The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater

by Matthew Rozell

  I returned to my high school alma mater in 1987 as a teacher of history. I found myself spending a good chunk of time each spring lecturing enthusiastically about World War II, and it was contagious. There was a palpable buzz in the classroom. All the students would raise a hand when I would call out for examples of grandparents or other relatives who had served in the war—frequently two hands would go up in the air. Every kid had a personal connection to the most cataclysmic event in the history of mankind—and the late eighties, many of the soldiers, airmen, Marines and sailors who came home from the war were still with us.

  A few years later my students and I watched as the nation observed the 50th anniversary of the Pearl Harbor attack. After that we had the 50th anniversary of the Normandy landings, which again attracted much interest. The films Schindler's List and Saving Private Ryan were released to much fanfare and critical acclaim. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, a work in progress for over a decade, opened its doors on a cold April day in 1993. These events signaled to those who had lived through World War II that it was okay to begin to talk about these things, that maybe people were finally ready to listen.

  Building on that blossoming interest, I created a simple survey for students to interview family members. I had hit upon something that every teacher searches for—a tool to motivate and encourage students to want to learn more, for the sake of just learning it.

  ‘A Nightmare like World War II’

  I was haunted, though, by one survey that was returned. When asked to respond to a simple question, a shaky hand wrote back in all capitals:

  I DON’T KNOW HOW YOU COULD MAKE YOUNG PEOPLE TODAY UNDERSTAND WHAT IT WAS LIKE TO GO THROUGH A NIGHTMARE LIKE WORLD WAR II.

  He was right—nobody can interpret history like those who were there. Maybe I took that as an unconscious push to bring the engagement into the students’ lives even more personally. Every spring we produced themed seminars and veterans’ forums and at every step of the way students were actively involved. We began to conduct videotaped interviews, inviting veterans into the classroom, and I also conducted dozens of interviews on my own outside of school. It seemed that for every facet of the war, if we dug deep enough, we could find someone who had lived it and would be willing to share his or her story. Young people who despised school stopped me in the hall to voice appreciation after listening to the veterans. I learned a lot about World War II, but I also learned a lot about teaching.

  Shortly after the 50th anniversary of the end of the war we initiated a dedicated project, and to date, young people have fanned out into the community and collected nearly 200 stories, forging bonds and bridging generational divides, bringing happiness and companionship to their elders. They became ‘collectors of memory’ and brought back much of what you will read here, improving their ‘people skills’, honing their capacity for sustained concentration and analytics, and sharpening their writing chops for college in the process. Just as importantly, students of history have had a hand in creating new history, adding an important tack on the scholarship of World War II that would have probably otherwise been lost. In that regard, this narrative is unlike other World War II titles on the bookshelves today.

  Hardwired to History

  Another early inspiration for this book is contextualized by an interview I did many years ago with Judge John A. Leary, a former Navy torpedo bomber pilot who later would go on to a distinguished legal career. Here was the young man who rubbed elbows with the likes of Joe Kennedy Jr., Pappy Boyington, Joe Foss and others, the man who received the Navy Cross and the Silver Star for his actions in combat, but would not display the medals to the students at Hudson Falls High, instead showing me ‘on the sly’.[*] Later Judge Leary invited me to his modest home and I sat with him for hours on a warm spring Saturday night.

  He settles into comfortable chair across from me and lights up a cigarette, relaxing and clearly delighted with the company. His wife has passed; his children have long since moved on, and he and I are alone. With a twinkle in his eye, he tells me joke after joke and regales me with one incredible World War II story after the other. We laugh and pass the time; the lifeblood of this small town is being transfused as he recalls his life and his old companions in the quiet of his living room, and then he tells me something that will resonate with me to this day:

  A little boy in the 1920s walks the streets of this town with his grandfather, hand in hand. They near the Soldier Monument erected in the 1880s to remember the young men of the community who fell in the Civil War. The old man stops, points, and wipes his eye, proclaiming to the youngster that ‘there stands nothing but a tribute to Southern marksmanship’. Here is the young John Leary, who would go on to pilot dozens of harrowing combat missions in World War II, the little boy holding the hand of his aged grandfather, who had fought at terrible places like Gettysburg two generations earlier.

  Soldiers' Monument. 1946.

  It is nearly midnight now, and it’s time to leave. In shaking John Leary's hand I am suddenly conscious that I am now ‘hardwired’ to the past. An electric tingle goes up my spine; in my mind’s eye I can see him flying as he steadies his torpedo bomber through a hail of anti-aircraft shrapnel exploding all around his plane, reciting his rosary prayers as he closes in to bomb the target. I am physically connected to the 16-year old boy from our town who fought in the furious action at the turning point of the Civil War. I am just two persons removed from his fellow World War II veteran and later President of the United States, John F. Kennedy. In reaching out to other veterans, I am only one person away from FDR and Eisenhower, Chiang Kai-shek and Churchill; I’m just twice removed from the likes of Stalin and even Hitler!

  A Higher Purpose

  Still, as we recount these stories, the overarching question for some may be—‘so what? Who cares?’—and I suppose in our busy world that is to be expected. But somehow I believe that there is a higher purpose to this endeavor. There are always the lessons of sacrifice and service, of duty and honor, and that is enough to warrant a work like this. But in the end it comes down to simply listening, and pausing to consider all we have gone through together in a broader scope as a nation. It helps us to understand the essence of the eternal truths of the human condition, and ultimately, ourselves. World War II brought out the worst in humanity, but it also brought out the best. In studying World War II and the Holocaust, the ripples created generations ago remind us that history is not static, that these events will continue to flow and reverberate down through the ages. In these narratives I hope you can draw your own lessons.

  John A. Leary, like most of the subjects for this book, has passed on. Thirty years after it all began, sometimes I will lie awake at night and wonder about it all. It appears that the past beckoned, and we channeled a portal. Here are the stories that a special generation of Americans told us for the future when we took the time to be still, and to listen.

  Matthew Rozell

  Washington County, NY

  Memorial Day, 2015

  Extent of Japanese Control in the Pacific, 1942, featuring battles and locations in the book. Drafted by Susan Winchell-Sweeney,

  after Donald L. Miller.

  chapter one

  A Sunday Morning

  On Saturday, December 6th, 1941, life was good for the average high school student in America, despite the fact that war was raging in Europe and the Empire of Japan had begun its tenth year of conquest, massacre, slavery and rape in Manchuria, Korea and eastern China. While many families still struggled with the challenges brought by the Depression, most ‘didn’t know we were poor, because everyone seemed to be in the same situation.’ Holiday preparations were underway and sports or other outdoor activities filled the time for most boys and girls outside of the classroom. Teenage romance bloomed, and football and basketball practice occupied many hours that fall. The Saturday matches were looked forward to all week as interschool rivalries were fierce and led to especially-anticipated games between certain teams
. Little did the players realize just how important their ability to function as a team unit would soon become—and for some, it would be a skill essential to their survival.

  ‘Where the Heck is Pearl Harbor?’

  The world changed on a dime that weekend when the Japanese Empire launched its early Sunday morning aerial attack on Pearl Harbor. In New York State, it was early afternoon. Church services had concluded; some families heard the announcement as they were traveling to relatives’ homes for Sunday dinner. Many others were at home or in a car listening to the New York Giants football game on the radio. Some young people went bowling on Sunday afternoons, and others were in the local theaters to see the latest Abbott and Costello release when the show was interrupted and the announcement of the attack made. For the young people and their elders, the response was the same: outrage, followed by the universal question—‘Where the heck is Pearl Harbor?’ The other universal feeling was the uneasy realization that life was going to be significantly altered from here on out.

  A few of the boys from the North Country surrounding the “Falls” were well acquainted with where the Pacific Fleet was anchored; they had joined the Navy already and on December 7th, 1941, they were on board ship in Hawaii for the attack. At the time, over 180 ships and vessels were moored in the harbor. At 7:55 am, the first of two waves of Japanese planes struck.

  Randy Holmes

  A lanky kid from Hudson Falls was serving as a fire-control man on the USS Oklahoma and that Sunday morning he may have been reading in his bunk, walking a duty shift, or maybe sidling through the chow line. With his parents’ permission, Randy Holmes had left high school early, and had arrived at Pearl Harbor a few months before. Just 19, he was probably one of the youngest sailors out of nearly 1,900 crew members.

  Dating from World War I, the ‘Okie’ was an older ship with thin armor plating, but had lately made a name for herself evacuating Americans trapped in Spain at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Like many ships docked at Pearl Harbor that morning, she was in a state of complete unreadiness at the moment of the attack. Having returned to port following sea maneuvers only the day before, the ship has its anti-aircraft ammunition locked away and the normally closed watertight compartments below the waterline opened in preparation for a fleet admiral’s inspection the following Monday, the 8th.[2]

  Barely minutes into the attack, as the airbases at Hickam and Wheeler Fields billowed smoke and flames and Battleship Row was coming under fire, the Oklahoma was struck by three Japanese torpedoes dropped at low altitude; crew members actually saw the torpedoes in the water with virtually no time to react.[3] The explosions ripped through the port side with Randy and over 400 others trapped below her decks. The order was given to abandon ship, but as the ship listed and more torpedoes were taken into her port side, the men below deck were plunged into darkness as water flooded into the open compartments. In desperation, many tried to make it to the shell deck (from which it might be possible to reach the top of the ship and jump overboard) as oil from the damaged machines slickened the surfaces while the ship was rolling in the water. Dozens of 1400-pound shells broke loose from their tiedowns; sailors screamed as the shells barreled towards them and they were crushed to death. When the ship took her fifth torpedo, she capsized completely around 8:08 AM.

  A frantic rescue operation by civilian shipyard crews with jack hammers and torches along the ‘bottom’ of the ship now above water over the next two days saved some 32 men, but it was beyond hope for most trapped below the waterline, where banging would be heard for several days.

  The destruction of the Oklahoma had taken all of fifteen minutes, yet it would take Herculean efforts over the next eighteen months to recover the sailors’ remains. Randy and over 400 others on the ‘Okie’ that morning would never return home.

  Japanese view as the “Okie” is struck. U.S. Navy Archives.

  The Japanese aircraft wheeled and dove in again. The USS Arizona suffered a direct hit with a nearly two-ton armor piercing bomb which penetrated below the main deck and ignited gunpowder in her forward ammunition magazine, instantly killing 1177 crewmen.[4]

  When the battle ended two hours later, over twenty ships had been sunk or damaged, including the USS Utah, which capsized with 50 men aboard.

  Hailing from just a few miles to the north of Randy’s hometown, Whitehall native Gerald ‘Barney’ Ross enlisted soon after an eventful career on the Railroaders’ 1939 ‘undefeated, untied, and unscored upon’ football team.

  Gerald ‘Barney’ Ross

  I was standing on the deck of the USS Blue, a destroyer. I had gotten up early that morning and was getting ready to go to church services. We were all alone out there at this buoy, tied up. I was waiting for a motor launch to pick me up and take me to a larger ship, where they had a chaplain; destroyers did not have chaplains because they were too small. I think that because the Blue was a small ship that it probably saved my life because the Japanese concentrated on those battleships. I was talking to a shipmate of mine waiting for the motor launch, and all at once I saw a plane go over our ship. I did not know what it was, but the fellow with me said, ‘That’s a Jap plane, Jesus!’  She went down and dropped a torpedo. Then I saw the Utah turn over.

  I did not really know what to do. The searchlight was my battle station, but there was no need to be on a search light at 7:55 in the morning. Not only that, but two-thirds of the crew had been allowed to go to the shore because they had weekend passes. The only ones aboard were those who had the duty. I started to help bring the awnings down. When we were in Pearl like that, in order to get out of the sun, we always had awnings over the back end of the ship, the stern of the ship. We used to sit there on Sunday morning and read newspapers. Sunday was our day to relax….

  Things were happening. So, anyways, while I’m out taking that down, the chief gunner, he’s coming and running trying to get into the magazine so we can get some ammunition going. We were caught flatfooted, everything was locked up… it was really a mess you know, and we didn’t have any kind of warning that the Japanese were coming.

  He started breaking the locks on the ammunition. Everything was locked up for fear that someone might go in there with a cigarette or something. He said, ‘Ross, follow me’. He took me down into the number three magazine. He said, ‘I want you to take powder and shells, and send it up to the gun’. He showed me how to operate the hoist, and that’s what I did. I’d get a shell, they weighed about 80 pounds I think, but when I was 19 or 20 that was nothing, I could pick one of those up easy. So, that’s what I did. I’d take a shell and then I’d take a bag of powder, I’d put it in the hoist and then I would send it up to the gun.

  In the meantime, we were getting under way. All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves—all the top officers were ashore! We managed to get underway, and I don’t know to this day why we didn’t get struck or take a torpedo, but we didn’t. We got outside of the exit of the harbor and we started dropping depth charges. There were Japanese submarines out there, and we got credit for two of them and credited for knocking down four planes on our way out. We were doing this with the Phoenix and the St. Louis and four or five other destroyers; our duty was to try and find the Japanese fleet. We formed up and started out.

  We were out there searching for 36 hours. We never did find the Japanese fleet and I am awfully glad that we didn’t, because they had attacked us there with six carriers, three battleships, ten or fifteen cruisers, and about twenty destroyers. The planes alone would have taken care of us, so I was grateful that we never found them.

  When we came back into Pearl, it was pitch dark, and we could see the fires from the Arizona and the other ships still burning in the harbor. They sent this commander out to bring us in because our young naval officer … was not acquainted with coming into the harbor, especially because it was pitch dark. Anyways, it was a terrible mess, as you can imagine, these ships blowing apart… th
ey destroyed the Arizona, hit the Oklahoma and tipped her over, and then the Nevada, she got hit and the California, and the Tennessee, these are all big battleships; they sent about 300 planes in there and it would have been like sitting here having 300 planes come and tear Hudson Falls apart. As a nation, we were sleeping; it is a terrible thing to say but we just—I was just standing there waiting for a motor launch to take me to a bigger ship to go to Mass, to go to church! We had no inkling, no inkling whatsoever. We were sitting there like sitting ducks! Here are men, if you can visualize, men struggling to get out of the ships. A lot of them were sleeping in because they had the day off. It was a horrible thing! This fleet was coming to blow us off the face of the earth. [5]

  Back in Glens Falls, Joseph P. Fiore was a 17–year old soon-to-be Marine who would later go on to be wounded several times in action in combat against the Japanese in the Pacific.

  Joe Fiore

  I was on Warren Street in front of Lenny Bovac’s news room. He had a table with all the newspapers on it out front and a big strap across it, with rocks on it holding it on the table, so they could put the extra that the Post-Star put out and the headlines were, ‘Japs Bomb Pearl Harbor!’ So I looked at Ted Toomey and he looked at me, and I beat him to it—I said, ‘Where the hell is Pearl Harbor?’