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

  March 11, 1945. Nearly two dozen planes had taken off from Japan, a distance of nearly 2500 miles. At 10 PM at night, only two kamikazes arrived at the target area. The USS Randolph was the stricken carrier.

  The USS Indianapolis was the heavy cruiser which would go on to deliver the parts for the first atomic bomb to the take-off base at Tinian Island. Sailing later for Leyte, she was torpedoed on July 30, 1945, sinking in less than 15 minutes with 300 men. The 900 other crew members spent the next five days in a nightmare of battling sharks, exposure, and thirst and hunger. Only 317 survived the ordeal. [http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm]

  LCM was Landing Craft, Mechanized, capable of carrying one small tank or 100 troops. LCVP was the Landing Craft Vehicle/Personnel, also known as a Higgins boat; it could carry 36 troops or a small vehicle such as a Jeep.

  Author William Manchester, present at the fight, thought back to his father’s experiences in World War I on the Western Front: ‘This, I thought, was what Verdun and Passchendaele must have looked like. Two great armies, squatting opposite one another in mud and smoke, locked together in unimaginable agony . . . there was nothing green left… ’See William Manchester, Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (Boston: Little Brown, 1987) pp. 359−360.

  Sledge, Eugene B. With the Old Breed at Peleliu and Okinawa. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991. 223. Mr. Lawler was well acquainted with the mild-mannered Alabamian Eugene Sledge (1923−2001), whom he would tease as ‘Rebel.’ Unbeknownst to Lawler and his fellow infantrymen, Sledge was keeping notes of what was happening to them in his pocket–sized Bible. On publication of With the Old Breed in 1981, Mr. Sledge would be hailed as the most influential war memoirist of World War II. Ken Burns’ PBS series, The War (2007) and the HBO series, The Pacific (2010) are based in part on his work. It is highly recommended for further reading. http://bit.ly/OldBreed

  Harold Chapman’s remains were repatriated nearly four years after he was killed on Okinawa. He joined the Marine Corps in 1943 at the age of 17. He was survived by three sisters and his mother, whom Jimmy Butterfield and Danny Lawler visited upon their return home in 1945. ‘Body of U.S. Marine Being Returned Home’, The Glens Falls Post-Star, March 7, 1949.

  Marine Corporal ‘Whitey’ Hargus.

  Well-known Glens Falls doctor Charles Richard Barber (1914−1999).

  Mary and Jimmy Butterfield were married for 67 years. After the war, they were the proud owners and operators of Butterfield’s Grocery Store on Bay St. in Glens Falls for 40 years. It was said that Mr. Butterfield could tell the denomination of the bill that was handed to him by its texture and touch. Mary passed in Oct. 2012; Jim passed the following summer.

   Lester Tenney, a Bataan Death March survivor and fellow slave laborer at a mine in Japan, recalled testing the guards to get a feel for whether or not the war was really over. He left his barracks and offered a “Hello” in Japanese to the nearest guard he could find, a move that normally would have resulted in a severe beating, as he deliberately did not bow. Instead, the guard returned the salutation in English, with deference. In a 2014 interview, Tenney recalled with emotion, “He bowed to me. He bowed, to me!”

  [*]Mr. Norton continued: ‘That was real sad. Fortunately, my parents wrote me a lot, and I would write back. My father used to go down to the post office, every night, looking for the mail. He would be there waiting for a letter from me, every night, you know. The parents were concerned.’

  Later, after this episode has passed, I discovered that Jessie was born exactly 56 years after the day Randy died. She is a Pearl Harbor baby.

  * * *

  [1]Front Matter

   ‘I hope you’ll never have to tell a story like this’- Iwo Jima veteran Ralph Leinoff

  Preface

   ‘we tend to read the history with a sense of inevitability’- Manchester, William. Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987. 167.

  Hometown, USA

   ‘We walked around’- Hiroshima witness John Norton

   ‘There was a family that lost two sons’- John Norton

   ‘I’ve had a nightmare down through the years’-Iwo Jima veteran Art LaPorte

   ‘I don’t know how you could make the young people today understand’- Battle of the Bulge veteran Joe Leary

   ‘nearly three-quarters of them went overseas’-National World War II Museum, http://bit.ly/ww2numbers.

  Assistant Secretary of War Robert P. Patterson had a hand in influencing the selection of the Glens Falls region by the magazine’s editors. Born in Glens Falls in 1891, Patterson allegedly helped to steer the magazine towards the North Country in promising the availability of color film, which at the time was scarce and prioritized for military use. You can read more about this remarkable public servant at http://bit.ly/rppatterson.

  It is perhaps also worthy to note here that Hudson Falls (formally known as Sandy Hill)was the birthplace of America’s first Consul-General to Japan, Townsend Harris (1804-1878), the man most responsible for the opening of that country with the West. On instructions from the President of the United States, he concluded the Treaty of Amity and Commerce with Japan in 1858. Soon after, President Buchanan appointed Harris as minister to Japan, where he would be highly regarded.

  [2]A Sunday Morning

  The chapter title was inspired by a heading in Studs Terkel’s Pulitzer Prize winning The Good War: An Oral History of World War II (1984) undoubtedly the primary influence on my career in narrative history and on this work. A must read for anyone who enjoyed this book. http://bit.ly/goodwar.

  Map, ‘Extent of Japanese Control in the Pacific, 1942’ by Susan Winchell-Sweeney Matthew Rozell, Editor [2015] after Donald L. Miller, The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. Digital data sources: Esri, HERE, Delorme, USGS, Intermap, increment P Corp., NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), Esri (Thailand), TomTom, MapmyIndia, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.

  Testimony of Stephen Bower Young, cited in Miller, Donald. The Story of World War II. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001. 90. In this work, I have leaned heavily on Donald L. Miller. I had searched for months for a good ‘textbook’ to use with high school seniors. In addition to Terkel, mentioned above, this book fit the bill and I have used it in the classroom for over a decade. See more at http://bit.ly/thestoryww2.

  [3] After Action Report. USS Oklahoma, Reports of Pearl Harbor Attack. 20 December 1941. Department of the Navy-Navy Historical Center.

  [4] “World War II-Valor in the Pacific National Monument”. National Park Service, U.S. Department of the Interior. http://www.nps.gov/valr/index.htm.

  [5] Interview with Gerald Ross. Interviewed by Matthew Rozell, Hudson Falls High School World War II Living History Project, Veterans’ Symposium, May 19, 2001. Also, classroom interview, 1998. Mary Bancroft and Cameron Rigby worked on transcriptions.

  [6] Interview with Joseph Fiore. Interviewed by Katelyn Mann, January 13, 2004.

  [7] Interview with Dante ‘Dan’ Orsini. Interviewed by Shea Kolar, Dec. 8, 2005. Also, Mikayla Orsini, Jan. 7, 2012, and classroom interviews. Dan became a friend late in life and loved to visit with the kids in my classroom. Besides being in the White House Honor Guard, he also fought at Guam and Okinawa. After serving in China protecting that government against the communists immediately following the war, he was awarded the ‘Order of the Cloud and Banner’ by Chiang Kai-shek himself. He served his community in many ways up until the week before he passed in 2013 at age 93.

  [8] Burr, Patten. “John Parsons, Local GI, Recounts Jap Tortures”, The Glens Falls Post-Star, Jan. 30, 1946.

  [9] Morton, Louis. The Fall of the Philippines, Chapter V: The First Days of War. CMH Pub 5-2. US Army Center for Military History. 1953. http://www.history.army.mil/books/wwii/5-2/5-2_5.htm

  [10] Source: Minder, Joseph G. World War II Diar
y of Joseph G. Minder, 1941-1945. Unpublished manuscript. Joe Minder’s POW diary forms the backdrop of this work. The bulk of it is published here for the first time. He kept his notes on cigarette paper and other scraps and managed to keep them hidden from his captors. Joe sent me a typewritten copy of his diary in the late 1990s, and it was reformatted in the spring semester of 2015 for use here by my 12th graders as a class project. Alanna Belanger, Sean Daley, Jessica Hogan, Emma Kitchner, Zoe Muller, Brendan Murphy, Ruthie Rainbow, Jack Roche, Nathan Smith, Kylie Tripp and Alexis Winney all played a role in piecing it together. Joe Minder passed away in 2006 at the age of 88.

  [11]The Defenders

  Map, ‘Route of Pvt. Joseph G. Minder in the Philippines, Oct. 1941-May 1942.’ by Susan Winchell Sweeney Matthew Rozell, Editor [2015]. Digital data sources: Esri, HERE, Delorme, USGS, Intermap, increment P Corp., NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), Esri (Thailand), TomTom, MapmyIndia, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.

  Tenney, Lester I. My Hitch in Hell: the Bataan Death March. London: Brassey's, 2001. 38. Lester Tenney, a Bataan Death March survivor and POW slave laborer at a mine in Japan, filed a pioneering lawsuit against the Japanese company he slaved for while a POW in Japan. In 2000, it was dismissed in a California court at the urging of the U.S. Government. In 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court turned aside this case and dozens of other POW slave labor claims. See http://bit.ly/TenneyPOW.

  [12] “Malinta Tunnel.” Corregidor: The Island Fortress. http://www.corregidorisland.com/malinta.html.

  [13] Ward, Geoffrey C. and Burns, Ken. The War- An Intimate History. New York: Alfred. A. Knopf, 2007.38.

  [14] Miller, The Story of World War II. 105,111.

  [15] Burr, Patten. “John Parsons, Local GI, Recounts Jap Tortures”, The Glens Falls Post-Star, Jan. 30, 1946.

  [16] Sloan, Bill. “Corregidor: The Last Battle in the Fall of the Philippines.” HistoryNet. http://www.historynet.com/corregidor-the-last-battle-in-the-fall-of-the-philippines.htm.

  [17]“Defenders of the Philippines.” 92nd Garage Area. http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/92nd_garage.html.

  [18]“Defenders” of the Philippines." Cabanatuan. http://philippine-defenders.lib.wv.us/html/cabanatuan.html

  [19] Holmes, Linda Goetz. Unjust Enrichment: How Japan’s Companies Built Postwar Fortunes Using American POWs. Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2001. 13.

  [20] Interview with Major Richard M. Gordon - Bataan Death March Survivor. HistoryNet. http://www.historynet.com/world-war-ii-interview-with-major-richard-m-gordon-bataan-death-march-survivor.htm. Major Gordon passed away in 2003 at the age of 81.

  [21]Captivity

  Map, ‘Prisoner of War Route of Pvt. Joseph G. Minder in the Philippines, May 1942-Oct 1944.’ by Susan Winchell Sweeney Matthew Rozell, Editor [2015]. Digital data sources: Esri, HERE, Delorme, USGS, Intermap, increment P Corp., NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), Esri (Thailand), TomTom, MapmyIndia, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.

  Source: Minder, Joseph G. World War II Diary of Joseph G. Minder, 1941-1945.

  Into the Fray

  Interview with Dorothy Schechter. Interviewed by Kaitlyn Barbieri and Matthew Rozell, Jan. 5, 2007. It is not clear if the women of Japanese descent were actually interned at this time. Nevertheless, the episode illustrates the mood of the times that targeted Japanese-Americans.

  [22] Miller, The Story of World War II. 125.

  [23] Keegan, John. The Second World War. New York: Viking, 1990. 275.

  [24] Interview with John Leary. Interviewed by Matthew Rozell, Veterans’ Symposium, May 19, 2001.

  [25]A Turning Point/Guadalcanal

  Map, ‘Guadalcanal, Sept. 1942’ by Susan Winchell-Sweeney Matthew Rozell, Editor [2015], after Hoffman, Major Jon T., From Makin to Bougainville: Marine Raiders in the Pacific War. National Park Service website. Digital data sources: Esri, HERE, Delorme, USGS, Intermap, increment P Corp., NRCAN, Esri Japan, METI, Esri China (Hong Kong), Esri (Thailand), TomTom, MapmyIndia, OpenStreetMap contributors, and the GIS User Community.

  Ward, Geoffrey C. and Burns, Ken. The War, 49.

  [26]Alexander, Colonel Joseph H. Edson's Raiders: The First Marine Raider Battalion in World War II. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2000. 49.

  [27] Alexander, Edson's Raiders. 32.

  [28] Alexander, Edson's Raiders. 60-63

  [29] Alexander, Edson's Raiders. 102.

  [30] Mr. Jones continued: “Matter of fact, he wanted me to stay out there and work for them. One day, he came to me and said—they were high society— he said ‘there’s going to be a debutante coming-out party. We always like to have a few service men present, so it doesn’t look too bad’. He asked if I would go with his friend’s daughter. I said yes. He said it wasn’t a romance or anything. I told him I would accompany her. Her name was Anne Folger, the coffee people, from Folgers coffee. Anyway they took pictures of this coming-out party and that’s one the pictures that was in LIFE Magazine… [shows clipping] That’s me with Anne Folger… At the table were the Spreckles, they were the big sugar people [on the west coast]. One of them was married to Clark Gable, the movie actor. I was in way over my head…. Incidentally, you don’t remember the Mansons, do you? How his people murdered Sharon Tate, and Anne Folger…she was one of the girls that they murdered!”

  [31] Alexander, Edson's Raiders. 112-115.

  [32] Alexander, Edson's Raiders. 153.

  [33] Miller, The Story of World War II. 151.

  [34] Interview with Gerald West. Interviewed by Laura Heil, Dec. 20, 2005. West commentary also taken from our veteran symposiums, May 19, 2001; May 24, 2002. Gerry West passed away in 2014 at the age of 95.

  [35] Interview with Thomas H. Jones, Interviewed by Phillip Kilmartin, Jan. 16, 2009. Also Ashleigh Fitzgerald, Dec.31, 2009. Tom Jones was 99 years old when he passed away in 2013.

  [36] Interview with Robert Addison, Interviewed by Ayme Baumler, Dec. 6, 2005. Addison commentary also taken from our veteran symposiums, May 19, 2001; May 24, 2002. Sara Prehoda and Jackie Quarters helped with the transcription. Bob Addison served as the first Director of Athletics at Adirondack Community College and later became a full time professor and beloved coach. He passed away in 2013 at the age of 90.

  [37] Manchester, William. Goodbye, Darkness: A Memoir of the Pacific War (Boston: Little, Brown) 1987. p. 175, 209.

  [38]I asked Gerry West, of Washington County, how fellow Raider Bob Addison, originally from Ohio, came to live so close by. “Well, the funny thing was, after I retired from the military in March of ‘62, that summer Bob got transferred in [to work at the fledging Adirondack Community College] and came into Sears [store where Gerry worked] to buy his appliances. He looked over at me and walked over and said ‘I know you from somewhere.’ I knew the face and I mean you’re talking twenty years, because the last time I had seen Bob was in 1943 in Camp Elliott. So it was like 19 years later! We got talking and the minute he said, ‘Marine Corps’, then I remembered.” In 2013, the author helped to get both of these Raiders inducted into the New York State Senate Veterans Hall of Fame. See bit.ly/NYRaiders

  [39] Wagner, Richard. Richard Wagner War Diary cited in Larson, Don, Lucky’s Life. 2014. Privately published.

  [40] Interview with John Leary. Interviewed by Matthew Rozell, Veterans’ Symposium, May 19, 2001. John Leary returned from the war and earned a degree in law, setting up practice in Hudson Falls. He later served as Washington County Court judge and district attorney with an illustrious career of public and civil service. He passed away in 2003 at the age of 84.

  [41]Sea Action

  Interview with Alvin Peachman, June 16, 2003. Interview by Matthew Rozell. Shannon Bohan, Naomi Borlang, Kate Mann and John O’Hara helped with the transcription.

  Captivity—Year 2

  Source: Minder, Joseph G. World War II Diary of Joseph G. Minder, 1941-1945.

  [42] Burr, Patten. “John Parsons, Local GI, Recounts Jap Torture
s”, The Glens Falls Post-Star, Jan. 30, 1946. John Parsons, having survived the Bataan Death March, gave an interview to the local newspaper in 1946 recounting his experiences. At Mukden POW camp in Manchuria, he was subjected to beatings and starvation. The Japanese also conducted a secret program that included bacteriological experiments, which the Japanese and American governments today do not acknowledge. (For a horrific accounting from the New York Times, you may wish to visit http://bit.ly/unit731.) Parsons was liberated by the Red Army on Aug. 20, 1945. He suffered greatly from his wartime experiences and owing to a lack of ‘documentation’ at the hands of his captors, he was denied full disability benefits by the U.S. Government, not an uncommon occurrence for POWs. He passed away in 1965 at the age of 53, having been bedridden for the previous five years.