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Show Forrestal Hails Aid for Wounded 12,000 Iwo Casualties May Be Fully Restored. NEW YORK. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal declared that as many as 12,000 of the 15,300 fighting men wounded on Iwo island is-land might be completely restored to health, with reports indicating that between 6,000 and 7,000 had returned re-turned to their divisions before the fall of Iwo. He spoke to 1,500 workers attending attend-ing the first report luncheon of the Red Cross 1945 War Fund of Greater New York. Out of every 100 navy men and marines wounded in the first three years of war, 93 have recovered, Mr. Forrestal said. Among the marines 75 have been able to return to active combat duties. "We will do everything in our power pow-er to keep that record good," he promised. "I mention it here because be-cause of a tendency to regard all casualties as fatalities. It is easy, for example, to speak of our 'losses' at Iwo Jima as 19,900 men, forgetting forget-ting that of this total. 15.300 were wounded." Going into other figures, the secretary, secre-tary, who visited the hospital ship, Samaritan, off Iwo the day after D-Day, estimated that in his opinion "there was in excess of 24,000 Japanese" Jap-anese" on the island. He said, "as . of today there are 21,500 actually ! "killed." s He paid tribute to the Red Cross saying he had accepted the invitation invita-tion to speak at the lunch "because I felt an obligation to make some return for the work which I saw the . Red Cross doing in the Pacific." He said that with every marine division moving into combat there is a Red Cross unit'of four to five men, "usually "usu-ally over fighting age, but they still have fighting qualities," who landed with the marines at Tinian, Saipan, Kwajalein and Iwo. He also referred to the first Red Cross club in the Philippines which was opened to 3,000 American and Philippine troops 21 days after the Leyte landing. |