America in WWII 2016-10-11

SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE! A FORT LAWTON RIOT A MR. TALK RADIO

AMERICA IN

WWII

Mission Impossible: Rescue ‘The Lost Battalion’

The War • The Home Front • T

ONE MARINE’S

WAR An Expanded, Illustrated Pacific War Memoir Boot Camp • Tulagi and Guadalcanal • Party in New Zealand • Wounded on Tarawa • The Devil Morphine • Welcome Home, Son!

Private Nick Cariello, marine veteran of the Pacific

B-17s RAID HITLER’S A-BOMB PROJECT

October/November 2016 $6.99

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I SAW JAPAN SURRENDER: A SAILOR’S STORY Tour What’s Left of Palawan’s Vile Prison Ken Burns’s Latest A Peggy Lee Quits Goodman

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09281 01971

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AM E RICA I N

WWII The War

• The Home Front • The People

October/November 2016, Volume Twelve, Numbers Two and Three

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FEATURES

14 TARGET: HITLER’S TOP-SECRET A-BOMB PROJECT Imagine the Nazis with a nuclear bomb. That was the nightmare scenario that launched 388 B-17s and B-24s to wipe out critical German operations in Norway in November 1943. By Neal Bascomb

22 RIOT AT THE FORT There were bricks and clubs, broken windows and bloodied bodies. By the time Italian POWs and African American GIs cooled down, one man was dead. By Chuck Lyons

30 ONE MORE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE In October 1944, the Japanese American 442nd Regimental Combat Team took on yet another assignment that others had failed: rescue a battalion being strangled by Germans in France’s Vosges Mountains. By Scott McGaugh

A Exclusive WWII Combat Memoir A

38 ONE MARINE’S WAR Swept up by patriotic fever after Pearl Harbor, a Wisconsin boy joins the marines— and learns the meaning of Semper Fidelis on some of the Pacific’s most savage battlegrounds. By Nick Cariello

40 PART ONE: The Making of a Marine 44 PART TWO: Under Fire on Tulagi and Guadalcanal 50 PART THREE: Bloody Tarawa 58 PART FOUR: Battling Back from the Abyss 63 EPILOG: A Warrior Reflects on War

departments 2 KILROY 4 V-MAIL 6 HOME FRONT: A Pioneer of Talk Radio 8 THE FUNNIES: Cryin’ Lion 10 PINUP: Alexis Smith 12 LANDINGS: The Ghost of Palawan’s Cruel Prison 64 WAR STORIES 68, 85 FLASHBACKs 69 I WAS THERE: Pacific Sailor from Landlocked Fort Wayne 77 BOOKS AND MEDIA 80 THEATER OF WAR: Ken Burns’s Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War 84 78 RPM: Peggy Lee 87 WWII EVENTS 88 GIs: ‘Safe’ with the Quartermaster Corps COVER SHOT: Private Nick Cariello is all smiles in his hard-earned new US Marine Corps uniform in 1942. Stirred to action by Pearl Harbor, he left his warm Italian American family in Racine, Wisconsin, to join the marines. They sent him to fight on Tulagi and Guadalcanal—and Tarawa, where a Japanese grenade knocked him out of the war. Grenade fragments remain in his flesh to this day. COURTESY OF NICK CARIELLO

AM E RICA I N

WWII The War

A KILROY WAS HERE

• The Home Front • The People

October-November 2016 Volume Twelve • Numbers Two and Three

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Heidi Kushlan 717-564-0161, [email protected] A Publication of 310 PUBLISHING, LLC CEO Heidi Kushlan EDITORIAL DIRECTOR James P. Kushlan AMERICA IN WWII (ISSN 1554-5296) is published bimonthly by 310 Publishing LLC, 4711 Queen Avenue, Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109. Periodicals postage paid at Harrisburg, PA, and additional mailing offices. SUBSCRIPTION RATE: One year (six issues) $41.94; outside the U.S., $53.94 in U.S. funds. Customer service: call toll-free 866-525-1945 (U.S. & Canada), or write AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. Box 421945, Palm Coast, FL 32142, or visit online at www.americainwwii.com. POSTMASTER: SEND ADDRESS CHANGES TO AMERICA IN WWII, P.O. BOX 421945, PALM COAST, FL 32142. Copyright 2016 by 310 Publishing LLC. All rights reserved. No part of this issue may be reproduced by any means without prior written permission of the publisher. Address letters, War Stories, and GIs correspondence to: Editor, AMERICA IN WWII, 4711 Queen Ave., Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109. Letters to the editor become the property of AMERICA IN WWII and may be edited. Submission of text and images for War Stories and GIs gives AMERICA IN WWII the right to edit, publish, and republish them in any form or medium. No unsolicited article manuscripts, please: query first. AMERICA IN WWII does not endorse and is not responsible for the content of advertisements, reviews, or letters to the editor that appear herein.

One Marine’s Take from War NICK CARIELLO IS USED TO HAVING THE SHRAPNEL in his legs get infected, if one can ever get used to such a thing. Now 93 years old, he’s had bits of cast iron inside him for more than 70 years since a grenade found him on Tarawa. Every once in a while he needs to go under the knife to have pieces removed. The problem can flare up at any time. Just a few months back, he had to get some taken out, and a patch of his WWII US Marine Corps uniform came along with one of the buried metal shards. This isn’t the worst that has happened to Nick since surviving some of the bloodiest fights of World War II. About a dozen years ago, an infection almost killed him, an infection caused by his pacemaker. After three hospital stays in Tucson, Arizona, where he lived at the time, doctors gave up on curing him. Reluctantly, Nick agreed to go home on hospice care. “I spent dreary hours contemplating my fate and pondering the mysteries of life and finality,” he wrote to me. But his son Neal was not convinced. Neal “stubbornly refused to surrender his father to Mr. Death,” Nick wrote. Neal, the now-retired head of pathology and toxicology at a pharmaceutical giant, scrambled to pull together his dad’s medical records and returned to his own home in Durham, North Carolina, to present the case to doctors at Duke Medical Center. They agreed to take Nick as their patient. Nick cuts to the story’s chase: “So, voila, here I am writing to you instead of being long gone.” Fortunately, Nick is alive and well and is writing not only to me, but also for me, for you. We’re proud to bring you Nick’s memoir covering much of his collected war experience in this issue—a special double issue that gives us extra space for his powerful story and personal photos while also providing room for other well-illustrated features and a supersize serving of our regular columns and other departments. There’s Tulagi and Guadalcanal and Tarawa, scenes of some of the war’s nastiest fighting, and Nick is in the thick of it. There are amusing anecdotes from R&R in New Zealand. Then, when injuries send him back to the States, his mom cooks up a huge Italian American homecoming feast. I’m always surprised when a seasoned veteran takes an antiwar stand. Nick believes the Nazis and Japanese of the early 1940s needed to be stomped down, but he’s not so enthusiastic about less obviously necessary wars. Whatever your personal stance, you can’t summarily dismiss his opinion, formed as it was after thoughtful consideration over the years, after long stints face to face with Japanese in the Pacific, shooting and getting shot at, watching fellow GIs die all around him. In these trying times, with pockets of chaos shaking the globe daily, it’s worth thinking hard about why we fight, and about when we really need to and when we maybe shouldn’t.

Carl Zebrowski Editor, America in WWII

© 2016 by 310 Publishing, LLC. All rights reserved.

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About this issue: After 12 years, we’re relaunching America in WWII with this taller, fatter issue, which takes the place of two regular issues. We’ll stay at this taller size as we return to our normal schedule, bringing you more stories of the American experience in World War II.

A V-MAIL professed to having been a Nazi. Sadly, the event is not held any longer. C ARL SARDARO

FDR’s GREAT RIDE YOUR ARTICLE ON page 6 of the June 2016 issue (Home Front, “Dewey Defeats”) has one error. Near the end, you state, “FDR rebutted the latter [worries about his failing health] by riding through Washington in the back seat of an open convertible for four hours as a chilly October rain poured down.” The ride was actually through several New York City boroughs. I have pictures and several books regarding FDR that clearly show him in NYC. His car was pulled into several garages during the ride, where he changed clothes and was given massages to warm his body. At the end of the ride, he was taken to Eleanor’s apartment in Manhattan to rest and recuperate. J IMMY MORAN received via e-mail

WINNIE’S AMERICAN EAGLE THE ARTICLE ON Mark Clark [“Rising Star, Falling Star,” June 2016] refers to Clark as “American Eagle” and attributes the origin to Ike. The problem is that Lord Moran, Winston Churchill’s doctor, writes, “Siena [Italy], August 20–21, 1944…. It was also a happy touch to throw in General Mark Clark as a luncheon host. When Winston does notice anyone, he is usually attracted by good looks and by a cheerful demeanor. Mark has both. After their first meeting the P.M. christened him the ‘American Eagle’….” Eisenhower doesn’t appear to have been present. Besides, in all my reading about Ike, I can’t find him giving nicknames. It seems out of character. V INCE MURPHY received via e-mail

THE 1940s AND 1980s MARIANAS IN THE JUNE 2016 ISSUE, there was an article titled “Keeping the Big Bombers Flying” [I Was There] by Bill Robinson. I really enjoyed reading about his experiences on Saipan and Tinian during the B-29 heyday. I am sure others recognize that the date of the 9th Bomb Group’s first mission to the Japanese homeland listed in the article was February 25, 1944; that should be February 25, 1945. Since Sergeant Robinson didn’t arrive on Tinian until December 28, 1944, the date must have been in 1945. 4 AMERICA IN WWII

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

Milan, New York

We lived on Saipan in the 1980s and took the 10-minute flight to Tinian often, showing visitors the still-visible runways and bomb pits of the war years. The island of Saipan still has visible scars from the war, with mostly Japanese monuments to the many soldiers and civilians who died there. The other monuments are the many Japanese-owned hotels. Jumbo jets filled with Japanese golfers and tourists arrive daily. R OBERT L. WILLETT Rockledge, Florida

THROUGH GERMAN EYES JUST FINISHED the article “Uncle Sam’s Nazi Reform Schools” by Melissa Amateis Marsh [April 2016]. It brought to mind an event formerly held annually at the local high school (Stissing Mountain High School in Pine Plains, New York) by the junior class, as part of their study of World War II. They invited war veterans up to the current time to a panel discussion. The students would ask questions and the veterans were free to comment. On the occasion I was first asked to attend (I served in Korea, 1953), I was surprised to find two former WWII German army veterans included. One had been wounded on the Eastern front. The other had been a POW and worked on a farm in the United States. Both immigrated after the war. They answered questions about the war from their viewpoints. Neither

THE WAR IN RHODE ISLAND THE ARTICLE “Uncle Sam’s Nazi Reform Schools” [April 2016] notes that all but five states had this program [German POW reeducation], Rhode Island being one of them. There were over 600 German POWs in Rhode Island, mostly on the island of Jamestown in the middle of Narragansett Bay. A recent Providence Journal article (which I couldn’t retrieve) gave a great deal of detail to this very subject, as it [reeducation] was most certainly done at several forts here. In other local interest, the last German U-boat sinking (U-853) was off Jamestown near Block Island, in Rhode Island waters, just after the end of the war. The whole crew was lost, though some bodies were recovered and interred here in Rhode Island. The site is now a war memorial, with the remainder of the crew still aboard. B RIAN F. HUSSEY Narragansett, Rhode Island

FARRIERS, MAYBE HARRIERS TOO IN THE NATURE OF niggles, your article on the US Army Quartermaster Museum [Landings, “Taking Care of Uncle Sam’s Boys,” February 2016] speaks of “saddlemakers, harriers, and blacksmiths.” I think they were “farriers” (horse-shoers), not “harriers,” though some of the sergeants might have harried their subordinates. ROY F. WILSON received via e-mail

GREMLINS June 2016: “Rising Star, Falling Star”— An error introduced in the editing process had Mark Clark serving in Germany and Belgium after the Nazi surrender; the setting was post–World War I, so it was the German surrender. Send us your comments and reactions— especially the favorable ones! Mail them to V-Mail, America in WWII, 4711 Queen Avenue, Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109, or e-mail them to [email protected].

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A HOME FRONT

What Is Your Problem, Madam? by Carl Zebrowski

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10 P.M. on December 7, 1941. The radio was on in just about every house in America that night, on the date which will live in infamy. Many were tuned to NBC. “In the event that there are any news bulletins concerning the national emergency during our session of The Goodwill Hour tonight,” the announcer said, “our program may be interrupted so that you may hear them.” Then followed some short stories of people mired in marital troubles. There was a woman telling how she left her husband to marry a man 22 years older than her only to find out they had nothing at all in common. There was a man saying he’d come to realize that his wife was mentally ill, but he didn’t want to put her in an institution. The airing of relationship problems continued, interrupted a couple of times for news updates that Nazi Germany had not yet made a statement about Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor earlier that day and that President Franklin Roosevelt had scheduled an address before a joint session of Congress for the following day. The radio show’s host, John J. Anthony, responded to his in-studio and call-in guests, and to those who had mailed in letters, with advice. Talk radio had been around since the 1920s, but no host had invited listeners en masse to join the discussion. That meant Anthony was the Adam of a lineage that would lead to Dr. Laura Schlessinger and Rush Limbaugh. Anthony was really one Lester Kroll, born in New York City in 1902. Having held jobs in his father’s textile business and as a writer and teacher, he was working as a cabbie in the 1920s when he was jailed for three months after refusing to pay child support and alimony to his first wife, as revenge for her moving to California with his two sons. T WAS

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library of congress

6 AMERICA IN WWII

John J. Anthony was a talk-radio pioneer. But he was not, as he claimed, a holder of three college degrees or a student of Sigmund Freud.

While in prison, Anthony came up with the idea for a radio show devoted to helping people with marriage and relationship problems. His first broadcast was in April 1930. In the mid-thirties he went national and by World War II his show had settled into a routine. “You have a friend and advisor in John J. Anthony,” each episode began. “And thousands are happier and more successful today because of John J. Anthony.” Simple phrases became clichés: “What is your problem, madam?” and “No names, please” (to preserve anonymity). Anthony titillated listeners by frequently introducing sex into his conversations. The advice and commentary Anthony doled out in what the New York Times described as a “brisk and businesslike” manner were the sort of bromides one might find served up in a local bar or grocery store aisle—not what you’d expect

from an expert who claimed to hold three college degrees. Anthony predictably scolded adulterers. Most of his analysis was rooted simply in the Golden Rule: treat others as you’d like others to treat you. And what happily married person would argue against his description of marriage as “a concrete art that must be learned”? Critics in the media, court judges, and social organizations railed against Anthony. They pointed out that the man many called “Mr. Agony” didn’t even have a high school diploma, let alone more than one college degree. He certainly hadn’t studied with Sigmund Freud, as he claimed. And then there was his exorbitant income. At his peak in 1939, with his show networked to 700 stations, he was making $3,000 a week ($2 million a year in 2016 dollars). His response: “It is more money than any man’s entitled to make. But after all, a man’s value is judged by his social impact on the community.” The Goodwill Hour remained on the air through the war years and beyond (though its name changed to The John J. Anthony Program in 1945). The predictably anxious and troubled populations of the Depression and world war years were good audiences for therapy radio. Anthony remained on air a total of 20 years before his show was canceled. There are no statistics detailing Anthony’s therapeutic impact on his faithful followers, but his years of listening and analyzing apparently had significant positive impact on him. As he later summed up the results of his second experience exchanging wedding vows, “I have been married to the same woman now for over 30 years.” But his greatest impact had to be his radio legacy: in 2006, a headcount of talk show hosts in America neared 4,000. A

A THE FUNNIES

The Other Cowardly Lion by Arnold T. Blumberg

tures that brought to mind more popular anthropomorphic animal stars of print and film. Adolf Hitler and Tojo turned up in issue No. 2, providing a tenuous connection to the world war. By the time Leo could hold himself together enough to explore a haunted house in issue No. 3, in the spring of 1945, his luck had run out. There would be no issue No. 4. For every success story that emerged from the pop culture crucible of World War II, there were numerous failures. Leo the Cryin’ Lion, surviving only several months, surely counted among the latter. But his story wasn’t all weepy. Arriving in troubled times when younger readers especially needed comfort, Leo, like his famous, cuddly cartoon contemporaries, provided some. A DR. ARNOLD T. BLUMBERG is an educator and the author of books on comic books and other pop culture topics. He resides in Baltimore, Maryland.

As suggested by the abundance of tears here, Leo the Cryin’ Lion was even weepier than the pop-culture icon that inspired his creation: the Cowardly Lion of L. Frank Baum’s illustrated children’s novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and Bert Lahr’s portrayal in the 1939 movie adaptation. 8 AMERICA IN WWII

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IMAGES COURTESY OF GEPPI'S ENTERTAINMENT MUSEUM, WWW.GEPPISMUSEUM.COM

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at comic book publisher William H. Wise and Company made it to the movie theater when The Wizard of Oz came out in 1939. So maybe it was just a coincidence when Leo the Cryin’ Lion appeared a few years after Bert Lahr brought the walking, talking, blubbering Cowardly Lion to life on the silver screen. Or maybe Leo was the sincerest form of flattery. Wise debuted Leo in the fall of 1944, in the anthology series The Cryin’ Lion Comics. Known for generic offerings such as Candy Comics and America’s Funniest Comics, Wise put a little something extra into this new title, hiring the likes of sought-after artist Al Eugster, who had worked on Walt Disney’s Donald Duck and Snow White. Leo seemed to have a solid shot at stardom. Joined by sidekick Waldo Rabbit and co-stars Grease Monkey, Groucho Gremlin, and Cock Robinhood, Leo the Cryin’ Lion, whose general appearance and personality seemed to owe great debt to Lahr’s Cowardly Lion, wandered tearfully through advenAYBE NO ONE

AM E RICA I N

WWII PINUP

Alexis Smith

A LEXIS SMITH BECAME FAMOUS as Hollywood’s “other woman,” the actress on every casting director’s short list when a script called for a sexy siren to lure away the leading man. “People frequently feel it was a shame Warner typecast me, but I don’t believe that,” she said. “I believe I typecast myself. I wasn’t creative.” Born in Canada but raised in California, Smith was discovered and signed by Warner Brothers in 1941. Through the 1940s and 1950s, her acting career and roles were defined by her studio nickname, the Dynamite Girl—the sizzling seductress. Then Smith moved to New York City, a decision influenced by her marriage to stage actor Craig Stevens. She broke into live theater playing opposite him in Critic’s Choice, Cactus Flower, and Mary, Mary. Contrary to what her early resume of stale movie portrayals suggested, she took Broadway by storm. In 1972 she earned a Tony award for her performance as Phyllis in Stephen Sondheim’s Follies and garnered the cover of Time magazine. In real life, Smith proved to be quite different from the stereotype she’d so often played on film. She remained married to Stevens until her death in 1993—for 49 years. E RICA M. ROBERTS photo courtesy of www.doctormacro.com

editorial intern

AM E RICA I N

WWII The War

• The Home Front • The People

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A LANDINGS

The Ghost of a Cruel Prison by Bob Bales

Japanese barracks at Palawan’s POW Camp 10-A. Guards housed here joined in the slaughter of 139 defenseless American prisoners on December 14, 1944.

T

HE SMOKE hadn’t even cleared at Pearl Harbor when the Japanese moved on to the Philippine Islands. Nine hours after their raid over Hawaii, they launched an invasion that soon outnumbered and overwhelmed American and Filipino defenders under the command of US Army Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright. Five months after Japan’s initial landings on Bataan island, Wainwright surrendered to General Masaharu Homma, commander of the Japanese 14th Army, on May 8, 1942. The Philippines belonged to Japan. The Japanese had captured thousands of Americans over those months and scattered them in prison camps throughout the islands. One such camp sprouted up on Palawan, in Puerto Princesa, and before long, locals were rallying in response to the growing enemy presence in their city. Dr. Higinio A. Mendoza, Sr., organized the First Guerrilla Unit (A Company) to fight the foreign occupier behind the scenes. Later known as the Palawan Fighting One Thousand Guerrilla

12 AMERICA IN WWII

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Unit of World War II, Captain Mendoza’s force worked to ferret out and execute Japanese spies operating on the island. Seventy years after the unwelcome arrival of the Japanese, Mendoza’s son, Higinio C. “Buddy” Mendoza, Jr., opened the Palawan Special Battalion WW-II Memorial Museum in Puerto Princesa. One sunny morning on Palawan, I loaded my six-foot-one frame into a motorcycle sidecar for a fast-paced, bumpy ride down a narrow road to the small, gated compound. Inside, I discovered the Mendoza family home and, off to one side, the museum built in memory of the US forces and Filipino guerrillas who fought the Japanese occupation. Standing there in the heat and humidity, I wondered what it must have been like during the war. The Fighting One Thousand was so successful in its mission in Puerto Princesa that the Japanese counted Mendoza and his guerrillas among some of the most wanted men in the islands. On January 7, 1944, Japanese soldiers finally

caught up with Mendoza. Taking him to an isolated spot on the island, they forced him to dig his own grave. Then they shot and beheaded him. The museum Buddy Mendoza built here is filled with artifacts from World War II and other memorabilia that he collected over the years. With displays ranging from a WWIIera Willys jeep equipped with .50-caliber machine gun to an assortment of Allied and Japanese weapons, the site gives visitors a glimpse of the Japanese occupation. One exhibit details the fate of the US soldiers imprisoned in what was known as Camp 10-A. In 1944 Allied forces under the command of General Douglas MacArthur returned to the Philippines to liberate the islands as promised. As US planes bombed Puerto Princesa and ground forces marched steadily closer to Camp 10-A, the Japanese began making plans to retreat toward Manila. With each American bombing run, Japanese guards treated the POWs worse.

all photos this article by bob bales

The main gate (above, right) is the only part of Camp 10-A that remains. But smaller remnants of the war years, such as this Japanese heavy machine gun (upper left) and American Willys jeep (lower left), are on display at Palawan’s WWII museum.

On December 14, the air-raid siren began blasting at 2 P.M., as it had on previous days. Under the orders of First Lieutenant Yoshikazu Sato, guards herded the prisoners into air-raid bunkers the prisoners had dug after being tipped off about the approach of friendly forces. After dousing the prisoners with gasoline, guards threw grenades into the bunkers and bayonetted anyone who tried to escape. Machine-gun fire followed, and some prisoners were clubbed to death, all while guards and Sato watched and laughed. Prisoners who were healthy fought back. Some wrestled weapons from guards and fired shots before being killed. Some escaped into the nearby brush and hid. Throughout the day and into the night, the carnage continued, with guards systematically hunting down and killing prisoners by gunfire or bayonet. Thirty to forty of the 150 prisoners fled by scaling the

barbed-wire fences or crawling through tunnels they had previously dug to the nearby bay. Some men were shot while attempting to swim to safety, and others hid among rocks. The guards hunted mercilessly, shooting to death or bayonetting any prisoners they found. They randomly threw grenades into possible hiding places among the rocks. Only 11 of Camp 10-A’s POWs survived the massacre. They escaped by swimming across the bay, where they were rescued by Filipino civilians imprisoned at the Iwahig Prison and Penal Farm. Filipinos clothed and fed the Americans, then turned them over to local guerrillas, who reunited them with advancing US troops. Once US forces arrived and discovered what had happened, they made it their top priority to locate and liberate the remaining POW camps throughout the islands

IN A NUTSHELL WHAT Palawan Special Battalion WW-II Memorial Museum WHERE Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines WHY Stand before the original main entrance gate through which Japanese captors led American POWs into the fateful Camp 10-A • Pay respects at the memorial to the POWs massacred by Japanese guards as liberation forces approached • See relics and photos of POWs and of local guerrillas who resisted the Japanese occupation

For more information call 0999-656-2471 or e-mail [email protected]

before the remaining prisoners suffered similar fates. Soon they discovered a camp at Cabanatuan, on the island of Luzon. On January 30, 1945, Lieutenant Colonel Henry Mucci led a force of 120 men of the 6th Ranger Battalion on what became known as the Great Raid and rescued 511 prisoners. Today, the site of Camp 10-A is a park, and the only reminders of World War II are the original main entrance gate and a memorial that marks the site of the massacre. I stood in the tranquil park, trying to envision the horror the POWs had endured at the hands of their captors and wondering whether I would have had the fortitude to fight back as they did. People can watch documentaries or movies about World War II, but walking around a place and seeing relics in person is different. Mendoza’s museum, with rare photos of the area on display along with personal possessions of the people who were here, pays powerful homage to the prisoners and the Filipino and American troops who fought on the island. Visiting is a moving experience. A BOB BALES, a retired veteran of the US Army, writes for various websites, especially his own www.thetravelingfool.com, about places he describes as “off the tourist path.” OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 13

TARG

H I T L E R ’ S T O P- S E C R E out critical German operations in Norway in November 1943.

by Neal Bascomb

GET:

E T A- B O M B P R O J E C T

One hundred miles from Oslo in German-occupied Norway, icy wilderness helped protect the operations inside the hydrogen plant Vemork from would-be Allied intruders and saboteurs. Here, Nazi scientists manufactured heavy water, the final critical ingredient they needed to produce what they hoped would be the world’s first atomic bomb. NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM

TA R G E T: H I T L E R ’ S T O P - S E C R E T A- B O M B P R O J E C T by Neal Bascomb Excerpted from The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler’s Atomic Bomb by Neal Bascomb. Copyright © 2016 by Neal Bascomb. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

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obody wanted the Nazis to have an atomic bomb,

not even their allies. But Adolf Hitler’s bomb project was making progress. One hundred miles west of Oslo in German-occupied Norway, Nazi scientists in the top-secret industrial plant Vemork were manufacturing heavy water, a critical ingredient to producing plutonium for a nuclear bomb. This was the only place in the world that made heavy water, and its location on the edge of an ice-bound precipice deep in the wild was purposely chosen for the protection provided by nature. On top of that inherent level of security, the Germans heaped tall barbed-wire fences, minefields, searchlights, and roving patrols of soldiers. The Nazis had taken over Norway in June 1940, and by 1943 they had increased heavy-water production at Vemork tenfold. Thanks to scientist-turned-spy Leif Tronstad, the Allies knew about the place and were determined to destroy it. An initial sabotage attempt ended in disaster. A second, made by Norwegian commandos, was a qualified success, knocking out operations for a few months. Then the Americans got involved, deciding to drop hundreds of bombs in a daylight raid. This is their story.

After two failed Allied attempts to destroy Vemork, the US Eighth Air Force got involved. First Lieutenant Owen Roane (above) woke up very early on November 16, 1943, to prepare for his role in dropping hundreds of bombs on the plant. The B-17 he piloted, Bigassbird II (shown opposite with crew members in October 1943), was one of 388 B-17s and B-24s that took off for Norway that morning. 16 AMERICA IN WWII

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lEFT & OppOSiTE: cOURTESy OF THE 100TH bOMb GROUp

AT 3:00 A.M. ON NOVEMBER 16, 1943, when the duty sergeant roused pilot Owen Roane from his bed, Station 139, the massive U.S. airbase by the North Sea coast [in Thorpe Abbotts, England], was already alive with the preparations for an impending mission. Orders from the Eighth Air Force command, over a hundred miles to the southwest, had come into the base by Teletype, identifying the target, the weather prospects, the force needed, and the plan of attack. The operations officer, Major John “Jack” Kidd, and his staff had been working since the field order arrived. They determined bomb tonnages, fuel loads, routes, zero hour for launch, and which groups and squadrons would participate in the assault. While First Lieutenant Roane shaved his boyish, bright-eyed face—the better to improve the fit of his oxygen mask—armament

crews were at the bomb dump, loading their trailers with explosives weighing a thousand pounds each. At the same time, fuel tankers rumbled across the tarmac to fill a row of B-17 bombers, while mechanics checked out the engines and bomb bays. At the mess hall, the cooks and kitchen staff were preparing the morning’s pancakes, powdered eggs, and oatmeal. And at the Group Operations buildings, maps and photographs of the target were being assembled for the crews. Dressed for the minus-thirty-degree temperatures at high altitude (wool underwear, two pairs of wool socks, a wool sweater, a brown leather jacket lined with sheep’s wool, and heavy trousers), Roane crossed the cold, fog-ridden airfield and gathered with the other pilots and aircrews in the huge Nissen hut used for briefings. A curtain covered the map showing their route and target. Once the doors were closed, Major Kidd, the operations officer, stood up in front of them, and a duty clerk pulled aside the curtain. They were headed to Norway, to a place called Rjukan. Given the distance and the short November day, they would need to depart soon after 6:00 A.M. The target was Vemork, a power station and hydrogen plant, where the Germans made some “special explosive.” To limit civilian casualties, they would hit the site during the lunch hour. Major Kidd did not expect much enemy resistance, either from antiaircraft batteries or from fighter planes, and called the attack nothing more than a “milk run.” It was never said, but Roane was left with the decided impression that this Vemork place was a priority target. Although Roane had just celebrated his twenty-second birthday, he was something of an “old-timer”—only two missions away from joining the “Lucky Bastards Club.” Membership was earned by beating the odds and making it through a twenty-fivemission tour alive. Nicknamed the Cowboy, with the hat to match, Roane was from Valley View, Texas, population 640, a town north of Dallas and little more than a dirt strip bordered by

a few buildings. Roane was one of nine children (eight of them boys). His family owned a small farm, growing cotton, wheat, and corn, and his father also herded cattle on a nearby ranch. Owen loved to help when he escaped from school each day. On graduation, he joined the Army Air Corps, his aim being to become a mechanic. A few plane rides later, he was hooked and enrolled in flight school. Soon he was assigned to fly the B-17. The fourengine, long-range bomber had an arsenal of machine guns and could take punch after punch and still deliver its bomb load—over ninety-six hundred pounds. Crewed by ten men, the B-17 was known as the Flying Fortress and was a giant in the sky. In June 1943, after ten months of flight training, Roane arrived in Britain, where he was assigned to the One Hundredth Bombardment Group. Over the coming months, they would earn their own sobriquet: the Bloody Hundredth. They hit submarine bases, airfields, and factories across occupied Europe and far into Germany. Over that time, Roane saw B-17s that were flying next to him end their war, either shredded by enemy fighters, exploding midair, barreling down into the sea, banking sharply into the ground, or simply falling helplessly from the sky, their engines dead, their pilot and crew parachuting out over enemy territory. The average lifespan in the Eighth Air Force was eleven mis-

sions; his fellow crewmen, many of them friends, were killed or went missing at a sobering rate. With equal measures of luck and skill, Roane always made it back. On one mission to Stuttgart, a fire raging across his wing and hounded by Messerschmitt fighters, Roane sent his plane into a spinning nosedive at three hundred miles per hour to extinguish the flames and throw off the enemy. Over Bremen and Schweinfurt, he waded through storms of flak, hell-bent on dropping his bombs on the target. In August 1943, after a run against a Messerschmitt factory, he was forced to land his plane, riddled with 212 bullet and flak holes, in North Africa. While there, he adopted a twenty-five-pound black donkey he named Mo, short for Mohammed. Mo came back to Britain with him, spending the flight hooked up to an oxygen mask in the radio room, covered with a sheepskin jacket. Approaching base, Roane messaged the control tower: “I’m coming in with a frozen ass.” At 5:00 A.M. Roane made his way onto the hardstand to check out his plane. Circling it, he inspected everything from the tires and the fuel vents to the propellers and wing-deicing boots. The ground-crew chief advised that the plane had been loaded with six thousand-pound bombs and an overload of high-octane gas, bringing its total weight to sixty-five thousand pounds (twelve thousand pounds over its rated maximum). Takeoff in the dark OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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lEFT: NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM. OppOSiTE: paTcH cOURTESy OF THE williSaM S. JackSON cOllEcTiON

through a low cloud ceiling would be a neat trick. “Ready to go,” Roane told the ground chief, then he headed to the food wagon, where he milled around with his men and had some tea, then a last cigarette. They were joined by Major John Bennett, their new squadron commander. The hard-nosed thirty-six-year-old was coming along on the mission aboard Roane’s plane, the Bigassbird II.

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FTER CHECKING THE SAFETY STRAPS on each other’s Mae West life preservers and parachutes, the ten-member crew entered the plane through the rear fuselage and took their positions. Two of the crew, the flight engineer and the radio operator, were a little more tense than usual, it being their twenty-fifth mission—a sortie infamous for bringing bad luck. Roane ran through his checklist again, and on seeing a green flare fire into the morning sky, started the engines. Their roar coursed throughout the plane, turning any conversation not conducted via the interphone into a shouting match. The ground crew removed the wheel chocks, and Roane taxied the plane onto the runway. All about him, lights flashed, brakes whined, and the air reverberated with the growl of engines. A minute behind schedule, Bigassbird II was in position for takeoff. Roane released the brakes and headed down the runway.

Three thousand feet down the pavement, the throttles at maximum power, Roane lifted the plane into the dark sky at 120 miles per hour and retracted the wheels. Almost immediately the plane was shrouded in clouds. Departures were spaced out every thirty seconds, but if the plane ahead had engine trouble or if its pilot misdirected his course, the plane behind could find itself flying straight into it, and the crew wouldn’t know a thing about it until it was too late. At three thousand feet, they emerged from the clouds. A halfmoon hung overhead. To assemble with the twenty other B-17s in his group, Roane made a wide left-hand circle around Station 139. He kept his eyes peeled on the swirling beehive of planes in the sky, both to prevent a mid-air collision with the other planes stacked at various altitudes and also to spot the colored flares corresponding to his own formation. Three hundred and eighty-eight B-17 Flying Fortresses and B24 Liberators from three divisions of the Eighth Air Force were headed to Norway that morning. Roughly half of them were set on Vemork; the others were assigned to destroy an airfield just north of Oslo and mining operations in Knaben. After some time spent circling, Roane rendezvoused with the other planes in the One Hundredth. Since Bennett was onboard, Bigassbird II was the lead in the group. There was a fair bit of

B-17 heavy bombers of the US Eighth Air Force (whose shoulder patch appears opposite) fly over Norway on their way to try to flatten Nazi hopes for a nuclear bomb. Each Flying Fortress in the assault force carried a half dozen or so bombs. 18 AMERICA IN WWII

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TA R G E T: H I T L E R ’ S T O P - S E C R E T A- B O M B P R O J E C T mayhem, pilots barking into their radios as B-17s and B-24s scrambled to find their places in the moonlight. Once they were all together, Roane told his crew to “go on oxygen” and climbed to an altitude of fourteen thousand feet for the journey across the North Sea. The armada expected limited fighters, and so did not assemble in combat wings but rather hung together in groups of about twenty planes. They crossed the North Sea on a northeastern course at a steady cruising speed of 150 miles per hour. The sun rose over the horizon to their right, illuminating a mesmerizing view: drifts of feathered clouds hanging below them, pure blue skies above, and hundreds of bombers surrounding them. The cockpit heater kept Roane and Bennett toasty warm. When they neared the coast, Roane and his crew donned their flak jackets and steel helmets. They would have to lower to twelve thousand feet to drop their bombs, and given that Vemork was three thousand feet above sea level, the difference would put them at a prime distance for antiaircraft fire. When they sighted Norway, Roane checked his watch and found that they were twenty-two minutes ahead of schedule. The first bombs were not supposed to be dropped until 11:45, when the plant’s workers would be eating lunch in the basement-level canteens. They had a choice: drop the bombs early and risk more civilian casualties, or make a 360-degree turn at the coast to delay the run, which would give the Germans time to muster a defense. “Make a large circle over the North Sea,” Bennett decided. When the bombers came around again, the Germans were ready for them. Two coastal patrol boats fitted with antiaircraft guns fired away. One B-17 went down. The rest of the bombers continued through the flak, most of it meager and inaccurate. Then German fighter planes scrambled into the sky, Messerschmitts and Focke-Wulfs. They attacked sporadically but were too few in number and the Flying Fortresses too well armed with machine guns for them to press the attack home. A B-17 in another group was hit. Its crew parachuted out, then the unpiloted plane performed a series of sharp turns, whipstalls, and corkscrews before slamming into the sea. Still, there was nothing the enemy could do to stop the force of bombers. Having survived missions over Germany where hundreds of fighters attacked for hours on end and where the Eighth Air Force lost sixty bombers in a single day, Roane was aware that this journey to Norway remained very much a milk run. As they crossed the coastline, the temperature in the cockpit registering minusforty-five degrees, he peered down on a monotonous landscape of snowbound mountains, steep canyons, and frozen lakes. The view felt ominous. The navigator, Captain Joseph “Bubbles” Payne, had few landmarks—cities, rail lines, or roads—to guide him to the target. Nonetheless, he charted a true course to Vemork. The Ninety-Fifth Bomb Group was ahead of the One Hundredth on the approach. Roane had to descend slightly to get

by Neal Bascomb

out of their contrails, and Bigassbird II rocked and shuddered in the prop wash. Minutes later, the bomb bay doors opened. At twelve thousand feet, free of the turbulence at last, the crew readied to drop their load. Some low clouds hung in the sky ahead, but they would not interfere with an accurate run. In total, 176 Flying Fortresses and Liberators soared on toward Vemork.

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N A FARM WEST OF V EMORK , Einar Skinnarland had just finished transmitting a message to London by wireless. While he waited in the barn for a return message to come through, he heard a distant rumble. Stepping outside, he found [commando Kurt] Haukelid staring up into the sky. Far above, an endless parade of bombers was heading east, and neither German fighters nor antiaircraft guns harried their course. The two men could only guess at their target. There was a good chance it was the power station and hydrogen plant at Vemork. The bombers made for an awesome sight. At 11:33 A.M., air-raid sirens blared throughout Vemork. Transport manager Kjell Nielsen ran down the steps of the hydrogen plant to the basement shelter. Only months before, he had been working at Herøya, in magnesium production, when American bombers had attacked. At that time, Nielsen had been supplying intelligence and photographs of the industrial site to the resistance—and, by extension, the Norwegian high command. Down in the shelter, the chief engineer, Fredriksen, received a phone call from the operator at Våer, the hamlet across the bridge. She reported twenty aircraft above the valley, then another fifty, then cried out, “There are even more planes!” Fredriksen had no doubt as to their purpose. The panicked families of the workers and engineers who lived on the Vemork side of Vestfjord Valley were shepherded into the air-raid shelter near their homes. The concrete structure, built above ground, was to be used as a garage when the war was over. Considering the limited protection it provided its occupants, it would have been better had this already been the case. Down in Rjukan, citizen volunteers directed the townspeople into a range of structures prepared for such an assault. At the local school, teachers hurried some sixty pupils into a tubular concrete shelter, which had a layer of sand on the floor. Four Germans who were living on the first floor of the school building joined them. They all heard the thunder of airplanes overhead. Fearing what was to come, one of the teachers ventured outside. Seeing the formation of bombers directly overhead, he shouted, “We’re in the center of the circle! Run to your homes!” The schoolchildren dashed from the shelter and scattered in all directions. The Ninety-Fifth, the lead group in the attack, swept directly over Vemork and held on to its bombs. Roane figured their crews could not see the plant through the bank of low clouds hanging over the target area. No doubt they would come around for a second pass. He wanted Bigassbird II to win bragging rights for the One Hundredth by being the first to hit the target. Whether they OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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Altered attack plans caused some of the US bombers to head toward Vemork via an alternate route. They arrived at the nearby town of Rjukan and, mistakenly thinking the nitrate plant there (below) was Vemork, dropped their bombloads. The total Norwegian death toll in both locations by day’s end was 21. Opposite: The US raid destroyed heavy-water cells inside Vemork. The plant remained, but it was newly vulnerable. NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM

TA R G E T: H I T L E R ’ S T O P - S E C R E T A- B O M B P R O J E C T

NORGES HJEMMEFRONTMUSEUM

did or not would be down to the skills of his bombardier, Captain Robert Peel, who was now in charge of the plane’s flight controls. At 11:43 Peel spotted the plant through a slight break in the cloud cover. The Germans had started to generate smoke screens over the valley, but they were not enough to obscure the target. “Bombs away,” Peel called, releasing his ordnance. With the sudden loss of weight, Bigassbird II bucked upward in the sky. Peel watched his four thousand-pound “eggs” strike the target. The concussion rocked the plane as it continued on a straight course for ten seconds, giving the Fortresses behind time to release their loads along the line. Squadron after squadron followed. Over the next twenty minutes, the planes, with names like Hang the Expense, Raunchy Wolf, and Slow Joe, poured destruction down onto the plant. Those who had missed their drops on the first pass circled back to try again through a haze of contrails and billowing smoke. There was occasional gunfire from the ground. It made little more impression than the few fighter planes that continued to nip at the edges of the armada. In total, 711 explosions ripped across Vemork and the surrounding area. Some bombs fell in the valley and woods, causing no harm. Others struck the penstocks, severing nine pipelines and spewing tons of water down the hillside. The suspension bridge was torn in half and hung over the southern cliffside. Three direct hits on the power station ripped away part of its roof, destroying two of the generators and damaging others. Bombs sheared off the top two floors on the western corner of the hydrogen plant. Several houses at Vemork and Våer were leveled, and the homes not eviscerated by explosion were destroyed by flying stones and splinters and by the fires that followed. Flames—red, green, and orange—rose throughout the area. Just as the main body of bombers banked away from the hydrogen plant, a pack of twenty-nine B-24 Liberators flew down the Vestfjord Valley. The pack had been assigned to the bomb run outside Oslo, but they found their target covered in clouds and so had come the hundred miles to Vemork. At 12:03 P.M., these B-24s mistook the nitrate plant in Rjukan for the target and released their five-hundred-pound bombs. Most of the cluster hit the plant, bringing down a pair of brick towers and demolishing a number of small buildings. Some of them struck the town’s populated center, a few hundred yards away. Roane and the others directed their bombers back toward the Norwegian coast at twelve thousand feet, Roane one run closer to joining the Lucky Bastards Club. As they made their way safely home, the residents and workers of Vemork and Rjukan were emerging from hiding to reckon with what they had left behind. “My God, what’s happened to my family?” One engineer, covered in concrete dust, gave voice to everyone’s fears as he stepped toward the door of the hydrogen-plant shelter. Nielsen tried to calm the man next to him, who was frantic about whether his wife and children had reached the air-raid shelter in time. A former member of the Norwegian Red Cross, Nielsen had

by Neal Bascomb

cared for wounded soldiers during the Finnish war against Russia. Now he headed straight to the shelter to see if anybody there needed his help. The air-raid sirens were still wailing, and all of Vemork was choked with smoke. People ran through the rubble putting out fires and carrying the wounded out of buildings on the verge of collapse. Some workers managed to shut down the flow of water from the penstocks and also closed off the valves to the severed hydrogen and oxygen pipes that ran across the valley. Screams and moans sounded from every direction.

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HERE WERE NO SURVIVORS at the Vemork air-raid shelter. There was nobody in need of Nielsen’s help. Where it had stood there were two craters, the result of two direct hits from the bombers. The concrete walls and roof had been pulverized, and the sixteen people who had huddled inside were dead: eleven women, two children, three men. Their bodies were all but irrecoverable: an arm, a head devoid of its features, a dismembered torso. Flesh and bone littered the broken concrete and twisted steel bars in gruesome chunks. Fathers, husbands, and friends knelt down in the open holes, their cries joining together into a macabre song of grief. In Rjukan, four miles away, plumes of heavy dark smoke filled the sky. The nitrate plant and a number of houses were in ruins. As fate would have it, the teachers and students who ran from the bunker during the attack had saved themselves. The shelter had been leveled, just like the one at Vemork. When the smoldering fires had been put out and the wounded treated, the dead were counted: in total, twenty-one Norwegians had lost their lives. SS officer Muggenthaler took cover in Rjukan during the bombing, but still received lacerations to his face from flying debris. In his first dispatches to Oslo and Berlin, he painted a stark portrait of the devastation he had witnessed in the attack and its aftermath. At Vemork, there was much that needed urgent repair: the pipelines, the suspension bridge, and the generators, as well as the equipment and the hydrogen plant. But after he and others carefully surveyed the site, investigations revealed that the “SH-200 high-concentration plant” was undamaged. Only a brief period of time and a limited amount of material would be needed to get things running again. In summary, the bombing run was a lot of storm and fury for what was, in effect, a limited blow to the German war machine.

THIS BOMBING RUN PROVED an essential turning point in the saga of the winter fortress, not because it obliterated the plant, but because it forced the Germans to decide to disassemble the plant and move its stocks of heavy water. This left an opportunity for a last-minute, ragtag operation led by Brooklyn-born Norwegian commando Knut Haukelid. The story is told in The Winter Fortress. A

NEAL BASCOMB is the author of several books, including the bestselling Hunting Eichmann: How a Band of Survivors and a Young Spy Agency Chased Down the World’s Most Notorious Nazi. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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R I O T AT T There were bricks and clubs, broken windows and bloodied bodies. By the time Italian POWs and African American GIs cooled down, one man was dead. And it happend on US soil, at Seattle’s For t Lawton.

by Chuck Lyons

T H E FO R T

The abandoned double barracks at Seattle’s Fort Lawton, shown boarded up and overgrown sometime in the 1970s or 1980s, was a ghost of the US Army’s WWII presence in Puget Sound—and the shocking, racially tinged riot that raged there in 1944. The building burned down in the 1980s. LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY

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R I O T AT T H E F O R T by Chuck Lyons

onday, August 14, 1944, was winding to a close as a group of captured Italian soldiers wiled away the evening at Fort Lawton near Seattle, far from the dangers of war. As 11 P.M. ticked past, the POWs relaxed on their bunks, playing cards, reading, and chatting. Suddenly, bricks came slamming against the barrack’s roof and walls. Windows shattered. The Italians were under attack.

The attackers, enraged American GIs, meant business. A savage riot broke out, and by the time military police shut it down, dozens of men lay wounded, some seriously. One Italian was dead. A total of 43 GIs, all African American, would face a courtmartial for rioting. Three of them were charged with first-degree murder, punishable by death. It was all a shocking tragedy that no one could have imagined back when the US Army decided to bring POWs captured in Europe here to its stronghold on the wooded bluffs overlooking Puget Sound.

Above: The 1943 invasion of Sicily swept up thousands of Italian prisoners, like these captured by the US 3rd Infantry Division. Italian POWs confined at Fort Lawton enjoyed great freedom and a better life than many GIs there had, especially black soldiers. GIs resented that. Opposite, top: Trucks pass an MP at Fort Lawton’s east gate. Military police were supposed to keep order, but some may have incited the August 1944 riot. Opposite, bottom: Newspapers, the public, and the army all assumed the riot was just a black uprising. 24 AMERICA IN WWII

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US ARMY

La Dolce Vita at Fort Lawton FORT LAWTON OPENED IN MAGNOLIA, a neighborhood a few miles south of downtown Seattle, in February 1900. By World War II, the fort had grown to house some 20,000 troops. It was an army training facility and the second largest port of embarkation for soldiers and materials bound for the Pacific. It also housed Axis POWs captured in the European theater. In the summer of 1944, most of the POWs were Germans, about 1,000 in all. But there was also a group of Italians, carefully selected to perform labor and maintenance duties at the fort. For the most part, these Italians had been draftees, unenthusiastic about the war—not volunteers committed to Duce Benito Mussolini and his Fascist regime. They were easier to handle than loyalists and less likely to require disciplinary action. Typical of the Italian POWs was Guglielmo Olivotto. In the 2005 book On American Soil: How Justice Became a Casualty of World War II, author Jack Hamann, a Seattle-based TV news correspondent and documentary producer, described Olivotto as a “quiet man…(who) did not drink or gamble [and] had no interest in being a soldier.” At the time, the US Army wanted to show other nations that it

was treating its POWs humanely and in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. Army brass feared that any poor treatment the United States visited on Axis prisoners would lead to reciprocation on American prisoners in Europe. At Fort Lawton, this concern for fair treatment created a happy environment for the Italian POWs. Among other privileges, they were allowed visits outside the fort, often without the officially required supervision. The visits were usually to the homes of local Italian American families (who also came to the fort on Sundays to chat with the prisoners and pass out Italian delicacies). But the POWs also visited local taverns, went to the movies, and even went on dates with local girls. The lenient treatment of prisoners created resentment among US soldiers stationed at the fort and among local residents, who considered it an affront to the American servicemen who had fought these very Italians a year earlier in North Africa. For African American troops stationed at Fort Lawton, the Italians’ freedom and ease was especially offensive. These black GIs, members of port companies trained to load and unload ships under combat conditions, were waiting at the fort for deployment to the Pacific, where they would risk their lives for their country. Yet some local taverns refused to serve them. Many of those same establishments welcomed the Italians. For the African American GIs, another sore point was the Italians’ romancing of local women. Especially galling was American girls getting engaged to Italian POWs. One black soldier at Fort Lawton summed up the problem in a quote printed in the Seattle Times: “Girls come out to service dances and make a big fuss over the Italians. They find ’em romantic. You know, speaking a foreign language and all that.” Resentment of the Italians wasn’t just an African American phenomenon. Later in 1944, one black soldier arrested after the August

LEFT: COURTESY OF pAULDORpAT.COM. INSET: COURTESY OF SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

14 riot would write in a letter that white MPs on base had been harassing the Italians “and trying to get the colored troops involved” for days before the violence erupted. In general, he said, the white GIs resented the Italians far more than the black troops did. Another African American soldier wrote to a friend that problems began four days before the riot “with white troops who had just returned from the Pacific theater. These guys beat up Italians for three days in the PX [post exchange, an on-base store for GIs]. They tried to get the colored troops to help them…. The white troops here were much more concerned by the presence of the Italians than we were. Certainly we resented the breaks they were getting, but there was nothing we could do about it.” Such claims would get little attention, if any, in the investigation and courtmartial proceedings that would follow the August attack.

Resentment Turns to Riot TWO OF THE THREE African American port companies at Fort Lawton were scheduled to ship out to the Pacific war zone on the morning of August 15. The third company decided to hold an unauthorized party in its mess hall on the night of August 14 to give their fellow GIs a sendoff. Drinking was heavy. Sometime after 11 P.M., four black soldiers later said to have been drinking left the mess hall. Outside they encountered three Italians returning after their own night of drinking. Words were exchanged, and one of the Italians punched one of the Americans, knocking him down and, according to some accounts, unconscious. The Italians fled. The other black soldiers involved in the scuffle apparently called for help. Some witnesses later claimed a whistle was blown. Soon a mob of angry African American soldiers had gathered. The mob then marched on the Italian compound. It might not have been too late to prevent further violence. Private Clyde Lomax, a white MP, OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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R I O T AT T H E F O R T had shown up at the scene of the initial fight and must have noticed that the situation was a powder keg ready to explode before he took the injured black soldier for treatment. Some witnesses claimed Lomax drove the patient to the far side of Fort Lawton rather than to a nearby hospital. The route took him past the fort’s guardhouse, they said, but he didn’t stop to report the escalating trouble. About 11:10 P.M., Italian prisoners lounging on their bunks in Barracks 708 of the Italian compound heard the thud of something hitting their roof. The three Italian POWs who had been out on pass came running into the compound. About 11:25 came other thuds—the sound of bricks being thrown against the walls—and the sound of windows breaking. The Italians jumped up and ran. Some went out the barrack’s windows to seek shelter wherever they could find it. Others hid under bunks or in the latrine.

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struggle, so investigators at first thought he might have committed suicide. Presumed Guilty I MMEDIATELY AFTER THE RIOT, two of the African American port companies were herded into a stockade. No distinction was made between men who had been involved in the riot and those who had not. Within 24 hours, the battle-scarred Italian barracks were repaired and repainted, effectively destroying fingerprints, blood splatter, and footprints—important evidence that could have exonerated some men and convicted others. News of Fort Lawton’s shocking and deadly breakdown of military discipline quickly made its way up the army’s chain of command. Soon the office of the inspector general sent Brigadier General Elliot D. Cooke to investigate what had happened and who was responsible for the conditions that had allowed the riot to happen. In his report, Cooke recommended that Lomax be court-martialed and that Colonel Harry Branson, Fort Lawton’s commanding officer, be demoted for destroying evidence. The court-martial case against the accused rioters was prepared and prosecuted by Colonel Leonidas “Leon” Jaworski of the army Judge Advocate General’s Corps. A Texas prosecutor in civilian life, Jaworski would later gain fame as special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal of the 1970s. After a preliminary investigation in which Italian witnesses had difficulty identifying specific rioters, Jaworski nevertheless decided the evidence supported a charge of rioting against 43 of the African American GIs, a charge that could bring a life sentence. Three of those men—Luther Larkin, Arthur Hurks, and William Jones—were also charged with first degree murder in connection with Olivotto’s killing (by this time, investigators had abandoned the suicide hypothesis). Conviction on this charge could mean death. Just two lawyers were assigned to defend all 43 accused men, and they had only 10 days to prepare their cases. Faced with this impossible task, lead defense attorney Major William Beeks, a Seattle maritime law specialist and later US District Court judge, decided to concentrate on saving the three men charged with murder from the death penalty. Court-martial proceedings opened on November 16, 1944. The court considering the case consisted of nine officers, all white. With 43 defendants, this would be the largest army court-martial of World War II. The trial lasted five weeks, including an all-day session on Thanksgiving Day. Jaworski relied heavily on the testimony of two Italian POWs who, unlike their peers, claimed to be able

Above: Fort Lawton’s guardhouse could hold only a few men. So when two entire African American companies were arrested after the riot, they had to wait in a stockade until prosecutors decided whom to charge. Meanwhile, the post commander had the Italian barracks fixed and repainted, destroying all physical evidence. Opposite: Private Samuel Snow was one of 43 charged with rioting, which could bring life in jail. 26 AMERICA IN WWII

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LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HISTORIC AMERICAN BUILDINGS SURVEY. OppOSITE: US ARMY

AMERICAN ATTACKERS came on fast, wielding entrenching tools, rocks, bare fists, and fence boards turned into clubs. A couple brandished knives. Some Italians tried to fight back with improvised clubs of their own. The rioting spread quickly to other Italian barracks and to the orderly room at the POW compound’s office, where some of the Italians had sought shelter. At least one white man was reportedly among the attackers and was seen striking POWs with a club. “For every black soldier carrying a stick, knife, or shovel,” wrote Hamann in On American Soil, “perhaps three others stood in the shadows, simply watching. Spectators lining the road and standing atop the berm above the Italian Area occasionally roared their approval; none attempted to intervene.” MPs finally showed up at the Italian barracks around midnight and walked onto a battleground. Blood streamed from wild-eyed men fighting without restraint. The rioters swung their clubs with deadly intent, overtaken by murderous emotions. It took the threat of force, including drawn pistols, for the MPs to restore order. The MPs arrested some of the rioters. By the end of it all, 32 men had been taken to the hospital, a dozen of them with serious injuries that would require months of recuperation. The worst was yet to be discovered. Hours after the rioting ended, white MP Lomax and black MP John Pinkney drove to the base of the bluffs on which Fort Lawton sat. There they discovered the body of Guglielmo Olivotto. He had been hanged. Olivotto, known to be extremely frightened of black people, had last been seen as the fighting began, leaping out the barrack window next to his bunk. His body reportedly showed no signs of HE

by Chuck Lyons

COURTROOM SkETCH BY HENRY ROTH. SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER

The accused black GIs sit tensely during a November 1944 court-martial session. All were accused of rioting. Three were also accused of first-degree murder in the hanging of Italian POW Guglielmo Olivotto. The GIs’ attorneys had just 10 days to prepare their defense.

to identify many of the black GIs involved in the rioting, despite the poor lighting in the barracks on the night of the incident. Early in December, Beeks learned that Jaworski had gained access to Cooke’s report. Knowing it contained important information about the case, Beeks asked to see it, but Jaworski refused. To share the report would break wartime secrecy rules, Jaworski said. Beeks asked the court to order Jaworski to share the report, but the court declined. Consequently, Beeks had to proceed with his defense knowing he did not have all the information. What he didn’t know was that Cooke had roundly criticized Lomax, Branson, and other people related to the case. Cooke’s findings could have changed the court-martial’s outcome.

Meanwhile, the court of public opinion had already pronounced its verdict: the black GIs were all guilty as charged. The New York–based Il Progresso Italo-Americano, the country’s leading Italian-language newspaper, called the riot and killing “a despicable crime” and “atrocious offenses” and opined that “the crime certainly puts in the worst light the Negro soldiers who planned it and carried it out with cynical barbarity.” Even an African American newspaper, the Seattle-based Northwest Enterprise, chastised the accused black GIs, saying “it illy becomes our men in arms—or any members of our race—to dignify the rope. The most regrettable part of the entire foray is that the victims were innocent.”

A Late Apology Just in Time

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N A SUMMER SATURDAY IN 2008, the city of Seattle paid tribute to the defendants in the Fort Lawton riot case with a parade, dinner, and ceremonies. Included in the day’s events were a Roman Catholic Mass in memory of Italian POW Guglielmo Olivotto. Then, at a military ceremony at Discovery Park (near the former site of Fort Lawton’s chapel and parade ground), Assistant Secretary of the Army Ronald James apologized to the wrongly convicted African American men, living and dead, and bestowed honorable discharges on them. “We had not done right by these soldiers,” James said. “The army is genuinely sorry. I am genuinely sorry.” The army managed to locate two survivors, Samuel Snow of

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Florida and Robert Montgomery of Illinois, along with the families of 10 deceased defendants. Montgomery couldn’t attend the ceremonies, so James visited his home and personally presented the army’s apology, honorable discharge, and back pay. Snow traveled to Seattle to attend the ceremonies, but just before the event, an irregular heartbeat sent him to Seattle’s Virginia Mason Hospital. His family attended on his behalf, then returned to the hospital to give him his honorable discharge, which he hugged to his chest with a smile. That evening, he died of heart failure. Thanks to his restored honorable discharge, he was buried with full military honors. Chuck Lyons

R I O T AT T H E F O R T In the military courtroom, the verdict read much like the newspaper editorials. The court-martial did drop the charges against two of the black soldiers, and another 13 were tried and acquitted, but the remaining 28 were found guilty. For them, the most lenient sentence was 6 months; the harshest was 25 years at labor. The court stipulated that each of the convicted men, with one exception, would receive a dishonorable discharge from the army upon completing his sentence. Among the convicted were Larkin and Jones, who were found guilty. Fortunately for them, their convictions were for manslaughter rather than murder.

ing “Christmas clemencies” to servicemen serving time on courtmartial convictions. The Fort Lawton defendants were among those whose sentences were reduced. By 1949, the last Fort Lawton defendant left prison.

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N THE 1980 S , Jack Hamann began looking into the Fort Lawton riot and produced a local TV documentary on the incident. His discoveries while working on that documentary inspired him to dive into further research together with his wife and fellow journalist Leslie Hamann, which led to the writing of On American Soil. By then Cooke’s report had been declassified. Hamann used the report and other information to argue that the Fort Lawton court-martial had been a miscarriage of justice. Within two years, the Hamanns’ work bore fruit. In late October 2007, the army’s Board of Corrections of Military Records, urged

MAGNOLIA HISTORICAL SOCIETY, SEATTLE, WASHINGTON

Condemnation and Vindication THE FOLLOWING JANUARY, Lomax faced a court-martial on charges of failing to notify his superiors “of a threatening disturbance” and failure to “prevent destruction of certain government property.”

by Chuck Lyons

Olivotto’s grave, with its distinctive headstone, stands out in Fort Lawton’s cemetery. His apparent murder on the fort’s obstacle course remains unsolved. He was remembered during the 2008 ceremonies that made amends to the African American GIs who were denied justice in 1944.

The latter charge was related to the fence the African American GIs had broken up to make clubs to use in the fighting. Lomax was discharged from the army. But questions about whether he was more deeply involved in the rioting, and possibly in Olivotto’s death, linger to the present day. Lomax’s trial and dismissal, however, had no effect on the fate of the 28 men convicted. An appeal to the army’s board of review fell on deaf ears and was rejected. The convicted men remained in prison, serving their sentences. Final Allied victory in August 1945 offered new hope to the imprisoned men. That year, President Harry Truman began issu-

on by Congress, ruled that Jaworski had erred in refusing to release Cooke’s report to the defense. “Egregious errors” had been made that made the trial “fundamentally unfair,” the board ruled. As a result of the ruling, the Fort Lawton convictions were overturned, nearly 63 years after the fact. The defendants’ dishonorable discharges were changed to honorable. And thanks largely to the Hamanns’ journalistic efforts, one of history’s injustices was set right. A CHUCK LYONS of Rochester, New York, has written many articles about the US home front for America in WWII. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 29

E N O

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r 1944, men of the Japanese American mrades who fell here in eastern France during the so-called Lost Battalion. US ARMY PHOTO

ONE MORE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE by Scott McGaugh Adapted excerpt from Honor Before Glory: The Epic World War II Story of the Japanese-American GIs Who Rescued the Lost Battalion by Scott McGaugh. Copyright © 2016. Available from Da Capo Press, an imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, a subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

America incarcerated more than 100,000 Japanese American

“

K

eep them moving and don’t let them stop. There’s a battalion about to die up there and we’ve got to reach them.” “Yes, sir,” the field commander [of the 100th Battalion] answered crisply. General John Dahlquist’s exchange with Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Singles revealed how dire Dahlquist [commander of the 36th Division] considered Martin Higgins’s position to be on October 29. The third-generation West Point graduate, who looked younger than his age, knew better than to argue with Dahlquist. Apparently, Dahlquist didn’t think the previous day’s air and resupply missions to the 1/141 [1st Battalion, 141st Infantry Regiment] had bought the surrounded men much time.

At the start of the fifth day of the rescue mission, Dahlquist wanted a full-court press, now that the 100th and 3rd Battalions were nearly a mile from Higgins’s men. Both battalions had been stymied by a major logging-road roadblock and adjoining minefields at Col de la Croisette [the mountain pass at the village of Croisette]. The two battalions were abreast, with the 3rd on the north side of the road [the only access route] and the 100th to the south. Both remained vulnerable to German artillery from across the valley to the south. German artillery units knew the exact location of the 3rd and 100th, and the battalions’ excruciatingly slow advance made them nearly stationary targets. Jim Okubo and the other medics had faced casualties within minutes of jumping off shortly after daybreak. On the northern flank, George Sakato, Kelly Kuwayama, and others in the 2nd Battalion waited for Kats Miho’s artillery battery to stop shelling Hill 617. The hour was approaching for the major attack on Hill 617 that Lieutenant Colonel James Hanley had carefully staged. Hanley finally had his companies in position. A few minutes after contacting Singles, Dahlquist called Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Pursall’s 3rd Battalion headquarters. For two hours, Pursall had been preoccupied by his men weaving their way through another German minefield. They had advanced only about 250 yards against enemy opposition. Pursall also needed tank support. A tank with a bulldozing blade on the front could clear the stacks of German-felled trees that blocked the road. Another tank or two could support the ground troops as well. But the dense forest limited the American tanks’ mobility. They generally stayed on or close to the logging road and had to

Above: The Mochida family of Mount Eden, California, awaits relocation to an internment camp in May 1942. A year later, after more than 100,000 Japanese Americans were forced to leave home for guarded camps, the military asked the young men among them to volunteer. Enough joined the army to fill the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. Opposite, bottom: Muddy roads were just one of many obstacles the 442nd faced on the Lost Battalion mission. Opposite, top and center: George Sakato and Barney Hajiro eventually received the Medal of Honor for their efforts on the mission. 32 AMERICA IN WWII

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dePARTMenT Of THe inTeRiOR, wAR RelOcATiOn AUTHORiTY. PHOTO bY dOROTHeA lAnge

citizens in desolate internment camps in the months following the Pearl Harbor attack. Just a year later, the nation asked the sons of those families to volunteer from behind barbed wire for combat in a segregated army. Responding in numbers that exceeded the recruitment goal, the Japanese Americans were formed into their own unit: the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The army made a habit of assigning the 442nd to difficult missions that others had failed. Here, the soldiers of the 442nd’s 2nd, 3rd, and 100th Battalions have reached the climax of a weeklong rescue mission in eastern France in October 1944. They’re fighting to save First Lieutenant Martin Higgins’s 1st Battalion of the 141st Infantry Regiment, 36th Infantry Division—a unit hence known as the Lost Battalion—which is surrounded by German troops on an isolated ridge in the Vosges Mountains.

American artillery range. Dahlquist and all three 442nd battalion commanders needed to know the status of the German positions in the forest as well as the location and progress of any approaching enemy reinforcements. The 36th Division had a Strategic Services Section (SSS) team assigned to it from the day it had landed in southern France. It was a team of secret agents. It had infiltrated German lines during the advance toward the Vosges, coordinating French Resistance activities and recruiting residents as spies. Local employees of the Bureau of Water, Forests, Roads, and Bridges were especially helpful to the agents in mapping German-held territory and identifying targets for American artillery units. The day before, three SSS agents had tried to slip through German lines and reach Higgins. The mission failed when

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get close to the enemy to be effective against heavily fortified German tanks. Dahlquist pressed home his sense of urgency with each of his 442nd battalion commanders. He repeated the same order to Pursall by radio. “Let’s keep them moving. Even against opposition. Get through to them. That battalion is about to die and we’ve got to reach them.” The interrogation reports from prisoners taken in recent days confirmed that a wellentrenched German force still separated Higgins’s men from the rescuers. At least three companies of the Germans’ 936th Grenadier Regiment—upwards of 200 men— and German artillery remained in the Americans’ path. New reports from the 36th Division’s intelligence section indicated a column of 250 Germans had been spotted marching toward the ridge. They were beyond

OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 33

by Scott McGaugh

OPPOSTie: US ARMY

cOURTeSY Of THe AUTHOR

ONE MORE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

they were caught by the Germans. The agents had hidden their incriminating radio equipment but now were on their way to German prisoner-of-war camps, where they would remain until the end of the war. Lieutenant Colonel Hanley’s 2nd Battalion was finally ready to ambush the Germans holding Hill 617 on the left flank of the rescue mission. The hill gave the Germans a commanding view of the valley to the north, where Companies E and F had tried to cross in hopes of ambushing the enemy. Frightening losses from enemy mortars had forced both companies to mount trucks at night and swing farther to the north before turning south toward Hill 617. To the west, Company G had attempted to draw the Germans’ attention, but the result had been several days of casualties and almost no progress. But now Hanley was ready. After a failed attempt at dawn, two Company G platoons attacked Hill 617, advancing up a narrow creek bed shortly before noon. Elevated German positions on both sides rendered the creek a killing zone. Bloodied, both platoons pulled back. It had been a diversion. George Sakato, Kenji Ego, and the rest of Companies E and F then attacked from the north. Company G simultaneously attacked again in force, against an estimated two hundred German soldiers on the west side of the hill. Enemy artillery pummeled the American battalion on both sides of the hill. Progress was measured by the distance between trees. The price was measured by the increasing number of casu-

alties as the Americans slowly advanced uphill over the course of several hours’ fighting.

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EDIC K ELLY K UWAYAMA HAD a unique view of the battle, peering over a boulder or from behind a tree. The intellectual Princeton graduate knew how to dissect a battlefield. Scan the scattered open areas where a man was more likely to be shot as he advanced. Watch for movement because when soldiers were moving, they were more vulnerable. Unconsciously run his hands around his belt, making sure medical-supply packs had not fallen off somehow. Look for stands of trees, mounds of rocks, and foxholes that might offer shelter if a man fell wounded and Kuwayama had to drag him to safety. The shorter the distance, the better. A medic couldn’t be searching the forest for a safe haven after he had reached a wounded soldier. Listen, especially between the mortar detonations. Men would call for help, most likely for buddies who had been wounded. “Medic!” Kuwayama saw a rifleman lying in the open, motionless. German mortars were landing dangerously close to the defenseless soldier. Kuwayama ran across bare ground, oblivious to the shrapnel and bullets splitting the air around him. The thud against his head must have felt like a heavyweight’s punch. Blood from the shrapnel gash nearly blinded the medic. He paused, dragged a shirtsleeve across his eyes, and then resumed his dash toward the

Opposite: A squad leader from the 442nd’s Company F looks for German soldiers in a French valley 200 yards in the distance in late 1944. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 35

ONE MORE MISSION IMPOSSIBLE wounded man. The first thing he did was to check the man’s eyeballs. If they didn’t move, Kelly would know he was dead. Not this time. They moved. He administered rapid-fire triage before dragging the man thirty yards across open ground and through wicked enemy fire. Litter bearers were nearby, ready for the wounded soldier. Kuwayama needed immediate treatment, too. Companies E and F finally reached the top of Hill 617, but it was clear the German units in the area were not defeated. Veteran combat soldiers had learned that a cleared enemy was not necessarily a vanquished enemy in the Vosges. Now the Germans had

by Scott McGaugh

The artillery attack finally paused, and Ikeda left Sakato in search of more ammunition. Then Sakato spotted the lead elements of the enemy’s infantry counterattack. The onetime sickly boy named after a samurai had become a battle veteran whom replacement troops relied upon. Could the 2/442 hold the hill? A German approached Sakato, grenade in hand. Sakato grabbed a German Luger he had found days earlier and killed the German. Now he had only a few seconds to fill his Thompson submachinegun clips. He had taped two together, giving him a forty-round capacity. As he did, Germans passed him on their way back up the

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The 442nd suffered some 350 casualties during its weeklong mission to save the Lost Battalion from surrounding German forces. Many of the wounded Japanese Americans passed through this US Army aid station on the way to more extensive treatment farther from the front.

to drive the Americans off the hill. Trees exploded and the forest floor quivered as Company E’s George Sakato dove into a German foxhole. A soldier from Company F joined him. George thought he recognized the man, despite the grime and exhaustion that coated his face. “Hey, you’re Mas Ikeda from Mesa, Arizona,” he said. “Yeah.” “What have you heard about home?” In the middle of the raging battle, they shared tidbits of life a world away, where families endured barbed wire and armed guards. Caucasian America called it internment. Many Japanese Americans called it incarceration when their sons had volunteered to fight America’s war. 36 AMERICA IN WWII

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hill. No one noticed the five-foot-four American in the bottom of the foxhole. Not far away, Saburo Tanamachi led a squad through the trees. He had grown up on a family farm in Texas. He had run the business side of the farm, planning crop rotations and supervising crop deliveries to market. He had promised his sister, Yuri Nakayama, that he “would bring home Hitler’s moustache.” He and his squad faced four machine-gun nests and twelve German riflemen. An enemy squad advanced toward him. Oh my God, Sakato thought before he yelled, “Watch out for the machine guns! They’re taking the hill back!” Tanamachi inexplicably stood. “Where?” The answer was a German machine-gun burst that ripped into

US ARMY

In September 1945, Lieutenant General Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., now commander of the US Fifth Army, visits the 442nd in Leghorn, Italy, to present Company L of the 3rd Battalion with a Presidential Unit Citation for its role in rescuing his Lost Battalion.

Tanamachi. Sakato ran to his friend, who had fallen into a foxhole. Sakato held his friend, blood soaking both uniforms. “Why’d you stand up?” Tanamachi gurgled in reply. Seconds later he died, limp in Sakato’s arms. Sakato cried in the middle of battle. They had shared a Waldorf-Astoria room in New York City when on leave, carefree and happy, looking out the window for a few hours when they discovered they had no money after paying for the room. Now they had shared death. His friend’s blood coated Sakato’s hands. Tears blurred the battlefield for a few seconds before they evaporated in rage. “You son of a bitch,” Sakato yelled as he, too, rose to his feet, in full view of the enemy. He could hardly have frightened the Germans. Sakato, the smallest and sickliest of five brothers, zigzagged toward the enemy, firing his Tommy gun from his hip, spraying the forest as Germans fell on one side and then the other.

H

IS SUICIDE CHARGE SO UNNERVED the Germans that several raised hands and white handkerchiefs fluttered. Sakato had nearly single-handedly halted the counterattack and taken prisoners. He had killed twelve Germans, wounded two others, and taken four prisoners. But he had lost a friend. Sakato had only thirteen days’ battlefield experience when

he mounted his charge up the hill. As a replacement soldier, he had halted a flanking attack by the enemy, taking charge when his squad leader had been killed. The previous day, Tanamachi had told Sakato that he felt sick to his stomach. Sakato had told him to report to an aid station. Tanamachi refused, picked up a grenade launcher, and reported to his assembly area. Once the 2/442 had secured Hill 617, Sakato walked back to Tanamachi’s body, soaked with blood and mud. Tanamachi’s blood on Sakato’s hands had crusted and then been rubbed off by his still-warm submachine gun. Sakato removed Tanamachi’s lucky 1921 silver dollar that he had carried in his pocket. After the war, Sakato gave the silver dollar to Tanamachi’s mother. Despite a horrific number of casualties, the 442nd rescued 211 men on this mission. Three of the Japanese Americans were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions (though 50 years passed before they received their medals). Ultimately the 442nd became the most-decorated WWII unit of its size, with members earning more than 18,000 awards for valor—more than one per man. A SCOTT MCGAUGH, a New York Times best-selling author, is the marketing director of the USS Midway Museum in San Diego. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 37

Swept up by patriotic fever after Pearl Harbor, a Wisconsin boy joins the marines— and learns the meaning of Semper Fidelis on some of the Pacific’s most savage battlegrounds.

ONE MARINE’S WAR by Nick Cariello

US Marines advance under intense fire during their November 1943 invasion of Tarawa in the Central Pacific’s Gilbert Islands. Private First Class Nick Cariello of Racine, Wisconsin, was there, fighting in the 2nd Marines’ Fox Company. The Guadalcanal vet was no stranger to grueling island combat, but for him Tarawa would pose the greatest dangers of the war. national archives

One Marine’s War • Part One

THE MAKING OF A MARINE by Nick Cariello

I

I was half-asleep at early morning when somebody shouted, “Jeez, will you look at that!” I peered out the window and saw that we had pulled into the San Diego train station. We cheered and stretched and congratulated one another, saying silly things like, “Watch out, you damn Japs, we’re on our way!” As we leaped off the train with our suitcases, we were met by cheerful women in gray uniforms (Red Cross workers) who handed out—with big smiles—steaming coffee and delicious doughnuts. Then we went aboard buses, which transferred us to the Marine Corps recruit depot along the ocean. The day sped by as we were given inoculations and Marine clothing and then, in assembly style, were quickly shorn of our long locks virtually down to the nub. We marched (well, straggled) to a mess hall, where we devoured oversized steaks, assorted vegetables, tons of cold milk, warm bread, and jiggly Jell-O. Then we were taken to temporary barracks, where we spent part of the night talking, despite being exhausted. When it was time for lights-out, I fell asleep just about the time my head met the pillow. I was shocked out of deep slumber by a recorded bugle blaring out reveille. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was only 5 A.M. “Huh,” I moaned and thought, “Are these f---ing” people crazy or what?” I turned over groggily and started to drift back to sleep. Then a beefy corporal, full of bile and bluster, burst into the room shouting, ”OK, you gorgeous sleeping beauties, drop your c---ks and grab your socks! You have only 20 minutes to do your number one and/or number two and shave your ugly faces! So up and at ’em, let’s go, chop-chop!” Sleepily I stumbled out of my lower

Top: Nick Cariello was one of countless young men who rushed into the US military after Pearl Harbor, eager to get a “Jap Hunting License,” as this pin put it (a sentiment echoed by a sign at Milwaukee’s US Marine Corps Recruitment Center, where Cariello enlisted). Above: Before the 19-year-old Cariello could join the marines, his mother, Domenica, had to sign a permission form. She signed grudgingly, knowing her boy might never return. Opposite: After finishing boot camp near San Diego, Cariello donned the uniform of a new marine. 40 AMERICA IN WWII

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TOP: AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION. LEFT & OPPOSITE: COURTESY OF NICK CORIELLO

T WAS WITH GREAT ANTICIPATION that I sprang up the snowy steps of a Milwaukee building in January 1942 and went into the US Marine Corps Recruitment Center. Many enlistees were milling about. I was impressed by a huge sign in big bloodred letters that hung on a wall: Jap Hunting Licenses Issued Here. One big, raw-boned recruit pointed at the sign and sniggered, “Yeah, I sure the hell am gonna bag my quota!” I had actually decided to join the Marines back in the temporary recruiting office in Racine, Wisconsin, my hometown, about 25 miles away. The day before departing for Milwaukee, I went with my anxious mother to a notary public office to sign a necessary paper. My mom was really reluctant about signing the document, saying something like, “Nickie, Nickie, why can’t you just wait until the draft? You may not have to go for at least a couple of years. You got a nice job in the tractor factory that pays good. You’ve got a nice car, a little old, but nice. And you know a few girls. So, why, why don’t you wait?” I’m sure she expected and dreaded the firm “No!” that I uttered. So with a deep sigh and tears glistening on her face, she slowly signed the paper, saying with anguish, “I just hope I’m not signing your death warrant.” On the tedious train journey to San Diego, we Marines were clustered in one car. And were we ever excited. The farthest I had ever been from home was Chicago, just 60 miles away. But time just didn’t seem to move. We smoked and bantered and read tattered magazines such as The Saturday Evening Post, Argosy, and Reader’s Digest. We slept curled up in our seats. Three days passed with agonizing slowness as the train’s monotonous clickety-clack, clickety-clack lulled us.

left & top: national archives

Top: Boot camp was a challenge, but it turned Cariello, a fresh-faced kid from Racine, into a genuine marine. The first step in the process was to shed the trappings of civilian life, as these enlistees are doing in February 1944 at San Diego’s marine corps recruitment depot. Above: Marine trainees practice hand-to-hand combat there in 1942, under the gaze of a drill instructor (in pith helmet).

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One Marine’s War • Part One

THE MAKING OF A MARINE by Nick Cariello bunk while the equally sleepy Marine above me jumped down and practically knocked me over. After a hasty breakfast we learned, much to our chagrin, that we were moving from our comfortable barracks to tents. Each tent housed four Marines. We were told that the tents would be “home, sweet home” until we left boot camp eight weeks later. Soon after leaving our tents we met our DIs (drill instructors). One, named Green, was tall, thin, and turned out to be taciturn and all business. The other DI, whose name escapes me—I’ll just call him Black—was much shorter, muscular, and talkative. Before long we were out on the wide parade ground getting acquainted with the concrete, learning the hard fundamentals of being Marines.

A

S THE LONG DAYS FLOWED ALONG,

we recruits slowly learned precise parade-ground marching. I found myself enjoying the almost hypnotic snap of the DI’s strong voice when he barked commands such as, “F-o-r-w-a-r-d march! Oblique left, oblique right, to-the-rear march, right turn, left turn, and halt!” Recreation came in the form of outdoor movies on base. But the ones we attended were mostly war films that were blatantly propagandistic. We would boo and stamp our feet whenever the sneering, hated Japanese appeared on screen. And occasionally when a romantic film would be screened, we would also hiss and boo—because who the hell wanted mushy-gushy, kissy-face Bmovie plots? We demanded war films with plenty of action. On the rifle range we were introduced to what the crusty gunnery officers emphatically described as “our best and only friend,” the ’03 Springfield rifle. It was used in the First World War and

to the firing line and said, “Now look, kid, the key to accurate shooting is simple. Just stay calm. You’ll do terrific and make me proud and improve my record.” My turn came and I stepped up with confidence, but the jumpy non-com now seemed more nervous as he instructed me on the proper firing stance. He whispered in his cigarette-scarred voice, “Now keep cool. Relax like a sleeping baby in its crib and don’t get nervous.” I was doing fine at the various distances and he said nervously, “Say, man, you are doing just great, just great. If you keep this up you’ll get the top award of Expert.” But during the final phase of shooting, the corporal kept whispering in my ear, “Now careful. Don’t get nervous. Keep it up. Take it easy and remain calm. Just don’t get nervous.” Well, of course I became nervous and barely missed making Expert. However, I did receive a Sharpshooter award, the next highest rank. While I was departing the range, the corporal sidled up and, as he was drawing furiously on yet another cigarette, said sympathetically, “It’s really too bad, kid, that you got nervous.” Finally the long-anticipated graduation day arrived, and we had a photo taken of the platoon with drill instructors Green and Black standing in mock sternness among us. Then Green declared in a triumphant voice, “Now listen up! You’ve lost your girlish laughter and your baby fat. You are now officially Marines!” We cheered and hollered when we were informed that we would be blended into the soon-to-be famous 2nd Marine Division based at Camp Gilbert, some 15 miles away. We had been magically transformed from a gaggle of smart-ass know-it-alls into lean, mean, tough, spunky Marines. And the Marine motto, Semper Fidelis (Always Faithful), now seemed seared into our very souls.

“...the Marine motto, Semper Fidelis (Always

”

Faithful), now seemed seared into our very souls. was considered most reliable, with its smooth bolt action and its magazine containing five cartridges. I discovered on the very first day on the firing range that my eyesight wasn’t quite 20-20. I did fine at target practice of 100 to 150 yards, but beyond that my accuracy fell dramatically. (I recalled the utterly bored navy corpsman back at the Milwaukee recruiting station. He hurriedly tested our eyesight by having us read a big black chart. “That’s great, that’s just great,” he kept repeating as we rushed through the procedure.) But I did manage to squeak out a Marksman award with the Springfield. Despite knowing that sniper school was not for me, I was still confident I could pop a Japanese soldier at 150 yards. My results at the range involving the famed Colt .45-caliber pistol were rather amusing. The instructor, a small, wiry corporal perhaps in his mid-20s, was obviously the nervous type. He puffed continuously on a cigarette while constantly pacing. He led me up

At Camp Gilbert we underwent prolonged tough training such as descending simulated cargo nets with full gear, practicing on the bayonet range, squirming under live machine-gun fire aimed just above our helmeted heads, and sweating profusely on forced marches of 20 miles. Then the scuttlebutt became intense that we would soon leave for the Pacific. Finally came the official announcement, and our regiment, the 2nd Marine Regiment (part of the 2nd Marine Division), went aboard vessels in San Diego harbor that were accompanied by a large array of warships. Our troop ship, along with several others, left very early one July morning in 1942. Several of us stood quietly at the stern of our ship, bewitched by the colorful fluorescent waves churned up by giant propellers. We watched as the varied lights of San Diego slowly began to fade. I pondered, as I’m sure others did, what adventures and misadventures lay ahead on that cool, fateful morning. A OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

AMERICA IN WWII 43

One Marine’s War • Part Two

UNDER FIRE ON TULAGI AND GUADALCANAL by Nick Cariello

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After a hectic hour or so, our sector was cleared and we were able to rest and swig warm water from our canteens. Then we were ordered to the eastern tip of the island, where we dug deep foxholes and boasted about the initial battle. With much braggadocio we expressed hope that the few remaining Japanese would counterattack so we could “kick their yellow asses.” Enemy Fire—and Friendly Fire A FTER SEVERAL DAYS OF INTENSE FIGHTING, the island was relatively secure except for a handful of die-hard Japanese still holding out. Then our company, Company F or Fox Company, moved up the island to protect an area called Chinese Village. Merchants had migrated there from China years earlier and set up a few ramshackle buildings, but had long since departed. We settled down for the night in our quickly dug foxholes. Toward dawn we were awakened and shaken by two quick shots. A few yards away a Marine in his foxhole yelled to me, “Hey, Nick, what the hell was that?” “Jeez, I don’t know, but keep your head down,” I said groggily as I grabbed for the comforting feel of my rifle. My other hand darted to my upper pocket to make sure my grenade was still there. What had happened turned out to be a severe blow to our morale. One of our company, a likeable blond strapping youth from Minnesota by the name of Olmsted had left his foxhole, apparently to urinate. A Marine who was one of several men standing guard around the perimeter heard the movement in the dark, panicked, and fired, instantly killing Olmsted. The next morning we were glum and shaken from the night’s traumatic event. As we left the area, the Marine who had killed the Minnesota Kid was sitting silently against a tree. He stared at the ground and refused to look up at us as we filed by. His helmet was off and his hair was damp and he wore a forlorn look. I didn’t know him very well but I felt sorry for him. How do you live

Above: Fighting in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific, on Tulagi and Guadalcanal, was the 2nd Marine Division’s baptism of fire. In tribute, the division patch bore the region’s Southern Cross constellation. Opposite: Nick Cariello’s own initiation into island combat and its savagery came on Tulagi. Here, naval guns soften Tulagi and Tanambogo for the marines’ assault on August 7, 1942. 44 AMERICA IN WWII

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after several weeks of sailing. The officers kept us busy cleaning our weapons and lecturing us on Japanese military tactics as well as Marine philosophy. Some of the old salts regaled us with tales of Marine service in various parts of the world, including China. Finally we were told that we were to land on the island of Tulagi in the Solomon Islands of the South Pacific Ocean on August 8. The day before that, the 1st Marine Division was scheduled to hit the main island of Guadalcanal, where the Japanese had built an airfield. We cheered and swaggered when informed that we would be taking part in the first offensive to roll back the relentless Japanese tide in the vast Pacific. There was unusual quiet aboard ship the night before our landing on Tulagi, which had an excellent harbor. We had heard that the 1st Marine Division had met little resistance during its invasion of Guadalcanal, some 25 miles from Tulagi. Finally a pinkish dawn arrived and we went over the side of the troopship and down the swaying cargo nets into Higgins boats (LCVPs, or landing craft, vehicle, personnel). The navy had laid down a fierce barrage of ship-to-shore artillery prior to our storming the beach, and I was almost giddy with apprehension as I saw the tops of tall coconut palms sheared off and strewn about like camouflage. We vaulted from the landing crafts into shallow water as non-coms and officers were yelling above enemy gunfire, “Go, go, go! Spread out! Spread out, you stupid sh--heads!” I fearfully sprinted ahead and ran faster when I saw a bloody dead Marine who was lying twisted on his side in the surf. Another Marine lay lifeless on the beach, his blood staining the sand. When I reached shore I heard enemy machine-gun bullets slashing through the air past my legs. My first thought was a silly one: “Hey, those crazy bastards are trying to kill me!” I was most grateful when somebody tossed a hand grenade and the deep whomp silenced that damn machine gun. OREDOM BEGAN TO SET IN

One Marine’s War • Part Two

UNDER FIRE ON TULAGI AND GUADALCANAL by Nick Cariello with that? I thought. A jumble of emotions must have been swirling through his mind. A few days later he was transferred to another unit. This was standard practice in case a friend of Olmsted would try to seek revenge. One night we heard what we called “our mail boat” chugging toward our harbor. It was a small patrol vessel that frequently plied the waters between Tulagi and Guadalcanal, carrying mail, personnel, and supplies. Suddenly we saw the long finger of a bright searchlight from a Japanese warship, probably a destroyer, pick up the helpless mail boat. The destroyer leisurely fired its guns and the mail boat simply exploded, sending fiery debris horizontally and skyward. To our horror, we heard a voice crying out from near the flaming wreckage, “Help, oh God, somebody please help me!” But the fast-sinking boat was too far out and there was nothing we could do. The weakened cry for help continued for a few minutes. Then there was an eerie silence except for the hushed breaking of the gentle waves and the occasional mournful cry of a seabird. I vividly recall another night when two Japanese warships shelled Tulagi for about 30 minutes. We scrunched down deep into our foxholes and I was wishing I could crawl into my helmet. Jeez but I was scared as the heavy shrapnel sang a deadly song over our heads. In the morning we learned that two Marines had

been killed and seven wounded. A few days later I was among a group of about 15 selected to invade a tiny island just a hundred yards or so off Tulagi. A few runaway Japanese had been spotted there. We piled into a Higgins boat and hit the beach a few minutes later. A patrol was formed to go around the island, skirting the water’s edge. We moved out cautiously. Suddenly came the deep, 20-round burping of a Browning Automatic Rifle (portable .30-06-caliber light machine gun dubbed BAR), which was carried by the Marine who was leading. I was third in line, and as I made my way forward, I was shaken to see the recipients of that incredibly loud fire. Inside a cave about four feet deep were the mangled bodies of three Japanese soldiers. Gore and guts had been splattered on the sides of the cave and the strong smell of blood wafted toward us. We completed the circling of the island and then swept across it without further incident. Ironically, we learned later that the Japanese who were killed had apparently thrown away the bolts to their rifles prior to the encounter. This was standard procedure for the Japanese, to prevent any captured weapon from being used by the enemy. Supplies were slowly arriving on Tulagi, but we were still short of food. Early on we had discovered cans of strange Japanese vegetables, some likely seaweed. But the strange fare didn’t taste bad,

Like these marines on Guadalcanal, Cariello’s Company F hit its first beaches (Tulagi on August 7, 1942, and Guadalcanal on October 29) aboard Higgins boats—LCVPs (landing craft, vehicle, personnel). NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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given how hungry we were. Also found were bags of buggy Japanese rice. At first we carefully picked out the numerous insects. But it was tedious, so we gave up, saying “what the hell,” joking that the bugs would give us extra protein. We made another surprise find inside a shack: Japanese porno magazines! Giggling and shoving we lined up to peek at the blackand-white drawings. We laughed and stamped our feet in derision at the crude artistry. Somebody said, “Hey, will you look at the horny people making little soldiers for the emperor. Well, screw them!” We guffawed and slapped each other on the back. It was good to laugh heartily after so many days of tension.

bombarded the beach area. It was just terrifying as the seemingly unending shells screamed in and exploded at nearby Henderson Field (a Japanese-built airfield captured and renamed by US Marines) and among the palm trees we were under. We lost three Marines that night, including a pleasant kid named Gueydan from our company, who was from the Missouri Ozarks and had a delightful accent. He was probably 20 or 21. The next several days were rife with scuttlebutt about an upcoming operation. Extra ammunition, water, and food were brought in by trucks, which we unloaded like stevedores. Then came the word that our outfit, Fox Company, would be in support of several units of the 1st Marine Division in an offensive along the coast (starting November 1, with the overall goal of capturing Kokumbona on the western third of Guadalcanal’s northern coast, where the Japanese 17th Army had its headquarters).

Onward to Guadalcanal NEWS FROM GUADALCANAL, meanwhile, was becoming grim. The Japanese were landing sizeable forces and frequent, ferocious battles were occurring. In addition the Marines A Hailstorm of Bombs were harassed by Japanese naval fire and WE STARTED OUT through a large cocobombers. Then at last, in October 1942, we got word from our company comnut plantation. The objective was to mander that we would be leaving for sweep the enemy away from near a river Guadalcanal to beef up the battered 1st called the Matanikau. Our company Marine Division. Cheering ourselves was moving slowly forward (heading hoarse, we tossed our helmets into the air west) despite occasional sniper fire and and pounded one another’s back. We the thunderous thunk, thunk, thunk of couldn’t wait to get to the “big show.” enemy mortar shells falling in the area. A brisk breeze was blowing the next The tension was almost unbearable and morning, October 29, as we left on we made sure we were “spread out,” Cariello (right) was with Stanley Glowacz of Higgins boats for Guadalcanal. I looked which was a Marine commandment. Nebraska when Company F came under 37mm fire on Guadalcanal. back at the lush, dark island of Tulagi Every nerve in my body seemed strained and realized that it was there that I had as I crept forward. COuRTESy Of NICk CARIELLO grown up. I had seen dead Marines and Suddenly enemy artillery shells came slain Japanese, and those awful scenes were seared into my memslamming in. Somebody yelled “37s!” (37mm artillery projecory. And although I was still only 19, I felt that now I was a man tiles). You could hear them being fired and almost immediately, it and certainly a Marine. seemed, you’d hear the terrifying whomp of the damn shell hitting

“We scrunched down deep into our foxholes and I was wishing I could crawl into my helmet.” As we approached the shore we saw many coconut palms strung along the beach, while the rest of the foreboding island looked dark with super-abundant foliage. Black, rain-laden clouds dangled over the ominous-looking mountains to the south. We piled out of the Higgins boats, and there were eager natives who greeted us with, “You got a ciggie, friend, ciggie?” We passed out the few cigarettes we could spare. I noticed one cheerful middle-age native with an enormously swollen leg, which a corpsman later told me was probably the result of the tropical disease elephantiasis.

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a few hundred yards and bivouacked after digging the ever-necessary foxholes. I noticed that the surf sound faded, but what became really noticeable was the soft sound of palm branches being rubbed together by the almost constant trade winds. Those foxholes came in handy that night as the Japanese navy INALLY WE MOVED INLAND

close by. Scary. Most scary. I was near a very good friend, Stanley Glowacz from Nebraska. He was effervescent and extremely articulate, with a finely tuned sense of humor and a smile that was easily provoked. He flashed a pixie grin when I once told him that I admired his fluent bullsh--. (Glowacz was later killed during the brutal battle for Tarawa.) We dove for cover under an immense log that was propped up by another tree just off the trail. Squadrons of mosquitoes buzzed my face and stinging ants covered my hands. I swiped at them as best I could while trying to burrow like a badger into the stinking, decaying vegetation. Rather morbidly, I thought about the $10,000 life insurance policy I had taken out. I had recently written my older sister Mary that if something happened to me, she should tell my parents to buy a late-model Buick (my favorite car then) and to use the rest of the money to pay off their mortgage. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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NATIONAL ARCHIVES COuRTESy Of NICk CARIELLO

Top: On Tulagi and Guadalcanal, Cariello encountered the enemy—Japanese like these men captured on Guadalcanal (who insisted on combing their hair for the photo). Above: Cariello is third from the right in the second row in this shot of men from Company F. On damp, buggy Guadalcanal, Cariello and Company F helped drive Japanese forces out of positions near the northwest coast and the Matanikau River.

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One Marine’s War • Part Two

UNDER FIRE ON TULAGI AND GUADALCANAL by Nick Cariello I shuddered. I sweated. I cursed. I cringed. I prayed in a barern approaches of our invaluable stronghold at Henderson Field. gaining mode, “Please, please save me, God. I’ll do good and go Thankfully it was a relatively quiet front and we were able to to church and be a better person. Honest, I will!” Then a shell relax and catch up on our mail. The chow was almost good but, howled in and struck nearby. A panicked cry rang out: as usual, never in abundance, and the nicotine addicts among us, “Corpsman, somebody’s been hit! Corpsman, hurry!” A 37mm including me, eagerly grabbed the cigarettes being passed out. shell had landed between the outstretched legs of a prone Marine and had virtually torn him in two. E ALSO THOROUGHLY HASHED OVER the remarkable About five minutes later the shelling had begun to ease when incident of those courageous generals who inspired us Glowacz shouted, “Holy sh--, Nick! Look to the left. Holy and whom we never saw again. In that particular fog sh--! Look!” I turned my head and was simply of battle, we never did find out who they were. Were they stunned. Two Marine generals were casually from our 2nd Marine Division or from the 1st Marine strolling down the narrow trail wearing neat Division? General staff members, or visiting dignikhaki uniforms. The taller officer wore a taries, or what? (I found out later that they most one-star insignia and the other, two stars. likely were Major General Alexander Vandegrift, Both carried swagger sticks and sidethe commander of the 1st Marine Division, and arms. The shorter general, astonishingly, his assistant commander, Brigadier General Wilwas smoking a big black cigar with liam H. Rupertus.) smoke curling around his head. And After a few days we were moved to an active there were snipers in the area! sector. It rained almost every day now. The mud To say that I, one scared 19-year-old tugged at our boots with a soft sucking sound. kid, was impressed by the calm presence of Adding to our misery was the ever-present those generals would not do justice to their multitude of small insects that would audacity. The pair just sauntered along, leisurehaunt your ears, invade your nose, ly as can be, with big smiles on their leathered faces and crawl down the neck of your as though they were just leaving the country club back ever-damp dungarees. And especially home. The tallest one kept repeating in a moderate bothersome were those damn huge and reassuring voice, “All right, boys. It’s time to mosquitoes. At times they seemed move out. Let’s go now. It’s time to move out.” The the size of hummingbirds. Once I generals never shouted. They never implored. They watched with fascination as a big didn’t curse or even raise their voices. The tall one just mosquito perched on my bare arm, said quietly over and over, “Time to move out, boys.” neatly drilled its proboscis into my The enemy shelling had virtually stopped skin, leisurely took its fill, and floated when a non-com bellowed something like, “OK, off with my blood. I said something silly Under severe fire during the you friggin’ pansies. Let’s move, damn it! Double like, “Dinner’s on me, pal.” Matanikau River operation, time, double time!” But it was the incredible Our company began patrols, which were Cariello was hugging the jungle example of bravery under fire of those taciturn uneventful until one morning we were floor and praying when two generals that ignited the courage we needed. ambushed. We were crossing a jungled ridge generals came walking along, Along with others, I leaped up and advanced, when enemy gunfire raked us. Casualties were calmly urging the marines fordodging and throwing myself on the ground and numerous, including a machine gunner who was ward. They were Major General repeating the process. We cleaned out several killed trying to set up his weapon. There was Alexander Vandegrift (above), Japanese positions and even found an abandoned much confusion. 1st Marine Division commander, and Brigadier General William 37mm artillery piece. Some Marines stopped and One Marine, “Pop” Suttles from Arkansas, Rupertus (top), his assistant. gleefully urinated on the hated weapon. crawled up a rise and was looking down in a uS mARINE CORpS I came upon the body of a Japanese officer half-crouched position. I was just below him and under a palm tree. The side of his head had heard a dull thud, and Suttles fell with a bullet in been ripped off. I hurriedly searched his pack and found a tiny his chest. I yelled for a corpsman, who yelled back, “Bring him Japanese flag. But the real find was a small black box that condown!” Suttles was moaning as I and another Marine pulled him tained a pair of intricately carved ivory chop sticks. I quickly off the ridge. He kept moaning and died in a few minutes. Then I stuffed the “spoils of war” into my own pack. crawled up the ridge and hurriedly threw a grenade into the valley. It boomed and I heard excited Japanese voices. Maybe I got Mosquitoes amid the Mayhem lucky, I thought. T HE DRIVE SOON ENDED WHEN we determined that the Japanese We picked up our dead and wounded and fought our way out of danger back to our safe sector. A had retreated. Our company was pulled back to protect the east-

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One Marine’s War • Part Three

B L O O D Y TA R AWA by Nick Cariello

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an added boost when Artie Shaw and his swing band came in for an unexpected visit and played popular tunes such as “Stardust” and “Begin the Beguine.” We simply went bonkers and danced wildly in the aisles with each other. Booze and beer were available in Wellington, near our camp. We went to dance halls and bars and were welcomed into the homes of New Zealanders, who were grateful to us for “saving their asses from those Japs,” as one bloke put it. Romances flourished with the local girls, and wedding bells even clanged for some Marines. We knew things were getting really serious when we were issued newly designed .30-caliber M1 Garand rifles, which were semi-automatic and held an eight-round clip. For months we trained in amphibious landings on the beaches of New Zealand’s North Island. The division, plumped out with replacements, was about 20,000 strong. Finally, with much excitement and speculation, we boarded ships. After several days of sailing, we were told of our upcoming mission. It would the taking of a vital Japanese airfield in the Tarawa atoll in the Central Pacific. Most Americans probably haven’t heard about Tarawa. If asked they might think it’s a TV reality show, a rap group, or a new Japanese car model. They probably would be surprised to learn that in just three days of stunning savagery, 997 Marines were killed and 2,233 wounded. Another 88 Marines went missing and were presumed dead. Also killed were 30 sailors, while another 59 were wounded. Total casualties: 3,407. (Some sources indicate as many as 1,009 Marines were killed or died of wounds, and

After Guadalcanal’s mire, mosquitoes, and blood, the 2nd Marine Division savored rest, recreation, and female companionship in New Zealand. Soon, war beckoned again. Top: When new M1 Garand rifles like the one in this poster arrived, Cariello knew “things were getting really serious.” Above: The new target was Tarawa Atoll, seen here in a 3-D model aboard a transport. Opposite: Marines clamber down into landing craft for the November 20, 1943, assault. Cariello manned a .50-caliber machine gun in an amtrac, a tracked amphibious vehicle. 50 AMERICA IN WWII

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HAT A 10- KARAT HELLHOLE Guadalcanal turned out to be, with its oppressive climate. The fetid smell of decaying jungle growth was ever present. Diseases such as dysentery, jungle rot, and malaria weakened us, along with inadequate nutrition. Present were poisonous snakes and scorpions, centipedes and crocodiles. Misery and melancholy were twin emotions prevalent in that accursed jungle environment, which was also infested with stubborn, loyal-to-the-death Japanese. It is said that the two most common expressions in combat are “What was that noise?” and then “Oh, sh--!” And some wise observer said that when you are in a war zone, there are long bouts of boredom and short periods of sheer terror. But finally we heard that the 1st Marine Division was leaving for Australia. The US Army was starting to come in force. And before long an army unit took over our duties, as the Japanese were near defeat. Then we (the 2nd Marine Division) departed for New Zealand for rest and rehabilitation. As we boarded ship, we were a tattered and battered bunch and wore torn combat fatigues, some clipped at the shoulder for freedom of movement. Many of us were underweight and over-tired. Some were dispirited, but most of us still maintained a cocky “esprit de corps” attitude. And we were fervently hoping the girls in New Zealand would be cute and cooperative. And they were! Soon (after getting settled in New Zealand at the start of March 1943) the morale soared in our camp as we fattened up on mutton and milk, stews and steaks, fish and fruit. Morale was given

One Marine’s War • Part Three

B L O O D Y TA R AWA by Nick Cariello some list 2,101 wounded. Many sources include the sinking of the escort carrier USS Liscome Bay (CVE-56) by Japanese submarine I-175 on November 23, 1942, to add 644 US Navy lives lost.) An Awaiting Island Fortress THE MAIN OBJECTIVE WITHIN the Tarawa atoll was a tiny island called Betio. It contained an airfield with an improved bomber strip. Its capture was critical because Japanese aircraft based on Betio were a serious threat to Allied shipping from Hawaii to Australia and New Zealand. Betio is surrounded by a treacherous coral reef and is only about 2.5 miles long and some 800 yards wide at its widest. According to Marine historians, this little sand speck was said to be the most heavily defended island ever invaded by Allied forces in the Pacific. Japanese Rear Admiral Keiji Shibazaki, the commander on the island, boasted to his 4,800 men (including about 1,000 military construction workers and 1,200 Korean forced laborers) that a “million Americans couldn’t take Tarawa in a million years.” But only 17 of the enemy would survive, and Admiral Shibazaki wouldn’t be one of them. Fortifications were awesome. Steel and concrete barriers, along with mine fields and extensive strings of barbed wire, protected the three beaches. Nearly 500 pillboxes were scattered over the island. Also present were fearsome eight-inch guns mounted on turrets. In addition, there were anti-aircraft and anti-boat weapons along with howitzers. Machine guns were prevalent, along with scores of mortars. The night before the landing we sat around cleaning our already spotless weapons. I looked around at the anxious faces of fellow Marines and thought, “Jeez, but we sure are a bunch of young punks.” Bravado filled the air. We joked and smoked and

heckled and sweated on deck and in the holds of the ship. I recall one Marine, known as Big Red from Alabama, who wondered in his Southern accent “if there were any gals on the island and would they be horny and cooperative.” We laughed, punched the air with enthusiasm, and yelled, “Yes! Yes!” Then a Marine stood up quickly and began singing parts of a bawdy song many of us knew. The tune was based on a rumor that a wealthy American woman had her nymphomaniac daughter sterilized to curb her excesses. The song was called “The Sterilized Heiress” and the first few verses went like this: Oh, I’m a sterilized heiress, the victim of laughter of rubes. I’m comely and rich and a most venomous bitch Because my mother run off with my tubes! So fie on you mother, you scoundrel. Come back with my feminine toys. Restore my abdomen and make me a woman I want to go out with the boys! Then somebody in a deep baritone burst out singing “The Marines’ Hymn” and we all chimed in with enthusiasm if not talent. At the finish we cheered and hollered for a long time. Sure, we were Marines, but I noticed many a moist eye, including mine.

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BOUT 3 A.M. (ON NOVEMBER 20) came the call to prepare for debarkation. We gathered our weapons and shook sweaty hands all around. Then we did what infantrymen have done for centuries: we nervously waited and waited and waited and then waited some more. I admitted to myself that I was scared, really scared. Then I thought, “Hey, that’s good. I’ll be more alert.” Finally we were told to go over the ship’s side. We made the dangerous descent down the cargo nets and dropped into the bob-

national archives

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bing amtracs (amphibious tractors). They were slow but capable of moving ashore through shallow surf. I made my way forward to one of the two .50-caliber machine guns aboard our amtrac. Though I was a young PFC (private first class), my squad leader had chosen me for that position, and I was most proud and knew others were envious. I carefully checked the

began rising from the deep waves. Finally the order came to head for the island. Our vehicle was in the first wave. As the line of amtracs chugged toward shore, my mouth felt like I was chewing on dry cotton. I took a big swallow from my canteen, but it didn’t help. So I reached in my pocket and took out a hard candy that had been sent by my mother. It

“Jeez, but we sure are a bunch of young punks.” weapon, which had already been loaded. Its new paint reflected dully and menacingly in the sun. I stroked the gun fondly and said something inane like, “Don’t let me down, pal.”

Opposite: The first invasion wave advances toward Tarawa. Cariello was in the first wave, his amtrac chugging forward just behind American naval bombardment and bombing and strafing by carrier planes. But this advance pounding didn’t knock out Tarawa’s Japanese defenders. Cariello fired his machine gun until it jammed. Below: Cariello’s amtrac reached the shore, but these marines’ landing craft got stuck on a coral reef. Wading in from 500 yards out, they were easy targets.

national archives

Racing for the Shore AS THE AMTRACS CHUGGED ALONG, the battleships Colorado (BB-45) and Maryland (BB-46) fired their massive 16-inch guns, answering the Japanese naval gun emplacements that initiated the historic battle for Tarawa. We cheered when we saw our red-hot shells howling toward shore. Monstrous fireballs erupted on the island, perhaps indicating a large ammunition dump had been hit. Plumes of heavy black smoke started enveloping the beaches as air attacks began and the incredible noise started to mount. I looked in disbelief at the havoc being created by the naval pounding and air strikes. I vividly recall becoming extremely apprehensive, and I felt my heart ratcheting up and the strong thumping of my pulse pounding in my ears. Looking out at the armada I felt like an ever-so-tiny cog plugged into a vast killing machine. I glanced at my fellow machine gunner across the amtrac. He had a grim look on his young and unshaven face. He managed a smile and flashed me the victory sign and quickly turned back to his own business. Time seemed fractured—as Shakespeare’s Hamlet so aptly put it, “time [was] out of joint.” We circled for what seemed a minor eternity. The blue-green ocean glistened, and oppressive heat

soothed my parched mouth, and I silently saluted Mom. We were perhaps 50 yards from shore when the overwhelming sound of battle increased in intensity. It was piercing beyond belief. The terrifying crescendo was almost paralyzing, and I thought my eardrums would crack. The din came from a slew of navy dive-bombers spreading their deadly eggs across the smoking island. Fighter craft relentlessly strafed the beaches. The warships added to the deafening cacophony as they belched salvo after salvo inland and along the battered beaches. The pizzicato humming of enemy machine guns, large and small, was almost continuous. Huge splintered palm trees with their tops knocked off were splayed against the vivid blue sky. Heavy smoke and dust swirled, making it difficult to see. As we approached shore, I delayed firing my machine gun, as I didn’t want to waste ammunition. Hot fragments, probably from shore guns, fell into our amtrac and wounded several Marines. Then I noticed an incredible sight to my left. An intrepid destroyer had slipped in close to our landing site with its propellers furiously churning to keep from grounding. Its five-inch guns pounded the shore in our support. Two sailors, one casually sitting and the other standing, were raking a gun emplacement with automatic rifles.

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A marine winds up to lob a grenade at a Japanese gun emplacement on Tarawa. Cariello desperately wanted to hurl a grenade at a bedeviling enemy gunner who pinned him and other marines down in a bomb crater, but the position was too far away. Another marine’s Browning Automatic Rifle did the job instead. national archives Photo

One Marine’s War • Part Three

B L O O D Y TA R AWA by Nick Cariello I began firing the big .50-caliber. It coughed heavily and danced erratically in my sweating hands, making it difficult to control as the amtrac bounced crazily in the surf. But I managed to fire along the shoreline as we closed in. The beach was now just a few yards ahead. It was then that I saw them. Seven or so enemy soldiers in light-brown uniforms were dashing ghostlike through drifting smoke toward a large bunker. I swung my weapon around, took careful aim, and pulled the trigger. But nothing happened. “Damn it, goddamn it,” I shouted. The gun had jammed. Hurriedly I tried to unjam the gun but couldn’t. “You lousy piece of sh--,” I yelled in anger as I struck it sharply with my palm. Then I realized I was wasting time. I grabbed my rifle and snapped off four shots before the Japanese disappeared through the smoke into the bunker. I may have wounded or killed several, but of course I’ll never know.

hole. Since there was no return fire we figured we either got lucky or the machine-gun crew had moved further inland. I had never known fear like I was now experiencing. I had endured searing fear numerous times on Tulagi and Guadalcanal. But it seemed different this time. It penetrated the very marrow of my bones and into my psyche. I noticed I was breathing shallowly, so I forced myself to take deep, measured breaths. There was a constant metallic taste in my mouth that I found most strange, so I popped another of my mother’s hard candies, but to no avail. I noticed that my muscles were tight and that I was exhausted. It was impossible to relax, and the sauna-like heat drained my energy. Tarawa is only 80 miles north of the equator. My lips were starting to split and my face felt sunburned. I was soaked and sticky, as sweat had gathered in my armpits and then slid down my chest and legs. I felt like I was a tightly wound toy, ready to do anything and everything.

“I had never known fear like I was now experiencing.... It penetrated the very marrow of my bones and into my psyche

”

Suddenly our platoon leader, Randy Johnson, a big fearless guy from Minnesota, yelled, “Everybody down! Down! Get your frigging asses down!” We all obeyed instantly as heavy enemy fire was zipping around the amtrac. Finally the vehicle crunched onto the sand and wheezed a few yards inland. “Everybody out, now!” Johnson screamed. We tumbled over the side and landed on wet sand, with Johnson shouting hoarsely, “Damn it, spread out, spread out and move forward. You go, go, go!” Battle on the Beach I LURCHED FORWARD THROUGH the sticky sand, weighed down by two grenades, two canteens, my ammo belt, a trenching tool, a three-pound helmet, my pack containing assorted paraphernalia, and, of course, the 9.5-pound Garand rifle. I wished I was wearing a thick suit of armor instead of flimsy fatigues. Moving ahead with several others we found a big shell hole about 20 yards inland. We hunched down at its bottom, mindful of enemy machine-gun bullets whining overhead. Finally it stopped. I carefully raised my head and considered throwing a grenade at the gun emplacement that I had spotted behind a massive log. I had played football in high school and had a good arm. But the distance was just too great. So I furiously fired my rifle at the emplacement. Two other Marines quickly joined me, and one had a Browning Automatic Rifle. He set up the weapon and the deep burp-burp-burp of the Browning, with its 20-round clip, was reassuring, though deafening. Then we heard a faint yelp. The operator of the Browning asked me nervously, “Hey, you think we got any?” I answered, “Yeah, I believe so. Maybe they’ll stay low for a while.” Smoke from our gunfire lazily drifted over our shell

Suddenly a mortar shell whistled in and hit the top of our shell hole about two feet from my left shoulder. I can still see those smoking yellow fins buried a few inches into the sandy soil. My heart was pounding so hard that I had the silly thought that it might break out of my rib cage. We ducked and cringed and cursed and prayed, but nothing happened. After about three minutes, we realized it was a dud.

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STOOD UP AND YELLED , “Holy sh--, but aren’t we a bunch of lucky frigging Marines?” Everybody jumped up and we pounded each other on our backs in glee. Then we decided it was time to move out. So we dashed out of the hole and ran forward. Then that damn machine gun came alive, and I could hear bullets chip-chip-chip-chipping the sand around my feet. It was then that I did something dangerous and perhaps foolish, but it probably saved my life. I saw a small opening into what apparently was an enemy dugout and I dove into it without hesitation. It was neatly carved out of the earth. Empty food cans and equipment were strewn about, and the odor of strange food permeated the area. No enemy was present, or I could have died there.

Rescuers Become Victims AS I LEFT THE DUGOUT, I saw I had been separated from the others, so I sprinted forward. The never-ceasing sound of gunfire of all makes and calibers was concentrated to my left and rear. Ahead I saw another large shell crater and fell into it. Four other Marines were there, none of whom I recognized but who apparently knew each other. One was a sergeant who had been severely wounded in the groin. A makeshift bandage covered his injury and he OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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Top: Cariello helped carry a badly wounded sergeant toward an aide station, much as these marines are doing for their injured buddy on Tarawa. Suddenly, however, the tables turned. Struck in the legs by shrapnel, Cariello was himself seriously wounded and had to be carried away on a stretcher. Above: A host of dead marines lies strewn across the beach of Betio, Tarawa’s main island, after the fighting.

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One Marine’s War • Part Three

B L O O D Y TA R AWA by Nick Cariello area and there were excited cries of “Get that Jap bastard! Hey, somebody get that bastard!” Those of us who had carried that stretcher believed the other Marines might have thought we were enemies because it was near dark. I yelled, “Hey, for Christ sake, we’re Marines! We’re Marines!” Others joined my frantic plea. Then I spotted the silhouette of a large marine, who yelled back, “Damn it, guys! I know it! I know it!” He pulled the pin from a grenade and tossed it into a spider hole. There was a muffled explosion and he shouted in triumph, “Yes! I got him. I got the son of a bitch!”

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TRETCHER - BEARERS MAGICALLY APPEARED out of the dark. Gentle hands carefully loaded me onto a stretcher while a corpsman skillfully gave me a shot of morphine. The awful pain began to lessen. As I was being carried to the first-aid station on the beach, I thought I recognized the voice of one of the stretcher-bearers. I said, “Hey, Tim, is that you?” He said, “Yes, and who are you?”

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moaned as his bloody hands kept clutching and opening around the wound. A Marine asked, “How you doing, Sarge?” The sergeant’s face was extremely pale as he shook his head and kept groaning. We conferred and agreed that he needed immediate medical attention. Our location was perhaps 40 yards from the beach, and two Marines volunteered to run for a stretcher. Dusk was near as we anxiously awaited the return of those Marines with the stretcher. The wounded man continued to moan. We could hear the unrelenting gunfire on all sides. Finally the two soaked-with-sweat Marines came back over the rim of the shell hole. We carefully loaded the now-quiet sergeant onto the stretcher. One Marine said softly, “Let’s go,” and we quickly moved out. There had been gunfire, but now it seemed strangely quiet. It was nearly dark. Cautiously we moved toward the beach, expecting sniper fire, but none came. I had the wishful thought that perhaps the snipers were withholding their fire because of our mission of mercy. Not likely, I concluded, but who knows? As we

A symbol of the Battle of Tarawa’s human cost: a marine’s pack, washed up on Betio’s shore, reveals treasured photos of loved ones. Approximately 1,000 marines were killed in the battle or died of their wounds. More than 2,000 were wounded, and dozens were missing.

neared the beach with our heavy load, other Marines in the area appeared almost as shadows. Suddenly there was a stunning blast and I felt like I had been swung up by a giant hand and then slammed hard to the ground. I remember wondering what the hell was I doing on my back. Then I managed to roll over. My legs felt like they had been seared with a blow torch and they burned with almost unbearable pain caused by jagged fragments from an enemy grenade. Many pieces had torn deeply into my buttocks and upper thighs. Many cries for “Corpsman!” rang out, and mine was among them: “My legs, my legs, are they gone?” I was sure I was dying. A profusion of confusion erupted in the

I told him, and he said tearfully, “Oh, my God, Nick, the guys from Fox company I’ve picked up today!’’ We reached the first aid station and I was taken off the stretcher. Two figures loomed above, one holding a tiny flashlight. The one with the flashlight hurriedly examined me and then I heard him say the sweetest four words I’ve ever heard: “There’s no hemorrhaging, doctor.” I spent the night in a drug-induced fog. Once, I awoke believing that land crabs were ripping at my wounds, but that was not possible, since my wounds had been tightly bandaged. Then I fell asleep wondering whether the gunnery sergeant and the other stretcher-bearers had survived. I never did find out. A OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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One Marine’s War • Part Four

B AT T L I N G B A C K F R O M T H E A B Y S S by Nick Cariello

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a nearby disabled amtrac. It had to be from a Japanese soldier who had made his way to the craft and was acting as a sniper. So I asked one of the stretcher-bearers if I could use his Garand. He handed it to me, and I rolled into a prone position and snapped off the rifle’s clip of eight rounds into the amtrac from stem to stern. The enemy fire stopped, and as I handed the rifle back to the stretcher-bearer, he exclaimed, “Hey, that’s nice shooting, Marine.” Finally we came to the end of the pier and I was transferred to a Higgins boat to be taken to a troopship for medical attention. The sympathetic corpsman aboard the craft asked if I wanted morphine. I was still in a slight daze but was able to shake my head no. I’ve often thought that additional morphine at that time might have really harmed me. I vaguely remember being winched aboard a troopship and being swung through the air on my stretcher like a giant pendulum. I looked out and saw our cruisers and battleships circling warily in choppy blue-white waters. Destroyers patrolled around ponderous aircraft carriers as they sniffed for enemy subs. The Clink of the Shrapnel AS I WAS BEING LOWERED to the deck, I heard voices shouting directions and then I felt eager hands lifting both ends of the stretcher. The hands gently carried me across the hot deck and down a hatch. Near a bulkhead lay three lifeless forms, each wrapped in American flags. Our company had been in the first wave and suffered heavy losses. I wondered if I knew any of those flag-draped dead.

Above: At the end of a 500-foot pier stretching into Tarawa’s lagoon, marines with a raft full of wounded await a landing craft to carry the casualties to a troopship. The wounded Cariello made the same raft journey—slowed by enemy sniper fire along the way. Top: Cariello still had with him an Mk 2 fragmentation grenade like this one, standard issue for infantry. Opposite: Hauled aboard a troopship like these wounded marines off Tarawa, Cariello caused panic when his grenade fell from his fatigues onto the emergency room floor. 58 AMERICA IN WWII

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TOP: PHOTO BY JEAN-LOUIS DUBOIS VIA WIKIPEDIA. CENTER & OPPOSITE: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

ORNING CAME AND I WAS STILL in a minor morphine daze, but I saw Marine reinforcements wading waistdeep through the shallow bay as if in slow motion. Jeez, but they were easy targets for eager Japanese gunners, and dozens upon dozens died. Some were half-submerged and looked like big rag dolls. Bodies began piling up in twos and threes, and they looked like driftwood. Parts of the lagoon were streaked with slender threads of blood, causing the water to appear pinkish. (I found out later that their Higgins boats had gotten hung up on the treacherous coral reef because the tide had been incorrectly calculated by the campaign’s planners.) At mid-morning I was placed on a stretcher and taken to a long wooden bridge. On the way, I saw unbelievable chaos and carnage. Marine and Japanese dead, some tangled together, were everywhere. The stench was horrific. Bloated bodies floated by, some face up, others face down. All types of equipment were lying about. There were several knocked-out Marine tanks along with many disabled amtracs. Japanese gun emplacements were shattered and smoking. At the pier, my stretcher was placed on a rubber raft along with several other wounded. The raft was pushed in shallow water along the pier by sweating Marines and corpsmen. The pier stretched about 1,500 feet into the lagoon. We quickly ran into sniper fire from Japanese holed up in disabled amtracs. Several Marines were re-injured and had to be taken to the shelter of the pier. Other Marines went ahead and cleaned out some of the snipers. As we moved along, I noticed continuing rifle fire coming from

One Marine’s War • Part Four

B AT T L I N G B A C K F R O M T H E A B Y S S by Nick Cariello Then I heard a commanding voice say, “Bring him in!” I was carefully put down onto a table inside an emergency room. My clothes were cut off, and in the process a grenade fell out of my pocket and rolled across the floor. Panic ensued with medical personnel screaming, “Grenade! Holy sh--, a grenade!” I managed to mumble, “No, no, it’s OK, it’s OK! It’s harmless until the pin is pulled.” Much nervous laughter broke out, and the tension broke as the doctor and corpsmen teased and called each other wimps. Then I was turned over onto my stomach and the doctor quickly went to work on my legs. I heard a steady plink, plink, plink as pieces of grenade were dropped into a metal tray. Almost musical, I thought with black humor. Yeah, some music. Finally it was over and the doctor said quietly, “Thank you for your service, son.” I was flattered and replied loudly, almost shouting, “And thank you for your service, sir!” He gently squeezed my shoulder and I saw his surgical mask crinkle into an apparent smile. Then I was taken down into the lower depths of the ship along with numerous other wounded. Conditions were dreadful. The area was permeated with the strong smell of sweat, unwashed

quiet with the “drug of the day”—morphine. You wanted it? You asked for it and it was quickly obtained, and I was among the many requesting the precious painkiller. Memories and Morphine Several times during those long days I thought about the Japanese solider who had wounded me and the others with that damn hand grenade. He had been killed by another Marine. Now, he must have realized that he was going to die and he must have been as scared as I was in that compressed time. What were his last thoughts, of home and family? Was he an only child, or did he perhaps have sibling brothers who were fighting against US troops elsewhere? How old was he? My age? Older? Younger? Was he outgoing, and did he have a sense of humor? Or was he shy and introverted? The Japanese enjoy baseball; hey, did he like the game as much as I did? Could we have gone to a night game together after enjoying a good dinner and sharing a beer or two? Well, whoever he was, I forgive him for doing what he thought was his duty, as I did mine. I also thought about the smoking mortar shell landing near my left shoulder that didn’t go off. Did some munitions worker in

“The extremely bright sun bathed my pale

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upturned face as tears appeared on my cheeks. bodies, and antiseptics. And it was hot. Groans from the wounded resonated as I was placed in a lower bunk. I glanced around and recognized one of the injured nearby. His name was Joey Rowe and was a member of my company. Joey wore a cast on his right arm and told me he had lost a testicle. He was worried about Archie and Tom, his two brothers. The three had enlisted together in Reno and had made it through the Tulagi and Guadalcanal campaigns unscathed. “Did you see ’em, Nick?” he asked anxiously. I said, “Sorry, Joey, but I saw neither.” We learned later that both brothers survived.

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BOARD THE TROOPSHIP where I was recovering, we heard with elation the welcome news that the savage Tarawa engagement was finished after “the issue being in doubt” during the early hours. For three horrendous days the ferocious Japanese fighters fought valiantly and just wouldn’t quit. They had to be bombed, blasted, and burned out of their formidable strongholds and improvised burrows. We also learned that a considerable portion of our losses had resulted from Higgins boats getting snagged on that damnable reef due to those fatal tide calculations. Bitter lessons were learned and applied to future Marine and army landings, and were credited with saving numerous lives. Now all we recovering casualties settled in for the lengthy and boring journey to Hawaii. The trip was frequently interrupted by general alarms, because enemy submarines were tailing us. Overworked medical people managed to keep us sedated and

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Japan, perhaps his mind a little numbed by a night of drinking rice wine, just forget to tighten a certain screw? Something apparently had gone wrong on that assembly line and I, along with those other Marines in the shell hole, were the awfully lucky beneficiaries. After a couple of grueling weeks, we reached Pearl Harbor. What a fantastic morning it was to be winched out of the ship’s innards on a stretcher and onto the main deck. I saw stately, swaying palm trees displayed against a turquoise sky. A mild breeze with the strong scent of salt blew in from the ocean and drifted over me. The extremely bright sun bathed my pale upturned face as tears appeared on my cheeks. We were quickly transported by ambulance to the hospital. Before long we were into the routine of meals, changing of bandages, playing poker for cigarettes, exchanging exaggerated tales, and penning letters home. One evening when I was feeling utterly wretched and possibly depressed, I routinely requested morphine from the naval nurse on duty. She looked at me intently after inspecting my medical record hanging on the bed. Then she said with authority, “No! You don’t need it, sir.” “What?” I complained. “Come on now! I do need it. I really do!” But once more in a firm voice, she said, “No, I keep telling you. You don’t need it and you’re not getting any. So forget about it and go to sleep.” With a determined step the nurse strode away, leaving me speechless. Then came the sobering realization that she was perfectly right. I, like many others, was becoming addicted to the

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From Tarawa, Cariello sailed to Hawaii and California for care. Top left: Nurses aboard USS Solace (AH-5), which carried him to San Diego. Top right: Solace was a hospital ship with surgical capability. Above: At San Diego’s naval hospital, a nurse reads to men recovering, like Cariello, from wounds received in the South Pacific. Nurses played key roles in recovery. One in Hawaii saved Cariello from morphine addiction.

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One Marine’s War • Part Four

B AT T L I N G B A C K F R O M T H E A B Y S S by Nick Cariello damn stuff. I profusely thanked the nurse the next day for steering me away from “Mr. Morphine.” She smiled, patted my arm, and said sympathetically, “That’s OK, son, I understand. And don’t think you’re the only one.” From then on, despite occasional sweats, the only painkiller I requested was aspirin.

Cariello spent Christmas 1943 in the hospital. But by mid-January he was off crutches and home on leave. His mom cooked an Italian feast. Upper right: Here he stands for one of many photos taken outside his home. Lower right: His sisters Mary (left) and Esther welcomed him home with joy.

At the naval hospital (in San Diego’s Balboa Park) I was assigned to a room with five other Marines. One was a handsome, young blond boy, perhaps 18, who had lost an eye in combat. Every day near dusk one of the nurses would sit beside him and offer comforting words. The boy had told the sympathetic nurses that he was afraid of losing his other eye to an accident or some disease. He was deeply troubled by the dark. Occasionally during the long nights he could be heard quietly crying. Then he was transferred to a special ward for the blind. More surgery was performed on my legs to remove even more shrapnel. I was encouraged to walk with crutches, and rehabilitation went smoothly. Soon I was able to cast aside the crutches, as I healed rapidly. Then I was overjoyed to learn I would be given a medical leave, and I happily left for the long train journey back to my hometown. The reunion with my joyful family was memorable and marked by repeated kisses and an abundance of tears, cheers, and backslaps. My mother had concocted one of her incomparable spaghetti meals with spicy sausages and mouth-watering meat62 AMERICA IN WWII

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The War Inside I RETURNED TO THE HOSPITAL, where I was soon discharged, and went back to the Marine base in San Diego, where I was sent back to duty. Several months later I was given a medical discharge and then I was warmly welcomed home all over again. Just after I was discharged I apparently suffered from what used to be referred to as shell shock. It was called soldier’s heart during the Civil War, but now is referred to as post-traumatic stress disorder. My patient mother sat up with me many a restless night when I drifted in and out of nagging nightmares. And after I married, I often would frighten my young wife, Babe (a.k.a. Loraine), with terrified outcries during my shattered sleep, such as, “Hey, they’re coming? Oh, no!” or “Holy sh--, is anybody watching the left flank?” Babe would comfort me by holding me tight and saying over and over, “It’s OK, it’s OK, hon, it’s all over. All over!” The disturbing dreams went on sporadically for decades and I still occasionally will wake up in a sweat. And for years I seldom discussed my apparently deeply imbedded wartime remembrances. Babe always listened sympathetically on those rare occurrences when I did “open up.” For some 70 years I apparently suppressed my good and bad wartime memories. After being discharged from the Marines, I, like many others, doggedly decided to “suck it up” after graduating from college and get on with my life and career. I earned my degree in journalism with the much-appreciated help of the GI Bill. Without that anxiously awaited government monthly check, I, along with probably millions of other veterans, never could have gone to college. A k cariello courtesy of nic left & below:

Back in the USA THE FOLLOWING DAY CAME marvelous news. We were to be taken aboard the Solace (AH-5), a hospital ship. Additional good news: we were scheduled to arrive in San Diego two days before Christmas. The trip back home was without incident. When we reached the dock there was a group of perhaps 20 gray-clad women who were welcoming the wounded being unloaded. As I was being carried down the gangplank on a stretcher, all the women seemed to be smiling and cheerful. Except one. She was middleaged and stared at me with almost a frown as I was carried by. I wondered: did I remind her of someone, maybe her son who perhaps had been killed in action, and what business did I have being alive (though seriously wounded), and why me and not him? The incident still haunts me.

balls. This entree was followed by chicken cacciatore. Bottles of robust red wine were shared. Zesty cheeses and a cornucopia of fresh fruit appeared magically. Italian liqueurs such as anisette, amaretto, and Frangelico graced the heavily laden table. Neighbors had brought over pies, cakes, cookies, and scones. The long-awaited night melted into early morning and was filled with joy, love, the telling of much-repeated stories, and recounting treasured memories of our great family life.

NICK CARIELLO worked as a journalist for 30 years after finishing college. For all but five of those years, he was news editor of the Racine Journal Times in his home town of Racine, Wisconsin, where the Root River empties into Lake Michigan. Today he lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he celebrated his 94th birthday on September 11, 2016.

One Marine’s War • Epilog

A WA R R I O R R E F L E C T S O N WA R

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’M NOW 94 AND ON THE RAPID DOWNWARD ARC OF MY LIFE. Over the decades, I’ve occasionally wondered

why I survived and so many others died. Some people might credit God. Others might suggest serendipity or an alert guardian angel perched on my shoulder. Still others might contend it was just peculiar circumstances or plain dumb luck. I’m not afraid to admit that I just don’t know and I never will.

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So what’s my take on war and its necessity? Sometimes I feel What I do know is that many veterans are still paying a promyself slipping toward pacifism. There must be circumstances longed and painful price for our service. Because of grenade fragwhere we can negotiate instead of just reaching for our guns Old ments still remaining in my legs, my wife, Loraine, laughingly calls West style. me a “walking junkyard” and says I “clank when I walk.” I’ve Is aggression buried deep in our DNA? Did it push early man had several hospital stays since 1945. One was in 1985, when I to beat his hairy chest when offended and reach for a pointed was hospitalized for two weeks with a shrapnel infection. During twig, a blunt branch, or a sharp stone, later expel his breath surgery a shredded piece of my uniform was removed along with quickly through the mouth of a blowgun, and the offending shrapnel—42 years after I was still later listen with delight to the twang of a wounded. The latest hospitalization was in longbow as it launched a deadly arrow? Then 2003—almost 60 years after I was wounded!— came the musket, the rifle, the deadly machine again due to infected shrapnel. And doctors tell gun, the lumbering tank, and the high-flying me the remaining shrapnel could cause another aircraft carrying an impersonal cargo of aerial infection at any time. bombs that whistle an unholy tune as they terBut hey, I’m not complaining. How can I, rify the scurrying hordes below. when so many others suffered more horrible The horrifying casualties resulting from the injuries, such as double or triple loss of limbs? atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I still remember a weeping lad I saw with part rattled the world. There are still convincing of his jaw blown away. And at least I’m alive, arguments on both sides as to whether the unlike those courageous young Marines whose bombs should have been used. But today nine lives were snapped off in their prime. nations—the United States, Russia, China, However, I still have philosophical questions Britain, France, India, Pakistan, North Korea, regarding my personal Battle of Tarawa. What and Israel—possess atomic weapons, including if one of the Japanese I failed to kill when my hydrogen devices that make the Hiroshima and machine gun jammed was the one who later Nagasaki bombs seem like puny firecrackers. threw the grenade that wounded me? Or what I’ve always liked this comment by General if I’d survived intact only to be wounded more The first deployed atom bomb Dwight Eisenhower: “I hate war, as only a soldier severely or killed in another Pacific campaign? spreads a cloud over Hiroshima, who lived it can, as only one who has seen its bruSomething else: Japan purchased scrap metal August 6, 1945. tality, its futility and its stupidity.” American from the US before the war. Could the many WWII general Omar Bradley said, ”As far as I am concerned, war fragments still embedded in my body be some of that metal? itself is immoral.” And farther back, Martin Luther commented, Probably not, but life is strange. “War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys reliWorld War II has been called “the Good War.” Noted author gions, states, it destroys families. Every scourge is preferable to it.” Studs Terkel wrote a popular book by that title. Sorry, Studs, but Sociologists, psychologists, and historians talk endlessly about why there are no good wars, only necessary ones. World War II certainmen commit atrocities in wartime. But war itself is an atrocity. ly did qualify as necessary. But Vietnam and Iraq? George All too often books, TV shows, and movies romanticize and Washington exhorted that the country should not unsheathe its glorify war. I’ve frequently wondered whether the human species sword except in self-defense. That’s uncommonly good sense that is programmed for war because of a defective gene. If so, we are we should heed. doomed. Albert Einstein said, “I know not with what weapons Civil War general William T. Sherman once observed that “war World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought is hell.” It sure the hell is! And I don’t mind admitting that during with sticks and stones.” those three brutal campaigns in which I fought I felt fear almost I’ve given my Purple Heart and other campaign medals to constantly. Fear seemed buried in my bones and deep in my psyNickie, my grandson and namesake. I fervently hope he never che. I saw death in many forms—too many. I heard death rattles earns any war medals of his own. A and worst of all I smelled death in all its dense, penetrating, difficult-to-describe acrid odor. Unforgettable. NICK CARIELLO OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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A WWII Scrapbook

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BOB AC KERM

One of the unforgettable stories that Bob Ackerman, bombardier of the B-26 Piccadilly Willy, brought home from war and told his family was about a B-26 pilot who didn’t return from his flight one foggy day.

A FOOTPRINT FOR POSTERITY

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I WAS IN elementary school, I had a school project to interview a relative who had fought in World War II, ask about his or her experiences, and write a report summarizing what I had learned. One of the stories my great-uncle Bob told me about his fellow soldiers was particularly sad, and I never forgot it. Every day the pilots [in the 344th Bomb Group, flying Martin B-26 Marauder medium bombers] had to change planes, and a list of the planes flying that day and who was flying them was posted. One day, somebody put wet cement under the list. Unfortunately, a pilot stepped in it while checking the list, and a footprint remained. The following day it was very foggy, but HEN

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the planes flew off anyway. Two American planes crashed, and all 26 people on board died. The pilot who made the footprint in the cement was one of them. Uncle Bob never told me what happened after that day—how the rest of the soldiers on base reacted to the footprint of a dead pilot left under the posted list, or whether they decided to remove it rather than keep it. But I like to think that they did keep it and memorialized it somehow, maybe with a plaque remembering both that man and the rest of the soldiers who died that day. ERICA ROBERTS grandniece of NATHAN “BOB” ACKERMAN, B-26 Marauder bombardier, 344th Bomb Group Carlisle, Pennsylvania

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SCREENING MOVIES IN BERLIN

in the army. While stationed in Berlin, Germany, [during the post-WWII occupation,] I volunteered to go to film projectionist school for a week on the base. The school introduced us to several overhead projectors like we had back in high school and the big 16mm-film projectors every science teacher used back home. We all remember a favorite film playing in our darkened classroom with the shades pulled down. The sound was always booming, to cover the noises from the machine itself. The teacher had to stand right next to it because when a glitch would occur, the film stopped and, if left like that for a couple of seconds, the film would melt from the heat of the proWAS A FILM PROJECTIONIST

jector lamp. This happened in movie theaters too, in the middle of Tarzan, King Kong, and Yosemite Sam short films. The army had many educational films covering every subject. The guys in my unit would gather in a basement room for a mandatory viewing session. Most guys, like Joe A., knew they could grab a quick nap until the lights came back on. One day I was told to get the film labeled The Battle of Berlin, with sound, that we had stolen from the Soviet army. The Russians had soldiers film the attack of the city at the end of World War II, a street-by-street documentary. We were studying this film to understand the tactics the Soviets used, compared to our methods. Our methods preserved homes and property as best we could. It seemed to me the Soviets did not pussyfoot around like we did, and our guys realized what we were up against if we had to fight them. We were all young, healthy, trained soldiers, but we saw that they were our equals in a fight if it ever were to happen. I had to get the projector set up an hour before the class began, and after I got the film set up, I watched it with the sound on. It was all in Russian—the printed titles and the sound—as a narrator followed the action with a loud and firm voice. I have never forgotten their CIC (combat in city)

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L ingo! 1940s GI and civilian patter cabbage: cash, just as green but not nearly as edible as its namesake dog food: canned corned beef hash in C- and K-rations, with the same texture as Rover’s chow meatball: found not on top of spaghetti, but on the flag of Imperial Japan—the red rising sun

tactics and thought it was a no-nonsense approach with less chance of casualties on their side. When the class arrived I had Joe kill the lights (he liked that part), and I started the film with the sound on, but it was far too loud. Everyone looked all wide-eyed at me as I then turned the sound off, telling them it was a captured film. The sound being off ended up being a mistake. Now Sgt. Johnson could hear anyone snoring in the dark room. “Wake up private!” often punctuated the silence. This film at least had action, unlike the dreaded film that I saw a hundred times: Cold Weather Footwear and the Changing of Socks. D ENNIS F. KING wartime sergeant on occupation duty in Germany Clinton, Massachusetts

ZEALOUS YOUNG SCRAPPER

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OUR ARTICLE “Scrapping History” [by David A. Norris in the February 2016 issue] reminded me of a family story I heard growing up in the 1950s. My brother Bill was 10 years old when the war began. His father enlisted in the navy and shipped out to the Pacific. Mother worked the last (midnight to 8 A.M.) shift in war industry. That left Billy to stay home alone at night with his big dog, Duke. One morning, mother came home from work and found that all her pots, pans, coffee pot, etc. were not in the house, anywhere. The neighbor told her that she had seen my brother with his wagon full of scrap metal on his way to school. By the time mother walked to the school, the scrap truck was long gone. Billy had donated all the metal he could get his hands on so that his father could come home sooner. Sadly, his daddy never did come home. K AREN DEMARIO

Fairless Hills, Pennsylvania

Send your War Stories submission, with a relevant photo if possible, to WAR STORIES, America in WWII, 4711 Queen Avenue, Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109, or to [email protected]. By sending stories and photos, you give us permission to publish and republish them.

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1941

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Pacific Sailor from Landlocked Fort Wayne by James Charles Wiegman • interviewed by Kayleen Reusser

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IT WAS MID-WINTER 1944–1945 when I arrived at Great Lakes Naval Training Center in Chicago for basic training. I was glad to be in the navy because I didn’t like sleeping on the ground. My family had owned a cabin on Lake James in northern Indiana, and I had spent many summers there around the water, so I knew how to swim. Having grown up in the Midwest, I had lived through many cold winters. Still, I wasn’t used to sleeping in all of my clothes and two blankets in a room heated with a potbelly stove. Every sailor in our barracks wore his clothes to bed. After eight weeks, I attended fireman training. At Camp Shoemaker, California [about 35 miles east of San Francisco], I became an alternate in a draft of assignments for the USS Indianapolis (CA-35), a cruiser that, after distinguished combat service in the Pacific, would deliver atomic-bomb parts and enriched uranium

to Tinian in the Mariana Islands in July 1945]. When all of the assigned seamen showed up, however, I was assigned to a troop ship headed to the Leyte Gulf [in the Philippine Sea]. When the USS Indianapolis sank in July 1945, I lost many friends. [The Indianapolis was torpedoed in the Philippine Sea on July 30 by Japanese submarine I-58 after leaving Tinian, with a loss of 879 men who went down with the ship, died in shark-infested waters, or succumbed shortly after their long-delayed rescue on August 2.] Some might have seen it as a stroke of luck that I was not on board, but I believe God spared me then and many other times during the war.

both images co urtesy of james charles wiegm an

HREE RIVERS converge in Fort Wayne, Indiana: the St. Joseph, the Maumee, and the St. Mary’s. But to a mariner, Fort Wayne is the very definition of “inland.” The only sizeable body of water, Lake Erie, lies a solid 110 miles away to the northeast. Despite this geographical reality, Fort Wayne native son James Charles Wiegman was destined, through the intervention of World War II, to see more than his share of water. Born to General Electric engineer Herbert Wiegman and his wife, Dorothy, on June 30, 1926, James graduated from South Side High School in May 1944. The following month, he was drafted into the military, selected for service in the US Navy. An adventure sailing the Pacific in the war’s final year began for him that winter.

After training, Wiegman shipped out to the Pacific in the spring of 1945. IN THE PHILIPPINES I was assigned to the battleship where I would spend the remainder of the war, the USS New Mexico [BB-40, a battleship]; our crew numbered 700. When fully loaded, it could hold 1,000 seamen. The New Mexico [nicknamed the Queen] was a WWI ship that had been commissioned in 1918 and refitted in 1937. It had four 12,500-horsepower jet engines; our normal cruise speed was 15 knots (17 mph) although we could reach 20 knots. It was 624 feet long and 94 feet wide. The New Mexico could hold one million gallons of fuel. Since destroyers couldn’t carry much fuel, they often pulled alongside us for refueling. As a fireman, I was part of the ship’s “black gang.” My duties included working in the engine rooms, monitoring the operation of the two engines in the center engine room. I also checked temperatures of the fire pumps and monitored oil pressures in the

Top: James Charles Wiegman of Fort Wayne, Indiana, sailed into the Pacific war in spring 1945, the peak kamikaze period, aboard USS New Mexico (BB-40). Above: A Thanksgiving menu cover from the New Mexico. Shipboard food was alright by Wiegman. He especially loved the ice cream. OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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main engine rooms. Our work area was always loud and hot, somewhere around 100 degrees. If the temperature in the room dropped to 95, we thought it was cool. We worked four-hour shifts with eight hours off. A few years later, some of my experiences in the engine room would be helpful, as I studied mechanical engineering at Purdue University on the GI Bill. Using steam boilers made me aware during courses in heat power (or thermal dynamics) about superheated steam and the significance of blade designs of turbines. Everything was done by seniority. Due to my low rank, and with me being the youngest in the engine room, some would have said my primary duty was refilling our two coffee pots. I’d catch all kinds of hell if there was no coffee. I had two battle stations aboard ship. During General Quarters [the call for all crew members to man their battle stations], I was an ammunition handler below deck for the No. 2 main magazine. During battle, those of us in the No. 2 magazine unloaded 42-pound nylon bags of TNT, passing them one to another—we didn’t have conveyors—until they reached the handling room. We put the TNT on a hydraulic elevator, which carried [the bags] up to the top deck. There the TNT was loaded in twelve 14-inch guns, mounted three each in four turrets. I was only responsible for the TNT in one turret. The ship also had 8-inch guns on its sides, three on either side near the bow. The 8-inch guns had a limited range of shooting. Due to the way they were mounted, they could only shoot broadside. At the center along the sides of the ship were 5inch anti-aircraft guns. It was scary being below deck during battle. We could not see anything, but we could hear the rumble of gunfire. Our magazine was protected by an armor plate, which offered some protection, but we knew there was a good chance we would not be able to get out [if enemy bombs, torpedoes, or kamikazes found their mark]. We were reconciled to either getting blown up or drowning. During air defense, I was on deck to man the Quad 40s. They were four guns [two pairs of Bofors 40mm guns] in a tub [a protective steel wall encircling the gun base and its crew]. Each gun held four 40mm shells in a clip. The shells were packed in waterproof

A I WAS THERE

cans and in each tub stood a loader or aimer. I handed the shells to the first loader. He dropped them into slots. The second loader, strapped to the guns, followed the turret around to shoot at aircraft. I earned $21 a month [$280 in 2016 dollars]. Upon being promoted to thirdclass petty officer, I earned $25 a month. We were paid extra while at sea, but I never earned $1 per day. It didn’t matter how little I earned, because there was no place to spend much money while at sea. We were issued one uniform each year, which took care of our clothing allowance. An extra T-shirt cost 50 cents, as did a pair of socks. A pair of shoes cost $5. The ship’s store sold cigars, gum, chewing tobacco, and cigarettes. We could smoke on ship unless the smoking light was out. That meant someone was handling ammunition or we were taking on fuel. In the engine room where I worked, smoking was permitted because it was all steam and not flammable. The New Mexico also had a barber shop, tailor shop, and a dentist and operating rooms in sick bay. As for chow, all of us had grown up in the 1930s during the Depression, when food was always scarce. We had food at our house, but it was mostly soup Mother made from a soup bone she purchased at Don Hall’s Meat Market for 10 cents. We followed a ship’s military menu, so every Saturday morning we ate boiled baked beans and cornbread. Otherwise we were served a lot of galley stew, boiled potatoes, Spam, Vienna sausages, turnips, powdered eggs and milk, and SOS [“sh-- on a shingle,” or creamed chipped beef on toast]. Beef came in 50-pound cartons that were stored in the freezer. Only officers were served bacon. I admit to stealing bacon a couple of times when the freezer door was open. Problem was, when we fried it in the engine room, the smell drifted up to the top deck. By the time anyone made their way down to us, though, we had eaten it. We had good bakers on the ship, but the bread usually contained weevils. When I picked them out, my crew picked on me as being the new boy. I learned to cover the OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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weevils with peanut butter and jelly and got used to them. One item that made our ship popular was an ice cream machine. Few ships had one, and we could trade ice cream with other ships for certain items like movies. Once we had the movie, we’d string canvas on the quarterdeck [the often elevated stern top deck] for a screen. Church services were held on the quarterdeck if the weather was good and we were at a place in the ocean with no danger of combat. Some sailor would play hymns on a pump organ, including “The Navy Hymn” [“Eternal Father, Strong to Save,” sometimes known as “For Those in Peril on the Sea”], and we’d sing. The crew included two chaplains, one Methodist and one Catholic. Sometimes Jewish services were conducted if a rabbi was aboard. Sometimes we encountered typhoons, when waves washed over the front 40 feet above the deck, but I didn’t worry. Being in the No. 2 engine room 15 feet below water level, I didn’t get seasick, and there was no danger of being washed overboard. It was the safest and smoothest place to be on the ship. Letters delivered aboard ship from home were a big deal. Once every two months,

A I WAS THERE

ships pulled alongside us and a cable was strung to handle ingoing and outgoing mail [loaded in mailbags sent across on the cable]. We were the flagship, or headquarters at sea, for [US Third Fleet commander] Admiral William “Bull” Halsey. [Actually New Mexico was the flagship of US Fifth Fleet commander Admiral Raymond Spruance, from April 5 to May 27, 1945.] When we traveled, it was always in a fleet for protection, with our ship in the middle. Officers on the ship slept in cabins in a section of the ship that the rest of us called “officers’ country” [traditionally in a ship’s stern]. My rank was too low to ever allow me to see the cabins. I slept on a hammock strung between two posts among a lot of other sailors sleeping in their hammocks. A disadvantage of being a flagship was the emphasis put on us to stay clean. We were expected to always have our hair cut and wear clean underwear, T-shirts, skivvy

shirts, and jeans. If we were not clean or if we smelled, the master of arms got on us. It was hard for us firemen to keep clean because the heat in the engine room caused our uniforms to be soaked and because we sweated. Each time we came off duty, we showered and washed our own clothes, scrubbing them in the shower room with a bar of soap and a brush. The clothes dried quickly in the engine room. Once, a group of us were sent to the Philippines on an APA ship [an attack transport, a troopship that carried an infantry invasion force and its landing craft]. Due to the ship’s size, we went 30 days without a shower and shave. The master of arms ordered us to clean up before he would talk to us. In early April 1945 we approached the island of Okinawa [in the Ryukyu Islands south of Japan] to lend support to the battle raging there with the Japanese. We landed the New Mexico approximately 1,000 yards off the beach. Then, using all of our guns, including anti-aircraft, we shot everything but the kitchen sink at them! Sadly, on April 11, 1945, a kamikaze blew apart our smokestack and 76 members of our crew were killed. None were

* O er valid through January 31, 2017 Discount does not apply to lag purchases or membership ees

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us navy

friends of mine. Thankfully, our ship didn’t sink but made it safely to Pearl Harbor with an escort. Without a smokestack, the smoke from the boilers was emitted through a vent. The sailors at Pearl didn’t know how we had made it. Our fire crew managed well during the attack. The older sailors had been through battles before and told me and the other young seamen what to do. Everyone on our magazine crew knew the hazards of life aboard a battleship. Years later, when my family and I visited Pearl Harbor, I viewed the sunken remains of the USS Arizona in the cemetery of the Pacific. I could picture my own battleship lying there in a Hawaiian mountain crater following our attack during the Battle at Okinawa. It was a sobering visit. In May 1945 we cheered at the news of V-E Day [Victory in Europe Day, May 8]. The war in Europe was over, but scuttlebutt said the Allies were massing for a major attack on Japan to help end the war. We knew something drastic had to be done to end the war but believed it would result in a significant loss of life. Some of my high school classmates would not be going home because they had been killed during

New Mexico sails past Mount Fuji at the war’s end. Wiegman saw the ancient volcano from his ship’s fo’c’sle during the Japanese surrender-signing in Tokyo Bay, September 2, 1945.

the war. Our feelings were that the only good Jap is a dead Jap. During summer of 1945, we continued to patrol the waters of the Pacific, once dropping anchor at Eniwetok Atoll [in the Central Pacific’s Marshall Islands, scene of a February 1944 US invasion and battle]. The victory there in early 1944 provided the US Navy a base for a repair station shipyard. When the atomic bomb was dropped on the city of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, we were at sea. After the second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki a few days later [August 9], Japan surrendered! I believed and still do that I might not have come home from the war if President Truman

had not dropped the bombs and forced a Japanese surrender. The anticipated death rate from the invasion was estimated in the hundreds of thousands. At that point all we could think about was going home. Little did I know I would soon have an eyewitness view of one of the most important military events in history. The official Japanese Instrument of Surrender ceremony was set for September 2, 1945, aboard the USS Missouri (BB-63) in Tokyo Harbor. A formal treaty was drawn up and we were told Admiral Halsey would be in attendance as would many other military officials and dignitaries from around the world.

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Battle of the Bulge

The crew of the New Mexico had another advantage: since the signing was not on our ship, we didn’t have to wear dress whites. I had duty afterward, so I had dressed in my work uniform—dungarees (blue jeans) and a blue shirt. In contrast to the New Mexico crew, the crew of the Missouri was restricted from

us navy

We were anchored alongside the Missouri. As the New Mexico pulled into Tokyo Harbor, our crew was at General Quarters. The war might have been over, but we didn’t trust the Japanese. All of our guns were loaded for a surprise attack. From my station in the engine room, I could hear the motors of our 14-inch guns being raised and lowered as seamen on the top deck rotated them in the turrets. The show of strength indicated we were ready to fire if necessary. After we dropped anchor and all seemed secure, the crew of the New Mexico was released from our positions to move where we wanted aboard ship to watch the surrender proceedings. Armed marine guards stood on the fo’c’sle [short for forecastle, the front part of the ship’s upper deck]. If a battleship was a flagship for an admiral, a Marine guard was always present. I went to the fo’c’sle and stood, looking down with maybe 30 other New Mexico crew members. Perched high on the top deck in front, we had a perfect view of the deck of the Missouri. There was barely 100 feet between us. The weather was sunny with a light breeze. Mount Fuji was visible in the distance.

Admiral William Halsey (above) led Wiegman’s Third Fleet (a.k.a. the Fifth Fleet when Admiral Raymond Spruance commanded).

being on their quarterdeck. Most would not have a good view of the important event taking place on their own ship. On the deck of the Missouri stood Admirals Halsey and Chester Nimitz [commander in chief, US Pacific Fleet and the Pacific Ocean Areas], Generals Douglas MacArthur [Allied supreme commander,

South West Pacific Area] and Jonathan Wainwright [US lieutenant general, forced to surrender the Philippines to Japan in 1942 and endure subsequent captivity], and British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. [Actually Montgomery wasn’t present. Admiral Sir Bruce Fraser, commander of the British Pacific Fleet, led the British delegation and signed the Instrument of Surrender]. There were also officers from Russia and New Zealand. Amidst all of that, I recall the unbelievably beautiful military hat worn by Australian Field Marshal Thomas Blamey [commander in chief, Australian Military Forces, and commander, Allied Land Forces, South West Pacific Area]. General MacArthur sat at the table with the documents while the other Allied commanders stood behind. Our attention became riveted to the American seamen transporting the Japanese representatives from shore to the Missouri. Their motor whaleboats had been newly painted. One officer appeared short and rotund. All carried a stiff, military bearing. The Japanese emperor was not among them. They went up the steps assisted by American navy personnel. The documents were laid on the table. The ceremony took

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maybe one hour. [Actually it was just 23 minutes]. We could not hear anything, but we stood as if made of stone, silent, as we watched General MacArthur preside over the momentous occasion. After the signing, we watched the Japanese leave the Missouri via the same whaleboats. At 19 years of age, I may not have fully appreciated the significance of what I had seen. Still, I felt an awe of the opportunity to witness such an unusual event. The signing of a peace treaty to end a war was something you read about in history books. I’ve always regretted not having a camera to capture those moments. We stayed anchored at Tokyo Bay for two days, still on guard for possible reactions to the surrender. When no retaliation seemed imminent and nothing exciting happened, we pulled anchor and headed to Pearl Harbor, where we were granted eight-hour shore passes. Honolulu was expensive, so most of us stayed on the ship. Once loaded with supplies, we headed toward the US through the Panama Canal. It was September and a lot of troops were headed home aboard ships. They all were trying to go through the canal at the same time. Boston was home port for the New

A I WAS THERE

Mexico. All of us on board got liberty after docking, which was maybe not a good thing. I saw newspaper headlines that stated 5,000 sailors, many of them drunk, were in Boston that night. Other ships were in port also. I was not a beer drinker, but I went into a bar with friends and we ordered steaks—anything but navy food! I asked for a hamburger steak, while all of my friends ordered T-bones. I didn’t know what a Tbone was. We didn’t eat steaks at home. I had not earned enough points to be discharged, so I was assigned to work at Chelsea Naval Hospital in Boston for three months (it is now closed). The nurse of our ward assigned me the task of plotting the charts that a corpsman had collected. She was a navy lieutenant and registered nurse, and I obeyed her order. Sometimes we took wounded sailors from our hospital to baseball games at Fenway Park. We would load them on a bus,

drive to the baseball field, and wheel them near the diamond. Concessionaires often gave us popcorn. I was thankful for never having been wounded. Once, aboard ship, I became so sick that the ship’s doctor thought I had blood poisoning. Penicillin was pretty new and they didn’t know what else to do for me, so he ordered shots of penicillin—lots of them—to be given in my butt. I could not sit down for a long time, but it was nice to be in sick bay because it was air-conditioned. I got a 30-day leave in December and was home for Christmas in Fort Wayne. I returned to Boston and remained with the ship until it was decommissioned in July 1946 [on the 19th]. I was discharged from Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where my military career had started, in August 1946. A JAMES CHARLES WIEGMAN graduated from Purdue University in 1950 with a degree in mechanical engineering. He worked for 30 years as an engineer at General Electric in Fort Wayne (where his father had worked before him), retiring in the 1980s. He and his wife, Adda, whom he married after the war, became parents to three sons. Adda died in 2013.

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MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific by Walter R. Borneman, Little, Brown and Company, 608 pages, $30

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ALTER R. BORNEMAN is the author

of a number of books covering a wide variety of history subjects, books on the American Revolution, the railroad in the American West, the French and Indian War, and the upper command of the US Navy during World War II. The last of these profiled relationships among Ernest King, William Halsey, William Leahy, and Chester Nimitz. MacArthur at War: World War II in the Pacific is perhaps the other side of that

coin. Here, Borneman chronicles the struggles not of the navy but of the US Army and in particular one of its most controversial generals, Douglas MacArthur, to gain victory against the forces of Imperial Japan. MacArthur at War is a study of command style as exercised by MacArthur. Borneman’s narrative details the general’s controversial career in the army from his days at West Point through the end of the war in September 1945. In the prologue, Borneman writes that MacArthur “was the consummate defender of his country and its honor. But around that core conviction was a complex personality. There was never any middle ground with Douglas MacArthur.” The story begins with an

army brat born to Arthur and Mary MacArthur in Little Rock, Arkansas, on January 26, 1880. Arthur served throughout the United States, the experience of which predisposed his youngest son to pursue a life in the military. Through memoirs, personal diaries, official histories, and a large number of secondary sources, Borneman weaves together the pieces of his book with special emphasis placed on MacArthur’s mercurial manner of commanding and on his relationship with his staff and with other military commanders, domestic and foreign. The heart of the book is his command of Allied forces in the Philippines, which ended in a disaster from which MacArthur OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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escaped almost unscathed to reemerge later as supreme commander of the Southwest Pacific Area. He even received the Medal of Honor for his bumpy PT boat ride and B-17 flight in retreat from the islands. With him came members of his prewar staff, including chief of staff Richard Sutherland and chief of intelligence Charles Willoughby, both of whom served loyally to a fault. A later addition to this clique was chief of air assets George Kenney. MacArthur faced the daunting task of defending his area of operations while building up forces for later offensives against the Japanese. Borneman writes that the task was made even more difficult by MacArthur’s (and his staff’s) complaining about the lack of aid given to them during the Philippines campaign and suspecting a cabal against his efforts in the Southwest Pacific Area. One target for his ire was the US Navy. MacArthur felt that the navy had failed to follow through on Plan Orange, the prewar plan that had directed ships to be sent to help the Philippines if war broke out with Japan. Not initially acknowledging the extreme difficulty the navy faced, MacArthur decided the rival military branch was as much a foe as the Japanese. Besides the sting of defeat and the feeling of being relegated to what he considered a backwater, MacArthur also wrestled with the fact that the Combined Chiefs of Staff, the supreme Allied council of war, regarded Nazi Germany as more dangerous than Imperial Japan. This meant that resources first went to fight the Germans while the Allies held a defensive posture in the Pacific. Further adding to MacArthur’s concerns was that Nimitz was appointed commander in chief of the Pacific Ocean Areas, making him a rival for resources and headlines. MacArthur had also to contend with a less-than-ideal Allied command structure with his command based in Australia. Nimitz was free of this. As the war progressed, MacArthur pushed harder and harder for more men and materiel, including aircraft carriers, believing that the liberation of the Philippines was the key to defeating Japan. Borneman showcases MacArthur’s brilliance yet does not shy away from pointing out the inconsistencies of his actions through the course of the war. One prominent example is MacArthur’s ordering

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Robert Eichelberger to take Buna or die trying. Eichelberger survived and his American and Australian troops took Buna. Unfortunately for him, his name appeared in the headlines. So despite the unqualified success of the operation, MacArthur was, in the end, perturbed. MacArthur at War does a very capable job of exploring the complicated life of Douglas MacArthur. M ICHAEL EDWARDS New Orleans, Louisiana

Storm over Leyte: The Philippine Invasion and the Destruction of the Japanese Navy by John Prados, NAL, 388 pages, $28

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HE O CTOBER 23–26, 1944, Battle of Leyte Gulf was the largest naval battle of World War II, and many consider it the largest naval battle ever. It was the last major, concerted effort of the Japanese navy to win a decisive battle, and it resulted in, as the subtitle of Storm over Leyte proclaims, that navy’s destruction. Although this battle has been covered extensively in other histories, this book offers new information based on intelligence sources not widely available until recently. It presents a full understanding of both American and Japanese decisions and their results before and during the battle. It also provides reasonable answers to some lingering questions about the battle. The book opens in late July 1944 with President Franklin Roosevelt visiting Admiral Chester Nimitz and General Douglas MacArthur in Pearl Harbor. US presidents, unlike leaders of Axis nations, rarely got directly involved in military operations at the strategic level. But that summer America had a major decision to make: where to strike next. By 1944, the United States had a huge advantage over Japan in war production, manpower, training, and technology. The Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944 (another candidate for largest naval battle in history) became unofficially known as the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot because the victory over Japanese forces

was so lopsided. But despite the losses, Japan was still very much in the war. Roosevelt needed to decide whether the Philippines or Taiwan would provide a better base for cutting off Japan’s resources and thereby forcing an end to the war. MacArthur persuaded Nimitz and FDR to invade the Philippines. Meanwhile, Japan’s defeat in the Battle of the Philippine Sea resulted in Tojo’s ouster as Japan’s political and military leader. New leadership started drafting plans for a singular, decisive battle. Storm over Leyte goes deep into the development of Sho-Go (“Operation Victory”). The final plan for repelling a US invasion of the Philippines was to use the still-powerful surface fleet, combined with air cover provided by army and navy land-based aircraft, to compensate for the navy’s lack of carrier strength. It featured a force that would hit the American transports at the site of the invasion, a diversion fleet to the south to distract part of the US fleet, and a northern force of carriers serving as bait to draw US Third Fleet carriers away from supporting the landing. Admiral William “Bull” Halsey, Jr., Third Fleet commander, preceded the invasion of the Philippine island of Leyte with a series of carrier raids against Japanese airfields on Taiwan, the Philippine island of Luzon, and Okinawa to prevent Japanese aircraft from opposing the upcoming landings. The result was an overwhelming American victory. But author John Prados argues that Japanese intelligence had provided enough warning for the Japanese air fleets to disperse and not engage Halsey’s planes. Five hundred Japanese planes that were lost to air strikes could instead have survived and been used to cover the upcoming naval battle as planned. This was the first of many strategic errors made by Japanese leadership. The Americans made fewer mistakes, though they too made costly errors. Why did Japan commit its airpower to resisting Halsey’s strikes rather than conserve it to cover its warships moving against the invasion? Why did Halsey leave his invasion fleet essentially unprotected to go after the Japanese decoy carrier fleet? Why did Japanese Admiral Takeo Kurita turn away from the overwhelmed and overmatched escort carrier fleet that comprised the only warships between his powOCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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erful fleet and the vulnerable invasion fleet on the beach at Leyte? Storm over Leyte answers those questions based on intelligence reports, Japanese sources, and a wealth of research—with very little speculation on the author’s part. Because Japanese admirals held the initiative through most of the battle, the book appropriately devotes much more time to Japanese decision-making than American. It portrays Japanese leaders not as enigmas making inexplicable decisions, but as professional, intelligent, and dedicated men making reasonable decisions under very difficult circumstances. Similarly, Halsey’s nearly disastrous decision to chase the Japanese carriers comes across as less impulsive and more understandable than at first it would seem. In the final chapter, Prados argues, correctly, that the stunning defeat of the Japanese navy led to the widespread adoption of kamikaze attacks, but he does not mention that kamikaze attacks ultimately proved

A THEATER OF WAR Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War Directed by Ken Burns and Artemis Joukowsky, written by David Blitstein, Artemis Joukowsky, and Matthew Justus, with the voices of Tom Hanks and Marina Goldman, 90 minutes, black and white and color, not rated. Premiered September 20 on PBS.

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EN B URNS MADE A NAME for himself by tackling big subjects—the Civil War, baseball, jazz, World War II—in multi-part documentaries. He takes a different approach with Defying the Nazis: The Sharps’ War. It’s still a big subject—the Holocaust—but seen through a very narrow focus. The film concentrates on the story of two Americans, Waitstill and Martha Sharp, a couple that rescued European Jews and dissidents from the Nazi killing machine. With round spectacles, slicked-back hair, and a three-piece suit, Waitstill Sharp (voiced by Tom Hanks) did not look like a hero. He appeared to be just what he was: a Unitarian minister from New England. He and his wife, Martha

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ineffective. He also makes a good case that FDR should have chosen Taiwan over the Philippines. In spite of these small issues, Storm over Leyte is a deep, engaging, and fresh look at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. DREW AMES Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

The Gatekeeper: Missy LeHand, FDR, and the Untold Story of the Partnership that Defined a Presidency by Kathryn Smith, Touchstone, 330 pages, $28

president could not be told apart from the man for whom she worked. Her life was so intricately intertwined with his that to separate them would unravel her identity. His would stay intact without her, however. Marguerite Alice LeHand first came to work for FDR in 1921, when Roosevelt first found himself in need of a secretary. He had just accepted the position of vice president of the New York branch of a surety bonding company and was working as a partner at a Wall Street law firm. Just eight short months after LeHand started her job with him, he came down with poliomyelitis— polio. Over the following months, she visited his home daily, keeping him connected to his work as he underwent physical therapy to rebuild weakened limbs. During these early years, LeHand dis-

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S THE TITLE INDICATES , the story of Missy LeHand, personal secretary to Franklin Delano Roosevelt the private citizen, New York governor, and US

(Marina Goldman), lived in Wellesley, Massachusetts, with their two young children. But when church officials asked them to help people in Europe escape the Nazis, Waitstill agreed, even though it meant leaving the children behind. The Sharps learned skills more appropriate for spies than ministers, and in February 1939 they opened an office in Prague to get people to the United States. The stakes increased dramatically in March, when Germany occupied Czechoslovakia and Gestapo agents began taking an active interest in the Sharps’ work, which included a tense train journey through the heart of Germany to bring refugees to safety in the Netherlands. “Every life we touched had its own drama,” said Martha. So did their own lives. With Martha in Prague, Waitstill traveled to raise money. On August 20, the Nazis raided and looted their office. Waitstill was not allowed back into Czechoslovakia and left for home. While at sea, he heard about Germany’s attack on Poland. Martha followed him “back to another world,” where war seemed so far away.

The war didn’t remain far away for long. In the spring of 1940, the church asked the Sharps to return to Europe. This time, they established themselves in Portugal and assisted refugees from France. They also worked to rescue children. Newsreel footage from December 1940 includes interviews with some of the youths the Sharps helped. The documentary opens with a letter Waitstill wrote to his wife in 1946 and repeats the same letter near the end. The letter hints at marriage trouble. The stresses of the secret work and the long separations irreparably damaged the

played excellent professional skills and also discovered with FDR that they had a common sense of humor and ideas about what was fun. Their relationship soon developed into something more than professional, and they began a life-long friendship. She came eventually to be regarded as a family member—by FDR’s wife, Eleanor, too. In 1923 Roosevelt needed an escape from the ever-present tensions between his wife and mother and from the reality of his physical condition, so he rented a houseboat and spent nearly two months cruising along the Florida coast. LeHand went with him, acting as hostess while conducting her usual secretarial duties. FDR spent his days fishing, swimming, and lying on sundrenched beaches and his nights drinking and cavorting with the “changing cast of visiting friends” that came aboard, as the book puts it. He found all this so therapeutic that he partnered with a friend to buy an old houseboat named Larooco, and he and Missy meandered around the Florida

relationship, and the Sharps divorced in 1954. While the marriage didn’t survive, the people the couple rescued did, and the program’s most emotional parts are the interviews with some of those individuals today. Defying the Nazis, which Burns codirected with Artemis Joukowsky (a grandson of the Sharps), is a worthy and interesting addition to the historical record. At times it may strain a bit to ratchet up suspense (as in a sequence where Martha is trailed by the Gestapo as she attempts to warn a Czech dissident to flee), but the Sharps’ vital work—much of it non-dramatic tasks such as obtaining visas, raising money, or opening bank accounts—doesn’t lend itself to dramatic interpretation on film. It has been said that the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. The Sharps were good people who were willing to risk everything to do their small part against the great evil that was Nazi Germany. Their story deserves to be told, and now it has been. TOM HUNTINGTON Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

Keys, often just the two of them on board along with the crew. It was during this time that the friendship between LeHand and FDR, and her unswerving loyalty to him, was firmly founded. Some, including Roosevelt’s son, Elliott, would later speculate that the two became romantically involved. But another son, James, said no. “Acting as his secretary, taking care of his correspondence and so forth, Missy was not, I’m convinced, father’s mistress,” James wrote long after both his parents had died. “Missy adored father, as he adored her. I suppose you could say they came to love one another, but it was not a physical love.” Aside from that, LeHand was thoroughly devoted to Eleanor, and Eleanor was glad for the freedom she enjoyed because of LeHand’s presence. The houseboat days ended in 1926, when FDR sold the vessel, and two years later he was elected governor of New York, beginning his political ascendancy. From that time on, LeHand lived with the Roosevelts and was on call 24 hours a day. She would come to wield enormous influence during FDR’s tenure as governor and in the Oval Office. In the White House, she occupied the only office that adjoined his and knew who had meetings with him and why they were meeting. She screened his phone calls and filtered his mail. She also “controlled the back door that bypassed his official appointments secretary” to allow certain visitors access to him without record in the official logbook. One of those visitors was Lucy Mercer Rutherford, with whom FDR did have an affair. LeHand indeed was the gatekeeper to the most powerful man in the world. More than that, author Kathryn Smith maintains, LeHand advised FDR on policy, official appointments, and speeches. It was her unshakable loyalty to him, combined with her common sense, good instincts, and honesty, that cemented the bond of trust between them and made her such a valued advisor. “In everything but name she was FDR’s chief of staff,” Smith writes (referring to a White House title that was not used until Dwight Eisenhower’s administration.) Even more telling was FDR’s frequent assertion of her importance to him: “Missy is my conscience.” In 1941 LeHand suffered a debilitating stroke and left the White House, leaving a

void in FDR’s circle that was never filled. She didn’t write a memoir or keep a diary, a point of honor for her, so Smith has tapped into letters, recently discovered home movies, and medical records that shed light on a woman whom history considers a marginal figure. While we will never know what LeHand thought during her time at FDR’s side, this study pieces together what she “saw, heard, and did.” Smith does the job well, and we are glad for it, as she reveals the person who was arguably FDR’s closest confidante. A LLYSON PATTON Gettysburg, Pennsylvania

The Mathews Men: Seven Brothers and the War against Hitler’s U-Boats by William Geroux, Viking, 390 pages, $28

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ATHEWS COUNTY, Virginia, is a peninsula that juts into the Chesapeake Bay, a peninsula that itself is part of a larger peninsula formed by the Rappahannock and York rivers. The county is very rural and somewhat isolated and is oriented toward the bay rather than the mainland. Not surprisingly, a large portion of the residents have been mariners. In 1941, the population was only about 7,500, but there was such a large number of ships’ captains and crewmen from here working for various shipping lines that every ship seemed to have a “Mathews man” on board. The Mathews Men follows the fates of many of these sailors as they transported cargo during World War II as members of the US Merchant Marine. Their stories, invaluable in their own right, also help tell the larger stories of the Battle of the Atlantic against Germany’s U-boats and of the immense efforts to keep the American and other Allied militaries well supplied. The book’s subtitle mentions seven brothers, referring to seafaring sons of Captain Jesse and Henrietta “Henny” Hodges, who had 14 children altogether. In fact, the book also follows 9 men from the Callis family, 7 from the Hudgins family, and numerous others from several other families. The stories of these men and their families—based on letters, interviews, personal recollections, and official records— emerge naturally from the narrative, and OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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author William Geroux does a good job providing enough context to keep readers from being confused by the large number of people involved (and there is a helpful summary at the end with short bios of the Mathews men and women). Readers get to know the men and their families, and the wartime losses and triumphs carry real emotional weight. The employer of the Mathews men was the US Merchant Marine. The merchant marine was not a branch of the military, but an association of privately owned shipping firms and civilian sailors sailing under the American flag. During World War II, the US Navy controlled the cargo itself and contracted with the merchant marine to operate the ships that carried it. Men signed up on a per-voyage basis and were paid only for time put in during a voyage. If a crew was forced to abandon ship, the men were off the clock. After returning home from a voyage, a man was allowed 30 days to find another voyage before he’d otherwise become eligible for the military draft. The men were given life-insurance benefits and were paid well, but they did not receive the veterans’ benefits offered to members of the armed forces. As is often still the case today, these civilian independent contractors were sometimes viewed unfavorably by the general population and by military personnel. That sentiment faded quickly when Germany declared war on the United States and sent U-boats to American waters. The toll on shipping was horrendous. The book says the first seven months of war in the Atlantic were the equivalent of the Pearl Harbor attack, but in slow motion. Many of the Mathews men survived multiple torpedo attacks and ship sinkings. Many other Mathews men did not survive. In fact, the entire merchant marine felt the brunt of decisions by Admiral Ernest King, chief of US naval operations, that made life more dangerous for merchant ships during the first several months of the war. In particular, King initially refused to use navy convoys to protect cargo ships, and he wouldn’t order lights in coastal cities to be blacked out at night. The result was perfect conditions for German submarines. U-boats were so active in American waters early in the war that it takes the first half of the book to 82 AMERICA IN WWII

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cover just the first seven months. Geroux provides details on 42 U-boat attacks on ships that had Mathews men aboard. Thirty of those happened between January and August 1942. The Mathews Men is not all sinkings and tales of survival at sea. It follows the Virginia sailors as they make high-risk cargo runs to Murmansk, Russia, and the island of Malta; participate in the invasions of North Africa, Sicily, Italy, and Normandy; and take thousands of GIs home after the war ends. The book wraps up with a chapter on the legacy of the war as experienced by residents of Mathews County and the merchant marine. The Mathews Men is a well-written, informative, and personal look at an aspect of World War II that does not get the attention that combat operations do. It’s a story worth reading. D REW AMES Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Aircraft Carriers: The Illustrated History of the World’s Most Important Warships by Michael E. Haskew, Zenith Press, 240 pages, $40

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N EARLY D ECEMBER 1941, the US Navy had 17 battleships and 7 aircraft carriers. The Japanese, meanwhile, had 10 battleships and 10 carriers. Although each nation, and the other major powers at that time, had hundreds of other navy vessels of all classes, it was the number of battleships and carriers that most starkly illustrates the differing overall approach to naval power at the war’s start. Michael Haskew’s book, Aircraft Carriers, traces the history of carriers from the very first experiments to marry aircraft to ships all the way through to today’s efforts. Along the way, the book helps explain how Japan got an early lead in carrier power and how the United States ultimately responded. It also covers the development of aircraft carriers in other nations, presenting a truly international perspective.

This is a large coffee-table book, measuring 10 by 11 inches, though it is comfortable to hold and read. The large format allows for several beautiful, high-resolution photos on each page. Glossy paper is used throughout so that even grainy wartime action photos have a depth of detail and tone that is missing when they’re viewed on a computer screen. The early historical photos are some of the most remarkable. Throughout the book, Haskew does an excellent job choosing photos that perfectly illustrate significant historical events and milestones. There’s a photo of Commander Theodore Ellyson, the first naval aviator, sitting in the first aircraft purchased by the navy, a Curtiss Pusher seaplane. Similarly, the first aircraft landing on a ship and the first aircraft take-off from a ship are here. There are Japanese planes taking off to attack Pearl Harbor. The Japanese carrier Shokaku takes damage during the Battle of the Coral Sea. There are the losses of Yorktown (CV-5) and Lexington (CV-2) and numerous photos of bomb strikes and kamikaze strikes on Allied carriers. Other nations’ carriers get coverage as well, especially British carriers such as Illustrious and Ark Royal. The photo captions are very informative, as is the rest of the text, which covers a lot of ground. The book is broken into six chapters arranged chronologically. Chapter 1 covers the very beginning of aviation to the end of World War I (1903–1918). While this chapter doesn’t directly address World War II, it was during the First World War that the British and Japanese experimented with and successfully deployed aircraft from ships. The next three chapters are directly related to World War II. They cover the years 1918–1939 (chapter 2), 1939–1942 (chapter 3), and 1942–1945 (chapter 4). They provide much insight into the effects of the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and subsequent agreements that limited aircraft carrier development for a decade—Japan got a head start on carrier warfare because it dropped out of the agreement. Haskew explains technical innovation and the development of carrier doctrine and the changes to both as the war progressed. Haskew also delves into the differences among the various nations’ carriers. Particularly interesting was the trade-off

between armor and aircraft capacity. British carriers featured armored flight decks, which provided very good protection against Japanese kamikaze attacks. American carriers had unarmored decks, but they could carry nearly twice as many aircraft. Thus American carriers suffered horrible casualties, but each carrier was able to deliver firepower of nearly 1,000 aircraft on the raids that characterized the latter part of the war. The book’s last two chapters cover postWWII aviation. It’s interesting how many Essex- and Midway-class carriers transitioned into postwar use, and how long they lasted. It’s also interesting how close America came to not building super carriers in the years following World War II—a “revolt of the admirals” ensured that construction continued. True to its title, the book is about the carriers, the ships themselves. The crews and aircraft get passing mentions, but the focus stays firmly on the vessels, their development over time, and the development of carrier doctrine in the nations that have them. Within that constraint, Haskew is very thorough, although his coverage of escort carriers, the smaller carriers built on merchant ship hulls during World War II, would have benefited from more detail. There were far more escort carriers than large fleet carriers, and they filled important roles in the war. It would also have been nice if the book had covered more of the history of some important technical innovations such as the steam catapult and angled flight deck. But those are just small complaints. This well-written and superbly illustrated history of aircraft carriers is well worth a read. D REW AMES Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939–1945 by Max Hastings, Harper, 640 pages, $35

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HEN NOVELIST Ian Fleming created

James Bond, the daring and dapper British Secret Service agent of the Cold War era, he wrote his storylines for good drama and with a final resolution of good over evil. Possibly, he was influenced to reverse in his fiction the

course of what he observed in reality during World War II: intelligence-gathering and clandestine operations seldom affected battlefield outcomes. Fleming, who served in various intelligence roles for the British Royal Navy, and his brother, Colonel Peter Fleming, who ran British military deceptions in Southeast Asia, are but two of scores of fascinating real-life characters in The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas, 1939–1945 by the accomplished British author of WWII history Max Hastings. While Hastings mentions that some Russian espionage plots during the war were as fantastic as those in Fleming’s thrillers, most spy operations were tedious and achieved little. There were, however, intriguing and dangerous situations for many of those involved in what he refers to as “humint” (short for human intelligence, gathered by spies, informants, and diplomats). The other intelligence, “sigint” (signal intelligence, obtained through the vast array of resources made possible by broad military and government use of wireless communication in the mid-20th century), introduced such characters to the story as Enigma, Purple, and Ultra. It was sigint that provided the intelligence data that made the most impact during the war. In a roughly chronological narrative, Hastings gives a comprehensive look at the role of each combatant nation’s secret warriors—spies, saboteurs, and codebreakers, as well as the military, administrative, and logistical groups that supported their efforts. He includes a wealth of new information gained from recently opened government archives and from personal interviews he did with some wartime intelligence personnel. He begins with the prewar period, when political instability and competing ideologies had the countries of the world, especially Europe, spying on each other. This humint, augmented by the very beginnings of sigint, accelerated rapidly once hostilities began. The military and diplomatic branches of Great Britain, Germany, the Soviet Union, Italy, Japan, and the United States all carried out major intelligence efforts. Other nations somehow participated in or were victimized by espionage as it became a worldwide phenomenon. So Zurich, Cairo, and Mexico City were OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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caught up in the same international web as London, Moscow, and Berlin. Covering the efforts of spies in the fields, scientists, mathematicians cloistered in cramped research facilities, commandos, resistance fighters, and the bureaucrats managing all of them is a daunting task, but Hastings does a wonderful job, providing overviews of each major aspect of intelligence operations and dozens of anecdotal stories of individuals and groups. The Fleming brothers are interesting, but their work was relatively insignificant compared to that of the codebreaking teams at suburban London’s Bletchley Park, for example. The discovery of how to read coded messages that the German Enigma machine produced, and the effort to keep this discovery secret from the Germans, was one of the most important British-led contributions to the Allied war effort. The varied aspect of the nations’ intelligence-gathering efforts often forces Hastings to pursue narrative threads out of chronological order, resulting in some

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jumping around on the WWII timeline. This he readily admits in his introduction, and it follows a dictum of Winston Churchill quoted frequently in the book to describe the challenges of espionage work: “All things are always on the move simultaneously.” The combatants all had similar objectives and goals: develop advanced weapons, break one another’s codes, and understand the size and composition of forces opposing them, to name a few. Even great intelligence was useless if decision makers didn’t have the resources and desire to act on it. Hastings points out that the Soviets had the most pervasive and effective humint system, led by their NKVD and GRU spy operations around the globe. Besides spying continuously on their British and American allies, for exam-

ple, they provided ample evidence in advance of the Nazi plan to invade Russia. This revelation, however, ran counter to Josef Stalin’s own beliefs, so he ignored it. It was in the democracies, where opposing opinions could be voiced, that intelligence bore the most fruit. Thus Admiral Chester Nimitz decided to commit his US Navy carriers to Midway on the advice of his codebreakers even as others questioned him. Of course, Allied intelligence was not always managed well. Inter-service rivalries, competition among espionage units, and personality clashes led to many wasted leads and agent deaths. The stories of all these issues, events, situations, and people—and many others— are told in entertaining narratives that make The Secret War great reading. I only wish more photos could have been included to provide visual references for more of the men and women in these amazing accounts. J AY WERTZ Phillips Ranch, California

A 78 RPM

Goodman’s Soft-Voiced Songstress

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ENNY GOODMAN had just lost vocalist Helen Forrest. Three years was long enough to work with any band, Forrest said. And this was Goodman, a meticulous director known to get testy when things didn’t go his way. He was especially hard on singers. Forrest saw her options as quit or suffer a nervous breakdown. So it was August 1941 and the Goodman band was without its voice. But it didn’t take long to find a replacement. At a cocktail lounge in Chicago, Goodman’s fiancée, Alice Duckworth, found herself listening to 20-year-old North Dakota native Peggy Lee. Impressed, Duckworth brought Goodman back with her the following night. Lee was hired. A few months later Lee took the stage for a big date at the Terrace Room of the Hotel New Yorker. George T. Simon of Metronome magazine later wrote that she “wasn’t too impressive till she got over the shock of finding herself with Benny’s band.” Other critics commented around this time that she sounded scared. Record producer John Hammond was harsher: Fire her, he told Goodman. But Lee’s nervousness soon gave way to growing confidence. Simon noted that she was “slowly turning into one of the great singers in the field. The lass has a great flair for phrasing—listen

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to her on those last sets at night, when the band’s just noodling behind her….” Lonely GIs and the girls they’d left behind couldn’t get enough of Lee’s intimate, whispering vocals, a trademark style she’d begun developing years earlier. “In a moment of intense fear, I discovered the power of softness,” she later said. “I was thinking people didn’t want to listen to me, so I’d just sing to myself. They immediately stopped talking.” The style paid off with a handful of wartime hits: “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good,” “Let’s Do It,” “How Long Has This Been Going On,” and “All I Need Is You.” Lee’s time with Goodman came to an end the way many of these situations did: the woman singer ran away with one of the musicians. Like most band leaders, Goodman had a rule against fraternization within the group. “But I fell in love with David [Barbour] the first time I heard him play [the guitar],” Lee recalled, “and so I married him. Benny then fired David. So I quit.” Lee had no hard feelings when her time fronting the Goodman band came to an end in 1943. She went on to even greater stardom in the later forties and in the fifties, her experience with Goodman, Barbour, and all the others having helped send her on her way. “I learned more about music from the men I worked with in bands than I’ve learned anywhere else,” she reflected. C ARL ZEBROWSKI editor of America in WWII

A AMERICA IN WWII FLASHBACK

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AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION

L I G G E T T & M Y E R S TO B AC C O C O M PA N Y

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1942 OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016

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THE

WRIGHT

MUSEUM OF WORLD WAR II Special Exhibits 2016:

Norman Rockwell & Pearl Harbor “A Unique Family Experience”

www.WrightMuseum.org Wolfeboro, New Hampshire 603-569-1212 A Open May1–Oct.31

AM E RICA I N

WWII

BACK ISSUES and

SPECIAL ISSUES

www.AmericaInWWII.com/ back-issues

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A WWII EVENTS

COMING SOON

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA • Nov. 11, Washington: Veterans Day Observance at the WWII Memorial. Ceremony starts at 9 A.M. 202-675-2017. wwiimemorialfriends.org FLORIDA • Nov. 4–6, Leesburg: Wings of Freedom Tour. WWII aircraft from the Collings Foundation on display and flying, warbird rides. 8807 Airport Boulevard. 800-568-8924. Check Collings Foundation website for more tour dates and locations. www.collingsfoundation.org Nov. 4–6, Stuart: Stuart Air Show 2016. Includes WWII and modern aircraft on display and flying; plane rides; WWII ground battle simulation with tanks, artillery, aircraft, and paratroopers; WWII weapons demonstration. Witham Field. 772-781-4882. www.stuartairshow.com Nov. 11–12, Pensacola: Naval Air Station Pensacola Open House and Blue Angels Homecoming Air Show. The Blue Angels are the central attraction, but the show includes the AeroShell Aerobatics Team flying AT-6 Texan trainers, and WWII aircraft on display. Naval Air Station Pensacola. 850-452-3806. www.naspensacolaairshow.com GEORGIA • Oct. 29–30, Rome: Wings over North Georgia. Show features the US Air Force Thunderbirds, but WWII warbirds will be on display. Richard B. Russell Regional Airport. 706-291-0030. www.wingsovernorthgeorgia.com

library of congress

CALIFORNIA • Oct. 29, San Francisco: The Legacy of Two Nations. Second annual Bataan Legacy Conference. Talks and presentations about World War II in the Philippines, including US involvement and experiences there. Presented by the Bataan Legacy Historical Society. Koret Auditorium, San Francisco Main Public Library. 510-520-8540. www.bataanlegacy.org The place to be as details trickled in.

75th Anniversary:

WAR COMES TO AMERICA Ordinary Americans react to breaking news from Pearl Harbor • A Japanese sub attacks near L.A. on Christmas Eve • And more! Look for our next exciting issue on print & digital newsstands December 6.

More Online! www.AmericaInWWII.com Join us on Facebook and Twitter.

LOUISIANA • Nov. 4–6, New Orleans: WWII Airpower Expo 2016. WWII aircraft on display and flying, WWII air veterans, warbird rides, vehicles and artifacts, exhibits, living history, period music, boot camp courses for kids and adults, Commemorative Air Force Red Tail Squadron’s “Rise Above” exhibit on the Tuskegee Airmen, and more. Lakefront Airport. 504-528-1944. www.ww2airpowerexpo.org Nov. 17–19, New Orleans: International Conference on Word War II. 1946: Year Zero—Triumph and Tragedy. Presentations by scholars and authors including Sir Max Hastings, Alex Kershaw, Donald L. Miller, David Kennedy, Richard Frank, and several others. Additional espionage symposium also available. The National WWII Museum. 877-813-3329, extension 511. www.ww2conference.com PENNSYLVANIA • Nov. 5–6, Strasburg: Trains and Troops 2016. History and living history event focused on America’s railroads and World War II. Living history, vintage trains, historical displays. “Taking the Swing Train ’40s Dance” Saturday, 7–10 P.M. Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania. 717-687-8628. www.rrmuseumpa.org/visitors/ seasonal/troopstrains/index.shtml TEXAS • Nov. 11–12, Waxahachie: Waxahachie WWII Weekend and Reenactment 2016. Features antique and military vehicles, living history, US and German encampments, battle simulation at train depot and bridge. Downtown Waxahachie. [email protected]. www.waxahachieveteransweekend.webs.com Nov. 12–13, Austin: Close Assault: 1944. Simulation of an attack on a German strong point by the US 36th Infantry Division (Texas National Guard). Includes infantry, a tank, and a halftrack. WWII weapons, uniforms, and vehicles on display. Presented by the Texas Military Forces Museum. Camp Marbry. 512-782-5659. www.texasmilitaryforcesmuseum.org VIRGINIA • Nov. 19–20, Newport News: WWII Living History Weekend. Living history and demonstrations of weapons and tactics. Endview Plantation. 757-887-1862. www.endview.org Please call the numbers provided or visit websites to check on dates, times, locations, and other information before planning trips.

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A GIs

‘Safe’ in the Quartermaster Corps

IvEs AL ARcH NAtION

FAMILY OF FRED HENR Y ZIEBER

Stationed in the Pacific with the army in 1945, Fred Henry Zieber was aboard a flight over Nagasaki a couple of months after the atomic bombing. He wrote to his wife about the utter destruction he witnessed.

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HENRY ZIEBER KNEW EARLY ON that war was coming. Working in the Philippines, he’d heard about Japanese aggression in East Asia. In 1934, then living in Hawaii, he enlisted in the US Army Reserve. The 30-year-old brand-new father joined the Quartermaster Corps. Being part of the army’s supply operations, he figured, would keep him out of danger. Zieber moved his family from Hilo to Honolulu in 1941 and settled in. On the morning of December 7, Japanese aircraft bombed Honolulu’s Pearl Harbor. Zieber was ordered to report for active duty. Before leaving home, he handed his wife a gun. If the Japanese invaded, he told her, shoot the children and then yourself so you’re not taken prisoner. In early 1945, Zieber shipped out to Ie Shima, near Okinawa in the Ryuku Islands. As executive officer of the 77th Quartermaster Company, he was there for the entire Battle of Okinawa in the spring of 1945. Soon after the war ended, Zieber was on a flight over Nagasaki, where the second atomic bomb had been dropped. In a RED

letter to his wife dated October 27, he described what he saw below: “…When an ordinary bomb hits, it destroys only a small area, a factory, a few houses—it leaves a pile of rubble, a wall standing, something that will tell you that a building had been in a certain place. But the atom bomb left an area looking as if a giant street sweeper had come along and swept away everything. The heat turned the whole area a yellowish brown color; everything was flattened, and apparently vaporized as there were no walls standing, no piles of rubble…. It is hard, almost impossible, to comprehend the complete destruction of one bomb.” Zieber’s plan to avoid danger in the war had failed. Instead he found himself in some of the world’s deadliest places. But he escaped unscathed and returned home safe in late 1945. A Submitted by Fred Henry Zieber’s great-great-granddaughter, Erica M. Roberts, editorial intern at America in WWII and student at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

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OCTOBER/NOVEMBER 2016