Stories by Sixth Division Marines
Nambu Wounds
by Jim White (29th Mar-3-G)
On May 10, 1945, on a rise south of the Asa Kawa Estuary on Southern Okinawa, a Japanese machine gun sat beside the dead body of the Japanese soldier who had lately been firing it. The gun was a Nambu 6.5 millimeter. The cartridge it fired had a bullet that weighed 156 grams, which was heavy for 6.5 millimeter. The bullet was round nosed with a flat base. That shape caused the bullet to lose velocity quickly. The gun’s maximum effective range was 600 yards, but a Nambu bullet could travel many times that distance. At long range, unless the bullet hit bone, it created a wound channel that closed quickly.
On May 16, 1945, PVT (later CPL) Don Honis, with three other Marines, was carrying a badly wounded Marine from Half Moon Hill. Don was hit by a single Nambu bullet, fired from either Half Moon or Sugar Loaf Hill. The bullet hit, back to front, on the outside of his left thigh. His stay in the Sixth Medical Battalion field hospital lasted three weeks. Then he returned to his unit, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 29th Marines.
On May 29, 1945, PFC Bill Pierce was on a guard detail at a causeway connected to a Japanese occupied island when he was hit by a single Nambu bullet fired from some distance away. He was hit on the back of his neck. While in the Sixth Medical Battalion field hospital, he had feelings of guilt because many of the Marines in the hospital had wounds that were much worse than his. After two days he voluntarily left the hospital and returned to his unit, Weapons Company of the 29th Marines.
Captain William Tomasello was the commander of G Company, 3rd Battalion, 29th Marines. I was a rifleman in his Company. The captain came to see me while we were on the Hospital Ship RELIEF. It was the third day after he was wounded. On June 9, 1945, on Oroku Peninsula, the captain had been hit by a Nambu bullet fired from long range. The bullet that wounded the captain hit the right side of his neck and exited the left side. Where the bullet had left his neck was like a small pimple. Where the bullet had entered his neck there was a barely visible lesion.
I had been wounded on that same afternoon of June 9, 1945. By contrast, the bullet that wounded my lower legs was fired from a 7.7 millimeter Arisaka rifle from about 75 yards. The bullet tumbled in my right calf and left a hole the size of a half dollar.