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Casualty Info
Home Town Wilkes-Barre, PA
Last Address 10 Park St Wilkes-Barre, PA
Casualty Date May 13, 1945
Cause KIA-Killed in Action
Reason Other Explosive Device
Location Pacific Ocean
Conflict World War II
Location of Interment Saint Mary's Cemetery - Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Official Badges
Unofficial Badges
Additional Information
Last Known Activity:
On 13 May, 1945, several enemy dive-bombers attacked the picket station off Okinawa and one completed a successful kamikaze attack on USS Bache (DD-470). The wing of the plane struck near number two stack, catapulting the plane down on the main deck amidships, with its bomb exploding about seven feet above the main deck. Forty-one of the crew were killed (16 missing in action) and 32 were injured. All steam and electrical power were lost. Fires were brought under control within 20 minutes and she was towed to Kerama Retto, Okinawa, for temporary repairs.
SK1 Alestek was killed in action. He was originally buried overseas. His remains were returned to the US in February 1949 for burial by his family.
Comments/Citation:
Service number: 6006240
The information contained in this profile was compiled from various internet sources.
World War II/Asiatic-Pacific Theater/Iwo Jima Operation
From Month/Year
February / 1945
To Month/Year
March / 1945
Description The Battle of Iwo Jima (19 February – 26 March 1945), or Operation Detachment, was a major battle in which the United States Armed Forces fought for and captured the island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese Empire. The American invasion had the goal of capturing the entire island, including its three airfields (including South Field and Central Field), to provide a staging area for attacks on the Japanese main islands. This five-week battle comprised some of the fiercest and bloodiest fighting of the War in the Pacific of World War II.
After the heavy losses incurred in the battle, the strategic value of the island became controversial. It was useless to the U.S. Army as a staging base and useless to the U.S. Navy as a fleet base. However, Navy SEABEES rebuilt the landing strips, which were used as emergency landing strips for USAAF B-29s.
The Imperial Japanese Army positions on the island were heavily fortified, with a dense network of bunkers, hidden artillery positions, and 18 km (11 mi) of underground tunnels. The Americans on the ground were supported by extensive naval artillery and complete air supremacy over Iwo Jima from the beginning of the battle by U.S. Navy and Marine Corps aviators.
Iwo Jima was the only battle by the U.S. Marine Corps in which the Japanese combat deaths were thrice those of the Americans throughout the battle. Of the 22,000 Japanese soldiers on Iwo Jima at the beginning of the battle, only 216 were taken prisoner, some of whom were captured because they had been knocked unconscious or otherwise disabled. The majority of the remainder were killed in action, although it has been estimated that as many as 3,000 continued to resist within the various cave systems for many days afterwards, eventually succumbing to their injuries or surrendering weeks later.
Despite the bloody fighting and severe casualties on both sides, the Japanese defeat was assured from the start. Overwhelming American superiority in arms and numbers as well as complete control of air power — coupled with the impossibility of Japanese retreat or reinforcement — permitted no plausible circumstance in which the Americans could have lost the battle.
The battle was immortalized by Joe Rosenthal's photograph of the raising of the U.S. flag on top of the 166 m (545 ft) Mount Suribachi by five U.S. Marines and one U.S. Navy battlefield Hospital Corpsman. The photograph records the second flag-raising on the mountain, both of which took place on the fifth day of the 35-day battle. Rosenthal's photograph promptly became an indelible icon — of that battle, of that war in the Pacific, and of the Marine Corps itself — and has been widely reproduced.
