Elbert Oliver "Bud" Ryan, 84, of Conway, was presented Thursday morning with the medals he earned serving with the Sixth Marine Division in World War II's Pacific Theater of Combat.
Ryan's grandson, Tim Tyler, said he wasn't sure why Ryan never got his medals or if maybe they just got lost over the years, "but we're sure glad he's got them now."
Ryan's division was created on the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in September 1944, about six months after Ryan entered service.
"I went down to Little Rock to join the Navy," he said Thursday. "I was there to sign up and this Marine recruiter showed up and said 'I need two volunteers.'"
After training on the island of Guadalcanal, the division steamed to join in the invasion of another island, this one the heavily fortified Japanese outpost of Okinawa.
Okinawa would be the scene of the final land battle of the Pacific War, and also the bloodiest. In 82 days of combat, 12,000 Americans were killed, consisting of almost 5,000 serving in the U.S. Navy and almost 8,000 Marines and U.S. Army.
Japanese forces sank 34 Allied ships, most through kamikaze attacks, and some ships were damaged by piloted, rocket-propelled missiles known to the Japanese as Ohka, or cherry blossom, and referred to by Allied forces as Baka, roughly translating as "stupid" in the language.
Okinawa was a warren of tunnels, bunkers and machine gun-mortar nests created by Japanese forces that transformed the entire island into an enemy fortress occupied by soldiers who, for the most part, chose to die fighting or through ritual suicide than surrender.
"He lived through some Hell," Tyler said. "He talks a lot about Sugar Loaf Hill and how they took it and how the guys were getting killed trying to get up it."
It was, in part, the loss of life in Okinawa that persuaded Congress to authorize the two atomic bomb attacks on the Japanese mainland in hopes that the Japanese leadership would surrender without an even bloodier invasion of their home island.
After Allied forces took Okinawa, Ryan's division was sent to Tsingtao, China, to accept the Japanese surrender there and, as Ryan put it, "help send the Japanese back to Japan."
He was discharged at the end of 1945 as a Private First-Class.
"I wouldn't accept a higher rank because that's the guy the (Japanese) would shoot!," he explained.
Among the decorations presented to Ryan by County Judge Preston Scroggin Thursday was the Presidential Unit Citation issued to the 6th Marine Division "For extraordinary heroism in action against enemy Japanese forces during the assault and capture of Okinawa, April 1 through June 21, 1945."
Scroggin read the citation aloud, including its concluding sentence "By their valor and tenacity, the officers and men of the 6th Marine Division, Reinforced, contributed materially to the conquest of Okinawa, and the gallantry in overcoming a fanatic enemy in the face of extraordinary danger and difficulty adds a new luster to the Marine Corps History, and to the traditions of the United States Naval Service."
A Marine division earning a Presidential Unit Citation has shown as a group the same heroism that would earn an individual Marine a Navy Cross.
Ryan's other decorations are the Purple Heart, World War II Victory Medal, American Campaign Medal, Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, Navy Occupation Services Medal, China Service Medal, Honorable Service Lapel Pin, Discharge Button and Expert Rifleman badge.
His time in the service, he said "made me grow up fast. It prepared me for life, too. I got my GED aboard ship and went to Arkansas State Teacher's College, as it was known then, for eight years on the G.I. Bill."
Ryan worked for 40 years as an engineer for Ward Body Works in Conway. There, he worked with Jim Havens, who later became the Faulkner County Veteran's Service officer who helped him track down his military documentation and apply for his medals.
Havens, a Marine veteran of the Korean War, said he got to know Ryan better through helping him get his medals. Ryan loves to tell war stories, Havens said, on rare occasion spicing them up with a tall tale or two. A bit of embellishment here and there, Havens said, is a right Ryan more than earned on the island of Okinawa.
(Staff writer Joe Lamb can be reached by e-mail at joe.lamb@thecabin.net or by phone at 505-1238. Send us your news at www.thecabin.net/submit)
