One of my latest purchases is a uniform I thought I would never own for my collection. This is WWII US Coast Guard uniform set consisting of a patched Amphibious Assault Jumper and bell bottom pants. What made this purchase interesting is a piece of paper folding in the pocket stating this Coast Guardsman name and that he participated in the Battle of Iwo Jima on an LST. Looks like it was written by a family member fairly recently in terms of how old the jumper is. Although this isn't a lot to to go by ( "Buy the Item, not the story"), it is a start when I started to research this sailor. A little background on the Coast Guard at Iwo Jima, 20 ships were manned by the Coast Guard, two of them were Attack Transports, and the other 18 were LST making the Coast Guard presence at the Battle of Iwo Jima small in comparison of the Marine, Navy and Army. Sadly this Sailor died quite young in the 1950's, so there isn't much information on his life not to mention his service considering Coast Guard WWII information is very hard to come by. His records have been sent for so this thread will be updated when I get his service information. Whatever this information will be I am sure it will be eye opening for many of us who study the Battle of Iwo Jima.6/14 UPDATE: I received the records last year and haven't gotten around to update this post. I received the records and it it turned out he wasn't at Iwo Jima but at the Battle of Okinawa. This made a lot more sense as to the note that was left in the pocket of this uniform which explains that he survived a Kamikaze attack on his group of ships. Iwo didn't have any large scale Kamikaze attacks on US ships. This is a fantastic uniform belonging to a very brave Coast Guard sailor to survive so many attacks during the Battle of Okinawa.
