\nSpecial to the Martinez News-Gazette<\/em><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Joe Matta, who as a World War II Marine was a member of the decorated \u201cStriking Sixth\u201d Division that singlehandedly captured two thirds of Okinawa after a fierce battle, has died at 94 after a short illness.<\/p>\n
Matta also lived a rich life after the war, returning to Contra Costa County to resume working at C&H Sugar and to play semi-pro football in his native town of Crockett, to buy a 144-acre cattle ranch east of Martinez, and to marry and to rear four children.<\/p>\n
He attended John Swett High School, Crockett, and was just 18 when he was drafted before graduation in 1943. That was two years after the bombing of Pearl Harbor that marked the United States entry into World War II.<\/p>\n
Since the Army had no openings, he was assigned to the Marine Corps. That surprised Matta, he said in a past interview. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what the Marine Corps was.\u201d Later, though, Matta would have encyclopedic knowledge of his Marine division, the famed \u201cStriking Sixth.\u201d<\/p>\n
During boot camp in San Diego, Matta learned about the Marines and how to fire a gun for the first time, starting with the military issue M1 rifle.<\/p>\n
He was sent on the aircraft carrier USS Wasp to Pearl Harbor, on O\u2019ahu Island, but that was just a stop before heading to Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands in the Southwestern Pacific.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the Army and the Marines were forming the new Sixth Division, made up of the Fourth, 22nd<\/sup> and 29th<\/sup> Marines and multiple other battalions, and where Matta and other servicemen trained for five months, preparing for the Battle of Okinawa.<\/p>\n The fighting was expected to be fierce. The military already had experienced massive losses on Guadalcanal before it was secured in 1943.<\/p>\n Before the Sixth Division was deployed, a shipboard Catholic priest gave Matta and the others last rites. \u201cThey knew some of us were going to die,\u201d Matta said in a past interview. What he didn\u2019t know at the time was \u201csome\u201d would end up being \u201cmost.\u201d<\/p>\n The Sixth Division made an amphibious landing April 1, 1945, Easter Sunday. Matta was trained in field artillery, which put him behind the soldiers and Marines who made up the front line against the worst of the Japanese assaults.<\/p>\n Behind them, Matta was firing 105 Howitzers that shot out a variety of projectiles, some bursting in air to rain shrapnel, others exploding on contact, and still more that waited until they plowed into the ground before they blew up. The Howitzers had a range of seven miles.<\/p>\n As part of the First Battalion of the 15th<\/sup> Marine Regiment, Matta and his companions were handling four guns they kept firing day in and day out. For that engagement, the Marines had issued no ear protection, and Matta lost some of his hearing as he stood and fired his booming gun.<\/p>\n As determined as the Allied forces were to take the island, the Japanese were just as determined to keep it. They capitalized on its rough terrain and plentiful caves and returned fire. Matta would tell stories about being surrounded by dead soldiers, of trying to rest despite growing swarms of flies. He kept other stories to himself.<\/p>\n He would describe seeing for himself the bravery of the Japanese, whom he learned were ready to die for their emperor and would sign up for suicide missions as kamikaze pilots.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of the planes the Japanese sent to sink ships were shot down before they could hit the ships, but they did sink 32 ships and damaged more than 300 in the three months we fought there,\u201d he once said. But some also chose to surrender, he noted.<\/p>\n Bit by bit, the \u201cStriking Sixth,\u201d as the division became called, routed out the Japanese from Okinawa.<\/p>\n The division reached Ishikawa in three days and took the entire Ishikawa peninsula, reaching 55 miles inland, by April 14, 1945, far shorter than expectations.<\/p>\n They defeated the Kunigama detachment led by Col. Takehiko Udo, who was charged with defending Motobu Peninsula. Driving on, the division liberated most of Northern Okinawa from Japanese hold, then went south to fight another Japanese defense called the Shuri Line.<\/p>\n Then the Sixth Division was ordered to take Sugar Loaf Hill, a complex of three hills on the western end of the Shuri Line. They came under heavy artillery fire and mortars. But in a week, Sugar Loaf Hill was captured.<\/p>\n The division took aim on Naha, home of a major airfield and harbor that would be key to the Allied victory. That nine-day battle has been called the bitterest of the Okinawa campaign.<\/p>\n Both sides suffered heavy losses \u2013 the Sixth lost 576 fighters in a single day. Night pictures of the battle show a sky crosshatched with tracers\u2019 white lines. \u201cIt was day after day after day,\u201d Matta recalled.<\/p>\n The Marines were credited with capturing or killing nearly 24,000 of the Japanese. By the time Matta reached Naha, he said, \u201cThere was nothing but dead people.\u201d<\/p>\n The Sixth Division is credited with capturing two-thirds of Okinawa for Allied forces. Five other divisions took the rest of the island. The battle on Okinawa ended officially June 21, 1945.<\/p>\n For its courage and accomplishments, the \u201cStriking Sixth\u201d received the Presidential Citation, the highest award a military unit can receive.<\/p>\n The citation, by Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal, recognizes the division for \u201cextraordinary heroism in action against the enemy Japanese forces during the assault and capture of Okinawa, April 1 to June 21, 1945.\u201d The document summarizes the Sixth\u2019s accomplishments and praises them for withstanding \u201coverwhelming artillery and mortar barrages.\u201d<\/p>\n Forrestal also lauded the division\u2019s \u201cvalor and tenacity,\u201d saying, \u201ctheir gallantry in overcoming a fanatic enemy in the face of extraordinary danger and difficulty adds new luster to Marine Corps history and to the traditions of the United States Naval Service.\u201d<\/p>\n But Matta also had memories of a tender side to the war, when he and his fellow Marines took care of civilians, including a small child.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Okinawans are small people,\u201d he said. The civilians were devastated by the war. \u201cWe would feed them, 200,000 of them. And we took care of their wounds.\u201d<\/p>\n In another remembrance, Matta recalled seeing a house and well on Motobu Peninsula. \u201cI hadn\u2019t had a bath in a month,\u201d Matta said. He and another Marine received permission to take a shower at the well while others stood guard.<\/p>\n As the men bathed, Matta spotted a little Okinawan girl, about 4 or 5, in one of the nearby caves. \u201cShe was watching us, and she had flies on her face,\u201d he said. The girl made no move, not even against the flies.<\/p>\n \u201cI said, \u2018Let\u2019s give this kid a bath.\u2019 She didn\u2019t make a move.\u201d Under the watch of an older Okinawan man, the Marines cleaned up the little girl and gave her a kimono they had. \u201cIt fit her perfectly,\u201d Matta said. Touched by the situation, Matta gave the child a hug.<\/p>\n The elderly man offered them some of his chickens in repayment for the garment. But the little girl never said a word, not even when the Marines left. \u201cIt just broke my heart,\u201d Matta said.<\/p>\n Before he left Okinawa, Matta visited the cemetery that held the bodies of his former battle mates, including Lt. Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner Jr., the 10th<\/sup> Army commander who was the highest-ranking U.S. officer killed by enemy fire during that war. \u201cThree months ago, they were alive,\u201d Matta recalled.<\/p>\n The Sixth Division began training to invade Japan itself. But on Matta\u2019s 19th<\/sup> birthday, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Days later, it also would drop a second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. The Japanese surrendered shortly afterwards, and the invasion was called off.<\/p>\n Matta was deployed to occupy Japan as part of Task Force 31, and later would go to a portion of China that had been under Japanese control.<\/p>\n From China, Matta returned to San Diego, and as soon as he was discharged with the rank of corporal, he took a bus back home to the Bay Area.<\/p>\n \u201cI left home at 18 and didn\u2019t come home until I was 21,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Once back in Crockett, Matta returned to the C&H Sugar plant, where he would work 45 years.<\/p>\n