Now, let me explain what happens when you are invading an island.
By 1943, the United States was fully involved in the Second World War.
For Matthias Gutman, and virtually every young American man, there were two options:
enlist in the armed forces branch of your choice, or wait for the draft to sweep you up.
I didn't want to be drafted in the Army or Marines.
Naturally, they would draft you mostly there because they needed the most men there.
In June of 1943, I enlisted in the Navy just to avoid being drafted in the Army or Marines.
I was sent to the naval training center in Sampson, New York
for recruit training.
After that we were given a seven-day leave to visit our family and friends.
Little did I know at that time that would be the last time I saw my parents until the war ended.
Matthias was placed on the crew of an LST - an amphibious landing ship,
capable of bringing vehicles, supplies and troops to the shore in the event of an invasion.
But the crew still had no idea to where in the world they were heading.
When we got to the shipyard and we started to board the ship,
we saw that the ship was camouflaged with tropical colors,
just like it would blend in with the tropical island when we landed.
When we boarded, we knew that this ship was bound to go to the Pacific Theater.
In December of 1941, the Empire of Japan had launched a massive conquest
across the Pacific, attacking and invading hundreds of territories
in an assault that reached as far as Hawaii, and the Aleutian Islands just west of Alaska.
Matthias was now involved in a campaign to win these lands back, one at a time,
in what would be a slow and bloody drive toward Japan.
We then joined a convoy of ships.
We didn't know where we were going. We didn't know.
They wouldn't tell us until we were out at sea. Then they told us.
We were on our way to our first invasion.
We were going to the Palau islands and we were going to invade the island of Peleliu.
They had an airstrip on that island that we wanted so that we could conquer that island
and have advanced air force that would land there.
There must have been anywhere from ten-
to fifteen thousand Japanese on that island.
Well, according to the higher ups,
we were supposed to conquer that island in three days.
It took us two months to conquer that island. A lot of Marines got killed.
Now, let me explain what happens when you are invading an island.
First of all, when we get there
our battleships, cruisers, and destroyers are pounding that island constantly.
Now, they're bombarding this island while we're approaching the island.
The first and second wave comes in there pretty easy. You know why?
Our guns stop firing, now our airplanes are coming in,
machine-gunning, dropping bombs, and keeping the Japanese pinned down
while we're invading that island.
Now, by the time the third wave comes in, they're out of there.
And, boy, all hell broke loose.
I was in the third wave, bringing in thirty-five Marines.
When I dropped the ramp on that boat and those Marines went storming up that beach,
a lot of them got killed instantly.
And they were all young guys like me. They were all young.
The men that were wounded - arms or legs missing, or something -
I'd take them on the hospital ship to get added care. Back and forth all day long.
We lost a lot of men there - a lot of Marines.
They conquered that island. It took two months rather than three days.
Now, Peleliu was conquered then. And then we used that airstrip.
Now, from there we went to our next invasion
which was at Leyte in the Philippines. Leyte Gulf.
During the Battle of Leyte Gulf, Mathias encountered a new kind of threat -
the likes of which the U.S. Navy had never seen: Japanese suicide planes.
We were at our guns three days straight.
At Leyte we shot down three airplanes - kamikaze planes coming at us.
They nearly hit us, but they didn't.
Leyte was one of the biggest sea battles in the Pacific.
That's when we crushed their fleet.
Had our fleet not conquered their fleet, they would have down there
and they would have eliminated all of us, because they had the big guns.
They could fire at us at a distance of two or three miles away.
They would have really slaughtered us had our fleet not knocked their fleet out.
The Imperial Japanese Navy’s attempts to stop the invasion of Leyte
were crushed by the United States Navy,
and Japan’s strength at sea would never recover.
Though the invasion was a success and Matthias once again came through unscathed,
he began to wonder just when his luck would run out.
After I made my first couple landings and I survived,
I was thinking to myself, "Now I'm going to the next one.
Am I going to survive that?"
Then I thought, "You know what? I may never come back home again."
I accepted that. How much can you survive one after the other, after the other?
And all the time you're in battle, you know?
If you're not battling air, you're battling submarines, you're battling an invasion.
I mean, what are the odds?
In the Philippines, I landed at four different islands.
First was Leyte, then Mindoro, then Lingayen Gulf, and Subic Bay at Luzon.
Four landings there, and then the final landing was in Okinawa.
I landed six landings in the Pacific, and I never got wounded.
While we were preparing to invade Japan itself,
we found out that they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima.
The Japanese wouldn't surrender.
Three days later we dropped the second bomb on Nagasaki.
Then the Japanese finally surrendered.
We had a flotilla of ships at Buckner Bay
waiting to invade Japan when we heard that the war had ended.
Well, the whole armada in that bay lit up their lights
and they were shooting their guns up in the air, celebrating.
We were all so joyous the war ended, knowing that -
my God - we don't have to go to battle tomorrow.
We knew that we were going to get home,
and we were able to probably have a girlfriend and get married,
you know, and have children.
You don't realize, unless you're one of us, what that meant to you.
The ones that were killed, they never experienced that. It was taken away from them.
Spanning the next twenty-two years, Matthias Gutman went on to a career in the Navy,
finally retiring as Chief Petty Officer.
But to this day, the memories of the Second World War
have remained fresh in his mind.
Now, the war has been ended for a long time, right?
And I'm thinking to myself - right now, even today -
what the hell did we win?
We won the war, but what did we really win?
We won our freedom. But look at what it cost us in lives.
And let's face it, every one of those troops were young guys.
Never were married, never had a family, never came home.
But do you see what young guys do? They're the guys that win a war.
It's the guts in you. You know what I mean.
And I stress to children when I talk to them at schools,
"Don't forget, without that veteran winning that war,
you probably wouldn't be here in this classroom."
So, remember. Remember that veteran that won that war so you could
have your freedom today as you have today.
Without that, God only knows what would've happened.
Remember that.
That's all.