Vet survived the true horrors portrayed in HBO miniseries
By D.A. WILKINSON
wilkinson@vindy.com
EAST PALESTINE
Arthur Cozza, 83, is one of the veterans interviewed for the HBO miniseries “The Pacific” about the fight against the Japanese.
“I had just turned 18 in December of 1944. I wanted to be a pilot,” he said. “I jumped the gun,” he said, and quit school in his senior year.
His brother, Frank, did make the Army Air Corps, but Cozza was shipped to Parris Island in South Carolina. He was going to war.
“Now I’m just an old man,” said Cozza, who “mostly drove a truck” hauling coal and steel for 43 years before retiring. He has health problems now, but his memory is sharp.
Cozza said he fought only on Okinawa.
“It was the last major defense of the Japanese,” he said, adding that Kunishi Ridge was the stronghold facing American forces.
Cozza said that when he landed, he was paired with a soldier about 30 years old named “Mose” from Waco, Texas.
“That was the only name I knew him by,” Cozza recalled. “He always had a smile on his face.”
Cozza said Mose never swore. “I was saved a few times by his help,” Cozza said.
Mose carried a Browning Automatic Rifle, and Cozza provided covering fire.
While on patrol, they were surprised by three Japanese soldiers.
“He fired from the hip with his BAR. I had never seen anything like it. I would say he was good with it.” Cozza said.
A squad leader sent a scout to find the enemy.
“A sniper got him,” Cozza recalled. “The leader sent another. He got killed. He sent out a third; he got killed.”
In another near-miss, a Jeep was passing by when it was hit with rockets.
“I was tossed 20 feet in the air. I didn’t know what happened. I got off with a severe concussion. Two were killed, and two were injured.”
His hands also were burned while using smoke grenades to flush the enemy from underground bunkers.
Later, he said, “I was sleeping with my buddies, and I was up against a tree. I hadn’t slept in two or three days. There was a big explosion.” The next morning, he woke up and realized a piece of metal had missed his neck by a fraction of an inch and was embedded in a tree.
Gen. Simon Bolivar Buckner was an American lieutenant general who commanded the 10th Army that conducted the amphibious assault on Okinawa. He was killed near the end of the battle by enemy artillery shells, making him the highest-ranking American to have been killed by enemy fire during the war.
The war was ended by the atomic bomb, Cozza said, not by the island fighting.
In a surprise, Cozza happened by the airstrip on the island where he ran into his brother, Frank.
“He had landed after coming from the carrier,” Cozza recalled.