When 50 Japanese Tried to Execute One American — He Killed Them All in 7 Minutes

When 50 Japanese Tried to Execute One American — He Killed Them All in 7 Minutes September 18, 1944. Peleliu — a tiny island in the Pacific, and one of the bloodiest battles of World War II. The Marines are pinned down. Japanese machine guns fire from fortified pillboxes hidden in the rock. Anyone who stands up could be cut down in seconds. And then a 19-year-old Marine named Arthur Jackson takes off his helmet, drops his pack, grabs his grenades — and runs straight at them. Inside the first pillbox are 35 Japanese soldiers. Jackson is alone. With white phosphorus grenades, a 30-second fuse and forty pounds of explosives, he takes it out. Then the next position. And the next. By the end, he is credited with destroying twelve fortified positions and killing around fifty enemy soldiers. A year later, President Harry Truman places the Medal of Honor around his neck. But Peleliu is only the beginning. Years later, at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, one more gunshot will change Arthur Jackson's life — and this time, he will be the one demanding a trial. So how did one teenager take out an entire line of enemy bunkers? And why does his story end nothing like you'd expect? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ SOURCES & FURTHER READING 1. Medal of Honor citation — Arthur J. Jackson, Peleliu, 18 September 1944 (U.S. Marine Corps History Division) 2. Washington Post (16.06.2017) — Arthur Jackson, Medal of Honor recipient for WWII one-man assault at Peleliu, dies at 92: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/... 3. Idaho Statesman (2013) — WWII hero breaks long silence 4. Wikipedia — Arthur J. Jackson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_... ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ABOUT THE CHANNEL Arven brings back the names of people from the past whose actions still surprise us — soldiers, ordinary men and women, and the moments of courage history almost forgot. If you like true stories told simply, clearly and without the boring parts, subscribe for more. Know someone in your family who showed incredible courage — in war or in everyday life? Tell us about them in the comments. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #WW2 #WorldWar2 #MedalOfHonor #Peleliu #USMC #Marines #MilitaryHistory #TrueStory #Arven