��������Ƶ Boulder distinguished professor and Marine veteran Richard Jessor reflects on what the planting of the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi Feb. 23, 1945, meant for the country and for him personally

Eighty years later, Richard Jessor vividly recalls hitting the beach on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945.

“The island had been under severe bombardment from U.S. aircraft and our Navy ships offshore,” says Jessor. “Both types of bombardment had been going on for quite some time, and the sense was that Iwo Jima could be taken in three or four days because nothing could have survived such a massive bombardment from American forces.”

The first three waves of Marines landed on the beach without taking enemy fire.

“By the time we in the fourth wave hit the beach, the Japanese—who were concealed, waiting for us—pulled their artillery out of the caves and had every inch of the beach registered, so when our tractor hit the beach, we were under severe fire,” recalls Jessor, then a 20-year-old Marine. “Our tractor got stuck at the beach edge and could not move us up, so we jumped out of the tractor into the water.

“As I hit the beach, I looked over and there was a Marine lying on his back, a bubble of blood coming out of his mouth. He died there, and that was my first exposure to combat.”

Jessor was hit in the back by shrapnel during the first day ashore but was able to continue fighting. After four days of fighting, he and his company were pulled back from the front line and told they could write one letter.

He wrote a letter to his parents, thanking them for everything they had done for him. He also said his goodbyes, “because I didn’t think anyone was going to get off the island alive,” he says, explaining, “there was carnage all of the time, every day, and you felt every day that it was going to be your last day.

“We were constantly being fired upon by the Japanese, who would come to the openings of their caves and fire, and then withdraw, so we didn’t see the enemy, and that was a huge source of frustration,” he adds. As it turned out, the Japanese had heavily fortified the island and had a dense network of tunnels from which they could launch attacks.

The flag raised atop Mount Suribachi

Back on the line the morning of the fifth day, Jessor looked at the opposite end of the island to see something in the distance atop Mount Suribachi, the dominant geographical feature on Iwo Jima.

“As I looked, I suddenly saw the American flag flying. I couldn’t see anything else that was that far away, but I saw the flag flying and I started shouting, ‘The flag is up! The flag is up!’” he says. “The other Marines around me began turning around to look. Seeing that made us realize that our rear was now being covered, because we had been under attack from behind as well as in front.

“For me, it was a moment of being able to say to myself, ‘Maybe I will get out of this alive,’” he adds. “In that sense, it was transformative for me, and I remember it well.”

The flag raising lifted the spirits of the Marines on the island, and later it did the same for a war-weary American public at home, when the image of Marines raising the flag was captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal. Rosenthal won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for photography, and the photo has is one of the 

Jessor says the photo symbolized the Marines’ perseverance in the face of one of the bloodiest battles of the war, and it helped shape the public’s sentiment that victory in the Pacific was at hand. However, it also may have inadvertently created a false impression among the public, he says.

“Some people may think that when the flag went up the island was secure—and that was absolutely not the case,” Jessor explains. “When the flag went up, on day five, we still had 31 more days of fighting—and most of the casualties took place after the flag raising. Close to 7,000 Marines were killed in the 36-day battle.”

Meanwhile, as the Marines advanced, they sometimes came across the bodies of dead Japanese soldiers, whom they searched for souvenirs. Marines were particularly interested in Japanese “good luck flags,” which bore well wishes from friends and family and which were often tied around soldier’s waist.

“One morning, when I looked out my foxhole, I saw a dead Japanese soldier. I walked over to him to see whether he had a flag under his shirt, and as I bent over, I saw he had letters in his shirt pocket,” presumably from his family, he says. “Well, I had letters from family in my pocket—and suddenly I was struck by the fact that in so many ways we shared the same humanity. I couldn’t blame him any more than I could blame myself for being in the same situation. It gave me pause about how stupid it was to be engaged in this kind of activity (war).”

An epiphany amidst combat

Jessor called that moment an epiphany. He made two vows then and there: that he would never go to war again and that he would go on to do something meaningful with his life.

First, though, he had to get off the island alive.

His next challenge came a few days later, when he was ordered to take a Japanese soldier captured at the front lines under his guard to the beach, where interpreters could question the prisoner about the placement of weapons facing the Marines.

“As I said, there was a great deal of frustration that we could not see the enemy we were fighting, so I anticipated there could be some attempts on my prisoner as I started walking him back through the rear lines,” Jessor recalls. “As we got through the rear of the lines, where our artillery was, a Marine jumped up, running toward me and my prisoner, saying, ‘I’m going to kill that son-of-a-bitch.’

“I had to point my rifle at his head and say, ‘I have orders to shoot anybody who touches my prisoner,’ and so he stopped and finally backed off. And the same thing happened a second time before I got the prisoner to the beach and turned him over to command headquarters,” he says.

“As I’ve ruminated these 80 years, I’m not sure whether I would have shot that fellow Marine if he had not desisted from his threat, and it worries me that I might have done that.”

Finally, the objective is achieved

After 36 days, the Marines secured Iwo Jima. A short time later, U.S. aircraft were able to use its runway, which—combined with the island’s proximity to the Japanese mainland—made it a strategic military objective.

“Capturing Iwo Jima had immediate consequences for the approach to Japan,” Jessor says. “What was happening was that our bombers were leaving from Saipan or Tinian, and some of those bombers would get hit over Japan and not be able to make it back, so they would have to ditch in the sea, and many were lost. So, the fact Iwo Jima had a landing strip on it was important for that reason, as well as serving as a base for the projected attack on Tokyo.”

But the victory came at a tremendous cost to the Marines.

“We were destroyed. As I said, almost 7,000 Marines were killed on that island,” Jessor says. The scale of the loss was on display when Jessor and fellow Marines retraced their steps to the landing beach, which was arrayed with crosses where Marines were temporarily buried after falling in combat.

The Marines were shipped back to their training grounds in Maui for their next mission—the planned invasion of Japan.

They spent their days practicing landing craft invasions. At night, Jessor says he and a few of his fellow Iwo Jima veterans would gather in their tent to relive details of the battle, which he believes had a cathartic effect.

Jessor also recalls being on Maui when the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

“When the bomb dropped, we all thought it was a great thing,” he recalls. “We were saying to each other, ‘No more war! We get to go home!’”

However, in retrospect, as the scale of the death and destruction in those cities became known, Jessor says he reevaluated his opinion about that fateful decision. At the same time, Jessor says he developed a deep disdain for politicians who were so easily willing to put American troops in combat.

“They talk about it like it’s a game,” he says. “They haven’t the slightest sense of what combat is like and what it does to people and the destruction it causes. Even for the many people who survive the experience, their lives are changed forever.”

After the war

After he was discharged, Jessor made good on his promise to himself to make a difference for the better. After earning his doctorate, in 1951 he accepted a position as an assistant professor of psychology at ��������Ƶ Boulder.

During his ensuing 70 years at ��������Ƶ Boulder, he co-founded and later directed the (its building was recently renamed in his honor); wrote in January 1970 critiquing the lack of diversity on campus and making suggestions for positive changes; wrote a report in the 1960s that took the ��������Ƶ Board of Regents to task for being unresponsive to students and faculty, which earned him the ire of former Regent Joe Coors; and wrote 10 books. He retired as a distinguished professor in 2021, which makes him the university’s longest-serving professor.

Like many World War II veterans, Jessor rarely spoke of his experiences during the war, even to close friends and his own family. That changed for him after he saw the World War II movie , which opens with a scene of American soldiers storming the beaches of Normandy, France, under intense fire from German soldiers.

“As a trained clinical psychologist, I didn’t want to share my experiences with others, so I didn’t talk much about having been a Marine,” he says. “And then one day, my wife, Jane, and I were in Aspen. It was raining, so we couldn’t go hiking, so instead we went to the movies and saw Saving Private Ryan.

“The Steven Spielberg-directed movie was the real thing,” he says. “When the invasion scenes start at the beginning, I was sobbing, and the tears were running down my face. And while that was happening, I’m saying to myself, ‘You’re a psychologist and you didn’t know that you still had this inside you?’ And obviously, I didn’t.

“The movie brought it all back to me, and so I began talking about it from that point on.”

“I don’t ever want to forget that experience, because it strengthened me in many ways. Sometimes I would say to myself, ‘If I can get through Iwo Jima, I can get through anything.’ But in other ways, it reminds me what war is all about and what has to be done so they don’t happen anymore.”

Jessor had hoped to return to Iwo Jima last year. The  in New Orleans offered to cover all expenses for him and his wife to attend a Pacific war theater travel lecture tour series it offers to patrons, which was to include a visit to Iwo Jima. However, the island is open to visitors only one day a year, and volcanic activity on the island at the time resulted in the tour being cancelled. Noting his age—he is 100—Jessor says he’s unsure he will ever have the opportunity to return to the island, despite his strong desire to do so.

Reflecting on the past

These days, Jessor keeps some mementos on his work desk to remind him of his time on Iwo Jima: a deactivated Japanese hand grenade he took home from the battle and a jar containing black sand from the beach where he landed. The jar of sand was given to him by a friend who visited the island in 2002.

“Sometimes I’m barely aware they are there, and then other times I’ll look over and see the grenade or the vial of sand and it all comes back to me. It’s a reminder that I value a great deal,” he says.

“I don’t ever want to forget that experience, because it strengthened me in many ways. Sometimes I would say to myself, ‘If I can get through Iwo Jima, I can get through anything.’ But in other ways, it reminds me what war is all about and what has to be done so they don’t happen anymore.”

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Richard Jessor, ��������Ƶ Boulder professor emeritus, to join Miami’s New World Symphony this weekend to be interviewed by historian James Holland

Next spring marks the 80^th anniversary of the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and Miami Beach’s New World Symphony is performing two concerts this weekend that will feature pre-concert interviews with Richard Jessor, a University of Colorado Boulder professor emeritus of behavioral science who fought with the U.S. Marines on the island of Iwo Jima.

Conductor Lidiya Yankovskaya and best-selling historian James Holland will team up for a commemorative concert honoring veterans and the “global sounds of resilience.”

The symphony characterized the event this way: “From the beaches of Normandy and Iwo Jima to the skies of the Tuskegee Airmen, explore the global fight for democracy through music that commemorates and reflects. Soprano Emily Magee makes her NWS debut in the pensive and poignant Four Last Songs.”

In pre-concert appearances on Saturday, Nov. 9, and Sunday, Nov. 10, Holland will interview Jessor about his experiences in the war.

Jessor, who will turn 100 this month, said the attempt to use music to illuminate “such deeply disturbing human experiences as war and the Holocaust is, to my mind, an admirable enterprise deserving support.”

Additionally, he said, the event should underscore the need for societies to do everything possible to avoid such calamities in the future. “And finally, perhaps, as one of the diminishing cohort of WWII combat veterans still alive, I feel a continuing responsibility to be a voice against the madness of wars.”

Jessor noted that the senior vice president for artistic planning and programs of the New World Symphony is Martin Sher, son of Boyce Sher and Daniel Sher, dean emeritus of ��������Ƶ Boulder’s College of Music.

Jessor met Martin Sher in July when he was visiting his parents in Boulder. At that meeting, Sher discussed his plan to devote the 2024-25 programs to commemorating the end of World War II and the Holocaust, and he wanted to present music that would provide an interesting and inspirational commentary.

Examples include Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony, written when the city was under siege, and the music for the film Saving Private Ryan, written by John Williams. Sher also wanted to learn more about Jessor’s combat experience as a Marine in the battle for Iwo Jima.

At the time, Sher was consulting with Holland, and . Later, Sher conceived the idea of the pre-concert interviews and asked Jessor to have those conversations with Holland in person. “Of course, I agreed,” Jessor said.

This are free to veterans. Saturday’s concert is available to stream live and will be available online after the performance. The streaming option is free to anyone with an email address who registers at . The full concert program is at .

Jessor’s pre-concert interview will not be streamed, however.

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Study led by ��������Ƶ Boulder researcher finds that flavored-tobacco products reduce likelihood of later cessation, but researchers say more investigation is needed

As a senior studying psychology and neuroscience at the University of Colorado Boulder,  (Psych’03) took a job at a large residential treatment center for youth in nearby Westminster. During overnight shifts she found herself poring over client case files.

“While the kids were sleeping, I was reading through a lot of their history, becoming more interested in why they have these problems, and how we can prevent them,” says Steeger, who is now a research assistant professor at the .

After conducting behavioral and mental health research with youth and their families for several years, she earned a PhD in developmental psychology from the University of Notre Dame in 2013 and did postdoctoral work at Yale University. She was a research scientist at the University of Washington before returning to ��������Ƶ Boulder in 2017.

's research interests and expertise are in prevention science, developmental psychopathology, etiology of problem behaviors, tobacco and cannabis research, and individual-, family- and school-based interventions. 

Throughout her career, Steeger has retained her interest in substance-use prevention and prevention of other problem behaviors for youth. 

“The vaping and opioid epidemics are significant public-health issues affecting youth and adults. Given the widespread impact, society is paying more attention to these problems and how to treat and prevent them,” she says. 

Although adults were the subjects of a recent paper, “Longitudinal associations between flavored tobacco use and tobacco product cessation in a national sample of adults,” published in July 2022 in , the study also has significant implications for youth, says Steeger, who served as the study’s lead author. 

Flavored tobacco products are “designed to appeal to kids as well as adults. Big tobacco knows how to market to kids and catch their eyes,” she says.

For the study, Steeger and her co-authors, including Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience  at IBS and colleagues from Yale and the University of Southern California, analyzed data from the ongoing Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health Study of thousands of subjects from 2013 through 2018 to determine whether use of flavored tobacco affected later cessation of tobacco use. 

The researchers found that past 30-day use of flavored cigarettes, cigars, hookah, e-cigarettes and smokeless tobacco was associated with lower likelihood of short-term and “longer-term” (24-month) cessation or abstinence from tobacco use.

“We were looking at how likely or unlikely people are able to quit that product a couple of years later, and how likely they were able to quit any of the five products. We found compelling evidence that flavored compared to unflavored tobacco use meant they were much less likely to quit,” Steeger says. 

She stresses that further work needs to be done, but argues that the study’s design shows the same pattern of effects across five products over a significant period of time, indicating that “characterizing flavors like menthol/mint and fruit, candy/desserts and other sweet flavors are likely contributing to prolonged use of tobacco.”

The study found that the effect for e-cigarettes was more pronounced for users aged 18-24 than those ages 25 and older. 

“That’s telling us that young adults (who use flavored e-cigarettes) may have an even harder time quitting,” Steeger says.

Meanwhile, it’s no secret that tobacco companies design and market nicotine-containing products to appeal to new users, most notably the young. Adding flavoring to various products may make it easier to hook new users.

“With e-cigarettes in particular, a lot of kids start because they are just curious about them and they come in fun flavors. And if it tastes good, the flavors can mask the harsh and bitter taste from using nicotine, allowing them to continue using the product,” Steeger says. 

Menthol flavoring, for example, may act as an analgesic to reduce irritation on mucus membranes and the respiratory system. And sweet flavorings mimicking fruit, candy, or chocolate, may trigger pleasant sensory associations with food, partially mitigating negative sensations.

Steeger stresses that researchers “certainly don’t have all the answers yet” when it comes to the consequences of using flavored tobacco products. But she notes that research lags the constant introduction of new products by tobacco companies, making it challenging to mount an effective regulatory response. She also points out that research on whether flavored e-cigarettes actually help adults quit smoking remains inconclusive.

“But this study provides additional evidence for the (U.S. Food and Drug Administration) to consider. When we are finding the same pattern of associations across both combustible and non-combustible flavored products, it’s likely that it’s contributing to sustained use,” she says. 

As the researchers conclude, “If the current study associations between flavor use and cessation behaviors reflect causal links, FDA regulations to remove flavored cigarettes and cigars from the market would reduce longer-term exposure to harmful combustible products.”

Steeger is interested in delving deeper into what may account for any association between flavored-product use and ability to quit. She recently obtained a seed grant to begin looking at disparities in both nicotine and cannabis vaping among youth across gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic status, rural or urban location, and other factors.

 

The big tobacco companies are smart and know exactly how to market to teens. They say they haven’t been, but just look at the ads and the range of tasty flavors that directly appeal to teens.”

Understanding why and how kids start to use potentially addictive products, and which types of kids are vaping and continue to vape over time, is critically important, she says, given the forces marshaled on the other side. 

“The big tobacco companies are smart and know exactly how to market to teens,” she says. “They say they haven’t been, but just look at the ads and the range of tasty flavors that directly appeal to teens.”

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Genes matter, says ��������Ƶ Boulder’s Jason Boardman, but so does the environment

Young adults living in high-crime areas have an increased genetic risk for Type 2 diabetes, according to a  co-authored by Jason Boardman, University of Colorado Boulder professor of sociology and director of the .

Boardman and his co-authors published their paper, “Does Crime Trigger Genetic Risk for Type 2 Diabetes in Young Adults? A G x E Interaction Study Using National Data,” in Social Science & Medicine in November. 

A key takeaway is that genes are not an irrefutable crystal ball predicting people’s health future. The environment plays a significant role as well. 

Jason Boardman teaches undergraduate and graduate-level courses in statistics, social demography, and the sociology of race and ethnicity. 

“Genes matter,” says Boardman, “but how they are linked to your health depends on where you live.” 

Key to understanding why, says Boardman, who studies the social determinants of health, is the notion of environmental triggering, a phenomenon by which the environment elicits certain genetic responses. 

It’s a bit like planting a flower, Boardman says, with the seed being people’s genes and the soil, water and sunlight being the environment. The seed may be planted, but without the right environmental conditions, it won’t sprout. 

Something similar happens with Type 2 diabetes. 

“Genetic risk for Type 2 diabetes does not manifest as a risk absent environmental triggers—in this case, local area crime rate,” Boardman explains. “Indeed, we find that the polygenic risk for Type 2 diabetes is non-existent among residents of communities with little to no crime.” 

In other words, genetic variants linked to Type 2 diabetes are not enough to give someone the disease. What counts is how those genes interact with the environment. 

Boardman and his colleagues’ findings recast what many consider the primary driver of Type 2 diabetes: obesity, which Boardman says plays not so much a causal role as a mediating one.  

To understand how this works, Boardman explains, imagine the same person in two scenarios. 

In the first scenario, this person lives in an area with a low crime rate. He or she therefore experiences little stress and has access to healthy coping mechanisms, such as walking or riding a bike outside. This person is consequently unlikely to become obese and develop diabetes. 

In the second scenario, however, this same person lives in a high-crime area and has elevated stress levels and limited access to healthy coping mechanisms. This person is therefore more likely to internalize stress, adopt an unhealthy dietary pattern, gain weight and become diabetic. 

Same person, same genes, opposite outcomes. The only difference between the two scenarios is the environment. 

“Thus,” says Boardman, “what appears to be a biological process is in large part a social process.”

Boardman began studying the social influences of health several decades ago. 

“I was fortunate to be part of the Social Environment Working Group of the National Children’s Study in the early 2000s,” he says. 

While working with this group, Boardman witnessed the scientific community placing “a great deal of emphasis on collecting and summarizing rich biological measures of population health” while overlooking “comparably rich measures of the social and physical communities in which people live, go to school and play.” 

But rather than criticize the field of statistical genetics, Boardman decided to gain training in it. He received a career development award from the Eunice Kenney Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Development and, as a tenure-track professor, enrolled in the graduate-training program at ��������Ƶ’s Institute for Behavioral Genetics.  

Boardman says that research exploring gene-environment interactions provides a more nuanced understanding of what causes Type 2 diabetes than does the nature-nurture argument.  

“The nature-nurture dichotomy gets us nowhere in terms of understanding complex phenomena like the increase in obesity in recent years,” says Boardman, adding that it’s not either nature or nurture that people should be focusing on, but both. 

“Nurture fundamentally affects nature, and nature fundamentally affects nurture.” 

Boardman also hopes his research will provide a counterpoint to what he considers a worrying trend. 

“I am most concerned about the routine practice among researchers utilizing genome-wide data and related summary scores to limit their analyses to individuals who identify with a similar socially defined racial group,” he says. 

“My hope is to contribute to methods that provide summary genetic scores that belie the unnecessary need to run models separately by racial and ethnic group.” 

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