Two Silver Stars. One Bronze Star. Four Purple Hearts. These are just some of the medals that were awarded to Mike Singer, member of the courageous 1st Division Marines. Then there were the Presidential Unit Citations awarded for the battles on Guadalcanal, Peleliu, and Okinawa. All of this came for Mike at the tender age of fourteen, when the “tough kid,” as he described himself, enlisted. His family didn’t stop him, the Marines didn’t ask him, and Mike didn’t volunteer his age. They trained him well. And they were tough, too.

Guadalcanal was the first engagement for the Marines in the Pacific, and the island was important for the air strip that was being built as well as its potential as a staging area to reach the Japanese strongpoint at Rabaul on New Britain, further up the Solomon Islands chain. Due to issues in New Zealand, the Marines were shipped out missing supplies like tents and mosquito repellant. When they landed at Guadalcanal, Mike was in the first wave and the jungle fighting was brutal. The Marines worked their way through, and endured the “banzai charges” of the Japanese troops. The Japanese Navy kept running men and supplies through “the Slot”, the water route down the islands, to reinforce and supply their troops even as the Coastwatchers helped warn the Americans from their lookout points high in the hills. The Japanese had been there first, however, and found caves on the island where they would hide out. It was from one of these enemy vantage points that Mike ended up wounded in the shoulder from enemy fire. The bullet went clean through, though, and he was patched up and sent back out to fight.

After battles on New Guinea and New Britain, the 1st was sent on a two thousand mile journey east to the Pacific islands of Palau with the job to take the island of Peleliu. The Navy bombarded the island from twenty-one ships offshore, with battleships, cruisers, and carriers dropping ordnance on the six square mile island. But they used less ammunition in three days at Peleliu than they had in three hours at Tarawa - it barely made a dent. The Japanese had built reinforced concrete walls inside caves and had a perfect view of the Americans as the landing craft dropped their doors and the Marines landed on the beaches. They also exercised great restraint during the shelling by the U.S. Navy. They did not fire and therefore did not give away their positions. The Japanese “were dug in,” Mike recalled, and they were shooting “right down on top of us.” But the 1st was trained so well that each man knew his job. They all “said a prayer,” Mike said, and moved in.

At night on the island it “looked like everything was moving,” Mike remembered, and those patrols were difficult. Communications were hard, too, in all the confusion and in all the action, but “the guys all knew what they were supposed to do.” Accurate information about the island was sorely lacking, however, and what was thought to be a low lying, flat, jungle terrain was anything but. As Mike and his men moved up the island towards Bloody Nose Ridge - a foreboding geography of coral and limestone ridges, canyons, caves, and cliffs - they fought the Japanese where they could and tried to ferret them out by throwing grenades. During one of these confrontations, Mike was hit. “I didn’t see that last one,” he said. His two best friends were also shot, and neither of them would ever get back up. Mike lay wounded in a hot field with temperatures reaching 120 degrees. He finished his canteens of water, as his tongue grew large and the sun blistered his skin. The fibula and tibia bones in Mike’s legs were broken, and his hands were broken as well, yet he managed to keep shooting. The stevedores and cooks who had volunteered to collect the wounded finally picked him up almost fifteen hours after he had been hit. He was in bad shape.

The Marines of the 1st Division took the brunt of the casualties at Peleliu, and history has questioned the command decisions as well as the strategic necessity of the taking of the island as the Philippines operations moved front and center. Casualties were alarmingly high at over 9,600, including 1,200 dead. Mike Singer was lucky to be alive.

After being sent back to the states on a hospital ship, Mike was recuperating in New York when he was informed by a Marine officer with an axe to grind that he wasn’t going home. Not yet. He was ultimately sent to Okinawa, but was fortunate that one of the first things he heard after he rejoined the 1st was the good news that “the war is over.”

When he finally returned home, Mike married wife Jean and they raised their two daughters. Many grandchildren have now been added to the family. After the war, it took Mike some time to relate easily to people again, but making small talk with folks while working at a gas station helped him. He ultimately bought two stations, and was a pioneer in the innovation and sale of food products to complement his gas pumping business.

Honor Flight Chicago was proud to have Mike and other deserving World War II Veterans on the September 30th trip to Washington DC to see the Memorial built in tribute to them. Mike was enthusiastic about the big day after he returned from the flight. “It was like it was out of the movies,” he said. “I was on Cloud 9.” Mike and another Peleliu vet have been able to connect due to their Honor Flight and they are both pleased. The whole day “was beautiful.”

Jody Kopsky

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