Pacific War Stories by Misha Beletsky

A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY “Parts of the ship, flames, and bomb fragments flew by us, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. The ship’s midsection opened like a blooming flower, burning white hot from within. Our entire magazine and forward oil storage had exploded; tons of TNT and thousands of gallons of fuel oil poured into the water. Black smoke billowed into the sky as the oil caught fire.”—RUSSELL MCCURDY, MARINES THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES “On the Bataan Death March I saw many guys trying to help comrades in distress, but it wasn’t the guys that were in distress who were killed. It was the guys who were trying to help them.”—JOHN BRUER, ARMY COPING WITH CASUALTIES “These guys, the Marines, God love ‘em, they’d fight until they couldn’t fight anymore. They’d fight with broken arms, gunshot wounds, shrapnel wounds, and things like that. I’d patch them up and tell them to go back to the ship and they’d say, ‘I’m all right,’ and they would just keep fighting.”—VERN GARRETT, NAVY

gerald a. meehl (left) and rex alan smith

ABOUT THE EDITORS Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl co-authored Abbeville’s recent volume Pacific Legacy: Image and Memory from World War II in the Pacific. Smith is a veteran of thirty-six months with the Army Engineers in the Pacific. He is the author of Moon of Popping Trees, The Carving of Mount Rushmore (Abbeville), and One Last Look (Abbeville), about the Eighth Air Force in World War II. Meehl has traveled extensively in the South Pacific over the last thirty years and visited and photographed every major Pacific battlefield and site connected to World War II. He is the author of more than ninety articles, and his photographs have been published in numerous periodicals.

THE WAR IN THE AIR “Suddenly, I heard something hit the plane and turned to look out the left waist gun window, and there was thick black smoke trailing out of the left engine. It turned out that ground fire had hit the prop governor and part of the engine had been shot away.”

ALSO AVAILABLE FROM ABBEVILLE PRESS

—JOHN BEDDALL, ARMY AIR FORCE

ABBEVILLE PRESS 116 West 23rd Street New York, N.Y. 10011 1-800-artbook (in U.S. only) Available wherever fine books are sold Visit us at www.abbeville.com

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Jacket design by Misha Beletsky

THE WAR AT SEA “The kamikaze hit us with sixteen different waves over a period of five hours— so many that the destroyers’ radar couldn’t even keep track of them all.” —BILL LEWIS, NAVY

ISBN 0-7892-0817-2 EAN

Pacific Legacy Image and Memory from World War II in the Pacific By Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl ISBN 0-7892-0761-3

SMITH AND MEEHL

MANNING THE PT BOATS “John F. Kennedy was the only one who wanted to go back into combat after he’d lost his boat. And, you know, they would normally send them home, but he wanted to stay there and get another boat.”—DAVE LEVY, NAVY

9 780789 208170

PACIFIC WAR STORIES

FROM PACIFIC WAR STORIES

U.S. $27.50

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h i s t o ry

PACIFIC WAR STORIES IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED compiled and edited by

REX ALAN SMITH AND GERALD A. MEEHL

PACIFIC WAR STORIES IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED

REX ALAN SMITH AND GERALD A. MEEHL

o published collection of first-person oral histories encompasses so many diverse aspects of World War II in the Pacific—in gripping, eyewitness accounts from more than seventy veterans of all branches of service. In their own evocative words, veterans who fought for their lives against the Japanese Empire some sixty years ago now think back on the terrifying, perilous, exotic, life-altering events that made up their wartime experiences. What they saw and lived through has stayed with them their entire lives, and much of it comes to the surface again through their vivid memories. These are not the stories of sweeping military strategies or bold tactical moves by generals and admirals. Instead, we hear mainly from those on the lower rungs of the military ladder from ordinary seamen on vessels that encountered Japanese warships and planes and sometimes came out second-best from rank-and-file Marines who in amtracs churning toward bullet-swept tropical beaches saw buddies killed right next to them, and from startled eyewitnesses to the war’s sudden beginning on December 7, 1941. Pacific War Stories is a unique book of stirring, first-hand accounts, from front-line combat at the epicenter of violence and death to restless weariness on rear area islands thousands of miles from the fighting, to chilling aerial encounters with the dreaded Japanese Zero. Fortunately, these compelling stories were collected before it became too late, for they cover myriad aspects of what it was like to have lived through the war in the Pacific, a war fought on countless islands scattered over an area constituting one-third of the globe.

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COMPILED AND EDITED BY

REX ALAN SMITH AND GERALD A. MEEHL

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PACIFIC WAR STORIES IN THE WORDS OF THOSE WHO SURVIVED

ABBEVILLE PRESS NEW YORK LONDON

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DEDICATION This book is dedicated to Rex’s wife, Wanda, for her patience and encouragement during his long hours of securing interviews and editing tape transcriptions thereof. It is dedicated also to Jerry’s father, B-17 crew chief Paul Meehl; to Jerry’s uncles, Al Hahn, Louis Meehl and Harlan Wall, whose stories from the Pacific he grew up hearing, and another uncle, Bill Durdy, who served in the Pacific but left almost no record of what he did or where he served; and especially to Jerry’s wife Marla, not only for her considerable technical contributions, but also for her emotional support, greatly appreciated and highly valued, through projects past, present and future. project manager: Susan Costello editor: Walton Rawls copyeditor: Marian K. Gordin production editor: Amber Reed

designer: Misha Beletsky compositor: Hall Smyth production manager: Louise Kurtz

Photography copyright © 2004 Gerald A. Meehl. Text copyright © 2004 Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl. Compilation, including selection of text and images, copyright ©2004 Abbeville Press. All rights reserved under international copyright conventions. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Inquiries should be addressed to Abbeville Press Publishers, 116 West 23rd Street, New York, NY 10011. Printed in the United States. First Edition 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pacific War stories : in the words of those who survived / [edited by] Rex Alan Smith, Gerald A. Meehl.—1st ed. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 0-7892-0817-2 (alk. paper) 1. World War, 1939–1945—Campaigns—Pacific Area. 2. World War, 1939–1945—Personal narratives, American. 3. Oral history. 4. United States—Armed Forces—Biography. 5. Soldiers—United States— Biography. I. Smith, Rex Alan. II. Meehl, Gerald A. D767.P3344 2004 940.54'25'092273—dc22 [B] 2004052819

jacket: The strain of the intense fighting on the island of Peleliu in 1944 is etched on the face of this Marine. endpaper map by: Michael Shibao page 1: U.S. troops storm ashore on the Philippine island of Leyte on October 20, 1944. This is the view that Fred Saiz and Dave Gutterman had as they landed on these beaches. pages 2–3: Guam landing beach with Americans under fire crouching on the beach.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION

A PA C I F I C WA R O V E RV I E W

1. “A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY.” PEARL HARBOR, DECEMBER 7, 1941 F I R M A N B A L Z A , navy, USS Maryland, battleship

R U S S E L L M c C U R D Y , marines, USS Arizona, battleship

E V E R E T T H Y L A N D , navy, USS Pennsylvania, battleship

D E L A L D R I C H , navy, USS Ramsey, destroyer-minesweeper A L B O D E N L O S , army, Schofield Barracks

H A RV E Y A N D J E A N F R A S E R , army, Schofield Barracks

WAY N E “J I M ” J O H N S O N, army air force, Hickam Field

B I L L A N D R U T H C O P E , army air force, Hickam Field

T O M L A R S O N , navy, Pearl Harbor

L E N O R E R I C K E RT , navy, Pearl Harbor, nurse

2. THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES: CORREGIDOR AND THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH, 1941– 42 A L A N H A N C O C K , army, Bataan Death March I RV I N G S T R O B I N G , army, Corregidor

J O H N B R U E R , army, Bataan, Corregidor

101

3. THE DOOLITTLE RAIDERS BOMB TOKYO, APRIL 1942 B I L L B O W E R , army air force, B-25 pilot

117

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4. ISLAND COMBAT BEGINS AT GUADALCANAL, TARAWA, PELELIU, NEW GUINEA, 1942–44 R O B E RT M A H O O D , marines, Guadalcanal

127

C A R L A L B R I T T O N , army, New Guinea, Philippines D AV E B O W M A N , marines, Peleliu, Okinawa

134

138

5. COPING WITH CASUALTIES: MEDICS AND CORPSMEN, 1942–45 V E R N G A R R E T T , navy, corpsman, USS Yorktown, carrier, and Marine invasions: Tarawa, Guam

157

R O B E RT C L A C K , navy, corpsman, USS Yorktown, carrier

161

S T E R L I N G C A L E , navy, corpsman, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal

166

D AV E G U T T E R M A N , army, medic, New Guinea, Philippines, Japan

173

6. COMMUNICATING WITH THE ENEMY: INTERPRETERS, 1942–45 B O B S H E E K S , marines, Japanese language officer, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian

181

D A N W I L L I A M S , marines, Japanese language officer, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima

198

H A R RY F U K U H A R A , army, Nisei interpreter, New Guinea, Philippines, Hiroshima

209

7. MANNING THE PT BOATS, 1942–45 D AV E L E V Y , navy, pt boat skipper, Solomons, Philippines A L H A H N , navy, pt boat motor machinist mate, Philippines

230

217

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8. THE WAR IN THE AIR, 1942–45 J O H N B E D D A L L , army air force, B-25 radio operator and gunner, Marshalls

247

A . C . K L E Y PA S , army air force, B-24 radio operator and gunner, New Guinea, Philippines

253

J I M R O S E N B R O C K , army air force, P-38 and P-51 armorer, New Guinea, Philippines

261

J O H N W. V I N Z A N T , army air force, B-29 pilot

265

F R E D W O L K E N , army air force, C-47 troop carrier pilot, New Guinea, Philippines

268

D O N VA N I N W E G E N , army air force, B-29 tail gunner

270

B I L L M A S H AW , navy, Naval Air Transport Service pilot L O U I S M E E H L , army air force, gunner

272

278

9. THE WAR AT SEA, 1942–45 R U S S E L L F R I N K , navy, USS Fletcher, destroyer, Solomons

283

W Y L I E D AV I S , navy, USS Chicago, cruiser P E R RY M A X J O H N S T O N , navy, lst 958

293 303

O Z L E V E R E N Z , navy, destroyer crewman

307

B I L L L E W I S , navy, lcsl captain, Okinawa

313

C L A R E N C E C O O K , navy, armed guard, merchant ships B I L L P O N D , navy, USS Tulagi, carrier, deck crew

317

321

C L A R E N C E “ D U D E ” S T O R L A , coast guard, lst 831

324

G E O R G E T H O M A , navy, USS Sperry, submarine tender

331

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CHAPTER 1

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Parts of the ship, flames, and bomb fragments flew by us, reaching hundreds of feet into the air. The ship’s midsection opened like a blooming flower, burning white hot from within. Our entire magazine and forward oil storage had exploded; tons of TNT and thousands of gallons of fuel oil poured into the water. Black smoke billowed into the sky as the oil caught fire.

—Russell McCurdy, marines

F I R M A N B A L Z A , navy, USS Maryland, battleship R U S S E L L M c C U R D Y , marines, USS Arizona, battleship E V E R E T T H Y L A N D , navy, USS Pennsylvania, battleship D E L A L D R I C H , navy, USS Ramsey, destroyer-minesweeper A L B O D E N L O S , army, Schofield Barracks H A RV E Y A N D J E A N F R A S E R , army, Schofield Barracks WAY N E J O H N S O N , army air force, Hickam Field B I L L A N D R U T H C O P E , army air force, Hickam Field T O M L A R S O N , navy, Pearl Harbor L E N O R E R I C K E RT , navy, Pearl Harbor, nurse

pages 28–29: The forward section of the sunken battleship USS Arizona burns fiercely in this photo of Battleship Row taken from astern of the ship on December 7, 1941.

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“A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY.” PEARL HARBOR, DECEMBER 7, 1941

FIRMAN BALZA navy

joined a Naval Reserve division in Green Bay, Wisconsin, on October 21, 1940. I had turned seventeen on September 25 and had to be seventeen to get into the reserves. But then I decided to join the regular Navy, and I couldn’t get my dad to sign for me, he wasn’t too anxious for me to leave home and go into the regular Navy. Finally I said to him, “Now, Dad, look, if you don’t allow me to go into the Navy, I’m going to go someplace. I’m not staying here. If I go in the Navy you will know where I am. If I go someplace else, you won’t.” So he says, “Now you have me between a rock and a hard spot. Under those circumstances I will sign for you to go into the Navy.” I said, “Well, Dad, Mother can sign for me, but all I wanted was your permission.” So he says, “I don’t have much choice, do I?” I didn’t answer that question, figuring that since he said I could go it was fine. So I joined the Navy on January 31, 1941, and I went to Great Lakes for training. When I got out of training at Great Lakes, I was to report to the West Coast, so they put me on a passenger train, the Chippewa, all the way to the West Coast. I ate in the dining car ordered off the menu, had a Pullman berth, and a black man made up my bunk. I thought I had died and gone to heaven. That was great. I was only seventeen years old, and for a seventeen-year-old kid to be going across the country in that fashion was really something. I got to Seattle, and they put me on the ferry boat over to Bremerton. When I get there here’s this great big piece of iron sitting in that dry dock. I had never seen so much iron stacked up in all my life. That big battlewagon had those great big 16-inch guns, and each gun was more than sixty feet in length, and I thought, “My God!” So that ship was the USS Maryland, and I boarded her on Easter Sunday, 1941. 31

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They put me in the third division in the No. 3 Turret. There were four turrets with two 16-inch guns in each turret. We left the States after shakedown and went to Hawaii. They had moved the fleet out of the West Coast. Our home port had been Long Beach, and we sailed out of there in July of 1941. When we left the States there were about seven tankers laying in San Pedro Harbor there in Long Beach, waiting for the U.S. government to lift the oil embargo to Japan. So we as kids in the Navy knew that the U.S. was having some problems with the Japanese. So we went into Pearl, and we got there in July 1941. You can’t believe what Hawaii was like then. It was like I’d gone to heaven. You’ve never seen such a beautiful place in your whole life. And here you are, on this great big $90 million yacht in Pearl Harbor with a place to sleep and places to go ashore. But we only got what they called “Cinderella Liberty” then. That’s a liberty that ends at midnight, because there weren’t enough accommodations in Honolulu to put up all the sailors in the fleet or all the Army or Marine Corps that was there. So we could only go ashore until they turned the lights out, and we had to be back aboard ship by midnight. On Saturday, December 6, I had the duty and I was aboard ship. Most of the guys had headed in to the beach on Saturday after inspection at 9:30 or 10 a . m . That morning we had Admiral’s Inspection, and Admiral Kimmel came aboard and inspected us. We had what we called “AMI,” Annual Military Inspection, and the big fleet admiral came on board and looked everybody over in the fleet that day. That night all the big, high muckety-mucks went down to Waikiki to the Royal Hawaiian and drank a lot of booze and danced and all that kind of stuff, and that’s what they did on that Saturday night. But not me, I had the duty. But we didn’t set watch at night. We didn’t have anybody manning the antiaircraft guns or on patrol. All you did was you had to be there in case they needed you, and you didn’t have anything else to do but go to bed. Actually we slept in hammocks. There were no bunks for us. The only people who got to sleep in bunks were the officers. You get up early in the morning when you’re in the Navy, about 5:30 a.m. Then you have breakfast about 7 or 7:30 a.m. Then after breakfast on December 7, a Sunday, it was time to go to mass. Being raised on the farm by my ma and pa, on Sunday you go to mass. There was no Catholic chaplain on the Maryland, so they had mass scheduled for 8:15 a.m. on the quarterdeck of the Oklahoma, which was tied up right next to us. Some of the guys had already gone over there, but I had to go into my gun compartment to change my shoes so I could go over on the gangplank to the 32

“A Date Which Will Live in Infamy”

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Oklahoma. But I never made it. If I had been a couple of minutes faster I would have been over on the Oklahoma when the attack started. So I had changed shoes, and while I was there a couple of other guys had come up and we were talking before I headed over to mass. I was standing right near my battle station, the No. 3 broadside gun, which was a 5-inch gun on the starboard side facing Ford Island. I was talking to these two guys, a first class cook by the name of Rocky Hallsted, and a first class gunners mate who was in charge of that secondary battery I was on, Joe Klimcack. And we were talking about if the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and sunk a ship in the channel, all the ships in the harbor would be trapped and couldn’t get out. And this was really spooky because exactly that almost happened just about an hour later. If they hadn’t beached the Nevada over by Hospital Point, it would have blocked the harbor just like we were talking about. So we were just standing there having this discussion, and all of a sudden a Jap Val dive bomber came flying right by us, over the top of the Naval housing on Ford Island, right over the administration building, and went over to the sea plane hangar on the end of Ford Island and dropped a big bomb in there and blew it up. Then all hell broke loose. The plane was well-marked, so there was no mistaking it was Japanese. It had big round red circles on the wings and fuselage, and that pilot was smiling at us as he went by. He was so close we could see his teeth. All I could say to Rocky Hallsted was, “It’s the goddamned Japs!” Then we got the word over the loudspeaker, “All hands man your battle stations, and this is no shit!” and the guy blew the bugle for battle stations. I was right there outside my battle station, so I went into the gun compartment. But that gun couldn’t be fired inside the harbor. You couldn’t elevate those guns much above 15 degrees, because they were for surface bombardment and weren’t set up for antiaircraft. So the order came in to take cover since we couldn’t shoot our gun, but I thought that’s kind of stupid. You have no place to go and no place to hide, so I figured I might as well do something. So I went into the midship casemate and I saw a petty officer in there sitting on the deck with his knees under his chin and I said to him, “Dutch, what do we do now?” And he says, “I’m not going anywhere until somebody tells me where I’m supposed to be going.” So I sat down next to him, and I stayed there for just a few minutes, but I was antsy. So I said, “Dutch, I’m going to go up on the boat deck and see if I can give a hand to those guys on the antiaircraft battery.” So I took off, and I don’t know what Dutch did after that. I got up there to the No. 4 antiaircraft gun on the Firman Balza

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CHAPTER 8

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Suddenly, I heard something hit the plane and turned to look out the left waist gun window, and there was thick black smoke trailing out of the left engine. It turned out that ground fire had hit the prop governor and part of the engine had been shot away.”

—John Beddall, army air force

J O H N B E D D A L L , army air force, B-25 radio operator and gunner, Marshalls A . C . K L E Y PA S , army air force, B-24 radio operator and gunner, New Guinea, Philippines J I M R O S E N B R O C K , army air force, P-38 and P-51 armorer, New Guinea, Philippines J O H N V I N Z A N T , army air force, B-29 pilot F R E D W O L K E N , army air force, C-47 troop carrier pilot, New Guinea, Philippines D O N VA N I N W E G E N , army air force, B-29 tail gunner B I L L M A S H AW , navy, Naval Air Transport Service pilot L O U I S M E E H L , army air force, gunner pages 244–245: A Seventh Air Force B-24, “Little Hiawatha,” parked on the coral airstrip on Funafuti in November, 1943. Ground crew members and an officer stand behind a bomb with the inscription “Bing Crosby to Seventh Air Force to Tojo.” opposite: John Beddall (front row center) poses with members of his B-25 crew, back row from left, Lt. Bryant, Capt. Bus Knight, Joe Csizmadia; front row from left, Pete Downs, Beddall, and a pilot from another plane. Photo was taken on Makin Atoll in front of the B-25 “Broad Minded.”

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THE WAR IN THE AIR, 1942– 45

JOHN BEDDALL army air force

enlisted in April 1941, from Idaho. I had some friends who thought it would be a great idea if we all joined the Army Air Corps together. I wasn’t quite eighteen so my parents had to sign for me. I went home, and when I told them my mother started crying, but my dad said, “It’ll probably do you some good.” So he agreed to sign for me. Well, it turned out that none of my friends enlisted, for one reason or another, so I went in alone. During training I got the request I wanted, to be a radio operator on a bomber, and the location I wanted, which was Tucson, Arizona. So I ended up being a radio operator/gunner on B-25s. I shipped out first to

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Honolulu where we did training. We were doing fully loaded short takeoffs and we thought they were going to put us on a carrier. Then I was based for ten months out in the Pacific, and I was based on Makin Atoll. We were flying bombing missions to targets in the Gilberts and Marshalls. I flew a total of fifty missions. On my fifth mission we were sent over to bomb the Japanese-held atoll of Maloelap where theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d built an airstrip on one of the islets called Taroa. Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d come in real low on these missions to bomb and strafe, so we were right at coconut height. I was shooting things up on the ground with the right waist gun as we zoomed over the airstrip, and all the other guns on the plane were firing. Suddenly, I heard something hit the plane and turned to look out the left waist gun window, and there was thick black smoke trailing out of the left engine. It turned out that ground fire had hit the prop governor and part of the engine had been shot away. First the propeller started windmilling faster and faster until the engine seized up, and then the propeller just stopped turning. Since the prop blades were flat to the wind, they created a lot of wind resistance. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s amazing that my pilot was able to keep control of the airplane with one engine shot out so close to the ground. So there we were, a long way from home, out over the ocean with only one engine. My pilot, and he was a great one, was Bus Knight. He was a University of Nebraska football star, and he played in the 1941 Rose Bowl game. So, he was nursing our B-25 along on one engine running wide open, barely above the surface of the ocean. Over the intercom he told me to throw anything heavy overboard to see if we could gain some altitude. Taking the waist guns out of their mounts was normally a twoman operation, but since the engineer was still in the tail gun position, I did it by myself. I put my foot up on the frame of the open waist gun window to brace myself, reached out with one hand and grabbed the barrel of the machine gun as far out as I could reach, and with the other hand yanked mightily on the butt end of the gun. It pulled right out of its mount, and I pitched it into the water. The adrenaline was really flowing! We were so close to the surface that the spray was flying up from the ocean, and my foot got wet when I put it up on the frame of the open waist window. I did the same with the other waist gun, and then started to pull up the two steel armor plates in the floor. Each was about three feet long, one foot wide, three-quarters of an inch thick, and about 200 pounds in weight. But the adrenaline was pumping and I yanked the first plate up from the floor, got it up on the waist window frame, slid it out of 248

The War in the Air

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John Beddallâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s B-25, with one engine shot out, has just braked to a stop on the nearly completed coral runway on Majuro Atoll. The plane, piloted by Bus Knight with Col. Solomon Willis flying as co-pilot, was the first American aircraft in WWII to land on a Japanese mandated Pacific island taken back from the Japanese. This was an honor being prepared for Admiral Nimitz and the Navy, but fate intervened on behalf of the Army Air Corps. Seabees and other naval personnel crowd around the plane.

the plane, and into the ocean it went. I was just starting to get the second one when Pete suddenly came up behind me from out of the tail gun position, grabbed me, and yelled that if I threw out that plate it would cut off the tail! Of course it wouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t since the tail of a B-25 was above the level of the waist gun windows and I had just thrown one big plate out with no problem. So I just grabbed him, bodily threw him back toward the rear of the plane, and finished throwing out the other armor plate. I never talked to him after that, and he never flew another mission. On our maps the closest atoll with an airstrip we could land on was Majuro. Well, the Marines had just taken that atoll from the Japs, and the Seabees were sprucing up the Jap runway to get it ready for a Navy plane to be the first to land on an atoll that had been forcibly taken from the Japanese. But we had an emergency and we had to come in and land. John Beddall

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Another of our B-25s, named “Luscious Lucy,” had been flying beside us to make sure we made it. The pilot buzzed the runway to get the Seabees out of the way, and then we came straight in and landed okay. But there was a complication. Admiral Nimitz was commander of the Navy fleet, and when the runway was finished he was going to take off from a carrier, circle the atoll, and land on Majuro as the newsreel cameras rolled. That would make him the first American to land on a prewar airstrip that had been owned by the Japanese. So here we come, an Army Air Force B-25, and landed on the runway before Nimitz could have a chance. So that ended the celebration they intended to stage for Nimitz landing on Majuro, and the Navy wasn’t real happy about this! They sent four Navy captains over right after we landed to inspect our plane. They figured four captains would outrank any officers that could have been on our B-25, and normally that would have been the case. But on that mission, our colonel, Solomon Willis, was flying in the right seat with my pilot, his good friend Bus Knight. So it was a stand-off, with Col. Willis being of equal rank with the Navy captains. We lined up in front of our B-25, and the Navy captains lined up in front of us. They could see right away that we had a legitimate reason for the emergency landing, and they didn’t really know what to say. They felt they needed to say something, so one of the captains sees me, an enlisted man, lined up next to Col. Willis. We were right under the machine guns in the nose of the plane. So this captain comes up to me and says, “Aren’t you going to clean those guns?!” I just moved a little closer to Col. Willis and said, “No, sir!” Col. Willis stood his ground and defended me from the Navy. We had to abandon our plane right there at Majuro since they didn’t have any repair facilities. So until they could fly us back to Makin, the enlisted men, me included, were put up in a tent on Majuro, while the officers on our crew were taken out to a ship. But to eat dinner, they came and got us and took us out to that ship, and I’ll never forget that meal. Here I had been eating powdered eggs and minimal food like that for weeks, and in front of us in the chow line was what seemed like a feast, and there was two of every category: for potatoes they had baked and mashed, for meat they had pork chops and beef, and so on. I couldn’t believe how good the Navy ate! After that our crew was sent to Honolulu for R and R. We were catching rides on planes headed that direction, and on one leg we were in a B-24 that was being ferried back. We were taking off from Kwajalein, and on our take-off run I noticed that we had gone past the last 250

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runway marker and were still on the ground. I started to get worried that this pilot was going to run us right into the ocean off the end of the runway. Well, we got to the end of the runway and the pilot just raised the landing gear, but the plane stayed at the same altitude. This didn’t seem like a good situation! The left wing dipped a little bit as I was looking out at the palm trees whizzing past, and then we were over the ocean, still right on the deck. But that pilot got the plane straightened out, and we started climbing real slow and made it to Honolulu. When we got there, I headed out to a recreation center that had been set up next to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. It was a low building with card tables, pool tables, and—this was the best part—fridges with bottles of cold milk. We all wanted to drink milk—it had been so long since we had tasted it. I would just pull a bottle out of the fridge and drink that ice cold milk, and it tasted so good! Back at our base Col. Willis had this little dog named “Pistol Head.” He used to whistle to it, and the little dog would come running. Pistol Head was kind of the squadron mascot, a great little dog. Well, one day Col. Willis was driving a Jeep back from the officers club. It flipped over and he was killed. This came as a blow to the squadron, a real tragedy. After that the dog just kind of moped around. He kept thinking Col. Willis was going to come back. Well, one day one of the guys was joking around and saw the dog hanging around. So this guy imitated Col. Willis’s whistle. The dog perked right up, thought his master was back, and came running, but couldn’t find Col. Willis. That was about the cruelest thing I ever saw—that dog was so disappointed—you could just see it searching around for its master because he thought he heard the whistle. That still chokes me up to think about it. Our missions were usually around four hours round trip. We bombed Jap bases on a lot of little atolls in the Gilberts and Marshalls, and also Ponape. We were told to never be taken alive. If we were over a Jap island and were hit and couldn’t make it, just push the controls over and nose it in. We heard the Japs killed enlisted men outright and tortured and then executed the officers. We think this is what happened to Capt. Colley and his crew. His plane crashed near the shore of an island, and we saw four of the five crew make it out onto their raft. A p b y went out to pick them up, but the Japs beat them to it. We never saw or heard from those guys again. Ten years after the war they were officially pronounced dead.

John Beddall

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I think my experiences in the Pacific affected me, and of course Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll never forget what happened. In 2002 my wife, Hazy, and I did a cruise around the Pacific islands with a lot of other veterans. We stopped at a couple of the atolls I was on during the war. As we went along I learned all about what the others did, and it was interesting to hear all the different types of experiences they had. I was only in one small bit, flying out over the atolls and islands, and some of those guys had a lot more dangerous jobs. But I did my part, I did what I was trained to do, and I survived. I volunteer at the Mesa wing of the Commemorative Air Force. I have a notebook with photos of B-25s and some of the islands we bombed, and we have a B-25 there in the hangar we are restoring. People look at the plane, and I show them the photos in my notebook and tell them about my experiences. I think it helps them to relate to the Pacific war if Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m there and they are looking at the B-25 and can hear a little bit about what we were doing out there.

opposite: Wartime photo of A.C. Kleypas. 252

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A . C . K L E Y PA S army air force

got drafted in a funny way. When I got out of high school I was eighteen years old, and that was in 1942. I had another brother who’s two-and-a-half years older than I am. I got a draft notice so my mama went with me to the Draft Board and I said, “Hey, what are you doing drafting me? I’ve got an older brother at home and he wasn’t drafted.” The guy there says, “Is that right? Well, what’s his name?” Sure enough they had lost my brother’s records, even though he had his draft card and everything. So anyway, they looked at me and mom and said, “Well, one of ya’ll’s gotta go right now. Either you or your brother can go, but one is going now.” I looked at my mama, and I didn’t want to say it, but I said, “I’ll go.” My brother stayed at home an extra year. I wanted to get in the Air Corps, so I took a bunch of tests and got in. They sent me to radio school, basic training, in South Dakota, then all over, including Yuma, Arizona. I finally ended up in California, and they shipped us overseas out of San Francisco. I ended up being a radio operator on B-24s. And on a B-24 the radio operator was also a gunner. So we flew a brand-new airplane across the Pacific, and made a lot of stops along the way. I remember one was at Christmas Island and another was Guadalcanal. They were still shooting there at nights. Then we flew out the next day, and we landed at Townsville, Australia. I forget how long we stayed there, probably two or three days. But it was there we had to give up our brand-new airplane. We were just flying it across the Pacific so somebody else could get it. From Townsville we got on a ship, a little old stinkin’ boat, smelled like goats. Took us three days and we went to Port Moresby, New Guinea. There were about three or four airfields where they operated 253

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INDEX Page numbers in italic refer to illustrations

A aron Ward, USS, 289

Abemama, 38 Abotellio, Al, 448 Admiral Ford, 111–12 Admiralty Islands, 174–75, 420, 437–39, 440 Agcaouili, Felix, 375–76 aircraft carriers, 280–81 flight training for, 339–41 stories of duty on, 161–65, 321–23 as target of early Japanese attacks, 17, 18, 19–20 see also specific carriers Air Medal, 72 Aisek, Kimiuo, 395–96, 496–97 Akamatsu, Yuji, 495 Albritton, Carl, 134–37 Alcorn (Marine), 424–25 Aldrich, Del, 52–54 Aleutian Islands, 38, 284, 302 Alexander MacKenzie, 367, 368, 369, 372 America, 308, 421–22 American Defenders of Bataan and Corregidor, 100 American Samoa, 20, 54, 127, 128, 183–84, 199, 319–20, 377–80, 401 Ames, Iowa, machinist school at, 231–32 amphibious tracked vehicles (amtracs), 22, 23 story of duty with battalion of, 450–54 Anderson, John, 44 Angaur, Palau Islands, 254, 255, 389 Anthony, Ray, 361 Antietam, USS, 341 Apia, British Samoa, 127–28, 380 Appalachian, USS, 202 Argonne, USS, 401 Arizona, USS, 28–29, 30, 39–44, 47, 57, 68, 77, 168–70, 318, 321, 399, 496, 500 band of, 56, 58 Whale Boat team of, 39, 39–40, 43, 44 USS Arizona Memorial, Pearl Harbor, 47, 51, 72, 172, 264, 495, 496 Army Corps of Engineers, 365–76, 497 Astoria, USS, 285, 298, 299, 300 Atlanta, USS, 289 atom bomb, 27, 107–8, 110–11, 175, 197, 207–8, 240, 241, 264, 312, 341, 389,

502

412, 414, 433–34, 441, 481, 482–83, 486, 490, 491, 500 atrocities, 18, 181–82, 199, 207, 396 Australia, 17–18, 20, 21, 133, 173–74, 219, 253, 256, 262, 269, 295–98, 328, 333, 334, 347, 355, 436, 497 Australia, HMS, 294

B-17 bombers, 70, 71–72, 131

B-18 bombers, 66, 70 B-24 bombers, 244–45, 253–60 B-25 bombers, 18–19, 122, 247, 247–52, 249 in Doolittle Raid, 19, 114–15, 116–23, 117, 407, 409–10 B-29 bombers, 24, 25, 27, 205, 265–67, 270–71, 329, 404–5, 447–48, 498 Baker, Commodore, 398 Baker, John, 39, 41, 43, 44 Balikpapan, Borneo, 254 Ballenger, Jack, 465 Balza, Firman, 31–38, 500 banzai attacks, 20, 175, 437, 442 Bartlett, David, 39 Barton, USS, 289 Basilan, Philippines, 235 Bataan Death March, 18, 90, 92, 97, 102–4, 498 Bataan Peninsula, Philippines, 18, 91–92, 97, 102, 104, 113 battleships: stories of duty on, 31–51 see also specific battleships Becton, Commander, 470 Beddall, John, 246, 247, 247–52, 496 Belleau Wood, USS, 162 Bellows Field, Hawaii, 62 Beru (now Kiribati), 392–93, 498 see also Tarawa Betio Island, 14–15, 22, 184, 189, 498–99, 500 Biak Island, 254 Bilibid Prison, Manila, 100, 105 Bismarck Sea, Battle of, 38 Black Dragon Society, 177 Blackhawk, USS, 296 black troops, 434 Bloody Ridge, Guadalcanal, 124–25 Boardman, Eugene, 187 Index

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Bodenlos, Al, 55, 55–58 Bogart, Humphrey, 284 Bond, Burnis, 39 Bong, Major, 262 Bora Bora, 20, 78, 285, 304, 352–53, 355–58, 359, 359, 497 Borneo, 235–38, 254, 291 Bougainville, 21, 220, 422–23, 428 Bower, Bill, 116, 117, 117–23 Bowfin, USS, 499 Bowman, Charles, 146 Bowman, David, 138, 138–53, 149, 499 Brandemhil, Frank, 421 Brewer, Captain, 132 Brickley, Eugene, 39 Briner, Dave, 44 Brisbane, Australia, 333, 334, 347 British Samoa, 54, 127–28, 380 Bronze Star, 195–96, 315, 439 Bruer, John, 90, 101–13, 498, 500 Bryant, Lieutenant, 247 Buckman, Paul, 36–37 Buckner Bay, Okinawa, 313–16 Bunkley, Captain, 398 Burgess, Fred, 470 Bush, George (elder), 86

C-47 aircraft, 268–69

C-54 aircraft, 274–77 Cabanatuan prison camp, Philippines, 100, 105–6 Cabiness (Marine), 44 Cabras Island, 424 Caine Mutiny, The (Wouk), 296 Cale, Sterling, 166–72, 497 California, USS, 309, 398–400 Callaghan, D. J., 289 Camp Elliot, Calif., 183, 202 Camp John Hay, Baguio, Philippines, 96 Camp O’Donnell, Philippines, 92 Camp Pendleton, Calif., 202, 207 Camp Savage, Minn., 209 Camp Seventeen, Amuta, Japan, 106–9 Canberra, 298, 299, 300 Canton Island, 58, 367 Cape Gloucester, New Britain, 21 Caroline Islands, 325 Cary, Otis, 192 Cascade, USS, 367 Cassin, USS, 308–11 casualties, 156–77 among comrades, dealing with, 220, 322, 437, 455–56, 467, 470–71, 476–77 buried at sea, 295 Index

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chaplains and, 147 civilian, 27, 440–41 evacuation of, 185, 275, 276 friendly fire and, 148, 439 identification of bodies, 168–70 Japanese, American pows forced to care for, 99 Japanese, burying of, 160 mental breakdowns, 137, 142–44, 151–52, 275, 276, 328–29, 432–33 Purple Heart and, 137, 176, 238, 314, 428 sent back into combat, 142–43, 426 shrapnel wounds and, 135–36 stories of servicemen hit, 148–52, 344–45, 425–28, 441, 450–51, 453 telegrams and, 137, 176, 466–67 see also medics and corpsmen; specific engagements Catch-22 (Heller), 122 Cates, Clifton, 206 Celebes, 254, 255 Chamorros, 24, 193, 330, 397–403 chaplains, 147–48 Chester, USS, 310–11 Chiang-kai Shek, Madame, 122 Chicago, USS, 293–301 China, 17, 43, 227, 488, 489 B-25 missions in, 18–19, 116, 119, 121–22 Japanese invasion of, 181–82, 199–200, 207, 397, 409, 412–13, 457 usmc occupation of, 207 China Sea, story of submarine patrol in, 348–51 “chopping block,” 107 Christmas Island, 38, 253 Chungking, China, 121–22 Cifra, Brigidio, 376 cincpac (Commander in Chief, Pacific), 74–77, 189 “Cinderella Liberty,” 32 Clack, Robert, 161–65, 499 Clark, J. J. (Jocko), 165 Clark Field, Philippines, 102, 111, 255, 433, 485 Clarkson, Major General, 212 Cloer, Calvin, 475 Coast Guard, 324–30 code breaking, 19–20, 189, 202, 219, 427 Colley, Captain, 251 Colorado, USS, 283, 284, 285 Columbia, USS, 316 “comfort women,” 204

503

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REX ALAN SMITH AND GERALD A. MEEHL