The Native Marine In America’s Most Famous WWII Photograph – And What Happened After He Came Home
Twenty years old.
From the Gila River reservation.
A Paramarine.
He was assigned to the 3rd Parachute Battalion, which deployed to the Pacific in 1943.
The Paramarines initially trained for airborne operations — jumps behind enemy lines, the kind of mission the Army’s airborne divisions were conducting in other theaters.
But the Pacific geography proved inhospitable to large-scale parachute operations.
The islands were too small, the terrain too difficult, the available aircraft too limited.
The Marine Paramarines were eventually used as elite infantry, fighting on Vella Lavella in the Solomon Islands in 1943.
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