think of the Americans only as devils and demons.
Speaker 1: The Japanese army gave the Himiyuri girls grenades and told
Speaker 1: them to use them on themselves. Of the roughly two
Speaker 1: thousand high school students who were drafted into service, only
Speaker 1: nine hundred and fifty survived. Miagi was one of the
Speaker 1: lucky ones. Almost a quarter of a million people died
Speaker 1: at Okinawa. Fourteen thousand of those were American troops and
Speaker 1: roughly one hundred and fifty thousand were Okinawan civilians, a
Speaker 1: third of the island's population.
Speaker 2: That's a hell of a lot of people to die
Speaker 2: and more than both atomic bones.
Speaker 1: In fact, the enormous casualties and the brutal fighting during
Speaker 1: the Battle of Okinawa directly influenced the American decision to
Speaker 1: use atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Harry Choon was
Speaker 1: afraid that an invasion of the Home Islands would look
Speaker 1: like quote Okinawa from one end of Japan to the other.
Speaker 1: Bob Bush made the most consequential decision of his life
Speaker 1: to join the service when he was a teenager. In
Speaker 1: an optimistic leap of faith way you do things when
Speaker 1: you're that age. He and his friend from the football
Speaker 1: team couldn't wait to get out there and serve. He
Speaker 1: had no idea what he was getting into, of course,
Speaker 1: how could he. Being that young is both a blessing
Speaker 1: and a curse. You have this idealistic notion of what
Speaker 1: the world can be, you go out and fight for it,
Speaker 1: and then it colors your life going forward. It shows
Speaker 1: you what is possible, and it shows you what can
Speaker 1: be lost.
Speaker 2: Two guys on the football team up there, that Willipaul
Speaker 2: Valley decided, well, we better go help them, and that's
Speaker 2: what we did. And I was very happy to have
Speaker 2: the opportunity of doing that. I don't know that I'd
Speaker 2: do it again, but I'm happy that I did for
Speaker 2: one time.
Speaker 1: Anyway, Bob spent time in a military hospital, but he
Speaker 1: wanted to get back to Menlo as quickly as he could.
Speaker 1: He returned in the summer of forty five, and that
Speaker 1: fall he went back to high school. He was anxious
Speaker 1: to restart his old life. He even tried to play
Speaker 1: football again with his glass eye and his chest wound.
Speaker 2: I said, coach, and I can still play, and I'd
Speaker 2: like to get suited up, and so he said, Okay.
Speaker 1: One Saturday morning, he was on his way to practice
Speaker 1: when the war encroached again in a different way.
Speaker 2: I was carrying my football shoes out. The phone rang
Speaker 2: from my home and I answered it and it was Forestal,
Speaker 2: Secretary of the Navy.
Speaker 1: James Forrestal was calling to tell him he'd won the
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. President Harry Truman was going to get
Speaker 1: him the award at the White House. He'd get to
Speaker 1: travel all the way cross country from Washington State to Washington,
Speaker 1: d C.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this was a trip for your lifetime when
Speaker 2: you live in a little town of Washington, d c.
Speaker 2: As about four across the country as you can get.
Speaker 1: His first thought was that he'd bring his mother to
Speaker 1: the ceremony. His mom had a different idea. Bob's girlfriend, Wanda,
Speaker 1: had waited for him when he was overseas and they
Speaker 1: planned to get married after he graduated. Bob's mother made
Speaker 1: a suggestion, why not get married now and take Wanda
Speaker 1: to Washington as a honeymoon, and so he did. The
Speaker 1: Middle of Honor service took place the day after Bob's
Speaker 1: nineteenth birthday.
Speaker 2: Took one year, six months and twenty two days from
Speaker 2: my entire military service, and I was in the service,
Speaker 2: out of the service, home, married, back in school, and
Speaker 2: I was still nineteen.
Speaker 1: The first days of adulthood. His life was just beginning.
Speaker 1: But what he'd experienced in Okinawa had shaped him. He
Speaker 1: knew now how arbitrarily cruel the world could be, and
Speaker 1: he knew how lucky he had been for one thing,
Speaker 1: he'd survived, unlike so many young men, including that high
Speaker 1: school friend who had also hoped to marry Wanda.
Speaker 2: I have a very close friend. He was a competitor
Speaker 2: to my wife. In fact, my wife had two boyfriends
Speaker 2: and he was one of them, and I was the other.
Speaker 2: And he was killed on me with GiMA.
Speaker 1: Bob knew that it could just as easily have been
Speaker 1: him dying on the shores of some foreign island, So
Speaker 1: he honored his missing friend, his romantic rival.
Speaker 2: I have decorated his grave for fifty years. I feel
Speaker 2: badly about it, but I know what wore a cost.
Speaker 1: That to me is the crucial thing. Two kids with
Speaker 1: the same hopes a split second bullet, and everything breaks
Speaker 1: differently for each of them. Life snuffed out for one
Speaker 1: fundamentally altered for the other. Bob knew the costs of
Speaker 1: war because he saw soldiers and civilians, men and women
Speaker 1: and children pay the price. He saw those things when
Speaker 1: he was barely an adult himself. Bob Bush, the guy
Speaker 1: whose mom wasn't quite sure he was smart enough to
Speaker 1: get to high school, bought a lumberyard with a friend
Speaker 1: and turned it into a multi million dollar business. He
Speaker 1: went on to lead the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.
Speaker 1: He was featured in Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation.
Speaker 1: He went back to Okinawa not just to pay tribute
Speaker 1: to his fallen comrades, but also to the civilians who
Speaker 1: gave their lives because they weren't given any other choice.
Speaker 2: I've been out there four or five times since the
Speaker 2: war that I took my whole family, fifteen of them
Speaker 2: back there.
Speaker 1: The surviving Himiyuri girls, including Miyagi, built a museum to
Speaker 1: memorialize what they had suffered through in the war. Not
Speaker 1: letting the world forget was part of how they made
Speaker 1: sense of what happened to them when they were so young.
Speaker 1: Bob also built his life on the foundations of his
Speaker 1: war experience. A lot of his fellow servicemen that greatest
Speaker 1: generation came home determined to work hard, be successful. Clearly
Speaker 1: Bob did too, but he would tell you that the
Speaker 1: most consequential thing he did in the wake of his
Speaker 1: service was something more emotional, more personal. The fatherless Ruddless
Speaker 1: boy was determined to be a father. Bob and Wanda
Speaker 1: went on to have four children, and Bob believed that
Speaker 1: it would never have been possible if he hadn't gone
Speaker 1: to war.
Speaker 2: What I learned in the service, but both an Avian wrinklers.
Speaker 2: I learned a value of a family and to be
Speaker 2: able to come home every night to a family and
Speaker 2: watch him grow up wonderful and believe me, I felt
Speaker 2: that that wouldn't be possible had I not served, because
Speaker 2: I don't think I'd have been disciplined enough to know
Speaker 2: what the hell I was doing.
Speaker 1: I can understand why it must have felt so wonderful
Speaker 1: to him. Kids are inherently optimistic, so unjaded, just like
Speaker 1: Bob had been back at Willepa Valley High waiting for
Speaker 1: the moment he'd be old enough to go on his adventure,
Speaker 1: to go and fight, totally unaware of what lay ahead.
Speaker 1: Bob lived through the brutality of Okinawa so he could
Speaker 1: look into the hopeful faces of his own children and say,
Speaker 1: the future is yours, This is your inheritance. I fought
Speaker 1: for this better world. Let me give it to you.
Speaker 1: Medal of Honor. Stories of Courage is written by Meredith
Speaker 1: Rollins and produced by Meredith Rollins, Constanza Galardo, and Izzy Carter.
Speaker 1: The show is edited by Ben Nadafh Haffrey, Sound design
Speaker 1: and additional music by Jake Gorski, recording engineering by Nina Lawrence,
Speaker 1: fact checking by Arthur Gompert's, original music by Eric Phillips.
Speaker 1: If you want to learn more about our Medal of
Speaker 1: Honor recipients, follow us on Instagram and Twitter. We'll be
Speaker 1: sharing photos and videos of the heroes featured on the show.
Speaker 1: We'd also love to hear from you dm us with
Speaker 1: a story about a courageous veteran in your life. If
Speaker 1: you don't know a veteran, we would love to hear
Speaker 1: a story of how courage was contagious in your own life.
Speaker 1: You can find us at Pushkin Bonds. I'm your host,
Speaker 1: Malcolm Baba