Port Hueneme played important role in Iwo Jima battle

On the anniversary of the battle of Iwo Jima, a Ventura veteran is telling the story of a little-known Navy Seabee unit that played a crucial role in the invasion.

Ken Bingham, who served in Vietnam, published a book this month about Seabee Unit 133, which camped for several months at Naval Base Ventura County before deploying to Pearl Harbor and later Iwo Jima.

"They played a central part in the invasion, and not many people know their special story," he said. "They were integrated into the Marines for this invasion, and there's not too many Seabee battalions that experienced that. There's others, but the 133rd was one of the first."

"Black Hell," a 440-page compilation of firsthand accounts, photos and historical chapters written by Bingham and other researchers, explains how Unit 133 helped the U.S. capture Iwo Jima in one of the most crucial battles of World War II.

On Feb. 19, 1945, the 1,000-member unit landed on the shore of the Japanese island and donned Marine Corps uniforms to fight in the first wave of the battle — a highly uncharacteristic move for a naval unit.

"There was another (Marine) battalion that was supposed to go in, but they had a bad case of dengue fever, so the 133rd, which was going through infantry training and jungle warfare training in Hawaii, was shipped out," Bingham said.

The unit, which suffered 28 percent casualties, built the first airstrips on Iwo Jima, allowing the U.S. to land planes that had been damaged in battles over Japan.

"It's estimated that 25,000 lives were saved by having the emergency landing," Bingham said. "Some of the pilots would jump out of their burning airplanes and get down and kiss the dirt of Iwo Jima."

Bingham, a retired project engineer, has been writing historical books for nonprofits since 2007 and spent about a year and a half working on "Black Hell." He hopes the book, named for the volcanic black ash covering the beach at Iwo Jima, will help the unit gain national recognition.

After the battle, the unit was awarded the Naval Unit Citation, but the Marine unit it fought with received the Presidential Unit Citation, a higher honor.

For several years, unit veterans and their family members have been campaigning for the national medal, which likely wasn't awarded to them initially because their unit was technically classified as a support unit, Bingham said.

"They would like to be upgraded for their sacrifices," he said. "They actually received higher casualties than the Marine unit they were joined at the hip with."

Only about 100 of the Seabees in Unit 133 are still living — none in Ventura County, Bingham noted. Many of them assisted him with the book, he said.

Bingham is donating all of the proceeds from "Black Hell" to the Navy Civil Engineer Corps and Seabee Historical Foundation, which supports the Seabee Museum in Port Hueneme.

"I also wish to highlight the rich history and association that the Seabees have with Ventura County," he said. "There were approximately 325,000 Seabees during World War II, and 175,000 came through Port Hueneme."

The book can be purchased for $19.95 through Amazon or Create Space, www.createspace.com/3694897, which is Bingham's publisher and gives the foundation a larger percentage of the profits. Copies also will be sold at the museum in coming weeks.