This presentation of In Their Own Words is dedicated to the brave men and women of the United States Armed Forces.

By 1945, the war in the Pacific was supposed to be winding down.

Chuck Tatum, who was yet to turn 18, dreamed of becoming a Marine.

He signed up before his 18th birthday and found himself in boot camp, preparing for unknown duties.

Before long, he would land on a distant island, whose black sandy beaches foretold the evil that awaited them inland.

The island's name was strange and unfamiliar to the young men who landed there.

But later, it became known to generations of Americans as the finest hour of the U.S. Marine Corps.

Its name was Iwo Jima.

The following is an in-depth interview with Chuck Taiton. These are his experiences,

in his own words. I was in B Company, 1st Battalion, 27th Marines, 5th Division.

And February 45, your rank was... PFC.

Okay.

What attracted you to the Marine Corps? How did you get into the Marine Corps? Well, one of the

first things that attracted me was a John Payne movie. He says, Pride of the Marines or something

like that was the name of it. And there was that blue uniform. Yeah, I didn't want to, I didn't

like the Army or Navy uniforms, but I thought, boy,

it'd really be good to come home and swallow the gals with a blue Marine uniform if you could get in

there. And of course, whenever I joined up and went to boot camp, and you could imagine the extreme

disappointment when I found out that they discontinued dress blue uniforms.

But I was attracted by the, there's a guy in front of the post office on a poster, and here's this Marine.

He's on the deck of a battleship, apparently, in the American flags waving in the background.

Here he is in dress blues.

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