America in WWII 2017-10

STORMTROOPERS & ‘RABBITS’ AT THE BULGE A QEII & THE YANKS

AMERICA IN

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EARS ON THE WORLD

Stateside Radio Agents Snoop on Axis Spies

The War • The Home Front • Th

INSIDE THE MIND OF THE

KAMIKAZE Why Were Suicide Pilots Dying to Kill?

TARGET: TOKYO

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100 Mustangs and 300 B-29s Smash a Vital Aviation Factory 0

One Family s Warbird Museum A Labor s Day

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The War

• The Home Front • The People

October 2017, Volume Thirteen, Number Three

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FEATURES

12 TARGET: TOKYO The Seventh Fighter Command had been waiting all war to avenge Pearl Harbor. Exactly 40 months after that fateful day, 100 of its Mustangs took off with 300 B-29s to attack mainland Japan. By Don Brown and Jerry Yellin

22 EARS ON THE WORLD Civilian FCC operatives fought on the front lines of the radio war, catching spies, blocking leaks, directing lost planes, and saving ships from U-boat wolves. By Leo Caisse

28 INSIDE THE MIND OF THE KAMIKAZE To American sailors, kamikazes were inhuman fanatics, eager to throw their lives away. The truth about Japan’s suicide attackers, their motives, and their feelings was more complicated. By Robert L. Willett

38 THE PRINCESS AND THE AMERICANS Steeped in American pop culture, and growing up amid a war that brought Americans to her doorstep, England’s future queen developed a lasting bond with the Yanks across the Atlantic. By Mark Weisenmiller

departments 2 KILROY 4 V-MAIL 6 HOME FRONT: Labor’s Day 8 PINUP: Susan Hayward 10 LANDINGS: A Minnesota family’s warbird museum 44 WAR STORIES 46, 56 FLASHBACKs 47 I WAS THERE: Hunted at the Bulge 57 BOOKS AND MEDIA 58 THEATER OF WAR: Five Came Back 61 78 RPM: No Hint of Irony Here 63 WWII EVENTS 64 GIs: From Farm to Flight COVER SHOT: Corporal Yukio Araki, 17 years old, holds a puppy in a farewell photo with other teenage kamikazes. The next day, May 27, 1945, Araki flew out from Japan’s island of Kyushu in a Ki-54 twin-engine trainer and died in a suicide attack. He may have been one of two kamikazes who struck destroyer USS Braine (DD-630) off Okinawa, killing 66 men and knocking the ship out of action. AMERICA IN WWII COLLECTION

AM E RICA I N

WWII

The War

A KILROY WAS HERE

• The Home Front • The People

September-October 2017 Volume Thirteen • Number Three

www.AmericaInWWII.com PUBLISHER

James P. Kushlan, [email protected] EDITOR

Carl Zebrowski, [email protected] ASSISTANT EDITOR

Eric Ethier BOOKS AND MEDIA REVIEWS EDITOR

Allyson Patton CONTRIBUTING EDITORS

Drew Ames • Michael Edwards • Robert Gabrick Tom Huntington • Joe Razes • Jay Wertz EDITORIAL ASSISTANTS

Kaylee Schofield • Nathan Zaccarelli ART & DESIGN DIRECTOR

Jeffrey L. King, [email protected] CARTOGRAPHER

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Megan McNaughton, [email protected] Debbie Librandi, [email protected] EDITORIAL OFFICES 4711 Queen Ave., Suite 202, Harrisburg, PA 17109 717-564-0161 (phone) • 717-977-3908 (fax) ADVERTISING Sales Representative

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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 2017 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.

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Glory and Insanity THERE’S NO GOOD REASON FOR ME TO BE SURPRISED when a combat veteran sends me an article questioning the sanity of an enterprise that ends with a payoff that couldn’t possibly equal the price paid in deaths. In the big wars, millions of people die, most of them still in their youth, sacrificed violently before having the chance to marry, raise families, enjoy friends into old age, and experience travel to places not under attack. You don’t have to look too deep to realize what a fool’s bargain war is. But still, after working 25 years in military history, some part of me expects veterans to be gung-ho about war. There is glory in it, as in a human being rising above the horror and fear to accomplish an impossible feat, saving lives. There’s the thrill of victory, for the lucky ones. This is probably as much about cheating death as anything else. One of my uncles on my dad’s side wrote home from the Pacific to my dad, a young teen, that he should learn to type so, if he got drafted, he could become a clerk in a safe office rather than a grunt at the front. My uncle was a grunt, and like many grunts, he still carries around shrapnel in his flesh to prove it. I’d say he realized that all this fighting and dying might be insane. He preferred not to lose family members because of what was happening. This is what sanity sounds like. Lloyd Howard’s combat was in the Ardennes, known to us as the Battle of the Bulge. Americans there had to battle not only the Germans but icy cold and snowy weather and ground conditions. Howard survived, but a couple of weeks into the fighting he was captured. He tells his story in I Was There in this issue (page 47). If anything could be worse than combat, it was internment as a prisoner of war. Howard’s time in captivity was easy, he claimed; he generously said the Germans treated him decently. To me, it doesn’t seem decent to transport POWs to their camps in unmarked train cars so that their own planes might bomb them, or to force them to walk 70 miles over ground covered with deep snow. Howard was carried on the final part of the journey to camp by two buddies. His daughter, Barbara, told me he was the only one of his group who came through the ordeal without losing his feet. Reading Howard’s eloquent account of his war experience, it’s no wonder he didn’t come home gung-ho about war. The surprise may be that some combat veterans do. Either way, it’s perfectly sane to be opposed to the whole bloody mess that war is, even if it is sometimes unavoidable. These days, with plenty of insanity rising around the globe again, hither and yon, the thoughts of Howard and others like him are worth considering as much as ever.

Carl Zebrowski Editor, America in WWII

A V-MAIL

event of aircraft radio failure. All pilots are required to recognize a few coded signals consisting of red, green and white lights. RANDALL KEILS

SO, ABOUT THOSE PLANES… IN THE AUGUST 2017 issue, in “Red River Kids at War” [by Kevin Hymel], on page 23, these are the strangest B-25s I’ve ever seen. Could they be perhaps A-20s? WINSTON ADAMS

Kalamazoo, Michigan national archives

Saugus, California

I NOTED AN ERROR in the photo caption on page 22 in the story “Red River Kids at War” (August 2017 issue). The photo in question shows three twin-engine bombers flying over tanks and troops during maneuvers in Louisiana. The caption identifies the planes as B-25s. They obviously are not. The dihedral of the wings and especially the horizontal stabilizers is quite different from the B-25, not to mention that the planes in the photo have a single vertical stabilizer (the B-25 of course has dual vertical stabilizers). Judging from the narrow fuselage, these planes are most probably A-20s. Each issue of your magazine is eagerly awaited and the first I read as soon as it arrives. Keep up the good work. W ILLIAM BRANNAN Lake Ridge, Virginia

Publisher Jim Kushlan replies: To get mistakes like this made, you need the deskjockey son of a WWII veteran and career air force aircraft mechanic. That would be me. (Sorry, Dad!) How I turned Douglas A-20 Havoc light bombers into North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers is a puzzler. The rest of the staff is making special spotter cards to help me avoid mistakes like this whenever I write airplanerelated captions in the future. THE TANKS THAT CAME TO TOWN T HE LATEST ISSUE [August 2017] is superb, as always! The photograph on page 23 in “Red River Kids at War” shows either M3 or M3A Grant medium tanks (I can’t tell which without seeing which version of 75mm main gun will be installed)…. The 4 AMERICA IN WWII

OCTOBER 2017

Silhouettes from a manual to help WWII plane spotters identify aircraft show the A-20 (left) and the B-25 (right).

caption on page 22 misidentified them as M2A4 light tanks…. VINCE MURPHY Lincoln, Nebraska

BURGERS AND WARBIRDS FIRST OFF, the White Castle article [Home Front, “A Bastion of Burgers,” by editor Carl Zebrowski, August 2017] was great! But the story by Bill Sloan [“Like Shooting Turkeys,” August 2017], whose writing I really enjoy, had a bit of a goof on page 15. It said that Lieutenant George Brown was flying a TBF Avenger, “designated TBF for aircraft manufactured by General Motors.” If it was built by General Motors, the designation was TBM. It was a really exciting article just the same! The story on “Cactus” [“The Cactus Air Force,” photo essay] was outstanding! D AVE LE FEVRE received via email

THAT’S A LIGHT GUN THE CBI (China–Burma–India) theater is my favorite chapter of WWII history, so I especially enjoyed “Thrown into Burma” [by John L. Bellah] in the June issue. One point: the soldier standing beside General Orde Wingate in the photo on page 31 is not holding a “portable radar device.” It’s actually a light gun, a cylinder containing a lamp and color filters, mounted with two handles and a trigger, used to signal aircraft observing radio silence. Light guns are found today in every control tower, civil and military, where they stand ready in the

COUNTING THE STARS I SO ENJOY READING your magazine every issue and found the article starting on page 36 of the June 2017 issue, titled “Propaganda for the Good Guys” [by Nathaniel Lande], very interesting. However, I wish to comment regarding the picture on page 37. The caption notes some of those pictured but not all. Not mentioned were Rudy Vallee next to Orson Welles, Edward G. Robinson behind Lionel Barrymore, and Edward Arnold standing on the right. Also, I believe the woman seated was none other than Marjorie Main. WAYNE SIMPSON Lincoln, Nebraska

ROD SERLING WAS MY PROF GREAT ARTICLE on Rod Serling in the June issue [“A Real-Life Twilight Zone,” by Mark Weisenmiller]. I had the good fortune of having Rod Serling as a visiting professor when I attended Ithaca College from ’70 through ’74. After reading your article, I had a better understanding of Mr. Serling’s serious dislike of the TV show Hogan’s Heroes which was pretty popular at the time. He would state how that TV show made light of the POW situation and the Second World War. Mr. Serling would visit one to two times a year depending on his schedule and was always generous with his time with the students especially in the radio and TV studios. Great magazine. A L ADKINS Syracuse, New York

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].

A HOME FRONT

Labor’s Day by Carl Zebrowski NCE UPON A TIME , Labor Day was more than just a long weekend dedicated to charring meat on an outdoor grill and drinking beer, or to hawk refrigerators, back-to-school clothes, and big new SUVs for low, low prices. In that quaint era long past, Labor Day was an annual celebration of Americans who left their homes most days of the week, for most of their waking hours, to trade sweat, and sometimes blood, for pay. Specifically, it celebrated union workers. The first observance of what became Labor Day happened in 1882, when thousands of workers called off work in New York City to march in favor of an eighthour workday—and generally against corrupt corporate interests. It was made a national holiday in 1894—a move that was more a fairly cheap gift to unions from a Democratic Congress and President Grover Cleveland than a heartfelt appreciation of the efforts of organized labor. Mechanics in Chicago, a national railroad hub, had refused earlier that year to work on any trains with Pullman sleeping cars, because the Pullman company had laid off workers and cut wages (while keeping its prices the same). In sympathy, the 150,000 members of the newly founded American Railway Union went on strike. Railroad traffic was thrown into chaos across the nation, and the president sent soldiers and US marshals to Chicago to put down the rebellion there. Riots ensued and protesters were killed. Six days after the strike’s end, Congress sent the president the holiday bill for which unions had been lobbying. With his signature, the first Monday in September became Labor Day. Into the 1900s, unions made a point of celebrating the holiday religiously every year with parades that were often followed by festivals featuring speakers to rally their troops to the cause. But the rank and file felt they had put too much effort into win-

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OCTOBER 2017

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

6 AMERICA IN WWII

An American Federation of Labor war bond poster. In the early ’40s, Labor Day was about unions, as well as picnics. It was about wartime patriotism, too.

ning the government-sanctioned day off work to dedicate too much of the resulting long weekend to job-related demonstrating. Thus was the Labor Day barbecue born. By the onset of World War II, the holiday was well established as part picnic, part union rally. The labor-related aspect of the holiday wasn’t about to go away at a time when the nation was getting ever closer to joining a great fight that depended on union members to manufacture tanks, ships, planes, guns, uniforms and just about anything else the military required. President Franklin Roosevelt understood. He addressed the nation via live radio broadcast on Labor Day 1941: “On this day—this American holiday—we are celebrating the rights of free laboring men and women. The preservation of these rights is vitally important now, not only to us who enjoy them— but to the whole future of Christian civiliza-

tion. American labor now bears a tremendous responsibility in the winning of this most brutal, terrible of all wars.” Once America joined the war, unions continued to make a showing on the holiday but displays of patriotism tended to overshadow labor themes. The Tule Lake Relocation Center in Northern California hosted a particularly unusual display of patriotism on Labor Day 1942—the residents were Japanese Americans whom the US government had recently forced out of their homes to live in guarded camps, fearing they might collude with the enemy. The day’s events began with a parade featuring floats made at a cost of $5 or less. Then camp residents elected a Labor Day Queen. A crowning ceremony and a dance spotlighting the winner and her court of runners-up followed. Emily Light, a teacher at Tule Lake, wrote, “Shig Tamaki ruled beautifully as Festival Queen—even though I had been hoping May Ohmura would be the one selected.” As it happened, the war came to its official end on a Labor Day Weekend. With the formal Japanese surrender ceremony held aboard the US battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sunday, September 2, 1945, labor was a bona fide afterthought on that year’s holiday. Union workers, however, were no doubt reminded that their ranks had grown larger than ever during the war’s four years, with a record 35 percent of the nation’s non-agriculture workforce carrying union membership cards by the end. Since then, things haven’t always gone well for labor unions. With the exception of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society years, their political and economic power has generally declined. Membership had fallen to a mere 11 percent of the workforce by 2015. With numbers like that, it might be no surprise that Labor Day has become merely a weekend to party and shop. A

AM E RICA I N

WWII PINUP

Susan Hayward

What Susan Hayward lacked in warmth, she made up for with spark. A homegrown Brooklynite with a penchant for self-promotion, she found stardom out West in 1939 thanks to her vivacity—her childhood nickname was Pepper-Pot—and to a chance meeting with Hollywood agent Ben Medford, whose lawn she decorated with a lucky bike crash. Medford praised the young redhead, but like most of her acquaintances in showbiz, he qualified his words with a note of caution: “This girl is smart, but cold as a polar bear’s foot.” Robert Preston, who would star with her in 1949’s Tulsa, said, “Anything I have to say about Susan Hayward, you couldn’t print.” Offscreen, Hayward was cranky and defiant; on-screen, she charmed with her lithe movements and honeyed smile, winning wartime roles in The Fighting Seabees and The Hairy Ape, both released in 1944. Her contribution to the war effort was entertaining servicemen at the Hollywood Canteen. By the time her career ended, Hayward had more than 50 movie credits. She peaked in the role of a prostitute executed for murder in 1958’s I Want to Live!, for which she won an Oscar. K AYLEE SCHOFIELD photo courtesy of www.doctormacro.com

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There was a dark side to life on the home front...

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Strange but True Stories from the U.S. Home Front

Mass Hysteria A Unsolved Mysteries A Accidents A Weird Phenomena Bombs Gone Astray A Disasters A Rumors and Fears A Terror Enemies Too Close To Home A Conspiracy Theories A Saboteurs

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A LANDINGS

One Family’s Warbird Museum by Robert Gabrick

A model of a Northrop P-51 Mustang marks the entrance drive to the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum in Minnesota.

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1946 ACADEMY Award–winning The Best Years of Our Lives, B-17 bombardier Fred Derry returns home from Europe to a loveless marriage and the difficulties of finding his place in the postwar world. At a moment of crisis, he visits an aircraft boneyard. Climbing aboard the partly demolished B-17 Round Trip? he briefly relives the war. In a swords-intoplowshares epiphany, he realizes he must build a new life by destroying his past, taking a job at the boneyard scrapping warbirds to provide material to create something new (prefabricated houses). A visit to the Fagen Fighters WWII Museum offers an alternative to boneyards and the destruction of warbirds: restoration. Literally in the middle of cornfields, the museum is a jewel on the Minnesota prairie. Beautifully restored and fully operational WWII planes are its individual gems. There’s also a marvelous collection of motorized vehicles, artfully displayed artifacts, and exhibits that explain the larger story of the war. Five separate structures make up the museum. Three hangars house the aircraft and related exhibits and displays. To help visitors appreciate the history behind each item, large display boards feature photographs and detailed information. While signs warn against touching the artifacts, there are no barriers to limit close-up viewing. N THE

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Visitors first enter the Trainer Hangar and, after passing a WWI-era Curtiss JN4D “Jenny,” find a Ryan PT-22 training craft that saw service with the US Army Air Forces beginning in November 1941. Then there’s the 1944 Fairchild PT-19A Cornell “Cradle of Heroes,” which represented a shift from biplane to monoplane trainers. At the time of my visit, a nearly identical variant was undergoing maintenance. A reconstructed glider of the type used on D-Day, manufactured by Northwestern Aeronautical Corporation of Minneapolis, features an uncovered side that enables visitors to study the construction. A recreated cockpit provides an opportunity to “be the pilot.” This model of glider carried 155 soldiers plus cargo that could include items such as a Clark CA-1 Bulldozer, a Cushman scooter, and a 1944 Harley Davidson WLA Type VII motorcycle, all of which are on display here. The museum’s collection includes a legendary GMC 6x6 “Deuce and a Half,” an example of the more than 800,000 of these trucks that were produced for the war. They were the mainstay of the 6,000-truck Red Ball Express, the convoy system created to supply Allied forces moving through Europe after D-Day. Another gem is a 1944 White Motor Company Half Track, featuring a mount for multiple machine guns, equipped with guns manufactured by Browning.

Dramatic murals by artist David Reiser cover the walls of the Fighter Hangar. Here is a Curtiss P-40 Warhawk. A total of 13,738 Warhawks were produced during the war, ranking the model third in production totals behind the North American P51 Mustang and Republic P-47 Thunderbolt. Powered by a 1350 HP Allison liquidcooled V-12 engine, it was first flown in June 1941 by British squadrons in North Africa; the Brits were among the first to paint the iconic open shark mouth beneath the nose. Americans flew this fighter, too: the 325th Fighter Group in North Africa and the Middle East earned an impressive combat record of at least 133 kills while losing only 17 of its own planes. The Fighter Hangar’s crown jewel is arguably Scat III, a Lockheed P-38 Lightning. Originally built in 1945, this fighter never saw combat and escaped the boneyard to serve a stint as a Bendix racer. It’s equipped with four .50-caliber machine guns and one 20mm cannon. This hangar also holds a North American P-51 Mustang. In 1943, the P-51 entered combat in Europe, escorting B-17 and B-24 bombers. By war’s end, P-51s had destroyed nearly 5,000 enemy aircraft in Europe—more than any other fighter. The Twilight Tear display commemorates the 78th Fighter Group, which participated in D-Day and the Battle of the Bulge.

all photos this article by robert gabrick

Clockwise from top left: a re-creation of a 375th Fighter Group Quonset hut and a control tower that offers a 360-degree view of the museum grounds; the B-25 Paper Doll, with Varga Girl nose art; and a life-size display depicting GIs charging onto Utah Beach.

A dramatic scene devoted to the D-Day action on Utah Beach commemorates Private Ray Fagen, the father of Ron Fagen, the museum’s founder. Fagen was awarded three service stars for his role during DDay, in the liberation of Paris, and in the Battle of the Bulge. Life-size sculptures of soldiers led by Fagen run out of a Higgins boat onto the beach. Sharing the hangar is an M4 Sherman tank, one of the approximately 50,000 produced during the war. Adjacent to an exhibit depicting in-the-field radio operations is the jeep that transported General Omar Bradley, commander of the US First Army, on D-Day. In between the Fighter and Bomber hangars is an “authentic re-creation” of the 357th Fighter Group’s briefing Quonset hut in Leiston, England, two miles from the North Sea coast. Inside, a large map

adorns the wall to aid a preflight briefing held on January 14, 1945, the day the group logged a record 55.5 kills battling German fighters. The hut honors Colonel Clarence E. “Bud” Anderson, who completed 116 missions with the group. He played a role in the filming of Twilight Tear, the documentary on view here that covers the restoration of the museum’s P51. A control tower offering a 360-degree view of the entire museum site is filled with a variety of authentic WWII-era radios and communications equipment. The Bomber Hangar’s treasure is North American B-25 Mitchell Paper Doll, most noted for its role in the carrier-based April 1942 raid on Tokyo led by Lieutenant Colonel Jimmy Doolittle. The bomber’s nose art is based on an Alberto Vargas original Varga Girl published in the December 1943 issue of Esquire.

IN A NUTSHELL WHAT Fagen Fighters WWII Museum WHERE Granite Falls, Minnesota WHY A vast collection of painstakingly restored, operational WWII planes highlighted by a B-25 bomber that flew in the Doolittle Raid and a beautiful P-38 Lightning fighter that never saw combat • a re-creation of the Quonset hut that the 357th Fighter Group used for preflight briefings in England • the jeep in which General Omar Bradley rode on D-Day

For more information call 320-564-6644 or visit www.fagenfighterswwiimuseum.org

Dramatically suspended from the hangar’s ceiling, as if in flight, is a German Messerschmitt Bf 109 fighter. On the ground, there’s a Grumman FM-2 Wildcat, one of the 5,280 FM variants of this smallcarrier fighter that were produced during the war. The plane has its wings folded as though on a carrier. The Bomber Hangar walls feature a marvelous array of murals and framed art, as well as a WWII timeline and many artifact- and information-rich displays. The Mementos of War display showcases various items soldiers brought home from war, including enemy medals, weapons, helmets, and articles of clothing. Women in Uniform covers the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC) and features uniforms, shoes, photo IDs, a prayer book, and a suitcase. The Home Front includes ration books and stamps. The Fagen Fighters WWII Museum says its mission is to “preserve history, promote patriotism, and inspire the future.” Thanks to a unique collection of priceless artifacts and to craftspeople who have rejuvenated its aircraft, vehicles, and other items, the first goal is obviously met. The second one, too. And I’d say the third is a good bet. A ROBERT GABRICK is a contributing editor of America in WWII. OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 11

Target:To The Seventh Fighter Command had been waiting all war to avenge Pearl Harbor. Exactly 40 months after that fateful day, 100 of its Mustangs took of f with 300 B-29s to attack mainland Japan.

by Don Brown and Jerry Yellin

Photo: P-51 Mustang fighters flying from Iwo Jima meet B-29 Superfortresses to escort them on a bombing run to Japan in 1945. On April 7, Captain Jerry Yellin piloted a Mustang on the first-ever mission flown by land-based fighters over mainland Japan. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

kyo

Target :Tokyo by Don Brown and Jerry Yellin

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M ARCH 1945, SOON AFTER TURNING 21, Captain Jerry Yellin landed on Iwo Jima. The native of Hillsdale, New Jersey, was sent there to fly a P-51 Mustang with the 78th Fighter Squadron, part of Brigadier General Mickey Moore’s Seventh Fighter Command. He had enlisted in the US Army Air Forces early in the war and now, three years later, he was anxiously hoping to be chosen for the first land-based fighter mission over mainland Japan, escorting 300 B-29 heavy bombers of the XXI Bomber Command to take out essential aircraft factories near Tokyo. ¶The following narrative of that mission is excerpted from Regnery History’s newly published The Last Fighter Pilot: The True Story of the Final Combat Mission of World War II by Don Brown and Captain Jerry Yellin. N

joint air raid on Japan with the B-29s: April 7…. But when April arrived, it brought something else: rain. The first four days of the month, it rained so heavily and frequently that no flight operations were conducted. After a month of nearperfect weather, it now seemed like the rain would never stop. And so the men of the Seventh Fighter Command, anxious and ready to fly, were subjected to yet another form of discomfort. Based on weather forecasts, the mission date had been circled on the calendar. Their hearts pounded each time they looked at it, hoping to see their names on the mission list. Three hundred were competing for a mission of only one hundred slots. For the next few days, Jerry could only bide his time and focus as the intelligence officers revealed plans for the attack. The pilots gathered under the primitive Quonset hut that had been erected for intelligence briefings and received information about the specific target for the mission: the Nakajima Aircraft engine factories west of Tokyo. Those factories had built engines for at least thirty-seven different military aircraft, mostly fighters and bombers, including kamikaze aircraft that had been flown into U.S. ships. Taking the plants out would be a significant step in crippling the Japanese war machine…. COuRTESy Of jERRy yELLIN

ALL pHOTOS THIS STORy (uNLESS OTHERwISE NOTEd): NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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N M ARCH 30, 1945, General Moore ordered a large group of Mustangs to execute a roundtrip practice flight from Iwo Jima to Saipan. Knowing the first strike on Japan was just days away, Moore wanted to test his Mustangs to see how they’d hold up under longer flight conditions. The one-way flight from Saipan to Iwo Jima was 725 miles, only twenty-five miles shorter than the distance from Iwo Jima to Japan…. The round-trip mission to Japan would take eight hours and be arduous on Moore’s pilots and their planes. The P-51s had never been pushed to such limits…. Moore selected a hundred pilots for the test flight, including Jerry. Although being picked for the test flight did not mean automatic selection for the actual mission to Japan, those chosen held out hope that if they performed well on the test flight, they would be included…. The results of the test flight were disappointing. Mechanical problems forced a number of P-51s to land in Saipan, unable to complete the round-trip journey. Others had to turn and fly back to Iwo Jima before even reaching Saipan. Altogether, nearly half of the P-51s on the test flight failed to complete the round-trip. The development raised concerns…. And if one factored in Japanese fighters and groundbased antiaircraft that would be launching enemy fire toward the American planes, the potential problems compounded. Soon, all the planes that started the test flight were back on Iwo Jima, and Moore put his squadron mechanics and planners to work on identifying problems that had occurred during the test flight, with instructions to engage in aggressive problem-solving and corrective procedures. Jerry, meanwhile, had been one of those who managed to complete the test flight to Saipan and back without encountering any problems. He hoped this would catch his commanding officer’s attention and guarantee him a slot in the big mission…. As March gave way to April, the anticipation among the American pilots stationed on Iwo Jima reached its highest point since their arrival. The date had been set for their first, massive,

April 6, 1945 “Okay, gentlemen. Gather round.” Major Jim Vande Hey, the twenty-nine-year-old commanding officer of the Seventy-Eighth Fighter Squadron, was a man’s man and a pilot’s pilot. The young man bore a special, no-nonsense charisma that commanded respect, and, when he spoke, attention. For Vande Hey, the war against Japan had been personal from its inception. On the morning of December 7, 1941, as a second lieutenant and recent graduate of pilot training, he’d sat on his bunk at Wheeler Army Airfield, the main U.S. Army Air Force fighter base in Hawaii, talking with a buddy before heading to church…. Wheeler Army Airfield was the first target of Japanese dive bombers on that fateful morning…. Vande Hey was fortunate; he survived the Japanese bombs and bullets. But he would not forget

Above: With the characteristic flair of a fighter pilot, Jerry Yellin poses in his leather flight jacket. On his left breast is the patch of his 78th Fighter Squadron “Bushmasters,” featuring a bushmaster venomous snake. Opposite: On April 8, 1945, B-29s, P-51s, and P-61 Black Widows that flew with the 78th in the previous day’s mission sit along Iwo Jima Airstrip No. 1. Mount Suribachi looms. 14 AMERICA IN WWII

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impressions of the death, carnage and destruction caused by the enemy…. Today, on Iwo Jima, Vande Hey looked his men in the eyes and delivered the news: they would fly to Japan in the morning as scheduled. His audience cheered, and he continued. The Americans would take sixteen planes per squadron as part of the attack force. That meant ninety-eight pilots would sweep north, under strict radio silence, guarding the bombers. Ten more Mustangs would fly in reserve, circling over the ocean just off the coast and ready to go in over Japan if a plane in the main fleet could not complete the task. The commanding officers looked primarily at pilot experience to determine who would fly first. Those selected would need to be ready to depart at 7:00 A.M.

Saturday, April 7, 1945 WHEN THE CREST OF THE ORANGE SUN BROKE over the Pacific at 5:22 A.M. on April 7, Jerry was up, wired, and ready to get into the air. In a war zone, the dawn always brought a measure of uncertainty. There could be bigger days to follow, or this could be his last day on earth. Even at twenty-one, Jerry had learned that no man could totally control his destiny. A million things could go wrong today: mechanical failure, bad weather, antiaircraft fire, a sudden influx of enemy forces with no escape route for the Dorrie R [his Mustang] and her companions….

Vande Hey started to read the names of those men, who, whether they lived or died, were about to become part of history. “Tapp.” “Roseberry.” “Yellin.” At the sound of his name, Jerry felt a surge of energy. He was going to war against the heart of Japan. He listened carefully to the preflight briefing from the intelligence officer: once reaching the Japanese coastline with the B-29s, the Mustangs would climb to thirty thousand feet. Their job would be to watch the bombers topside. If a Japanese plane tried to climb high and take out one of the B-29s from above, the Japanese pilots would have to deal with the American guard first.

The three hundred B-29 bombers that Jerry and his fighter group were going to protect today were already in the air, having taken off in the dark hours of the morning from Saipan. Jerry headed over to the Quonset hut for the final briefing: while the main force of B-29s would bomb the aircraft factories, another handful of B-29s and P-61s [Northrop Black Widow night fighters] would fly alongside the P-51s to Japan, solely for the purpose of providing navigation for the P-51s (both the P-61s and the B29s had radar/tracking systems). That smaller group of B-29s would not fly over Japan; rather, they would remain offshore while the invasion force carried out its strikes, then help navigate the fighters back to Iwo Jima once the bombing mission was complete. Also, in addition to the backup Mustangs, eight more P-51s

It would be the mission of a lifetime. Now, if only he could manage a good night’s sleep.

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AMERICA IN WWII 15

Target :Tokyo by Don Brown and Jerry Yellin

would provide “top cover” for the rescue U.S. submarine below, as well as the B-29 navigators at the rally point just off Japan. The backup planes not called on for the attack over Japan would then turn back to Iwo Jima, accompanied by the P-61s. Before long, Jerry was strapped into the cockpit of the Dorrie R as it sat on the airfield. He glanced out at the other Mustangs, all awaiting the go signal. The B-29s were approaching, the pilots knew, somewhere in the southern skies. And soon they appeared….

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ERRY LOOKED DOWN AT HIS GROUNDS CREWMEN .

Thumbs up were exchanged, and then at 7:00 A.M. precisely came the signal for the planes to start their engines. Jerry fired up the Dorrie R, and the hum of her seventeen-hundred-horsepower engine joined the roaring chorus filling the air. The sound grew into a thunder so great that it shook the ground. The ground controllers began to motion the pilots into a takeoff position. One by one, the P51s began rushing down the runway and lifting into the morning sky. Picking up more speed and slicing through a slight layer of ground fog, the wheels of the Dorrie R broke contact with the earth. The end of Airfield No. 1 disappeared under her wings, and the Mustang nosed upward. A moment later, Jerry pulled her out of the takeoff line and over the ocean, the distinctive granite features of Mount Suribachi now down to his right. He swung the Dorrie R around and lined up in the “four finger” formation, assuming the “wingman”

position with the Yellow Flight. The first leg of the flight plan called for a rendezvous with the B-29s over Kita Iwo Jima, or “North Sulfur Island”—the small, jagged area of about two square miles located approximately fifty miles north of Iwo Jima. Once this had been accomplished, the fleet turned toward Tokyo. Because of the long range of the mission, the Mustangs were carrying two supplemental 110-gallon fuel tanks, one under each wing, enough fuel for the initial flight to Japan. As the Japanese coastline came into sight, each P-51 hit a switch that dropped the spent fuel tanks into the bay. The tanks had served their purpose; now, the planes needed to lighten their load for the upcoming dogfight with enemy aircraft. The planes began crossing Suruga Bay, one of the two great inland bays in the Americans’ flight path. To the west of the bay was the Japanese mainland. Off to the north, Jerry witnessed, for the first time, a landmark he’d seen so often in pictures: the great, snow-capped peak of Mount Fuji, looming twelve thousand feet into the sky. He remembered the intelligence officer’s briefing from the previous morning: “When you fly across Suruga Bay, focus your gun cameras on the tip of Mount Fuji. In that way, we will be able to evaluate your film when you fire your guns at the enemy.” Jerry trained his .50-caliber guns on the mountain, and felt a sense of excitement, knowing that the city of Tokyo awaited just seventy miles beyond. On a clear day, they said, that great snowcapped mountain could easily be seen from the Japanese capital city.

B-29s fly past Mount Fuji on the way to bombing Japan (above). Jerry Yellin had seen the towering 12,000-foot, snow-capped mountain many times in pictures. April 7, 1945, was the first time he saw it in person, from the cockpit of his Dorrie R, flying with a purpose like these Mustang fighters (opposite) that a US military photographer artfully captured 700 miles off Iwo Jima that year. 16 AMERICA IN WWII

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Target :Tokyo by Don Brown and Jerry Yellin The Americans’ flight path would take them near some of Japan’s most populated areas: the neck of the Izu Peninsula (between Suruga Bay and Sagami Bay), past the Yokosuka peninsula (between Sagami Bay and Tokyo Bay), and then, once they crossed the Tokyo Bay, the land surrounding Tokyo, and the city itself. The projected time over the target, if all went well, was estimated to be about fifteen minutes. However, no one expected the Japanese to wait until the planes were over their target before striking.

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Y DESIGN, THE SEVENTY-EIGHTH FIGHTER SQUADRON flew in the right front quarter of the Americans’ formation as they soared closer to Tokyo. The prime position was largely due to Vande Hey’s and Jim Tapp’s reputations as pilots; General Moore knew that they would make a formidable “onetwo” punch, and based on military intelligence, the general believed that the Japanese had no pilots who could match them. The spot in the formation meant the Seventy-Eighth would be the first to fly over Japan; it also meant they might catch the first waves of Japanese Zeros awaiting the American aircraft. The American command, frankly, hoped that the Japanese planes would come out and fight. An experienced Mustang pilot would trump an experienced Zero pilot. Nearly four years after Pearl Harbor, the Americans had the superior fighter planes. Nothing in the world could trump the P-51 Mustang. If the Zeros came out en masse, perhaps the P-51s could inflict significant damage to the Japanese air defenses in one mission. At 10:20 A.M., as the Americans flew over the waters of Suruga Bay, the first enemy fighter appeared. The Ki-44 Shoki, referred to as a “Tojo” Fighter, approached quickly from the west, flying in on a hostile vector from the Japanese mainland. Its target was the American B-29s. The heavily armed Tojo carried four 12.7millimeter machine guns (some Tojos also had two twenty-millimeter cannons). If it got a clear shot at a B-29, its guns were lethal. In addition, the plane’s agility made it a dangerous threat to American bombers. The question mark when facing these war machines, however, was the competency of the Japanese pilots. Since 1942, the Japanese airmen had taken a pounding when going up against the air defense of the U.S. Marines and the pilots of the U.S. Navy. Beginning with the battle of Midway [in June 1942], when the outnumbered U.S. Navy struck a severe blow against the Japanese by sinking all four aircraft carriers in the Japanese task force, Japan suffered a loss from which she would never recover. U.S. military intelligence believed that many of Japan’s better and more experienced pilots had been killed earlier in the war and that the P-51s today would be facing less experienced pilots compared, for example, to those who had attacked Pearl Harbor. Now the Blue Flight of the Forty-Sixth Fighter Squadron broke

off and gave chase to the Tojo, becoming the first American squadron to open fire on the Japanese over Japan. The American quartet scored multiple hits against the outnumbered enemy aircraft, and watched as the Japanese fighter veered away. Within minutes, however, a Japanese Ki-45 Toryu “Dragon Slayer” managed to penetrate too close into the Americans’ air space. The tip of the American air armada had flown within five minutes of Tokyo when something told Major John Piper, the commanding officer of the Forty-Seventh squadron, to look overhead. Piper spotted the Dragon Slayer about a thousand feet above the American planes, ready to strike. The aircraft—a twin-engine, heavily armed, longrange fighter—was one of Japan’s best weapons against the B-29. The Americans had to get the Dragon Slayer out of there. Piper pulled up on his stick, and the other three planes in his Red Flight broke into a pursuit maneuver. The Dragon Slayer, outnumbered four to one, would have nothing of it. As soon as the Mustangs locked in, the Dragon Slayer initiated a steep dive, rushing toward the waters of the bay. Piper and his men had to make a quick decision: either they chase the Ki-45 all the way down to the water, and probably catch and destroy him, or they remain on post at eighteen thousand feet to continue protecting the B-29s. With the Dragon Slayer now out of play, Piper’s squadron chose to resume their defensive position guarding the B-29s. As much as Piper wanted to give chase, he had to keep his eye on the ball. He and his men were there, first and foremost, to protect bombers. The pattern repeated as the Americans crossed Suruga Bay: more interceptors appeared, only to be taken down by the P-51s. Meanwhile, the men of the SeventyEighth, despite their prominent position, had yet to be challenged by the Japanese. By 10:30 A.M., they had crossed over from Suruga Bay to Sagami Bay. As the planes made landfall for the final phase before the attack, Japanese antiaircraft fire picked up considerably. Down below and out front, the sky began to fill with waves of black streaks and smoke rising from the ground. Over in Yellow Flight, Jerry kept his hands on his yoke and eyes peeled on the horizon for incoming enemy craft. Below, the industrial area of the Nakajima Aircraft engine factories came into view. The sight from the late morning sky resembled the photographs the pilots had studied in their intelligence briefings. From the air, the buildings spread over several acres, a labyrinth of squares and rectangles rising from the ground. Within minutes, the men of the Seventy-Eighth had led the bombers over their targets, and now, from their position high above, they held the best vantage point in the world for watching the bombers do their work. “I saw little dots of light spring from the ground as the bombs exploded,” Jerry wrote later. “Wave after wave of bombers dropped their cargo inside the squares of fire on the ground. We fighter pilots were in a constant state of alert; Japanese fighters

Above: A Japanese “Tony” fighter. 78th Fighter Squadron pilot Jim Tapp shot down a Tony that was attacking B-29s on April 7. Above, top: A Japanese “Dinah” reconnaissance plane. Shortly after Tapp hit his Tony, 78th commander Jim Vande Hey took out a Dinah. 18 AMERICA IN WWII

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A couple dozen Mustang fighters based on Iwo Jima do what Mustangs did often and well during World War II: escort B-29s over the waters of the Pacific. Only one B-29 appears in this frame, at the very top.

An aerial view of the Nakajima Aircraft Engine Factory, still smoking from the April 7 bombing, is marked to pinpoint various locations: A. administrative headquarters, B. machine shops, C. engine assembly areas, D. testing cells, E. offices and various shops, F: foundry (most likely).

were all over the sky and the aerial battles between us were fierce. We had to protect our ‘Big Brothers’—the B-29s—as they droned on and on over the target. When I had a chance to look down, I could see fires raging. All of the city, it seemed, was on fire.”

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B-29 S OPENED FIRE , Tapp spotted yet another Dragon Slayer nearby, vectoring into attack mode—the Seventy-Eighth’s first opportunity for engagement. Tapp broke off in pursuit. Maneuvering his Mustang into close range, Tapp opened fire, his bullets ripping into the enemy aircraft’s engine. Tapp’s wingman, Lieutenant [Phil] Maher, also opened fire, but it wasn’t clear if he scored a hit. Tapp, meanwhile, knew his fire had struck the plane, but didn’t know if he’d destroyed it. Having chased the Dragon Slayer out of the way, he and Maher pulled back up to twenty thousand feet to resume their protective position of the bombers. A second threat swooped in, however, this time a Kawasaki single-engine Ki-61 Hein, identified by the U.S. Air Force as a “Tony.” Externally, the Tony presented a long, sleek-looking design, with the cockpit set well behind the engine in the centerforward position. Faster and more maneuverable than the twinengine Dragon Slayer, the Tony—which looked almost like the P51s—could strike with quick and lethal effectiveness. Tapp had to take it out or risk losing a slew of bombers. The pilot pushed down on his plane’s throttle to close the gap between the two aircraft, then pulled back to avoid overflying the target. After closing within a thousand feet of the Tony, Tapp UST AS THE

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opened fire. The enemy craft burst into flames, and Tapp pulled away. It was his first sure shoot-down—known as a “kill” in military aviation—of the day. The pilot turned around a second later and saw the Japanese pilot bail out, his parachute deploying and his body dangling down below. There was no rest, however, for the American pilot. Tapp noticed a B-29 under fire by an unidentified enemy fighter attacking the bomber from the rear. He tightened his circle, and getting an angle on the Japanese fighter, opened fire. The enemy aircraft burst into flames, began spinning out of control, and fell to earth. Kill number two. The Japanese planes were everywhere, it seemed. Six more (this time, single-engine fighters) approached. Tapp bore down on one of them and opened fire again. A second later, the Japanese plane broke up, its wing splintering off, both the plane and wing soon crashing below. It marked the third plane Tapp had downed within minutes. He also actually fired at a fourth plane and struck it but hadn’t realized it had been shot down. He was later given credit for the kill after other pilots reported it. Overall, his heroism that day would go down as one of the greatest feats in the history of the Air Force. The B-29s lingered for a total of forty-five minutes over Tokyo, unloading their fire on the Nakajima Aircraft Engine Factory and other targets and reducing them to seas of burning rubble. As always, however, there was a cost: “The fighting and the flak was intense,” Jerry described later. “At one point I saw one of our B29s get hit, and the right wing fell off. The plane burst into flames,

Target :Tokyo by Don Brown and Jerry Yellin and then, as if it was all being photographed in slow motion, one Captain Ayers was more fortunate than Anderson—he bailed out parachute came out, then a second, and a third; then the huge, near the U.S. Navy destroyer on watch in waters just north of Iwo lumbering plane just keeled over like a ship in the water, went into Jima and was picked up by a U.S. Navy search-and-rescue team. a spin, and fell from the sky. Of the twelve crew members on Meanwhile, Jerry and the rest of the Seventy-Eighth landed back at board, only three had bailed out.” Iwo Jima without losing a single plane from their squadron. As their bombing on Tokyo concluded, the B-29s and their PLater that evening, after hitting the hot tubs and grabbing a hot 51 escorts began turning south for the flight back to Iwo Jima. meal, Jerry and his squadron mates attended the post mission Halfway between Tokyo and Mount Fuji, a call came in over the intelligence de-briefing in the squadron Quonset hut. There, they radio from one of the B-29s. learned that only three B-29s had been lost. By contrast, at least “Bushmaster Leader! We got an inbound bogey approaching twenty-one Japanese fighter aircraft had been shot out of the skies from 12 o’clock high! Repeat, inbound bogey at 12 o’clock high!” over the Japanese mainland, and the B-29s had unloaded tons of The phrase “12 o’clock high” was used among American milideadly and destructive fire on Japanese ground targets. tary aviation personnel to describe the location of attacking All in all, the first joint long-range mission against the Japanese enemy aircraft based on the imagery of a clock face. The homeland had been a smashing success, with the American bomber was considered the center; the term “high” pilots inflicting far more damage on the enemy than meant above the bomber, while “level” meant they had suffered. Eventually, the air raid of April at the same altitude and “low” meant the 7 would be remembered as the greatest accomenemy was below the bomber. Enemy fightplishment in the history of the Seventh Fighter er pilots preferred this “12 o’clock high” Command. Just as their fellow patriots had location, because the target aircraft had done at Normandy, these pilots had taken difficulty spotting the attacking fighter, the fight directly to the shores of the enemy which was in the bomber’s “blind spot.” under heavy fire. Many of the men also For the aggressor, this proved the best enjoyed a bit of personal satisfaction that position from which to get a shot at the the raid had come on April 7, subtle venbomber’s wings and engines. geance for what the Japanese had inflicted Vande Hey looked up through the top on December 7, 1941, at Pearl Harbor. of the Mustang’s glass cockpit into the blue But the stubborn Japanese were far from skies above. Sure enough, the twin-engine finished. Brainwashed into a kamikaze menJapanese Ki-45 “Dragon Slayer” was about tality and prepared to commit suicide for to take a shot at the B-29. their emperor, they refused to surrender, and Vande Hey pulled back on the stick of his remained capable of dealing a deadly blow A gripping action photo of a B-29 hit by plane, Jeanne VII, and put it in a climb, to the Americans. enemy fire over Japan during a June 26, bringing the Dragon Slayer into his gun This would be a long air-war of attrition, 1945, bombing run. It was the responsights. He fired a quick burst from his .50the American intelligence officers told their sibility of Mustangs and other fighters caliber, striking the aircraft and sending it pilots that night, followed by a dreaded to protect lumbering heavy bombers from enemy attack during missions. into an evasive maneuver. Not a shootinvasion of the Japanese homeland itself. Usually they succeeded. down, but good enough for the time being. For Jerry and the men of the SeventyThe threat, at least, had been removed. Eighth, the real war was just beginning. A minute later, he spotted a twin-engine Japanese Ki-46 Mortal danger, as always, loomed over the horizon. “Dinah” moving in. It made a diving turn to the right, again, targeting the American bombers. ERRY YELLIN’S WWII SERVICE ended on August 14, 1945, Vande Hey set an immediate intercept course, closed on the when he unknowingly flew the last combat mission of the enemy, and opened fire. This time, his bullets sprayed into the war. As he and his wingman, Second Lieutenant Phil engine and right wing of the enemy aircraft. Debris flew off the Schlamberg, took off to bomb Tokyo, they knew the end of the plane, and the Dinah burst into flames. Vande Hey quickly broke war was imminent. As they approached their target zone, the war off to avoid a mid-air collision with the crippled fighter. Jerry, was officially declared over. But word did not reach Schlamberg soaring several hundred feet above with the Yellow Flight, saw the in time. He never got to celebrate the victory over Japan with his Dinah fall to the earth. The shoot-down of the Dinah marked comrades. His plane disappeared and was never found. Vande Hey’s third confirmed kill of the war. After the war, Yellin met and married Helene Schulman, with The pilot rejoined his squadron, which pushed on toward Iwo whom he raised four sons. He had lost many friends in combat Jima. Remarkably, the American P-51 pilots’ casualties for their and struggled for decades with post-traumatic stress disorder. A first mission over Japan had been low. One pilot did not return: the P-51 flown by Lieutenant Robert Anderson from the 531st DON BROWN, a former officer of the US Navy Judge Advocate Squadron was spotted by his fellow pilots burning and on a crash General’s Corps, is the author of several novels and two military pattern over Tokyo. Anderson never bailed out and lost his life that history books. The Last Fighter Pilot is based on Brown’s interday. A second P-51, flown by Captain Frank Ayers of the Fortyviews with JERRY YELLIN, who is now 93 years old and has travSeventh Squadron, ran out of fuel on the flight back to Iwo Jima. eled the world speaking about post-traumatic stress disorder.

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Ears on the

World Civilian FCC operatives fought on the front lines of the radio war, catching spies, blocking leaks, directing lost planes, and saving ships from U-boat wolves.

by Leo Caisse

Photo: The spy-busters of the FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division (RID) put their radio listening capabilities to work intercepting transmissions from enemy agents at home and overseas. They even took their work on the road, using mobile listening posts like this one—cars crammed with direction-finding equipment—to pinpoint the sources of illegal radio signals. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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Ears on the World

CHOPMIST HILL in Scituate, Rhode Island, was the center of the world. That’s what the Federal Communications Commission discovered in 1941. The hill’s geographic and atmospheric conditions were extremely favorable for radio reception. Receivers could grab wireless signals not only from the entire United States but from much of the world. With America on the verge of joining a sprawling global war, this was good news, especially for the FCC’s hardworking Radio Intelligence Division. Chopmist Hill would become the most productive listening post for the men of this little-known civilian agency, whose work helped clinch victory for the United States and her allies. From large but hidden radio listening posts—not only on Chopmist Hill but also in Maine, New York, Maryland, Florida, and Washington State—the FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division (RID) saved lives, uncovered German spies and saboteurs, and more. Future FCC Commissioner George Sterling, the RID’s wartime director, described his radio surveillance personnel as “patrolmen of the ether.” RID personnel aided lost airplanes—more than 600 by Sterling’s count—locating and redirecting them by locking onto their radio signals. They monitored foreign radio stations for information, and intercepted enemy agents’ secret transmissions to their bases and submarines. They built radio equipment for Office of Strategic Services operatives and taught them how to use it. They patrolled radio signals on the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, as well as on the Alaskan coast. They even discovered a secret German weather station in Greenland, enabling the US Coast Guard to destroy it. Amazingly, from stateside facilities, RID aided Philippine guerrilla operations. At the end of the Pacific war, it was a RID outpost that spent “a tense thirty-seven hours establishing initial contact between the Japanese and General [Douglas] MacArthur [Allied Supreme Commander, Southwest Pacific Area], eventually succeeding, and setting the foundation for the Japanese surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri,” according to Susan Brinson of Auburn University, in her article, “Politics and Defense: The FCC’s RID, 1940–1947” (published in the Journal of Radio and Audio Media, May 2009).

ALL pHOTOS THIS STORy: NATIONAL ARCHIVES

T TURNED OUT THAT

More than Eavesdroppers TO ACCOMPLISH THE RID’S MAIN MISSIONS of intercepting enemy transmissions and preventing America’s airwaves from leaking

by Leo Caisse

secrets to the enemy, the agency eventually established 12 primary monitoring stations (of which Chopmist Hill was the most productive), 60 substations, and 90 mobile units in the US, Alaska, Hawaii, and Puerto Rico. At its peak, RID employed 893 people. Primary monitoring stations bristled with poles and wires. There were rhombic antennas: wires strung on poles above the ground in the shape of a rhombus, or diamond. There were four-pronged Adcock radio direction finders, which could be rotated in order to home in on a shortwave signal and get a geographical fix on its source. Indoors, the primary stations had state-of-the-art receiving and recording equipment manned by highly trained operators. The RID had mobile units, too—automobiles crammed with radio equipment, each with a surveillance man at its controls. These were able to follow up on a received signal, getting closer to pinpoint its source. The units relied on single-loop antennas, simple receivers based on a circle of wire or other conductive material. For even closer investigation, the agency developed a handheld unit called the Snifter. This device was so sensitive that a radioman could detect not just the building but the room from which a signal was emanating. On average, the radio intelligence men pinpointed, or fixed, more than 800 locations each month. It was quite an accomplishment, considering that each fix required operators to collect 6,000 bearings. But the intensive effort paid off. Near the war’s end, SS Major Wilhelm Höttl, the Third Reich’s acting intelligence and counterespionage chief for Central and Southeast Europe, surrendered to US forces. Under interrogation by US Third Army officials in June 1945, he revealed that German foreign intelligence “had not been able to establish a single wireless connection in either the US or England.” And in the only public account of the RID and its work, declassified by the CIA in 1994, Sterling commented that when Japanese agents had sought permission from their controllers to set up radio links, they were denied because their superiors knew “the FCC would nab them as soon as they went on the air.” Shutting Down Axis Radio AS EARLY AS 1940, there were signs that Germany was trying to create a spy organization in Central and South America. That October, the RID station in Tampa, Florida, picked up maritime radio signals and narrowed them down to small vessels of the Gough Brothers line, operating out of British Honduras. Further investigation suggested these vessels were carrying fuel to German

Above: The RID had listening posts with powerful equipment that could home in on illicit radio signals, even distant ones. Any one of these might be from a spy. One of the RID’s most reliable tools was the Adcock direction finder, like this one at a stateside listening post. Opposite, top: Technicians scan the airwaves at an RID listening post. Opposite, center: In their secret posts, the RID men were out of sight and out of mind—except in the radio and technology communities, where they were heroes featured in advertising. 24 AMERICA IN WWII

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U-boats operating in the Gulf of Mexico and passing information to them. A sting operation snared a total of 20 men, including principal owner George Gough. They remained incarcerated until April 1943, when authorities claimed evidence was insufficient for conviction. The persistent problem of Axis espionage in Latin America led to the formation of the multinational Emergency Advisory Committee for Political Defense, created in early 1942 by the United States and several Central and South American states. The committee’s job was to give concrete suggestions for rooting out Axis spies and infiltrators in the Americas, and for keeping them out. One suggestion involved ferreting out radio spies. To assist with that task, and to help Latin American countries set up their own monitoring networks, the FCC sent some of its top monitoring officers south of the border. They were successful everywhere except Argentina, which was officially neutral in the war and did not participate in the emergency advisory committee’s work. Spies who were pushed out of other South American countries found a safe base in Argentina, where even commercial radio transmitters were sending vital information to Axis Japan, Italy, and Germany. The RID men tried to shut down enemy radio transmissions there, but the Argentine government

became so hostile that the FCC had to withdraw the agents for their own safety. The Hill with Ears AMONG ALL THE RID LOCATIONS, in Latin America and in the States, Chopmist Hill was the top facility for radio interception. The site first came to the FCC’s attention thanks to Thomas B. Cave, a RID technician. Cave was looking for the best spot to set up a listening post to detect illegal private and commercial radio transmissions, stopping lawbreakers from getting around FCC licensing regulations. He had already settled on a spot in Greenville, Rhode Island, when he discovered Chopmist Hill in Scituate. Conditions there were strangely ideal for receiving radio traffic from a large portion of the globe. Beyond its value for simple rule enforcement, Chopmist Hill was the perfect global listening post for a nation inevitably headed into a world war. Cave moved his operations there in March 1941. Once the listening post was fully up and running, Cave claimed, he would be able to zero in on the location of any radio transmission within 15 minutes. Skeptical army brass tested Cave’s assertions, secretly setting up an impromptu station and transmitting a signal. It took Cave and his crew 7 minutes to notice the signal and identify its source as the Pentagon. OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 25

The U.N. in Rhode Island—Almost

Thomas Cave, who set up the Chopmist Hill post, takes a turn listening. After the war, he hosted a committee investigating Chopmist as a possible site for UN headquarters.

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he United Nations, the world organization designed to prevent future world wars and promote peace and cooperation between countries, was a direct outcome of World War II. And with the signing of its charter in San Francisco in October 1945, just a month after the war’s conclusion, it was ready to get down to work. One of the first orders of business: establishing a headquarters. But where? For a fleeting moment, Chopmist Hill and its surrounding area in Scituate, Rhode Island, was a contender. Stoyan Gavrilovic, head of Yugoslavia’s UN delegation and chairman of the UN Committee on Site, visited the area. The Providence Journal reported on the visit on January 26, 1946, in an article titled “Chopmist Hill District is rated One of Top Potential Locations for UNO Quarters by Committee.” Numerous locations across the US were under consideration, amid substantial lobbying from each. Scituate councilman George Matteson convinced his fellow council members to put their town forward as a candidate. The UN committee received the suggestion with interest, and Gavrilovic and other members visited to take a look at Chopmist Hill and its surroundings. According the Providence Journal article, Thomas Cave, head of the FCC Radio Intelligence Division listening post atop the hill, led Gavrilovic and his party on a tour of the site. From atop a fire lookout tower, Cave showed the committee members a panoramic view of the area and indicated where an airport could be built. Inside the RID’s nerve center within the site’s farmhouse, the committee learned more about the hill’s astounding international radio capabilities, which were part of its appeal as a possible world headquarters. At the tour’s end, Gavrilovic told reporters, “This is a possible site. It meets most of the technical points. It is good.” Alas, not Chopmist Hill and Scituate, but Turtle Bay in New York City won the distinction of hosting the UN headquarters, thanks in part to John D. Rockefeller’s offer to donate the price of a large parcel of land along Manhattan’s East River. Otherwise, Rhode Island might today be playing host to UN representatives from around the globe. 26 AMERICA IN WWII

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What Cave had discovered up on 731-foot-tall Chopmist Hill was a quirk of nature. So good was the hill’s receiving capability that line-of-sight mobile communications, and low-frequency signals that were meant to travel just a few hundred miles, bounced off the atmosphere and straight down to Chopmist Hill. His post could receive radio transmissions from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and South America. Cave later said it could even pick up tank-to-tank transmissions from German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Corps in North Africa. These were forwarded to the British commander in the area, General Bernard Montgomery. A 40-member team under Cave set up the top-secret listening post in a leased 14-room farmhouse. The complex was surrounded by fences and armed guards, with its own blockhouse, barracks, and generator. No one could approach or enter without a state police escort. The Chopmist station’s ears were antennas—more than 16 miles of them. They were strung around telephone poles set deep in the ground so they wouldn’t poke up above the tree line and attract attention. The site also had two directional antennas. To improve reception, Cave had to call the local utility company, Narragansett Electric, to send out foreman Charlie Weinert to move the antenna poles, which were sunk nine feet into the ground. Sometimes a move was just a few feet. Cave later said, “Weinert thought I was clean crazy.” After the war was over and the station was declassified, Cave told Weinert, “Every time you moved those poles you were following Rommel as he was backing up across North Africa.” Weinert reportedly shot back, “Why, if I had known that, I’d have dug poles all the way to Cairo.” So effective was the secrecy on Chopmist Hill that the listening post’s very existence was revealed to the public only after the end of hostilities. Looking back on the war years, Sterling commented, “Many a night I wondered if everyone at the station would get home safely. If the enemy had known how we were recording messages sent between agents right in Germany, they would have eliminated the Scituate Station and everyone in it, provided they could.” The Airwave Harvest AT CHOPMIST AND ELSEWHERE, much of what the RID intercepted was encrypted or in non-English languages. These messages were recorded and forwarded to the Signal Security Agency in Washington, DC, for deciphering or translation. How some transmissions got deciphered—specifically, messages encrypted with Nazi Germany’s top-secret Enigma code—remains a mystery. “Was there a twin Ultra machine [British military intelligence’s ultra-secret decryption computer] in Washington to which Scituate fed…?” asks Paul Eno, author of the 2005 book Rhode Island: A Genial History. “If not, how were secret interceptions in the secret German code translated?” The answer may have to wait until the RID’s wartime files are declassified in 2049. One of the seemingly mundane tasks assigned to the Chopmist Hill unit was to home in on German weather reports from Central Europe. These were forwarded to the British bomber command and, once the United States joined the war, to US Army Air Forces commands based in England. The reports were essential for planning air raids over Axis targets. On one occasion, when a USO plane carrying American actress Kay Francis got lost, the Chopmist Hill listening post came to the

Ears on the World rescue by picking up the pilot’s radio transmissions, pinpointing his location, and guiding him to safety. On another occasion the station saved many American lives aboard the British ocean liner Queen Mary, then serving as a wartime troop transport ship, ferrying US troops to fight in Europe. While the ship was docked in Rio de Janeiro for fuel and supplies in March 1942, local German spies somehow learned her future course and alerted their superiors. Fortunately, operators on Chopmist Hill intercepted the message. The Queen Mary’s captain changed course, avoiding the wolf pack of German U-boats that was lying in wait and saving the lives of some 14,000 GIs on board.

by Leo Caisse

Chopmist Hill Revealed SOON AFTER THE WAR, the FCC gave agent Cave permission to grant an interview to the Providence Journal revealing the Chopmist Hill station’s existence, its purpose, and some of its wartime successes. The FCC maintained a station there until 1950 with a skeleton crew to fulfill the original purpose of catching unlicensed radio transmitters. Rhode Island’s Civil Preparedness Division then took over the facility as its headquarters. In 1965 the hilltop site reverted back into private hands. One Frederick Leeder purchased it at auction in 1968; by then, a scant 5 acres of the original 183

Left: The most productive listening post was on Chopmist Hill in Scituate, Rhode Island, where these operators are at work. Chopmist picked up signals from around the world, intercepting intelligence that saved Allied lives. Right: Equipment like this lined the walls at Chopmist.

On yet another occasion, a plane carrying wounded men home to the States from Europe crash-landed in Canada’s far-northern Labrador province, so close to the magnetic North Pole that getting an accurate fix on the plane’s exact location was difficult. But the Chopmist Hill team did it, and rescue operations got underway. Even then it took three months to get all the plane’s passengers to safety.

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N A 1981 INTERVIEW quoted in Eno’s book, Sterling claimed Chopmist managed to pick up Japanese radio traffic before the December 1941 raid on Pearl Harbor. The Rhode Island site also detected signals from radio transmitters on incendiary balloon bombs that the Japanese had launched into the jet stream to float across the Pacific and explode in America and Canada. Each bomb-laden, hydrogen-filled balloon emitted a tracking signal so the Japanese could follow its progress. The Chopmist Hill listeners forwarded balloons’ locations to West Coast fighter squadrons, which attempted to intercept and shoot down the floating bombs before they did any harm. (Most of the fighters’ efforts were in vain. They managed to shoot down less than 20 of the more than 9,000 that were launched. Fortunately, few of the balloons that reached inland North America exploded, and only one of those caused casualties, killing a pregnant women and five children on a Sunday school outing in Oregon.)

remained. As Leeder learned about the property’s history, he and others tried in vain to get the site listed on the National Register of Historic Places. It was rejected because the FCC equipment had been removed, so the site did not meet the criterion of substantial conformity to how it looked during its period of historic activity. Why isn’t Chopmist Hill spiked with surveillance antennas today? The answer is simple: change. What was once a rural, backcountry location has grown immensely since 1945. Houses, factories, and other buildings interfere with radio reception. The feats performed there in the past cannot be replicated. In an interview shortly before his death, Cave told Eno, “It was not the receptivity of the location, but the advanced secret radio equipment used there that made Chopmist Hill’s place in history.” He added, “Though reception was remarkably good, it was 99 percent knowhow that created such a success between 1941 and 1945.” Maybe. In 2049, perhaps we’ll know the whole story of Chopmist Hill, the FCC’s Radio Intelligence Division, and their role in winning World War II. A LEO CAISSE is a third-generation Rhode Islander. His research for this piece included articles published in the Providence Journal soon after the war. OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 27

INSIDE THE MIND To American sailors, kamikazes were inhuman fanatics, eager to throw their lives away. The truth about Japan’s suicide attackers, their motives, and their feelings was more complicated.

by Robert L. Willett

OF THE KAMIKAZE

Photo: Japanese Navy Special Attack Unit pilots—kamikazes—clutch samurai swords and present stoic faces for their final photo. Wearing full flight gear, with Rising Sun flags on their sleeves and inscribed ribbons tied to their harnesses, they are about to take off and attempt to crash their bomb-laden planes into US ships. Most kamikazes seemed to believe it was their duty to fulfill their suicide missions, but they expressed a wide range of feelings about their sacrifice, and about dying young. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

ALL pHOTOS THIS STORy (uNLESS OTHERwISE NOTEd): NATIONAL ARCHIVES

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INSIDE THE MIND OF THE KAMIKAZE

ECOND L IEUTENANT S HINYA S HIBATA SAW the coastline of Kyushu, Japan’s southernmost island, recede and gradually disappear behind him on April 8, 1945. He had taken off from his base at Chiran, near Kyushu’s southern tip, on a one-way trip to Okinawa. The force in which Shibata served—the Special Attack Unit, or Tokubetsu Kogekitai (Tokko Tai for short)—was called “Special” because, unlike other military units, it made no distinction between its fighting men and their weapons. The Tokko Tai considered its planes to be self-propelled missiles, not merely vehicles for delivering bombs. And the Tokko men were the missiles’ onboard guidance systems, steering their plane-bombs down to their targets and dying in the fiery result. Shibata was one of these Tokko pilots—a kamikaze. When he lifted off from Chiran that Sunday in April, his assignment was to fly 460-plus miles to Okinawa in the Ryukyu Islands and slam his plane into one of the ships in the American invasion fleet there, dying in the process. Shibata understood this. It was his mission, and he was determined to complete it. His government and his commanders had determined that such sacrifice was necessary to save his country from an American invasion that would surely be a horrific spree of murder, rape, pillage, and unbearable humiliation. On the other end of Shibata’s flight plan, aboard the American ships off Okinawa, the kamikazes and their grim mission evoked a mix of terror, anger, and bafflement. “They had one thing in mind, and that was to crash into our ships, bombs and all,” Seaman First Class James Fahey wrote in his diary after a kamikaze struck his ship, the light cruiser USS Montpelier (CL-57), on November 27, 1944, during the Battle of Leyte Gulf. “You have to blow them up; to damage them doesn’t mean much.” Sailors, forced to keep vigil day and night lest a kamikaze get past their anti-aircraft guns, viewed the suicide pilots as faceless fanatics, deadly nuisances that had to be blasted out of the sky. To the American mind, it was inconceivable that young men would strap themselves into planes packed with fuel and explosives and hurl themselves into an enemy vessel. The kamikazes—and the nation that so willingly sacrificed them—seemed to love death and have no regard for human life.

A Loaded Word AMERICANS ATTACHED DISGUST AND HORROR to the word kamikaze. In Japan, it brought to mind courage, patriotism, and selfless sacrifice for the homeland. The term was centuries old, originating

by Robert L. Willett

when powerful typhoons saved the island nation from Mongol sea invasions under Kublai Khan in 1274 and 1281, smashing the enemy fleets and sparing the Japanese from conquest and subjugation. The acts of nature were seen as heavenly intervention. The typhoons were kamikaze, literally “god wind,” “spirit wind,” or “divine wind.” The Imperial Japanese Navy’s Divine Wind Special Attack Units, which attempted to ram Allied warships using manned motorboats loaded with explosives, made reference to this historic deliverance in their very name, and the wartime Japanese press referred to the Tokko Tai as kamikaze. There had been occasional, individual suicide attacks on all sides since the early engagements of the Pacific war, carried out on the spur of the moment by pilots who were mortally wounded or whose aircraft were hopelessly damaged. But Japan’s Special Attack Units, formed in October 1944 after its military forces had suffered crippling setbacks, were the first military organizations specifically charged with carrying out planned, organized suicide missions. By early 1945, they were an accepted everyday component of Japanese strategy, as witnessed by a slogan General Mitsuru Ushijima wrote for his increasingly beleaguered 32nd Army on Okinawa: “One plane for one warship, one boat for one ship, one man for ten of the enemy or one tank.” It was Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi, commander of the Japanese navy’s 1st Air Fleet in the Philippines, who formally proposed the official implementation of the suicide air tactic that Ushijima described in the first line of his slogan. Onishi brought up the matter in a general staff meeting outside Manila on October 19, 1944. “In my opinion, there is only one way of assuring that our meager strength will be effective to a maximum degree,” he said. “That is to organize suicide attack units composed of A6M Zero fighters armed with 250-kilogram bombs, with each plane to crash-dive into an enemy carrier.” With that, the Special Attack Units were born. Onishi’s plan went into effect during the Battle of Leyte Gulf, off the Philippines. On October 25, 1944, after a pep talk from Onishi, aerial kamikazes from the new Shikishima Special Attack Unit took off from a base near Manila. At 10:47 A.M., they swarmed the American Task Unit 77.4.3, known as Taffy 3, damaging five of its six escort carriers. USS St. Lo (CVE-63) got hit hardest, with a Zero fighter crashing on her flight deck. The plane’s 250kg bomb pierced that deck and exploded on the hangar deck below, starting a gasoline fire that detonated bombs and torpedoes. The escort carrier went down in half an hour, the first US ship sunk by a kamikaze. The crew of 889 lost 113 men killed or missing, and some 30 more died later from their injuries.

Above: Dodging anti-aircraft fire to hit a ship required skill and luck. Many kamikazes, lacking both, were downed by ships’ guns. Off the Philippines on November 25, 1944, Lieutenant Yoshinori Yamaguchi’s D4Y3 dive bomber got through to strike carrier USS Essex, leaving 15 men dead, 44 wounded. Opposite: Carrier USS Bunker Hill’s crew reels after two kamikaze hits on May 11, 1945, at Okinawa. 30 AMERICA IN WWII

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The Tokko Tai had scored its first victory, though it was by definition a pyrrhic one. A few months later, on February 21, 1945, kamikazes rained down on a US fleet off Iwo Jima in the Japanese Bonin Islands, sinking the escort carrier USS Bismarck Sea (CVE-95) with a loss of 318 men. Japanese bombs and kamikazes also struck USS Saratoga (CV-3), forcing the carrier to limp away for major repairs, with 123 men dead or missing and 192 injured. Other kamikaze victories off Iwo Jima on February 21 included slight damage to the escort carrier USS Lunga Point (CVE-94) (which shot down three Nakajima B62 torpedo bombers in the attack), an LST (landing ship, tank), and a transport vessel. A Metal Wind Blows at Okinawa THE HIGH POINT OF JAPAN’S KAMIKAZE EFFORT, in terms of sheer volume and raw desperation, came during the Battle of Okinawa,

ing of May 11, 1945. Each of the suicide planes was able to drop its 250kg bomb on Bunker Hill before crashing. Damage was severe, putting Bunker Hill out of action for the rest of the war. The dead numbered 390, and 264 others were wounded. Some 30 destroyers and several other American ships, including battle cruisers, battleships, transports, Liberty and Victory ships, and even the hospital ship USS Comfort (AH-6) (despite its identifying white paint and red crosses), were struck by kamikazes, as were two British aircraft carriers. Most of the suicide attacks that hit home resulted in damage, and several destroyers, cargo ships, transports, and landing vessels were sunk. No Allied carriers sank at Okinawa. (The Bismarck Sea was the last carrier the kamikazes sent to the bottom.) The Tokko attacks off Okinawa did their share of damage and kept American sailors at their battle stations, exhausted and frazzled. But the kamikazes couldn’t stop the inevitable. The bloody

which began on April 1, 1945. The Allies were getting too close to the Japanese homeland, and terror that American boots might soon tramp on Japanese soil was rising. Nearly 1,500 Tokko aircraft, most flying from Kyushu but some coming from Formosa (Japanese-occupied Taiwan), would hurl themselves at the US Fleet off Okinawa before the battle ended nearly two months later. The fleet carrier USS Bunker Hill (CV-17) was the most prominent casualty of the Okinawa blitz. Two Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighters smashed into the carrier within 30 seconds on the morn-

Battle of Okinawa ended with a hard-won Allied victory on June 22. The Japanese homeland was the next and last logical step in the Allies’ island-by-island push across the Pacific. One of the Special Attack Unit flyers sent to attack the US fleet at Okinawa was Second Lieutenant Shibata, who lifted off from Chiran on Kyushu on the battle’s eighth day. Death as a kamikaze was not to be Shibata’s fate, however. Instead, his engine failed and he crash-landed on Kuroshima, a sparsely populated island off Kyushu’s coast. The plane caught fire, and Shibata suffered OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 31

INSIDE THE MIND OF THE KAMIKAZE severe burns before he broke free from the cockpit. The island lacked the medications he needed, but he was alive. And help was on its way, courtesy of another kamikaze. On April 30, Captain Masaya Abe left Chiran on his own death mission to Okinawa. But he too had to make an emergency landing on Kuroshima, where he encountered Shibata. Abe was unhurt and immediately resolved to return to Chiran and carry out his suicide mission. He persuaded a young farmer named Katsumi Yasanuga to row him back to Kagoshima on Kyushu, a 60-mile journey. Before he left, he promised Shibata he would drop medicine from his plane on the way to Okinawa. True to his word, Abe deviated from his planned course on May 4 to drop the life-saving drugs. Shibata lived, but Abe, just 21 years old, died on his suicide mission. Shibata, and the steadfast rower Yasanuga, survived the war.

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ARADOXICALLY, THE PHOTO DISPLAY IS A WALL of smiling faces, despite the fact that death dictates even the order of the pictures, with the first to die displayed first. Most show young men between 18 and 22 years old. The youngest Tokko pilot pictured was one month past his 17th birthday; the oldest was 32. One of the most heart-rending photos shows young Special Attack Unit flyers in full flight gear, gathered around a tiny puppy. The caption notes that two of the pilots were 17 years old, two 18, and one 19. They are laughing and obviously having fun with the puppy. All five perished the next day on suicide missions. In every war, there are men who consciously sacrifice their lives, rolling on a hand grenade to save their buddies, braving withering

fire to rescue wounded comrades, entering burning structures to rescue trapped people. These deeds are done in an instant. The decision is made and the deed is performed. In contrast, kamikaze pilots made their commitments, then waited, sometimes for weeks, before they flew off to meet death. Night after night they lay waiting for sleep, knowing the next day might be their last. The Chiran museum displays beds these flyers slept on just before their deadly flights, and docents comment that many tears were shed on them.

CHIRAN pEACE MuSEuM

Recruited to Die Young IN CHIRAN, WHERE A SPECIAL ATTACK UNIT had its base from March through July 1945, a unique museum offers a rare look at Tokko Tai men like Shibata, Abe, and hundreds of others. The Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots, in the town of Chiran-cho, part of the city of Minamikyushu, Japan, sheds light on who the pilots were, why they did what they did, and how they felt about their sacrifice. Four aircraft similar to the ones typically used by the Chiran base’s kamikazes are on display at the museum, and there are artifacts to see. But the main focus is on the stories of 1,036 army kamikaze aviators who flew from Chiran. Most, though not all, were volunteers; some agreed to Tokko service only under pressure. Some of the Special Attack pilots were experienced air combat veterans, but many were trained to fly just one mission. For each of the featured pilots, the museum displays a photograph and, in many cases, the pilot’s last letter home before his final flight.

by Robert L. Willett

Saying Goodbye IT WAS CUSTOMARY FOR TOKKO PILOTS to write final messages to loved ones before setting out on their missions. These last letters home reveal the pilots’ humanity and their mixed feelings about giving up their lives. Some of the letters displayed at the Chiran museum are stilted and formal, others haunting and uncertain, and still others plucky and humorous. Captain Bunichi Ishikiriyama was 25 years old when he died on April 12, 1945. The night before he crashed he wrote to his parents somewhat stiffly: Dear Mother and Father, I will go as kamikaze at 15:00 tomorrow. I will go in high spirits. I am sure I will be a sincere fighting officer and repay your obligation till now. I will spend my last night with my young men without anxiety. These are the final words which I dedicate to you. Good-bye Twenty-three-year-old Captain Hiroshi Maeda was less certain. “Who will cry for me when I die?” he wondered. Second Lieutenant Torao Kato, just 18 years old, flew out on his terminal flight on May 4, leaving this short letter: Dearest Mother, Please live a long life with full vigor. I will try to destroy a big one. Second Lieutenant Nobuo Aihana died the same day as Maeda, and at the same young age. He had not taken to his stepmother after his mother’s death, but his last message must have eased her heart: Dear Mother, How have you been? I really appreciate you for your kindness. You brought me up from when I was six years old. Though you were a stepmother, there were no scandals around you as usually happened. You cherished and brought me up with love.

Above: Plane trouble forced kamikaze Masaya Abe down on an islet. Returning to Japan for a fresh plane, he finished his mission. Opposite: On Kyushu on May 26, 1945, young 72nd Shinbu Squadron kamikazes play with a puppy. They are (clockwise from center) 17-year-old Yukio Araki (holding puppy), Tsutomo Hayakawa, Kaname Takahashi, Mitsuyoshi Takahashi, and Takamasa Senda. All died the next day. 32 AMERICA IN WWII

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INSIDE THE MIND OF THE KAMIKAZE I appreciate and respect you, Mother. I was happy in my life. I never called you “Mother” till now. I often tried to do so, but…I was a man of weak character. Please forgive me Mother. You may feel very lonely. Now I will call out to you “Mother, Mother, and Mother.” Lieutenant Haruo Ohashi, a former enlisted man turned pilot, was brave and funny. His last message, written the night before his April 1 death, was short: Hey, You, Hellish great King of the Buddhist Hades! Await me, opening your black book. Most young Tokko pilots addressed their final goodbyes to their mothers. Very few wrote to fathers, though some wrote to

by Robert L. Willett

their children, if they had any. One of the most chilling letters at Chiran is from Major Hajime Fujii, a 29-year-old flight instructor who ended up as a kamikaze. His story reveals the almost casual attitude the Japanese had toward suicide at that time. When Fujii’s wife found out he was assigned to a Special Attack Unit, she took her two young daughters and drowned them and herself so her husband wouldn’t have any worries about leaving his family behind in a time of fear and uncertainty. Fujii wrote to his two dead children: It was a day when the cold wind blustered hard. Some lives went out as if they were dew. I have a soft spot for my young children who died with their mother before I die. They must understand my mind, that I throw out my life for the country. Moreover, they seemed as if they were smiling.

T O O L S A N D TA C T I C S O F D E AT H

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ost kamikazes flew the standard fighters, dive bombers, torpedo bombers, light bombers, and trainers of Japan’s navy and army. But two aircraft types were designed specifically to blow holes in Allied ships in explosive highspeed crashes, at the cost of the pilots’ lives. Each of these plane types was named after a lovely, delicate flower. The Yokosuka MXY7 Ohka (literally, Cherry Blossom) Model 11 looked like a bomb with stubby wooden wings and a tiny cockpit, and that’s exactly what it was. One of these missile-shaped, 2,646pound, rocket-propelled bombs would be attached to the belly of a shore-based Mitsubishi G4M medium bomber (called a Betty by the Americans), which would carry the Ohka out to the US ships off Okinawa and release it like a bomb. After gliding for a while, the Ohka’s pilot, a member of a special unit called the Thunder God Corps, would ignite one or more of the bomb’s three rockets, pick up speed (sometimes to 600 mph or more), and steer down to crash into his target. The Americans couldn’t believe their eyes when they captured an Ohka on Okinawa. 34 AMERICA IN WWII

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The Nakajima Ki-115 (left) and Yokosuka MXY7 (right) were Japan’s only purpose-built kamikaze planes. A US Navy schematic (center) of the MXY7 calls the manned bomb the Baka—the Idiot.

To them, it epitomized the disregard for one’s own life, or human life in general, that seemed to characterize the Japanese military of that era. The Yanks renamed the Ohka the Baka, “idiot” in Japanese. The destroyer USS Mannert L. Abele (DD-733) felt the fury of an Ohka explosion on April 12, 1945, off Okinawa. The impact and blast broke the ship in two and she sank, with 84 men dead. Ohkas damaged other ships, but Mannert L. Abele was the only one they sank. The other purpose-built kamikaze plane was Nakajima’s Ki-115 Tsurugi (Saber or Sword), also known as the Toka (Wisteria Blossom). Unlike the Ohka, it looked like a plane, but it was clearly a one-way-trip aircraft. Its rudimentary

landing gear was detachable; after takeoff, it fell off for use by another Ki-115. The Toka was meant to be cheap. Made of wood and some steel, designed to use any surplus engine, it was so rudimentary that it was hard to fly. It was likely to have trouble getting past US naval defenses. But if it did get through, it could deliver a bomb as large as 1,800 pounds in its suicide crash. The war ended before kamikazes got the chance to try it. Alongside these unusual aircraft, the kamikaze effort also employed explosivesladen suicide powerboats, human-steered underwater torpedoes (Kaiten, literally Return to Heaven), midget submarines with torpedoes and a warhead, and divers carrying mines on bamboo poles (Fukuryu, or Crouching Dragon). There was also an additional kamikaze aviation tactic: ramming. The Shinten Special Unit near Tokyo was trained to fly Nakajima Ki-44 fighters into American B-29 Superfortress bombers that were coming to firebomb Japanese cities in late 1944 and early 1945. A Shinten pilot expected to die if he managed to hit his target. None succeeded in downing a B-29.

Escort carrier USS Sangamon strains hard to port to avoid a kamikaze in a Ki-61 fighter. Evasive action and anti-aircraft fire sent the suicide plane into the ocean just 25 feet off Sangamon’s starboard beam. Half an hour later, another kamikaze got through, dropped its bomb on the carrier, and crashed through the flight deck. The resulting explosions and fires knocked Sangamon out of the war. pHOTO By LIEuTENANT JOHN B. CHICK, uSNR. NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Gun smoke fills the air as USS Missouri’s crew tries to avoid a strike by a kamikaze in an A6M Zero fighter off Okinawa on April 11, 1945. The Zero hit the battleship’s starboard side. Unlike the Sangamon’s crew, which lost 11 men killed, 25 missing, and 21 badly hurt, Missouri’s men were unharmed. When the kamikaze pilot’s body was found on deck, the Missouri’s captain ordered burial at sea with full military honors for him.

INSIDE THE MIND OF THE KAMIKAZE I shall get after you soon. Let us lie while I hold you in bosom on my knee. Please await me without crying until I go. Dear Kazuko, please take care of Chieko when she cries. Captain Kanji Eda left a more tranquil, even poetic, message just before his death on June 6, 1945, at age 22: The green is too beautiful. I may forget that I even go to die now. The sky is blue without limit. I see a cloud floating in the sky. I feel the summer in Chiran in June while hearing the song of cicadas While I wait the operation order. The song of birds seems to be happy. “I will be a bird next.” I hear Sugimoto say such words while he is stretching himself out on the grass. Don’t amuse me! 13:35 p.m. today At last, I will take off. Our good old homeland! Good-bye. I leave the used fountain pen as a remembrance.

by Robert L. Willett

kamikazes runs to approximately 150. Of those, some 47, mostly US Navy vessels of destroyer size or smaller, seem to have sunk, according to research published by Bill Gordon, a Japanese studies scholar behind the comprehensive historical website www.kami kazeimages.net. In terms of human lives, as many as 4,900 US Navy men died because of kamikazes, and another estimated 4,800 were wounded.

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AMERICAN SHIP LOST to a kamikaze was the destroyer USS Callaghan (DD-792). Operating off Okinawa, she had seemingly driven off the attacking plane—a wood-and-canvas Yokosuka K5Y biplane trainer—with her guns on July 28, 1945. But the American gunners didn’t realize their anti-aircraft fire had failed to destroy the plane. The K5Y looped back undetected and slammed into Callaghan’s starboard side. The resulting explosions claimed 47 lives and sent the destroyer to the bottom in the wee hours of July 29. Though Callaghan was the last ship lost to an aerial suicide attack, the war’s final kamikaze attack came two weeks later, on August 15, 1945, the day Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender. After the announcement, but before cease-fire orders reached Japanese field units, Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki, commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s 5th Air Fleet on Kyushu, decided to die. The man who Like Eda’s letter, a grand piano on dishad sent wave after wave of kamikaze play in the Chiran museum testifies to the attacks against the US Navy since Febintelligence and talent of some of the ruary decided to end his life, and to do so young men sent to die in suicide attacks. as a Tokko Tai attacker. Together with a The piano belonged to a nearby elemenpilot and a radioman who refused to let tary school, which two kamikaze pilots Ugaki replace him, Ugaki boarded a visited before their mission. The young Yokosuka D4Y dive bomber. The three men said they were music academy gradmen flew off to attack US ships off Okiuates and asked permission to play. The nawa. They radioed back to Kyushu that teacher agreed, and the Tokyo pilots they were diving on a ship, but their plane played Ludwig van Beethoven’s Moonseems to have been hit by American guns light Sonata. and crashed down near the village of Vice Admiral Takijiro Onishi had started Iheyajima, Okinawa. Japan’s kamikaze blitz. At war’s end, What Did It Accomplish? There are no reliable records of exactly he offered his slow, painful suicide in HISTORIANS HAVE DIFFERED over how how many Tokko pilots died in the war’s apology to the kamikazes and their families. kamikaze onslaught, but estimates place many kamikazes actually succeeded in the number at roughly 4,000. It was to those men, most of them hitting Allied ships. Some have estimated that more than 60 peryoung, that a remorseful Vice Admiral Onishi dedicated his slow, cent either crashed or were shot down before they could reach painful suicide on August 16, 1945. As Japan surrendered to the their targets. Others have suggested losses as high as 80 percent or Allies, the founder of the Special Attack Units left a note of apolas low as 50 percent. But one thing is certain: the odds were ogy to the lost pilots and committed the ritual self-disembowelstacked against the Tokko pilots. ment known as seppuku. As reparation to the kamikazes and their To hit a ship, a kamikaze had to arrive at the target area (somefamilies, he elected not to have an assistant behead him afterward, thing made unpredictable by the potential for mechanical probas was customary. Instead, he lingered in agony for 15 hours lems); slip past the carrier planes that patrolled the skies over before joining his suicide warriors in death. A American naval task forces; and penetrate the screen of anti-aircraft fire that the task force’s ring of destroyers and other combat ROBERT L. WILLETT of Rockledge, Florida, was in Officer ships spewed out whenever radar or lookouts detected enemy Candidate School at the US Army’s Fort Benning, Georgia, when planes. If he got through all that, he had to maintain control as he World War II ended in August 1945. In 2012, he and his wife dove toward the targeted ship, which often took evasive action went on a cruise to Japan, and one of the sites they visited was the and had blazing guns of its own. Chiran Peace Museum for Kamikaze Pilots. The list of Allied naval vessels and war cargo ships damaged by HE LAST

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THE

P RI NC E S S AND THE AMERICANS Steeped in American pop culture, and growing up amid a war that brought Americans to her doorstep, England’s future queen developed a lasting bond with the Yanks across the Atlantic.

by Mark Weisenmiller

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GERMAN TANKS RACED ACROSS the Polish border on September 1, 1939, opening World War II in Europe, Princess Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor of the United Kingdom was 13 years old. By the time that most lethal of wars had ended, with an estimated 60 million or more people dead (equivalent to the current population of Italy), the princess was 19. The teenager who would eventually become Queen Elizabeth II went all the way from girlhood to womanhood against the turbulent backdrop of the Second World War. The eldest daughter of King George VI, Elizabeth had led a sheltered existence before the war. But world wars, by their nature, force people to become internationalists rather than isolationists, and the young princess was no exception. For Elizabeth, exposure to the people from whom, as the saying goes, the British are “separated by a common language”—the Americans, with their casual style and infectious popular culture—broadened her

all photos this story: national archives

HEN

frame of reference and left her with a lifelong connection to the Yanks across the Atlantic. Back in 1939, before the war broke out, Elizabeth and her only sibling, her younger sister Margaret (who was born in 1930 and died in 2002 at the age of 71), had watched their parents sail off to America to visit President and Mrs. Franklin D. Roosevelt. It could have been the princesses’ chance to see the United States in person, for they, too, were invited. In the President’s Secretary File at the Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum in Hyde Park, New York, is a copy of FDR’s August 25, 1938, invitation to King George. The final paragraph notes, “I forgot to mention that if you bring either or both of the children with you, they will also be very welcome, and I will try to have one or two Roosevelts of approximately the same age to play with them.” But the king replied on October 8, 1938, “…I am afraid we shall not be taking the children if we go to Canada [which he and the queen intended to visit on the same trip] as they are much too

Opposite: The 18-year-old Princess Elizabeth Windsor smiles on July 6, 1944, after christening Rose of York, an American B-17 bomber named for her. She stands with her parents, King George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The queen is speaking with US Eighth Air Force commander Lieutenant General James Doolittle. The christening took place in eastern England at Thurleigh Airfield, home of the plane’s 367th Bomb Squadron. Returning from her 63rd mission, a raid over Berlin on March 2, 1945, Rose went down with the loss of her crew and a BBC correspondent. OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 39

THE PRINCESS AND THE AMERICANS young for a strenuous tour.” The news was one of the great disappointments of Elizabeth’s young life. When she and her sister saw their parents off from Portsmouth on May 6, 1939, reporters present noted that Elizabeth was crying as she waved good-bye. From home, Elizabeth and Margaret did their best to follow their parents’ American adventure. Perhaps the most memorable part of the visit was a Sunday picnic lunch in upstate New York at which the Roosevelts served their royal guests good old American hot dogs. Queen Mary, the king’s mother, who was along on the trip, asked aloud, “How do I eat this?” The princesses delighted in a letter from their mother that said, “there were a lot of people there and we all sat at little tables under the trees round the house, and had all of our food on one plate—a little salmon, some turkey, some lettuce, beans, and hot dogs too!” Later that same year on September 3, two days after the Third Reich’s invasion of Poland, the United Kingdom declared war on Germany. Elizabeth and Margaret were in Scotland with their parents at Balmoral Castle when the declaration came. “King

George and Queen Elizabeth soon left for London, but the girls stayed on, at Birkhill [in Scotland] under police protection,” wrote author Carolly Erickson in her 2004 book Lilibet: An Intimate Portrait of Elizabeth II. “Lilibet [Elizabeth’s nickname] and Margaret both fretted over the safety of their parents, who called them every night from London, and followed the war news in the newspapers.” As the princesses awaited word that they could rejoin their parents (a reunion that would not come until Christmas), the future queen distracted herself with the confections of that distinctly American institution known as Hollywood. Watching films in the evening, she and Margaret laughed at the comic antics of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy. Other favorites of the young Elizabeth were Fred Astaire and Howard Keel.

by Mark Weisenmiller

In addition to American movies, Elizabeth was also smitten with Broadway musicals. She knew by heart the songs from 1927’s Show Boat (released as a black-and-white film starring Irene Dunne in 1936). Later in the war, when she was being courted by her future husband, Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, people around her often heard her break out singing “People Will Say We’re in Love” from the 1943 show Oklahoma! (whose songs she would have heard in a recording or on the radio). Shortly after the war, she would be humming and singing tunes from the 1946 hit Annie Get Your Gun.

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Y C HRISTMAS 1939 THE W INDSORS were back together, reunited at the royal family’s Sandringham estate in Norfolk, East Anglia. Elizabeth was far from merry, however. She was still heartsick over 833 British seamen killed on October 14, when German submarine U-47 sank the battleship Royal Oak (08) in the Orkney Islands. More than 100 of the dead were between the ages of 15 and 17.

Adding to Elizabeth’s sorrow were worries about Prince Philip, and for these an American was partly to blame. Even at age 13, Elizabeth was reportedly hopelessly in love with Philip, who was 18 years old and away serving in the Royal Navy. She had received no Christmas card from him (the navy was simply late in sending them). Worse, she had just learned that he had a number of girlfriends. Chief among them was American actress and model Cobina Wright. (Unknown to Elizabeth, Philip wrote numerous letters to Wright and even proposed marriage, unsuccessfully.) By the spring of 1940, with Nazi Germany’s Luftwaffe raining bombs on London, the royal family had made its home within the ancient and sturdy Windsor Castle in Berkshire, west of the capital. The king and queen secretly commuted to London each weekday. On weekends, the family stayed in the Royal Lodge, a small-

Above: HMS Royal Oak crashes along in her glory days—before a U-boat sank her in October 1939. The loss of her men, many of them teenagers, haunted Princess Elizabeth. It was one of many reminders there was a war on—that and the many Americans in Britain, as many as 1.6 million before June 1944’s Normandy Invasion. Opposite: Elizabeth was destined to symbolically head her country’s military and face future wars with her subjects. In April 1943, at age 17, she inspected a Grenadier Guards battalion as honorary colonel for the first time. 40 AMERICA IN WWII

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A P R I N C E S S AT WA R

Y

During an April 1945 visit to the Auxiliary Territorial Service base where Princess Elizabeth was training as a mechanic, the queen watches the princess service an engine.

oung Princess Elizabeth lived a life constrained by her future. She was, after all, heir presumptive to the throne of the United Kingdom. Early in World War II, from July 1940 through May 1941, the ever-present threat of German air attacks on England further narrowed the boundaries of her comings and goings. But she was not about to sit around idly while her country fought a war. In April 1942, reaching her 16th birthday changed things somewhat for Elizabeth, entitling her to formally enter public life. She became colonel in chief of the Grenadier Guards, and the next year she inspected the regiment in her first solo public appearance. Many of her female teenage friends were already working as nurses or members of the Auxiliary Territorial Service (the ATS, the British Army equivalent of the US Women’s Army Corps), and she wanted to do the same. Her father objected, even when she told him firmly, “I ought to do as other girls do.” The king won that round of discussion, and she ended up devoting time to safer things such as charity work, collecting scrap iron, and cultivating a vegetable garden on the Windsor Castle grounds. As the war neared its end in Europe, Elizabeth finally con42 AMERICA IN WWII

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vinced her father to let her join the ATS. She signed on as an honorary second lieutenant in February 1945, two months before her 19th birthday. As a member of the royal family, she did not have to go through basic training, or undergo the mandatory head-lice inspection. For three weeks, however, she underwent instruction to become a mechanic, mostly working on broken-down ambulances and trucks. By the end of her training, she could completely strip down an engine, bleed brakes, change spark plugs, and change or rotate a vehicle’s wheels. Still, she was the only ATS member who was chauffeur-driven between home and her duty station each day. When Victory in Europe Day came on May 8, 1945, Elizabeth wore her ATS uniform as she, her sister, her parents, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill stepped onto Buckingham Palace’s balcony to wave to an adoring crowd numbering in the tens of thousands. Afterwards, she and her sister and some of her friends joined the jubilant crowds in London. For the first and only time in her life, Elizabeth Windsor was liberated. In her daily journal, she wrote that she “simply walked miles” and later “ate, partied, bed 3 am!”

MARK WEISENMILLER

THE PRINCESS AND THE AMERICANS

by Mark Weisenmiller

er house on the Windsor Castle grounds. For the safety and proPrincess Elizabeth turned 17 in April 1943 and celebrated by tection of the royal family, especially the young princesses, Allied dancing with British and American army officers to the swing soldiers—including US troops—were posted at Windsor. music of a big band. She enjoyed American jazz, swing, and boo“American soldiers were stationed at the castle and were fascigie-woogie; the Count Basie Orchestra was among her favorite nated by the princesses, saying so often ‘I have a little girl at home bands. In her teenage years, and in her rare spare time, she was just your age’ that Elizabeth and Margaret struggled not to gigquite the jitterbug dancer. gle,” historian Kate Williams writes in her 2012 biography Young Elizabeth: The Making of Our Queen. “The GIs collected postF ALL THE A MERICAN OFFICERS Elizabeth encountered cards of the girls and sent them little treats—including a whole during the war, the one she would stay in touch with box of chocolates on one occasion to Elizabeth, a great treat in longest was not a dance partner, but the highest-ranking rationed Britain.” soldier in the European theater: US Army General Dwight D. EisenLater that year, Americans back home in the States got to know hower, supreme commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. “At something of Princess Elizabeth through a BBC radio address she the end of the war,” Eisenhower related in his 1967 book At Ease: made to British children who had been evacuated from their homes Stories I Tell to Friends, the king “asked me to come to Buckingham for safety during the war. The October 13, Palace about tea time, mentioning that he 1940, broadcast by the 14-year-old Elizabeth wanted to see me privately for a few minutes with her sister Margaret was filmed, and porin his office before we took tea with the tions were shown in newsreels that preceded Queen and the Princess [Elizabeth].” feature films in US movie theaters. The reason the king wanted to see “Thousands of you…have had to leave Eisenhower privately was to present him your homes,” Princess Elizabeth told her with the British Order of Merit. But the tea young listeners. “My sister Margret Rose that followed began what would be a long and I feel so much for you as we working relationship and personal friendknow…what it means to be away from those ship between Eisenhower and Elizabeth. The we love most of all.” She concluded the general came to admire the future queen’s speech on a hopeful note: “We know, every firmness and resolve. After the war, they one of us, that in the end, all will be well.” would maintain communication, chiefly Elizabeth’s radio address was especially through letters. heartfelt, coming just a month after a disasBoth Elizabeth and Eisenhower rose to ter that had directly affected British evacuee political leadership in 1952. That June, she children. During the German air assault on was crowned Her Majesty Elizabeth the Great Britain, the Children’s Overseas Second, by the Grace of God, of the United Reception Board (CORB) shipped children Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern to temporary homes in Australia, Canada, Ireland, and of Her other Realms and TerNew Zealand, South Africa, and the United ritories, Queen, Head of the CommonStates. But the program halted abruptly wealth, Defender of the Faith. That Nowhen, on September 17, 1940, the British Of the many Yanks Elizabeth met during the vember, Eisenhower was elected president liner SS City of Benares was torpedoed and war, the one with whom she had the longest of the United States. Throughout Eisenrelationship was Dwight Eisenhower, seen sunk en route to Canada. Of 90 CORB chilhower’s two-term presidency, which continhere as president, meeting her at the British dren on board, 77 were killed. ued through the 1950s, the diplomatic and embassy in Washington, DC, in 1957. In 1942, Elizabeth got to meet a strong political alliance between the United States advocate for children displaced by war, US First Lady Eleanor and Great Britain remained strong. Roosevelt, who visited London that October. In the 1990 book Elizabeth and Eisenhower didn’t meet again face to face until the Royal Sisters: Queen Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, American queen made her first official visit to the United States in the fall of biographer Anne Edwards describes the young princesses’ impres1957. Two years later, in 1959, both leaders participated in the cersion of Mrs. Roosevelt. “Lilibet and Margaret did not quite know emonies formally opening the St. Lawrence Seaway. As queen, Elizwhat to make of their American guest and exchanged little furtive abeth more than made up for the trip to America she had missed in glances,” writes Edwards. Mrs. Roosevelt appeared “enormous, 1939, making five official trips there (the most recent in 2007). over life-size…with a roving smile and eyes that never seemed to Eisenhower, born 35 years before Queen Elizabeth, died in 1969 focus anywhere.” at age 78. The queen lives on, now 91 years old, a living legacy of The first lady stayed overnight, and the next day, says Edwards, the war that shaped her own coming of age and cemented the bonds “the king, queen, and princesses saw her off…more like friends of friendship and mutual aid that united America and Great Britain saying good-by than any formal leave-taking.” Mrs. Roosevelt in the face of the deadliest aggression yet known to mankind. A wrote to her husband after the visit that Elizabeth was “quite serious and a child with a great deal of character and personality. She MARK WEISENMILLER is an author and reporter living and workasked me a number of questions about life in the United States and ing in Florida. Visit www.alkapressinternational.com to learn they were serious questions.” more about him and his career.

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A WAR STORIES

A WWII Scrapbook I CAN PASS THE EDDY TEST

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JANUARY 1943 TILL June 1944 I studied electrical engineering at City College of New York, where naval officers were visiting, asking students to take the Eddy Test [Radio Technician Selection Test]. Anyone who passed could join the navy, go to their electronics school, and graduate as an officer. In September 1944 I was drafted into the army. I left my crying mother’s arms to begin my service. At the induction center there was one final physical examination. Thousands of young men like myself disrobed and wound through long lines of doctors. At the end of the line, just before we got back into our clothes, we passed a table with a navy chief petty officer sitting there, reading a magazine. I shouted out, “I can pass the Eddy Test!” He sat up straight and said, “Who said that?” “I did,” I replied. He asked, “What do you know about the Eddy Test?” I answered, “I’ve been studying electric engineering at City College for the last year and a half.” “Give me your papers,” he grumbled. And he stamped each of the pages. “You’re in the navy now. Come with me.” Naked as the day I was born, I followed him into a classroom. He sat me down at a desk and gave me the Eddy Test. When I was finished, I brought the test to him. He said, “Get dressed and be at Penn Station, gate 19, at 7 o’clock this evening.” Happily, I got dressed and went home. When I walked into the house, my mother started to smother me with kisses. “I knew they wouldn’t take you,” she cried. “You’re too small.” “No, Mamma, I’m in the navy, and I ROM

courtesy of lewis m. unterman

have to be at Penn Station at 7 o’clock.” Well, at 6 o’clock, my mother, father, little brother, grandmother, and grandfather all took me to Penn Station to see me off. While in boot camp, we were given many tests to see what we would be best suited for after basic training. A week before we graduated, an officer interviewed us individually, and when my turn came he asked me what I would like to do in the navy. I told him, “I took the Eddy Test.” He replied, “I know. You failed it.” L EWIS M. UNTERMAN wartime US Navy sailor Delray Beach, Florida

BEGINNING OF THE END, PART 1

I

August 10, 1945. We were settling down for the night in our

T WAS THE NIGHT OF

nice new barracks and watching the green lizards crawling around in the rafters. Their little bug eyes seemed to be watching our every move. I had sprayed the barracks with an aerosol sprayer containing something that probably caused cancer in laboratory rats, once in a while leveling a little fog at a smirking lizard just to make sure it knew who was boss. Lights out was at 2200 [10 P.M.]. Some snores had already commenced, but I still remember lying there thinking about Japan. What would it be like? We knew that was where we were going if there was an invasion. But what about the bombs? What was an atomic bomb, anyhow? We knew that it made an awful big blast. Chet had finally managed to be assigned to Stars and Stripes [the US military newspaper] and had wangled a ride over Hiroshima. His description of the devastation was inconceivable. To think that the bombs and the aircraft that delivered them had been sitting on Tinian within swimming distance of our island was exciting. As I relaxed on my sack the screen door crashed open and several men ran into the barracks, calling my name. They said that there was a rumor going around that Japan wanted to surrender and they wanted to know what I knew about it. My position at the message center would make me the first to know, but I hadn’t heard from Tojo [Japan’s emperor] since his friends had called upon us at Pearl Harbor. So I offered to check on the latest poop and skinny to see what I could find. Hastily I pulled on my pants and stuck my feet into my boots and took off on the double for the message center. Arriving, I found it empty. My duty man had gone, I suppose, to awaken the CQ [charge of quarters—guard of the barracks entrance].

Above: Wiry engineering student Lewis Unterman was in denial. Sure, he could be drafted any day, but he kept putting off taking the navy’s Radio Technician Selection Test in college. He got one last chance to take it—stark naked at an army induction center. 44 AMERICA IN WWII

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national archives

On Saipan, where Arthur Church served, armorers get a B-29 bomber ready to strike Japan.

The teletype was quiet, but I found remaining in the machine the duplicate of the message just received. I ripped it off and read: All stations memo 10 August 1945 Picked up at 96.5 megacycles the following: The Japanese government advises the Swedish government that it is willing to accept the Allied surrender ultimatum at Potsdam [released by the United States, England, and China on July 26] provided they can keep their emperor X The Jap government asked that this news be transmitted to United States Great Britain and the Soviet Union. Note: No Allied confirmation X That is all It wasn’t easy running back up the hill with my boot straps and laces whipping

AM E RICA I N

WWII

L ingo! 1940s GI and civilian patter pucker factor: the higher the factor, the scarier the mission runaway prop: a propeller stuck on high speed, as though attempting to break from the plane shrapnel: Grape-Nuts, a food as jagged as bomb fragments

about my ankles. When I arrived back at the barracks everyone was up, plus a few more troops from the other barracks. Out of breath, I still managed to read the message to them. Immediately a cheer awakened everyone else in camp. Everywhere lights came on as the news was passed along. It was another hour before lights began going off again. As usual the sun came up hot and humid on the 11th. The excitement of the previous night’s news continued, but so did routine and the war. Our duties continued on the 12th and 13th but excitement had waned considerably. There had [been] no additional news of a possible surrender. Mid-morning on the 14th, as my driver and I drove along the “Saipan Highway” toward the airfield, I heard the roar of aircraft engines. Looking to the rear I saw five navy fighter planes headed directly at us in line with the roadway. As soon as they had passed they pulled up into a steep climb and appeared to go thousands of feet up. They did a big loop, came screaming down behind us, and one by one peeled off to the left and disappeared from our sight behind the hills. It made us feel good. Something was up. The morning of the 15th arrived the same as all the months of mornings that we had endured before. As we tried to appear busy in the event that the Adjutant General or the Sergeant Major should pay us a visit, I was suddenly awakened from my thoughts by the insistent ringing of the bell on the teletype. Could this be it?! I sat down at the console and watched as some unseen operator began to type out the call letters of every organization that was to receive his message. With the whole crew hanging over my shoulder, we watched. To be continued… A RTHUR S. CHURCH wartime army message center chief on Saipan, Marianas Ukiah, California

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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AMERICA IN WWII 45

A AMERICA IN WWII FLASHBACK

A

BOB GABRICK COLLECTION

U N I T E D S TAT E S S T E E L 46 AMERICA IN WWII

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•

1943

A I WAS THERE

Of Rabbits and Stormtroopers by Lloyd T. Howard

court esy of bar ba th

ra bay ou

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T. HOWARD WAS 22 YEARS OLD when the US government conducted its 1940 census. Born in Missouri, he’d moved to Wichita, Kansas, by then. By early 1944, he was in the US Army, which sent him to Europe with the 106th Division to join the struggle to pry the Continent from Germany’s iron grip. There, he fought in the early days of the December 16, 1944–January 25, 1945, Battle of the Bulge until Stormtroopers captured him. By the fall of 1945, Howard was back in the States, a private first class working at the Pentagon, across the Potomac River from Washington, DC, when a friend from home named Chuck wrote to ask what it had been like to fight in the recently ended LOYD

war. Howard wrote the following reply from his barracks on the night of October 8, 1945. S ALUD Y PESETAS—y tiempo para gozalos! Greetings, buddy, How are the palpitations of the heart in the strange civilian world? I have a vague recollection of indulging in the sanctity and privacy of a home once myself in the dim dark past when yon cry to battle was unheeded. My friend of long standing, I’m still from Missouri and like the other natives have a quaint disbelief of things I don’t see—how did

Above, left: Early 1945 was hard on Lloyd Howard, captured in the Battle of the Bulge. News of his later liberation used an early-war photo; his actual condition was poor (though he claimed the Germans treated him well). Above, right: Howard was thrilled to get home again. OCTOBER 2017

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you get mixed up in that foreign entanglement? If you are serious about it, my heartiest congratulations or deepest sorrow. Son, you asked for it when you told me to give you the low down on my status, place of abode, and other non-entities. Now you are going to have to read all of these pages and write me an equally long missile. I was damn glad to be back with the family, but it has been hell all over again to leave them behind. I haven’t seen Judy [his baby daughter] since July, or the frau [his wife, Ella] since the early part of August. I’m going to hold you to that promise to pay me a visit—come up to D.C. and see me sometime. I can assure you that I can show you anything your purse can handle and things mine can’t. A quick resume: Passed Aviation Cadet test in November 1943; Ella was operated on in Dec. 1943, so I got an extension. Called up in January, entered active duty in Feb. 1944; spent a few weeks S.D. [special

A I WAS THERE

Golden Lion (fighting kitty) 106th Div end of August as T/4 steno [technician fourth grade stenographer] with S-3 major [a major serving as unit operations officer] 422 Inf Regt, MOS 213 [stenographer]; staging area near Boston, Mass; shipped out of New York early part of October on English ship Aquitania; docked in the Firth of Clyde, and disembarked at Gourock, Scotland. Spent rest of October in England and Wales—toured London, Shell’s Lensbury Club [for Shell Oil Company employees] at Teddington, Oxford, Shakespeare’s Stratford-on-Avon, and a lot of pubs in such quaint places as Chipping Norton, Banbury, Adlestrop, Daylesford, Moretonin-Marsh, Birmingham, etc., etc., etc.

national archives

Germans hurry across a blocked Belgian road during the Battle of the Bulge in December 1944. Lloyd Howard witnessed stark scenes like this in the battle.

duty] at S.T.U. [secure telephone unit] camp at Leavenworth; went out in the suds to the Infantry in March; IRTC [Infantry Replacement Training Center] six-weeks, through clerk school (S.D. at 198th Bn, Cp [Camp] Blanding, Florida, MOS 405 [Military Occupation Specialty 405: clerktypist] replacement 5 weeks in August 1944 at Fort Meade, Maryland; joined the 48 AMERICA IN WWII

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Crossed the channel and landed near Le Havre [in Normandy, France] in November. From then on, tents, mud, rain, snow, cold, guard duty, etc. until pulled into the line, first in Luxembourg, then in the Siegfried Line [of German defenses] in the Ardennes Forest with the First Army 2 December. No fires [permitted], combat patrols, laying mines, outpost sentry duty,

cold food, perpetual snow and the encroachment of trench foot, buzz bombs ran a shuttle every 15 minutes at night over our C.P. pillbox [circular pillbox—a concrete shelter], mortars, etc. Then on the 12th of December, holy hell broke out—German heavy artillery, jet propulsion planes, new Messerschmitts [fighters], “burp” guns [submachine guns], flame throwers, big “Tiger” tanks. [The German Ardennes assault actually began December 16.] Our supporting artillery knocked out, line cut in several places, no communication except via radio after first two hours, never any food or ammunition or support from the rear reached us, supporting anti-tank guns and cavalry lost. By this time, we were being harassed from our rear; the Germans’ first assault waves had broken through and they kept on pouring in replacements. After three days, we could hold out no longer and could not retreat, so were ordered forward in a counter-attack in a vain attempt to cut off some of their supplies and eventually reach the British zone near Aachen [Germany] about 70 miles farther north and to the flank of the breakthrough. Our reserve regiment was committed as well as the 9th Armored [Division] way back in our rear at St. Vith [Belgium], but had the sh-- knocked out of them. We fought and ran against the Tiger tanks, SS troops, and German Engineers, were trapped time and time again, but infiltrated through their lines in the dark, only to be trapped by tanks in the fields or by their troops in the dark forests. Seven days later, the remnants of our company, one other company, and part of the 1st Bn was all that remained of the Allied forces in that sector. We had succeeded in crawling and fighting 15 miles through their attack further into Germany only to be hopelessly bottled up on the side of a hill in a thick forest by a reserve regiment of Storm Troopers, a Panzer Division [armored vehicles] and tanks. The 21st of December we destroyed our radios and were prepared to die. We were 50 miles away from any other American forces now and were unable to withstand the beating and were out of everything except small arms ammunition. The third day in this trap, they brought up their artillery, and on the 3rd attack the division of storm troopers went through and over

us. That day, the 22nd of December, we had not had food, re-issue of ammunition, or sleep for ten days. The worst part was the wounded. We never got any men back for treatment, and until the last three days had been unable to carry our wounded with us. According to statistics compiled on our Regiment, there were only 9 officers and 70 men that were not killed or captured. God was really keeping tab on me. Xmas day, as P.W.s [prisoners of war], we were strafed by P-47’s [American Thunderbolt fighters] in loaded boxcars,

A I WAS THERE

laborers would sneak to us at night when we were herded through towns. Went through Bad Orb and Wiesbaden before a fatal 5-day locked in boxcar trip without food or water. So cold our breath froze around the inside of the car. We broke some boards out of side of car near

energy to walk out of that Stalag the end of January when the Germans thought the Russians were coming on in there. 250 of us were sent as slave laborers to work for some civilians on railroad construction work. During the first week of February my dysentery was so acute that I only worked 2 hours but passed out three times. After laying in bed eight more days…, a French doctor and two German Army Officers came in and took 50 of us to an infirmary. This French doctor, by feeding me through the arm, plugging up my dysen-

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The Pentagon (shown here in 1952) opened across the Potomac from Washington, DC, as the headquarters of the Defense Department in January 1943. Lloyd Howard was stationed here in late 1945, when he wrote to his friend Chuck to describe his war experience.

bombed, and roof caved in on us with incendiaries at Gerolstein. We walked around 145 kilometers, crossing the Rhine at Koblenz after the first of January. Besides bombing and strafing, we froze in coal mines, shale mine, elevators, walked nights (no overshoes as the Jerries took them off us), got beat over the head with a rifle butt, went 5 days at a stretch without a bite of food, stole cow beets out of the fields as we passed, fought for scraps of bread forced 50 AMERICA IN WWII

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top, tied helmets on belts, shoe laces, etc, and hauled up snow for water and food. One more man died on that trip and my two buddies carried me into Stalag IV-B, 56 miles southeast of Berlin, where I lay for 2 weeks crowded beyond imagination in filth and disease on ersatz coffee and toasted black bread. At the end of that period, fever was down from over 104 to 100 and after two weeks of soaking feet with hot water, I had enough feeling in them and

tery, and breaking up my fever, complete rest except for the daily cold hours in the dark basement during the bombings, a certain amount of medical and food from American Red Cross, brought me out of it. Brother do I love the French. I became acquainted with many French, English, Scotch, Poles, Russians, Yugoslavs, Rumanian and a Greek while I was there. Upon our liberation (we were 35 miles from the Czech border and were liberated

April 17th by an armored outfit) we had to stay in the front lines two days until trucked back 60 miles through Zwickau & Gera to Erfurt, the nearest airbase, for air transportation back to a hospital in France. 5 weeks later and 44 lbs. heavier, I was on my way home when V-E day was proclaimed [the day Germany surrendered— victory in Europe]. Ella’s cooking, Judy’s laughter, and the old family physician really brought me out of it. Although I wear arch supports, was down to the hospital for trench foot treatment, still take some medicine for dysentery and edema, I look and feel almost perfect. I’m class D [low-level security clearance] and have a limited service typewriter commando job here although my official MOS is Chief Clerk. Now, it was easier writing this to you than trying to tell you, so we’ll forget the past and think only of today. With 15 points for 3 battle stars, 12 points for 1 child, 14 points for seven months overseas, and 12 points for a year in the states, I had only 53 points on my ASR score [advanced service rating score— enlisted men needed 85 points for discharge]. However, I’m too thankful to be alive to gripe about staying in the Army. This really isn’t the Army here, a civilian life except for the uniform and pay. I work 40 hours a week in a nice office in the Pentagon, snack bars just around the corridor; more civilian girls, WAC’s and Generals there than enlisted men. We are quartered at the Army War College [AWC] across the Potomac in Washington D.C., just ten minutes trolley ride from the Capitol and downtown. Very convenient location and a beautiful post. We are escorted in Army buses, jeeps, and MP’s, sirens and all to work in the morning at 8 and back to the post at 4 p.m. We have very good chow here, but not so hot at noon as the WAC’s serve us our noon lunch in their mess cafeteria in the Pentagon. All of the buildings are brick at the AWC, sleep in dormitories, hardwood waxed floors, the entire second floor is a club—library on the south, rugs, easy chairs, etc; pool tables, card tables, fluorescent writing lamps & tables, ping-pong tables, coke & candy machines, telephone booths, and a room for motion pictures all on this floor. What a layout—radios, newspapers, and latest magazines as well as OCTOBER 2017

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Bulge to flesh out what he’d written in the letter above.

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person, but can’t print or broadcast anything to the general civilian public yet. Buddy, I’ve hardened since you last saw me. I wasn’t in the war long, but I had more than my share of death and agony, and my stomach reeks with it. Every once in awhile I get pretty close to stewed although two years ago I never drank. We have theater, gym, golf course, bowling alleys, tennis courts, swimming pool,

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attendants to take care of the place for us. We have no details at all on this post and 100% passes. The only check is whether you are at work or not at the office. If we work overtime, nights, Sat. or Sunday, we get time off for it, like the civilians do. We are allowed rations for married EM [enlisted member] regardless of grade to live off the post, but I can’t find a decent apartment to bring Ella and Judy here to. Chuck, weren’t you stationed up here once? If so, no use boring you about the sightseeing, Mt. Vernon, Capitol, Smithsonian Institute, National Museum, National Art Gallery, river boat trips, monuments, National Zoo, airports, free canteens, church suppers, free dances, free movies, free baseball & football ticket, Stage Door Canteen, U.S.O’s, Service Centers, in almost every block of downtown D.C. I have seen most of the American League baseball games since coming here in August and two professional football games here as well as some good boxing matches, shows, radio, movie and stage shows, stars on personal appearances, and other better than any place else entertainment and benefits for servicemen. Chuck, I have been invited to dinners, parties, etc. by many influential people I have met here. I have shook hands with Marine Colonel Devereux [James Devereux, commander of the 1st Defense Battalion on Wake Island], Wake Island & Jap P.W.; Fred M. Vinson, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury; Rep. Lyndon B. Johnson [future president of the United States] from Texas; had luncheon on Rep. Ed Rees from Wichita’s invitation in the House of Representatives restaurant in the basement of the Capitol with him and the other representatives from Kansas, where I put in a little lobbying for the P.W.’s, and have been down to his office several times for discussion. Had a letter from Shell wanting me back to work for them the other day, turned it in to my CO [commanding officer], and got it back without a reply. Several Congressmen have been agitating the Army’s refusal to release former prisoners of war. You understand, of course, that what I have written you is taboo. Prisoners of War were all checked through the F.B.I. and we are not allowed to make public speeches or publish books or magazine articles yet on our experiences. You see, I can tell you some war secrets we found out in Germany in

The Germans were on a roll at this point in the Battle of the Bulge—the early phase of the six-week clash during which Stormtroopers captured Lloyd Howard.

etc, on the post, and I intend working out a little bit to try to get shape. I’m 170 lbs. now and mainly fat. I would like very much to see you again and talk to you, particularly about that little bit of heaven you referred to. If you can’t make it to D.C. for a vacation, look me up in Wichita as I’m coming home for Xmas via either discharge, furlough, AWOL, but I’m going to be there.... Your buddy, Lloyd “Health and money—And time to enjoy them” After Howard was diagnosed with cancer in the late 1970s, he heeded the urgings of his daughter, Judy, to tell more about his war experience. He typed up some memories and impressions of the Battle of the

I Ran Scared R UNNING SCARED . Belly-crawling scared. For six days and nights I ran scared. Death was so cold. So white in the snow. So silent after all hellzapoppin. Death was in the mountain crags. Death was in the ravines. Death was on the hilltops. Death was in the streams. Brown-clad bodies lay where they fell. So cold even blood wouldn’t run. Pieces of bodies where once there had been men. Defoliated trees, stumps, and shattered branches where once mighty forests stood. Craters where once plows had turned the sod. Death was everywhere. Like the grey ghost it rode the dreary day. It stalked the cold black night unseen. But it was in the air. It spoke to you. Beware! You smelled it. And it was foul! I ran scared. For six days I ran. For six days I had no ammo. For six days I had no food. For six days I had no rest. I ran scared. Pinned on an open hilltop. Rolling, twisting, under fire by mortars and tanks. We came tumbling down. Some of us! The pieces of some are buried there. In our minds we can’t forget the hill. We ran scared. We had no ammo. We had no food. For all I know, some are running still from the fear on that hill. Like rabbits running scared. We sought cover. We were under rifle and burp gun fire. We had no ammo. We could not stay under cover. There was no cover for us. We ran scared. Into the icy stream and under the water. Up for air and running again. We ran scared. Why were there so many of them and so few of us? Why did they have so much and us so little? What had happened to our war? The skies were filled with their planes. There were none of ours. The roads were clogged with their tanks and armored vehicles. There were none of ours. The fields were populated with their troops. We few running rabbits were all of ours. They owned the roads, the fields, the skies. They had the world. They gave us Hell. No food. No ammo, only bayonets to do or die. No time to burrow in holes. To be shot like rats in holes. By day we ran, hid and ran. We ran scared. We hid scared. We

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Reaching a small patch of thick trees, I dropped behind a big tree and lay prone. Maybe for the first time in days I was out for a few minutes. Even out—we were out scared—and all senses remained alert. I was awakened by the staccato of a burp gun ripping a few inches from my arm to the top of the tree. I had no idea where the fire was coming from and no intention of sticking around to find out. One thing I had learned long ago in combat. If fire is zeroing in on you, get the heck out of there, and then try to figure out where it was coming from. If you don’t act fast and instinctively, it is automatic death.

courtesy of barbara bayouth

had a right to be scared. We had seen men shot with their hands up. No prisoners were to be taken as they moved up front. Encircled by their camps. When the embers of their fires had cooled and the inky blackness of the night descended around them we escaped their traps by stealing thru their midst like Indian warriors. Success depended upon complete silence. So dark you could not see the man in front or behind you. Each man hooked a finger in the belt of the man in front of him. Footstep, pause, footstep, pause thru their camp and sleeping sentry. One mishap, one snap or crackle, meant death. We were scared! Past their sleeping camp, out of the forest, and another field to be crossed. Halfway across, here comes a buzz-bomb [a V1—an early cruise missile] directly overhead. The bombs were beaded for Bastogne [Belgium] and other towns miles and miles to our rear. Why did they bother us? Why had we been put in this position anyway? Trapped in their Siegfried Line bunkers captured earlier. Repulsed their frontal attack on our pill-box three days prior to their great push. Prisoners we captured talked. Other enemy activity had been building up all along that area of the front. Our position was untenable. We requested permission to withdraw. Our information was relayed thru channels to our Intelligence. Permission denied. Requested replacement of casualties and urgent air drops of ammo. Neither came. One by one all contact was eliminated and we were isolated miles behind their front as they by-passed us and moved on all sides where they had eliminated all opposition. Before they could drive us out of our pill-box that night we used everything we had and ended being driven farther behind their lines before daybreak. We couldn’t even use “walkie-talkies” as we were within their area for the next six days—running for our lives as scared as we had fought for our lives. A decimated company in the pill-box, we became small groups, and isolated individuals as the enemy scattered us at every turn night and day. In the field that night we were a small group. Since we weren’t the target of the “tractor-roar” buzz bomb, why did it bother us? Because it lit up the snowcovered field like flares and we became running targets for the enemy again.

Lloyd Howard with an American Red Cross worker. He credited his survival to the organization and to various Allied humanitarians who came to his aid.

Fortunately, I was the target for a “burp-gun” operator. The “burp-gun” fires so rapidly it tends to start at ground level and end up at tree height. I rolled, twisted, keeping a low profile, and I was on an open snow-covered side of a hill away from the fire. A few of the dwindling number of my buddies joined me on the hillside. There was a small icy stream at the bottom. I stopped to fill my canteen and put in some Halazone tablets [to purify the water]. Since you need water with your “sulfa” for wounds; this was urgent. I heard the near-by roar of 88’s [88mm anti-aircraft guns]. Three “88” tanks parked on the other side of the embankment were blowing my buddies to pieces at point-blank range. In seconds, with my bare hands, using

particles of ice and bank-side debris, I had an under-snow level escape shelter. The tanks rumbled away. I hadn’t been discovered. I was now alone. I had about decided to come up top-side and have a look around when I heard intermittent rifle shots. They seemed to be coming nearer. Then I heard their guttural utterances and realized they were shooting any wounded they found. I could hear them at the top of the embankment overhead and held my breath. Scared. Yes, I was scared. They didn’t come down the embankment to the stream but went on their way. I know not how long I lay there with my nostrils quivering like a frightened rabbit. My ears were pricked like a bird dog’s for the slightest sound. I made an opening and peered out. Motorized vehicles were on the road to the north of the field. That was my only way out as the troops were over the hill to the south where another road crossed. So I slid and slithered, like a snake in the snow, until I reached the ditch by the road at dusk. The motorized vehicles were still driving without their lights on. I judged the time it took for the tanks to pass. Then, I hurled myself across the road to the opposite ditch on a rolling leap to escape the treads of the next tank. Before I was spotted, it was dark. I made it to a patch of trees on the bank of a large stream. I could not cross over the bridge because of troop movements. I found other running rabbits like myself trapped in this small patch. A Division of Storm Troopers coming from the Russian Front as back-up for Hitler’s Big Push had decided to make their camp across from the small patch on the other side of the bridge. We were trapped on three sides by the stream, the bridge, and the road that I had crossed at dusk. This was an unusual night. There was a moon and shadows could be seen. They sent in mortars of “tree-bursts” to keep us pinned down during the night. I leaned my weary frame against a large tree trunk and piled all the tree limbs I could find over me for protection against the splintering tree bursts. I could not dig a hole in the frozen ground and tree roots for shelter. With my back propped against the tree trunk, I fastened my bayonet and placed it in position between my legs and wrapped my arms around my rifle. I figured they

would keep us pinned down until it was light enough to come in and wipe us out. I had a wracking cough. I was hungry after six days without food. I was exhausted after a night of fighting followed by six days of running rabbit while they played “Maggie’s Drawers” [they kept missing their targets—“Maggie’s drawers” was slang for the red flag waved when a shot completely missed its mark on a shooting range]. From the six days of snow, wading streams, water in boots freezing into ice, my feet no longer seemed a part of my anatomy. They were a mechanical contraption that somehow had kept moving. I was paralyzed with exhaustion. My hands were frozen to the rifle and bayonet propped between my knees. My brain was as numb as were my fingers. I no longer had any sense of awareness. I had no fear. I was not alive. I passed out. For the first time in seven nights I slept without even knowing I was asleep. The Whistles Blew P EOPLE WERE PULLING ME UP. It was a cold misty grey dawn. Two buddies were holding me up by their shoulders. They told me

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some officer trapped in the same patch we were had talked to the Storm Troopers during the night. Since we had no ammunition, he had surrendered us. He was shouting orders to all of us survivors. I took my M-1 by the rifle butt and smashed it against a boulder. I took my sulfa [antibiotic] and my water. Then it was light enough to see our captors. We were not beaten nor abused. Strange—since many G.I.’s had treated prisoners worse than they treated us. Also, in over six days of running I had never seen the enemy take a prisoner. But our captors were hardened combat veterans who realized their turn might be next. Why is it that those who play the games or fight the wars often have more respect for each other than they do for the spectators who cheer them on for profit and glory? Whose blood is shed? Whose bodies are bruised? What price glory when yesterday’s heroes are a

dime a dozen? The whistles blew and the count began: Ein, Zwei, Drei, Feir, Funf. The whistles blew. My body was battered. My brains were numbed. I was back playing football. It was a hard fought game. Bodies tired and bruised. Near the end of the game. The final whistle blew. Who won? Who lost? Who cared? It was the end of the game. The whistles blew. War was only a game! Then my buddy turned to me and softly said, “Tomorrow will be Christmas. I wish I were home in bed.” Not long after his stint in the army ended, Howard settled back in Wichita, where he and his wife had two more children, Barbara and Robert. He remained employed by the US government, spending the rest of his working days with the Internal Revenue Service. He died of cancer in 1979 at age 62. His wife, whom Barbara recalled her dad always referred to as “Elly,” died on July 4, 2017, at age 99. A Submitted by DARRELL PLINSKY, a US Navy veteran of World War II and long-time friend of Lloyd Howard’s family.

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A AMERICA IN WWII FLASHBACK

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BOB GABRICK COLLECTION

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1942

A BOOKS AND MEDIA

The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won by Victor Davis Hanson, Basic Books, 720 pages, $35

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HANSON adopts a unique style in The Second World Wars. Rather than tracing chronology, this accomplished historian organizes his account by themes, not always intuitive, that show how common aspects of the war emerged and developed. This unusual approach yields new insights about long-familiar events, making his experiment ingenious and successful. Hanson’s themes include ideas, people, and, surprisingly, the four elements. Within each, he compares the varying styles and experiences of the war’s major combatants. For instance, one entire chapter compares British, American, German, Japanese, and Soviet army culture and strategy, examining the background and merits of each. These analyses are extremely rewarding. Hanson’s extensive experience as a historian shows, as it does again later when his discussion of the air war mentions not only rocket fighters and jets, but the hot-air balloons of the Napoleonic Wars. More generally, Hanson notes that World War II did not end the way anyone expected. The United States ended up protecting its former enemies from its former ally in Moscow. The British soon saw their economy become weaker than that of their erstwhile adversaries as their former ICTOR

colonies flocked to the Soviet model of governance. Japan and Germany achieved, through finance, the primacy they had failed to secure through war. China became hysterically communist and then stealthily capitalist. From drugs to computers to jets, wartime technical innovation remade the world. No one saw this coming. The belligerents’ miscalculations weren’t confined to forecasts of the future. Hanson is critical of many wartime Allied choices: the overambitious Operation Market Garden in the Netherlands and Germany, the futile destruction of the Monte Cassino monastery in Italy, the entire Italian campaign, and the PR-driven recusal of General George S. Patton when his presence on the battlefield would have led to more successful action and fewer casualties. Yet these critiques pale in comparison to Hanson’s review of feckless Axis strategy and execution, beginning with how each aggressor initiated war. Hanson’s assessments are remarkably deep and insightful. Hanson’s approach to military history occasions unusual discussions. His survey of sieges includes analyses of successes (such as Corregidor) and flops (such as Leningrad). The unsuccessful Italian-German siege of British-held Malta is cited as an example of a siege campaign that changed the course of the war. Malta’s enormous significance overshadowed its tiny size, and its denial to the Axis allowed it to host air and sea forces that would destroy 500 German aircraft and more than 2,000 ships. Other hard-fought

sieges, however, such as Sevastopol and Cassino, were of little consequence, yet few could have foreseen such outcomes. Superior Allied industry was key to the war’s outcome. The United States could literally build ships and aircraft faster than battle could destroy them. The Japanese built 16 aircraft carriers during the entire war; American shipyards produced 150. So great were US resources that the nation not only could afford two separate theaters of operation, but could engage in two completely autonomous major campaigns in the Pacific—Admiral Chester Nimitz’s and General Douglas MacArthur’s. Hanson memorably writes, “those who made more stuff beat those who killed more people.” Further, says Hanson, Allied choices focused on winning, not being the best. Hence, while Germany employed jet fighters, rocket planes, ICBMs, helicopters, and cruise missiles, and the Japanese built the world’s largest warships, these made no strategic difference. (This is not to dismiss Allied technical prowess in radar, nuclear weapons, cryptography, computing, proximity fuses, incendiaries, and logistics technologies.) Inevitably, readers will find cherished topics or events absent. Hanson has negligible interest in the role of intelligence-gathering and cryptology. Few battles catch his eye; Surigao Strait, Anzio, and the battle for Berlin are absent. The Manhattan Project, the code wars, the unexpected primacy of the P-51 Mustang fighter, to name but a few topics, receive little if any mention. We OCTOBER 2017

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A look in vain for Hanson’s reflections on lasting controversies, from Pearl Harbor to Dresden to Buchenwald to Hiroshima. Clearly, this is not the kind of history writ ten by John Keegan, Max Hastings, Antony Beevor, or Rick Atkinson. This book is memorable for what it does include, however: excellent comparisons of Allied and Axis forces and fighting styles and analysis of the British strategy for sea war, each side’s industrial strategy, and the differing approaches to armored forces. There’s a lot to like, and I frequently found myself pausing to absorb new insights. The Second World Wars is written for those who already know the story, and seek broader insight into and interpreta tion of the war’s major trends. I would not suggest this book for a college class or readers new to this subject. But for readers who already know the story, The Second World Wars will well reward their time. THOMAS MULLEN Flemington, New Jersey

A THEATER OF WAR Five Came Back Directed by Laurent Bouzereau. Starring Meryl Streep, Francis Ford Coppola, Guillermo del Toro, Paul Greengrass, Lawrence Kasdan, and Steven Spielberg. 2017

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ALREADY fascinated by World War II when I first studied documentary history in film school. I learned that the US government, not Hollywood, pioneered the American documentary, with films chronicling New Deal programs in the 1930s. Then, suddenly, the United States was at war. Looking to use movies as a communications tool in the war effort, the War Department got together with Hollywood to produce the Why We Fight series of army recruitment films. Now, Why We Fight and other wartime documentaries are themselves the subjects of a three-part documentary series from Netflix. Five Came Back, based on a 2014 book by Mark Harris, traces the WWII experiences of five of Hollywood’s most accomplished direcWAS

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BOOKS AND MEDIA

Divided on D-Day: How Conflicts and Rivalries Jeopardized the Allied Victory at Normandy by Edward E. Gordon and David Ramsay, Prometheus Books, 432 pages, $26

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contribution to the growing literature on the 1944–1945 campaign in Western Europe, the authors— one American and one British—argue that conflicts among the Allied generals repeatedly caused victory over German forces to take longer and to cost more lives than might otherwise have been necessary. Arguing what-ifs is risky business, but Edward E. Gordon and David Ramsay make a compelling case in Divided on DDay as they recount the arguments beN THIS LATEST

tors of that magical 1935–1945 period of motion pictures. For varying reasons, Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, and George Stevens all received reserve officer commissions and went to work for the government making films to explain the war to the service personnel who would be fighting it and, eventually, to civilians back home. In the course of doing their jobs, all five filmmakers traveled to the theaters of war, faced combat, and were profoundly affected by their experiences. In Five Came Back, five current filmmakers examine the lives and work of those earlier directors. Using period interviews, stills, and archival footage, Steven Spielberg, Francis Ford Coppola, Lawrence Kasdan, Guillermo del Toro, and Paul Greengrass review not only the historical record of the WWII directors’ unique effort, but what was likely going on in the heads of the five men. Capra, whose determination embodied an immigrant’s embrace of the American dream, volunteered immediately after Pearl Harbor. He took on the heavy responsibility of creating the training

tween British and American leaders over whether even to attempt a cross-Channel invasion; the eventual appointment of General Dwight D. Eisenhower as supreme commander for Operation Overlord; and the actual invasion that launched the crusade to liberate Europe. Throughout the story, divisions and personality clashes lead to miscalculations, delays, and missed opportunities that allowed the enemy to recover, prolonging the war into 1945. For readers already familiar with the campaign’s history, there isn’t a lot that’s new here. The authors’ characterizations of the principal Allied commanders offer few surprises. Eisenhower is portrayed as a hands-off leader uninvolved in the ground campaign’s details—a “political general” using his considerable diplomatic skill to hold the fractious Anglo-American coalition together, but failing to provide leadership at the operational level. US Lieutenant General Omar Bradley is the “dependable commander,” a modest and intelligent

series and accepted the role of chief middleman between the military and the filmmakers. Ford, another early volunteer, had no idea his first assignment would take him into one of the war’s most significant early actions, at Midway. While bullets flew, he and his crew got footage for one of the film collaboration’s early successes. Wyler bounced among a number of tasks until he hooked up with the US Army Air Forces to make The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress and other films featuring America’s flyboys. Huston was drafted. His efforts turned out films that were controversial but had profound long-term impact. Stevens was a latecomer but directed coverage of the D-Day landings, camera in hand, and documented the liberation of concentration camps. The Netflix documentary has three episodes: “The Mission Begins,” “Combat Zones,” and “The Price of Victory.” Meryl Streep narrates, counterbalancing all those male voices with her calm, firm delivery. The programs go beyond the five directors to cover much about the relationship between the movies and World War II.

team player. Lieutenant General George Patton, on the other hand, is the maverick, difficult to control but a master of armored warfare and the Allied general the Germans most feared. The authors also give several of Eisenhower’s British lieutenants their due, particularly Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (father of one of the co-authors) whose

I had a personal experience with one of the five early directors. In 1977 Huston took an acting role in Tentacles, a film spawned by the success of Jaws that also featured Henry Fonda and Shelly Winters. It was an Italian production and needed extensive recording studio work for dialog replacement. I was supervising the recording sessions. Huston came in, did his job, and afterwards I gave him a ride home. We didn’t converse much during the trip—he was a true gentleman but absorbed in his own thoughts. And I was just enjoying sitting beside a man who had made heroic contributions to American cinema and to the understanding of World War II. J AY WERTZ Phillips Ranch, California

careful planning for the invasion’s amphibious phase and farseeing logistical concerns were indispensable to the campaign’s overall success. The most controversial member of the team is British Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, commander of ground forces for Overlord. Prickly, egotistical, and too often self-serving, Monty has never been popular among American historians. But the British Ramsay agrees with co-author Gordon that blame for many of the campaign’s delays and disasters rest on Montgomery’s shoulders. So, when asking why the Allies initially failed to break out of the Normandy beachhead, the answer is Montgomery’s excessive caution. Why did the British not capture Caen, a top D-Day objective? Ditto. Whose decisions entangled the Americans in a bloody fight for the hedgerows? Again, Montgomery. The authors repeatedly contrast Monty’s bluster during the planning stages with his hesitation on the battlefield. They concede that British unwillingness to suffer heavy casualties in Normandy was due to the near exhaustion of their manpower reserves by 1944. What the authors find unforgivable, however, is Montgomery’s dishonesty. When his original plan for a bold dash to the open country south of Caen degenerated into a series of costly slugfests, Monty rationalized his failure by claiming his plan all along had been to tie down the bulk of German panzer forces, setting the stage for the American breakout in Operation Cobra. Who, ask Gordon and Ramsay, was responsible for the Allied failure to close the gap and destroy the German army at Falaise? For the disastrous Operation Market Garden? For the failure to seize the vital port of Antwerp in a timely manner, which might have solved the Allies’ resource drought sooner and even ended the war before Adolf Hitler had the opportunity to launch his Ardennes counterattack? In one way or another, all were Montgomery’s doing. But, by extension, the fault was ultimately Eisenhower’s. Deferring to British sensibilities, the supreme commander repeatedly abstained from sacking his troublesome subordinate. Gordon and Ramsay analyze triumphs and miscalculations on the road from Normandy’s beachheads to VE Day in con-

vincing and readable fashion. Unfortunately, Divided on D-Day is marred by what appear to be the publisher’s failings. The text is riddled with mistakes that detract from the work’s quality. Typographical errors abound. Usage is inconsistent (military style capitalizing operation, e.g. OVERLORD, is sometimes observed and sometimes not). Regiments are identified as divisions. Photographs are particularly problematic. The negative for a photo of Eisenhower and Admiral Sir Bertram Ramsay (page 76) appears to have been reversed. Elsewhere, German Field Marshal Walter Model is identified as Montgomery’s chief of staff, and vice-versa (pages 249 and 257). The absence of an index is inconvenient, and while the authors provide a thorough set of maps at the end of the book, these are sometimes incorrectly referenced in the text. Divided on D-Day may still serve as a useful addition to our understanding of one of history’s most closely documented campaigns. I hope Prometheus Books will soon issue a revised edition that addresses the flaws in the current version. K EN MUELLER Lafayette, Indiana

The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine Who Outwitted America’s Enemies by Jason Fagone, HarperCollins, 448 pages, $27.99

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LIZEBETH SMITH FRIEDMAN was a prodigy. She just hadn’t realized that by the time she accepted a job with eccentric tycoon George Fabyan after finishing college in 1916. The resulting accidental career fit her perfectly and bore fruit for the well-being of the civilized world. Fabyan sent Smith (who was still going by her maiden name at that time) to his Riverview research facility outside Chicago. She had studied poetry, and he asked her to use her linguistic skills to uncover secret messages he believed were hidden in William Shakespeare’s plays. The approach of World War I led to a change of assignment. Suddenly, Smith was working to decode enemy messages for the US government, to which Fabyan had connections. The result—a fascinating life’s OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 59

A work, a marriage, a partnership that virtually created the science of code-breaking, and a substantial boost to the Allied war effort in two world wars—forms the gripping narrative of Jason Fagone’s The Woman Who Smashed Codes. Named one of the “Ten Young Writers on the Rise” by the Columbia Journalism Review, Fagone is the author of numerous articles and of the books Horsemen of the Esophagus (2005), on competitive eaters, and Ingenious (2013), about innovators reimagining the automobile. For The Woman Who Smashed Codes, Fagone conducted three years of intensive research, the impressive depth of which is revealed in his citations. Working for Fabyan, Smith met William Friedman, a talented and innovative cryptologist, and in 1917 they married. But when William joined the US Army Signal Corps and was sent to France, Elizebeth wasn’t allowed to accompany him. World War I ended in November 1918, and William returned to the States the following April. The war’s end didn’t mean the end of code-breaking for the Friedmans. The Prohibition era began, and liquor smuggling was increasing. The US Treasury Department hired the couple as 2 of 1,400 new agents to combat smugglers. William was placed in the US Army Reserve, while Elizebeth was appointed as a civilian. During that time, William started tinkering with cipher machines, which were still in their infancy. The Friedmans’ work attracted the attention of J. Edgar Hoover, director of the Bureau of Investigation (soon to be the FBI), and of law enforcement agencies including Scotland Yard. In the midst of their challenging work, the Friedmans went on with life, having two children. When the US Coast Guard asked Elizebeth to intercept and decode communications from smugglers, she agreed, provided she could work at home. But the workload grew to handling some 25,000 messages per year, traveling crosscountry, and occasionally testifying in court. By 1931, the Treasury Department (under which the US Coast Guard then served) agreed to let Elizebeth build and train her own code-breaking team, the first unit of its kind in US Coast Guard history, and the first run by a woman. When Elizebeth testified in a high-profile case in 60 AMERICA IN WWII

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BOOKS AND MEDIA

New Orleans, the news media touted her as a “pretty government script-analyst.” Meanwhile, William was involved in top-secret work on coded Japanese communications. He and Elizebeth were doing the same type of work, but were forbidden to discuss it between themselves. A new world war was fast approaching, technology was advancing, and code machines were becoming popular. William endeavored to crack the new machines’ codes, reverse-engineering captured Japanese and German code-making machines by analyzing their garbled messages to determine the operating keys. William also helped engineer a US code machine, the SIGABA. No enemy ever cracked the SIGABA code. Germany eventually simply ignored SIGABA messages. Elizebeth, meanwhile, worked on the problem of enemy agents already on US soil in the run-up to World War II. The FBI turned to her to decode and decipher their messages—though the FBI, whose nascent code-breaking unit she later trained, got the credit. In fact, Elizebeth received little or no credit for any of her work, which was classified as top secret. Code-breaking was tedious, with long hours and high stress that affected William’s mental and physical health. But the result was the ability to read enemy messages that revealed troop movements, diplomatic matters, espionage, shipping routes, aircraft sightings, and more. This gave the Allies a leg up, saving many lives and making the difference between victory and defeat. Elizebeth left government service in 1946. William, who reached the rank of lieutenant colonel, died of a heart attack in 1969, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery. When Elizebeth died in 1980, her ashes were scattered there. The Woman Who Smashed Codes is a must-read for anyone interested in the murky world of codes and code-breaking—and in the lives of extraordinarily gifted people. J OHN L. BELLAH La Habra, California

The Accidental President: Harry S. Truman and the Four Months that Changed the World by A.J. Baime, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 448 pages, $30

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HARRY S. TRUMAN became president of the United States after the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, many Americans compared him with the neighbor down the street. Most thought he was just an ordinary man. While Truman, something of an unknown at the time, may have seemed like someone the average American could relate to, he was far from ordinary. Truman had not been given much in life, but through intelligence and hard work, he developed his innate gifts and talents to the utmost. He never went to college, beyond a few law classes, but he was a voracious reader and lifetime learner, unlike many college graduates. He over-compensated for his lack of formal education by doing extensive homework before attending meetings and making decisions. Serving as a US Army officer in the Great War, Truman proved he could handle chaos, stress, and tough decisions under horrific battlefield conditions. His subsequent business ventures failed, but he learned from his mistakes. Then he served for a decade as a commissioner in roughand-tumble county government in Missouri, including several years as the Jackson County Court’s presiding judge. Starting in 1934, he was a US senator for a decade, respected for rooting out government waste in defense contracts. Then he was Roosevelt’s vice president, for only 82 days, before becoming president of the United States. In The Accidental President, which takes its title from Truman’s own description of his rise to the Oval Office, journalist and historian A.J. Baime examines the first four months of Truman’s presidency. These months—April 12 to August 12, 1945—were among the most difficult and critical in US history. Many of the decisions Truman made in that brief period still affect the country today, and, as Baime’s thoroughly researched, well-written book shows, not all accidents are bad. In the short time that Truman served as HEN

vice president, he certainly wasn’t being groomed to replace the ailing FDR. He was out of the loop and spent most of his time at the Senate. The shock of Roosevelt’s death affected all Americans, but it was especially hard on Truman. He was very respectful to widowed First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and he knew the American people needed time to grieve. In a very short time, however, Baime shows, the new president was developing his sea legs, gaining more confidence in his leadership day by day. By the end of May 1945, Baime says, most Americans were in love with Truman. The first challenge Truman had to deal with as president was Nazi Germany. By April 12, 1945, the Third Reich was collapsing. Truman could have hitched a passive ride on the victory train, writes Baime, but instead he chose to be a leader. During Nazi Germany’s final days and in their aftermath, his meetings with his Cabinet and top military officers were collaborative and full of dialogue and discussion, followed by decisions by Truman. Many top officials

found Truman’s style and approach refreshing compared to Roosevelt’s. The next major difficulty Truman had to contend with was Japan. The horrendous details of the fighting on Okinawa weighed on him. By all accounts, the Japanese would fight to the end. Firebombing of their cities appeared to have little effect on their resolve. Truman was informed of plans for the invasion of Japan, scheduled to commence on November 1, 1945. Top brass told him US deaths could reach 250,000. When the details of the atomic bomb were revealed to him, he concluded that if the bomb proved successful in testing, it could save thousands of American lives. Without opposition from his primary advisors, he decided he had to authorize dropping the atomic bomb. The relationship with wartime ally the Soviet Union and its leader, Premier Josef Stalin, proved to be the most difficult problem Truman had to address in his first four months as president. As he prepared for the US-British-Soviet Potsdam Conference out-

side occupied Berlin, the Soviets were already violating the terms of the earlier Yalta Conference regarding Poland. Truman understood he was meeting with two towering figures at Potsdam: Stalin and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. But he was prepared, and his confidence had grown dramatically. General Dwight Eisenhower, the supreme Allied commander, was greatly impressed with Truman’s knowledge of European history and his command of the details. When Truman received news of the successful testing of the atomic bomb, he knew he was in a superior position relative to Stalin at Potsdam. Truman’s reputation and standing among US presidents have risen significantly since he left office in January 1953. This book’s examination of recently declassified military and diplomatic documents of the difficult and challenging first four months of his presidency should continue to raise the ranking of the “accidental president.” D ENNIS EDWARD FLAKE Hummelstown, Pennsylvania

A 78 RPM

No Hint of Irony Here

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N THE 1940 S , irony wasn’t the epidemic it has become since. In fact in WWII-era music, it was virtually nonexistent. There was patriotic rallying of Americans to aid the war effort, no-nonsense yearning for beaus who were away fighting the war, and plenty of silliness and otherwise non-seriousness to divert attention from the very serious matters at hand. But there was hardly ever a lyric that misled listeners only to reveal its true meaning at the end. “I Never Mention Your Name” was a rare exception. You might consider “I Never Mention Your Name” an ironic “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” the 1940 Duke Ellington big-band instrumental to which lyricist Bob Russell put earnest words in 1942, creating a classic. The narrator of the latter hit spends the song lamenting a missing sweetheart, specifically sitting home and avoiding any activity that might “stir up memories.” The meaning is obvious as early as the song’s first verse: “Missed the Saturday dance. / Heard they crowded the floor. / Couldn’t bear it without you. / Don’t get around much anymore.” When Mack David crafted the lyrics for “I Never Mention Your Name,” he walked a different path. Granted, the irony isn’t the toughest to tease out. The listener might have to be half asleep not to figure out that “I never dream of your eyes. / I never go where we used to go” means quite the opposite. Nonetheless, the

for-certain confirmation waits until the last two lines: “Except for every minute / Of every hour of every night and day.” The irony didn’t bring as much airplay as Ellington and Russell received with their hit, but the song did find an audience. Allen Miller and His Orchestra were first to cut it to shellac, in July 1943, with a vocalist who received no named credit on the record’s label. Shortly afterward, the biggest celebrity singer of the day, Bing Crosby, crooned the tune on the popular Command Performance radio show. Next followed recordings by Dick Haymes (with the Song Spinners) and Jack Leonard. Note that all these performers were men, singing a song that appears to come from the point of view of a lonely girl on the home front. Record executives apparently decided that male singers would appeal more to the teenage and twenty-something females who drove sales for this sort of song. They may have been proved right by the success: Haymes took the song to 11 on the Billboard charts, while Leonard did even better, peaking at 8. Or maybe the success lay mostly in the irony. Over the following decades irony settled into pop music very comfortably right alongside the electric guitar. Think Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Randy Newman. And like the rock-and-roll guitar, it developed more of a bite, too. CARL ZEBROWSKI editor of America in WWII

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AMERICA IN WWII 61

THE

WRIGHT MUSEUM OF WORLD WAR II Special 2017 Photography Exhibit: The American Soldier, from the Civil War to the War in Iraq

“A Unique Family Experience”

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

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[email protected] Offering individual tours by car 45 years of guiding experience

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COMING SOON

WWII EVENTS GeorGe Strock

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA • Oct. 14: An Evening to Honor Holocaust Survivors. Engage with Holocaust survivors and hear their stories. Artifacts will be on display for small-group viewing. Advance registration required. 7:30 P.M. United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 202-314-7877. www.ushmm.org Oct. 25: Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands 75th Anniversary Commemoration. Ceremony honoring and remembering the participants and casualties of the October 1942 battle. 11:30 A.M. National WWII Memorial. 202-675-2018. www.wwiimemorialfriends.org LOUISIANA • Oct. 4, New Orleans: Lunchbox Lecture: The Battle of Aachen. Museum volunteer Mike Alexander will delve into the October 1944 US victory at Aachen, the first German city to fall to Allied forces. Noon–1 P.M. H. Mortimer Favrot Orientation Center, National WWII Museum. 504-528-1944, ext. 463. www.nationalww2museum.org Oct. 27–29, New Orleans: WWII Air, Sea, and Land Festival 2017. Military vehicles from all branches of the armed forces. Dockside tours of fully restored and operational PT-305 patrol torpedo boat, WWII warbirds on display and in flight, period automobiles, WWII artifacts, children’s activities and displays, period fashion show, and victory parade. Hosted by the National WWII Museum. New Orleans Lakefront Airport. 504-528-1944. www.airsealandfest.com MASSACHUSETTS • Sept. 2, Fall River: WWII Saturday. More than 50 living historians, artillery and vehicle displays, and special programs scheduled throughout the day. 9 A.M.–5 P.M. Battleship Cove, 5 Water Street. 508-678-1100. www.battleshipcove.org

time & Life PictureS/Getty imaGeS

CALIFORNIA • Sept. 6, Chino: Strategic Bombing during WWII. A panel of veterans, military historians, and aviation experts will offer a presentation and roundtable discussion on heavy aerial bombing in World War II. 10 A.M.–noon. Planes of Fame Air Museum. 909-597-3722. www.planesoffame.org

Photographer George Strock shot this on New Guinea’s Buna Beach on December 31, 1942.

DEATH IN LIFE The war was half over before Americans saw dead GIs in their favorite magazine. Look for our next exciting issue on print & digital newsstands October 31, 2017.

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WHERE AMERICANS BATTLED IN 1918...

NEW HAMPSHIRE • Sept. 12, Wolfeboro: The Holocaust: The Twisted Road to Auschwitz. Lecture on the gradual progression of social and political policy that resulted in the Nazi ideology, the SS, and demographic engineering in Germany. Presented by Tom White of the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies, Keene State College, Keene, New Hampshire. 7 P.M. Wright Museum of World War II. 603-569-1212. www.wrightmuseum.org PENNSYLVANIA • Sept. 16–17, Gettysburg: WWII Weekend. Living history, European theater battle re-creations, educational programs, Enigma machine demonstration, guided cemetery tours, and a WWII-era USO dance. 9 A.M.–4 P.M. Eisenhower National Historic Site. 717-338-9114 ext. 4411. www.nps.gov/eise TEXAS • Sept. 16, Fredericksburg: Behind the Wire Symposium: Life as a POW and Internee. Interactive discussion and presentation by a panel of authors, historians, and veterans on the experiences of those who endured POW and internment camps. Hosted by the National Museum of the Pacific War. 8 A.M.–4:30 P.M. Fredericksburg Theatre Company. 830-997-8600. www.pacificwarmuseum.org UNITED KINGDOM • Sept. 18, Dover, Kent: School on the Home Front. View a recently uncovered book of hand-painted images detailing the realities of school life in England during WWII. A lecture will be given on the paintings’ history and discovery. 7–8:30 P.M. Dover Castle. +44 0370-333-1183. www.english-heritage.org.uk

“Forgotten stories of the American soldiers who went overseas in the bloodiest war the world had ever seen.” –Rick Steves, TV travel authority “Whether you travel or not, get this book. It’s a great read.” – OnTravel Radio

432pages • Photos from Then & now ORDER ONLINE AT

Please call the numbers provided or visit websites to check on dates, times, locations, and other information before planning trips.

markdvanells.com/wwi travel guide Facebook.com/markdavidvanells / OCTOBER 2017

AMERICA IN WWII 63

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an of se urtesy os co phot

sims

From Farm to Flight

Home in Alabama after flying over Europe in a B-24 (right, with his crew, second from right in back row), Technical Sergeant William Sims wed his wife, Agnes, and went back to farming.

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ROWING UP IN RURAL Autauga County, Alabama, William Sims had barely seen an airplane, let alone flown in one. That changed when, at the age of 21, he decided to leave the fields of Alabama for service in the skies of Europe with the US Army Air Forces. He headed to Keesler Field in Mississippi in July 1942 for training. In December 1944, Sims joined the ranks of the 767th Squadron of the 461st Bombardment Group (Heavy). Flying aboard B-24 Liberator bombers out of Torretta Airfield near Cerignola, Italy, he played the dual role of aerial engineer-gunner, responsible for addressing in-flight mechanical issues and shrapnel damage and protecting the bomber using two .50-caliber machine guns in the top turret. Flying through the deadly skies over German marshaling yards and refineries, Sims and nine fellow crewmen grew to rely on each other for survival. Before combat ceased in 1945, these 10 servicemen would fly 19 combat missions together in the Northern Apennines, Balkan, Po Valley, Rhineland, and Central Europe cam-

paigns. On one mission, Sims had to evaluate a shrapnel hole in one of the wings and determine whether the plane could make it home (fortunately, it could). Following VE (Victory in Europe) Day, Sims and the 461st Bomb Group were called on to drop a different kind of payload across Europe. During six mercy missions, Sims and his crew jettisoned kapok-padded drums of supplies to POWs below. The B24s dropped the drums from an altitude of 50 feet. As Sims’s crewmate, radioman David Edwards Jr., recalled, upon impact the barrels bounced up higher than the bombers. After returning to the States, Sims served out the remainder of his hitch with Squadron L of the 3502nd Base Unit at Chanute Airfield, Illinois. Then, leaving the service in October 1945, he returned to a life of farming. Until his death in 2007, Sims never forgot the nine other airmen with whom he served. A Submitted by Technical Sergeant William Sims’s grandson, SEAN SIMS. Adapted by editorial assistant NATHAN ZACCARELLI.

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