Fyffe, Billy - WWII 2
Billy Fyffe: World War II (Part 2)
Interviewed by Joanne McMillen
Interview date June 2004
Q: OK, as I read through this, I’m going to reflect on some things and have Billy respond. You were out on the bridge the whole – does any one stay inside of the destroyer when this happens, or is everyone always out on the bridge?
A: Well, no, no, wasn’t that many on the bridge.
Q: OK.
A: There was a captain, exec, and the helmsman, me, and the signalman up there. That’s all.
Q: And – I know we talked about this last time, but can you tell me again exactly what your position was, what your job was at sea that day?
A: I was the CO’s speaker during battle.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I wore a set of headphones and he relayed the message to me and I relayed it to whoever it should go to in all the departments of the ship.
Q: Right. So. . .
A: If they said, “Start firing gun two and three,” then that’s what I’d say – I’d say “Guns two and three start firing.” And they would.
Q: Were in proximity to you or at times did you have to move about the top . . .
A: No, the telephone. They were quite a ways away.
Q: OK. They had phones also?
A: Yes.
Q: Now you saw – did you say you saw people coming in on glider planes? The Japanese coming in on . . .
A: No, that was the day before that. The night before that happened.
Q: OK.
A: We was over there, but they were coming in and attacked Tacloban airstrip. That was on the east side of Leyte. We were on the west side of Leyte at Ormoc . . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: . . . delivering a bunch of troops there.
Q: And the position of the destroyer was to protect troops as they landed.
A: We were keeping lookout.
Q: Guard?
A: Guard the perimeter of that bunch of troops that was being put ashore.
Q: I guess I had visions of the captain or someone needing to give the orders for everyone to jump overboard – is that what happens?
A: He did. That’s what happened, yes. When we found out that our ship was going down and he gave orders to abandon ship, well, I wasn’t going to go. I was going to stay with him and he says “No, you’re not.”
Q: Ah-huh. Is the captain always the last one to leave the ship?
A: The captain was the last one to leave that ship.
Q: Did he make it out alive?
A: Yeah. He died this last summer in July up in Chevy Chase, Maryland. He was 93 years old.
Q: He led a full life, didn’t he?
A: He sure did. He graduated out of the naval academy in 1933 in Group A.
Q: You were in good hands.
A: Oh yeah, yeah, good hands.
Q: Is it difficult when you abandon ship to swim away quickly before the whirlpool of the ship starts pulling you in?
A: Well, you can feel it, you can feel it, but you have got to get away from the ship.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: If (garbled) when it goes by you, well, you’re going under if those propellers are still going, absolutely.
Q: Did you say also there were sharks in the water?
A: Yeah, isn’t that funny? The water was full of sharks and none of them attacked us. Nobody got attacked by sharks.
Q: I guess they weren’t hungry that day.
A: I don’t know. It must have been that time of the morning or something. It was cool. Oh man, if it’d been warm out there, we’d have a lot of them bitten by sharks, but they didn’t attack.
Q: Do they provide you with weapons to use when you’re in the water if something like a shark should try and attack you? Do you have knives or – I guess a gun would not be any good at that point?
A: Some of them had knives. Some of them had guns strapped around their waist. But most of them didn’t have a thing.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Absolutely nothing. Just like me – I didn’t have anything. Except in my hip pocket in a waterproof pouch I had a list of everybody on that ship and where everybody lived.
Q: Ah-huh. Was it your job to notify family?
A: No, it was my job to get that information off that ship so that the captain could use it to notify the families.
Q: I see.
A: I carried that it my hip pocket all the time.
Q: Ah-huh. So you did have a few life rafts, is that right?
A: Had a few, yeah.
Q: Were these blow-up rafts or were they rafts that were on the other side of the ship?
A: They were cork rafts. You know, you’ve seen the big ones about like that and they come in a round circle like that?
Q: OK.
A: OK, that’s what they were.
Q: How long did you stay in the water before the other destroyer came by?
A: Well, I don’t know. Oh, probably around an hour. Maybe a little longer than an hour.
Q: OK. I just asked you that question and I’m reading through this and it said that you were in the water for two – two and a half hours.
A: We could have been. That’s been a long time ago.
Q: Sure. And you wrote this 60 years ago, so I’m sure your recollection then was pretty good.
A: It could have been.
Q: What happened to you after you got rescued? Did they pack everyone up and put you on another destroyer right away or did they give you a few days leave?
A: No, they took all – the survivors – and we were transferred from that destroyer to an AKA, that’s a supply ship. And on that ship they had, ah, they knew who needed the sailors out there. And a lot of them just went from my ship to another ship out there. A lot of them went back to new construction. The commanding officer, the executive officer, and myself, we were a different breed. We got on a C-47 transport there, then flew down to, ah, oh, probably about a thousand miles from there and then got on a C-54 and flew from there to Honolulu. And then we got into Honolulu and the only way to get out of there was a Pan American clipper. And the clipper was loaded with generals and everybody else going on a hay-day, and they pulled everybody off and only the three of us got on.
Q: Um.
A: We were loaded with aviation fuel and flew from Honolulu to San Francisco and if unable to land, they’d go to San Diego and if they couldn’t land there they’d come back to Hawaii. When we got into San Francisco, there was a hole opened up in the sky and this pilot took that little dude right down there and landed. Other than that, we’d probably have gone to San Diego. If not there, we’d have come back.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: See, they didn’t have things then to help the pilots land like they do now.
Q: Right.
A: They can land now in fog or rain or anything, but you couldn’t do that back then.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Didn’t anybody get off that ship except the three of us.
Q: Did you think about calling family at that time?
A: Oh no!
Q: OK.
A: I didn’t call my family until I got to Washington, D.C.
Q: And how long after that?
A: How long after what?
Q: After you’re destroyer went down?
A: Well, it went down on the seventh of December and on the – let me see, probably the tenth of December – seventh – oh, later than that – probably the fourteenth of December we were in Washington D.C. And I was on West G Street, three blocks from the White House, in a little hotel like – hotel place there. Couldn’t have any visitors in there. It was full of gum-shoe people.
Q: Full of what?
A: Gum-shoe people – CIC, ah . . .
Q: I’m not familiar with that term.
A: Well, Counter-Intelligent Corps people.
Q: OK.
A: And they were – they’d ship out of there one night and go to Russia and be back there in about three or four weeks and you’d see them back in there again.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: You went into your room and then if they happen to see you go in and they punched a button and if you didn’t answer it they were at that door seeing why you didn’t answer that.
Q: Was that for your safety?
A: (laughing) I don’t know.
Q: Because they were worried about you leaving?
A: No, they were worried about me having a woman in my room!! (laughing)
Q: (laughs) Were you anxious to get back on another destroyer after that happened?
A: Well, not really. I wasn’t. I’d been on half a dozen of them. I wasn’t ready to go back to another one.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That was the third destroyer that the skipper had lost. He was just a passenger on another one that was lost.
Q: And for you? Was that the first time your destroyer went down?
A: Well, I got several of them beat up very badly underneath me and I was transferred to another one and off we went again.
Q: OK.
A: I worked for, ah, a commodore named Abercrombie. And he looked after me like I was a hunk of gold. I went with him. He had a group of nine ships and when he left that ship he took me with him wherever he went.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: We’d be on one ship and it would get beat up pretty bad and he’d say, “We’re going here. Get ready and pack and in ten minutes be down on the gang plank.” So in ten minutes I’d be waiting for him. We’d get in a boat and go to another destroyer.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And we’d sail that maybe just three months or four months or maybe two weeks then we’d go to another one. Eventually we got back to the one that was damaged. They moved us around a lot–
Q: Sounds like it.
A: I guess that way there I got into more battles than a lot of them. More dodging bullets than a lot of them did. I should have been getting submarine pay because those destroyers stayed about half the time underwater anyway – submerged!
Q: (laughs) Was that higher pay, submarine pay?
A: Oh yeah, submariners got higher pay.
Q: So you ended stating that in the end the Japs paid their price.
A: Well, they did. Yeah, they did.
Q: Yeah. I know sometimes they have, well, what I’m hearing from you is there wasn’t an attempt to keep men together from one destroyer to the next?
A: Well, you couldn’t do that.
Q: OK.
A: It was a matter of necessity. Wherever they needed you, that’s where they sent you.
Q: Ah-huh. Unless, you just stated you had rapport with a commodore and . . .
A: Oh yeah, I sure did.
Q: And so wherever he went, he tried to keep you . . .
A: He didn’t try – he did! (laughs)
Q: It’s been a week since we last had a conversation.
A: Yes.
Q: Have you thought about any other stories that . . .
A: Oh, yeah, a lot of them.
Q: . . .that you’d like to talk about more?
A: I don’t think you’d want to hear about two or three battles we had.
Q: And the reason for that would be . . .?
A: Well, they were kind of messy – kind of gory.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: When – this one battle we were in, we lost four heavy cruisers – the United States did. One was – one was Australian – Canberra, Vincennes, Quincy, and Astoria – all those were heavy cruisers – lost them. One battle we were in. But that night the Japs lost everything they had. That’s when this – we hit this ammunition ship with a torpedo – that fire went up like that and made a ball up there and it was just – lit everything up just like daylight – midday.
Q: As it close enough to your destroyer that you felt . . .
A: No, well you could hear it and see it.
Q: OK.
A: You couldn’t feel the concussion from it, ‘cause that was quite a ways off. I imagine we were at least five or six miles away from it.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But she went up – good-by! Of course, in another battle there at Guadalcanal we were doing in twenty knots and went right over where the North Hampton went down. She went down and we went right over where she went down. We didn’t slow up, either.
Q: You knew she had just gone down shortly before?
A: Oh we could see her!
Q: You could see her, OK.
A: But they must have hit her pretty good because she took on water fast.
Q: Ah-huh. You didn’t see any survivors.
A: No. Midnight. I never saw such dark nights anywhere in my life as out there. Wasn’t any moon and I mean they were just pitch black. I mean they were black. And we were using our radar and we knew where we were. I mean, our sonar – one was SG and ASC. The SG was telling us where we were. It was taking a picture of the whole surroundings. Every time it would go around you could see where we were. And just showed them – just like a map – an outline of a map.
Q: Ah-huh. What was worse, getting torpedoed or having planes fly overhead and shoot down at the destroyer?
A: Take your pick!
Q: They both sound terrible to me, but I don’t know.
A: Both of them are rather deadly!
Q: If I were on board if I felt like I had more a chance of beating it or moving from it. .
A: But we never – I saw that day there, we never had a – we’ve had some close calls of planes knocked down and they were just come in and ten feet from the side of the ship, his wing would go in the water and that’d be it. And then one went off across our bow one time and just everything got gasoline on it. And he was knocked down.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But one never got that close to us before.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I saw a lot of them knocked down. We had some peculiar ammunition back then. We had ammunition that was called centrifugal fused, and it would – if you shot a shell and if it was going toward something, it would just build up a resistance as you went to it – and the minute it started passing any resistance by it, it would blow up.
Q: Huh.
A: So we got several airplanes that way. They shot – I saw – I saw – I was standing there watching – I was on the bridge and I saw them shoot a shell out there and just as it passed this dang Zero that was coming in, it blew up and that Zero just – just pan caked right in the water, just like that. Yeah, they had a lot of good ammunition out there. A lot of dangerous times.
Q: Were you ever in a position where you were at battle and you were low on ammunition that you know of or were you pretty well supplied?
A: I don’t think so. We were low on food a lot of times. They did pretty well replacing the ammunition. Those torpedoes – man we shot a lot of torpedoes. We had a better torpedo than the Japs did and they wanted one of ours, but I don’t think they ever got one. When we sank our ship – when we sank our ship – before I got off it, they were jettisoning the torpedoes to get rid of them. And so, they’d just go out so far and then they sank – go down.
Q: The reason in doing that is to prevent . . .
A: Keep the Japs from getting a-hold of them.
Q: OK.
A: If that ship had gone and, and just run into the beach, then they could have had a chance of getting some torpedoes or stuff off of it, see.
Q: That makes sense.
A: Yes sir! Absolutely.
Q: Were there people on board that had the responsibility of destroying documents when the ship was going down?
A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, I had a job doing that.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: If I had my duty . . .
Q: Did you have a paper shredder?
A: If my duty station was down on the e-send machine - that’s an electrical coding machine – all of our messages came in on that and we sent them out on that. It was a machine about this wide, about that tall, sat down in a – and the funny part was they had a part that broke on it. A little arm that broke on it. And we had a machinist’s mate on there and he took some montel metal and made the part and put it on there and it run better with that part he’d put on than it did with the new one! And then when we got in port, they made us turn that in and get another one.
Q: Ah-huh. Wasn’t regulation?
A: Well, it worked just as good as the other one.
Q: So when you destroyed – what – you destroyed documents? Or you destroyed equipment?
A: Oh, yeah. Yeah, when we left the ship, the documents were all destroyed, yeah, they were. Absolutely.
Q: I don’t imagine – I haven’t heard you talk about a situation where a destroyer or individuals on a destroyer may have been captured. If you had to leave the ship, nothing like that happened?
A: Well, we were out there and when we come in after the incident happened. The USS Helena, I think, was an eight-thousand ton light cruiser and the Japs hit it and just the chief pharmacist’s mate and the chief bosun’s mate were the only two that got off that. It blew up. It was a light cruiser – I’m not sure of the name of it.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They hit it and boy it just went sky high. And one of them – the chief bosun’s mate, he got off to do something and the other guy got off – maybe it was a doctor, I’m not sure. But anyway, just those two survived out of a whole crew.
Q: What was the way that you received information about the war – the happenings of the war – what was going on in different places?
A: Oh, well, we had radio people on there and it was on the air all the time – coming in – you could hear the kk-kkk-kk-kkkkk-kkk . . . and they were sitting down there typing down what happened everywhere all over the world. And they’d put out a little newspaper with that news on there. I thought that was pretty good.
Q: So it if was good news or bad news it was shared with all of the men on board?
A: Oh yeah, yeah, that’s right.
Q: What was the longest battle experience you were in?
A: When – in the navy?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Well, I guess – I think MacArthur started us to work one day and eighteen months later we got relieved! (laughing)
Q: (laughs) Well, that’s true. I guess my question had more intense firing type scenario . . .
A: Oh, I’d say maybe three days.
Q: Three days of firing back and forth with other ships and planes?
A: Yeah, yeah.
Q: It has to be very stressful.
A: Yeah.
Q: Where was that? Was that the time your ship went down? No. . .
A: No, it wasn’t that one then. That didn’t take long for that to happen.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Oh, we were landing troops two or three different places and it took a long time. We – we went in and we bombarded the landing place to get the Japs off of it. Just beat the tar out of it. And then we’d go back out and, ah, heave-to out there and just stand – float in the water – and then they’d send the troops in, see? Of course, now, some of those lasted several days.
Q: And you’d get fired while you were sending the troops in?
A: No.
Q: No?
A: No. We generally had fired before they went in and then if they asked for some shell support, then we’d give them some. Guadalcanal was – well, we went to several of them. Ah, I can’t think of the names of the islands now. I didn’t go to Iwo Jima. Didn’t go to Okinawa. But I hit most of the rest of them. And, ah, all of them were about the same. You go in and – I sat – we sat out there and watched battleships send those sixteen-inch shells in there. Boy, don’t think they make a swishing sound when go through the air.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I ain’t lying! Man! They’re sixteen inches, man, they’re five foot high. They’re big, big shells. Ours was just five-inch thirty-eights, so they were about that big around.
Q: About ten inches?
A: No, no, no, about that big around. They were about that big around and about that long. And the powder was in canisters, ah. . .
Q: Were those as powerful as the large ones?
A: What, the canisters?
Q: Right.
A: Oh yeah, the powder in there was just as powerful as on the big guns. It just had a smaller gun to shoot the shell out of.
Q: OK.
A: Ours took one thing of powder after . . they might put just hunks of powder about that thick, not that thick, sixteen-inches wide – they might six or eight of them in there or ten of them in there to shoot that shell. Boy, don’t you think they didn’t shoot that ship, boy. . . absolutely!
Q: I’m sure they did. As I recall last time you said you didn’t have much leave time. You were pretty much out at sea. . .
A: Oh, we accumulated leave and so, then, when we’d go to get to port, particularly when we had a ship overhaul, then they’d let us go home. I got to go home one time in the war.
Q: OK, and for how long was that?
A: Thirty days.
Q: Wow.
A: We came back to the states several times, but no leave. Sometimes they wouldn’t even let me go on an overnight – they wouldn’t even let me off the ship overnight. I had to stay aboard ship and everybody else went to (garbled).
Q: Is that because they were on the alert?
A: No, that’s because of the job I had.
Q: OK.
A: When we got into port I had to make sure that the log got off, the mail got off, everybody got off that had a transfer coming, and everybody who was received on there was received properly. It was quite a hassle from a guy in my position on there. And lots of times I just didn’t make it. Of course, I’ve had the exec come in an tell me, “You stay aboard,” and that’s the end of that. The last exec that I had was a pretty good guy, pretty good guy. He died of Alzheimer’s.
Q: Did he?
A: Yeah.
Q: You lived through all those battles with a visible enemy and it’s the invisible enemy that finally kills them, huh? The Alzheimer’s.
A: Yeah, yeah. Had a pretty good bunch of them. Pretty good crew on those destroyers. Had to have. They had to function. I heard of – like the USS Blue, it just disappeared and they don’t know what happened to it. I know what happened to two destroyers because they were with us on picket duty in that, ah, in that, ah, typhoon out there. But you never saw one blown out of the water or anything. I mean, some of them got blown out of the water, but I never saw them blown out of the water. Well, they were just a powder keg from tip to stern.
Q: Sure.
A: Everything on there – every cranny on there was chuck full of ammunition or gunpowder or something. When – (laughs) what was funny, when were going after a submarine, we’d go over where he was and they’d drop those six hundred pound depth-charges. Boy, now they were about like this and about that wide and they weighed six hundred pounds. They’d go down and they just life the tail of that destroyer up like that. It come out of the water and those screws would just be going like that! (laughing)
Q: Ah-huh. Ah-huh.
A: Did you hear that?(referring to his hearing aids)
Q: Yes, I did. Are you getting feedback?
A: Yes, I did when I was doing something a minute ago. These are different – they have a little button on them. You press it once and you get two of them – you that? OK, that takes out all the excess noise.
Q: I see.
A: You press it again – got three of them. I can talk on the telephone.
Q: Oh, that’s great.
A: And then you press it again – one – and it’s back to normal again. They’re quite expensive, they are. You don’t see many of them built like this. I’m practically deaf. As a matter of fact I went down to the Veteran’s Administration and they, ah, checked my ears, and they come up D-E-A-F – 100 percent disability on that.
Q: In both ears?
A: My ears, yeah. I got that in the navy. I, ah, I was back handling – helping load – I was putting the powder in on the gun and the other guy was putting the shells in and they were firing them and they were going along there and the concussion blew my damn ear plugs out of my ears and I couldn’t reach down and put them back in and so when I did, well, I couldn’t hear anything. And I couldn’t hear for three days. And the doctors told me, well, he says, “Don’t worry,” he says. Your hearing will come back. But when it did I never hear good. I never did. I tried. But that was screwy as heck running around there not being able to hear anything.
Q: Especially in the position that you had! You relied on hearing a lot.
A: (laughing) Oh yeah, I did, you bet. Yeah. Then now, just recently I went down to, to Ada to see about my disability down there and they took a – tested on my ears down there. And I was deaf down there, too.
Q: Well, you do a great job for a man who has limited hearing – virtually no hearing.
A: Yeah, I don’t have hardly any hearing.
Q: Do you read lips?
A: No. Now, these have a little, little adjustment to them. See that little thing there? You can pull on it – you can pull them out. But right underneath it there’s a little thing I turn and I can adjust them where I hear better or – if – I have to have them about like that or I can’t hear.
Q: When did you start wearing your hearing aids?
A: Oh, several years ago. But it’s really gotten bad the last two years. Really got bad. And it all happened because of that gunfire.
Q: You could tell the difference when your hearing came back that it was not what it was prior to . . .
A: Oh yeah, that it wasn’t going to be like it was, right.
Q: Did you consider going to get some medical assistance at the time?
A: I tried to (laughing). I couldn’t get in the VA down here for sixty years.
Q: I was thinking when you were on board ship or at different times. . .
A: Well, no. The hearing was just different, but I could hear. And it didn’t start getting – piling up onto them until I was about forty-two years old. Then, it hit.
Q: During World War II, how many battles do you think you’ve been in?
A: Oh, many, many, many battles. Ah, on this thing here (handling a piece of paper), this I had fifteen – I had seventeen major battles on the South Pacific right there on that one. Then I had one over here on the Asiatic Pacific – something else I was in.
Q: Did you tell me about that battle?
A: Huh?
Q: Have you told me about that battle?
A: Which one? All of these (looking at a piece of paper)? No, no. I tried to find my navy record – I’ve got one – see, my navy record was burned up up in St. Louis several years ago. They reconstructed it and the, the engineering officer that was my boss on the Patterson when I was a log room yeoman, he had – he was the one that signed off and remade that record and he left Pearl Harbor off of it! He says I wasn’t on the Patterson, but if you look right on the back of that thing there, it says I was on the Patterson on 7 December.
Q: Ah-huh. Ah-huh.
A: And that’s my discharge!
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Now that’s so tiny you can’t even hardly read that.
Q: The back of it?
A: The back of it. I can’t open that, no, that’s. . .
Q: No, its permanently mounted.
A: They’ve permanently mounted it.
Q: It certainly is a piece of history, being there at Pearl Harbor.
A: Huh?
Q: That is certainly being where history was made, being at Pearl Harbor.
A: Yeah, that was kind of tough, I mean, ah. . . boy, I’ll tell you what, I wish we’d have – I wish they’d have told the battleships and the other people in there that they were coming in, but they didn’t.
Q: Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what was your life like being in the navy?
A: What was my what?
Q: Your life like being in the navy? Did you go out to battle as much as you did after?
A: Well, no, we – we did a lot of training.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: We were constantly training. We were having maneuvers and everything all the time. I mean. . . once in a while we’d come in and swing around the buoy out there in Pearl Harbor for about a week, but generally we were out training. That’s amazing. I was kind of surprised that they had so much of it.
Q: So after Pearl Harbor, the training was over and you were in the real-life situations.
A: Everything then was for real.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: You want a Coke?
Q: I’m fine. I brought some water today, thank you.
A: I’d offer you some coffee, but my wife – the things that . . .
Q: The filters?
A: She can’t find them.
Q: That’s fine. Do you think about the men that you knew often from the destroyers?
A: Yeah I’ve got a list of them.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I’ve got every one of them and where they were assigned to off that ship.
Q: Have you had a reunion?
A: Huh?
Q: Have you had a reunion of any kind?
A: Oh, yeah. I went to a reunion up in, ah, Sky – some kind of big resort up in Wyoming, ah, six or seven years ago, and one of the officers were there off the ship – a guy by the name of Ogle. Elvin C. Ogle – he come out of the academy in 1938, not too bright. He and another guy named William K. Ratliff came out in ’38. The skipper, he come out in ’27. His name was Frank R. Walker, and the executive officer was named Miles Hunter Hubbard, and he came out in 1936. And then we had, ah, ah, Harry Grimshaw Moore was the gunner officer and he came out in, ah, ’29. And, and Richard Star Craighill came out in ’29. He was an engineering officer.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Strange I know all those names, isn’t it?
Q: Those names and those dates. It’s pretty amazing. I have to think the years my daughters were born in!
A: (laughing)
Q: What was your last battle? Do you remember your last battle on the destroyer – your last tour out? What was that like?
A: Last battle. Ah, outside of when my ship was sunk?
Q: Ah-huh. Or was that the absolute last time? After your ship sank, did you not go out to sea after that?
A: No, the flew me back to Washington. . .
Q: Right, but I wasn’t clear if you went out after that.
A: Nope. I got to Washington and the skipper says, “Would you like to go back to sea with me?” And I says, “Na, I don’t think so. Have you got a brig around handy?” (laughing) He says, “OK,” he says, “we’ll fix you up.” So they shipped me to Treasure Island, that’s a man-made island out in San Francisco Bay. You know where it is?
Q: No, I don’t.
A: It’s right off of . . .
Q: I know where San Francisco is.
A: . . . Goat Island is the original island there and right down below they’ve built a place called Treasure Island.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And they had a World’s Fair there.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I think in ’36 they had it there. And I shipped there and then I stayed there about two – three weeks and they sent me down to the Eleventh Naval District Headquarters in San Diego and I became the top seated control officer there. That’s a hairy job! Yup, I did.
Q: So your first battle was . . .
A: Seventh of December.
Q: Pearl Harbor.
A: Yeah.
Q: And your last battle was when your destroyer . . .
A: No, well, that’s – that was the last battle when my destroyer went down.
Q: Right, that was your last battle.
A: Aren’t we going to talk about the army?
Q: We’re going to talk about that, but that’s Korea?
A: That’s Korea.
Q: That’s Korea – we’re still on World War II. We’re going to get to be good buddies! OK, during that time period – was it a year and a half? From Pearl Harbor to when your destroyer sank?
A: No, no, three years, right to the day.
Q: Three years. . .
A: Right to the day, right to the hour almost! Seven o’clock in the morning on the seventh of December 1944, they got my destroyer, but on the seventh of December 1941 I was in Pearl Harbor.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Three years to the day.
Q: And in between that, most of your tours were . . .
A: Lots of combat.
Q: . . . out in which area? Or did you go all over?
A: All over the Pacific.
Q: OK, all over.
A: We were in battles everywhere. . . (end of side A)
(Short discussion about performance of tape recorder)
Q: So you spent three years in battle?
A: Oh, more than that.
Q: During the navy. . .
A: More than that.
Q: More than that.
A: Well, I mean, ah . . .
Q: Three years at sea?
A: I spent five years at, ah, four and half years at sea.
Q: OK.
A: Never could get off those destroyers. Once you rode a destroyer and they saw that you kept your head on your shoulders, you’re never going to get off.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But we had a lot of people from the destroyers I was on to other destroyers and to other ships.
Q: I was looking at the amount of time that you were in heavy battles from the start of Pearl Harbor to your ship sinking. And you enlisted how long before Pearl Harbor, I don’t remember.
A: Oh, I came in in August of ’40.
Q: OK.
A: So I was in it long enough to learn enough about it to get my head above water.
Q: Ah-huh. Ah-huh.
A: Yeah. We lost a lot of them because they didn’t know enough. They hadn’t been – I noticed that the people had two years and up in, we didn’t lose that many people like that. In fact, we didn’t lose any people on our ship on any of them except maybe by accident. Other than that, we didn’t lose anybody until the ship went down.
Q: It’s difficult for the inexperienced to be under those conditions where you’re really being hit by the enemy from all sides and at any time.
A: Oh, yeah. Man, they were going after us, though, boy, a couple of those Salvo Island battles. They sure were. I stood out there and I looked out over the edge of the bridge and I saw those torpedoes running under us and I says, “Well, we’re drawing 18 feet – they must be set at 20 feet.” (laughs) They were.
Q: Ah-huh. So why is it do you think you were able to keep your calm and your focus during those stressful times? Was it – I think it’s more than the training.
A: Ah. . . well, I just looked like it was a job that had to be done and I was going to do it.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But a lot of that stuff rubbed off on me and my wife says that it’s bothering me now. Well, I don’t really think – I never talked about it. You’re the only one I’ve ever talked to about this.
Q: Ah-huh. And I appreciate you taking time to do this.
A: My kids have always – my, my grandson said – he found out we were doing this, says, “Tell him I’m glad he’s doing that.”
Q: Well, you had mentioned several times the first time we met that you had family members that were curious about your stories.
A: About my life in the navy, yes.
Q: Right, about your stories. And not only is this a time when those people that know you and love you are interested in knowing those stories, but the nation as people across the nation understand the importance of talking to and hearing about the real-life experiences of our men that were involved in saving our country and defending our country. You know, now we have, I think, a better understanding with emotional support. We understand that when people go through a very stressful situation or they see things that are very much out of the ordinary, there’s – your mind and your emotions can only stretch so far. I think previously people didn’t look at that way.
A: Well, I went to see a shrink down in Ada.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And he said I had stress . . .
Q: Post Traumatic Stress?
A: Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That’s what he said I had.
Q: Did he explain what that meant?
A: Oh yeah, yeah, he did. Well, not very good, he didn’t tell me. He made a pass at it.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But he said “You got this in combat when you were out there.”
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And, ah, I don’t think it affects me any, but he said yes.
Q: It affects people in different ways. I think you’re seeing more and hearing more that reminds you of those battles that you were in just because of the anniversary of World War II.
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: And they may have been things that you’ve worked at not remembering or thinking about. . .
A: Yeah.
Q: And as your life becomes less busy, and you hear more about this – two things are happening. You have less work tasks to think about to distract you from it and then you put the news on or you see things and you hear stories and your reminded of some of those days and some of those long battles and some of the people that you shared those experiences with. What Post Traumatic Stress is it looks at the fact that we can only stress ourselves so much before, like any other piece of equipment, our bodies respond a little bit differently than they would . . as you stress your car engine or any of those, you can only – you can ride it hard for a while, but if you do that for a long time, then your car doesn’t work the same. And when you have something like Post Traumatic Stress, you know, sometimes people get more anxious. They get more – it’s easier for them to lose their temper, some people. People respond to it differently.
But going back to the stories, when I started the interview, I said you’re in the driver’s seat. I have questions and you can answer with as much information and as much detail as you feel comfortable. Because this is your story and its your gift to the people that are going to be reading this and learning about those experiences. And sometimes its easier to talk to another person – someone who’s different than a family member, than it is to a family member.
A: Yeah, that’s true.
Q: And so it gives you that platform. And I don’t want it to be invasive for you. I don’t want to do that . .
A: That’s alright.
Q: But at the same time I think with a man with your experiences and your history – you’ve seen a lot and you’ve had a lot of responsibility that someone like myself can barely begin to fathom what might have meant and translated to . . .
A: You weren’t old enough for World War II, were you?
Q: No, I was born in ’49.
A: ’49 – that’s the year I graduated!
Q: There you go.
A: Yeah, that’s the year I graduated.
Q: I’m what you call a baby boomer.
A: You are?
Q: Yeah.
A: I thought the baby boomers were in ’46?
Q: Well, they . . .
A: ’46, ’47, and ’48.
Q: Well, there’s a wider gap there and I fall into the younger part of that generation.
A: Well, that’s not bad.
Q: But if it wasn’t for men like you who saw it as a job and who were able to stay focus and to take orders – you know taking orders and not always understanding them is a trait that some people believe the generations have lost.
A: You see that one right there?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: With those palms on that island? I saw a lot of that.
Q: Over in . . .
A: A lot of that. All those islands had the palm trees on them. Some of those fights were vicious.
Q: Ah-huh. Was it common to go to bed at night and hear guns firing in the distance or even close by? Were your nights peaceful?
A: Well, a lot of times we we’re in the vicinity to hear that. When our guns were firing, you could hear them. We were fighting.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: We – we blasted lots of islands out there. They had a little LCI, no, it wasn’t an LCI – it shot rockets, and it was just – the whole deck was just loaded with rockets and it would start up here and he might be five miles from the beach and when he’d get through, he’d be ten miles from the beach. All those rockets going off just kept pushing him in the ocean.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And you should have seen those – they really cause a lot of trouble. Cause a lot of damage. That was necessary evil. Those Japs, they didn’t show anybody any mercy at all. You know after this was over and I went to Japan in ’40-ah, I was over there in ’53, and, ah, I didn’t feel any animosity towards them at all. Of course, they lost a lot of people. They lost a lot of people.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Like on Iwo Jima, we lost 6,000 marines, they lost 33,000.
Q: That’s a lot of men.
A: A lot of men went down. And those that didn’t die in combat up there went down to the high end of that island and jumped off this cliff and killed themselves. Of course, I didn’t have much respect for those kamikaze pilots, though. They knew they were going. Saw a lot of that. Until they home on my own ship (laughing), it didn’t really hit home until they hit my ship! Yeah, saw a lot of that. That was just desperation on their part.
Q: Being a kamikaze pilot?
A: Yes siree! Those guys, they just learned how to fly that plane solo level – that’s all. They didn’t learn anything else about that plane.
Q: They certainly didn’t teach them how to turn around or change their mind, huh?
A: No, I don’t think they did (laughing). I’ll tell you – they – Okinawa – down at Okinawa, they got several of our ships there. Hit two or three of those small carriers.
Q: You mentioned before you dropped the troops off you would go in and . . .
A: Bombard the beach.
Q: Bombard the beach. Does that mean that you would destroy the ships that were out there or any structures?
A: No, no.
Q: I’m not real sure I . . .
A: Well, the – probably there weren’t a lot of Jap ships out there. We were just – we were just preparing the beach for landing and so we’d bombard the beach. Everything we – every ship out there would bombard that beach.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And when they said, well, they thought it was time to go, then they’d stop it and they’d send the troops in in these Higgin’s boats. They carried about, probably, ah, oh, 40 people standing up in them. But the three in front were the most precarious ones in there. I told – like I said before, we sent in one off our ship – all the troops got on our ship from someplace – I don’t know where they come from and we brought them in there as a fast troop transport. And then the boat we send in, they sent back and three was dead who were on the front end of that that we sent in. Yeah, the first shot hit them right in the head-end of that Higgin’s boat.
Q: I would think that would happen on a frequent basis where the people in front would be hit.
A: Well, I saw it happen on that one, but I haven’t heard many people say if they’d seen a lot of that happen. I mean, they lost people on the Higgin’s boat – in the Higgin’s boats, but, ah . . .
Q: When you bombarded the beach – I’m sorry, I want to make sure I understand this – were they firing at the beach in case there were . . .
A: Oh yes, absolutely.
Q: . . . the Japanese were there with their weapons hiding in the growth?
A: Absolutely, oh yes.
Q: OK, so it would either kill them or push them back so our troops could land safely.
A: So our troops could land, ah-huh.
Q: And was presumably, then, someone was on the boat who’s responsibility was to take it out and bring it back so you could load it up again?
A: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Q: It didn’t navigate itself back. You didn’t have that kind of technology.
A: No, a lot of them made several trips. Of course, they’d lose one every once in a while. They’d hit that – hit that Higgin’s boat way down on the front end and they couldn’t shut that door. They’d go out and fill up with water and they’d just – a lot of them that did that, they just ground them on the beach because they couldn’t do anything else with them.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Of course, you know they had a lot of that when they landed over in Normandy over in Europe, you know. Lost a lot of Higgin’s boats over there.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They landed over in Normandy on the sixth of June ’44 – that’s my brother’s birthday and that’s the day he got killed. He got killed on his birthday in the navy.
Q: Where was he?
A: He was on a destroyer out there.
Q: In Normandy?
A: His – his destroyer came to relieve us because we were badly damaged. And so he was – they were patrolling there and, ah, this little Jap plane – little Zero had two bombs on it – come in and dropped them right amidships on that destroyer. I don’t know how he got in there, but he did. And my brother must have been standing right where that bomb hit.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Because they couldn’t find hide nor hair of him. But that wasn’t the bad part. The bad part was when we got back to Pearl Harbor, we got a message on board ship telling about it, and so, the exec wouldn’t give it to me. He held it in his room for three days, and when we started back to sea again he gave it to me. And I says, “Hey, man, this isn’t how you cook.”
Q: That had to be a tough message to get, hearing about your brother.
A: Yeah, it was, it was.
Q: And then knowing that it was . . .
A: But I had seven brothers and sisters in the service. I had a pair of twins in the navy, and a little one in the navy, and Jack was in the navy. Wallace was in the army. I was in the navy. One in the coast guard and one in the air force. Eight of them.
Q: So all of you were involved in the military and at war at the same time?
A: No, my youngest sister wasn’t in the war. All the rest of them were.
Q: Ah-huh. And you lost one brother?
A: Lost one brother. Yeah, I did.
Q: Were you close to him?
A: Pretty close to him, yeah. And, and, and, after . . .they had my graduation thing up in Covington. They’ve got a board up there of the people that went to war and they got him and my name all mixed up. My name is Billy Bruce (laughing) and they’ve got him as something else up there. They didn’t check that stuff.
Q: Oh.
A: And he was – those that were killed have a star by them and they don’t have a star by his name.
Q: Did you let them know so they can correct that?
A: They know it now, but I don’t know – I don’t think they’ll ever correct it. It doesn’t make any difference.
Q: I would hope so. I would hope they would go back and do that.
A: My brother’s name is on this thing downtown in Oklahoma City. Out by the capitol.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: It’s on that. And it’s in Perry at the county courthouse there, it’s in . . .
Q: Were you able to attend a funeral service for him after the war of any kind?
A: Oh, no. He just, I mean, he – they just vaporized him, so. . .
Q: A memorial service?
A: No. No. Couldn’t do that.
Q: Now you said your parents, or your father, was not in the military. . .
A: In World War I or World War II.
Q: And there were eight children in the family?
A: No, I’ve got seven half-brothers and half-sisters.
Q: OK.
A: They’re all dead.
Q: Right, now they’re dead.
A: Yeah.
Q: OK, but at one time. . .
A: There were 15 of us.
Q: OK, 15 of you?
A: Yeah.
Q: That’s a large family.
A: Eight in my family and seven half-brothers and sisters up in Indiana.
Q: OK.
A: The oldest one was born – the oldest one was born in 1903. So my oldest brother would have been a hundred and . . .
Q: A hundred years old – hundred and one.
A: A hundred and one years old. His wife’s still living. I found those right after I graduated from the university. We heard about them, so we got in the car and went up to Indiana and met them.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Met four of them, but the others wouldn’t – wouldn’t talk to us.
Q: So those were one of your parents’?
A: Huh?
Q: Those siblings belonged to either your father or mother?
A: Father.
Q: OK. But the seven that were in the military – the seven that . . .
A: I don’t know whether they were in the military or not. I don’t . . .
Q: The ones in your family. . .
A: The ones in my family were, but their family, I don’t think they were. They were too old.
Q: Why do you think so many people in your family enlisted?
A: Well, I guess I started it. I went in before the war and got caught in Pearl Harbor. So my brother that got killed he paced the floor for a month and finally his wife said, “Go join the navy.” And he did. And, ah, then when he went in, well, I don’t know how they went in because I was overseas. I don’t know how they went in.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: My oldest brother of the immediate family, he was a conscientious objector (laughs), and so he went in the army as a medic.
Q: OK.
A: That didn’t go over very good with the family.
Q: Him being a conscientious objector?
A: That’s right. Sure didn’t. I don’t think that he contacted any one of us after he got out of the service. Anybody.
Q: Was that interpreted as being none patriotic?
A: Well, what do you call a guy who doesn’t want to take up arms and fight for his country?
Q: But he did enlist and he did support the troops.
A: Yeah, but – he did enlist but he, ah, he did it in sort of a underhanded way.
Q: Ah-huh. He did that after you were already in the navy?
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: OK, so you weren’t around when that discussion occurred between him and maybe other family members about his decision?
A: No. I don’t think – I don’t think he discussed it with anybody.
Q: OK.
A: I don’t know whether they were going to draft him or not, and that’s how that came out.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But you know, you go back and they let people go and didn’t draft them or anything for various and sundry reasons that didn’t make sense to me. And if he was a farmer, now I can understand that. But a lot of these people – a lot of our senators in the United States up there and representatives up there, they didn’t go to war and they were able bodied and everything else.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They didn’t go. Just like, when they had them going to Vietnam, all our – all our able-bodied guys went across the border to Canada and spent a couple of years up there to keep out of it. That’s stupidity.
Q: That’s very different than being a conscientious objector and going to war.
A: Yes, yes.
Q: A conscientious objector and feeling the right thing for them to do is leave the country is a very different interpretation of that.
A: Some of them are still up there.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They’ll never come back down here.
Q: And I understand some of them have.
A: Some of them have and they’re having a tough time of it, too.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Why, I’d go – I’d go to Iraq right now if they’d take me because they need somebody over there that’s – that they can depend on, really. I’m not saying they can’t depend on what they’ve got over there, but, ah, they’ve had a little – a few fallacies in that. (laughing)
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Yeah, they sure have.
Q: So what I hear you saying is you’re willing to do what needs to be done to . .
A: Absolutely.
Q: . . .to protect your country. And you still feel very strongly about that. That’s quite admirable. I think it shows the strength of the character that you have. How did people act when you came back after the war?
A: Like I’d never been anywhere.
Q: Were you one of many returning from the war or were you. . .
A: I was one of many.
Q: So it wasn’t a big deal?
A: No big deal. I had a little trouble down at the university.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I was nervous, and if a fire truck started up right outside that window when I was in the class, I’d jump right straight up in the air! It took me – oh, I guess about six months to get over that. . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: . . . that, ah, all these strange noises, you know. You listen to that about six years – that’s drilled into you, boy.
Q: That’s right.
A: You move – I mean. I had a retread teacher down there in math – algebra – college algebra, and, ah, her name was Breen, I don’t know what her first name was. And I had an A in the class – this is strange. And, ah, she’d get me up to the board and we’d start over here on this board and go all along this board and all along that board and somewhere in that thing I wouldn’t do the right thing. I’d get the right answer on the end of the board, but I wouldn’t do the right thing, and she’d just ream me out about that. So one day I wasn’t feeling good, you know, and I said, “Well, god damn, get up there and put it up the way you want it up there.” And she gave me an F – the only F I ever got in my life. I could have gone to the Board of Regents and got my grade, but I didn’t know it at the time.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: So I just took it over and made an A – no I made a B-plus. Only F I ever got in my life. Because of the – well, I guess I shouldn’t have said that, but then . . . you know, a guy coming back out of what I’d been through, for crying out loud, I . . .and I’d just been married and had a child to take care of.
Q: Were you working also?
A: Yeah, working, too.
Q: So you had life filled with new stresses that you were working to adjust to.
A: Then I transferred up to Oklahoma City University and I went to work at Wilson Company, so – I’d never do that again. I started in September of ’46 and graduated in June of ’49. What is that – two years and what – seven months?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And I went to school at eight o’clock, got off at five. And at six – got off at four and I had to be at Wilson’s at five to work until one or two or three o’clock the next morning. Then I’d come home, do it again. Now that put a lot of stress on me.
Q: I’m sure it did. You weren’t getting enough sleep, you weren’t getting enough of what you needed, for sure.
A: Yeah, that was. . . I’ve always . . . ever since I can remember, I’ve been getting up a four and five o’clock in the morning.
Q: Do you still do that now?
A: Yeah, still do that now. But – you were getting up such odd hours in the navy, it was unreal anyway. (laughing)
Q: You were conditioned.
A: Ah, after the war broke out, you were on four hours on and four hours off.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. That’s the way it worked. So, ah, part of the time off, I took care of my chores I had to do and the other time I tried to get some sleep now and then.
Q: Ah-huh. Cause you never knew if you’d get the next four hours.
A: That’s right, boy.
Q: Now when you came back from World War II, they had the GI bill to help you with school, didn’t they?
A: Oh, yeah. Got a hundred twenty dollars a month from the GI bill. Or I could have never made it.
Q: It was a good thing to take advantage of. I think a lot of – most of the men have done that.
A: But they didn’t do it, not all of – not any of my brothers and sisters did it. They started, but they didn’t finish.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I think that sort of created a bar between them and me. Not on my part, but on their part. They didn’t – they didn’t appreciate it because I got a degree, and I think they sort of looked at themselves and they kind of down-graded themselves because they had a chance and didn’t do it.
Q: Ah-huh.
(phone rings – tape stops temporarily)
Q: We were talking about the reception that you had when you got back and the interaction with your siblings who were in the war also.
A: Well, there was quite a few of them went to school, but a lot of them just dropped out. They didn’t finish. I don’t know, I don’t think the, ah, I don’t think that the, ah, the climate was what they thought it was going to be.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: So. . .
Q: What do you mean by that?
A: Well, I think that they thought it might have been like it was back before the war to go to school, but it wasn’t. After the war it was entirely different set of rules.
Q: How was that different?
A: Well, ah, they had a lot of people. Like my English class down there, we had 86 and half of them had to sit outside the room.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And things like that. They’d get discouraged, you know, and just up and quit.
Q: Ah-huh. Do you think they were looking for, maybe, some preferential treatment?
A: Yeah, I think they was looking for a hand-out and they don’t give hand-outs.
Q: Ah-huh. Were there any places where you received a discount or any kind of recognition for being in the war.
A: Oh, no. Oh, yeah, I got a little bit – I got some credit for being in the service. I had a pamphlet they gave me on chief yeomans and I just turned it in to them and they just gave me a little credit.
Q: Oh sure, over in the college. But what about other places in the world?
A: No, no.
Q: In looking for a job, you know, did they prefer hiring people who were veterans from the war?
A: Well, I didn’t – I didn’t go right away and hunt for a job. I, ah, I had a couple of part-time jobs. Of course, I had to have that in order to make it.
Q: Now you were married before you went into the navy?
A: No.
Q: No. You got married when you came out of the navy?
A: I got married in 1946. The eighth of March, ’46.
Q: OK.
A: Pretty soon it will be 60 years.
Q: Congratulations!
A: Sixty years. You didn’t stay married that long!
Q: No, that’s a good long time.
A: How long did you stay married?
Q: Twenty-five.
A: Well, that’s half of that.
Q: Close to it. So you got married after World War II when you came back.
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Were you writing to each other or . . .
A: No, no. I never wrote to her. No. Ah, I came back and visited a friend of mine down in Norman. Ah, his name is Bob Bailey. And I went to visit him and he wasn’t there. He was off to war, but his mother was there and my family lived down on a farm and I couldn’t do anything there, so I just went down there. And I met her down there at a sorority house.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: One funny thing happened! When I made that – got – got leave and came back to the states, well, it was after I made chief. . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That uniform there. I was down there in Norman, well, I think it was after my ship was sunk and I was down in Norman on leave. And, ah, I was riding a bicycle with my wife and this MP came up and he asked me whose uniform I had on. And I said, “well, I’ve got my own uniform on.” I showed him my ID card and he says, “Um, have a nice day!” Because (garbled)
Q: Yes, a handsome man.
A: I was a young man. They called me baby-face in the navy. Yeah, they did. They called me baby-face.
Q: So how soon after you were discharged from the navy did you get married?
A: I got married when I was still in the navy – at the end of it.
Q: Right at the end. OK, right before. . .
A: On the eighth of March, ’46, and I got out on the twentieth of August, ’46.
Q: OK. There were a lot of changes with leaving the navy. Did a lot of the men get married right away when they left the navy? Do you know?
A: Here’s the thing. Most of them were married when they were in the navy and lost their wives in the navy. We had one enlisted man on that ship – he was a carpenter’s mate – and I thought he and his wife were going to stay together, but they got – she left him – sent him a “Dear John” letter. There was a lot of “Dear John” letters.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That was an everyday occurrence.
Q: Had to be really hard to take.
A: Well, it probably was if they were really in love. But if it was just one of those passing fancies, I don’t imagine it mounted to much. Because when those guys hit the beach, boy, they were out – they were going to have fun, that’s all there was to it. Because that was real stress at sea, I’ll tell you. . .
Q: Sure, ah-huh.
A: But I read at sea and other things, and, I never smoked or never drank. Those guys come in, boy, they’d get wall-eyed quick! (laughing) Nothing worse than seeing a sailor drunk.
Q: Going out to sea drunk doesn’t sound like a good combination to me.
A: Oh, I’m sure you’ve drank in your life.
Q: Oh, yeah, but I mean going out to sea and being on the rough sea having a hangover would be a bad combination.
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: Would be something . . .
A: I’ve been on board ship and we’ve come in, you know, and everybody went in on leave and then they came back and one of them – one guy was so drunk and he looked up there and he saw three gangplanks! (laughing) And he looked at those and he chose the middle one and he missed it and fell in between the ship and the pier! I saw that happen many a time. Oh, there was a lot of it. I enjoyed the navy. There was a lot to learn in there. A lot to see. I saw a lot of it.
Q: You talk about places that you’ve been to during the war. You mentioned you returned to Japan after the war. Have you been to any of the other places? Normandy . . .
A: What, after the war?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: No, I haven’t. Well, we went to Hawaii one time going somewhere, but we’ve never been anywhere. Hawaii changed. Before the war, they had the – they had the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Mona Loa right next to it and that was all there was out there between that and Diamond Head, except Doris Duke’s house that was out there on stilts about half-way out. Now, the dang thing is just all skyscrapers.
Q: All built.
A: Have you ever been to Hawaii?
Q: I have. I have a daughter that lives there.
A: And you went out there to see your daughter?
Q: Ah-huh. Several times.
A: And, and you, and you see how it’s built up out there?
Q: Oh, definitely.
A: It’s unreal.
Q: On Oahu. I don’t know what it looked like prior to that, but it’s all very commercial.
A: Oh, my, yeah, it’s very commercial. You bet it is.
Q: Can you think about how your war experiences may have affected your relationships other than your siblings? You mentioned the education seemed to pull you apart, but that was even after the war. Do you think you came back a different person and people treated you different or you treated them different?
A: Oh, yes, I did come back a different person. Absolutely.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I was just a little rosy-cheeked country boy when I went in . . .
Q: OK. And the way . . .
A: And I was a crusty old sailor when I came home, I’ll clue you. I didn’t drink or smoke, but I’ll tell you what, I was a crusty old sailor.
Q: OK.
A: I sure was.
Q: So the sweet Billy was gone and . . .
A: Oh, yes.
Q: And you were more assertive?
A: Oh, you bet I was. Absolutely, boy.
Q: Any other changes you can think of where you would have responded differently?
A: Well, I was – I had this in mind – before I left the navy I wanted a – I wanted to be a dentist. . .
(end of Side B – change to next tape)
A: . . . ah, I was – and when I applied for dental school they came back and says two years I could come do it, well, I was graduating from Oklahoma City University right this minute and I wasn’t going to wait two years to go to dental school.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: So I didn’t go.
Q: So you had less patience?
A: Huh?
Q: Are you saying you were, perhaps, less patient than before your war experiences?
A: Well, I had a goal set that I wanted to do and I had it all planned out. Knew just what I was going to do – when, where, and how – and when that came up, I said, “Well, I can’t wait for that. I’ve got a family.” And so I graduated and then I got a job.
Q: OK. That makes sense. You’ve already mentioned that you kept in touch with the people that you served with?
A: Oh, yeah. Well, no, not really. I went to two or three meetings of the Patterson, but, ah, other than – I learned a long time ago when I was in service not to make friends with anybody. I saw this happening. And it just tore the heck out of a couple of people. So I said, “I’ll – I’ll – I’ll communicate with them. I’ll talk to them. I’ll do anything they want to, but I’m not going to make a friend out of them because just as soon as you make a friend they get killed or you get killed, so . . .”
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That doesn’t pay off.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: The spoils of that are very few and so I just didn’t do that.
Q: So was it more difficult to create friendships when you came back? Did you find yourself doing that, too?
A: Sort of, yes.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I was more friendly with the officers than I was the enlisted men.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And, ah, we never communicated anything, except the old man and me. I wrote him a couple of letters.
Q: How would you say the World War II experiences impacted your life?
A: (laughs) Made me sit up and take notice.
Q: Notice of what?
A: Of everything.
Q: People here and life in the United States?
A: Well, I was interested in people all over the world. And I still am.
Q: You’ve traveled a lot, haven’t you?
A: Oh, yes. I’ve traveled a lot. I’ve been all over the world. I’m interested in other parts of the world. But I can’t see how they can be so dumb! (laughs) I can’t stand dumb people. I’m sorry.
Q: I have to say that I think you have more intelligence than the average person does, too. I think to learn and do all of what you’ve done shows a high degree of intelligence.
A: But I just can’t stand dumb people, I’m sorry.
Q: Let me ask you this question. Did you experience in World War II have any affect on your view of other wars that the US has been in after the war?
A: Well, I’ve always been a, a, reader of the Civil War. I admire what they did in the Civil War. And I’ve done a lot of research on that. I know a lot of things that happened that and how dumb they were! They were really dumb! Did you ever hear of the Gray Ghost?
Q: No.
A: His name was John Singleton Mosby.
Q: OK.
A: He was born in 1830 and he died in 1916.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And he worked for the South, and one night he’d be here in the war and the next night he might be 150 miles over there and they often wondered how he did that. He was a sort of a Robin Hood type guy in the Civil War. You never heard of him before?
Q: No. So how did he do that?
A: Riding horses.
Q: OK.
A: See, they only had the horses. And, ah, he was quite an interesting guy.
Q: I’m not a war buff. I know I have some friends who were historians and enjoy it.
A: But he died in 1916. I’d like to have met that guy, really. I’d like to have met, ah, ah, who was the – the colonel that got killed up by the Indians? Up in Wyoming? He had the battle with the Indians up there in 1878. The blond-headed colonel.
Q: Not the Battle of the Bighorn?
A: Yeah, Battle of the Little Bighorn.
Q: Yes, I don’t remember.
A: I’d like to have met him because, you know, he was a general in the Civil War.
Q: Ah-huh. He was a gentleman?
A: He was a general.
Q: Oh, OK.
A: And they busted him back to colonel.
Q: What about the wars after World War II?
A: Huh?
Q: What about the wars after World War II?
A: Wars after World War II?
Q: Ah-huh. What’s your view of those?
A: Well, the Vietnam War, I don’t think the Vietnam War – we should have ever participated in that. We should have taken a, a, ah, lesson from the French. You know, at Bien Dien Phu, they had a battle up there and were kicked out of Vietnam.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And they’d been rulers of Vietnam for years, you know. But that didn’t impress us, apparently. And then we went over there. Well, we could have whipped Vietnam. We could have whipped them in a minute, but politicians got in it. Old LBJ got in the thing. He was a sorry president. Pardon me for saying that – he might have been your best friend. Ah, just too much politicians in the Vietnam War.
Q: OK, what about the subsequent – may not have been wars, but we’ve been in battle a few times since.
A: Well, Korean War, I can understand that. That made sense. Of course, I was over there in it, too, so I know. But . . .
Q: And Iraq?
A: Yeah, I was there too, in the middle of that.
Q: Do you think we should be in Iraq now?
A: Iraq is a strange place. You’ve got to go way back to when, ah, who’s that Englishman that went down there with the Arabs? Ah, and puttied up to them for all that time – way back before World War I, he was down there. Ah, they – the Arabs have always been an arrogant bunch of people – always. What should have happened didn’t happen. The first Bush was in there. He had a chance of getting rid of Saddam Hussein, but he didn’t do it. He stopped the war three days before it should have been stopped back in ’91. So there – that way there, the general, soon as the war was over, he retired because of that. And he should have got Saddam Hussein back then – got rid of him. And he could have, but he didn’t do it. And he left it for his son to do, now his son’s having a problem over there. But the thing of it is, we’re going to be over there till they settle down if it – if it takes ten years or twenty years – we’re going to stay right there until that thing – and they’re dumb to think we’re not going to do it. They are dumb.
Q: I did hear you say earlier you’d be willing to go there now if you could.
A: Yeah, sure would. But, ah, ah, that, ah, we’ve been fighting in this world since the beginning of time. It says – the Book says we’re going to and it’s going to happen. And I can just – and you say there’s a time they won war, I can prove it when there was a war. Just take in Europe – Thirty Years’ War, Hundred Years’ War, War of the Roses – look at all the wars they’ve had over there. Just hundreds of wars. Been going on since way back when the Arabs ran across North Africa and crossed Gibraltar there and went in and went up to Spain. They were all the way up to Alhambra. Well, that’s the place that they built there. They were all about the middle of Spain before they got them stopped and ran them out of Europe. But they were all the way over there. And that was back in – when was that? Fourteen hundred they were in there. And they left a lot of their footprints over there. They should never have been allowed to come across there, but they did, they came across. Now they’re spread in all countries now.
Q: So, if I hear what you’re saying, there always was war and we will always have war going on?
A: The Book says as long as there’s two people they’re going to fight.
Q: So how has your World War II experiences – or what kind of observations do you have about today based on your World War II experiences?
A: What kind of observations today?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I think there’s a lot of people should go home and mind their own business. Absolutely. We can’t police the world. We can’t feed the world. And it looks like that’s – it’s leading up to – that’s what they are going to expect us to do.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: We feed – go over there and feed those Arabs for ten years and they’re going to want to expect us to keep it up, but they don’t want us over there doing anything with them – or about them.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: That’s stupid. Can’t see that.
Q: So you think we should be less involved in the politics of other nations?
A: I think – yes. We can’t be an isolation – isolated country. They tried that once before and it didn’t work. We can’t do that. There ought to be some lessons out of this to somebody. See if the first Bush had done his job, then they wouldn’t be in this mess. No way. And for the second Bush to go in and get what he had done, they used a little subterfuge. That wasn’t right. They didn’t know that he didn’t have weapons, but. . . of course, he could have destroyed them before we got in there to make us look like a bunch of idiots, and that’s probably what he did because he had already – up north with the Kurds – he’d killed over 5,000 of his own people, for crying out loud, with the damn gas up there. Excuse me. Yeah, now the, ah, it’s going to come up who’s going to try Saddam Hussein and whether he’s going to stay over there and be tried there or are they going to take him up to The Hague and try him.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Someone’s going to try that dude.
Q: Hope so.
A: Oh, they will, no getting around it. See, we did it right after World War I – or World War II. They had The Hague – they had the tribunals up in Germany. They had all those dudes in there and they all got a fair hearing. Some of them got off, some of them got killed. Just like old Tojo in Japan. They hung him, boy. I was stationed over there in the army at a – at a Big Eight stockade, and we got people in there that had – soldiers in our army and so on that had done things they shouldn’t have done and they were punished and sent there. Well in there, up in one part of it, they had a place where they hung people. And you ought to see how many – how that rope had cut into that hunk of wood that the Japs hung people. They’d gone down into the wood that far.
Q: Um.
A: Here was the corner of the wood, like that, and they’d just – that rope would just come down and slap there and just wore that down – wore it down in that far.
Q: Um.
A: Because of the number of people they hung.
Q: I can’t imagine.
A: Oh, they hung a lot of people in there. We got a soldier in there off of Okinawa that he killed a colonel’s child. A master sergeant. He was in our prison there. I was the personnel officer, but I still had to stand guard there and I walked the top of – around that prison every night. I was on duty for – what was it – four hours or six hours – whatever it was, I don’t remember. And every hour, or every half-hour, I walked around the top of that thing. I had a .45, too. I walked right around the top of that.
Q: Is that what you did after . . .
A: No, I was in the army then.
Q: Oh, OK.
A: And then, ah . . .
Q: That was during Korea that you’re talking about now?
A: Yeah. After Korea. I went over on a in-effect transfer. I was assigned to the stockade out there as a personnel officer.
Q: We’re going to talk more about Korea next time I come out and visit with you.
A: OK.
Q: Because that is – this last question that I have leads into looking and reflecting into the different wars and you were in a unique situation in that you were in both wars. We have a few men who have been in both wars, but it sounds like you’ve been on the front line in both World War II and Korea. More stories.
A: More stories.
Q: A lot more stories. I have a feeling I barely skimmed the surface with what you have . . .
A: You’ve barely skimmed the surface.
Q: Ah-huh. . . .going on in your life with World War II.
A: Oh, yeah. I wish they could find my navy record. That would be interesting to you.
Q: It would be.
A: I looked for it, but I’ll look for it again.
Q: OK.
A: And, ah, it’s got all those battles in there. One right after the other.
Q: Now, we are not putting photographs on-line yet, but if you have one that I could take and scan, we’ll save that until we’re able to put the photograph in with – if you have one or some other ones.
A: She’s got two in there somewhere.
Q: So, if you’d like that, the next time I come, then I’ll take them up to campus and I’ll bring them back to you. But we’ll just make copies of them.
A: OK. I think I’ve got this one. I might have that one. I showed you that hat, didn’t I?
Q: Right.
