No Ordinary Joes

by Larry Colton

  “I don’t think people in this country fully understand what that flag represents,” he said, his voice quivering.

  “Did you vote for President Bush?” I asked.

  “I’ve never voted,” he answered. “What good would it do?”

  How could I ever unscramble the paradox of such a contradiction?

  The deeper I probed into these men’s stories, the more my focus kept shifting; I felt as if I was standing on quicksand. For example, the more details I learned about how the Grenadier sank, the more I believed that Captain Fitzgerald had screwed up royally, but how could that be the case when every man I talked to under his command steadfastly called him a hero?

  These were men of the so-called Greatest Generation, and for the longest time America had been falling all over itself gushing over the way this generation had endured the depths of the Great Depression, performed heroic deeds against truly evil aggressors, then somehow found the strength to bounce back and rebuild a postwar utopia.

  Yet in almost every interview, I regularly heard the “N” word tossed around like kindling and women referred to in terms that negated every advance for women’s rights over the past fifty years. How could I paint these men as the “Greatest Generation” when so much of the evidence I was gathering seemed to draw a picture of a racist, xenophobic, and misogynistic generation?

  I would read about the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo, and then sit down and try to write about the torture the Japanese inflicted on the men in these pages. I wondered what would have happened if somebody had photographed the degradation in the Japanese camps. Would there have been a greater public outcry against the Japanese after the war? Would President Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld still believe that waterboarding was okay or that due process didn’t apply? Did our leaders know that in the war crimes trials in Tokyo following the war, many of the Japanese military men directly responsible for the torture inflicted on our POWs were sentenced to death by American military tribunals? None of the men portrayed in this book believed such torture would accomplish anything other than lower our standing in the world. If these guys didn’t crack under the torture inflicted upon them (and I included only a portion of those descriptions on these pages because writing about it was difficult and I assumed reading about it would be equally hard), what would make anyone believe it would work against our captured enemy?

  * * *

  For research I beat a regular path to Google, as well as read books, official Navy documents, and firsthand accounts I found in the National Archives. But perhaps the best document I had for my research was from Gordy Cox, the guy who supposedly flunked first grade because he’d been kicked in the head by a horse. To help me in my research, he wrote a seventy-five-page account of what happened to him, stunning in its details and honesty. Captain Fitzgerald’s written testimony submitted during the Tokyo War Crimes Trials in 1947 was also very useful, as was Bob Palmer’s twenty-page autobiography titled “A Rather Unusual Story.”

  Bob, Tim, Gordy, and Chuck weren’t just subjects for my book; we forged special connections. In sharing such intimate details of their lives, they put their trust in me. It was impossible not to feel a closeness, a responsibility. I visited their homes; sat in their living rooms; talked to their wives, ex-wives, and children; and dug through old letters. We met in restaurants, at a hospital, and rode in cars together. I attended two of their reunions, one in Las Vegas and the other in Reno—reunions that at times were so drenched in memories that it brought these men to tears. Always, the subjects understood the purpose of my visit. In most cases, I used a tape recorder, and if that was not possible, I took notes. All transcriptions were done by me.

  By the time I showed up, these men were old, liver-spotted, hard of hearing, and sometimes slow to remember. Yet at times they told tales from sixty years ago as if it was yesterday morning. They showed me telegrams to their parents from the Department of the Navy that declared them missing in action. I listened to their anger over their treatment by their own government—and Japan’s—and the callous disregard for their right to reparation. I spent time with a psychiatrist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder, a term that wasn’t even coined until 1985. These men were all textbook cases, but they were all reluctant to admit that they suffered from it.

  Scenes in this book were reconstructed from the memories of those involved, and are subject to the inaccuracies that the decades might have brought. When dialogue is directly quoted, at least one of the participants is the source. With but a few exceptions, the real names of the people involved are used. In the few instances where I have changed the name of a minor character, it was to protect his or her privacy.

  The “true story” was often hard to pinpoint. In some cases, the recollections of different individuals of the same event varied—e.g., the Grenadier’s sinking. In that specific case, as well as others, I recounted the story that made the most sense to me in terms of the published facts. If there was an account recorded within a couple of years of the incident, I relied more on that. With regard to the ship’s sinking, I interviewed ten men who experienced it and they all had different accounts. Four men believed the Grenadier fired two torpedoes at the freighters, yet there was nothing about any torpedoes in Captain Fitzgerald’s official report immediately following the war.

  In the letters and journals that are included, they are reprinted exactly as they were originally written, although sections might have been omitted for brevity.

  At times I cringed at the stories I was hearing. Combined, I was told over one hundred torture stories. But these were men who had to be tough. They had endured hardscrabble childhoods and withholding fathers. Every time they pulled out of the harbor to patrol enemy waters, they didn’t know if they were coming back. A submarine is no place for a loner, and these men grew to know each other better perhaps than anyone they’d meet the rest of their lives and forged a bond they found hard to explain, stumbling on words such as “respect” and “affection.”

  When the war was over and liberation finally came, they returned to a country much different from the one they’d left five years earlier. All of them were married within a couple years of their return. Was it because it was an era when that’s what young people did, or because their imprisonment had made them all starved for affection and female companionship? I’ll leave that for the shrinks to determine.

  Another thing the four men had in common was that they rarely, if ever, talked about what they’d been through, or spent time indulging in introspection. For the most part, they lived veiled lives. Until this book.

  What was it that gave each of these men the mettle to survive a POW experience almost unimaginable in its brutality? What gave them the strength to endure? Most days I felt inadequate to the task of figuring it out. In the end I could only conclude that they were all very tough sons of bitches, not just because they survived their captivity, but also because they endured the lifetime burden of war.

  For whatever reason, Bob, Chuck, Gordy, and Tim were ready to talk when I came to visit. Maybe it was because they knew that this was likely their last chance to tell the world what happened to them. They talked freely about their childhoods, Navy careers, and years as POWs. They bristled at the handling of Iraq. They made dark jokes about living long enough to read this book. They were not pleased that I was past my deadline … by several years.

  For all their honesty and candor about the past, most of them drew tight when talking about their relationships with their sons. I had to wonder. Had their experiences in World War II directly or indirectly impacted their kids? Three of their sons preceded them in death, and a fourth was in prison. There were stories of drug addiction, disease, and deep depression. But I didn’t initially learn any of that from these men.

  I knew that to tell their stories, I needed to include the parts they would rather not discuss, if only in a final chapter. But to do so would surely cause them pain, a pain they didn’t de
serve at this late moment in their lives. I wondered if there was a part of me that was waiting for them to die so as to spare them any pain this book might cause, or me the pain of thinking I may have betrayed them. As I write this, only Tim is still alive.

  For months at a time, it seemed too daunting a story for me to try to tell. I’m not a historian or a psychologist, and yet it felt like I needed to be those things to somehow make sense of it all.

  But perhaps nothing paralyzed me more than the day in December 2006 when I opened a Christmas card from Chuck Vervalin, of whom I’d grown especially fond. He wrote a little note on the inside: “I am 84 years old. I have read ten books in my life. I hope to live long enough to read the eleventh.”

  I let him down. But I hope I still did him justice.

  Appendix 1

  Sailing List

  USS Grenadier (SS210) March 17, 1943

  Officers

  John Critchlow Washington, D.C.

  John Fitzgerald Vallejo, California

  Kevin Hardy River Edge, New Jersey

  Arthur McIntyre Bessemer, Alabama

  Harmon Sherry La Mesa, California

  Al Toulon Washington, D.C.

  John Walden Portsmouth, New Hampshire

  George Whiting Quaker Hill, Connecticut

  Enlisted Men

  Ralph Adkins Whitsburg, Kentucky

  Norm Albertsen Edgewater, Michigan

  David Andrews Oswego, New York

  Clyde Barrington Orlando, Florida

  Lesly Baker Brownsville, Texas

  Lynn Clark Los Angeles, California

  Thomas Courtney Wyandotte, Michigan

  Gordon Cox Yakima, Washington

  William Cunningham New York, New York

  Charles Doyle Weymouth, Massachusetts

  Jewell Embry Rosine, Kentucky

  Charles Erishman Quaker Hill, Connecticut

  Rex Evans Muskogee, Michigan

  Robert Evans Weber, Nebraska

  Ben Fulton San Angelo, Texas

  Glen Fourre Shelton, Washington

  Randolph Garrison Brooklyn, New York

  Justiniano Guico Los Angeles, California

  John Gunderson Lincoln Park, Michigan

  Carlisle Herbert Johnstown, Nebraska

  Richard Hinkson Modesto, California

  Joe Ingram Pharr, Texas

  Johnny Johnson Cartersville, Illinois

  William Keefe Waterbury, Connecticut

  Riley Keysor Modesto, California

  Joseph Knutson San Diego, California

  James Landrum Richmond, Virginia

  Charles Leskovsky Bellaire, California

  Raymond Leslie Dover, Massachusetts

  Charles Linder South Cambrian, Michigan

  Irving Loftus Minneapolis, Minnesota

  John McBeath Bronx, New York

  Charles McCoy Dallas, Texas

  Dempsey McGowan Charlotte, North Carolina

  Joseph Minton Jacksonville, Florida

  Elwood O’Brion Fort Dodge, Iowa

  Virgil Ouillette Ypsilanti, Michigan

  Robert Palmer Medford, Oregon

  John Pianka San Diego, California

  Miner Pierce Arlington, California

  Edgar Poss Anson, Texas

  Joseph Price Brooklyn, New York

  Carl Quarterman Macon, Georgia

  Thomas Rae Franklin, Texas

  Warren Roberts Des Moines, Iowa

  Charles Roskell Brooklyn, New York

  Albert Rupp Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  Paul Russell Saint Louis, Missouri

  Henry Rutkowski Bridgeport, Connecticut

  Lyle Sawatzke Crofton, Nebraska

  John Schwartzly Saginaw, Michigan

  Lee Shaw San Antonio, Texas

  Dean Shoemaker Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

  John Simpson Omaha, Nebraska

  George Snyder Phillipsburgh, New Jersey

  George Stauber Buffalo, New York

  Orville Taylor Grand Rapids, Michigan

  Thomas Trigg Austin, Texas

  Charles Vervalin Sodus, New York

  Charles Westerfield Danielson, Connecticut

  Charles Whitlock Rock Mills, Alabama

  Charles Wilson Santa Ana, California

  William Wise Los Angeles, California

  William Withrow Goshen, Virginia

  Bernard Witzke Saint Paul, Minnesota

  Robert York Port Chester, New York

  Peter Zucco Santa Barbara, California

  Fred Zufelt Portland, Oregon

  Appendix 2

  Because this is a nonacademic narration, I don’t feel it is necessary to footnote or provide a comprehensive bibliography of sources. But I do want to include the names of authors who were essential in my research:

  David Creed, Operations of the Fremantle Submarine Base 1942–1945; Anthony Barker and Lisa Jackson, Fleeting Attraction: A Social History of American Servicemen in Western Australia During the Second World War; Lynne Cairns, Fremantle’s Secret Fleets; Beth Bailey and David Farber, The First Strange Place: Race and Sex in World War II Hawaii; Time-Life Books, War Under the Pacific; Robert Stern, U.S. Subs in Action; Antony Preston, Submarines; Clay Blair Jr., Silent Victory: The U.S. Submarine War Against Japan; Richard Perry, United We Stand: A Visual Journey of Wartime Patriotism; Life, Our Finest Hour: Voices of the World War II Generation; Donald De Nevi, The West Coast Goes to War 1941–1942; Stan Cohen, To Win the War: Home Front Memorabilia of World War II and V for Victory: America’s Home Front During World War II; Bert and Margie Webber, The Lure of Medford; Doug Stanton, In Harm’s Way; Carl Lavo, Back from the Deep; Rear Admiral Corwin Mendenhall, Submarine Diary: The Silent Stalking of Japan; Jonathan McCullough, A Tale of Two Subs; John Burton, Traveling Life’s Twisting Trails; Albert Rupp, Threshold of Hell; Terence Kirk, The Secret Camera; Linda Goetz Holmes, Unjust Enrichment: How Japan’s Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs; Gavan Daws, Prisoners of the Japanese: POWs of World War II in the Pacific; Tom Mathews, Our Father’s War; Hampton Sides, Ghost Soldiers; Stephen Ambrose, Comrades; Tom Brokaw, The Greatest Generation; James Bradley, Flyboys and Flags of Our Fathers.

  Acknowledgments

  This list must start with Barbara Palmer. I appreciate her candor, support, and patience.

  From the beginning, there was my agent, Richard Pine, who initially believed in the project and never gave up despite all the setbacks.

  Editorially, I appreciate Rachel Klayman’s patience and significant input, and then the way that Sydny Miner at Crown Publishers brilliantly picked up the ball.

  In Portland, David Kelly was such a friend and mentor.

  I can’t give enough thanks to Gordy Cox, Tim McCoy, Bob Palmer, and Chuck Vervalin, not only for what they endured during the war but also for the trust they afforded me. I apologize again for taking so long. And a big thanks to their families, and to all the other crew members of the Grenadier who shared their stories.

  I also appreciate the sound advice I got from early readers—Tim Boyle, John Strawn, and John Norville.

  And to all the many people who gave their time, money, passion, and energy to the projects—Wordstock and Community of Writers—that diverted me from finishing this book, especially Peter Sears, Greg Netzer, Jan Smith, Eden Bainter, Tom McKenna, Shelley Washburn, Sydney Thompson, Rich Meyers, and Erin Erginbright. Thanks also to all the writers and teachers in supporting the mission.

  My sister Barbara Colton Juelson, the world’s nicest person, was always there for me. So were my daughters, Sarah and Wendy.

  And to Stacy Bartley, who offered so much encouragement, I owe so much.

  And special thanks to Greg Dufault, Kerry McClanahan, Regina Perata, Laure Redmond, Steve Duin, Gail McCormick, Arlene Schnitzer, Katie Merritt, Storm Large, Katherine Dunn, Terry and Val Holberton, Todd Houlette, Kelly Burke, Don and Wendy Cobleigh, Rebecca Burrell, Shel Buch, Kate Finn, Rick Weiss, Brian Herman, Week 10 campers, Jill Spitznoff, Lodi Rice, Trudi Morrison, Maria
Ponzi, Teresa DiFalco, Shirley Williams, COW teachers, the Boys of Bandon, and all the book clubs who listened to this story.

  About the Author

  Since his days as a pitcher for the Philadelphia Phillies, Larry Colton has taught high school, worked for Nike, and written three books. Between 1976 and 2000, his articles appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Boston Globe, Sports Illustrated, Ladies’ Home Journal, Esquire, and elsewhere. His previous books are Idol Time, Goat Brothers (a main selection for Book of the Month Club), and Counting Coup, which in 2000 won the Frankfurt eBook Award (FeBA) for nonfiction. He is also the founder of Wordstock, the Portland Book Festival.