‘Fuji Fire' Review: The Burning Storm
On Oct. 19, 1979, Typhoon Tip, at the time the most intense tropical storm ever recorded, whipped through a U.S. Marine Corps training camp near Mount Fuji in Japan. On one slope of the camp stood a recently constructed fuel farm, made up of three large, rubberized fuel tanks, called bladders, each carrying more than 5,000 gallons of fuel and weighing in excess of 30,000 pounds. As the torrent of rain continued, the loose lava soil underneath began to erode. One bladder containing 5,933 gallons of gasoline 'floated up and over what remained of its encircling earthen embankment.' A sharp metal corner of its frame ripped a 5-foot-long tear in the bladder. Soon 'an estimated 5,500 gallons of the fuel . . . flowed downhill atop already flooding rainwater.' So writes Chas Henry in his account of the disaster, 'Fuji Fire.'
At the bottom of the slope, an infantry battalion undergoing training maneuvers at Camp Fuji was temporarily housed in a dilapidated collection of leaky and worn World War II-era Quonset huts. The waterborne fuel flowed downhill and seeped inside some of the huts, where the Marines' open-flame kerosene heaters ignited a series of flash fires. In moments the camp turned into a rushing hell of flame. Thirteen Marines died. Seventy-three, including a Navy corpsman, were badly injured. Of those, 54 suffered life-altering burns.
The story is a painful reminder that our youngest soldiers, sailors and Marines bear the consequences of decisions made by the high-level officers and political leaders far above them. Of the 13 who died, the youngest Marine was 17, the oldest 22.
With the large number of seriously burned Marines, many of whom would remain on the edge of death for months—five died in Japan and eight others wouldn't make it—the immediate damage from the fires was only the beginning. The remote base was limited in its ability to provide emergency care, and the typhoon blurred communications. But Camp Fuji's leaders made multiple requests that enabled the relocation of casualties from the camp to the next level of triage and stabilizing care, mostly at Yokota Air Base, 60 miles northward from Camp Fuji over difficult routes.
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‘I'm not the hero': At 99, one of America's few living D-Day vets would rather be fishing
How do you carry a shard of history everybody wants a glimpse of, a memory everyone craves? Edward Sandy and his friend Spero Mihilas shared one such memory but bore it differently. Friends since their Depression-era childhood in upstate New York, they enlisted together in the Navy in 1943, Sandy at just 17. A year later — June 6, 1944 — they found themselves on the same gunner boat off the coast of Normandy, France. Shells exploded around them. Nazi gunfire pounded from the shoreline. It was D-Day, one of the 20th century's most famous battles, history's largest amphibious invasion. With an assault wave of 160,000 Allied soldiers, the Battle of Normandy has been memorialized in countless books and movies. To the soldiers, it was a mess of sea spray, confusion and slaughter. Theirs seemed a suicidal mission — the two friends and their crew were assigned to run a converted landing craft up and down the shoreline, their job to draw enemy fire away from troops making landfall. Mihilas would later recall their commanding officers 'informed us we'd be slaughtered." But they survived unscathed. After the famous ground invasion broke through, marking the beginning of the end of the war, their role in the initial assault wave turned into a weeks-long rescue mission, one that left their decks drenched with the blood of wounded comrades they shuttled from shore. In the decades to come the two men would remain friends, each finding their way in later years to Florida. But they would treat their shared experience differently. Whereas Mihilas would aerate it with discussion and recollection, Sandy would keep it close, demurring on details, leaning into understatement. 'It didn't look too good, believe me,' he says now of the battlefield that day. That reluctance held true even when he and his friend would meet, Sandy traveling north from his home in Lantana to visit his old friend, now deceased, in Winter Park. 'That's all he'd talk about would be the war,' Sandy recalls now. 'He'd say, 'Sandy, we were lucky.' ' D-DAY: Veteran lost leg but not spirit on fateful 1944 day Lucky they certainly were. Sandy finished a three-year tour of duty, went home and started a life and family as nations rose and fell. Eighty-one years later, here he is on the cusp of a century of life, sitting in a Tex-Mex restaurant in Lantana waiting to place his order. The 99-year-old can do fewer things these days. He loves fishing but his balance isn't what it once was. That and swollen feet make getting in and out of boats difficult. Mostly he and his son watch fishing shows on TV. He doesn't talk much about the war now. Not that he ever did if he could avoid it. 'I don't know,' he says. 'It's just a feeling in me. I just don't like it.' But you can get him talking about fishing. About the snakehead fish and clown knifefish he caught last summer on Lake Ida in Delray Beach, an increasingly rare boating excursion to celebrate his 99th birthday. His son thinks he may now hold the record of oldest person to catch each one. Sandy's face brightens, too, when the conversation switches from war to what followed. When his three years in the Navy ended, he returned to his home in Amsterdam, New York, a small city 32 miles northwest of Albany. D-DAY: Palm Beach County remembers He doesn't hold back talking about how he met his wife, Barbara, now 90. It was a buddy who summoned him one day to come out and meet her. 'He says, 'Ed, you've got to come to the bowling alley,' " he recalls. " 'This girl, she's something. You gotta meet her.' ' 'Boy, he was right,' he says. 'She was nice. And we hit it off together.' WORLD WAR II: Christmas dinner 1943: WWII Navy vet cooked all night for 8,000 sailors ... 'A lot of guys weren't going to be around the next year' They married in 1959 and honeymooned in Miami. Thirteen years and three kids later, they moved to Palm Beach County. Sandy got a job with the county government's traffic engineering department, striping roadways. They bought a house with a pool on 57th Avenue in Greenacres. 'It worked out perfect,' he said. 'Everything just clicked just like that. So I figured we moved at the right time.' He loved the warm weather, raised his family, retired from the county at 62 and never looked back. A long, rich life followed, but memories of D-Day are always there. D-DAY: The men on the beach remember Yet those frightening days along the Normandy beaches are what people push for a glimpse of. Not just the names and dates — the sensations, that brush with the sweep of history. It's not that he refuses to discuss it. In February he and the family drove down to Sunrise, where he was honored at a Florida Panthers hockey game. The stadium played a prerecorded interview with him on the Jumbotron, where he gamely summarized his experience. 'We were on a gunboat. We were patrolling the shore,' he said in the video. 'I helped protect the men on the beach.' 'A bomb went over our bow and another bomb went over our stern,' he recalled. 'We were very lucky we didn't get hit.' He brought down the house with his go-to line about confidence in victory that day: 'We knew we were going to do it. We're Americans.' 'I'm not the hero,' he was quick to add. 'The heroes are the ones that are left there.' From a seat in the arena, he waved to acknowledge the crowd's applause, all smiles. Sandy's son, Mark, a Navy veteran himself, said his father's reservedness is borne from his awareness that so many others paid such a steep price. It's estimated some 4,400 Allied soldiers died on D-Day, including 2,500 Americans. 'He's lucky that he's here, is the way that I think he looks at it,' he said. 'And he doesn't really want to talk about it because there were a lot of people lost during that time. He's just fortunate that he came back. And he's really humble about that.' There are fewer and fewer World War II veterans still living. Of the 16 million Americans who served during the war, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimated in January that just 66,000 were still alive. Of the 73,000 American soldiers who fought in the Battle of Normandy, it's likely just a few hundred remain. Sandy's 100th birthday comes in July. To celebrate, his son Mark hopes to take him out boating again. If he can document his father catching another snakehead or clownknife fish, maybe he'll set a new record, on the day of his centennial no less. Now that would be something to talk about. Andrew Marra is a reporter at The Palm Beach Post. Reach him at amarra@ This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Navy vet Edward Sandy, 99, of Lantana, survived D-Day
Yahoo
8 hours ago
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The Email Chain Heard 'Round the Corps: Top Enlisted Leader Makes Surprise Visit to Corporal's Graduation
Cpl. Andrew Hundley never expected fame, but after becoming a Marine Corps sensation overnight, he wields it with humility and gratitude. In mid-April, Hundley's staff noncommissioned officer attempted to route a military certificate he completed up the chain so he could get a spot in a Marine Corps program designed to give up-and-coming leaders the skills to take on greater roles within the service. But the email got sent forcewide, setting off a chain of hundreds of responses from Marines across the fleet and lighting social media ablaze with memes and fraternal adulation only members of the amphibious service can dish out. Read Next: Army Faces Backlash over Plan to Divert Barracks Funds to Border Mission On Thursday, Hundley, 24 years old and a cyberspace warfare operator from Colorado, graduated from that program, known as the Corporals Course, and the top enlisted leader of the Marine Corps, Sgt. Maj. Carlos Ruiz, made a surprise appearance to help herald his and the other junior leaders' accomplishment. "The Marine Corps gods have called upon me," Ruiz said at the graduation to cheers, laughs and whoops across the room for Hundley. "They were setting up a schedule, and the schedule somehow ended up with -- where you at, Hundley? Raise your hand ..." "An unintentional, so-innocent email that went to everyone," he said at Camp Johnson, North Carolina, where the event was held. In an interview with on Thursday, Hundley said that he was "ecstatic" to have the top enlisted Marine attend his graduation. He was quick to say that his staff sergeant was doing her due diligence in trying to get him into the course, but a glitch with the distro list led him out of the unknown and into the annals of Marine Corps lore. "I was worried more than anything that I would get in trouble or I was worried something bad was going to happen," he said. 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"It's a big community out there; everyone I've come across has been really motivational to talk to about [it], and I think it's a great way that we develop this because it's like friends and brother and sibling, how you have that humor with each other." After Ruiz posted to social media a video of his attendance at the Corporals Course graduation, Hundley said he started getting messages of support and congratulations from across the country, from Marines and veterans, too. He had heard rumors that Ruiz would be attending, but knew he had "so much stuff on his plate" that he wasn't certain. But he ended up being "completely amazed" -- and a little nervous -- that Ruiz attended and appreciated that he was there to celebrate with them. "To me, supporting our Marines in their endeavor to become [professional military education] complete was the win," Ruiz told through a spokesperson Thursday, referring to courses Marines take throughout their careers as they advance through the ranks. 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Of the email saga, he said that he learned it's OK to not be "super serious all the time" and that part of being human is to "sit back and laugh" about the absurdities of life. "There's a lot of things I don't know, and I want to inspire growth in all of my Marines that I'm leading," he said. "I want them to know that they're amazing in their own ways, and that they have valued input and ideas. I want to inspire them to grow as their own human beings and leaders." Related: Marine Corps Releases New Details on Drone Competitions Coming to Bases Around the World
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Navy launches frantic search for female sailor who vanished near her barracks a week ago
Navy investigators and police have launched an urgent search for an enlisted female sailor who vanished near her barracks in Virginia last week. Officials issued a missing adult alert for 21-year-old Angelina Petra Resendiz on June 3 around 9.38 pm. She was last seen on May 29 around 10 a.m. at her barracks at the Miller Hall Naval Station in Norfolk, Virginia. Authorities have described her as a white/Hispanic woman who is 5ft tall, weighs 110 pounds, with brown eyes and black hair. The Navy is not sure what she was wearing, but says she did not have a vehicle. A military investigative agency has determined that her disappearance poses a risk to her health and safety. She first joined the Navy after high school in 2023. Anyone with information about her disappearance is encouraged to contact the Naval Criminal Investigative Service with information regarding her whereabouts at (877) 579-3648. Resendiz, a Texas native, is a culinary specialist assigned to the USS James E Williams, the Navy said in a statement to ABC News. Resendiz's mother, Esmeralda Castle, told the outlet her daughter 'does not miss work. Sick, snow, feeling down, she shows up.' Castle said her daughter's decision to join the military 'was something that called her.' Resendiz, she said, hoped 'that one day she might be able to cook for the president and other world leaders.' She added, "She worked really hard on her ship." Castle described her daughter as 'fun, loving, kind, compassionate and uplifting.' "People that care about Angie shared with me that the last person she was with was missing with her,' she said. 'That person showed up Monday but not Angie.' Still, there are more answers than questions: "I just want my kid,' said Castle. 'She doesn't deserve to be missing." In a statement to the outlet, the Naval Criminal Investigative Service said, 'Out of respect for the investigative process, NCIS will not comment further while the investigation remains ongoing."
