Holly Rees was born in January 1926 in Prescott, Arizona. Although he grew up during the Great Depression, his father was an automobile mechanic, and was always able to provide for the family. Rees was in his last semester of high school when he turned 18 in 1944. A military service deferment enabled him to finish his senior year, and he graduated on 3 June. Early on the following Monday, D-Day [Annotator's Note: Allied invasion of Normandy, France on 6 June 1944] in Europe, he was on the bus to Phoenix, Arizona to undergo government physicals. Someone on the bus had a portable radio, and they heard the news about the Normandy invasion. He went back home to await his draft notice. When three months had passed with no word, he and a buddy went to the recruitment office and volunteered. He was sent to Camp Roberts, near San Louis Obispo, California for basic training that emphasized use of the rifle, but he was also trained on mortars, Browning Automatic Rifles, machine guns, pistols, bazookas, and explosives. He remembered there was in-depth training on gas masks, and that his was fitted with prescription glasses. The recruits had to take their mask everywhere they went; caught without it, their pay was docked. He qualified for officer candidate training, but failed the eye test, and was "red lined." He rejoined the rest of his group at Fort Ord, California, for more training that included swimming lessons. He traveled by troop train to Fort Lewis in Seattle, Washington, where he was issued clothing for his tour of duty in the Pacific. While waiting in the Pacific Northwest, he remembered being very cold. The soldiers boarded a troop ship in Seattle, and as they sailed out of Puget Sound, they encountered rough weather and everyone was seasick. Rees had to be confined to sickbay, along with wounded Nisei [Annotator's Note: first generation Japanese-American] soldiers who were returning to Hawaii from the battlefields of Europe. Rees said it was "not the best selling point" for an infantryman who was on the way to war in the Pacific. When he reached Honolulu [Annotator's Note: Honolulu, Hawaii], he recalled having to help push the overloaded narrow gauge train uphill from the harbor to the replacement depot, and that for the 12 days he remained in Hawaii, it rained every afternoon during formation. Once again on a troop ship, he left Pearl Harbor and headed for Saipan.

On the troop ship out of Pearl Harbor, Holly Rees said there was little to do, and the soldiers played cards and got into mischief. When they landed on the previously secured island of Saipan [Annotator's Note: Saipan, Mariana Islands], the terrain still showed signs of the battles the year before. After a short stay, their ship proceeded to Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan], landing on 10 May [Annotator's Note: 10 May 1945], the 40th day of fighting on the island. Rees was among the 2,000 replacements who integrated into the 7th Infantry Division which had been pulled back after a long stretch in the field. In all the turmoil, he heard someone yell his name, and was reunited with the buddy that had volunteered with him. They spent the night talking, but were assigned to different outfits the next morning. Within two weeks his buddy had been shot twice and taken out of combat. Rees' division was recommitted on 21 May at Yonabaru, on the eastern end of the fighting. It took Rees' company [Annotator's Note: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division] 32 days to scrape across eight miles to the southern end of Okinawa. During that time, they encountered Japanese troops in the hillside caves, firing five inch naval guns that were lowered to a flat trajectory and shot directly at the American troops. When the monsoon eased off a little, his unit embarked on a planned attack that called for air support from Marine Corsairs [Annotator's Note: Vought F4U Corsair fighter aircraft] to strafe the Japanese positions. The Americans rolled out luminescent orange oilcloth panels to mark their front line and while Rees was standing next to his company commander and their artillery officer, .50 caliber bullets came blazing through Company I. Two bullets hit the artillery officer, one on either side of his spine. Rees said that going into his back, the bullets made half inch holes; but the exit wounds were five inch holes, which practically cut him in half, and splattered his blood and guts on his two companions. In two or three minutes the man was dead from what is Rees said is "euphemistically" called "friendly fire"; though Rees doubts that the pilot ever knew that he killed an artillery captain. The worst part, Rees said, was that the unit behind them started rolling out their panels, to indicate a pull back in the front line, and they had to hurry a radio message to abort the air support. Then they moved on.

The next little village Holly Rees' division approached was Keradera [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] with Company I on point [Annotator's Note: Rees was a member of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division]. The Americans took the hill, but during the night the Japanese counterattacked and killed about 12 of Rees' company. In the pitch dark, mist and rain, with only the artillery radio working, they reached JASCO [Annotator's Note: Joint Assist Signal Company] who in turn contacted an offshore destroyer. The ship fired flares to light up the field, and the Americans were able to retake their ground, leaving about 150 enemy dead. It was later learned that an entire Japanese battalion had attacked his infantry company, and lost, for which Rees' company earned the Presidential Unit Citation. They were relieved, and headed east. On the muddy march, Rees avoided a piece of wood lying in his path, but the guy behind him stepped on it and was blown "to smithereens." From the coast, Rees's company proceeded to take the adjacent island of Kudaka in an amphibious attack, for which Rees was awarded a bronze arrowhead to pin on his Pacific ribbon. Afterward, the unit returned to the main island, moved inland and started back south. A day or so later, as they fought from hill to hill, Rees volunteered to run a telephone wire and on the way back help remove the dead and wounded. He was nominated for a Bronze Star [Annotator's Note: the fourth-highest award a United States service member can receive for a heroic or meritorious deed performed in a conflict with an armed enemy] for that mission, but the request was turned down on the premise that he was only "doing his duty." They came out onto the flatlands on the southern tip of Okinawa, and reached the sea, where the commanding general announced that Okinawa was secure on 21 June [Annotator's Note: 21 June 1945]. While standing around with a bunch of soldiers on the shore, a sniper in the hill above shot one guy in the leg, shot Rees in the foot, and "put a round in the radiator of the company jeep." Everyone dove for foxholes and while Rees was pinned down for an hour or two, he cut off his boot and patched his "million dollar wound". After the sniper was killed, Rees was eventually loaded onto a small plane, experiencing his first flight while in transit to a field hospital.

At the 68th Field Hospital, Holly Rees was carried into a Quonset hut and laid on the floor, where he waited while more serious cases were handled. He was afraid to go to sleep, and was conscious enough to refuse to sign a release for an amputation of the front of his foot. Instead he was put into a cast that had a "porthole" above the wound so it could be tended. He was flown to the 111th Naval Hospital on Guam [Annotator's Note: Guam, Mariana Islands], and then to the 219th General Hospital at Schofield Barracks on Oahu, Hawaii. There, he underwent the "barbaric" surgery available at that time, and was moved to San Francisco, California and farmed out to the Hammond General Hospital in Modesto, California. He had a second and third surgery there, and during his recuperation, the atomic bombs were dropped and the war with Japan ended. He spent three months in the hospital, and at the end of September 1945 he was returned to "limited duty." After some leave time, he went to the Fort Sam Houston [Annotator's Note: in San Antonio, Texas] redistribution center, and was reassigned to administration of a USAFI [Annotator's note: United States Armed Forces Institute] program in connection with the University of Wisconsin, in Madison. It was a "cushy job" that he enjoyed. He was discharged the last day of June 1946, seven months shy of his 21st birthday. It annoyed Rees that although was old enough to go to war, he was too young to vote, or legally buy alcohol.

Returning to his prewar life, Holly Rees remembered when he heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941]. It was a Sunday morning, and he and a friend listened to the reports on the radio of a light colored Plymouth coup. The next day, President Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] went before Congress and war was declared. Rees admitted that he probably didn't know enough about the situation to realize that in a few years he would be "in the thick of it." After his training, Rees was relatively sure that he was prepared for his role in the war. Looking back, he knows that he was young and ignorant of what the real experience would be like. He said the soldiers were "psyched up to hate the Japs [Annotator's Note: a period derogatory term for Japanese]," and were "gung-ho." Rees shot his first enemy soldier on his first day of combat, and at the time he didn't feel any remorse. He said, "When somebody is shooting at you, you have no problem shooting back." Years later, he had afterthoughts about taking human life; but recognized that things were different under the circumstances of war. It is Rees' opinion that "a lot of the shooting was impersonal." He thought the single most effective American weapon on Okinawa [Annotator's Note: Okinawa, Japan] was the M-1 Garand [Annotator's Note: .30 caliber M1 semi-automatic rifle, also known as the M1 Garand]; the vast majority of the infantrymen carried that semi-automatic rifle. The most feared Japanese weapon, in Rees' view, was the knee mortar [Annotator's Note: Japanese Type 89 Grenade Discharger], a highly portable and easy to fire device. Asked what he was fighting for, Rees said that initially, it was patriotism. But once on the battlefield, it was more for his unit [Annotator's Note: Company I, 3rd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division] and his fellow man. Everything was based on teamwork and mutual coverage.

Asked how he got a Japanese flag, Holly Rees said that nearly every enemy soldier carried one folded up on top of the head under the helmet. In displaying the trophy, Rees said that if he had known his target was carrying such a nice flag, he would have aimed a little lower; that way it would not be stained with blood and brains. He has had the writings on the fabric translated, and they are the parting wishes of his friends and relatives. Rees said he was surprised to find many of them "pessimistic," such as "die nobly for the emperor," and "choose the time of your death." Each of the 25 messages is addressed to the soldier Slanji Tamoy [Annotator's Note: phonetic spelling] who was 19 when given the flag. Rees noted that he was 19 when he shot the man, and learning his name and age added a poignant dimension to the item. For Rees, the most difficult part of being in combat was knowing the suffering of his fellow soldiers from "battle fatigue"; during his division's [Annotator's Note: Rees was a member of Company I, 3rd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division] 82 days of combat, there were between 4,500 and 5,000 soldiers evacuated from Okinawa for what was then known as "shell shock." Rees describes in detail how the combination of the constant stress of battle, the death and injury, the noise, the smell, the weather, the deprivation, the destruction, loss of one's comrades, survivor's guilt, and the uncertainty of an end to the fighting all weighed upon the infantrymen. The memories are seared into Rees' mind.

Although in retrospect Holly Rees thinks he may have been naive, he felt certain that his battlefield career was over at the time of his injury. He was in a hospital in the United States when the atomic bombs were dropped, and was elated when he heard the news that the war was over. It meant his division [Annotator's Note: Rees was a rifleman in Company I, 3rd Battalion, 184th Infantry Regiment, 7th Infantry Division] would be spared the invasion of mainland Japan. Rees felt the atomic bombs preserved more lives than they wasted. The worst thing to him was "the opening of Pandora's box," and the potential of such weapons in future conflicts. He felt the Japanese soldiers were as good or better than the American forces. Under siege, they were "lean and mean." He mentions that he had no contact with the indigenous Okinawans, and remembered only one native, maybe a woman who appeared to be either handicapped or weighted down, struggling across the battleground. The group consensus was to preclude the risk that it was a trick, and they "cut her down." When the target "blew into smithereens," it was clear that she was carrying grenades and ammunition for the enemy. Asked how his war experience affected the rest of his life, Rees said that his foot injury made a difference in his physical activities; but he also felt that his time in the armed forces "accelerated" his maturity from a high school kid to a man. After he was discharged, he enrolled in college and got a degree in business administration with the help of the Vocational Rehabilitation Act. He married and raised a family. Rees said he thinks America had to declare war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor [Annotator's Note: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on 7 December 1941] and the Philippines, and that it is extremely important that there are institutions such as The National WWII Museum [Annotator's Note: in New Orleans, Louisiana] and the national memorials that preserve the history of the war.