When 3 Japanese Charged This American With Bayonets — He Burned Them All in 7 Seconds

At fifteen minutes past eight on the morning of February twenty-third, 1945, intense machine gunfire raked the dark volcanic sand of Iwo Jima.

Corporal Hershel Williams pressed flat against the ground, carrying seventy pounds of pressurized fuel on his back while rounds split the air just a foot above his steel helmet.

He was twenty-one years old, stood five feet six inches tall, and had trained on Guadalcanal with a weapon that most Marines flatly refused to carry into battle.

Ahead of him, twenty-one thousand Japanese soldiers were deeply entrenched within an eleven-mile network of concrete tunnels carved directly beneath the volcanic island.

Four days earlier, thirty thousand United States Marines had successfully stormed the heavily defended beaches, but by nightfall, twenty-four hundred men were already dead or wounded.

The treacherous black volcanic sand swallowed heavy boots and tank treads alike, leaving advancing soldiers to sink knee-deep as they tried to move forward.

Sherman tanks ground to a complete halt on steep terraces that proved far too steep to climb, meaning every single yard gained across the island was measured in blood.

Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi had spent twelve months transforming eight square miles of harsh volcanic rock into an impenetrable underground fortress.

His military engineers poured massive concrete pillboxes with walls four feet thick, connected them through subterranean tunnels, and positioned machine guns in interlocking fields of fire.

Every single meter of open ground fell squarely inside overlapping kill zones, while skilled mortar spotters on the summit of Mount Suribachi called in deadly fire on targets.

Standard American tactics relied heavily on deploying Sherman tanks against fortified positions, but on the brutal terrain of Iwo Jima, this conventional approach completely failed.

The shifting black sand bogged down thirty-three-ton Shermans while hidden land mines shattered their treads, rendering the heavy armored vehicles completely useless in the firefight.

When a tank finally managed to reach a pillbox, its seventy-five-millimeter gun cracked the thick exterior concrete but utterly failed to collapse the reinforced structure.

The Japanese gunners inside survived the blast, waited patiently for the armored vehicle to roll past, and then immediately reopened devastating fire on the exposed infantry.

Eight specialized flamethrower tanks, which were modified Shermans that the frontline Marines affectionately called Zippos, had successfully landed during the opening phase of the assault.

However, the exact same treacherous terrain that stopped regular armor also brought the Zippo tanks to a complete standstill, preventing them from closing the dangerous distance.

That left only one viable weapon to clear the formidable bunkers: a brave infantryman carrying a portable M2-2 flamethrower capable of delivering seven seconds of continuous flame.

With an effective range between twenty and forty meters, the operator had to cross open ground under direct fire, reach the pillbox aperture, and squeeze the trigger.

Japanese defenders systematically targeted flamethrower operators on sight, knowing that a single well-placed round through the pressurized nitrogen tank would cause a catastrophic explosion.

On the unforgiving killing fields of Iwo Jima, brave flamethrower men rightly measured their personal life expectancy in short minutes rather than hours or full days.

By that fateful morning, Williams’s company had ground to an absolute halt against a devastating network of mutually supporting pillboxes pouring machine gun fire from everywhere.

With infantry pinned down and tanks completely stuck, five out of six members of Williams’s specialized demolition team had already been killed or seriously wounded in action.

His company commander urgently needed someone to volunteer to go forward with a flamethrower and systematically burn out those deadly enemy positions one by one.

Without hesitation, young Corporal Hershel Williams stepped forward and volunteered to undertake the virtually suicidal mission to break the terrible stalemate holding back his unit.

Two years earlier, a skeptical Marine recruiter in West Virginia had looked at Williams, rejected his application because he was too short, and sent him away.

The Corps maintained a strict minimum height requirement at the time, forcing Williams to return home to driving delivery taxis and hauling heavy lumber in rural areas.

When the military finally lowered its height standards in 1943, Williams promptly enlisted and was shipped out to undergo rigorous training at San Diego and Guadalcanal.

Assigned directly to demolitions and flamethrowers within the twenty-first Marines of the third Marine Division, he experienced his very first combat during the summer of 1944.

Now, he stood alone as the very last operational flamethrower specialist remaining in his entire company, facing seven heavily reinforced concrete pillboxes blocking their advance.

The stark math of the mission was unforgiving: seven formidable bunkers, four brave riflemen providing cover, and one flamethrower operator holding a mere seven seconds of fuel.

Just before nine in the morning, Williams firmly strapped a fully loaded M2-2 flamethrower onto his back while four steadfast riflemen stepped forward to cover him.

Between his starting position and the first enemy pillbox lay forty meters of entirely open volcanic sand offering absolute zero cover from hostile observation.

A seasoned Japanese machine gun crew that had been methodically killing Marines since dawn zeroed in on the approach, waiting for anyone foolish enough to move.

The portable M2-2 flamethrower was far from a precision weapon, consisting of two heavy steel cylinders on the operator’s back holding a crude thickened gasoline mix.

A smaller central bottle contained compressed nitrogen pressurized at three hundred pounds per square inch to force the volatile fuel through a rubber delivery hose.

When the rear trigger was squeezed, a spring-loaded igniter cartridge at the nozzle sparked the stream, transforming it into a roaring rope of burning gel.

This burning napalm stuck tenaciously to concrete, steel, and human skin alike, burning at nearly two thousand degrees and instantly consuming all available oxygen inside spaces.

Despite its terrifying effectiveness, the weapon possessed one critical tactical flaw: the operator had to get dangerously close to the target to ensure a successful hit.

He needed to reach the narrow firing slit where the enemy machine gun protruded and push the heavy metal nozzle almost directly inside before pulling the trigger.

At that terrifying close range, every single Japanese defender positioned directly behind the narrow concrete slit could clearly see the young American’s face in the chaos.

His four-man cover team consisted of brave riflemen armed with standard M1 Garands whose job was simple, terrifying, and nearly suicidal in its execution.

They continuously fired directly into the narrow pillbox apertures to force the enemy gunners to duck, buying Williams precious seconds of movement with every burst.

Williams advanced in short, agonizing rushes, dropping flat between bursts and crawling the final stretch on his stomach with heavy fuel tanks grinding against rocks.

The barren terrain offered no trees or deep shell craters capable of sheltering a man with twin fuel tanks rising high above his protective steel helmet.

A thick field of loose black cinder stretched between the company line and the first enemy position, absorbing sound and radiating intense heat across the ground.

Because the enemy pillboxes were arranged in a staggered pattern designed to cover all possible approaches, knocking out one required navigating fields of fire from others.

Williams could not simply attack them in a straight line, meaning he had to circle wide and approach from blind flanks or vulnerable rear ventilation pipes.

Each separate approach required crossing a treacherous expanse of open ground, and every trip back to the company line for a fresh unit meant crossing it again.

The four cover riflemen spread out into a loose tactical arc ahead of him, firing into the nearest aperture in a relentless, cycled rhythm of bullets.

Brass shell casings continuously clinked against the dark volcanic sand as Williams rose swiftly from a shallow shell crater and began his desperate run forward.

The initial ten meters proved to be the absolute worst part of the sprint as his combat boots broke through the crust and sank deep.

The heavy fuel tanks shifted violently on his back, pulling his center of gravity dangerously high and rearward while machine gun rounds kicked up dust nearby.

Dropping flat instantly, he let his cover team pour another heavy volley into the slit before pushing forward once more on his elbows and knees.

At fifteen meters, he could clearly discern the dark horizontal slot in the gray concrete wall, with bright muzzle flashes flickering ominously inside the bunker.

At fourteen minutes past nine, roughly ten meters away from the deadly slit, he rose to one knee and carefully braced the heavy flame gun against his hip.

Nitrogen hissed loudly through the open valve, the igniter cartridge cracked with a sharp snap, and a roaring jet of burning napalm arced across the space.

The flaming gel struck the concrete face just below the aperture, splashed upward in a brilliant wave, and poured directly through the narrow opening inside.

The enemy machine gun went completely silent in under three seconds, signaling that the very first pillbox had been successfully neutralized by the young Marine.

It was now nineteen minutes past nine, and Williams had consumed nearly a full tank of precious fuel on that single stubborn enemy fortification alone.

Six formidable pillboxes still remained standing ahead, and his valiant cover team was already receiving incoming fire from another emplacement eighty meters to the northeast.

Crawling all the way back to the company line with an empty flamethrower strapped to his back, Williams traversed the same dangerous forty meters of open ground.

This time, the enemy defenders knew his exact location, and heavy machine gun fire from the second pillbox tracked his every single movement across the sand.

His resilient cover team immediately shifted their suppressive fire toward the new threat, keeping up a steady stream of bullets despite sustaining shrapnel wounds.

Reaching the relative safety of the company line, Williams quickly unstrapped the spent M2-2 unit and grabbed a freshly serviced replacement prepared by his squadmates.

The fuel tanks had been topped off, nitrogen fully pressurized, and a new igniter cartridge loaded in a rapid swap taking less than ninety seconds total.

Buckling the sturdy straps and adjusting his hip belt to balance the crushing weight, Williams turned right back around to face the second fortified bunker.

This particular position sat eighty meters northeast of the first, with its firing slit facing squarely south toward the exact route Williams had used earlier.

A direct frontal approach was absolute suicide, forcing him to execute a wide flanking maneuver by moving in a low crouch across a shallow field depression.

The slight dip provided roughly eighteen inches of cover, hiding his body from view while the heavy fuel tanks still rose ominously above his shoulders.

Moving rapidly while rifle fire cracked overhead from his cover team, he successfully reached the rear of the second pillbox and searched for its vital vulnerability.

Every single Japanese bunker constructed on Iwo Jima required a reliable ventilation system to prevent toxic gun smoke and carbon monoxide from suffocating the crew.

A vertical metal pipe measuring four inches in diameter protruded directly from the flat concrete roof, acting as the primary lung for the underground fortification.

At forty-one minutes past nine, Williams climbed directly onto the low concrete roof, which rose barely three feet above the surrounding volcanic sand and rubble.

Positioning himself right beside the open vent pipe, he tilted his heavy metal nozzle downward and inserted it directly into the narrow metal cylinder.

One firm squeeze of the trigger sent a torrent of burning napalm straight into the interior, turning the ventilation pipe into a reverse chimney of death.

Superheated gas and intense flames instantly flooded the subterranean space below, ensuring that no one inside survived the devastating internal inferno of the attack.

With two enemy positions now decisively neutralized and five remaining, Williams slid off the concrete roof and hurried back to collect his third flamethrower unit.

A punishing tactical pattern was firmly establishing itself: cross open ground, find the blind spot, burn the bunker, return, reload, and cross the field again.

Each complete round trip cost him approximately twenty-five minutes of intense physical exertion, combining movement, firing, equipment swapping, and navigating enemy suppressive fire.

The relentless mathematical reality meant that dealing with the remaining seven pillboxes required nearly four hours of continuous exposure to enemy combat fire.

The third pillbox was situated forty meters west of the second, skillfully dug into a low ridge with an aperture covering a wide tactical arc.

Approaching from the left flank this time, Williams utilized a shallow fold in the ground that angled gracefully toward the blind side of the position.

Suddenly, halfway across his advance, a furious burst of fire erupted from an entirely unidentified fourth pillbox further north, ripping across the sand nearby.

Dropping flat instantly, he watched as deadly rounds passed close enough to spray sharp volcanic grit across his face, arms, and helmeted head.

His outnumbered cover team simply could not suppress two separate enemy positions simultaneously, leaving Williams pinned down in the open without immediate support.

Remaining motionless in the searing volcanic sand for nearly two minutes, he waited patiently until the northern pillbox finally shifted its aim toward the riflemen.

The exact microsecond those enemy tracers swung away, Williams surged forward on his elbows, reached the bunker’s blind flank, and fired into the rear opening.

Three bunkers were now thoroughly silenced, three flamethrowers were completely spent, and his dedicated cover team was reduced down to just three effective rifles.

Four remaining Japanese positions continued pouring heavy fire across the company front, forcing Williams to carefully analyze the unfolding layout of the defenses.

Each pillbox he successfully destroyed inadvertently revealed the precise location of the next one through the distinct direction and angle of its incoming fire.

The fourth pillbox sat prominently upon a slight rise seventy meters north of the third, boasting a wide firing arc covering nearly half the open ground.

Its machine gun crew had been actively engaging advancing Marines along the entire company front for hours, creating the main bottleneck holding up the advance.

Collecting his fourth flamethrower from the rapidly working support crew, Williams prepared himself for another punishing dash across the heavily targeted volcanic field.

Because this specific position offered no helpful flanking routes or terrain depressions, Williams had to make a direct charge nearly straight toward the rise.

His three remaining cover riflemen opened fire simultaneously from scattered positions, creating a clever tactical illusion of a much larger attacking American force.

Williams advanced in short, heart-pounding bursts of three seconds upright followed by dropping flat onto the unforgiving sand while machine gun bullets hissed past.

Reaching a shallow dip in the ground barely a foot deep at around twenty meters, he pressed his face hard into the grit and paused briefly.

With the narrow aperture facing him directly and no visible vent pipe from his angle, he realized he had to shoot straight through the slit.

Rising swiftly and running five meters forward, he dropped to one knee and triggered a stream of burning napalm that splashed directly inside the opening.

Holding the trigger down longer than usual to expend nearly his entire fuel tank in two sustained streams, he watched the enemy machine gun go silent.

Thick, dark smoke immediately began pouring outward from the narrow concrete slit, confirming that the fourth stubborn enemy bunker was completely out of action.

Turning back toward the company line at six minutes past twelve, Williams suddenly found himself facing a desperate hand-to-hand surprise encounter with the enemy.

Three Japanese infantrymen unexpectedly emerged from a cleverly concealed spider hole camouflaged with sand and debris directly to his right side without any warning.

Charging at him across fifteen meters of open ground with fixed bayonets gleaming, they aimed to eliminate the lone Marine before he could react.

Although his M2-2 tank was nearly empty, Williams managed to swing the heavy flame gun around and squeeze off one final short burst of fuel.

The remaining napalm caught all three attacking soldiers at extremely close range, igniting their uniforms and instantly consuming the oxygen around them in flames.

They collapsed lifelessly within five meters of his position, allowing Williams to safely reach the company line and swap to his fifth flamethrower unit.

The fifth pillbox sat southeast of the fourth, partially buried under a large mound of heavy volcanic rubble that made its narrow aperture hard to see.

Circling around to the rear, Williams located the familiar ventilation pipe and repeated his proven technique of inserting the nozzle to purge the interior.

Five distinct enemy positions were now successfully neutralized, leaving only two final bunkers standing in the way of the company’s ultimate tactical objective.

By this time, word of the lone flamethrower operator’s incredible feat had spread rapidly throughout the battalion, inspiring surrounding Marines watching from foxholes.

It was now fifty-three minutes past eleven, marking three hours since Williams first departed the company line with his very first heavy flamethrower unit.

He possessed just one fresh flamethrower remaining, and the final two pillboxes represented the absolute core and deepest anchors of the entire defensive network.

The overarching Japanese strategy relied entirely on mutual support, where each pillbox protected its neighbors and adjusted its fire when an adjacent bunker fell.

However, knocking out five interconnected positions fundamentally shattered the geometric integrity of the entire defensive web, leaving the survivors exposed and isolated.

His company commander easily observed this dramatic shift from the rear as incoming machine gun tracers dwindled from six chaotic directions down to two.

The sixth pillbox sat thirty-five meters north of the fifth, connected by a shallow communications trench that had been partially caved in by naval bombardments.

Because moving through that ruined trench exposed infantry to point-blank fire from the sixth bunker crew, Williams chose to execute another wide northern flanking arc.

Using the smoking ruin of the fifth pillbox as visual concealment to mask his approach, he reached the northeast corner of the final objective.

Finding the rear resupply entrance firmly sealed with a heavy steel plate, he pressed his flamethrower nozzle against the tight gap where metal met concrete.

Pulling the trigger one last time, he forced burning gel through the narrow two-inch seam, spraying liquid fire directly across the interior concrete floor.

Desperate screams echoed briefly before falling completely silent, marking the successful destruction of the sixth enemy bunker using all six available flamethrowers.

With his current M2-2 unit entirely empty, Williams moved forward to utilize the heavy demolition charges kept in reserve by the company supply teams.

These specialized demolition packs consisted of cylindrical blocks of high-explosive TNT wired securely to wooden poles designed for manual insertion into bunker openings.

At twenty-two minutes past twelve, Williams unstrapped his spent flamethrower, grabbed a heavy TNT charge, and advanced steadily toward the seventh and final position.

This ultimate pillbox served as the principal anchor of the entire defensive complex, constructed deeper into a natural depression with reinforced concrete on three sides.

Its primary firing slit pointed squarely south, covering the main avenue of approach that the entire marine company desperately needed to utilize for advancement.

Approaching cautiously from the west to avoid any remaining hazards, Williams climbed expertly onto the low concrete roof and located the final ventilation shaft.

Lowering the heavy demolition charge directly into the vertical pipe, he released it and rolled off the structure just moments before the massive detonation.

The ferocious explosion blew the reinforced concrete roof completely inward, sending thick clouds of dust, smoke, and debris erupting from every single opening.

The very last operational machine gun on the company front went silent, leaving a total tally of seven pillboxes destroyed in four hours of fighting.

Williams walked calmly back to the company line under his own power, his uniform badly scorched and his hands severely blistered from extreme heat.

At thirty-one minutes past twelve, the entire front opened up as Marines who had been pinned down since dawn began pushing forward through the breach.

The narrow lane burned by Williams through the enemy defenses measured barely two hundred meters wide, but it proved entirely sufficient for the infantry.

What heavy Sherman tanks and continuous naval bombardments had utterly failed to achieve over four days, one determined Marine accomplished on his stomach.

Although his specific company successfully reached its primary objective that afternoon, the broader battle of Iwo Jima raged on fiercely for thirty-six brutal days.

Williams continued fighting on the front lines for thirty-four of those days, encountering hundreds more hidden pillboxes, subterranean tunnels, and fortified caves.

The third Marine Division pushed relentlessly northward through treacherous terrain featuring jagged ravines, active sulfur vents, and treacherous collapsed underground passages.

Japanese defenders frequently emerged from hidden rear passages behind American lines to launch surprise attacks before vanishing back into the dark earth.

Every single day brought the exact same grinding tactical cycle: advance fifty meters, dig in defensively, take heavy fire, and call up support teams.

On that exact same February twenty-third afternoon, photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the iconic image of six Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi.

While that famous photograph became a defining symbol of World War II, securing Suribachi only marked the beginning of the deadliest northern phase of fighting.

Before the grueling campaign finally concluded, more than twenty-four thousand American airmen would owe their precious lives to emergency landings on captured island airfields.

The fierce combat yielded twenty-seven distinct Medals of Honor for bravery on Iwo Jima, representing the highest concentration awarded in a single battle.

Nearly seven thousand brave Americans lost their lives during the island campaign, accompanied by another twenty thousand wounded who required medical evacuation offshore.

Fewer than two hundred and twenty Japanese defenders survived the relentless onslaught to become prisoners, while the rest perished inside their dark tunnels.

Williams persevered through the harrowing conditions until March sixth, when a Japanese mortar round detonated dangerously close to his frontline position.

Flying shrapnel tore deeply into his legs and body, prompting frontline corpsmen to evacuate him rapidly to a beachhead hospital and later an offshore ship.

His personal combat experience on Iwo Jima was officially over after spending thirty-four days in a living hell where average life expectancy was hours.

Out of more than three hundred specialized flamethrower operators deployed by the Marine Corps on the island, fewer than twenty managed to survive.

The severe shrapnel wounds earned him a well-deserved Purple Heart medal, while his company commander submitted a detailed eyewitness report of the four-hour assault.

As official paperwork recommending him for the Medal of Honor worked its way upward through military headquarters, Williams recovered in a hospital bed.

He remained entirely unaware of the prestigious nomination, focusing instead on the heavy mental toll and wondering about the brave riflemen who had covered him.

Following Japan’s formal surrender in August 1945, the planned amphibious invasion of the Japanese home islands was happily canceled thanks to the end of the war.

On October fifth, 1945, Corporal Hershel Williams stood proudly inside the historic East Room of the White House to receive our nation’s highest honor.

President Harry S. Truman placed the coveted Medal of Honor around his neck while surrounded by only four living recipients from the entire battle.

Twelve days after receiving the decoration, Williams married Ruby Meredith in West Virginia, transitioning from a Quiet Dell farm boy into a national hero.

To casual observers, he appeared to have returned home completely whole, holding a steady job and interacting normally without showing internal trauma.

In reality, he spent the next seventeen years trapped inside a severe psychological cycle of post-traumatic stress disorder, experiencing nightmares and vivid flashbacks.

Seeking escape from the haunting memories of close-range combat, he spent many evenings drinking at his local veterans post to quiet his troubled mind. l The terrifying sound of pressurized nitrogen hissing through a valve could instantly paralyze him with fear during ordinary daily civilian routines.

The profound guilt of surviving while his comrades perished weighed far heavier on his spirit than any physical injuries he had sustained in combat.

In 1962, a profound turning point arrived when he found spiritual solace at a local Methodist church, which finally helped bring his persistent nightmares to an end.

While his deep faith did not magically erase the painful wartime memories, it provided him with a stable framework to carry them forward constructively.

He subsequently dedicated thirty-five years of service as the national chaplain for the Congressional Medal of Honor Society, helping fellow veterans heal.

Retiring proudly from the Marine Reserve in 1969 as a Chief Warrant Officer 4, he completed twenty total years of honorable military service. l For thirty-three years, he worked as a dedicated veteran service representative with the Department of Veterans Affairs, counseling countless combat veterans through darkness.

He intuitively understood the invisible burdens carried by younger soldiers because he had successfully navigated those exact same psychological depths himself.

Although he eventually learned the names of the brave riflemen who died protecting his flamethrower assault, he chose to keep their identities private.

Whenever anyone asked him about his prestigious decoration, his humble response never wavered: the medal did not belong to him, but to the fallen.

He entered the Marine Corps as a young man deemed too short to serve, yet left a legendary legacy that expanded significantly across decades.

In 2010, at the age of eighty-seven, Williams established the Hershel Woody Williams Medal of Honor Foundation with a clear and noble mission.

The organization focused on building lasting public memorials specifically honoring Gold Star families who had lost loved ones in active military combat service.

The man who once carried profound survivor’s guilt dedicated his remaining decades to ensuring that fallen heroes and their families were never forgotten.

By the time of his passing, his foundation had successfully erected over one hundred Gold Star family memorial monuments across communities throughout the United States. l In January 2016, the United States Navy honored his enduring legacy by naming a massive expeditionary sea base ship the USNS Hershel Woody Williams.

Displacing ninety thousand tons, the floating forward staging platform was officially commissioned at Naval Station Norfolk to carry his proud name across oceans.

Further local honors followed in 2018 when the VA Medical Center in Huntington, West Virginia, was officially renamed in his honor.

That exact same year, an eighty-four-year-old Williams stood proudly at midfield in Minneapolis to toss the official coin before Super Bowl Fifty-Two.

Surrounded by fourteen other esteemed Medal of Honor recipients, he represented the enduring spirit of American service on national television for millions to witness.

In June 2021, Williams made a deeply emotional final visit to the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in Parris Island, South Carolina, wearing his dress blues.

He served as the honored official for a graduation parade of three hundred and fifty new recruits, including his great-grandson, Private First Class Cedar Ross.

When drill instructors discovered the family connection, they reminded the young recruit that he had remarkable shoes to fill belonging to a true legend.

Hershel Woodrow Williams peacefully passed away on June twenty-ninth, 2022, at the very medical center bearing his name, having lived to the remarkable age of ninety-eight.

As the last surviving World War II Medal of Honor recipient out of four hundred and seventy-three total heroes, his passing marked an end of an era.

His remains lay in solemn honor inside the United States Capitol Rotunda, where national leaders praised his fierce courage and lifelong dedication to others.

Buried eventually in his home state of West Virginia, his legacy endures through bronze monuments, naval warships, and the grateful memories of a nation.

The prestigious Medal of Honor he wore for sixty years remains safely preserved to remind future generations of the incredible price of freedom.

Though the physical battlefields of Iwo Jima faded into history, the indomitable spirit of Woody Williams continues to inspire all who learn his story.