"Thank you, thank you for your service," Lucas, 77, said with a smile to each of them.

They, in turn, thanked him for his service — which was far beyond the call of duty.

A North Carolina kid who fast-talked his way into the Marines at 14, Lucas played a heroic role in one of history's great battles.

He was among two dozen Iwo Jima survivors honored by the 500 people who attended the Kane'ohe ceremony at Marine Corps Base Hawai'i yesterday.

The occasion also marked the third anniversary of the dedication of the base's $600,000 Pacific War Memorial, a sculpted depiction of the most famous image of World War II — Joe Rosenthal's photo of the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi.

Yesterday's ceremonies also marked the third anniversary of the dedication of the Pacific War Memorial at the Kane'ohe base. Richard Ambo • The Honolulu Advertiser

The keynote speaker, retired Marine Brig. Gen. Jerome Hagen, spoke of the uncommon bravery shown by Iwo Jima Marines such as Lucas.

Lucas, who had turned 17 on Feb. 14, 1945, found himself in Hawai'i as the battle drew near. Assigned as a Marine truck driver, he stowed away aboard a troop transport bound for Iwo Jima because he wanted to be in combat.

"I didn't know where they were going," said Lucas. "But I knew they don't assemble that many ships at Pearl Harbor with the 4th and 5th Marine divisions without getting ready to go somewhere. And that's where I wanted to be."

Lucas landed on Iwo Jima on the first day without a rifle. He grabbed one off the beach and dived into the fray. On the second day, he and three buddies were ambushed by eight Japanese soldiers. Lucas shot and killed one Japanese soldier before falling across two enemy grenades to save his buddies.

Incredibly, he survived the blast and became the youngest American ever awarded the Medal of Honor since the Civil War. Lucas wore that medal yesterday.

Iwo Jima is an 8-square-mile speck of inhospitable raw earth 660 miles south of Tokyo. But toward the end of World War II, its importance was clearly understood by the Japanese and the Americans.

Because of fuel limitations, American B-29 bombers flying the 3,000-mile roundtrip from the Marianas to Japan and back had to fly over Japanese anti-aircraft batteries on Iwo Jima. America was as determined to capture the island as the Japanese were to keep it.

By the time the Marines arrived on Feb. 19, 1945, 22,000 Japanese were entrenched inside 16 miles of tunnels beneath the rocky landscape. Some 7,000 Americans and 20,000 Japanese were killed in the 36-day conflict that brought an earlier end to World War II and saved tens of thousands of lives.

On Saturday, Lucas was among a group of survivors who visited Iwo Jima. Another was John Hartford of Newton, Kan., a Navy Seabee assigned to Iwo Jima between February and September of 1945.

"I celebrated my 19th birthday on that island," Hartford, 79, recalled yesterday "The only time I was ever back was last Saturday. And it was just as dusty and dirty as it was in World War II."