"We never thought about talking about it. It's just one of those things. The thing had to be done, we did it, that's it - forget about it." (Video interview, 1:09:00)

Thomas Claw

Thomas Claw [2004] War: World War, 1939-1945 Branch: Marine Corps Unit: 1st Marine Division Service Location: New Caledonia; Australia; New Guinea; Palau; Solomon Islands Rank: Private First Class

Thomas Claw was born in 1922 near Many Farms, Arizona, and attended boarding school in Fort Defiance through the 8th grade, then Fort Wingate High School. Claw was assigned to the 11th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, where he worked in the regimental headquarters' operations center. During the Battle of Cape Gloucester, Claw remembers how his fellow Marines’ sense of humor got them through nightly Japanese bombings. In June 1945, he was wounded by a Japanese grenade on Okinawa, earning him the Purple Heart. After the war, Thomas Claw eventually moved to Parker, Arizona and took up farming, and also worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs as a water master for the Colorado River Indian Irrigation Project - in this role he was responsible for the irrigation of 80,000 acres of farmland.