By Thomas W. Butler
What we in the USA refer to as a hurricane is known as a typhoon in the far east. In the Volcano Islands (Kazan Retto), of which Iwo Jima is a part. October is the month of the most frequent occurrence of these major storms. 1945 was an exception.
Sometime in June, weather forecasts came to us at Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) Iwo Jima, warning of an impending “…force 10-11 typhoon with waves 20 to 30 feet high”. Early the next day signs of the coming blow were unmistakable. Several hours later we were in the throes of a very serious storm.
All of the SUN patrol ships and support vessels which had been anchored offshore of our beach on the southwest, windward side of the island had either put to sea or moved to the northeast, leeward side. The storm came out of the southwest from the South China Sea.
Our 16′ x 16′ pyramidal tent billeted four radiomen who were J.J. Killion, M.L. Leonard, R.P. (?) McGuinness and T.W. Butler.
During the height of the storm we struggled constantly to keep our tent from collapsing. The effort required almost continuous pressure on the bowing centerpole to keep it supported in a vertical position. Those not holding the centerpole made frequent trips outside the tent to check on the sandbag windbreak which we had constructed…and to rehammer loosened tent pegs into the black beach sand. We had early on realized that standard issue 18 inch wooden tent pegs were not going to do the job in the kind of a storm we were experiencing. We had reinforced the anchoring of the tent with three foot long 2×4’s, sledgehammered deeply into the beach. We managed to keep things under tenuous control for a few hours, which wasn’t easy with gusting 60 mph winds hurling abrasive volcanic ash at us like the business end of a sandblaster. Eventually however we lost the battle and damned near lost the tent and its entire contents.When the tent finally rose up and started to fly, everything else went as well. Cots, clothes, seabags, lose floorboards, the crates we used a footlockers, everything. We ran after our things and salvaged what we could. We saved the collapsed tent by covering it with sand and weighting it with sandbags. Drenched to the skin, we retired to the Operations Quonset hut. Mother Nature had won another battle.
By the next day, the weather had quieted down. We looked around at the damage and only then realized what a major storm we had experienced. During the latter part of the invasion of Iwo Jima, the U.S. Navy had towed and deliberately sunk several concrete barges just offshore of the southwestern beach…about midway between our DAB-3 D/F and Mount Suribachi. These barges were strategically placed to make a small harbor, of sorts, to facilitate and protect the beaching and discharge of amphibious DUWK vehicles taking cargo from ocean transport vessels up onto the beach. Wave action and a pounding surf had taken several of these huge concrete barges and smashed them to pieces. Actually, we at FRUPAC were lucky the storm never quite reached the level of intensity that had been predicted. Aside from Officer in Charge Bobeck’s prudent decision to temporarily shut town and practically dismantle the DAB-3 and DF-15 direction finders, our operation was uninterrupted.
It really was amazing we did not incur more damage, considering our extremely exposed position on the southwest beach. In hindsight, the choice of site for our FRUPAC station was a poor one, dictated, I assume by limitations of choice. The site had good signal reception but there wasn’t one structure on our station more than 15 feet above sea level and the DAB-3 D/F was closest to the sea and even lower than everything else! In that part of the Pacific, most bad weather comes out of the southwest. A very high tide, coupled with a strong southwesterly wind could have put the station in jeopardy at any time. Even considering the protection afforded by the substantial offshore reef, any kind of tidal wave from the west likely would have wiped out the station and qualified us as posthumous elements in some postwar archive of FRUPAC.
However, negative thoughts of that kind never entered our minds. Most of us were in our early 20s and, like all of that age, we were confident of our immortality.
Station HYPO 
3 January 2026 at 13:19
Vividly recall when Dad, CTRC “Dick” Sansom, was assigned to Okinawa (1st Futema, 2nd Hanza) in the early 60’s. Typhoon’s were the biggest threat we faced. Frequently experienced 150+ mph winds that resulted in major damages. First order of business for our family, that is Dad and myself, was to lower the 40-foot mast used for Dad’s ham rig. Once that was secure, we policed the outside area for any materials that might end up being “missiles.” We lived in government quarters which were of cinder block construction. But I still remember one storm being so bad it forced water through the motar between the cinder blocks. We had to arrange throw rugs into a circle in the living and moved all the furniture into the ring. Ended up with about 2-3 inches of water throughout the house, but the furniture was dry. Ahh, memories of a Navy brat.
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