Still Serving CV Veteran Returns To Classroom With Memories Of World War Ii

Anton Rasmussen’s hand can swallow yours. He’s tall enough to make a good authority figure at Central Valley High School.

And his girth, well, he doesn’t fit into his U.S. Marine Corps tunic any more. He’s a big man, all over. But Ras’ heart has to be the biggest part of him.

Consider what this guy carries around: some of the grimmest war memories of our time; the super-heated patriotism that marks his generation; and love. Love enough not only for his family, but a battalion of renegade kids whom he steered clear of trouble as teacher, coach and assistant principal here in the Spokane Valley.

Rasmussen, retired after 27 years at CV High School, is back in the classroom today. He’s talking about Veterans Day and why it should be important to students.

A codger connecting with kids? Might be a tough sell, you’re thinking?

Not for Ras.

Come sit at his kitchen table in Liberty Lake and listen to this Montana boy’s story of World War II: Ras enlisted in the Marine Corps on his 17th birthday, leaving school at the start of his senior year. The bombing of Pearl Harbor had turned Glasgow, Mont., and the rest of the country upside down.

“The school was in an uproar. We’d never heard of a place called Pearl Harbor. We were just farm kids.”

Nationalism swept those farm kids right into the military. Out of a class of 150 kids, perhaps 10 boys graduated the next spring in Glasgow.

The train ride from Butte to San Diego took three days. Boot camp was a mecca of discipline, loyalty and camaraderie, and Ras loved it.

“I think my experience in the corps gave me the makings of a man.” Those ideals, plus the teamwork, the philosophy that your life depended on the other guy, and his on you - those were the ideals that Ras put to work so successfully as a coach.

Before long, Ras was island-bound. A forward observer in the Marines Fourth Division Artillery, he was trained to meticulously note the distances and positions of the Japanese forces.

“If you didn’t (do it right), you were likely to fire on your own people,” he says.

(His attention to detail hasn’t faded. The American flag in his front yard flies all weather, day and night, under the glow of the nearby streetlamp. “I’ve gauged the candlepower,” he says, “It’s legal.”)

The young Marines quickly got their baptism by fire, taking control of a few specks in the sea called Kwajalein Atoll. Ras was still 17 at this point, mind you, and had seen nothing bloodier than the butchering of a cow.

“Seeing dead bodies, seeing your buddies go down, it was a real shock, a real shock to a young kid,” he says.

The strategy was to island hop and neutralize the Japanese across the Pacific. On they went to the Mariannas Islands, Saipan and Tinian, and then Iwo Jima.

On Saipan, the fighting lasted 26 days. And in the end, Ras tells of watching native islanders jumping from the cliffs to their death - anything to avoid capture by the Americans.

Then Tinian. It was a island of harsh coral, where Ras wore out a pair of boondockers in three weeks. Once the island was secure, the Seabees set to work.

“In two months they cleared that island and built the largest airport I’d ever seen in my life. How they did it in that type of soil, I’ll never know.”

The distances across the Pacific were so great that if a B-29 bomber had any problems heading home, plane and crew were lost in the ocean.

“Every time that happened, it meant $3.5 million and 12 people going down. The brass realized they had to do something about that.”

Iwo Jima was the agreed-upon solution. Its position was close enough to Japan to offer a needed interim base.

The battle for Iwo Jima was a mess from the begining, as Ras tells it. Advance information told the Marines that the tides were running at two feet.

“But when we got there the tide was running at 10 feet and the place was volcanic sand. You’d sink in it up to your knees. Tanks sank clear up to their turrets.”

The Japanese command let the U.S. forces start their landing, then pinned them down. Surf spun the amphibious Higgins landing boats around, sending them into the beach backwards.

“We couldn’t get our wounded back to the ships and we couldn’t get our supplies ashore.”

The troops couldn’t move. If they dug a hole for protection, the volcanic sand caved in on them. It took everything the Americans had, amphibious tractors, Higgins boats and flame-throwing tanks to secure a hold.

Ras breaks the pace of his storytelling now. This is tough stuff for him, no matter how many times he’s told it, relived it.

Casualties on Iwo Jima were a brutal 85 percent. Six thousand kids died in three days. Another 14,000 were injured - Ras among them.

Where was he hit?

Ras hesitates, which should be a dead giveaway that the location of his wound was, ah, delicate.

“I got hit in the rump,” he says with a grin.

The heavy cost paid off, and U.S. forces took the island.

As a forward observer, Ras had to get up high, somewhere he could see the area. That was Mt. Suribachi. By the time he climbed to the top and readied his intruments so he could take readings, there were about 30 people on the summit.

A little flag flew from one knoll of Mt. Suribachi.

“Well, the powers that be were watching through their field glasses from the ships,” Ras says, “and they decided, `Hey, that’s a good idea, but we need a bigger flag that you can really see.’ ” A photographer named Joe Rosenthal was among the 30 people on Mt. Suribachi. He took a picture of that large flag being raised on Iwo Jima - a picture that came to stand for all the sacrifice of the fighting men in the Pacific.

“No one thought anything about it” at the time, Ras said. Two thousand B-29s landed on Iwo Jima.

“Any number of Americans survived the war because Iwo was there.”

Ras remained in the Pacific for the last months of the war. For him, as for thousands of other Marines, the A-bombs didn’t come too soon.

In 1995, Ras went back to Iwo Jima.

“I sat on the beach and I bawled,” he says. “The only reason that island was taken was that young American kids went into the flame and fire.”

Ras leans back in his chair. So, this is the story that Ras is telling to today’s teenagers.

“The experience - I wouldn’t want to have to go back through it again. But there’s all kinds of pride that I was part of it.”