Edwin Sagurton, a 20-year-old Army private hospitalized in the Philippines while his outfit was engaged in fierce combat on the Japanese island of Okinawa, knew something had gone terribly wrong when six of the seven letters he had written to his buddies were returned unopened.
“They came back marked ‘KIA,’” Sagurton said. “All six were killed in action.”
The seventh letter reached a buddy who had survived, but had lost three of his limbs.
All these years later, Sagurton, now 91 and an Indian River Shores resident since 1987, hasn’t forgotten those men – or the other 30-plus members of his platoon, which was wiped out in some of the bloodiest, most ruthless warfare in World War II’s Pacific Theater.
His platoon’s battlefield was at Kakazu Ridge, on the same blood-soaked island as Hacksaw Ridge, the focus of a recently released war film about Army medic Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
“From everything I’ve heard and read and learned over the years, the fighting at Kakazu was as brutal as anywhere on the island,” Sagurton said. “We tried to take it a dozen times and were driven back a dozen times. But that was typical of the fighting on Okinawa.”
Historical accounts, in fact, say some of the stiffest Japanese resistance encountered by U.S. forces during the 82-day Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945 came at Kakazu Ridge, where, according to one Navy intelligence officer, “GIs and Marines desperately tried to claw their way up heavily defended rocky escarpments” while exposed to constant mortar, machine gun and rifle fire, as well as artillery shelling.
That officer said the sustained intensity and savagery of the combat at Kakazu Ridge surpassed that of Peleliu and even Iwo Jima.
It was no surprise, then, that Sagurton felt compelled to see “Hacksaw Ridge” three weeks ago, just days after its first Vero Beach screening. One particular scene has stayed with him.
About an hour into the movie, when Doss first arrives on Okinawa, his outfit must step off the road to allow oncoming trucks carrying dead U.S. soldiers to pass. Someone identifies the lifeless passengers as the 96th Infantry Division.
“Those are the guys we’re replacing,” someone in Doss’ unit said, quickly and coldly adding, “what’s left of them.”
Sagurton was a member of the Army’s 96th Infantry, 383rd Regiment, Company C, 2nd Platoon. Had it not been for a timely bout with schistosomiasis – an infection of the urinary tract that occurs when human skin comes in contact with fresh water contaminated by parasitic snail eggs – he might have been one of those bodies.
Or he might’ve been killed at Kakazu.
“I was extremely lucky,” Sagurton said. “There were lots of diseases in the Pacific and I caught a bug, so I was safe in the hospital when all that was going on. I never made it to Okinawa.”
The Bronx, N.Y., native did see plenty of combat, however, serving as an infantryman and carrying a Browning Automatic Rifle into battle in the Philippines in the fall of 1944 and early 1945.
As fate would have it, Sagurton was lucky there, too: One day, he left his foxhole for five minutes, only to return to find the foxhole had been hit by a bomb while he was gone.
On another occasion during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the largest naval battle of World War II, he was hunkered down in a foxhole when a typhoon delayed a Japanese attack long enough for U.S. reinforcements to arrive.
“I was blessed,” Sagurton said. “I made it home.”
Then he made sure those blessings weren’t wasted, returning to the U.S. in August 1945 and using his GI Bill benefits to earn a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan College and a law degree from Fordham University before embarking on a successful career as a tax attorney and corporate executive.
Starting at the Internal Revenue Service, Sagurton went on to work for the Arthur Andersen accounting and tax consulting firm, Texaco Inc., and the Monsanto agricultural company, where he was in charge of international tax planning.
He finished his career at Merck & Co., rising from tax director to vice president for finance, retiring in 1987. It was while working for the pharmaceutical company that he was introduced to Vero Beach.
“Back when John’s Island was just getting going, the pharmaceutical industry would hold meetings down here,” Sagurton said. “To be honest, I was partial towards retiring in California, but my wife, Cate, said it was too far away from the kids and grandkids, so we settled on Florida.”
Sagurton has three daughters who live in New York, Illinois and Ohio, and a son, Edwin Jr., who works for the State Department at the U.S. Embassy in Seoul, South Korea.
He lived at John’s Island, where he enjoyed playing golf and tennis, until his wife of 64 years died in November 2015. He then moved to The Estuary.
“It’s very nice here,” Sagurton said.
It’s a long way from The Bronx in 1943, where, 20 months after Japan’s sneak attack at Pearl Harbor and two months after graduating from high school, Sagurton enlisted in the Army, which sent him to Fort Benning, Ga., for training and then, in June of 1944, to combat in the Pacific Theater.
Thirteen months later, having served his country and survived, he was on a ship back to the U.S. when he learned of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“They told us we had dropped some special bombs, but we were just kids,” Sagurton said. “We didn’t know what kind of bombs they were talking about. But I know this: What happened in Okinawa – the brutality of the battles and the way the Japanese refused to quit – had a lot to do with the decision to drop those bombs.”
By the time his ship pulled into Seattle, the Japanese had surrendered. The war was over. The so-called “Greatest Generation,” which had grown up during the Great Depression, returned home and built the greatest economy the world had seen.
Sagurton was a proud member of that inspirational generation, though he would not say whether he was driven by the loss of his buddies and made a conscious effort to honor them by becoming a success when he returned home.
“All I can say is,” he said, “I loved some of those guys.”
And Sagurton’s memories of them came racing back as he watched “Hacksaw Ridge,” which graphically portrayed the carnage and barbarity of war.
“It was the beautiful story about a gentle and courageous man who deserved the Medal of Honor,” he said, “but you’re also shown the hell that was Okinawa.”