In November 1944, at Palau, during the invasion of the Philippines, the USS Whitehurst was taking on stores when the USS Mt. Hood, an ammunitions ship, blew up. Lewis was going up a ladder when he was blown backward. The Whitehurst was just going by the ship when it blew up. This is part of the reason Lewis wears hearing aids today. Only a few sailors from the Mt. Hood who were on leave were safe; the rest of the crew were killed by the blast. There was a fire onboard that ignited the ammo on the ship.
Lewis’s ship made it to Brisbane, Australia, but they were there only three days before being called back to help with the Battle of Okinawa. Lewis was unhappy not to be able to see more of Australia and not to have leave there.
They escorted the USS New York at Okinawa. The USS New York fired on the island to clear out the Japanese before the troops landed.
“Okinawa, the last battle that we were involved in, when we were hit by a kamikaze, killing forty-two of our guys. It happened April 12, 1945, the same day that FDR died. The crew spent two whole days plugging holes. There was a convoy leaving Okinawa, so we joined it and left. They didn’t want lights to be seen by Japanese ships or subs. We left Okinawa and stopped in Saipan, where we took all the ammo off the ship—no use to carry it back home.”
How did you feel after you got hit?
“I was never afraid until we got hit. Then I was afraid. When that clanging started for battle stations, well, I was afraid. But you still do what you have to do; it’s your job. I was still immature.” Lewis was only twenty years old.
“We arrived in Pearl Harbor the middle of May 1945. We were all disappointed that they repaired our ship. They welded a new bridge onto the ship. They converted it to a power supply ship. It was repaired and ready to go back to sea by the Fourth of July. They took fifteen of us who had some special training home for a thirty-day leave. We went home on the USS Intrepid, which took us to San Francisco.” Lewis got an extra seven days for travel time because he was going to Ohio. The war was far from being over at that point. The United States was looking at invading Japan.
“Our ship was powered by turbo electric drive. It would make electricity like we have at our homes. Our job was a power supply ship instead of a destroyer. We arrived in Manila and supplied electricity to the city of Manila until November 1945.”
What did you think about dropping the atomic bomb?
“Didn’t think anything about it. It ended the war, that’s all we thought about it. I think people who think we shouldn’t have dropped the bomb are idiots. It took their emperor to end the war. There were some idiots in Japan who wanted to fight to the death.”
They were engaged in seven battles. His medals include seven battle stars, a Good Conduct Medal, an American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic Pacific Campaign Medal, and the Philippine Liberation Medal.
The USS Whitehurst was used in the movie The Enemy Below. The movie starred Robert Mitchum, and several of the original sailors were given bit parts. The USS Whitehurst was sunk on April 28, 1971, off the coast of Washington state. Lewis is computer savvy and used the DE634 website to trigger some long-forgotten memories of his WWII days.
James Crabb – US Navy
“The GI Bill was the biggest thing that made us what we are today.”
In January 1945 Jim graduated from Tech High School in Indianapolis. He had taken some ROTC classes while he was in high school.
Jim was on the USS General Burner in the Pacific Theater. His job was on a troop ship transporting troops to Okinawa, preparing for the invasion of Japan.
How do you feel when strangers come up to you?
“Wonderful feeling! Keep on thanking us. It’s great the way people treat us.” Jim has also been on the Indy Honor Flight to Washington, DC.
He was asked about his feelings concerning the book Unbroken, by Laura Hillenbrand. He replied, “I don’t know how he got through it and the brutality of the Japanese.”
He said, “The GI Bill was the biggest thing that made us what we are today.” The GI Bill was a program that provided educational assistance to military personnel.
What did you think about the United States dropping the atomic bomb on Japan?
“I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know there was that kind of technology.” He was on the ship going to Japan when he heard the news. They were glad.
Jim was friends with Colonel Paul Tibbets, pilot of the Enola Gay, who was responsible for dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, on August 6, 1945. Later in Paul’s life, “people would stop him and ask if it was really necessary to have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan.” Paul Tibbets said, “Yes, it was; it saved many lives.”
Japan
Tokyo, the capital city of Japan, is located on the island of Honshu. The city was bombed by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmie Doolittle on April 18, 1942, in the first attack on the homeland of Japan, also known as the Tokyo Raid. The city was bombed by sixteen US B-25 bombers. The bombers had to take off from an aircraft carrier, drop their bombs on Tokyo, then fly on to China, as they didn’t have enough gas to return to United States soil.
Osaka, the second largest city in Japan, is located on the south coast of the island of Honshu. The first air raid there was on March 13–14, 1945. The second air raid was on June 1, 1945, and the last air raid was on August 14, 1945, the day before the Japanese surrendered. Unfortunately a train had just arrived at the train station when the US bombs were dropped, killing over seven hundred people. Osaka was an important center for industry and war supplies, making it an important target for the Allies.
Hiroshima is located on the southwestern part of the island of Honshu. It was the site of the first atomic bomb explosion, dropped by the US airplane Enola Gay, piloted by Paul Tibbets Jr. on August 6, 1945. The bomb was named Little Boy. Hiroshima sustained a loss of more than eighty thousand Japanese lives, and thousands more were wounded. Tibbets said openly he had no regrets about dropping the atomic bomb, as it saved lives. The Allies were planning an invasion of Japan that would have taken many Japanese and Allied lives.
Nagasaki is located on the island of Kyushu in Japan. The second atomic bomb, Fat Man, was dropped three days after the first bomb, after the Japanese government refused to surrender. The pilot, Frederick C. Bock, flew the B-29 Superfortress Bockscar over Japan, looking for Kokura. However, the city was fogged in. The plane then went to the secondary target, Nagasaki, which was targeted because of the war plants and industry in the city. Over 50,000 people were killed in this attack. On August 15, 1945, the Japanese surrendered; they formally signed the surrender agreement aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.
General Douglas MacArthur was preparing for an invasion of Japan, which was set for the fall of 1945. After the Japanese surrendered, MacArthur was put in charge of the formal surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri battleship.
Clell Downey—US Navy
“I was in more danger on an aircraft carrier than Guadalcanal.”
In 1942 Clell joined the navy, when he was fifteen years old. The recruiter asked him if he had a birth certificate. He said no, but he had a Bible record back in Tennessee, where he was from. The navy recruiter said, “as long as you have it, it’s OK. You don’t have to go get it.” So Clell joined in Florence, Alabama, and took the train to Birmingham to pick up another train. He remembered it was a Pullman, and he slept in the upper bunk. When the train had to cross a river, it was put on a barge. “We got out on the other side instead of going across a bridge. We took the southern route through El Paso, Texas,” Clell said.
“Mostly they fed us on the train, but sometimes we got out at a restaurant to eat. While eating at one restaurant, some guy said, ‘Throw me the salt. So I picked up the salt shaker and threw it. The salt shaker hit the big guy in the forehead! He shook his head, as though he couldn’t believe I’d done that. He was a big redheaded guy.”
When he arrived in San Diego, he got his navy uniform. Because he was dirt poor, these were the “best newest clothe
s I’d ever owned. I thought I was rich.” The Depression had hit, and Clell’s family was very poor. He made fifty dollars a month in the service. He kept fifteen dollars and sent his mom thirty-five dollars; with the government matching it, his mom got seventy dollars altogether. According to Rights and Privileges of American Servicemen, servicemen were allowed to make a voluntary allotment to either his wife or dependent parent or other family members. The Government provided a designated amount according to the amount of money the soldier was making.
Boot camp
Boot camp was not too hard for Clell, since he had worked as a delivery boy. He had gotten exercise delivering groceries at home in the hills of Tennessee. He was in good shape. There were several guys at the start of this one exercise they were doing—running up and down a field. At the end of the exercise, there were only five left, and he was one of them.
In 1942 the military needed lots of soldiers overseas. Some of the boys had been in boot camp only two weeks, and they were sent overseas. However, Clell had twenty-six weeks of boot camp. He was sent to radio school, where he had an attack of appendicitis. He spent twenty-one days in the hospital, until he could return to duty. So he flunked out of radio school.
Next he was sent to North Island Naval Base, San Diego, California. His job was to work on huge wheels, filling them with air and attaching them to seaplanes. His next assignment was in Estonia, Oregon, at the Naval Air Station. His job there was putting ammo into aircraft. He then moved to Sheldon, Washington, for six months, then was sent overseas. The first stop was Ford Island in Pearl Harbor.
Pearl Harbor
He said there is a little known and little reported incident where twenty-two LSTs loaded with ammo blew up. The LSTs were tied together, and there was a chain reaction explosion. The men on the ship spent several weeks afterward picking up body parts. The military kept it out of the news, as it was not good for morale. Clell saw the USS Arizona before the December 7th bombing. It is still commissioned; it has never been taken it out of service. His impression of Pearl Harbor in 1942 was that there was lots of asphalt, as it was paved for an airstrip. He stated, “I was just a kid and had not learned to be afraid yet.”
Clell was on a world cruise. One of the ports of call on this cruise was Honolulu, Hawaii. His wife, Bobbie and he returned to Pearl Harbor during this cruise.
How did you feel about returning to Pearl Harbor after so many years?
He didn’t say how he felt about returning after more than sixty years. He did say he had mentioned the above incident with the LSTs to someone at the base while he was there. He was told the navy was going to recognize it at a later date with a celebration to let people know about the disaster.
Clell remarked several times about how kids are not able to recognize fear. He gave this example: Two officers were drinking, and one said, “I can do a slow roll on takeoff.” The other one said, “No, you can’t, and I bet five dollars you can’t!” So they went out to a plane to settle the bet. The pilot didn’t make it and crashed into the head, killing the guy going to the restroom in there as well. Two people died over a silly bet!
Guadalcanal
Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands, was code-named Operation Watchtower. Fighting occurred there between August 7, 1942 and February 9, 1943. It was the first major battle, and a very important victory, against the Japanese army. Japan was trying to stop the supply and communication routes that ran between Australia, New Zealand, and the United States. The Allies wanted Guadalcanal as a base. There were 7,100 deaths and more than seven thousand wounded; twenty-nine ships were lost, and 615 aircraft were lost.
Clell was sent to Guadalcanal, and it took the ship two months to arrive. They were going very slowly, four knots an hour, with no escort, on a Dutch merchant ship. They were zigzagging to avoid subs. There was a sub alert, but nothing happened. The island was tropical and very hot. He found a smooth place on the deck to sleep at night. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner consisted of bread and meat sandwiches, maybe bologna and cheese.
When Clell arrived in Guadalcanal, the marines had already secured the island. He was stationed there for one year. One night, while he was sleeping in a Quonset hut, he woke up, and his bunk was shaking. “I thought we were being invaded again. The sky was red!” he recalled. An ammo ship had blown up. Only one man survived; he was blown off the ship but lived.
“Even though it wasn’t a war zone, it was a dangerous time and place to be,” said Clell. He had a buddy who was hit by a plane and killed because the pilot couldn’t see him. Planes had to go one way or the other because they couldn’t see what was in front of them. The plane was tipped up in front. When his buddy was hit, Clell ran over to see if he could help, but his buddy died immediately.
After returning to the States, Clell had some time left in the service. He had a choice of duty stations. He chose Astoria, Oregon. It was 1945, and the war was over. He was assigned to Treasure Island for two months, with very little duty, so he basically played the whole time. He was on a seagoing tugboat for a while before he was discharged on August 23, 1946. He returned to Tennessee and was just nineteen years old.
Korean War
Clell’s time in the military was not over. In 1950 he was called up again for the Korean War. He was assigned to the carrier USS Franklin D. Roosevelt, doing Mediterranean Sea duty. He said, “We lost seven men the last day I was on the ship—just accidents, not enemy fire. I was the eighth accident on the ship. I was working on the flight deck when I was blown almost over the length of the ship by the jet blast. I wore the seat off my pants and some skin. There was material on the deck to help keep the planes from skidding; however, it was like sandpaper on me! I was in more danger on an aircraft carrier than [on] Guadalcanal.”
What did you think about the United States using the atomic bomb against the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima?
“Best thing that happened. It saved more lives than it took. We would have killed more of them. They [the Japanese] wouldn’t give up.”
Family life
When Clell was forty-six years old, he went to college at Tennessee State University. He majored in industrial arts and became a teacher. In his junior year, he was named Outstanding Student of the Year.
Clell had met a girl named Bobbie when they were twelve years old in Columbia, Tennessee. Later in life they were reunited. They have been married since 2015 and have been on five world cruises.
Bobbie and Clell Downey
What do you remember about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?
Bobbie replied, “It was on a Sunday in Columbia, Tennessee. We were going to a Sunday afternoon movie. I was waiting on my parents, and they were upstairs. I called up to them, ‘What’s the hold up?”
“’I think we are at war!’ said my parents. I asked if we were still going to the movies. As a fourteen-year-old child, I went to pieces and started to cry.”
Bobbie started to cry remembering Pearl Harbor, which she and Clell had just recently visited. “I had friends whose fathers were in the war,” she said, “and one friend’s father was a POW. It was hard on him. “FDR was the first president she remembered. She said, “He has always been my hero.”
Glen Eakle - US Navy
“I never want to see what I saw on the tour again.”
“I was drafted at seventeen, in October 1943; they gave us our high school diplomas, even though we weren’t there to graduate,” Glen said. “No one in my family owned a car, but I hitched a ride from my best buddy’s father to the county seat. A school bus picked up all the inductees from Monroe County, Kentucky, and drove us to Louisville, to the army hospital in downtown Shively.” Since it was determined that Glen had flat feet, he was assigned to the navy. “Apparently flat feet made me a better swimmer!”
He continued, “The first night in the Great Lakes training center, our group from Louisville was asked for volunteers to drive trucks. I had been cautioned earlier not to fall for that scheme. They wanted people
to push wheelbarrows!
“We got in some marching the next day, along with pictures of how to identify Japanese airplanes and warships. We had thirteen weeks of training to change us from the kids some of us were to fighting sailors. All this was going on in February. Hiking and marching was no fun in this kind of weather. The worst activity we had to do in this weather was two days of firefighting. We were practicing with fire hoses and had icicles on our chins, noses, and eyebrows.
“At the end of our training period, we were given a two-week vacation to go home. This was good and bad...I visited with friends and relatives. All this was good. Then, two days before returning to Great Lakes, I contracted the mumps. I called Dr. Smith, and he said that I should stay in bed for ten days. So he called the Red Cross to extend my vacation ten days. Now I know that this illness may have saved my life. When I got back to Great Lakes, I was given light duty for a short time. During that four weeks, all the sailors that I trained with had been assigned to ships and were gone from the training center. A student from my high school who had left with an earlier group was killed.”
After returning to Great Lakes, Glen was sent to Boston and assigned to the USS Sanctuary, one of the newest hospital ships built during that time. Glen was an electrician in charge of replacing lightbulbs on the ship. It was important to keep it lit up at night, so the Japanese would know it was a hospital ship. “Here is where we trained on two ships to learn how to shoot the big guns. We had to sleep down in the hole, where the bunks were stacked five high. I simply cannot tell you how uncomfortable this was...like sleeping in an oven! On the USS Sanctuary, the bunks were one and two high and much wider. Also, we had real showers with both hot and cold water, and the ship was air-conditioned.
WWII Heroes: We Were Just Doing Our Jobs Page 5
