by Larry Colton
“How long did it take to get over the effects of prison camp? My answer is that you never get over it. You just live with it. Any man who served in a war on the front lines, where men are killed, shelled, blown to bits, whether he is doing the shelling or the dying, will never get over it. These things change a person. You just live with it in your changed condition.
“My injury is a constant reminder of what happened and where. I got it on the Asama Maru in 1943, and it still plagues me six decades later. As the body gets older, these old injuries make their presence known.
“I have always believed that the government should have done more for the returning soldiers, sailors, and other fighting men. It spends a fortune to make them into killers, and then when they returned, they were just turned loose on society. I guess what gripes me is how our government tried to sneak out from under its responsibility to returning vets, and especially the POWs.
“We as POWS had in our mind that once we got out of prison camp, everything would be all right. All our ills would clear up. The doctors had to know that wasn’t so.”
49
Tim “Skeeter” McCoy
Austin, Texas
Although he was physically absent from the last two Grenadier reunions, there was no shortage of conversation and speculation about Tim McCoy. Over the years, he had taken on an almost mythical status with his old crewmates. One story had it that he got court-martialed for punching another sailor through a portal. Another one said he’d given away over a million bucks to his church.
It was hard to know what to believe.
Like many of his crewmates immediately after the war, Tim felt uncertain about what to do next. He’d dropped out of high school, and because the war had broken out shortly after he enlisted, he had never really had the time to learn a trade. So he reenlisted. Until he retired in 1965, he spent his entire Navy career assigned to some form of submarine-related duty, including submarine rescue vessels, submarine tenders, and submarine support activities of the Pacific Fleet. By the time he left the service, he had reached the grade of second lieutenant.
Tim had first thought about an insurance career as a teenager in Dallas; he had even moonlighted selling fire and casualty insurance in Chula Vista during his last couple of years in the service. After his retirement from the Navy in 1965, he moved to Austin, Texas, and became the director of the military division for National Western Life Insurance before being promoted to director of all its marketing divisions.
Tim’s financial star started to skyrocket in 1973 when he founded NEAT (National Employees Assurance Trust), a niche insurance company specializing in policies for seniors, specifically to cover burial costs, cancer care, Medicare supplement, and supplemental support for current and retired military personnel. Although he turned the running of the company over to his son Tim Jr. when he retired in 1999, he continued to serve as chairman of the board and showed up at the office every morning at seven thirty.
In the entryway at NEAT Management Group in Austin hangs a ten-foot-high painting of Tim McCoy, the old-time cowboy movie star; it’s impossible to miss. Tim, now in his early eighties, pointed to the painting with a self-satisfied grin. “Tim McCoy, larger than life,” he said with a big ol’ Texas accent. “That’s me.”
In his ready-for-inspection office, the phone rang. It was his wife, Jean. He spoke to her briefly, then stood up and excused himself.
“She has an appointment at the beauty parlor today and it’s my job to get her there,” he said, smiling, pleased with his assignment. “I’m a honey-do husband.”
He met Jean in San Diego in December 1945, three months after returning from the war and after Valma had returned his engagement ring and money for the trip to America. He had moped around for a couple of weeks after he received her letter, but quickly decided to move on. Like so many returning vets, he was drinking pretty hard and searching for love. He and Jean were set up (their parents knew each other in Texas), and for their first date Tim took her ice skating, figuring he could impress her with his slick moves on the ice. For him it was pretty much love at first sight—Jean had light brown hair, a great smile, and a nice figure. In his eyes, she was the marrying kind. But there was a problem: she was only fourteen years old.
Patience was never Tim’s strength, but he and Jean did wait a year and married on December 27, 1946. She was fifteen; he was twenty-two. A year later they had a son, Chuck. Five years later, they had another son, Tim Jr.
Tim spent most of his Navy career on shore duty, a majority of it stationed at Pearl Harbor. Jean was the quintessential Navy wife, staying home to raise the boys and support her husband, while Tim gained notoriety for his athletic skills, hot temper, and drinking.
On the base football team, he played defensive back, earning a reputation as one of the most hard-nosed players in a league that included many former college stars. He took up handball and within a couple of years won the Pacific region all-service championship. He traveled to Washington, D.C., to take part in the Navy’s deep-sea-diving training and soon became known as one of the best divers around Hawaii. To keep fit, he regularly went on ten- and fifteen-mile runs, long before the jogging craze struck. To help earn extra cash, he worked at an ice-skating rink, and was never shy about demonstrating his fancy spins and jumps. When Chuck reached Little League age, Tim took on coaching duties, and in 1960 he led the Pearl Harbor team all the way to the Little League World Series in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. They didn’t win the championship, but it wasn’t because they hadn’t been drilled in the fundamentals.
Tim put as much energy into boozing as he had into outmaneuvering the guards in prison camp. He often overindulged, either blacking out or staying out all night. The carousing took a toll on his family. On several occasions, Jean warned him that if he didn’t quit she was leaving. He’d be contrite and promise never to do it again, but then he would.
With his sons, he was a demanding, gruff, no-nonsense, intimidating disciplinarian. He wouldn’t tolerate lying and maintained strict rules. If the boys didn’t come home by the assigned time, day or night, there was a good chance they were going to get their butts beat with a belt. From their mom they heard a lot of “Wait until your dad gets home.”
But the one thing the boys always knew was that he loved them. He could be fiery mad one day but over it a day later. They came to understand that it was just the way he was—passionate about everything he undertook. When he was coaching Little League, Tim was famous for getting the team pumped up with his motivational pep talks. He could be tough on his players, especially Chuck, who was an excellent shortstop and catcher. But he would also give him or the other players a hug when he thought they needed it. He wasn’t afraid to tell his sons he loved them. On long drives, he often reached into the backseat and affectionately tugged on their legs.
He required that they go to church every Sunday and take part in family prayer. He also demanded a strong work ethic. He’d worked hard as a boy, learning the value of a nickel, and he was determined they would too. He didn’t give them an allowance, and by the time they were teens they were expected to earn their own money, whether it was by mowing lawns or by flipping burgers. If they went out on dates, they were expected to use their own money to pay for the evening and behave like perfect gentlemen.
Tim frequently lectured them; the subject might be money, or manners, or morals, the talks often taking the form of mini-sermons. There could be no back talk. He demanded respect, something he’d learned from this father and in the military. He was the commanding officer of the house, and his orders were not to be questioned.
After an afternoon visiting the National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, Tim eased his big new Cadillac onto Highway 290 and headed east toward Austin and home. He swerved to miss an oncoming car that he hadn’t seen.
“No fear,” he offered. “We’re as safe as if we’re in the hands of Jesus.”
Located on a six-acre site in the heart of the Texas H
ill Country, the museum is “dedicated to perpetuating the memories of the Pacific Theater of World War II in order that the sacrifices of those who contributed to our victory may never be forgotten.” Tim had come to the museum to tour its many exhibits, but he was even more interested in seeing his new plaque embedded on a wall next to the Veterans Walk of Honor. Donated by his family, it included a picture of him in his dress whites and commemorated his Purple Heart, Silver Star, and service on the USS Trout and Grenadier.
The visit had put him in a reflective mood. “I’m a better man for having been a POW,” he claimed. “It taught me so much about myself, primarily that I possessed the inner strength to survive real adversity. When I lost my oldest son, I think I was able to call on that same inner strength.
“I’m sure some of my crewmates thought I didn’t always do the smartest thing in camp. But I was not going to cut the guards any slack. I was not going to be intimidated by them, nor was I going to let them break my will. If anyone was going to return from a Japanese prison camp, it would be me.”
Unlike many of his fellow survivors, he said he held no grudge against the Japanese. “At the time I kept thinking that if this was another time and place I’d kick your ass,” he continued. “But at some point after the war, I made a decision. As much hate and resentment as I’d built up against those people, I knew I had to do something or I would never get over it. I prayed a lot for guidance. Most of the Japanese were extremely cruel to me, but a few actually tried to help me, despite risking serious punishment by their superiors if they got caught. To some extent they were victims, too.
“When I was going to deep-sea-diving school I met a Japanese man who was a little younger than me. I asked him what he remembered most about the war and he told me that on his fourteenth birthday in 1944 his mom gave him a full bowl of rice. He hadn’t had a full bowl in over a month. That was his most vivid memory of the war. That drove home the fact that they had also truly suffered. When I left prison camp and headed for Tokyo, I saw the damage our bombs had inflicted. Total devastation.
“I came to realize that we’re all prisoners in one way or another. We might be trapped by cancer, or financial hardship, or a bad relationship. I knew that to forgive would be to set the prisoner in me free, and that all the hate I had for those people—and trust me, nobody hated them more than I did—could only keep me a prisoner of my own thoughts. So I forgave them. I could do it because I was a Christian. I simply forgave them and put it all behind me as best I could and got on with my life.”
He also held no negative thoughts regarding his treatment by the Navy. “I receive a generous pension and benefits,” he said. “I had a wonderful career in the Navy, and when I retired they honored me with a special ceremony. Men whom I’d served with all wore dress whites and formed an arc with crossed swords. It was very emotional.”
He disagreed with his shipmates who felt the U.S. government had not done enough in pursuing the Japanese companies that used brutal and exploitive practices in building postwar fortunes on the slave labor of American POWs. “That’s another one I had to let go,” he acknowledged. “I could go nuts thinking about all the injustice.”
When asked about Captain Fitzgerald, his tone and posture shifted. He sat up straight behind the wheel. “It’s easy for all the Monday morning quarterbacks to question the captain’s decisions that led to our capture, but that doesn’t change a thing as far as I’m concerned,” he said, his voice now choked with emotion. “That man was as fine a captain as I ever met. Nobody endured more punishment than he did. It was inhuman. As far as I’m concerned, he deserves the Congressional Medal of Honor.”
As we reached the outskirts of Austin, the topic changed again, this time to his fight with Trigg in prison camp. The more he talked about it, the more worked up he got, his tone and voice peeling away the years and the Christian tolerance he’d been espousing a few minutes earlier. “He was a sonuvabitch,” he concluded.
Trigg stayed in the Navy after the war, eventually receiving a dishonorable discharge when he was caught stealing morphine from a base hospital. After that he moved to Dallas, found religion, and became a Baptist minister. In the early 1990s he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and moved to Austin, his hometown, to be with a daughter. He’d heard that Tim lived in town and called him.
“It was a surprise to get a call from him,” said Tim. “He told me he was a changed man and had been for a long time. He’d confessed his sins and accepted Christ as his personal savior. I told him what a wonderful thing that was. He admitted what he’d done in camp and apologized. I asked if I could take him out to lunch and he said yes. But when I called back a couple days later, his daughter told me he’d passed. I was sorry I didn’t get to see him.”
Tim waved a greeting to an acquaintance as he entered his favorite lunch spot, Rudy’s “Country Store” & Bar-B-Q. Located a few blocks from his office, Rudy’s is famous for its collegial atmosphere, friendly staff, and big slabs of beef served on butcher paper and in Coke crates. Tim ordered the brisket.
“By golly, this is the best brisket in the good ol’ U.S. of A.,” he informed a lady standing behind him.
Sliding his tray down to the young woman at the cashier’s stand, he gave her a wink. “Dad gum it, y’all must have the prettiest smile in Texas,” he said, handing her a twenty. “Keep the change and buy yourself something frilly.”
Known by his friends as a terminal flirt, he carried his lunch to one of the communal picnic tables and offered a greeting to anyone within range.
Taking a sip of his iced tea, he scanned the room, looking for familiar faces, and spotted a local car dealer. He shouted a greeting across the room. “He’s a good man,” he said, pointing toward him. “A deacon at our church.”
The Baptist Church had become a large part of Tim’s life. It had been when he was a child growing up in Lubbock, but in the years following the war when he fell into the clutches of alcohol, he strayed from the church and his own moral code. In 1977, when he was fifty-three, he finally hit bottom after a long binge. He quit drinking, and hadn’t touched a drop in thirty years.
In his sobriety, he turned more to the church. It wasn’t that he just showed up every Sunday to pray—he became involved in a variety of community projects: he donated money; he gave the church two houses; he set up a scholarship fund for disadvantaged students; he mentored. Although he claimed not to impose his religious beliefs on others—“I’m no Holy Joe; I try to let my actions speak for me”—he certainly took to heart one of the basic tenets of the Baptist religion as stated in Mark 16:15: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.”
In the past twenty years, he had given countless motivational speeches at business conferences, seminars, conventions, and schools. His most often delivered speech was titled “One Moment of Glory—Then What?”
“I believe that if you don’t believe in God and a future existence, then you are bound for hell,” he asserted, taking a last bite of brisket. “I guess that’s what helps me behave better as an adult. I’m dumbfounded by people who are agnostic. Where do they go when they need a higher voice to tell them what to do? Like Bob Palmer. Every time I saw him after the war, he seemed so disconnected, not just to the people around him but to any sense of life and spiritual guidance.”
It was this moral rectitude that directed him to seek out Doug Graham, one of his former crewmates on the Trout, the sub that had transported the Philippine treasure to safety. For fifty years he held the memory of Graham taking coins out of one of the bags of silver and slipping them into his pocket. When Tim learned that Graham now lived in Houston, he tracked him down and called him to tell him he didn’t think what he did was right.
“He admitted that he’d done it, but told me he’d given the coins to his daughter,” said Tim. “He said he’d call her and get the coins back, and then mail them to me. I would donate them to the museum in Fredericksburg. Well, I waited and waited, and he never sent them t
o me. Guess that’s something he’ll have to deal with on Judgment Day.”
Tim McCoy Jr., Tim’s younger son and the CEO of NEAT, sat behind the desk in his office. In comparison to his father, he is far more laid back. A small framed picture of his older brother Chuck hung on the wall behind him.
“I’m sure it was my dad’s faith that allowed him to get through what happened to my brother,” he said. “He was devastated.”
Chuck died in 1994 at the age of forty-seven. The cause of death was listed as a heart attack, although friends of the family have sometimes wondered if there wasn’t something else involved. At the time, Chuck was going through some difficulties—a divorce, business failure, and dependence on alcohol and prescription drugs. Years earlier, Tim Sr. had gotten him involved in NEAT, but that didn’t work out. Then he loaned him the capital to start his own business, McCoy’s Lawn Equipment, but the shop hemorrhaged money.
Maybe the father had pushed the son too hard for too many years, some people speculated, and in the end the stress of trying to live up to a war hero/self-made millionaire father just caught up with him. By Tim Jr.’s account, Chuck was never quite able to meet his father’s high standards. In high school, Chuck challenged his dad to a footrace and lost. As a young adult he got into drugs, a vice few parents from Tim’s generation could understand. The more Chuck’s personal life fell into disrepair, the greater the tension between them.
“My brother and I had a good childhood,” said Tim Jr. “Yes, Dad was a disciplinarian and pretty strict. But really, there weren’t many tough times. At the time [of Chuck’s death] he didn’t really go into a deep, dark depression. His faith got him through, and he also threw himself into his work. He never took a day off. He stayed focused, pouring himself into his job rather than sitting at home and dwelling on it.”
