A monument stands on Ie Shima (now known as Iejima), off the coast of Okinawa’s main island, honoring a man who fought in World War II with a pen rather than a rifle. His name was Ernie Pyle, a U.S. journalist who found his calling as the preeminent war correspondent of World War II. Pyle was beloved by the troops he wrote about and earned the nickname “The G.I.’s Buddy.”
From 1940 until his death in 1945, Pyle riveted the nation with his personal, straight-from-the-heart tales about hometown soldiers fighting in history’s greatest conflict. Pyle’s success was due to his ability to immerse himself in the day-to-day world of an infantryman and write about him better than anyone. Pyle’s popularity was due to his ability to write from the perspective of the common soldier, explaining how the war affected the man rather than focusing on things such as troop movements. A successful newspaperman and columnist before the war, the one-time Indiana farm boy found his true calling as a combat correspondent during World War II.
Pyle was generally in the thick of the fighting, making landings with the troops in North Africa, Sicily, and Normandy. Pyle believed that the only way to honestly cover the fighting was to go where it was happening, rather than writing about it from the sidelines. Pyle spent 2 1/2 years writing about the common foot soldier, with whom he felt a special camaraderie.
In 1945, he wrote to one of his biggest fans, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower: “I’ve found that no matter how much we talk, or write, or show pictures, people who have not actually been in war are incapable of having any real conception of it. I don’t really blame the people. Some of them try hard to understand. But the world of an infantryman is a world so far removed from anything normal that it can be no more than academic to the average person.”
Pyle’s newspaper columns helped make Americans conscious of and sympathetic toward the infantryman. He constantly strived to make people feel what the ordinary soldier endured. It was a goal he never felt he fully achieved; however, many believed that he came closer than any other writer.
As the war in Europe drew to a close, Pyle turned to the war in the Pacific. The names of the islands where battles were fought seemed exotic and distant to most Americans, who had never heard of Saipan, Ie Shima, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, and Peleliu.
Pyle was determined to go with the Marines if he was going to write about them. The last big battle he covered was the invasion of Okinawa, code-named “Operation Iceberg.” He was at the peak of his writing career, with his column appearing in approximately 400 daily publications and nearly 300 weeklies. In 1944, his columns for Scripps–Howard newspapers earned Pyle a Pulitzer Prize, and Hollywood made a movie titled “Ernie Pyle’s Story of G.I. Joe.”
As L-day (landing day) for Operation Iceberg approached, Pyle joined an assault transport ship carrying units of Maj. Gen. Pedro A. del Valle’s 1st Marine Division and prepared for the worst. The Army and Marines had been briefed that the resistance on Okinawa would likely result in high casualties. Pyle wanted to see the war’s end but confided to his friends that he didn’t expect to survive.
The night before L-Day, Pyle was asked to write something to the men aboard the ship:
“In a message like this, it is the usual thing for a person to say that he’s happy to be aboard. If I said that, I would be a liar for sure. Tomorrow, as you know, is our day. For some of you, this business tomorrow is new, and you are curious. For some of us, it is old stuff. None of us like it. But we have to do it, and wishing doesn’t change it. In writing about tomorrow and the days that will follow, I’ll try to give the folks back home an honest picture of what happens ... so that they can understand enough to give you the credit deserve. I’ll do the best I can. And so to you on the ship, and you in the boats, and you on the beaches—good luck. And I hope you wish me the same. I’ll need it too.”
Pyle went ashore with the seventh wave, the 5th Marine Division. Surprisingly, there was no resistance by the Japanese. The 5th Division got ashore with only two casualties: a case of heat exhaustion and complications from an injured foot.
After a week on Okinawa, Pyle returned to the command ship, Panamint, to write and recuperate from a bad cold. Maj. Gen. Andrew Davis Bruce, commanding the 77th Infantry Division, came aboard the Panamint with news that he had just received orders to seize the outlying island of Ie Shima.
The assault was scheduled for April 16, and Pyle decided to go out the following day. The day after the invasion of Ie Shima, Pyle joined Bruce’s men. The following day, Pyle accompanied Lt. Col. Joseph B. Coolidge with several officers in a jeep in search of a new command post. As they drove along a well-traveled road, a concealed sniper fired on them with a .30 caliber Nambu machine gun.
They all bailed out of the vehicle as the sniper fired again. A single bullet struck Pyle in the left temple, killing him instantly. They buried Pyle about 100 yards from where the East China Sea washed onto the shore of Ie Shima. He was buried with his helmet on—the chaplain remarking that “a lot of the men thought he looked more natural that way.”
Soldier and cartoonist Sgt. Bill Mauldin described the effect of Pyle’s death:
AT THIS SPOT THE 77TH INFANTRY DIVISION LOST A BUDDY ERNIE PYLE 18 APRIL 1945(The author visited the Ernie Pyle monument on Ie Shima when he was on active duty in the U.S. Navy.)
