War Stories II

by Oliver L. North

  MAJOR MIKE RYAN was nominated by his regimental commander, General David M. Shoup, to receive the Navy Cross, the nation’s second highest award, for his heroism in the Battle of Tarawa. Ryan finished out the war and then served in the Korean War. He spent time at the USMC headquarters, completing an illustrious career as a Marine Corps major general.

  SERGEANT NORMAN HATCH stayed in the Marine Corps, was promoted to warrant officer, and went to Japan as part of the occupying American force after the war. He later joined the Bell & Howell Corporation, handling government projects, and still later returned to Washington, D.C., where he freelanced as a photographer. From 1956 to 1979 he became the first civilian to head the Public Affairs Department at the Pentagon.

  LIEUTENANT DON LILLIBRIDGE returned to the States after the war and went on to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, where he earned a Ph.D. He became a professor of history at California State University at Chico and taught until his retirement in 1981. He is also the author of six books, many articles, and a published war memoir.

  CORPORAL HARRY NIEHOFF was awarded five battle stars, two Purple Hearts, one Silver Star Medal, and one Bronze Star Medal for his heroism and exploits at the Battle of Tarawa. When discharged, he went home to Portland, Oregon, and enrolled in the Chouinard Art School in California. Niehoff pursued the home furnishing business, working with design, manufacturing, and sales until he retired in 1998. He often goes to public schools to tell students about his firsthand experiences in World War II.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS RICK SPOONER stayed in the Marines and retired in 1972 as a major. After retirement, Spooner decided to go into the restaurant business. He now owns and operates the Globe & Laurel Restaurant, just outside the gates of Quantico.

  LIEUTENANT ALEX VRACIU put in twenty years with the Navy, retiring in 1963. After that, he started another successful career with the Wells Fargo banking firm.

  SERGEANT CYRIL “OBIE” O’BRIEN left the Marines after the war but stayed in the Marine Reserves, putting in a total of twelve years of service and rising from sergeant to captain. He continued his work as a reporter, helping Americans understand everything from the politics of Washington to applied physics research at Johns Hopkins.

  DON SWINDLE left the Marines at the end of World War II. He returned to his home in Indiana and went back to work with General Motors until he retired in 1980. After a few restless years, he went to work for Ace Hardware for another six years. He works today as a security guard, more than sixty years after the battles he fought in the South Pacific.

  MAJOR GORDON GAYLE rose through the ranks of the Marine Corps and was promoted to the rank of brigadier general. He retired from the Corps in 1968. He then went to work with the Georgetown Center for Strategic Studies, where he worked on a study of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam. He later wrote a book about his Pacific war experiences, Bloody Beaches: The Marines at Peleliu.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS FRED FOX went to college on the GI Bill and was given a disability pension because of the wounds he received in the Battle of Peleliu. He returned to Peleliu in 1964, twenty years after he fought there, and exorcised his demons of combat. He also went back for the fiftieth anniversary of the Battle of Peleliu in 1994.

  PHARMACIST MATE THIRD CLASS JOHN J. HAYES was awarded the Purple Heart and the Bronze Star for his actions at Peleliu. After recovering from his shrapnel wounds, he served again in the invasion of Okinawa, where he was also decorated. After the war, he was discharged from the Navy and joined the Coast Guard. Thanks to the GI Bill, he got a degree from the University of Missouri and his master’s in hospital administration from Washington University in St. Louis. He served in hospital administration for the next thirty-eight years.

  CAPTAIN EVERETT POPE met President Harry Truman when he presented him with the Congressional Medal of Honor in June 1945, even as plans were being made to end the war by the first tactical use of atomic bombs. Pope left the Marine Corps after the war and became the youngest bank president in Massachusetts. He says he had to retire in 1980 because he was about to become the oldest.

  FIRST LIEUTENANT PAUL AUSTIN returned to Ft. Worth, Texas, after the war and spent thirty-one years in a career with the telecommunications business.

  LIEUTENANT (JG) JAMES (JIM) HALLOWAY remained in the Navy and eventually achieved the rank of admiral, followed by service on the Joint Chiefs of Staff as chief of naval operations.

  LIEUTENANT RICHARD (DICK) ROBY spent five years in active duty service and another five years in the organized Reserves. He moved to Texas, where he worked thirty-two years in the insurance and investment business while also being active as a rancher on a 1,000-acre ranch outside of Austin. He retired in 1982. He and his wife, Mary Evelyn, who died in 1998, raised three children and have five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

  LIEUTENANT THOMAS (TOM) STEVENSON survived the shark-infested waters of the Pacific Ocean after his ship USS Samuel B. Roberts was sunk by the Japanese. After the war ended he returned to his family’s shipping business in Long Island, New York.

  CAPTAIN ROBERT PRINCE saw virtually no combat prior to helping to lead the Rangers’ rescue raid of POWs at Cabanatuan, but he returned to the U.S. a hero. He and the other officers who took part in the raid were debriefed at the Pentagon and then honored by President Roosevelt. Prince is still shy about being in a spotlight that he neither seeks nor believes he deserves. But he says, “A new generation is learning about the sacrifices that were made. I’m glad to see that happening.”

  PHARMACIST MATE SECOND CLASS JOHN “DOC” BRADLEY was awarded the Navy Cross and will always be remembered as one of the six men who raised the U.S. flag on Mount Suribachi. After the war a movie was made about his life, and he was often invited to dedicate a war memorial or lead a parade honoring America’s heroes. He downplayed his actions in World War II until his death in 1995.

  LIEUTENANT GEORGE GREELEY WELLS returned to his home in Green Village, New Jersey, after the war. For his heroic service on Iwo Jima in 1945, where he was wounded in action, Wells was awarded the Purple Heart.

  PRIVATE JOHN COLE, after serving two and a half years in the Marines, returned home after the war to fight another battle—finding a job. He and many other nineteen-year-old veterans hadn’t been trained in anything but combat, and it took some time to find other work. In 2000, Cole returned to Iwo Jima, where he visited the graves that he and others from Graves Registration had filled. He grieved that there was no one to mourn the brave men who had died and now rested on this lonely and scarred island.

  PRIVATE DONALD MATES was hospitalized until 1946, recovering from wounds he received on Iwo Jima, where he was awarded the Purple Heart. He returned to the U.S., went to Arizona State, graduated in 1951, and went into business. Mates is retired and lives in Palm Beach, Florida. On the fifty-fifth anniversary of the Battle of Iwo Jima, he returned to the island with other Iwo Jima survivors and hardly recognized the land, now lush and green with sixty years of new vegetation.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS DAN BARTON recovered from his wounds and went home after the war. He worked in oil exploration in Kuwait, the Khyber Pass, Pakistan, and then in Venezuela and the Oronoco and Amazon jungles. Barton later worked for the TRW Corporation, an aerospace company in Redondo Beach, California, for twenty-five years.

  SEAMAN THIRD CLASS LAWRENCE DELEWSKI recovered from the explosion on the USS Laffey but his nerves would never be the same. He suffered from what came to be called “post-traumatic stress syndrome” after the Vietnam War. Back home, Larry became a teacher and coach and taught special-ed kids for twenty-five years.

  PRIVATE FIRST CLASS HERMAN “BUFF” BUFFINGTON went back to finish high school and took advantage of the GI Bill to go to college. He married his wife, Helen, in 1949, and the couple had two sons. Buffington and his wife worked for the Summerville (Georgia) News, where they learned the newspaper business. They purchased a newspaper in Jefferson, Georgia, and now own four weekly newspapers and a commercial printing o
peration. Buffington is still involved in the business but has been semi-retired since 1978; his sons now run the business.

  CORPORAL MEL HECKT landed in San Francisco on 3 August 1945, completing exactly twenty months of continuous combat in the Pacific. After a few days of celebration, he headed for his hometown in Iowa, getting there in time to celebrate V-J Day and the end of World War II.

  COLONEL FRANK SACKTON, after helping MacArthur with the occupation, returned to Washington after the war, serving as deputy director for national security affairs for the Secretary of Defense, then as deputy director of planning for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and deputy chief for military operations, U.S. Army. After an illustrious military career, he turned to higher education. Today he is Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University and said, “I’d like to be remembered as a man who remained in the workforce until I was ninety.” Still active at ASU, Sackton turned ninety-two this year.

  ENSIGN DONALD (“MAC”) SHOWERS decided that after World War II he would make a career in the U.S. Navy. He retired as a rear admiral and in 2002 returned to Midway atoll to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of that pivotal battle.

  ENSIGN WILLIAM (BILL) TANNER was reassigned to the European theater after he took part in the hunt for midget subs at Pearl Harbor. On 1 August 1943 his plane was attacked by a group of eight German Luftwaffe in air combat and Tanner was shot down with two of his crew. All survived.

  TIMELINE OF WORLD WAR II IN THE PACIFIC

  1937

  28 July

  Japan Invades Chinese Capital

  Chinese and Japanese troops skirmish in Peking (Beijing). Japan bombs three Chinese cities and “terror bombs” Shanghai in August.

  12 December

  The Sinking of the USS Panay

  A U.S. gunboat and three other ships evacuating Chinese citizens of Nanking are attacked by Japanese planes. A U.S. sailor on the Panay, Charles Ensminger, becomes the first American to die in the Pacific War.

  13 December

  Nanking, China, Captured by the Japanese

  Over the next six weeks 300,000 civilians are brutally killed, mostly elderly, women, and children. The event is captured on newsreels and is dubbed “the rape of Nanking.”

  1938

  4 February

  Japan Continues Its War with China

  The Japanese subdue the eastern third of the nation.

  20 February

  Roosevelt Revises the Pacific War Plan

  The U.S. War Plan (Plan Orange) transfers part of the American fleet to the Pacific, and uses the 1933 “Trading with the Enemy Act” to develop a plan to freeze Japanese assets in the event of war.

  20 February

  Hitler Supports Japan in Its Plans for Asian Conquest

  Nazi leader Adolf Hitler proclaims his unilateral support for Japan in its war for Asia.

  March–June

  Japanese Launch Total War in Asia

  They claim their military aggression is to “free Asia from colonial rule and communism.” Public opinion in the U.S. opposes Japanese aggression and is determined not to permit the kind of appeasement that America had condoned in its dealings with Germany. The U.S. indicates that its citizens will not permit Japan’s war efforts to continue unchecked.

  17 May

  The Vinson-Trammel Naval Expansion Act

  This bill is passed, authorizing $1 billion for building a “two ocean” U.S. Navy of sixty-nine new ships and 3,000 airplanes.

  August

  U.S. Fortifies Its Pacific Possessions

  The U.S. takes steps to protect its possessions in the Pacific (Midway, Wake, and Guam Islands) by constructing strong defenses. Earlier, U.S. politician William Borak decried the expense of such efforts as “decoration of a useless sand dune.”

  16 August

  Birth of the Atomic Era

  Enrico Fermi receives the 1938 Nobel Prize in physics for identifying new elements and discovering nuclear reactions by his method of nuclear irradiation and bombardment. It is one of the precursors to creating the atom bomb.

  23 August

  Flying Tigers Created

  U.S. retired Army Air Corps general Claire Lee Chennault begins a “secret” air war in China using funds covertly approved by President Roosevelt. He recruits and organizes volunteer pilots, calling his air force the “Flying Tigers.” He uses American P-40 fighters, which perform better in dogfights with the Japanese Zero.

  1939

  7–15 April

  Congress Cuts Off Trade with Japan

  The U.S. Congress introduces a resolution to cut off trade with Japan.

  1940

  9 April

  Nazis Occupy Denmark, Invade Norway

  Continuing their run across northern Europe, the Germans storm into Denmark and Norway. They will also take Belgium and Holland, and march into Paris in May.

  May

  U.S. Pacific Fleet Ordered to Pearl Harbor

  The Pacific Fleet makes Hawaii its base instead of San Diego, California.

  3 June

  Dunkirk

  British and other Allied troops send thousands of ships to evacuate the retreating army at Dunkirk, and 350,000 are rescued from the Nazis, although the next day 40,000 are captured by the Germans.

  30 June

  British Appeasement for Asia

  Great Britain continues its policy of Japanese appeasement and Churchill agrees to a Japanese demand to close the Burma Road, a key China army supply route. Churchill acquiesces in order to avoid war with Japan.

  5 July

  Nazi U-Boats Extend Their Range

  German submarines extend their range ever closer to the United States and Canada in their attempt to blockade British shipping.

  10 July

  Battle of Britain Begins

  Winston Churchill becomes the new prime minister after Chamberlain resigned on 10 May. Germans attack British shipping and their Luftwaffe begins bombing raids that will later come to be called the “Blitz” by Britons.

  17 July

  Japanese Troops Occupy Hong Kong

  Part of the Hong Kong territory is seized by the Japanese and they blockade the British colony. The governor general of Hong Kong issues an evacuation order for women and children to be moved to the Philippines.

  3–7 September

  Hitler Plans to Invade Britain

  The Nazis are committed to invading Great Britain and extinguishing the opposition to German conquest. The plan, Operation Sea Lion, is unveiled on the third, and the “Blitz” begins on the seventh. In October Hitler decides to postpone Operation Sea Lion until spring 1941.

  16 September

  America Introduces the Draft

  Military conscription starts in the U.S.

  22 September

  Japanese Troops Invade Indochina

  French Indochina (present-day Vietnam) is taken by Japanese troops crossing the border. The Axis-controlled French Vichy government accedes to their action.

  25 September

  Japanese Secrets Stolen

  The Japanese seek a way to improve the security of their signals. Their solution to the security problem is radical: They decide to abandon using codebooks and began instead to encrypt their most confidential and secret messages on a machine. Ironically, this decision eventually enables the U.S. to read Japanese diplomatic messages with great ease once the Americans break their new code.

  27 September

  Axis Powers Formed

  Japan, Germany, and Italy announce the Tripartite Pact and become known as the Axis Powers.

  30 November

  Flying Tigers Group Gets Funding Help

  China’s leader, Chiang Kai-shek, gets a $100 million loan from President Roosevelt to purchase fifty more war planes for Claire Chennault’s Flying Tigers.

  1941

  January

  British Victories in the Mediterranean

  British and Australian troops capture Bardia, take 48,000 German prisoners, then take Tobr
uk and another 25,000 Germans.

  7 January

  Yamamoto Plans Pearl Harbor Attack

  Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto outlines his war plans, and suggests that an air attack of Pearl Harbor and other American bases, along with raids against British colonies and bases in the Pacific, will convince the Americans and British to abandon their interests in the Pacific and concentrate on the war in Europe.

  27 January

  U.S. Ambassador Warns of Attack

  Ambassador Joseph Grew warns his government that the Japanese intend to attack Pearl Harbor, but U.S. naval intelligence believe that the threat is not credible.

  2 February

  The “Desert Fox” Prowls

  General Erwin Rommel, Hitler’s brilliant tactician for desert warfare, arrives in North Africa to oppose the British and Australians.

  14 February

  Ultimatum to Japan

  Eugene Dooman delivers FDR’s ultimatum to Foreign Minister Ohashi in Tokyo that if Japan attacks Singapore, it would mean war with the United States.

  15 February

  Discovering “Magic”

  “Magic” (the nickname for American code-breakers’ ability to read Japanese signals communications) intercepts a “shopping list” for spies in Hawaii, but Pearl Harbor is not informed.

  3 April

  Ships for the Atlantic

  Admiral Harold Stark, chief of naval operations, orders three battleships, one carrier (Yorktown), and four cruisers transferred from the Pacific to the Atlantic due to emerging “Europe-first” strategy and the need to send war matériel to Britain as part of the Lend-Lease convoys.