Born: October 18, 1923
Campaigns Served: Iwo Jima
Highest Rank Attained: Private
Decorations:
Jim Chavers was born in Savannah, Georgia, in 1923. He graduated from Savannah High School and was summoned by the local draft board in 1943, but was rejected due to asthma. After taking a series of shots to overcome his difficulties, he went back to Atlanta for another try. "I basically talked them into taking me," he said in an interview with the Savannah Morning News. "I told the doctor that I hadn't come back again to fail." He had intended to join the Navy, but when a recruiter on the train asked for volunteers for the Marine Corps, he and the man next to him raised their hands.
After training at Parris Island and Camp Lejeune, Chavers was transferred to Maui, where he joined the Fourth Marine Division.
Private Chavers fought as a machine gunner with Able Company, 24th Marines during the battle of Iwo Jima. He survived the battle unwounded, though he had a close call when a sniper missed him by inches. "When people ask me now how I survived, I always tell them it was because I was a fast runner," he told the Morning News. "Of course, nobody walked anywhere. If you were up and out in the open, you ran." He often shared a foxhole with Clarence Foster and Robert Langner; on the night of March 1, 1945, Langner occupied a different hole and was killed.
Though Chavers was lucky, many of his friends were not.
There was a guy named Rolo in the hole next to me and Rolo was smoking a cigarette at the night time, and you are not supposed to that unless you cover up, so the Japenese can't see ya, and they kept telling him to cover up and he didn't and a Japenese man came walking down the road and Rolo didn't make it. He died around 3:00am.
His experiences on the battlefield ranged from the horror of stepping on a partly-buried dying Japanese soldier, to the happiness of running into a Savannah High classmate one night while picking up more ammunition. Chavers particularly remembered relishing his first hot meal (he went through the chow line twice) and cold shower aboard ship at the end of the battle.
Chavers returned to the division's rest camp after the battle; he would remain there until the conclusion of hostilities. He helped to dismantle Camp Maui at the end of the war, and was discharged in 1946.
Jim Chavers returned to Savannah after the war. He is active in division reunions; in 2010 he was chosen as the parade marshal for Savannah's annual Veteran's Day parade.
