Question:          (Grandmother) How did you feel, Grandma, when you found out Grandad had been drafted?

Answer:            I felt terrible, of course, but (pause) to tell you the truth, I didn’t think

he’d pass the physical.  I don’t know why, but I didn’t think about it until after he passed the physical and then the reality - - then.

 

Question:          Was there any training in the States before embarkation?

Answer:            We had boot camp and Line Company.  I wound up as a company scout and I had one week of scout and sniper training. 

 

Question:          What special training did a scout have?

Answer:            We had been on a rifle range and I shot high score.  The requirement was to be able to shoot and be able to climb with climbing spurs.  Of course, you were more or less on your own.  You had some hand signals [training], but I didn’t get too much of that… You’d more or less have your own way of signaling…

 

Question:          And that was your assignment?  A scout?

Answer:            Yeah.

 

Question:          What weapons did you carry?

Answer:            I carried a Garand M-1, semi-automatic, gas-operated, clip-fed, offensive weapon.

 

Question:          Thirty caliber?

Answer:            Thirty caliber.  Yeah, chamber pressured at 52,000 feet and muzzle velocity of

51,000 feet a second. 

 

Question:          And you told me you remembered the serial number of your rifle?

Answer:            1865169 (gently smiling).

 

Question:          That’s impressive.

Answer:            You didn’t forget that, because that meant whether you lived or died.

 

Question:          Did you hit?  Marines were known for going in on LSTs and going in on the beachheads.

Answer:            Right.  We used Higgins’ boats - - flat-bottomed and a little faster.

 

Question:          How many men would they carry?

Answer:            They’d carry ‘bout fifty.

 

Question:          What do you remember? Is there anything you’d like to say about hitting those

beachheads?  What stands out in your mind most about them?

Answer:            Well, hitting a beach with a weapons charge, you carried your weapon, your rifle, but you were also equipped with a sawed-off shotgun, automatic or pump, and a box of shot-shells.  Of course, you were also equipped with a Kabar knife, which you used for everything, even sometimes you shaved with it.  And I had my side arm, a pistol.  We had a Navy .32 also.  A .45 was supposed to be issued to you, but I got permission to carry a .38.  See, Navy and Marine Corps are interchangeable and you can get the ammunition.

 

Question:          Was there much confusion? What about training to prepare you?

Answer:            You didn’t feel like you got anything out of training.  We trained in the Catalinas for naval gunfire.  And you didn’t feel like you got anything, but you did.  It would come back to you in combat - - what you originally thought was useless.  You’d have forgot about it because, in the first place, you considered it worthless.  With the real McCoy there is always some confusion.  But then when the times come to the real McCoy, you remembered [your training].

 

            I was involved the Marianas.  The 2nd and 4th Divisions hit the Marianas.  We both hit Saipan.  The 1st Marine Division hit Pelelu and the 3rd Marine Division hit Guam simultaneously, and that included the group of fortified Mariana Islands. I was only involved in three operations.  Saipan and Tinian were two.  We were thirty-nine days on Saipan and seventeen on Tinian…  Tinian was a naval base, so they shelled everything out on Tinian. 

 

I didn’t go to Iwo Jima but I did Okinawa, and it was about eight or nine months after the Tinian deal that we went to Okinawa.  Of course, it was almost like being in combat ‘cause we were on board ship thirty-seven days before we hit on the island.

 

Question:          At Tinian, after the operations ended, you said you had eight months till the Okinawa campaign, what did you all do during that time?

Answer: Well, to be frank, [the operation] really lasted longer.  When our flag went up, they announced it secured.  As far as the people knew back here, it was secured, but it wasn’t.  They always overran caves and stuff like that, and we would go back and re-combed the islands.  That is, we’d get replacements in. We’d go back and do it again and again because there were still Japs in those caves.  The Japs would steal from you.  They’d kill you if they could.  We didn’t have anybody killed in our outfit, but the 2nd Marine regiment had two people killed in their tents by Japs with knives. And this was after everything was supposed to have been secured, y’know.  It was kinda hard to explain… to people, but then they censored ;  everything you sent out anyway.  So people back home just had a vague sense of what was happening.

 

Question: Saipan - - was that where some of the Japanese were - -?

Answer:            Committing suicide?  Suicide bluff?  It was on Saipan.  I was the first one in my company to see it.  Yep. Yeah, they jumped.  They was a two-hundred and ten foot cliff and the military was using it.  They was a draw there (draws line on table with hand), and there was a about a hundred foot cliff, and the civilians was using it [to jump from].

 

Saipan family and an American soldier.

 

Question:These civilians, were they Japanese nationals?

Answer:            No, no, they were gooks.  They were just Polynesians.  But they were scared to death.  The Japs fed them all that propaganda, see, and they were committing suicide.  But not near on the wholesale basis that the Japanese troops were. 

 

Question:The Japanese troops?

Answer:            (Nods.)  I seen one whole battalion jump off.  Over two hundred feet deep, down to the rocks, big rocks.  And in the meantime, we had our people that spoke Japanese, and we had some on board some destroyers.  The destroyers were moving in pretty close to this cliff, and they were trying to tell them people just to

turn around and surrender to us--that they didn’t have to kill themselves.  But Japs

were so indoctrinated, you know.  They thought they had a ticket to heaven if they killed themselves, if they shed blood for the Emperor.  And you couldn’t tell them anything… But [our people] were out there all the time and they were talking to them all the time… over loudspeakers.  And they weren’t far from the cliff.  Some of them come in pretty close.  There were several destroyers and destroyer escorts out there.  And they all had Japanese-speaking people on them.  We had Japanese-speaking people with us.  Fact of business, we had a Jap at one time (laughing).

 

Question:          Do you know how they viewed Americans? Did they view us as liberators or just another invader?

Answer:            Oh, they were real humble and they worked.  They got along the best they’d ever

got along in their life.  They were high on the Americans because we’d give ‘em

work to do - - cleaning up around hospital, stuff like that - - and pay them a dollar-a day.  Man, they was getting rich (smiling).

 

Question:          How often did you communicate with Grandma back home?

Answer:            Well, every time I could get a chance.  She wrote me almost every other day.

But sometimes the mail would stack up and I’d get seven, eight, or ten letters at the time.  But there was periods when we couldn’t communicate.  Like before Okinawa, she didn’t hear from me.  I was on board ship thirty-seven days before we hit Okinawa.  We had no mail going in or coming out.

Answer:            (Grandmother)  It was V-mail.

 

Question:          V-mail?  What’s V-mail?

Answer:            (Grandmother)  Little bitty, reduced.  He’d write normally like this and they’d reduce it till it was about this big.  (Indicates about half original size.)  It would be a copy, and it would be reduced. 

Answer:            See, they were flying all that mail out of the Pacific after [the censors] cut it all to pieces, then they’d reduce what was left.

 

Question:          So your mail to her was censored?

Answer:            Oh, yes, completely.

 

Question:          They didn’t want you telling her where you were or what was going on?

Answer:            No, no.  You’d get to where you didn’t feel like even writing a letter cause you knew it’d be cut all to pieces [censored]--regardless of what you’d put in it.

 

Question:          Other than maybe where you were at, what wouldn’t they want you to tell?

Answer:            Not anything!  Oh, you could say you were doing fine, something like that, but if you said anything else they’d probably cut it out.

 

Question:          Did they just black words out or cut them up?

Answer:            They’d cut ‘em up.  They’d cut ‘em up.  Sometimes they’d be just one word right in the middle cut out.

Answer:            (Grandmother)  I didn’t get many like that, just a few.  He learned, you know, to not call names and such.  He knew not to ask about anyone or anything like that.

Answer:            It didn’t take you long to learn, you know.  Even a blind hog can find an acorn every once in a while.

 

Question:          Was your mail back to him censored?

Answer:            She could write anything she wanted to. They didn’t have any authority to censor civilian mail.  But they kept us from telling [civilians] anything ‘bout what was going on.

 

Question:          Could you send anything like clothes or socks or?

Answer:            (Grandmother) They didn’t need that, but we sent cookies and candy and stuff like that.

Answer:            They sent me some of the best pork tenderloin you ever eat.  Canned it.  Canned it.

 

Question:          What did you live in when you were on the islands?

Answer:            When I wasn’t in combat I was in a tent.

 

Question:          How big was the tent?

Answer:            Oh, they were regulation size tents.  We had the little pup tents, just slept two, you know,          but I mean, after the campaign, well we did have a bigger one.  I think it was 16 by 16.  It slept eight men.  I had a deal with the property sergeant and I stayed in his tent, so it was just me and him. 

 

Question:          What did y’all do for diversion?  Were there any games?  Sports?  Movies?

Answer:            Oh, yeah, they had all kinds of sports.  I think I went to one movie. I didn’t care anything about ‘em.  I’d usually stand charge of quarters and let these other boys go to movies.   Well, we had a lot of floorshows.  But I usually stood charge of quarters on them, too.  I didn’t care much about that really.  I went and seen one floorshow--Eddie Bracken and his company.  Judy Garland was his main actress on it.

 

Question:          Were these USO shows?

Answer:            Yeah.  Well, they just had a stage and sandbags out here on the side of a hill, you

know, and we could look over on the other side.  Oh, as far as music was concerned we had to make our own.

 

Question:          I know you play the guitar.  Did you have one with you?

Answer:            I got a hold of one.  We had an old boy that bought a guitar.  It was just an old cheap guitar.  Anyway, he couldn’t play a lick.  On the way over, when we were on board ship, he got me to tune it.   And then he wanted to have music, and he rousted those people around that had some instruments that they could play, and we got a pretty good little old band together. And of course, after we hit Saipan, well, there wasn’t no playing from Saipan to Tinian.  But after we came back, I bumped into him again.  He let me keep the guitar.  And I got in with an old boy, a McMillan boy from North Carolina that had a radio show…  Yeah, I think he played the guitar, too.  He was a musician in the Jimmy Dorsey Band that was in New York.  And he learned to pick lead.  This old boy that give me the guitar, well, he got killed at Iwo Jima.  He never did learn to play, never did learn to make a chord.

           

Oh, yeah. (laughing) The guys in my outfit called me “Pappy”.  Yeah, I had four kids.  I even had guys offer to go for me, in my place, to Iwo Jima.  There

was about five who said, “Send me.  He’s got four kids.”

Question:          You said the last major campaign you were in was Okinawa?

Answer:            Yeah.  I saw a cave in Okinawa where there was four thousand in it that had

committed suicide. 

Question:          Four thousand?  How did they die?

Answer:            Yeah, four thousand in the cave.  They carried this little old knife about like the old trench knife from World War II, sharp on both sides.  The blade was about that long (indicates seven-eight inches), and it had brass knuckles on the end.  That was their version of the World War II Kabar.  Real sharp, real pointy.  Some of ‘em used knives.  Some of ‘em had blown themselves up with grenades.  They used various ways to kill themselves.  They were some that might have killed each other off. - - only thing, they were all dead. 

(Pauses) We landed on Okinawa, and it was on Easter.  Easter came on the first day of April. And we landed Easter Sunday morning at 5 o’clock.  We were the first troops to put our foot on Okinawa.  We landed on the Pacific side… But we landed as a decoy -- a pretty big decoy--thirty thousand Marines hit eight mile of beach. 

Question:          How long was it before Okinawa was secure?

Answer:            I just don’t remember, Philip.  We were diversion troops there.  We went back on board ships.  We made some contacts, but our main purpose was to pull all these guns across the Bishigawa River…  We then secured the airfield.  They blew all those bridges up as soon as all that equipment got across.  Those heavy cruisers sitting out there blew those bridges.  They already had everything calculated, and they just blew those bridges higher than a kite. 

We was supposed to hit Ie Shima, this small island out there… [but we didn’t] and… we moved out leading this convoy that was making a pass at Nagasaki…  That was the actual combat plan.  We let the army have Ie Shima.  By the way, that’s [Ie Shima] where that famous reporter that was on our flagship, Ernie Pyle, was killed.  I saw him when they ordered him off the ship.  He transferred to the 77th.  But he was on our flagship all that time that we were out there these thirty-something days.

Oh, we got hit. We got attacked from the air - - suicide.  We got hit.  Our ship got hit, but we could still travel under our own power.

 

Question:          You were hit by kamikaze?

Answer:            Yeah. They was twenty of ‘em in the group and in three minutes seventeen of ‘em went down.  The other three attempted to escape but the 58th Task Force fighter planes came in and chased ‘em…  But we had seventeen that were turned into piles of junk, burning on the water.  And then the water caught fire…

 

 Question:          Did it upset you that Japan didn’t surrender at the same time as Germany?

Answer:            No, no.  I knew the Japs by then. They was a bunch of fanatics, you know.  They didn’t mind dying.  They don’t mind dying if they can take somebody with them.

 

 Question:        Grandma, do you remember what you were doing when you heard of the atomic bomb?

Answer:            Yes, it was summertime.  It was real hot, August, and the children were all out

playing.  The Shreveport Times newspaper came and that was the headlines.  Of course, I didn’t understand really the extent of it.  When it got a little more publicity, they explained that it was the splitting of the atom, but it was brand new, see. We didn’t know what they were talking about.

 Question:          How did you feel when you heard they had dropped this bomb?

Answer:            I was glad of it.  I didn’t care what they done to them Japs to get rid of ‘em.

Answer:            (Grandmother) Later you didn’t feel that way.  Because you said it was uncalled for.

Answer:            Well, it was uncalled for.  The whole thing was uncalled for because Japan was whipped.  The whole thing was disgusting because we knew that Japan was whipped.  At Okinawa they’d finished up their little ball of yarn, and we were supposed to land at Nagasaki on November the 1st.  We already had our orders cut to land… 

 Question:          Grandad, how long after the war was it before you came home?

Answer:            Well, let’s see.  We landed in Japan combat loaded.  We didn’t trust the Japs.  Field commanders had their own prerogatives as to what to do.  It was over in August, and I got home just before Christmas.  I stayed in Nagasaki.  We went to Nagasaki four days after they signed the papers.  We would have been going in November anyway.  We were the first troops to land in that area of Japan… We pulled in there late in the afternoon and before daylight we were unloaded.

 

 Question:          When the sun came up, could you see the destruction that the bomb had done in Nagasaki?

Answer:            When you got into town, you could really see it then.