Pacific War Stories: In the Words of Those Who Survived

by Rex Alan Smith (Compiler), Gerald A. Meehl (Compiler)

Overview

This is the most extensive collection published to date of first-person oral histories on so many diverse aspects of the war in the Pacific—told in gripping, eyewitness accounts by more than seventy veterans from all branches of service.

In this new book by the authors of Pacific Legacy: Image and Memory of World War II in the Pacific, the history of the War in the Pacific comes vividly to life in the words of those who witnessed it first hand. The editors create for the reader, as the veterans themselves recall it, what that war was like—how it looked, felt, smelled, and sounded. The stories collected here are a unique portrayal of the mundane, exotic, boring, terrifying, life-altering events that made up their wartime experiences in World War II in the Pacific, a war fought on countless far-flung islands over an area that constitutes about one-third of the globe. What the veterans saw and lived through has stayed with them their entire lives, and much of it comes to the surface again through their vivid memories. This is an important book for military buffs as well as for the survivors of World War II and their families.

The narratives, grouped into fifteen thematic, chronologically arranged chapters, are stirring, first-hand accounts, from front-line combat at the epicenter of violence and death to restless, weary boredom on rear area islands thousands of miles from the fighting. While their experiences differed, all were changed by what happened to them in the Pacific. These are not the stories of sweeping strategies or bold moves by generals and admirals. Instead, we hear from men and women on the lower rungs, including ordinary seamen on vessels that encountered Japanese warships and planes and sometimes came out second best, rank-and-file Marines who were in amtracs churning toward bullet-swept tropical beaches and saw their buddies killed beside them, and astounded eyewitnesses to the war’s sudden start on December 7, 1941.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780789208170
Publisher:	Abbeville Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2004
Pages:	512
Sales rank:	880,255
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.70(d)

About the Author

Rex Alan Smith and Gerald A. Meehl are also the editors of Pacific War Stories: In the Words of Those Who Survived (Abbeville), an oral history that serves as a companion to Pacific Legacy. Smith (1921–2010), who served three years in the Army Corps of Engineers in the Pacific, was the author of several well-received books of history, including The Carving of Mount Rushmore (Abbeville), the standard work on its subject.

Gerald A. Meehl, the son of a B-17 crew chief, has traveled extensively in the South Pacific and photographed every major battlefield and site of the Pacific Theater.

Read an Excerpt

PACIFIC WAR STORIES

in the words of those who survived

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By Rex Alan Smith, Gerald A. Meehl

Abbeville Press

Copyright © 2004 Rex Alan Smith
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7892-0817-0

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Excerpt from: Pacific War Stories

Introduction

A man in his eighties sits down as the table and carefully spreads out in front of him ten or so small black-and-white photographs. They have all now taken on a kind of amber hue, after some sixty-odd years, but their images are still sharp and clear. All the photos picture very young men, teenagers clowning for the camera, hats at jaunty angles, on beaches, in front of tents, palm trees always in the background. “I’m this fellow here. He points to one of the smiling lads in the photo closet to him. You look up from the old photo to the face of this amiable, distinguished, Pacific war veteran, and it’s difficult to imagine that they are the same person.

Then, as arranged, he starts to tell his story, first what made him enlist in 1942, then the crazy things that happened while training Stateside for war, then being crammed into a converted Hawaiian cruise ship with thousands of other teenagers, crossing the Pacific with a sense of high adventure, and then further stories of wild times on leave in wartime Honolulu. Then he finds himself on another ship, this time going to invade an enemy island he has never heard of, an island few people even remember today. Then, in an uninterrupted stream, there are stories of terror, violence, and death, interspersed with bizarre and even humorous events, You marvel at how easily he can switch his narrative from a truly gruesome experience to one that is so funny he has trouble getting it out between fits of laughter. Ultimately he tells about hearing that atomic bombs had been dropped on Japan, and he confides that he felt a profound sense of relief when he learned that the war in the Pacific was finally over, that he would indeed survive the war. Then one last story, about another ocean voyage, on another ship, but this one is taking him home.

He stops for a moment, and you think the stories have ended, but it is just a pause. Perhaps unexpectedly, he has somehow tapped deep into a well-secured vault of Pacific war memories, and now they begin to resurface one after another. His face brightens again and again as more images of things that happened come into focus. “And I remember one time—and, you know, I don’t think I ever told my family this story…” and he launches into a humorous, R-rated experience he had in Honolulu. Then another island combat anecdote. Then a story of a strange thing that happened to a friend of his on one of the islands. He will later say he’s told you stories he hasn’t related to anyone for a long time, and some of them he’s never told since the war.

When they first came back, most Pacific war veterans didn’t seem to talk much about what happened to them in the islands. They needed first to get on with their lives, and of course they knew that many other veterans had similar stories they could tell. What a vet had personally done, as just one individual embedded somewhere in the Pacific islands, might not have seemed all that spectacular, unique, or even interesting to others, at the time. Sometimes when tempted to tell their stories, the vets could see family eyes roll and hear a chorus of, “THere goes dad again with his old war stories.” But even with an interested audience, Pacific war veterans would seldom tell anyone about the bad things that happened. They figured was was tough for everybody one way or another, and nobody would want to hear about the horrible things anyhow. However, half a century later, it dawns on some veterans that they actually did have a part in world history, and that what they did then was even fairly interesting. Since more people appear ready to give them an ear, many are now willing to share their experiences, willing to acknowledge that they did play a role, however small, in the outcome of the Pacific war.

Listening to a Pacific war veteran tell his stories is not a relaxing experience. You strain to imagine the scenes he is recalling, and you struggle to keep up, in your mind’s eye, with the images he describes. But as you begin to relive with him his varied experiences, he is no longer an eighty-two-year-old man sitting across from you but a young man stationed on a South Sea island long ago, recounting events with an immediacy that also transports the listener to the Pacific. It’s a form of time travel, and you are there on exotic Pacific islands, living hilarious events that happened on leave in Honolulu, experiences horrific scenes of violence and death, feeling the discomforts of rain, heat, mosquitoes, and the oppressive humidity of the tropics, seeing stunning beauty in lush, island scenery, contemplating all those spectacular sunsets, enduring the boredom, waiting for something big to happen even on rear area islands.

As he talks, the face of the elderly man appears to merge with that of the smiling teenager in the photos. You no longer see the thinning hair and creased face but focus instead on a pair of eyes, the same eyes that saw everything he is describing, the eyes that have not aged, that are still as clear and blue at age eighty-two as they were at age eighteen. Those eyes recall all the Pacific islands he describes, all the events he witnessed, all the tragedy and humor of his experiences in the Pacific war. Yet, through his eyes you see but one part of WWII in the Pacific, a tremendous series of historic events staged and played out across one third of the planet’s surface. At the end of the interview, you look at the old photos again, and they seem familiar now. You don’t see just old black-and-white snapshots anymore—the palm fronds are dark green, the tropical sky is brilliant blue, the beaches are searing white, and the uniforms are rumpled khaki against the tan, forever young faces.

It is this sense of time travel that we attempt to convey in Pacific War Stories. Having interviewed dozens of war veterans for our earlier book, Pacific Legacy (Abbeville Press, 2002), we sensed that some were aware that their island experiences had been overshadowed in the popular media by stories about the European theater of war, and we knew they wanted to be heard. But of all the eyewitness stories collected, we could only include a fraction in Pacific Legacy. Nevertheless, we were determined to all let them have their say, before it was too late. So in this volume we have been able to present the firsthand war stories of more than seventy veterans, just as they recounted them to us, in as much detail as they remembered, with a level of clarity that is at once remarkable and fascinating.

Pacific war veterans are now all close to eighty years of age, or older, yet they still remember in spectacular detail what they did and saw during World War II. Their stories, in this volume, range from up-close and terrifying island combat, to perilous encounters at sea, to aching boredom on rear area islands, and include all the myriad feelings in between that comprise the cast scope, the color, and the vivd imagery within this rich tapestry of stories by veterans who put their lives at risk for their buddies and their country. The result, we hope, will provide those who weren’t there a small sense of what it was like to have had a part in history, to have been out in the Pacific during World War II with a generation of brave and selfless individuals.

During the preparation of this book, Dave Levy, a PT boat skipper in the Solomons who served with John Kennedy, told us, “Everybody who was out in the Pacific has all kinds of stories of what they did during the war, and those stories are worth telling, of course. But what I find fascinating is how the war affected the course of our lives. I know my entire future was changed by my experiences in the Pacific with the Navy. Why don’t you let the veterans finish their stories?” We agreed, and include an epilogue to many of the stories, so the veterans can reveal just how this war altered the trajectories of their later lives. For some, the impact was profound, either due to lingering effects of wounds suffered or because of horrifying memories that continued to resurface for years in nightmares and flashbacks. Some simply picked up where they left off and continued with what they had set out to do before the war. Others who could never resume their former lives headed off in entirely different directions, in careers perhaps energized by their Pacific war experiences.

But whatever the war veterans did after returning from the islands, all of them agree that their war experiences in the islands have become central elements in their lives. They have found that memories of what happened ten or even twenty years ago are not nearly so vivid as those harsh or humorous events on tropical islands recalled from sixty years ago.

The Pacific was veterans who have carried their memories deep inside them all this time are now, in this volume, ready to share their stories.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from PACIFIC WAR STORIES by Rex Alan Smith, Gerald A. Meehl. Copyright © 2004 Rex Alan Smith. Excerpted by permission of Abbeville Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Table of Contents from:
Pacific War Stories

INTRODUCTION

A PACIFIC WAR OVERVIEW

1. “A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY.” PEARL HARBOR, DECEMBER 7, 1941
FIRMAN BALZA, navy, USS Maryland, battleship
RUSSELL McCURDY, marines, USS Arizona, battleship
EVERETT HYLAND, navy, USS Pennsylvania, battleship
DEL ALDRICH, navy, USS Ramsey, destroyer-minesweeper
AL BODENLOS, army, Schofield Barracks
HARVEY AND JEAN FRASER, army, Schofield Barracks
WAYNE “JIM” JOHNSON, army air force, Hickam Field
BILL AND RUTH COPE, army air force, Hickam Field
TOM LARSON, navy, Pearl Harbor
LENORE RICKERT, navy, Pearl Harbor, nurse

2. THE FALL OF THE PHILIPPINES: CORREGIDOR AND THE BATAAN DEATH MARCH, 1941–42
ALAN HANCOCK, army, Bataan Death March
IRVING STROBING, army, Corregidor
JOHN BRUER, army, Bataan, Corregidor

3. THE DOOLITTLE RAIDERS BOMB TOKYO, APRIL 1942
BILL BOWER, army air force, B-25 pilot

4. ISLAND COMBAT BEGINS AT GUADALCANAL, TARAWA, PELELIU, NEW GUINEA, 1942–44
ROBERT MAHOOD, marines, Guadalcanal 127
CARL ALBRITTON, army, New Guinea, Philippines 134
DAVE BOWMAN, marines, Peleliu, Okinawa 138

5. COPING WITH CASUALTIES: MEDICS AND CORPSMEN, 1942–45
VERN GARRETT, navy, corpsman, USS Yorktown, carrier, and Marine invasions: Tarawa, Guam
ROBERT CLACK, navy, corpsman, USS Yorktown, carrier
STERLING CALE, navy, corpsman, Pearl Harbor, Guadalcanal
DAVE GUTTERMAN, army, medic, New Guinea, Philippines, Japan

6. COMMUNICATING WITH THE ENEMY: INTERPRETERS, 1942–45
BOB SHEEKS, marines, Japanese language officer, Tarawa, Saipan, Tinian
DAN WILLIAMS, marines, Japanese language officer, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima
HARRY FUKUHARA, army, Nisei interpreter, New Guinea, Philippines, Hiroshima

7. MANNING THE PT BOATS, 1942–45
DAVE LEVY, navy, pt boat skipper, Solomons, Philippines
AL HAHN, navy, pt boat motor machinist mate, Philippines

8. THE WAR IN THE AIR, 1942–45
JOHN BEDDALL, army air force, B-25 radio operator and gunner, Marshalls
A.C. KLEYPAS, army air force, B-24 radio operator and gunner, New Guinea, Philippines
JIM ROSENBROCK, army air force, P-38 and P-51 armorer, New Guinea, Philippines
JOHN W. VINZANT, army air force, B-29 pilot
FRED WOLKEN, army air force, C-47 troop carrier pilot, New Guinea, Philippines
DON VAN INWEGEN, army air force, B-29 tail gunner
BILL MASHAW, navy, Naval Air Transport Service pilot
LOUIS MEEHL, army air force, gunner

9. THE WAR AT SEA, 1942–45
RUSSELL FRINK, navy, USS Fletcher, destroyer, Solomons
WYLIE DAVIS, navy, USS Chicago, cruiser
PERRY MAX JOHNSTON, navy, lst 958
OZ LEVERENZ, navy, destroyer crewman
BILL LEWIS, navy, lcsl captain, Okinawa
CLARENCE COOK, navy, armed guard, merchant ships
BILL POND, navy, USS Tulagi, carrier, deck crew
CLARENCE “DUDE” STORLA, coast guard, lst 831
GEORGE THOMA, navy, USS Sperry, submarine tender
MIKE DeBOLT, navy, USS Portland, cruiser
LEO DORSEY, navy, carrier fighter pilot
“EX-CHIEF PETTY OFFICER,” navy, Underwater Demolition Team [name withheld by request]
JIM LOCKHART, navy, submariner

10. LIFE IN THE REAR AREA ISLANDS, 1942–45
FRED GILES, navy, Bora Bora
DOUG McEVOY, navy, Midway
REX ALAN SMITH, army engineers, Canton, Funafuti, Guam, Philippines
CHARLES McNEAL, marines, Samoa
ROBERT PHELAN, army, rear area islands
CARL HAMILTON, navy, Seabees

11. WAR AS ISLAND NATIVES SAW IT, 1942–45
FALAVI, coast-watcher, Beru, Gilberts
KIMIUO AISEK, Truk
JORGE CRISTOBAL, navy, Pearl Harbor, Guam
12. THE VIEW FROM JAPAN, 1942–45
PAUL KURODA, Tokyo
AKIRA KASAHARA, Tokyo

13. THE FINAL PHASE OF ISLAND COMBAT, PHILIPPINES, SAIPAN, GUAM, TINIAN, IWO JIMA, OKINAWA, 1944–45
JIM MILLIFF, marines, Bougainville, Guam
HARLAN WALL, army, Philippines
FRED SAIZ, army, New Guinea, Philippines
MILO CUMPSTON, marines, Iwo Jima
BILL HASTINGS, marines, Iwo Jima
JOE WOODS, marines, Saipan, Iwo Jima

14. FACING THE KAMIKAZE, 1944–45
JIM SPRIGGS, navy, USS Laffey, destroyer
BOB KARR, navy, USS Laffey, destroyer
LARRY DELEWSKI, navy, USS Laffey, destroyer
DALE KILLIAN, coast guard, lst 170

15. THE SURRENDER, AND ENTERING JAPAN, 1945
HOADLEY DEAN, army, advance party into Japan
KEN GUENTHER, army, Philippines, Hokkaido

THE PACIFIC WAR IN RETROSPECT
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
INDEX