Gerald Kamber

Gerald Kamber’s father was a WWI veteran who had served in France. When Gerald, who was born in 1924 and considered himself a patriot, heard about the Pearl Harbor attack, he decided to join the Marine Corps. After recovering from pneumonia, he passed his physical test and took a bus to Philadelphia, where he got a train ticket to South Carolina and a box lunch from a Marine recruiting officer.

After arriving at the Marine Corps Recruit Camp at Parris Island, South Carolina, Kamber and the other recruits on his train were led to a building where they took showers and had their heads shaved before beginning their eleven week “Boot Camp” training schedule. In retrospect, he thought the training was “unnecessarily harsh.”

Kamber, who referred to himself as a mentally and physically strong individual, survived, but he recalled that some “boots” died during training! After nine weeks, they went to the rifle range for marksmanship training, which Kamber considered a difficult skill. When he returned to the camp years later, he found that the ‘hoodlum’ aspect of the Marines’ training was gone.

After eleven weeks, Kamber and his classmates traveled west by train and were given one meal per day on the trip, which took them two weeks. Along the way, they got off the train periodically to do “rifle calisthenics.” On reaching Camp Pendleton, California, they began amphibious training, simulating landings from ship to land. Kamber was assigned to the 5th Marine Division’s 26th regiment. The division was largely composed of paratroopers and Raiders, along with some regular Marines, most of whom had just completed basic training and had no prior combat experience. In August of 1944, the 26th was shipped to Hawaii, where it remained until September, when the whole division was finally assembled. The enlisted Marines thought the ensuing battle for the island of Iwo Jima would last but a few days, and that Kamber’s ship might not even get to the shore. The battle lasted for 6 weeks, however.

On February 19, when landings began on Iwo Jima, Kamikaze fighter planes started crashing into ships on suicide missions. Kamber’s vessel was in the reserve, and he watched the first ships go in at 8:30 AM, while his vessel stayed about a half mile offshore. He witnessed bursts of smoke and fire from the ships and planes, and the ship next to his was then hit by a Kamikaze.

Within a few hours, 1,500 men had landed. When the reserve units went in, Kamber recalled it as ‘pure hell’. He saw arms and legs floating in the surf. The beach that they landed on had a small slope that turned into a steeper one, and the Japanese were able to sweep the beach with machine gun fire. The tactic employed was to stay below the level of the machine guns to get on the beach.
When Kamber stormed the beach, he was carrying an M-1 carbine. He considered himself lucky, because his platoon was not under constant fire. Kamber watched as the first flag went up on Mount Suribachi, and he and his comrades thought the battle was over. It was not. Iwo Jima was a small island, yet had eleven miles of caves and bunkers connected by tunnels and stairways. Seventy days of bombing had produced “no appreciable damage” on the defenses.

The Japanese were well-fortified and very elusive in their tunnel maze, as they had occupied the island for over fifty years. Kamber entered some of the caves and remarked that it was a very scary experience. When asked about his officers, he said that they would not ask you to do anything that they would not do. After thirty-six days of fighting, with the island secure, the Marines held a memorial service for their dead at the end of March 1945.

Iwo Jima proved to be the bloodiest battle in WWII for the Marines. They lost 6,821 men killed in action, and thousands more wounded. Other battles during WWII had more men killed, but none lost as many Marines. At the cemetery on the island there were three different chapels, Catholic, Jewish, and Protestant.

When the atomic bombs were dropped, the Marines in Kamber’s unit on Iwo Jima had no idea what those weapons were and the destruction they wreaked, nor where Hiroshima was, or the implications of the bombing. When the second one hit Nagasaki, they still had no idea.

Kamber remarked that Hirohito, the Emperor of Japan, should have been tried as a war criminal, as the bombings were the Emperor’s fault for not surrendering sooner. Even when the first bomb was dropped, Hirohito still would not surrender, so the U.S had to drop another.

After the war, Kamber learned some Japanese when he landed in Japan in one of the first units deployed on occupation duty. The Americans explained to the Japanese civilians that the war was over, and that they were now friends. When the Marines were told that it was time to go home, they boarded a ship with three times as many men as it was designed to carry. They eventually docked in San Diego, and were greeted by people in the area who had relatives on the ship. Women were there with babies who their husbands had not met yet.

Kamber concluded his story by saying that he would not be the person he was without his World War II experiences. He eventually went to Rutgers University, where he studied languages. Kamber received an MA degree at Middlebury College in 1952; and, he earned his Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Comparative Literature at Johns Hopkins University in 1962. He began a career as a college professor. Kamber taught at several schools and was also a musician, founding the Monmouth Saxophone Quartet and the Eatontown Municipal Band. He also contributed articles to the periodical Jersey Jazz.

Kamber would see more shooting as a professor. He was teaching at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970 when the state National Guard opened fire on anti-Vietnam war demonstrators. Dr. Kamber dispersed students after the Guard opened fire, no doubt saving lives. 

Gerald Kamber died at the age of 89 on October 30, 2014.

Additional Resources:

• Kent State Shooting Victim Alan Canfora’s Legacy Of Post-May 4 Activism
• The Kent State Coverup
• Clipping from Asbury Park Press