May 5, 1923 - June 27, 1945
Edward Dawley Potter, Jr.
He arrived in Pelham just in time to start kindergarten at Siwanoy Elementary School in 1928 with his family settling into a cute Dutch Colonial home they rented at 459 Siwanoy Place, conveniently located just two houses up from the school. For the next thirteen years, life in Pelham for Edward Dawley Potter Jr. tracks like most boys of the time: he helped the Siwanoy Cub Scouts win enough points to beat the Colonial School Cubs (though losing to Prospect Hill), he helped write and put on a play the year he graduated from Siwanoy, and, as a teen, he was on the organizing committee (several times) for dances at Huguenot Yacht Club. At Pelham Memorial High School he received varsity letters in football and swimming. At age sixteen before the US had entered WWII, his fitness and character earned him a spot as one of twelve selected from Pelham to attend the US Citizen’s Military Camp, where he received basic training without yet having to commit to military service. After graduation in 1942, he quit a short-lived job at the Union Carbide Company and, in August, enlisted in the US Marine Corps.
After training at Parris Island, South Carolina and New River, North Carolina, he shipped out to the Pacific in December 1943, landing on the big island of Hawaii, where he was stationed at Camp Tarawa and absorbed as a new recruit into Battery D, 2d Battalion, 10th Marines. The camp was no Hawaiian paradise. Known for its harsh, dusty, and high-altitude conditions, he would spend the next five months in rigorous, live-fire field training on 75mm pack Howitzers. Known as the “Little Dynamite,” the versatile weapon consisted of components that could be more easily transported and assembled than larger guns. And then the action began.
In May, 1944, Private First Class Edward Potter was transported the rest of the way across the Pacific Ocean and landed under heavy fire on the western beaches of Saipan in the Northern Mariana Islands where he and his fellow Marines hauled their Howitzers ashore and over rugged terrain, firing them to support frontline infantry. They remained there until July 7 when they repelled a Banzai charge of over 4,000 Japanese soldiers before securing the island two days later. They then turned their guns north at the nearby island of Tinian before landing there on July 24 and claiming control of that island on August 10.
Right: Edward D. Potter photo from 1943 Pelican Yearbook of Pelham Memorial High School (resolution increased and colorized by AI).
Above: Camp Tarawa, Hawaii
Returning to Saipan, the next six months were supposed to relieve battle fatigue, but Potter’s battalion was occupied clearing out remaining isolated Japanese troops holding out there in the hillsides.
April fool’s day was no joke in the Pacific in 1945. It was the day the American assault on Okinawa commenced. The war was already going very badly for Japan. By the end of the month, victory against Germany had been achieved and Hitler committed suicide. But the Japanese refused to give up. Schoolboys as young as fourteen were drafted and put into front line service. Edward Potter arrived at Okinawa and became part of a floating reserve before being pressed into service in feint landings on the southern approaches to draw fire and distract Japanese attention while a full scale landing took place on the western side of the island. Here Potter's ship was at particular risk from a new and increased intensity of Kamikazi airplane attacks.
A return trip to Saipan for a break from action was brief. By mid-May Potter was back in action, making a landing on Ilheya, Shima on June 3 and taking the Island of Aguni on June 9. He and his battalion were then placed under the operational control of the First Marine Division for deployment to Okinawa in what would be one of the bloodiest battles of the Second World War.
On June 16, 1945 at noon, Potter hit the southwestern beaches of Okinawa where his battery struggled to drag the howitzer pieces in knee-deep mud following torrential monsoon rains. The guns were used to blast away for several days at coral ridges and caves, where thousands of Japanese troops had burrowed underground in a complex of tunnels. Around-the- clock work began on June 20 to clear out the last Japanese stronghold on the Kiyamu Peninsula before the island was finally declared officially secured on June 22. Despite this declaration, thousands of heavily armed Japanese soldiers remained in caves where, over the next three days, the Marines worked to control cave openings as suicide squads were attempting to breaking out. In the course of this effort, Edward D. Potter, Jr., after surviving some of the harshest conditions and fighting in multiple battles in the Pacific, was badly wounded.
Left: Photo of marines in Pacific in 1944 with a 75mm pack Howitzer of the type hauled onto Okinawa by Edward Potter
On Sunday, July 8, 1945, Mr. & Mrs. Edward D. Potter, Sr. saw the thing most dreaded by any parent with a son serving in the military: a telegram delivery boy. Arriving at their apartment building at 620 Pelhamdale Avenue, he delivered news from the Navy. Their only child had died on June 27 of his injuries. He is one of the approximately 12,500 American servicemen who died or was declared missing in the Battle of Okinawa.
Edward Dawley Potter, Jr. is buried at the Punchbowl National Cemetery, Section 4, in Honolulu Hawaii. He was posthumously awarded a purple heart.