Dear Mr. Hanks,

I wanted to tell you that in the old film clips of Tarawa where the Marines finally take the bunker at Tarawa (the focus of the battle), the 21 year old with the flame thrower was my father, Corporal Robert Domasky. How do I know, he was the only one with the flame thrower and identified himself to us. There were only seven left from the group that gunny lead to stop the machine guns on the bunker. The machine guns were slaughtering the 2nd and 3rd waves who couldn’t get to shore without wading in (tide went down). He was in the first wave and got ashore. He was in a special attachment of engineers. He told me they exchange the bunker more times than he could remember (each time they retook the bunker they killed the wounded Japanese – the Janpanese also killed the wounded Mariens when they retook the bunker).

My father passed away 5 years ago but just for the record, he would want me to tell you, it was gunny who lead the marines on the attack of the bunker not the lieutentant who was awarded the CMH. At the end, gunny told the rest (from atop of the bunker), “You can do what you want, I’m staying.” They all stayed with gunny. My father was wounded in the leg on the last day of the battle (lasted three days). Incidentally, my father was one of those marines who jumped over the coconut retaining wall (said it was the dummiest thing he ever did but as a squad leader thought he was supposed to and expected other to follow – they didn’t but that’s another story).

Probably won’t see this but I owed it to my dad to write it.

Thomas Domasky
Sacramento, CA