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

  The Japanese spotted us, we knew it, and we could see that they were here. We pointed them out on radar, but they didn’t dare attack. We shot a few planes down on the perimeter and knocked off a few subs. So I thought, boy we’re going to take on Japan now, this will be the end. But when we got up there near Okinawa, it was on my birthday on March the 25th, there was a big bombardment. Okinawa was protected by the Japs for fifty years before we came! They had seven huge airfields there at that time. So we bombarded that that day and created quite a few fires, I think we hit oil tanks. Then we’d leave at night and come in early in the morning. One morning when we came in, they were taking off in the airstrips, and we gave them all the anti-aircraft fire we could. We got a few—not only our ships were firing, but so were many others.

  We were the escort ship for the Indianapolis, you might have heard of it. As a matter of fact, we would go in like a beagle dog, close to the shore, and if a shell was fired, the Indianapolis fired a big one in. Our heaviest gun was only three-inch, that’s about as heavy a shell as you can carry. It’s nothing compared to what naval shells are. The Indianapolis had eight-inch. You couldn’t handle an eight-inch shell yourself. So the Indianapolis was with us and we were with a sister ship, the Bowers, and two of the Japanese suicide planes aimed for the Bowers and us on the Witter, they were concentrating on our escort ships. One came for the Bowers, he came in a straight drive. Just before he hit, the Bowers made a quick turn, so just part of the wing hit it. And when the plane meant for us came, our ship did not fire quickly enough, and the Indianapolis did. Aboard the Indianapolis was Admiral Spruance, who was the Commander of the 5th Fleet. He gave our captain heck, so he got it for us that day, though we had gotten other suicide aircraft ourselves in the Philippines, under big attacks.

  ‘We’re Going to Be the Target’

  On Easter Sunday, it would have been April the 1st of 1945 as I remember, the big invasion started, and on that day it wasn’t too bad from what I would have expected, because troops and Marines were able to cut straight across the island. But now, pretty soon we found ourselves all alone. We were assigned to what was called ‘roger [radar] picket duty’. We had to protect the island against the Japanese coming in to attack our troops; the attacks started getting worse and worse by kamikazes. One of my friends told me that battle was not so bad. He had only come onboard two months before, just coming from the States. I said ‘Yeah, that’s true, until you’re the target. We’re going to be the target one of these days’.

  USS BUNKER HILL is hit off Okinawa by two kamikazes,

  May 11, 1945. National Archives.

  On April the 6th we were under great attack all day. Our ship had to have oil [refueling], and we finally got it on. We had lunch about four o’clock, and right after that we had a big attack. Two of them came out of the skies and we fired like mad and got the first one. The other one was coming straight for us and we had him on fire. He hit into the engine room, fire room and kitchen. He blew out about a half of the ship with a thousand-pound bomb in the plane! Luckily he missed where I was, because on the other five ships in our group, most of the radiomen were dead, unless they were manning guns. You see, the kamikazes would aim for the bridge because it was the communication part of the ship, and they wanted to exterminate or get rid of all the destroyer escorts and destroyers so that they could come in and torpedo everything else. It was a good idea, but it didn’t work out.

  The kamikazes were coming from Japan. Okinawa might be just a few hundred miles from Japan, very close to Japan. So we were hit heavily and I saw quite a bit of action that day. One or two suicide planes went right through the noses of our ships, but several were shot down. When our ship was hit, I helped the gunners out all I could. One of our sister ships came up and towed us in to a little anchorage called Kerama Retto. Kerama Retto was not really controlled by us, except we used it for our ships. The Japanese planes would show up, and we’d fire at them. So we had the bait, and if we were under attack there, the Navy would use PT boats and make a big smoke ring, put in white smoke; you couldn’t see anything, so they couldn’t see us. But some of our ships would open up on the planes right through the smoke-our radar was so good that we’d shoot them right down. As a matter of fact, the radar on our ship was so efficient, we could spot a plane three hundred miles away! And we just traced them; if they came within 20 miles, we were all ready. That was a very good thing, we had good radar.

  So we were in there from when we got hit at the beginning of April until June of 1945. There were so many ships that had been hit that we could not get a guy to weld it good enough to take us back to the United States. Finally, my lieutenant came up to me one day and he said we were going to take casualties back to the United States on the troop ship USS Hocking, a big ship, and that I could go with them because I had been there the longest. He said, ‘When you get to California, you will take a leave, and then you will come back to California and our ship will be ready, and you will take it through the Panama Canal with the men who are [going to the East Coast]’. So I went back on the Hocking, we were under great attack in a big convoy. We brought back a lot of amputees to Tinian to a big hospital there. Many of the men had legs off, arms off, maybe even all limbs off, a pitiful sight.

  We got down there and we also put aboard the Seabees. We then went to the island of Kwajalein and then to Hawaii. We got off on a little base and they gave the destroyer escort men two beers every day. That’s all I needed, I was drunk on two beers! I was ‘landsick’; instead of being seasick, I was landsick. I was aboard a ship too long; I thought the land should hit me in the teeth! Then we came to San Francisco, and I had leave and came across the country, which I had to pay for, by the way. When I came back I found out the Witter had beaten me and had made it to California [and then departed for the East Coast], so they had to send me back again across the country!

  Right about that time, World War II ended. And on September 28, 1945, I had enough points. I was in Philadelphia when the Witter came in, and I asked to get out. I got out and on October 1st, I was in college! I wasted no time, one weekend.

  ‘I Lost Many Friends’

  Matthew Rozell: So what did you think about the atomic bomb?

  Best thing that ever happened to us. If it wouldn’t have been for the atomic bomb, I think we would have had a catastrophic amount of men killed, and probably the elimination of the Japanese nation as a whole. It would have been a terrible thing to conquer. I think it did a great deal in helping to save a million or two men, as well as the Japanese. I believe Harry Truman was a wonderful president in that regard; he really did a great favor to us. But I do not understand why we had to wait so long to figure things out! We shouldn’t have gone into Okinawa if we knew we had the atomic bomb because in Okinawa, we had 50,000 casualties! Our whole division was hit, except for the Wilmarth, as I told you. Two hundred and fifty ships were hit at Okinawa by kamikazes. The day we got hit, 26 ships got hit, and six were sunk to the bottom! I believe the Japanese had over 500 aircraft against us that day, suicide aircraft. Have you ever been startled by a partridge suddenly trying to fly into you? It is really a scary thing! They were nuts like [angry] bees! Although you weren’t thinking of it at the time, it was a scary thing that these people would give up their lives like that. It was the most Navy lives lost in one battle. I lost many friends.[71]

  Destroyer Escort USS WITTER

  following kamikaze attack. Alvin Peachman collection.

  As the land battle for Okinawa raged toward its crescendo with the fury of a storm, the kamikaze attacks would claim over 15,000 American casualties for the Navy alone.

  chapter fourteen

  Typhoon of Steel-Okinawa

  After three years of fighting across 4,000 miles of ocean, the United States was finally poised at the threshold of the Japanese home islands. The island of Okinawa had been colonized by Japan in the early days of her imperial might; at a mere 340 miles from mainland Japan, the coming assault on the isla
nd would be an attack on her inner defenses. Sixty miles long and nearly 900 square miles, the island hosted perhaps 120,000 defenders, but once taken, planners reckoned it would be big enough to support 800 heavy bombers. As the winter of 1945 gave way to spring, it was clear to the Japanese that the island had to be held at all costs. Taking it was not going to be simple or easy. Planning for the largest combined operation in the Pacific War took months, and over half a million Americans would be committed to the battle.

  Early morning on Easter Sunday, 1945, the invasion of Okinawa began. The first Marines and soldiers to hit the beaches that Easter morning were somewhat perplexed, however, to find little or no opposition. Others noted the irony of the date: besides being Easter Sunday, it was April 1st- April Fools’ Day.

  Bruce Manell, a combat photographer from Whitehall with the 6th Marine Division, remembered the invasion.

  Bruce Manell

  They gave us a good time before we went to Okinawa. The Navy gave us all the beer we wanted to drink all day long. Oh what a place that was [Mog Mog, the island set aside for rest and relaxation at Ulithi]!

  When we hit the China Sea going into Okinawa—it is supposed to be one of the roughest seas in the world, and I won’t deny that a bit—you would see ships go out of sight under the waves and coming back on top of the wave! The screws in the propellers came out of the water, and the whole ship vibrates because there is no water there, and you go back down. It was pretty rough. Anyway, we pulled up off Okinawa during the night, and about 1:00 in the morning, they woke us up to get ready to go ashore. I said I would go up topside to see what was going on. So I went up topside and—my golly!—guns were going off. That Navy, they really knew how to spit that stuff out! There were times when you could see the shape of a hill—with all the explosives going off at once. They were hitting a hill, and you could see the shape of the hill silhouetted in the dark. That was a tremendous barrage. Just about daybreak, they let off on that. And fighter planes and dive-bombers came in, and they did an awful job on the shore. That was a spectacular sight also. Then, at 20 minutes after 8:00, I went ashore with the first wave. You go to shore in one of these LCMs or LCVPs. You have this big metal door in front of you, and they ram it into the shoreline. And as soon as it stops, the door flops down, and you wonder what’s going to be on the other side- There was nothing there! We were surprised. So we went ashore and started doing our job like we were supposed to, and guys were saying, ‘Where’s the Japs? Where are the Japs?’ No one seemed to be able to find the Japs!

  Then we started to get reports, a couple hours later – well-such-and-such has found some Japs south of us a ways. Then they started to get heavier and heavier resistance down there. So we found out where the war was…

  Our job was to cut the island in two and then proceed north from there, which we did. We got scattered resistance here and there—except for one night, we had a banzai charge all over the island. They just seemed to come out of the ground, and it was 11:00 at night. It was a horrible night! I shot my first Jap then on Okinawa, and I have the grenade that he was trying to throw at me as a souvenir.[72]

  ‘Mud and Total Extinction’

  The Japanese were refining a defense–in–depth tactic that brought the battle up the island to the ten–mile long Shuri Line. In the space of a very constricted area, some places no more than 600 yards wide, 300,000 fighting men were waging a death struggle that seemingly turned the area into a moonscape of exploding shells, knee–deep mud, denuded vegetation, sewage and rotting corpses.

  Dan Lawler had recovered from his wounds at Peleliu and was back in the thick of things at Okinawa with his outfit, which included a friend of his from Alabama, Eugene B. Sledge. Sledge’s war memoir would be published in the 1980s to vast critical acclaim.

  “Souvenirs”. Dan Lawler (L) and Eugene Sledge (3rd from left) and others from ‘K’ Company on Okinawa.

  Courtesy Dan Lawler.

  “Heavy rains began on May 6 and lasted through May 8, a preview of the nightmare of mud we would endure… until the end of the month. On May 8, Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally…we were told the momentous news, but considering our own peril and misery…’so what’ was typical of the remarks I heard around me. We were resigned to the fact that the Japanese would fight to total extinction on Okinawa, as they had elsewhere, and that Japan would have to be invaded with the same gruesome prospects. Nazi Germany might as well have been on the moon.”

  Jim Butterfield recalled the island.

  Jim Butterfield

  Okinawa was a beautiful island, really. Gardens, a lot of farmlands, and one of the problems we ran into there was civilians, which we never had before. You’ve got a lot to learn here, I think.

  Our orders were that if we took anything—we were issued invasion money—and we were supposed to pay these people if we took a chicken. But some of those chickens we would put a .45 [cal. bullet] through, and we kept on going [laughing]. But it was pretty nice up there. It was hard with the people, because you did not know what… patrols would go out into the villages and stuff and get ambushed. The people that were living there, you’d think they were defending. So that is when we were ordered to take them out—put them in stockades. That wasted a lot of our time—slowed us up too.[73]

  The Children in the Cave

  It should also be noted that over 100,000 native Okinawan civilians were also caught in the crossfire and killed.

  Dan Lawler

  We hit the middle of Okinawa. The Marines went north, and the Army went south. There were some civilians in a cave—we couldn’t get them out. So we talked to the interpreter. He said something in Japanese that meant ‘Come out; we’ll give you food and water.’ So I went up to this cave and said that. No one came out, but I knew they were in there. They were talking very low. All the sudden, a boy and girl came out… they came out of the mouth of the cave. And I could see that it was quite a ways away, so I stopped. They were about that tall [gestures with hands, about three feet from ground]. They finally came out a little bit closer. I moved a little bit closer. I got to where I could see they were shaking—they were shaken up. Their clothes were all blood—no socks, no shoes. And they were a mess—faces all blood—but they didn’t have anyone around. So anyway, they would get just so far, and they wouldn’t come any closer. I couldn’t figure out what was the matter with them. And I figured, well, wait a minute, it might be the weapon. So I laid the weapon down, and I came back over.

  And we had these candy bars... so I offered them that, but they wouldn’t take it. I figured, well, maybe they figured there was something wrong. So I bit a piece off, and I gave the rest of it to him, and he bit a piece of that. Finally, he started talking to me in his own language, and grown-ups started coming out... so they all came out of the caves. And I picked the little girl up—she let me pick her up. It was rough—it was rough... [pauses, then speaks in barely audible voice] I still remember—I remember well… I can still see the two little kids... the Japanese told them that we were going to kill them, all those civilians: ‘The Marines are going to kill all of you.’[74]

  Evacuating the Wounded

  Katherine Abbott was born in 1917 and wondered about her future upon graduation from South Glens Falls High School. Soon enough, she would find herself in the U.S. Army as flight nurse during the Pacific War.

  Katherine Abbott

  I just wanted to do something, I wanted to be a school teacher but we did not have enough money for me to go on to graduate school. We had a large family and we did not have that much money—we did not have student loans then. So someone suggested I would like nursing. I did apply and I went to Memorial Hospital in Albany for three years’ service.

  I think a friend of mine, a classmate, talked me into [the Army]. So we decided to go in and after we heard about the Air Evacuation Squadron, and once we had our basic training, we applied for the School of Air Evacuation. It was six to eight weeks. Then we went overseas, this wa
s 1944 and '45, and I was discharged in February 1946. My five brothers and I went into the service, and as I said my classmate talked me into going in and well, I thought it was a good idea.

  In the Pacific, we shuttled from island to island and [the wounded were] transferred from nurse to nurse, as you would in the wards when working shifts. Since there was only one nurse and one medical technician aboard the plane, we shuttled and changed planes and we rested until we were called again. So, we just kept things going—Hawaii, Johnson Island, Guadalcanal, Guam, Saipan, Tarawa, Biak, Leyte in the Philippines, and Okinawa; we would just be ‘island hopping’ with our planes. We had nothing to do with the Navy or the ships; they had their own Navy nurses and Navy nurse corps. We flew day and night, so where we were all depended on how the war was going and [where we were needed in] getting the patients ready to be transferred.

  We were on call as the patients were being transferred and brought in by ambulance. We would be there to see that they were put on the plane and to secure their litters to the walls of the plane. They had hooks with a certain snap to them to make sure they were safe. The [aircraft] were four-motored cargo planes. On cargo planes, all the way back, there was nothing but space and that is where we put the patients, on each side of the walls of the plane and down the center, and it was just the nurse and the technician, the medical technician. There was no doctor.

  We had 28 patients on the plane. We carried three tiers of four patients on each tier on each side, and four patients on the center of the plane on the floor. We had some patients who were ambulatory and others that couldn't move, but they were on the top layers. We did not have anyone who was really, really bad, because our planes were not pressurized and [had] no oxygen, so we could not go any higher than 9,000 or 10,000 feet. That is what you call ‘primitive’ because we were the pioneers in air evacuation and they had just started. Today I believe they are much improved, and they have the helicopters.