July 13, 2025 • 39 mins
It has been considered by many to be our US Marine Corps greatest peacetime loss of life. But many have never heard of it. Chas Henry joins us to describe the Fuji Fire that took place on Oct. 19, 1979.
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
They are the men and women of our military and
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Speaker 2 (00:20):
Is on the air. Welcome to American Warrior Radio, Ladies
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your front door, making silence simple. Since two thousand and
five Silencercentral dot com. It's been called the most serious
peacetime disaster suffered by the US, but many never heard
(01:01):
of it, and probably the only ones that recall it
are the friends, family, and comrades. That the seventy three
persons were badly injured, fifty four of those suffering major
burns and thirteen of whom died. War is a dangerous business.
Training for war is a dangerous business, and sometimes nature's
fury gets a vote to On October nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
Typhoon Tip, the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded,
(01:24):
raised with one hundred and fifty mile an hour winds
and torrential rain, the twelve hundred and fifty Marines of
Camp Fuji hunkered down the Quantcet huts to ride the
storm out. Just above them on the hill sat a
fuel farm rubber bladders held in place by retaining wall.
Ranged from the typhoon. It eroded the retaining wall, causing
the bladders to break free, and then some pumps then
fell down upon the bladders, slicing that one of them
(01:46):
wide open, releasing fifty five hundred gallons of gasoline. The
rains carried the fuel right down upon the unsuspecting marines.
When a heater inside one of the Quantcet huts ignited,
the fire, Marines would find themselves literally in rivers of fire.
Has largely overlooked tragedy is a subject of a new
book by Chess Henry called Fujifire, Sifting the Ashes of
a forgotten US Marine Corps tragedy. It's the product of
(02:08):
Chas's four year two cunt and investigation. Chess is a
combat decorated Marine Corps vetter himself, and rose from private
to captain during his career with the Courts. He is
also highly recognized an award winning television and radio journalists.
He reports on security maners and issues impacting military veterans.
His assignments had taken him to more than thirty nations
on five continents. Chash, Welcome to American Warrior Radio.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The privileged to be here, Ben, thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Now, sir, going from private to captain, that's not the
usual way one does It isn't, sir.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Probably not the smartest way either. But I over the
course of the almost twenty years that I did in
the Marines, I went through eleven ranks private, private, first class, Lance, corporal, corporal, sergeant, staff, sergeant,
warrant officer, chief, worn officer two three and four, and
the captain.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I'm curious the backstory on how this book came to
be as almost as interesting as the story itself. I'm curious, Chats, what's.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Your why on this?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Why did you choose to do this.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It was never intended. It was something I fell into.
I retired from daily journalism at the end of twenty nineteen,
convinced my wife to retire from her job. The idea
was we were going to start a life of leisure travel.
Then the pandemic hit and I was stuck at home
looking for something to do, and I wasn't being very productive.
I was posting photos on Facebook, and one of them
I posted was of me at Camp Fuji in nineteen
(03:24):
seventy eight, and just in passing, I wrote, this was
taken about a year before the big fire there, which
I thought everyone knew about, certainly those of us who
had been at the camp, you know, in nineteen seventy nine.
When this happened, it was a kick in the gut,
and I was shocked by the number of people who
sent notes back, to include guys fellow Marines who had
been through the camp in the early eighties who asked
(03:45):
what fire. That was really quite a shock. Secondly, I
was embarrassed a bit when another commenter, a friend of
mine who'd known since nineteen eighty one, said, you know,
I escaped one of those burning huts. I'd known him
for all those years and hadn't realized that he had
been caught up in this disaster. So I thought, well,
maybe there's something, maybe there's a podcast in this, or
(04:07):
I'll start doing a bit of research. So I started
looking online. There were no books written about it. There
were a few sites put together by guys who had
survived it and had posted things, photos and such to
remind people of what had happened. So I started gathering
what I could, and just by good fortune, a friend
had in nineteen eighty six done a Freedom of Information
(04:28):
Act request thinking that he might write something about this.
He was never able to interest a publisher, but he
had kept this half inch three quarters inch worth of
photocopied material and he sent it to me. He said, here,
see if this is useful to you, and it was
a starting point. There was a copy of the investigation
of the incident on the Navy JAG website actually, but
(04:50):
it was highly redacted, a lot of things crossed out.
But between the one that I downloaded from the website
and this one that my friend had gotten in nineteen
eighty six, I was able to do a pay by
page reconstruction that basically gave me the entire investigation without
any reaction. And what that allowed me to do principally
was finding people's names, and not everybody was named Bob
(05:11):
Jones or Fred Smith. People had sufficiently unique names that
then I began using search engines to try to locate people,
and I spent a lot of money on postage stamps,
sending letters to address as I found online, And eventually,
probably the first year and a half was principally that
just trying to find people. Eventually I would get letters back,
(05:31):
and then sometimes people would say, oh, I'm still in
touch with my friend, and I started to gather some
people who I could ask about this.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
How many of the survivors did you actually end up interviewing, jess.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, I interviewed all told one hundred and thirty three
people with direct firsthand experience. Now, in some cases those
were people who were Air Force people who had flown
into the eye of the super typhoon that was the
principal cause of this disaster. I interviewed people who were
at the camp who were terribly burned and went through
these long medical journeys. I interview people who were at
(06:02):
the camp who were able to escape the flames, but
had different experiences having to come back into the camp.
And then I interviewed a lot of doctors, nurses, and
corman who cared for these marines who had been hurt.
So all told that was more than one hundred and
thirty people.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And we're going to talk a little bit about the
post investigation on this terrible tragedy. But also my suspicion
is or I don't know if you'd support this. But
so when I turned I went to college. When I
was seventeen, my cohort was the first age group when
President Carter reinstituted the draft. So when I was in college,
(06:39):
I turned eighteen, I went down, I registered to vote,
and I registered for the draft. Well, shortly thereafter, the
Iranians took over our embassy in Tehran. I thought, oh boy,
here we go. Do you think that really kind of
ate up the press cycle? And that's why many people
never learned about the Fuji fire.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Absolutely, And it took me a while to figure out
as I put this chronology together, how huge a part
the events in Iran played. So it was two weeks
after the fire occurred at Campfuji that those hostages were
taken in Tehran, and attention, global attention just shifted. And
you'll recall that, you know, it was a disaster that
(07:18):
lasted four hundred and forty four days that those people
were held hostage, and attention just stayed focused on that.
And so there had been some coverage in American media
about what had happened at Campfuji, and I suspect that
had that incident in Iran not happened, more stories would
have been done following, you know, what happened to these
(07:39):
guys that were hurt. But as was the case, they
just dropped off of the news cycle.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Let's let's start where they got a couple minutes for
the first break chairs. But let's start with the typhoon itself.
I mean, this thing was just a monster.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To this day it holds the record as the largest
and most intense tropical cyclone ever. Typhoon Tip was the
name of it. It set the still standing world record
for the lowest sea level air pressure ever recorded on Earth,
and in fact, for the book Fuji Fire, I was
able to find and interview people who were on board
(08:17):
that airplane, air Force stormchasers who recorded those records, setting measurements,
and whose pictures later appeared in the Guinness Book of
World Records actually for that accomplishment, And it was interesting
talking with them because it was a scientific rush for them,
you know, to set this record, and you know, be
the ones that made the measurement, and it was only
(08:39):
almost an afterthought that they thought, oh, I wonder what
this storm might do now, and now we know it
moved toward Guam and Okinawa and then over mainland Japan,
particularly the impact it had on the Marines at camp Fuji.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Now now did it was it directly bearing over Camp
Fuji or just in the vicinity?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
No, the so the eye I believe was about sixty
miles some sixty some miles from camp Fuji at the
time of the incident occurred. And this thing had moved
down to tropical storm status because after a hurricane or typhoon,
it's all the same thing, different names for the same phenomenon.
After it moves away from water onto land, it's not
(09:21):
as strong, it's not pulling up this water from the
ocean or whatever it's been over. But it was still
still very strong and it's still very large. So the
eye was about sixty miles from camp Fuji, but there
was still it put down in one day. More rain
on Campfuji and Goutimba, this small Japanese town nearby than
(09:41):
those areas would typically get in a month.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben bler Garcia. We're
talking with Chas Henry. His book is called Fuji Fire,
Shifting the Ashes of a Forgotten US Marine Corps Tragedy.
Lots of very very interesting things to come stick a rout.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio, Lasia,
(10:13):
and gentlemen, this is your host, Ben deler Garcia. We're
talking with Marine veteran Chaz Henry. Chaz began a four
year odyssey to research and helped spread the word of
really almost forgotten maybe one I think, Chaz said, he
quote some of the books, saying, maybe the one of
the worst peacetime tragedies at the Marine Corps ever experienced,
and that was just this horrendous fire at Camp Fuji
(10:37):
in nineteen seventy nine. Now, you spent a year there,
you're familiar with the camp itself. You actually had boots
on the ground.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I had been there for a couple of months in
early nineteen seventy eight. So this camp was a satellite
training area of the Marine headquarters down in Okinawa, and
they would cycle units through for a few weeks at
a time, a few months at a time, because there
was a lot of room to to practice maneuver on
the ground with artillery fire, with tanks, support with mortars,
(11:06):
more so than there was in Okinawa, and so typically
units from Okinawa would rotate up and train there. And
it was people from Okinawa who ran the camp and
allowed this training for Marines who were further south where
there were a lot more restrictions on training. There were
talents and farms that butted up against the base, so
you couldn't use the tank fire and artillery fire and
(11:28):
such the way you could at Camp Fuji. I had
actually been on board a ship with the thirty first
Marine Amphibious Unit which just stayed in the Pacific ready
to handle events there, and we had offloaded for a
month or two of training at Camp Fuji, so I
knew the camp. That was early seventy eight. The incident
happened in October nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Chas I would to describe Camp Fuji as spartan would
be a compliment. I mean, this is a family show,
so I can't go into some of the details you
shared in the book of let's just say the available
facilities there, but man oh man. And then you know
these Quanta huts. I don't know if they're left over
from World War two or what, but you have marines
stacked in there like sardines.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Right, there were eighteen to twenty in these Quanta huts
that were not huge, and so you have bunk beds
in there, you know, these iron cast iron bunk beds.
Everybody's in there with all their sea bag that they brought,
all their geary and their weapons. You have a foot walker,
and you have you know, all your earthly possessions that
you've carried with you on ship and offloaded to take,
(12:31):
you know, hold your clothing and such. During the training
fire inspectors have been through and said this really isn't safe.
You know, it's not easy for guys to move around.
But there really wasn't much that people could do. There's
no place else for people to stay at that time,
and they wanted to keep rotating units through. So that
was sort of the status quo with the the camp.
(12:53):
You mentioned the soil it is it's volcanic, so it
was some of it was hard than others that some
of it was ash, some of it were larger rocks.
But for decades there had been military training there, even
as far back as World War Two, when the Imperial
Japanese Army trained there. There were tanks and armored vehicles
moving across it and breaking the soil down. So it
(13:17):
was you know a lot of ball bearing sized pieces
of this volcanic soil. Sometimes if it got a little wet,
you could you would slip on it because these little
pieces are moving around.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And best certain times a season, I'm sure it's apt
to describe it as drizzly and cold. And the quants
of huts were heated with these kerosene heaters with an
open flame, which obviously played into this tragedy.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Right, And so these are very drafty quants of huts. Interestingly,
it would be very toasty with these what looked like
a fifty five gallon drum, one at each end of
the of the hut, and then a you know, a
tube of flu going up through the top of the
ceiling to up through out of the roof to carry
away the heat. And you would throw a match into
(14:07):
it light the kerosene and appeal. There were kerosene tanks
that would flow kerosene through pipes down into each one's
and it kept them very warm, so it could actually
be comfortable in there when it was cold outside. But
it was that that heating setup that created a danger
when suddenly the fuel was introduced, the gasoline that spilled.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Let's talk about these bladders. These are manufactured by Goodyear.
If I'm not mistaken, famous for the blimp and whatnot.
Overall safe relative, I mean, it's this has been this wasn't.
This is one of the first time they'd been used there.
But I think in your book I also read that
a marine field manual basically used the word never place
(14:56):
these bladders up the hill, you know, when you've got
people living down down the slope there.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Well, so this was not a marine training manual. It
was actually an army Army training manual.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So does that explain why they ignored it?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well, I make the distinction. You know, I checked fuel
handling regulations for the other military services at the time,
and I contrasted that with the rather slim volume that
the Marine Corps was using at the time for fuel handling. Procedures,
and the Marine Corps manual was very much focused on
bringing these things ashore in combat. How you set them
up in combat you're under choir, and not quite as
(15:34):
much to do with ways you might handle them in
different terrain or in a training situation. And so there
was no violation of the Marine Corps regulations as the
fuel bladders were set up, But the Army, going back
years before this, in their safety manuals for fuel operations,
(15:56):
had said that you don't want to put fuel up
above where people are living or where waters flowing, and
if for the logical purposes, you know, it could create
danger if it flows into those Now at the camp
there was when they moved into this camp, there was
a berm that had been built of this volcanic soil
we've been describing, and I don't know how well it
(16:17):
had been tamped down, but it had been built up
by bulldozers. And the fuel bladders will put uphill of that.
The idea of those people putting it in that well,
if it leaks, this berm will keep it uphill, we'll
be able to gather the fuel and reclaim it. The
problem came with typhoon tip and so on October nineteenth,
(16:39):
nineteen seventy nine, the typhoon dumped, you know, more rain
than they in a day than they typically got in
a month. A lot of that water accumulated uphill of
the berm and eventually created a breach. It broke away
about a fifteen to twenty foot section of the of
this berm. It also floated up the gasoline bladder because
(17:04):
it was you know, there was so much water it
floated up, and there's the rapids that sort of was
created down through this place where the water could finally
get through, flowing naturally downhill, and the bladder came in.
Hoses remained attached, but there were pumps that had been
set up on top of the berm so that the
fuel could be pumped into tanks and amtraks uphill of
(17:25):
the berm, or trucks or jeeps down below. Those hoses
remained attached. Pulled the pump into the breach, and a
piece of that pump frame was very sharp. It sliced
a five foot rip in the gasoline bladder and five
five hundred gallons of gasoline flowed downhill on top of
the water and the huts.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Where people don't know I mean, gasoline is lighter.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Than water, right, So this is all on top of
the water, and there was enough water even before the
Berm breach. There was a lot of water that had
gotten into the huts, and so this eventually came in
to the huts under the doors such as they were.
These weren't real doors. What do you think? They were
sort of piece of supplywood that had been put up.
(18:09):
And then the vapors rose and we get the whoolf
like you can imagine on a barbecue, except on a
much larger scale.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Chas when come back, I like you to, you know,
and I want people to read the book Fuji Fire.
But if you don't mind, maybe just describe just some
of the horrors that your fellow marines went through there
on the camp, because literally, I mean walls and sheets
and rivers of flame are everywhere here for these these
four marines. And then I want to talk a little
bit about just the amazing I think one of the
(18:40):
good things I took from the book is just the
amazing heroism that we also saw come out of this tragedy.
So when we come back, like to chat about that,
Ladies and gentlemen, there is your host Bend la gar Ship.
We'll be back with more of chess henerations to few mats.
(19:09):
Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Laser and gentlemen. This
is your host, Ben buler Garcia. We're coming to you
from the Silencer Central Studios. Silencer Central is the largest
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There's a Silencercentral dot Com to confirm if owning a
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(19:31):
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two thousand and five Silencercentral dot Com. We're back with
Chez Henry, a Marine Corps veteran who's written a very
compelling book called Fujifire. It describes just a ri terrible,
(19:52):
tragic fire that claimed the lives of thirteen personnel in
Japan nineteen October nineteen nineteen seventy nine. Correct Chess correct
and many others who were burned and and would basically
have to live their lives with those scars for the
rest the rest of their lives. And really what I'm
getting from from the book chats here, it was a
(20:12):
It was a domino effect of several things. You know,
first of all, the biggest typhoon on record. Second of all,
you know this this, and people aren't familiar with these
these blood they basically look like a big rubber pillow
when they're inflated. I think folks might get a visual
of that, so they yes, water, they will float because gas.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Now there was three bladders, correct, there were There were
three bladders, two of which were connected with hoses. One
was filled with gasoline, one was filled with diesel. There
was also a bladder that was filled with the aviation
fuel JP five, but it was further up the hill.
They weren't using aviation support during this exercise, so it
wasn't connected by a hose, and it was only the
(20:53):
the gasoline bladder that floated up and tragically because that
that flashpoint was more dangerous than that of the others.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I was just gonna say, I f but I used
to fight fires, and that you know, gasoline, particularly with
the vapors that it's just bad luck that are happened
to be the gasoline, not the diesel or the the
aircraft fuel that was ruptured. And the other thing, the
storm is so severe, I mean, basically everybody's been been
ordered off their posts and just into the huts and
just to hunker down. In fact, the sentry whose job
(21:24):
it was to monitor these fuel bladders was ordered to
get the heck out of dodge too, so nobody had
eyes on when this thing happened. And then literally, you know,
they're nailing plywood over the doors. I think a couple
of doors on the huts were actually locked as well.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There were padlocks in a couple of places that had
quint in hasps, and guys had inside the huts pushed
wall lockers up against the door because the wind was
just blowing, blowing the doors open, rain and wind coming
in and blowing all.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So you know, what people were thinking about was writing
out the store and.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Seeing the book you reference. There's a number of people
who did smell the fumes, but by that time this
fuel had been flowing through the camp for a while
and it just took that one. We think it was
a heater. So basically with with the fuel floating on
the water and then with the typhoon winds, I mean
this basic in effect caused a flammable aerosol to sort
(22:24):
of permeate everything in that you know, you use that
word womp. I mean, if you've ever seen or heard
her like you said, folks that you know, maybe lit
up their barbecue after a little too much lighter fluid,
that they've seen that. But you know, think of that
on an industrial scale.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
And in an enclosed space, you know, this semi circular
h you know, corrugated metal and wood frame hut.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You and I talked about this before we started the
interview chat. I want to say I enjoyed the book,
but the chapters where you describe, you know, from the
personal recollections of the folks who were there and who
were victims, it's it's tough. It's hard to read it.
I mean literally, people's skin melted off their bodies. And
there was one fellow who just was burned pretty bad
(23:07):
and he asked someone for help and they just they
turned away. They couldn't they couldn't do it. Not to
fault them, but holy smokes, it was difficult.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And I thought a lot as I wrote about that chapter,
and part of the reason I described it in graphic
detail is that it was it was that difficult for everyone,
those who heard, those who weren't heard, those who thought
they were going to be hurt. And because this has
been so forgotten, I didn't want to slight, you know,
(23:42):
a reader's understanding of what these guys went through. And
because there is there is heroism amidst that there is endurance,
there's this odd feeling of shock for the people who
had third degree burns that took care of nerve endings,
and so they actually weren't feeling any pain when those
nerve endings were severed, and they're trying to figure out
(24:03):
what happened to me. I don't feel bad. I felt
I felt terrible as I was burned, but now I
feel like okay, and I'm watching these people watch me.
And it was there was a surrealism to that that
that struck me from the stories that that these fellow
marines shared, and I thought, also, you know, operating in
that circumstance, the people who rose to heroism of taking
(24:26):
care of fellow marines were that much more heroic to
my mind, the Corman particularly these Cormen were young. These
Navy uh you know EMTs as it were. Most of
them knew each other, and they had just been in
they'd gone to boot camp the Great Lakes, they'd gone
to Medical core School, and then they'd gone to what's
(24:46):
called Field Medical School, which trains these sailors to operate
with marine units. And then they had been assigned to
this unit. So some of them had been in the Navy,
you know, maybe a year, and and then here they
are faced with is trauma that that they haven't really
been trained for. They had probably some introduction to dealing
with burns, but nothing of this scale. And and one
(25:09):
of the hugest challenges of dealing with burns is trying
to figure out how to get ibs through burn skin.
When when skin is terribly burned, it can be it
can be very leathery, you know, how do you find
the veins underneath that? And there's a huge challenge just
for these guys to to attempt the basic care. Uh.
And then fellow marines who who grab guys, and and
(25:32):
often many told the story of you know, grabbing somebody,
which is your inclination. I'm going to help you, and
you grab you and when I touch you, your skin slides
off your arm or your shoulder or your back. And
the fact then that these guys were able to continue
to help help those guys even after that shock. Put
marines on to the hood of a cheap and drive
(25:52):
them over to the mess hall where they could be
put on top of a table where corman would gather
to do what they could initially.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
And and you know these again, they're they're kicking these
doors or they're busting out the windows, just trying to
get out of these quantit huts which are are burning.
And you know they're running out into a typhoon by
the way, and you know what you would think would
would be helpful, but you don't want to take water
to a fuel fire. Generally, that's just a bad idea.
That's that's not in the textbook. So some of them
(26:24):
were running out of part of the phrase. But you
know from the firing pan to enter the fire.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Literally they and it's the inclination of marines, you know,
and recruit training. You're taught do something, you know, do
something and do it quickly. That's it. And most often
that's going to you know, put you in a good stead.
Don't just sit there, don't you know, don't freeze. And
many of the marines, you know, here's a fire in
our hut. We've got to get out. So in some
cases the doors opened easily. In some cases, uh, you know,
(26:53):
someone had to knock it down because perhaps you know,
something wood had been nailed over it from the outside
to prevent the store from breaking in. But guys ran out,
and in most cases they ran right into the fire.
And the way this gasoline was burning, the gasoline's burning
on top of the flowing rainwater, and the rainwater is
flowing downhill. So in some cases you had these fifteen
(27:15):
foot maybe fifteen feet high and perhaps ten or fifteen
feet wide curtain of flames that's moving. So it's like
a moving curtain of flames. And in many cases people escaping,
you know, terribly burned or not. Was just the whim
of where this water happened to be flowing based on
the erosion patterns in the camp. And many guys ran
(27:35):
right out of the camp, out of their quantset huts,
and through the fire. They got to the other side
of the fire. But in the course of that they
were terribly burned. There were a couple of guys who
had watched a Dick van Dyke public service announcement about
how to act if there's a fire and our Forces
TV play. These played these public service announcements. They had
(27:55):
very few they ran no commercials, and they had to
fill all those holes in the programming with public service announcement,
so they played him over and over. One of these
was Dick van Dyke crawling around on his hands and knees, saying,
do you know why I'm down here? He's in the
living room of a house, So I'm down here because
in a fire, this is where the good era is.
And I interviewed two guys who remember that they fell
down the fire essentially over after time burned out above them,
(28:19):
and enough time so that they could then escape the hut,
watch where flames were and get out.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
But so unintentionally, Dick Van Dyke was also one of
the heroes of this, so.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
He wasn't interestingly ironically given his recent escape from fire
in the Malibo Hills.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
But watch, Chaz, we got to take another break here
when we come back. I like to talk a little
bit more about that heroism, because just the book is
just full full of stories. Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host,
Ben Bler Garcie. We're talking with Chance Henry. His book
is called Fuji Fire. Look it up, it was just released.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio.
(29:12):
Lasion and gentlemen, this is your host, Ben Biler Garcia.
We're talking with Marine Corps veteran Chans Henry. He's written
just a very powerful and compelling book called Fujifire, Sifting
the Ashes of a Forgotten ust Marine Corps Tragian. I
was in college at the time, nineteen seventy nine. I
had to spend a while ago, obviously, but I don't
recall ever ever hearing about this, you know, and give
(29:32):
him my interest in supporting the military mentor entire adult life.
I was a low embarrassed and so I'm glad that
you're doing this to get the word out there so
people don't forget.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
These guys are all about my age. I was not
there when the fire happened. I had been at the
camp a year before, so I knew the place and
the fact. When I began sort of looking at what
had or hadn't been written about it, I was really
shocked from my own understanding of at the time of
of how bad it had been. And so this may
be in my years in the Marine Corps and my
(30:06):
many years thereafter as a journalist, I think this is
the most meaningful thing that I've ever ever done professionally.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Jas one of the other factors here, and if folks
don't read their history, and our American radio listeners are
pretty sharp groups, so they've probably already done the math
we're talking. I don't do math. And but what thirty
four years after the conclusion of World War Two, the
relationships were still let's say, they're not what they are
now as far as partnerships goes. And I think one
(30:34):
of the other factors that as a former firefighter myself
that play into this is so the neighboring Japanese bases
and the communities of course, dispatched their fire personnel to
go help fight this fire. A they did not know
that it was a fuel fire, so they brought water
instead of foam or tardened. And two they'd never been
allowed on the base previous to this, so they had
(30:56):
no idea, you know, where if hydrants were around, where
the buildings were located. The context of the fire, which
is pretty important when you're driving into a blaze, right.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
They did bring water and they did the best they
could with it. It was a ways into fighting the
fire before they realized that they were dealing with gasoline
fed And I quote from some fire fighting manuals from
the military that say it's the worst thing to do
because when you're just pushing the fire around and you
might be moving it to new places if you're using that.
But the Marine Corps and the camp had zero fire
(31:28):
fighting capability. There were not many fire extinguishers up in
the huts where the training camp was located, and these
Japanese firefighters did the best they could, and they did
eventually contain it, though it took longer than it might
have had someone told them that. But when they were
initially called, probably the person who made the call didn't
know what the constant the fire was.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
There are another other heroes that jump out, and at
the back of your book you list these citations that
a lot of these folks received for their bravery and heroism.
But I tell you that the couple that one of
them that stand to me were those kind of crazy
Navy helicopter pilots. I mean, nobody in their right mind
should have been taken a bird up in that weather,
but they did.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
There were some Navy helicopter pilots at Naval Air Facility
at Sugi, which was thirty forty minutes away. All the
pilots across the country, certainly the US military pilots were
having a typhoon party. You can't fly when there's a typhoon,
so there were guys drinking at the club. It came
to this point where someone from Camp Fuji called up
at Sugi and said, we have this incident. We've had
(32:31):
one marine dye. I should point out that the thirteen
who died, most of them died over a period of
about fifty days thereafter. But they said, we've had one
marine dye and others are terribly burned. We need help.
And it was difficult to find pilots who hadn't been drinking.
It's supposed to be eight hours from bottle to throttle.
But these two Navy pilots from a helicopter detachment that
(32:54):
was on board a Navy supply ship that was being
The ship was being resupplied at Yukoska when that happened,
These guys flew up to it. So again they do
do maintenance on the helicopters. So two helicopter crews, four pilots,
seven or eight enlisted guys, crew chiefs, maintenance technicians. They
were out, they were on liberty, you know, in town,
(33:14):
having dinner. They're called upon, and they very quickly, when
I say very quickly, probably a couple hours, they were
able to get one helicopter back together in the hangar,
and two pilots go out onto the flight line and
they start spinning it up in wins that were too dangerous.
You know, by the regulations, you weren't supposed to be
starting up and wins. If a gust comes, it might
push the rotor down and it could actually slice open
(33:36):
the top of the helicopter. It might even break the
piece that keeps the roters rotating and not hitting each other.
But these guys, as the lead pilot told me, if
marines are dying, what are we here for anyway? And
so they got it spun up. These navy pilots had
no idea where Camp Fuji was. There were a couple
of marine pilots who rode with them because they had
(33:57):
been operating Fuji recently, the their helicopter was getting a
new engine, they couldn't fly it. These guys got up
to the camp and they they In the end, by
around midnight when they could start evacuating people, they evacuated
a lot of the injured.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
One of the other things that really I enjoyed about
the book is is you know, the camp food you
did is on fire, and the mold typhoon they didn't
have even on a perfect day, they would have not
had the facilities of the personnel to handle this kind
of a mash casualty event. So I mean literally, they're
taking these burned patients to clinics and hospitals, almost any
(34:31):
place in the towns that could take them in. And
they're already dealing with the victims of the typhoon itself.
But they they I don't want to say they embrace it,
but they they handled their business. I think that really
was was good to know, like I said, particularly given
them relatively recent history there.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Right, So these are Japanese doctors and nurses in doctors'
offices or tiny clinics that these marines are dropped up.
There were no memoranda of understanding, there was no previous agreement.
You know you'll provide these services. These trucks just showed
up and dropped these guys off, and that the Japanese
medical teams did everything that they could with what they had,
often using up all their you know what, few trauma
(35:10):
resources they had to help the Marines, and that kept
them alive. It was about twelve or fifteen hours after
they were hurt before they were finally evacuated to an
Air Force hospital some distance away.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I tell you, she's one of the more heartbreaking lines
in your book was about Lance Corporal David Littenberger who
went to the burn Wards to talk to his fellow Marines.
And this is a guy who has spent a year
with them, and the nurse actually had to tell him
the name of who he was visiting with because they're
so bad. They disfigured Chas. We got just about three
(35:45):
minutes left. I want you signed an organizational theorist, Charles Perrow.
I think it is who quoted something called the system
accident and the As a civilian, I'll say this, the
the results of the final investigation left me less than satisfied.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
You're not alone in that regard.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, but there were some improvements that were made. There
were some lessons learned.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Right, there were, And within four or five years the
camp had been improved in a way that fuel was
stored underground. New barrack structures had been constructed that were
of the sort that had been on Okinawa for a
long time, more resistant in a typhoon scenario. But yeah,
the investigation determined that it blamed God only, and even
(36:38):
the commandant of the Marine Corps in nineteen ninety one,
when he was interviewed, noted that there were human actions
that were taken that contributed toward toward what happened. There
were two things that come from of course, the obvious
thing is what these marines will see that we care
about them. More importantly, Robert Barrow, then Commandant, said I
want every general to go look at these reads and
(37:00):
ask themselves the question, how did this happen?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah? Very powerful stuff. Well, sir, if you don't mind,
I'm gonna take a point of personal privilege here. So
long as they speak your name, you shall never die.
Lance Corporal LC. Malvu twenty one, Beaumont, Texas, Private first
Class Tyrone Chris Ellen nineteen Alexander, Virginia, Lance Corporal Thomas
Joseph Brune nineteen Saint Paul, Minnesota. Corporal Colin Miller twenty
(37:24):
one of Brooklyn, New York. Lance Corporal Philip Everett DuPont
twenty one Bluemont, Virginia. Lance Corporal Robert Vincent Smith Junior
nineteen is Spartanburg, South Carolina, Private first Class, Robert Lee
Breeze seventeen of Dell Rapid, South Dakota. Lance Corporal Stephen
ray Turner twenty two, Tips City, Iowa. Lance Corporal Orlando
Eloisambovo twenty Pueblo, Colorado, Prior first Class Greigory Lawrence Has
(37:48):
twenty Chicago, Illinois, Prior first Class Roger Allen Larson twenty
of Claire, Wisconsin. Lance Corporal Willie Davis twenty two of Detroit, Michigan,
and Lance Corporal Ernest Eugene Cotiedis twenty two of Park, California,
chash It's been a real privilege to have you on
the show, and folks can get your book. It's well,
the audiobook is now out so they can listen to it.
(38:10):
You know, I'm an old guy. I actually like to
see and turn the pages, but just about half a
minute less or what do you hope, other than raising awareness,
what do you hope comes of this endeavor of yours.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I had an email the other day from someone who
is there at the day of the fire, and it
wasn't somebody with whom I spoke for the book, who
said that because he couldn't find anything about this in
any history of the Marine Corps. As he put it,
those of us who were there feel almost ashamed. It
was almost asking themselves, did we do something wrong? Why
(38:43):
is this forgotten? So? I think Americans remembering what these
people went through, understanding the role that safety leadership accountability
play in these circumstances is useful to consider through any time.
Looking at this an example as an example, what can
we learn from it? Filling that gap in our Marine
Corps history, and particularly on behalf of guys who are
(39:04):
about my age, has been very fulfilling, and I hope
people well read and learn and respect.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Ladies and gentle on. The book again, is Fujifire Sifting
the Ashes of Forgotten US Marine Corps Treasure. I'd definitely
encourage you to look it up and read it. Chess,
thanks for spending your time with our listeners today.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
So appreciate your helping us spread the word man.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Thank you. Until next time, Ladies and gentlemen, all policies
and procedures or remaining pleasures take care.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
You've been listening to American Warrior Radio. Archived episodes may
be found at americanwarriorradio dot com or your favorite podcast
platform
We all owe them, but very few of us know them.
They are the men and women of our military and
first responder communities, and these are their stories. American Warrior Radio.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
Is on the air. Welcome to American Warrior Radio, Ladies
and gentlemen. This is your host, Ben Bula Garcia American
Warrior Radio broadcast from the Silencer Central Studios. If you're
thinking of getting a silencer for one or more of
your weapons, there's never been a better time to do so.
For a limited time, our friends at silencer Central will
(00:40):
pick up the cost of your tax stamp on select suppressors.
That's a two hundred dollars value. Visit silencercentral dot com
to confirm if owning a sounder's legal in your state.
They'll help you complete the paperwork and ship right to
your front door, making silence simple. Since two thousand and
five Silencercentral dot com. It's been called the most serious
peacetime disaster suffered by the US, but many never heard
(01:01):
of it, and probably the only ones that recall it
are the friends, family, and comrades. That the seventy three
persons were badly injured, fifty four of those suffering major
burns and thirteen of whom died. War is a dangerous business.
Training for war is a dangerous business, and sometimes nature's
fury gets a vote to On October nineteenth, nineteen seventy nine,
Typhoon Tip, the largest and most intense tropical cyclone ever recorded,
(01:24):
raised with one hundred and fifty mile an hour winds
and torrential rain, the twelve hundred and fifty Marines of
Camp Fuji hunkered down the Quantcet huts to ride the
storm out. Just above them on the hill sat a
fuel farm rubber bladders held in place by retaining wall.
Ranged from the typhoon. It eroded the retaining wall, causing
the bladders to break free, and then some pumps then
fell down upon the bladders, slicing that one of them
(01:46):
wide open, releasing fifty five hundred gallons of gasoline. The
rains carried the fuel right down upon the unsuspecting marines.
When a heater inside one of the Quantcet huts ignited,
the fire, Marines would find themselves literally in rivers of fire.
Has largely overlooked tragedy is a subject of a new
book by Chess Henry called Fujifire, Sifting the Ashes of
a forgotten US Marine Corps tragedy. It's the product of
(02:08):
Chas's four year two cunt and investigation. Chess is a
combat decorated Marine Corps vetter himself, and rose from private
to captain during his career with the Courts. He is
also highly recognized an award winning television and radio journalists.
He reports on security maners and issues impacting military veterans.
His assignments had taken him to more than thirty nations
on five continents. Chash, Welcome to American Warrior Radio.
Speaker 3 (02:29):
The privileged to be here, Ben, thank you for the invitation.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Now, sir, going from private to captain, that's not the
usual way one does It isn't, sir.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
Probably not the smartest way either. But I over the
course of the almost twenty years that I did in
the Marines, I went through eleven ranks private, private, first class, Lance, corporal, corporal, sergeant, staff, sergeant,
warrant officer, chief, worn officer two three and four, and
the captain.
Speaker 2 (02:52):
I'm curious the backstory on how this book came to
be as almost as interesting as the story itself. I'm curious, Chats, what's.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Your why on this?
Speaker 2 (03:00):
Why did you choose to do this.
Speaker 3 (03:01):
It was never intended. It was something I fell into.
I retired from daily journalism at the end of twenty nineteen,
convinced my wife to retire from her job. The idea
was we were going to start a life of leisure travel.
Then the pandemic hit and I was stuck at home
looking for something to do, and I wasn't being very productive.
I was posting photos on Facebook, and one of them
I posted was of me at Camp Fuji in nineteen
(03:24):
seventy eight, and just in passing, I wrote, this was
taken about a year before the big fire there, which
I thought everyone knew about, certainly those of us who
had been at the camp, you know, in nineteen seventy nine.
When this happened, it was a kick in the gut,
and I was shocked by the number of people who
sent notes back, to include guys fellow Marines who had
been through the camp in the early eighties who asked
(03:45):
what fire. That was really quite a shock. Secondly, I
was embarrassed a bit when another commenter, a friend of
mine who'd known since nineteen eighty one, said, you know,
I escaped one of those burning huts. I'd known him
for all those years and hadn't realized that he had
been caught up in this disaster. So I thought, well,
maybe there's something, maybe there's a podcast in this, or
(04:07):
I'll start doing a bit of research. So I started
looking online. There were no books written about it. There
were a few sites put together by guys who had
survived it and had posted things, photos and such to
remind people of what had happened. So I started gathering
what I could, and just by good fortune, a friend
had in nineteen eighty six done a Freedom of Information
(04:28):
Act request thinking that he might write something about this.
He was never able to interest a publisher, but he
had kept this half inch three quarters inch worth of
photocopied material and he sent it to me. He said, here,
see if this is useful to you, and it was
a starting point. There was a copy of the investigation
of the incident on the Navy JAG website actually, but
(04:50):
it was highly redacted, a lot of things crossed out.
But between the one that I downloaded from the website
and this one that my friend had gotten in nineteen
eighty six, I was able to do a pay by
page reconstruction that basically gave me the entire investigation without
any reaction. And what that allowed me to do principally
was finding people's names, and not everybody was named Bob
(05:11):
Jones or Fred Smith. People had sufficiently unique names that
then I began using search engines to try to locate people,
and I spent a lot of money on postage stamps,
sending letters to address as I found online, And eventually,
probably the first year and a half was principally that
just trying to find people. Eventually I would get letters back,
(05:31):
and then sometimes people would say, oh, I'm still in
touch with my friend, and I started to gather some
people who I could ask about this.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
How many of the survivors did you actually end up interviewing, jess.
Speaker 3 (05:42):
Well, I interviewed all told one hundred and thirty three
people with direct firsthand experience. Now, in some cases those
were people who were Air Force people who had flown
into the eye of the super typhoon that was the
principal cause of this disaster. I interviewed people who were
at the camp who were terribly burned and went through
these long medical journeys. I interview people who were at
(06:02):
the camp who were able to escape the flames, but
had different experiences having to come back into the camp.
And then I interviewed a lot of doctors, nurses, and
corman who cared for these marines who had been hurt.
So all told that was more than one hundred and
thirty people.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
And we're going to talk a little bit about the
post investigation on this terrible tragedy. But also my suspicion
is or I don't know if you'd support this. But
so when I turned I went to college. When I
was seventeen, my cohort was the first age group when
President Carter reinstituted the draft. So when I was in college,
(06:39):
I turned eighteen, I went down, I registered to vote,
and I registered for the draft. Well, shortly thereafter, the
Iranians took over our embassy in Tehran. I thought, oh boy,
here we go. Do you think that really kind of
ate up the press cycle? And that's why many people
never learned about the Fuji fire.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Absolutely, And it took me a while to figure out
as I put this chronology together, how huge a part
the events in Iran played. So it was two weeks
after the fire occurred at Campfuji that those hostages were
taken in Tehran, and attention, global attention just shifted. And
you'll recall that, you know, it was a disaster that
(07:18):
lasted four hundred and forty four days that those people
were held hostage, and attention just stayed focused on that.
And so there had been some coverage in American media
about what had happened at Campfuji, and I suspect that
had that incident in Iran not happened, more stories would
have been done following, you know, what happened to these
(07:39):
guys that were hurt. But as was the case, they
just dropped off of the news cycle.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
Let's let's start where they got a couple minutes for
the first break chairs. But let's start with the typhoon itself.
I mean, this thing was just a monster.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (07:56):
To this day it holds the record as the largest
and most intense tropical cyclone ever. Typhoon Tip was the
name of it. It set the still standing world record
for the lowest sea level air pressure ever recorded on Earth,
and in fact, for the book Fuji Fire, I was
able to find and interview people who were on board
(08:17):
that airplane, air Force stormchasers who recorded those records, setting measurements,
and whose pictures later appeared in the Guinness Book of
World Records actually for that accomplishment, And it was interesting
talking with them because it was a scientific rush for them,
you know, to set this record, and you know, be
the ones that made the measurement, and it was only
(08:39):
almost an afterthought that they thought, oh, I wonder what
this storm might do now, and now we know it
moved toward Guam and Okinawa and then over mainland Japan,
particularly the impact it had on the Marines at camp Fuji.
Speaker 2 (08:54):
Now now did it was it directly bearing over Camp
Fuji or just in the vicinity?
Speaker 3 (08:59):
No, the so the eye I believe was about sixty
miles some sixty some miles from camp Fuji at the
time of the incident occurred. And this thing had moved
down to tropical storm status because after a hurricane or typhoon,
it's all the same thing, different names for the same phenomenon.
After it moves away from water onto land, it's not
(09:21):
as strong, it's not pulling up this water from the
ocean or whatever it's been over. But it was still
still very strong and it's still very large. So the
eye was about sixty miles from camp Fuji, but there
was still it put down in one day. More rain
on Campfuji and Goutimba, this small Japanese town nearby than
(09:41):
those areas would typically get in a month.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host, Ben bler Garcia. We're
talking with Chas Henry. His book is called Fuji Fire,
Shifting the Ashes of a Forgotten US Marine Corps Tragedy.
Lots of very very interesting things to come stick a rout.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio, Lasia,
(10:13):
and gentlemen, this is your host, Ben deler Garcia. We're
talking with Marine veteran Chaz Henry. Chaz began a four
year odyssey to research and helped spread the word of
really almost forgotten maybe one I think, Chaz said, he
quote some of the books, saying, maybe the one of
the worst peacetime tragedies at the Marine Corps ever experienced,
and that was just this horrendous fire at Camp Fuji
(10:37):
in nineteen seventy nine. Now, you spent a year there,
you're familiar with the camp itself. You actually had boots
on the ground.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
I had been there for a couple of months in
early nineteen seventy eight. So this camp was a satellite
training area of the Marine headquarters down in Okinawa, and
they would cycle units through for a few weeks at
a time, a few months at a time, because there
was a lot of room to to practice maneuver on
the ground with artillery fire, with tanks, support with mortars,
(11:06):
more so than there was in Okinawa, and so typically
units from Okinawa would rotate up and train there. And
it was people from Okinawa who ran the camp and
allowed this training for Marines who were further south where
there were a lot more restrictions on training. There were
talents and farms that butted up against the base, so
you couldn't use the tank fire and artillery fire and
(11:28):
such the way you could at Camp Fuji. I had
actually been on board a ship with the thirty first
Marine Amphibious Unit which just stayed in the Pacific ready
to handle events there, and we had offloaded for a
month or two of training at Camp Fuji, so I
knew the camp. That was early seventy eight. The incident
happened in October nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2 (11:46):
Chas I would to describe Camp Fuji as spartan would
be a compliment. I mean, this is a family show,
so I can't go into some of the details you
shared in the book of let's just say the available
facilities there, but man oh man. And then you know
these Quanta huts. I don't know if they're left over
from World War two or what, but you have marines
stacked in there like sardines.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
Right, there were eighteen to twenty in these Quanta huts
that were not huge, and so you have bunk beds
in there, you know, these iron cast iron bunk beds.
Everybody's in there with all their sea bag that they brought,
all their geary and their weapons. You have a foot walker,
and you have you know, all your earthly possessions that
you've carried with you on ship and offloaded to take,
(12:31):
you know, hold your clothing and such. During the training
fire inspectors have been through and said this really isn't safe.
You know, it's not easy for guys to move around.
But there really wasn't much that people could do. There's
no place else for people to stay at that time,
and they wanted to keep rotating units through. So that
was sort of the status quo with the the camp.
(12:53):
You mentioned the soil it is it's volcanic, so it
was some of it was hard than others that some
of it was ash, some of it were larger rocks.
But for decades there had been military training there, even
as far back as World War Two, when the Imperial
Japanese Army trained there. There were tanks and armored vehicles
moving across it and breaking the soil down. So it
(13:17):
was you know a lot of ball bearing sized pieces
of this volcanic soil. Sometimes if it got a little wet,
you could you would slip on it because these little
pieces are moving around.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
And best certain times a season, I'm sure it's apt
to describe it as drizzly and cold. And the quants
of huts were heated with these kerosene heaters with an
open flame, which obviously played into this tragedy.
Speaker 3 (13:45):
Right, And so these are very drafty quants of huts. Interestingly,
it would be very toasty with these what looked like
a fifty five gallon drum, one at each end of
the of the hut, and then a you know, a
tube of flu going up through the top of the
ceiling to up through out of the roof to carry
away the heat. And you would throw a match into
(14:07):
it light the kerosene and appeal. There were kerosene tanks
that would flow kerosene through pipes down into each one's
and it kept them very warm, so it could actually
be comfortable in there when it was cold outside. But
it was that that heating setup that created a danger
when suddenly the fuel was introduced, the gasoline that spilled.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Let's talk about these bladders. These are manufactured by Goodyear.
If I'm not mistaken, famous for the blimp and whatnot.
Overall safe relative, I mean, it's this has been this wasn't.
This is one of the first time they'd been used there.
But I think in your book I also read that
a marine field manual basically used the word never place
(14:56):
these bladders up the hill, you know, when you've got
people living down down the slope there.
Speaker 3 (15:04):
Well, so this was not a marine training manual. It
was actually an army Army training manual.
Speaker 2 (15:08):
So does that explain why they ignored it?
Speaker 3 (15:11):
Well, I make the distinction. You know, I checked fuel
handling regulations for the other military services at the time,
and I contrasted that with the rather slim volume that
the Marine Corps was using at the time for fuel handling. Procedures,
and the Marine Corps manual was very much focused on
bringing these things ashore in combat. How you set them
up in combat you're under choir, and not quite as
(15:34):
much to do with ways you might handle them in
different terrain or in a training situation. And so there
was no violation of the Marine Corps regulations as the
fuel bladders were set up, But the Army, going back
years before this, in their safety manuals for fuel operations,
(15:56):
had said that you don't want to put fuel up
above where people are living or where waters flowing, and
if for the logical purposes, you know, it could create
danger if it flows into those Now at the camp
there was when they moved into this camp, there was
a berm that had been built of this volcanic soil
we've been describing, and I don't know how well it
(16:17):
had been tamped down, but it had been built up
by bulldozers. And the fuel bladders will put uphill of that.
The idea of those people putting it in that well,
if it leaks, this berm will keep it uphill, we'll
be able to gather the fuel and reclaim it. The
problem came with typhoon tip and so on October nineteenth,
(16:39):
nineteen seventy nine, the typhoon dumped, you know, more rain
than they in a day than they typically got in
a month. A lot of that water accumulated uphill of
the berm and eventually created a breach. It broke away
about a fifteen to twenty foot section of the of
this berm. It also floated up the gasoline bladder because
(17:04):
it was you know, there was so much water it
floated up, and there's the rapids that sort of was
created down through this place where the water could finally
get through, flowing naturally downhill, and the bladder came in.
Hoses remained attached, but there were pumps that had been
set up on top of the berm so that the
fuel could be pumped into tanks and amtraks uphill of
(17:25):
the berm, or trucks or jeeps down below. Those hoses
remained attached. Pulled the pump into the breach, and a
piece of that pump frame was very sharp. It sliced
a five foot rip in the gasoline bladder and five
five hundred gallons of gasoline flowed downhill on top of
the water and the huts.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
Where people don't know I mean, gasoline is lighter.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
Than water, right, So this is all on top of
the water, and there was enough water even before the
Berm breach. There was a lot of water that had
gotten into the huts, and so this eventually came in
to the huts under the doors such as they were.
These weren't real doors. What do you think? They were
sort of piece of supplywood that had been put up.
(18:09):
And then the vapors rose and we get the whoolf
like you can imagine on a barbecue, except on a
much larger scale.
Speaker 2 (18:18):
Chas when come back, I like you to, you know,
and I want people to read the book Fuji Fire.
But if you don't mind, maybe just describe just some
of the horrors that your fellow marines went through there
on the camp, because literally, I mean walls and sheets
and rivers of flame are everywhere here for these these
four marines. And then I want to talk a little
bit about just the amazing I think one of the
(18:40):
good things I took from the book is just the
amazing heroism that we also saw come out of this tragedy.
So when we come back, like to chat about that,
Ladies and gentlemen, there is your host Bend la gar Ship.
We'll be back with more of chess henerations to few mats.
(19:09):
Welcome back to American Warrior Radio. Laser and gentlemen. This
is your host, Ben buler Garcia. We're coming to you
from the Silencer Central Studios. Silencer Central is the largest
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(19:31):
huge variety of suppressors. They will complete all the paperwork
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two thousand and five Silencercentral dot Com. We're back with
Chez Henry, a Marine Corps veteran who's written a very
compelling book called Fujifire. It describes just a ri terrible,
(19:52):
tragic fire that claimed the lives of thirteen personnel in
Japan nineteen October nineteen nineteen seventy nine. Correct Chess correct
and many others who were burned and and would basically
have to live their lives with those scars for the
rest the rest of their lives. And really what I'm
getting from from the book chats here, it was a
(20:12):
It was a domino effect of several things. You know,
first of all, the biggest typhoon on record. Second of all,
you know this this, and people aren't familiar with these
these blood they basically look like a big rubber pillow
when they're inflated. I think folks might get a visual
of that, so they yes, water, they will float because gas.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
Now there was three bladders, correct, there were There were
three bladders, two of which were connected with hoses. One
was filled with gasoline, one was filled with diesel. There
was also a bladder that was filled with the aviation
fuel JP five, but it was further up the hill.
They weren't using aviation support during this exercise, so it
wasn't connected by a hose, and it was only the
(20:53):
the gasoline bladder that floated up and tragically because that
that flashpoint was more dangerous than that of the others.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
I was just gonna say, I f but I used
to fight fires, and that you know, gasoline, particularly with
the vapors that it's just bad luck that are happened
to be the gasoline, not the diesel or the the
aircraft fuel that was ruptured. And the other thing, the
storm is so severe, I mean, basically everybody's been been
ordered off their posts and just into the huts and
just to hunker down. In fact, the sentry whose job
(21:24):
it was to monitor these fuel bladders was ordered to
get the heck out of dodge too, so nobody had
eyes on when this thing happened. And then literally, you know,
they're nailing plywood over the doors. I think a couple
of doors on the huts were actually locked as well.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
There were padlocks in a couple of places that had
quint in hasps, and guys had inside the huts pushed
wall lockers up against the door because the wind was
just blowing, blowing the doors open, rain and wind coming
in and blowing all.
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Sorts of stuff.
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So you know, what people were thinking about was writing
out the store and.
Speaker 2 (22:00):
Seeing the book you reference. There's a number of people
who did smell the fumes, but by that time this
fuel had been flowing through the camp for a while
and it just took that one. We think it was
a heater. So basically with with the fuel floating on
the water and then with the typhoon winds, I mean
this basic in effect caused a flammable aerosol to sort
(22:24):
of permeate everything in that you know, you use that
word womp. I mean, if you've ever seen or heard
her like you said, folks that you know, maybe lit
up their barbecue after a little too much lighter fluid,
that they've seen that. But you know, think of that
on an industrial scale.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
And in an enclosed space, you know, this semi circular
h you know, corrugated metal and wood frame hut.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
You and I talked about this before we started the
interview chat. I want to say I enjoyed the book,
but the chapters where you describe, you know, from the
personal recollections of the folks who were there and who
were victims, it's it's tough. It's hard to read it.
I mean literally, people's skin melted off their bodies. And
there was one fellow who just was burned pretty bad
(23:07):
and he asked someone for help and they just they
turned away. They couldn't they couldn't do it. Not to
fault them, but holy smokes, it was difficult.
Speaker 3 (23:16):
And I thought a lot as I wrote about that chapter,
and part of the reason I described it in graphic
detail is that it was it was that difficult for everyone,
those who heard, those who weren't heard, those who thought
they were going to be hurt. And because this has
been so forgotten, I didn't want to slight, you know,
(23:42):
a reader's understanding of what these guys went through. And
because there is there is heroism amidst that there is endurance,
there's this odd feeling of shock for the people who
had third degree burns that took care of nerve endings,
and so they actually weren't feeling any pain when those
nerve endings were severed, and they're trying to figure out
(24:03):
what happened to me. I don't feel bad. I felt
I felt terrible as I was burned, but now I
feel like okay, and I'm watching these people watch me.
And it was there was a surrealism to that that
that struck me from the stories that that these fellow
marines shared, and I thought, also, you know, operating in
that circumstance, the people who rose to heroism of taking
(24:26):
care of fellow marines were that much more heroic to
my mind, the Corman particularly these Cormen were young. These
Navy uh you know EMTs as it were. Most of
them knew each other, and they had just been in
they'd gone to boot camp the Great Lakes, they'd gone
to Medical core School, and then they'd gone to what's
(24:46):
called Field Medical School, which trains these sailors to operate
with marine units. And then they had been assigned to
this unit. So some of them had been in the Navy,
you know, maybe a year, and and then here they
are faced with is trauma that that they haven't really
been trained for. They had probably some introduction to dealing
with burns, but nothing of this scale. And and one
(25:09):
of the hugest challenges of dealing with burns is trying
to figure out how to get ibs through burn skin.
When when skin is terribly burned, it can be it
can be very leathery, you know, how do you find
the veins underneath that? And there's a huge challenge just
for these guys to to attempt the basic care. Uh.
And then fellow marines who who grab guys, and and
(25:32):
often many told the story of you know, grabbing somebody,
which is your inclination. I'm going to help you, and
you grab you and when I touch you, your skin slides
off your arm or your shoulder or your back. And
the fact then that these guys were able to continue
to help help those guys even after that shock. Put
marines on to the hood of a cheap and drive
(25:52):
them over to the mess hall where they could be
put on top of a table where corman would gather
to do what they could initially.
Speaker 2 (26:01):
And and you know these again, they're they're kicking these
doors or they're busting out the windows, just trying to
get out of these quantit huts which are are burning.
And you know they're running out into a typhoon by
the way, and you know what you would think would
would be helpful, but you don't want to take water
to a fuel fire. Generally, that's just a bad idea.
That's that's not in the textbook. So some of them
(26:24):
were running out of part of the phrase. But you
know from the firing pan to enter the fire.
Speaker 3 (26:30):
Literally they and it's the inclination of marines, you know,
and recruit training. You're taught do something, you know, do
something and do it quickly. That's it. And most often
that's going to you know, put you in a good stead.
Don't just sit there, don't you know, don't freeze. And
many of the marines, you know, here's a fire in
our hut. We've got to get out. So in some
cases the doors opened easily. In some cases, uh, you know,
(26:53):
someone had to knock it down because perhaps you know,
something wood had been nailed over it from the outside
to prevent the store from breaking in. But guys ran out,
and in most cases they ran right into the fire.
And the way this gasoline was burning, the gasoline's burning
on top of the flowing rainwater, and the rainwater is
flowing downhill. So in some cases you had these fifteen
(27:15):
foot maybe fifteen feet high and perhaps ten or fifteen
feet wide curtain of flames that's moving. So it's like
a moving curtain of flames. And in many cases people escaping,
you know, terribly burned or not. Was just the whim
of where this water happened to be flowing based on
the erosion patterns in the camp. And many guys ran
(27:35):
right out of the camp, out of their quantset huts,
and through the fire. They got to the other side
of the fire. But in the course of that they
were terribly burned. There were a couple of guys who
had watched a Dick van Dyke public service announcement about
how to act if there's a fire and our Forces
TV play. These played these public service announcements. They had
(27:55):
very few they ran no commercials, and they had to
fill all those holes in the programming with public service announcement,
so they played him over and over. One of these
was Dick van Dyke crawling around on his hands and knees, saying,
do you know why I'm down here? He's in the
living room of a house, So I'm down here because
in a fire, this is where the good era is.
And I interviewed two guys who remember that they fell
down the fire essentially over after time burned out above them,
(28:19):
and enough time so that they could then escape the hut,
watch where flames were and get out.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
But so unintentionally, Dick Van Dyke was also one of
the heroes of this, so.
Speaker 3 (28:29):
He wasn't interestingly ironically given his recent escape from fire
in the Malibo Hills.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
But watch, Chaz, we got to take another break here
when we come back. I like to talk a little
bit more about that heroism, because just the book is
just full full of stories. Ladies and gentlemen, there's your host,
Ben Bler Garcie. We're talking with Chance Henry. His book
is called Fuji Fire. Look it up, it was just released.
We'll be right back. Welcome back to American Warrior Radio.
(29:12):
Lasion and gentlemen, this is your host, Ben Biler Garcia.
We're talking with Marine Corps veteran Chans Henry. He's written
just a very powerful and compelling book called Fujifire, Sifting
the Ashes of a Forgotten ust Marine Corps Tragian. I
was in college at the time, nineteen seventy nine. I
had to spend a while ago, obviously, but I don't
recall ever ever hearing about this, you know, and give
(29:32):
him my interest in supporting the military mentor entire adult life.
I was a low embarrassed and so I'm glad that
you're doing this to get the word out there so
people don't forget.
Speaker 3 (29:44):
These guys are all about my age. I was not
there when the fire happened. I had been at the
camp a year before, so I knew the place and
the fact. When I began sort of looking at what
had or hadn't been written about it, I was really
shocked from my own understanding of at the time of
of how bad it had been. And so this may
be in my years in the Marine Corps and my
(30:06):
many years thereafter as a journalist, I think this is
the most meaningful thing that I've ever ever done professionally.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
Jas one of the other factors here, and if folks
don't read their history, and our American radio listeners are
pretty sharp groups, so they've probably already done the math
we're talking. I don't do math. And but what thirty
four years after the conclusion of World War Two, the
relationships were still let's say, they're not what they are
now as far as partnerships goes. And I think one
(30:34):
of the other factors that as a former firefighter myself
that play into this is so the neighboring Japanese bases
and the communities of course, dispatched their fire personnel to
go help fight this fire. A they did not know
that it was a fuel fire, so they brought water
instead of foam or tardened. And two they'd never been
allowed on the base previous to this, so they had
(30:56):
no idea, you know, where if hydrants were around, where
the buildings were located. The context of the fire, which
is pretty important when you're driving into a blaze, right.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
They did bring water and they did the best they
could with it. It was a ways into fighting the
fire before they realized that they were dealing with gasoline
fed And I quote from some fire fighting manuals from
the military that say it's the worst thing to do
because when you're just pushing the fire around and you
might be moving it to new places if you're using that.
But the Marine Corps and the camp had zero fire
(31:28):
fighting capability. There were not many fire extinguishers up in
the huts where the training camp was located, and these
Japanese firefighters did the best they could, and they did
eventually contain it, though it took longer than it might
have had someone told them that. But when they were
initially called, probably the person who made the call didn't
know what the constant the fire was.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
There are another other heroes that jump out, and at
the back of your book you list these citations that
a lot of these folks received for their bravery and heroism.
But I tell you that the couple that one of
them that stand to me were those kind of crazy
Navy helicopter pilots. I mean, nobody in their right mind
should have been taken a bird up in that weather,
but they did.
Speaker 3 (32:09):
There were some Navy helicopter pilots at Naval Air Facility
at Sugi, which was thirty forty minutes away. All the
pilots across the country, certainly the US military pilots were
having a typhoon party. You can't fly when there's a typhoon,
so there were guys drinking at the club. It came
to this point where someone from Camp Fuji called up
at Sugi and said, we have this incident. We've had
(32:31):
one marine dye. I should point out that the thirteen
who died, most of them died over a period of
about fifty days thereafter. But they said, we've had one
marine dye and others are terribly burned. We need help.
And it was difficult to find pilots who hadn't been drinking.
It's supposed to be eight hours from bottle to throttle.
But these two Navy pilots from a helicopter detachment that
(32:54):
was on board a Navy supply ship that was being
The ship was being resupplied at Yukoska when that happened,
These guys flew up to it. So again they do
do maintenance on the helicopters. So two helicopter crews, four pilots,
seven or eight enlisted guys, crew chiefs, maintenance technicians. They
were out, they were on liberty, you know, in town,
(33:14):
having dinner. They're called upon, and they very quickly, when
I say very quickly, probably a couple hours, they were
able to get one helicopter back together in the hangar,
and two pilots go out onto the flight line and
they start spinning it up in wins that were too dangerous.
You know, by the regulations, you weren't supposed to be
starting up and wins. If a gust comes, it might
push the rotor down and it could actually slice open
(33:36):
the top of the helicopter. It might even break the
piece that keeps the roters rotating and not hitting each other.
But these guys, as the lead pilot told me, if
marines are dying, what are we here for anyway? And
so they got it spun up. These navy pilots had
no idea where Camp Fuji was. There were a couple
of marine pilots who rode with them because they had
(33:57):
been operating Fuji recently, the their helicopter was getting a
new engine, they couldn't fly it. These guys got up
to the camp and they they In the end, by
around midnight when they could start evacuating people, they evacuated
a lot of the injured.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
One of the other things that really I enjoyed about
the book is is you know, the camp food you
did is on fire, and the mold typhoon they didn't
have even on a perfect day, they would have not
had the facilities of the personnel to handle this kind
of a mash casualty event. So I mean literally, they're
taking these burned patients to clinics and hospitals, almost any
(34:31):
place in the towns that could take them in. And
they're already dealing with the victims of the typhoon itself.
But they they I don't want to say they embrace it,
but they they handled their business. I think that really
was was good to know, like I said, particularly given
them relatively recent history there.
Speaker 3 (34:48):
Right, So these are Japanese doctors and nurses in doctors'
offices or tiny clinics that these marines are dropped up.
There were no memoranda of understanding, there was no previous agreement.
You know you'll provide these services. These trucks just showed
up and dropped these guys off, and that the Japanese
medical teams did everything that they could with what they had,
often using up all their you know what, few trauma
(35:10):
resources they had to help the Marines, and that kept
them alive. It was about twelve or fifteen hours after
they were hurt before they were finally evacuated to an
Air Force hospital some distance away.
Speaker 2 (35:23):
I tell you, she's one of the more heartbreaking lines
in your book was about Lance Corporal David Littenberger who
went to the burn Wards to talk to his fellow Marines.
And this is a guy who has spent a year
with them, and the nurse actually had to tell him
the name of who he was visiting with because they're
so bad. They disfigured Chas. We got just about three
(35:45):
minutes left. I want you signed an organizational theorist, Charles Perrow.
I think it is who quoted something called the system
accident and the As a civilian, I'll say this, the
the results of the final investigation left me less than satisfied.
Speaker 3 (36:06):
You're not alone in that regard.
Speaker 2 (36:08):
Yeah, but there were some improvements that were made. There
were some lessons learned.
Speaker 3 (36:13):
Right, there were, And within four or five years the
camp had been improved in a way that fuel was
stored underground. New barrack structures had been constructed that were
of the sort that had been on Okinawa for a
long time, more resistant in a typhoon scenario. But yeah,
the investigation determined that it blamed God only, and even
(36:38):
the commandant of the Marine Corps in nineteen ninety one,
when he was interviewed, noted that there were human actions
that were taken that contributed toward toward what happened. There
were two things that come from of course, the obvious
thing is what these marines will see that we care
about them. More importantly, Robert Barrow, then Commandant, said I
want every general to go look at these reads and
(37:00):
ask themselves the question, how did this happen?
Speaker 2 (37:03):
Yeah? Very powerful stuff. Well, sir, if you don't mind,
I'm gonna take a point of personal privilege here. So
long as they speak your name, you shall never die.
Lance Corporal LC. Malvu twenty one, Beaumont, Texas, Private first
Class Tyrone Chris Ellen nineteen Alexander, Virginia, Lance Corporal Thomas
Joseph Brune nineteen Saint Paul, Minnesota. Corporal Colin Miller twenty
(37:24):
one of Brooklyn, New York. Lance Corporal Philip Everett DuPont
twenty one Bluemont, Virginia. Lance Corporal Robert Vincent Smith Junior
nineteen is Spartanburg, South Carolina, Private first Class, Robert Lee
Breeze seventeen of Dell Rapid, South Dakota. Lance Corporal Stephen
ray Turner twenty two, Tips City, Iowa. Lance Corporal Orlando
Eloisambovo twenty Pueblo, Colorado, Prior first Class Greigory Lawrence Has
(37:48):
twenty Chicago, Illinois, Prior first Class Roger Allen Larson twenty
of Claire, Wisconsin. Lance Corporal Willie Davis twenty two of Detroit, Michigan,
and Lance Corporal Ernest Eugene Cotiedis twenty two of Park, California,
chash It's been a real privilege to have you on
the show, and folks can get your book. It's well,
the audiobook is now out so they can listen to it.
(38:10):
You know, I'm an old guy. I actually like to
see and turn the pages, but just about half a
minute less or what do you hope, other than raising awareness,
what do you hope comes of this endeavor of yours.
Speaker 3 (38:23):
I had an email the other day from someone who
is there at the day of the fire, and it
wasn't somebody with whom I spoke for the book, who
said that because he couldn't find anything about this in
any history of the Marine Corps. As he put it,
those of us who were there feel almost ashamed. It
was almost asking themselves, did we do something wrong? Why
(38:43):
is this forgotten? So? I think Americans remembering what these
people went through, understanding the role that safety leadership accountability
play in these circumstances is useful to consider through any time.
Looking at this an example as an example, what can
we learn from it? Filling that gap in our Marine
Corps history, and particularly on behalf of guys who are
(39:04):
about my age, has been very fulfilling, and I hope
people well read and learn and respect.
Speaker 2 (39:12):
Ladies and gentle on. The book again, is Fujifire Sifting
the Ashes of Forgotten US Marine Corps Treasure. I'd definitely
encourage you to look it up and read it. Chess,
thanks for spending your time with our listeners today.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
So appreciate your helping us spread the word man.
Speaker 2 (39:24):
Thank you. Until next time, Ladies and gentlemen, all policies
and procedures or remaining pleasures take care.
Speaker 1 (39:35):
You've been listening to American Warrior Radio. Archived episodes may
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