Jacob Cruz

Jacob was born in Nogales, Arizona on 25 March 1925 – the second of five children born to Isaac and Altagracia “Grace” Cruz. Little is known about his life before the war, but his family lived in Nogales and El Paso, Texas, before finally arriving in Los Angeles and settling on Echandia Street in Boyle Heights. Jacob attended Theodore Roosevelt High School, and was halfway through his freshman year when Pearl Harbor was attacked. He was sixteen – too young to enlist – so Jacob remained a student for the first year of the war.

On 26 February 1943, shortly before his eighteenth birthday, Jacob joined the Marine Corps. He attended boot camp in San Diego – where he rated as a sharpshooter on the rifle range – and advanced infantry training at Camp Elliott. In the summer of 1943, he sailed overseas as a member of the 22nd Replacement Battalion, and alighted in New Zealand where the 2nd Marine Division made their camp. Private Cruz was told to report to Company D, First Battalion, 6th Marines for duty with a heavy machine gun platoon.

As a new replacement – and one of the youngest men in the company – Cruz was primarily detailed as an ammunition carrier. A water-cooled Browning machine gun like those carried by D/1/6 could burn through ammo at a prodigious rate, and the Guadalcanal veterans knew the importance of keeping boxes of belted rounds nearby. Most “heavy” squads had three ammo carriers whose job it was to keep the gunner and his assistant supplied. They carried personal weapons for defense, but in combat were encumbered with a heavy box in each hand. In emergencies, or if there were casualties, ammo carriers were also expected to know how to operate their squad’s gun.

Private Cruz had a short time – perhaps little more than a month – to train with his crew and earn their trust. By late October, his unit was headed for combat in the Gilbert Islands. Jacob had been in the Marine Corps for just eight months; his combat career would last only twenty-four hours.

On the night of 22 November 1943, Private Cruz’s platoon was attached to Company B, 6th Marines. The “heavies” were brought up to the front line as the day’s fighting ended. Because they were valuable targets to the Japanese, the guns were only to be fired in an emergency – like the banzai charge that struck the battalion after darkness fell. After a few harassing infiltration attempts (which killed and wounded some of Cruz’s buddies), a full-on charge involving hundreds of Japanese troops came screaming towards the 6th Marines. Every weapon in the Marine arsenal, especially the heavy machine guns, opened fire.

Private Cruz knew his job and performed it well. Whenever a gun needed ammunition, Cruz “tirelessly” ran back and forth between fighting positions and distribution points, carrying box after box of .30-caliber to frantic gunners, exposed all the while to enemy fire. His bravery was noticed by his comrades – and, unfortunately, by the Japanese as well. On one of his runs, Jacob Cruz was shot in the head and instantly killed. He would receive a posthumous Silver Star for his gallantry.

The next morning, a burial party from Company D set out to find the bodies of the dead. Private Wayland Stevens was part of this effort and remembered burying several friends together: Jack Hill, Elden Baumbach, Clarence Drumheiser, Robert Hatch, John Gillen, and Jacob Cruz.

Several of the boys in the platoon went up and picked up the boys that were killed and buried them in the same location, leaving one dog tag on the body and the other on the marker that we placed on the grave.

We dug the graves just about four feet deep and before burying any of the boys, we searched them for their personal effects and also to make sure they had identification tags.

At the time we buried them, we found ourselves some trash wood that we inserted into the ground and then finding some old mess gear we scratched in the names of the dead boys on the mess gear and hung this equipment over the board that signified the grave of the Marine dead. One of the identification tags we left on the body and the other dog tag we just loosely hung the chain over the top of the board and just placed the mess gear bearing the scratched identity of the deceased on that.

Unfortunately, the temporary markings were later destroyed, and a mass grave containing as many as thirty Marines – including Jacob Cruz – was lost to time.

The mass grave would remain undiscovered until 2019, when a History Flight expedition uncovered “Row D” and brought the remains back to the United States for laboratory analysis.

Cruz was identified on 14 April 2020, and has now been officially accounted for.

CENOTAPHS
Honolulu Memorial, Tablets of the Missing

FINAL BURIAL
Los Angeles National Cemetery