CECIL AKIN
WOUNDED ON GUADAL CANAL - P.F.C.
Cecil Akin, 22, former Cherokee amateur boxer, won his first round with
the Japs and is waiting for the gong to start the second round.
He took a lot of punishment in that first session but the Japs got
worse. In the hot, wet jungles of Guadal Canal the Nipponese knocked
P.F.C. Akin out of action twice...once with a mortar shell fragment and
again with a piece of shrapnel from an aerial bomb.
Though the enemy put him out of service for awhile, P.F.C. Akin put a number of them out permanently. He told the Times reporter
when interviewed "I killed two of them with my rifle. One was a
corpsman and the other a regular Jap Army private. I couldn't say
how many I got with my machine gun, but it was a plenty."
"Getting
hit by a chunk of shrapnel isn't pleasant, " P.F.C. Akin said.
"The ugly, jagged pieces of metal are red hot when they strike the
flesh and they burn unmercifully." Five stitches were required to
close one of his two shrapnel wounds.
Cecil
was with the first American troops invading the Solomons. The
assault on Guadalcanal was an attempt to turn the tide in the southwest
Pacific early in 1942 and put the United States on the offensive in
that area.
The fighting on the Canal was
one of unspeakable hardships calling for the best in every man.
"But I'm glad I had the experience," Akin declared, "because I learned
things there that will be invaluable to me wherever I'm sent
next. We learned every trick of the Japs and we've got lots more
confidence now than we ever had before."
Before going into the
service, the Cherokee Marine was a brakeman for the Illinois Central
Railroad, working out of Waterloo. He joined the Marine Corps May
11, 1942 and took his training at San Diego, Calif. He left the States
July 15 and landed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and shortly afterward
"shoved off" for the southwest Pacific. He was on Guadal Canal
six months and two days. He was also on Tulagi, but was in no
fighting there.
Guadal Canal, in the Solomons, was the first
major allied offensive in the Pacific, Japanese had swept through the
Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. They were posed for an
assault upon Australia and New Zealand, the last major allied
possessions in the S.W. Pacific. The Battle of Guadal Canal
blunted their attack and halted their advance. Guadal Canal was
to serve as a spring board for the allied attack in the Pacific.
(Source: Cherokee County
Historical Society Newsletter, Vol 15, Num 1, Jan 1980, Sec V, Pg
7. From the Cherokee Daily Times of Jan. 3, 1944)
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