George J. Byers Jr. (August 18, 1918–February 19, 1945)

G Company, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division

By Anne Makay and Katherine Thurlow

Early Life

George Joseph Byers, Jr. was born on August 17, 1918, in Mingo Junction, OH to George Byers Sr. and Anna Byers (née Sabol) who were also natives of Ohio.¹ Byers’s paternal and maternal grandparents immigrated from Slovenia, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His paternal grandfather John Byers, immigrated to the US in 1885 while his paternal grandmother Mary Byers immigrated in 1888.² His paternal grandparents actively participated in the community affairs of the eastern Ohio town of Mingo Junction that bordered West Virginia; John Byers helped organize the American Slovak Citizens Club in 1925 that assisted Slovakian immigrants and Mary Byers helped spur the establishment of the Mingo Library during the 1930s.³ Byers’s maternal grandfather John Sabol immigrated to the US in 1883 while his maternal grandmother Annie immigrated in 1886. In the early twentieth century, the Byers and Sabol families lived close to each other in Steubenville, OH, just north of Mingo Junction, as George Jr’s parents grew up together.⁴

George Jr’s parents married in the mid-1910s.⁵ In 1920, George Sr. and Anna rented a house in Mingo Junction with George Jr. and his older brother Edward who was born on March 3, 1917. George Sr. worked as a store proprietor, meaning that he likely owned a store in Mingo Junction.⁶ The Byers family grew with the birth of a daughter named Helen on August 4, 1921, and a son named James on October 8, 1927. By 1930, the family owned a home in Mingo Junction worth $5,500 as well as a radio set. Byers’s father worked as a proprietor of a billiards room, which by the 1920s gained a reputation as a place for men to escape the societal structures of home and family in socializing, gambling, and drinking.⁷

Byers’ 1940 Draft Registration Card

In 1940, the family still lived in the same house including George Jr., now twenty-one, Edward, and Helen had all completed high school and his younger brother James was in seventh grade. Byers’s father worked as a bartender at a private club. His sister Helen worked as a bookkeeper. George Jr., as seen here on his draft card, and Edward both worked at the Weirton Steel Company. George Jr. worked as a laborer while Edward worked as a greaser. Greasers had the dangerous and messy responsibility of keeping the axles of the coal cars greased so they could run smoothly.⁸ As a coal-rich town also known for its steel and iron industries, these industries employed large sections of Mingo Junction’s population.⁹

Military Service

On October 16, 1940, over sixteen million American men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-five registered for the nation’s first peacetime draft including George Jr. and Edward.¹⁰ On February 7, 1942, George Jr. married Jeanne Shay, a native of West Virginia who lived in Steubenville working as a nurse.¹¹ Nearly a year later on January 15, 1943, Byers enlisted in the Marine Corps out of Pittsburgh, PA. He trained in the 7th Recruit Battalion aboard the Marine Corps Recruit Depot on Parris Island, SC.¹² By April 1943, George completed his recruit training and was sent to Camp LeJeune, NC. He became a Private in Company G, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marine Regiment, of the newly organized, 4th Marine Division.¹³ Due to the demands of the war effort, the Marine Corps grew at a rapid pace. On February 15, 1943, the 23rd Marines detached from the 3rd Marine Division to form the nucleus of the 4th Marine Division. Later that month, the newly formed 24th Marines joined the division. To organize the third infantry regiment necessary to complete the division, the 23rd Marines split in two. The separated portion formed the veteran cadre of the 25th Marines.¹⁴

July 1943 proved to be a busy time for the 23rd Marines and an exciting one for George Jr. On July 1, the Marine Corps promoted George Jr. to Private First Class. Shortly thereafter, the 23rd Marines departed Camp LeJeune for Camp Pendleton, CA.¹⁵ Because of the time it took to form new units, especially ones the size of a division, the 4th Marine Division began as East and West Coast echelons. The 23rd Marines’ movement to Camp Pendleton began the 4th Marine Division’s consolidation on the West Coast and the final phase of its formation. By the end of September 1943, all of the 4th Marine Division’s organic units, totaling 17,831 personnel, arrived in California under the command of Major General Harry Schmidt.¹⁶

For the remainder of 1943, George and the Marines of the 4th Marine Division trained in the varied terrain of Camp Pendleton and prepared for their departure for the Pacific Theater. In the early days of January 1944, the 4th Marine Division departed Southern California for the Hawaiian Islands. Their convoy arrived at the island chain on January 21, received orders from the V Amphibious Corps, and departed over 2,000 miles southwest of Hawaii for their target, Kwajalein, on January 22. The battle for the island was brief but intense. US forces landed on January 31 and secured the island by February 3, 1944.¹⁷ George was wounded during the battle and received a Purple Heart.¹⁸ After the battle, the 4th Marine Division returned to Hawaii to recover from the battle.¹⁹

While the 4th Marine Division trained for their next mission on Maui, HI, George received a promotion to corporal on April 1, 1944.²⁰ The 4th Marine Division, along with the 2nd Marine Division, departed for the Mariana Islands on May 25. While underway, the Marines found out the name of their next target in their island-hopping campaign across the Pacific. The assault on the Mariana Island chain began with Saipan.²¹ George and the rest of his division landed on Saipan on June 15. The nearly 30,000 Japanese troops on Saipan put up a dogged defense against the assaulting 2nd and 4th Marine Divisions. It took them, along with the Army’s 27th Infantry Division, twenty-four days to secure the island on July 9. US Forces incurred 16,500 casualties, including 3,500 killed in action.²²

Unlike after the Battle of Kwajalein, the 4th Marine Division did not have months to recover and refit after Saipan. Instead, a week later they assaulted the nearby island of Tinian on July 24, 1944. After eight days of hard fighting, the Marines secured Tinian at a cost of 2,345 casualties, with 384 killed in action. With Saipan, Tinian, and the rest of the Marianas in US possession, American B-29 bombers could use the islands to launch raids on mainland Japan. In fact, the B-29s that dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki the following year took off from Tinian.²³

Corporal Byers in a Marine Corps Muster Roll, July 1944

Most likely, George did not participate in the Battle of Tinian, at least not in a combat role. In early July, he fell ill and went to Naval Hospital Number 10, as seen here, in Saipan.²⁴ He remained ill long enough that he temporarily detached from the 23rd Marines and became part of the Casualty Battalion of the Transient Center in the Marians.²⁵ George most likely suffered from one of the many tropical diseases that afflicted troops fighting in the Pacific Theater, such as malaria. More troops became casualties due to malaria than by enemy actions. Individuals could suffer repeated bouts of the disease; marked by fever, chills, muscle aches, and weight loss. Troops with malaria could also simultaneously suffer from other tropical diseases, such as dysentery and beriberi.²⁶ Many of these factors may have contributed to George’s temporary reassignment to the Casualty Battalion. While George recuperated with the Casualty Battalion, the 4th Marine Division returned to Maui after the conclusion of the operation on Tinian.²⁷ Sometime around November or December 1944, George returned to Company G, 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines.²⁸

When George rejoined his company, it and all the other units in the 4th Marine Division were preparing for the assault on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. At the time, however, the Marines only knew it as “Island X.”²⁹ George spent January 1945, the month prior to the assault on Iwo Jima, conducting amphibious landing exercises around Maui. One key difference in the preparation for Iwo Jima compared to previous islands involved assaulting fortified positions. Prior to this, the 4th Marine Division assaulted jungle islands, where natural terrain served as the primary form of defensive cover for the enemy. Iwo Jima, as a barren, volcanic island fortified by concrete pillboxes and bunkers, presented new challenges. George and the 23rd Marines departed the Hawaiian Islands on January 31. In early February, the 4th Marine Division returned to the Marianas for a final phase of training, including a simulation landing on Tinian on February 13. From there, it sailed to what Imperial Japan considered a home island, Iwo Jima.³⁰

On the morning of February 19, 1945, the Marines of the 4th and 5th Divisions sat off the coast of Iwo Jima. Aircraft and naval gunfire bombarded the island in preparation for the amphibious landing. The V Amphibious Corps designated the southeast-facing beaches of the porkchop-shaped island as the landing zones. The beaches assigned to the 4th Marine Division had the codenames Blue and Yellow. The 4th Marine Division charged George’s 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines with assaulting Yellow Beach 2.³¹ As George climbed over the gunwales of his ship and down the cargo nets to his landing craft, he likely saw Mount Suribachi looming in the distance.

The landing craft set off for Iwo Jima at 0830. As the covering barrage of US naval gunfire lifted, the Japanese defenders began their counter-landing efforts. To complicate matters, the island’s volcanic sand bogged down the landing craft, which pinned successive waves of Marines on the beaches.³² The 2nd Battalion, 23rd Marines was one of the first units to land on Iwo Jima. Corporal George J. Byers Jr. was killed during the initial assault on Iwo Jima’s Yellow Beach 2.³³

Legacy

The capture of Iwo Jima came with a hefty human price. After the first two days alone, the 4th Marine Division lost over 2,000 Marines. Though the advance was slow and dangerous, the 4th and 5th Marine Divisions split the island. The assault of Iwo Jima was immortalized on the fourth day of the battle as members of the 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division raised the US flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi at 1037 on February 23, 1945. Despite this momentous and moral-boosting occasion, the battle for the island was not over. On the morning of March 16, the commanding general of V Amphibious Corps announced that Iwo Jima was secure, however, mop-up and embarkation activities occurred for the next ten days. The 23rd Marines were relieved on March 18. The 4th Marine Division suffered 9,090 casualties, including over 1,700 killed in action.³⁴ In total, the Marine Corps incurred nearly 27,000 casualties on Iwo Jima. Of them, almost 7,000 were killed in action. It remains the bloodiest battle in Marine Corps history. Iwo Jima also carries the distinction of the most Medals of Honor awarded for a single battle. Thus the quote describing the Iwo Jima by Pacific Fleet Commander in Chief Admiral Chester W. Nimitz puts the battle in perspective: “Among the Americans who served on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.”³⁵

George died in the early hours of the battle, but his bravery and uncommon valor in service was a part of the success of taking Iwo Jima and, ultimately, winning World War II. George was initially buried on Iwo Jima. On May 3, 1948, he was reinterred at St. Augustine National Cemetery in Florida. This occurred as part of the Return of the World War II Dead Program. The program commenced in 1945 with the goal of returning those who died overseas by locating plane crash sites, searching for isolated grave sites on battlefields, and disinterring numerous short-term military cemeteries around the world. George J. Byers Jr. rests among his fellow Veterans in Section D, Site 119.³⁶

During the war, Byers’s mother Anna passed away on July 2, 1942, in Mingo Junction at the age of forty-eight. Four years later on September 23, 1946, Byers’s father George Sr. also passed away in Mingo Junction at the age of fifty-four.³⁷ Byers’s older brother Edward eventually settled in the Cleveland, OH area. On November 30, 1953, Edward married Carletta Winkler in Cuyahoga County, OH. At the time, he worked as a tool designer while his bride worked as a cashier. He eventually moved to Wilmington, NC where he lived until he died on November 27, 1996, at the age of seventy-nine.³⁸ Byers’s younger sister Helen married her husband Edward Weiss, a native of Carnegie, PA, on July 30, 1942, in Jefferson County, OH. In 1942, Helen worked as a stenographer while her groom worked as a telephone man. Like her brother Edward, she also moved to Wilmington where she lived until her death on September 3, 2009, at the age of eighty-eight.³⁹

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