WWII Heroes: We Were Just Doing Our Jobs

by Minton, Linda E.

  “Yes, but I saw enough of it.”

  “I always felt sorry for the ones in the Pacific after Pearl Harbor because the navy was in bad shape for the first year. People didn’t realize they were giving most of the supplies to Europe. Everything was going to Europe, and the Pacific had to do with what they had.

  “After diesel engine school, I was assigned to a mine sweeper. It operated in the Atlantic Ocean until July 1944. After that, they sent us back to the US mainland and took all the sweep gear off to make us a patrol craft. The hull was already a patrol craft. We were sent to the Strait of Gibraltar. We went to Africa for a week, then to Naples, Italy, on August 14, 1944.

  “We left Italy and went on to southern France. On August 15, 1944, we got in position to make the invasion on southern France. There were about three different beachheads. We were up there for about three days, and we ran out of food. We finally found an LST (Landing Ship Tank) that would let us have some supplies. We were operating up and down the coast of Italy, and our base was in Sicily. It was spring 1945, we were in Leghorn, Italy. A German sub and cruiser were in a base in northern Italy, and we wanted to keep those ships there. We did this for three or four nights. The war in Europe ended May 8, 1945.”

  “In July 1945 we were sent to Jacksonville, Florida, for a major overhaul. We were getting ready to fire up the engines when the war in Japan ended, August of 1945. I still had a little over a year left in the service and was transferred to the west coast of the United States. The rest of my career in the navy was spent on the west coast.”

  What did you think about the United States dropping the bomb on Japan?

  “I didn’t think too much about it—anything to end the war. If they hadn’t done it, and an invasion occurred, there would have been a whole lot of people die. Japan was fortified to fight back. They had airplanes and civilians lined up for defense. They never expected what they got. If there had been an invasion, many people would have died. They wouldn’t give up. I see no wrong with it. That’s the way it went, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Japan attacked the United States, and they had no sympathy. That’s war.”

  What happened to the USS Jarvis?

  USS Jarvis was sunk on August 9, 1942, off Guadalcanal, and all the crew were lost. There was no debris or anything left in the area. It was a couple of days overdue before anyone investigated. Lester knew many of the men on that ship. It wasn’t known what happened to the ship until after the war, when Japanese records were searched, and what had taken place was pieced together. Lester never returned to the Jarvis after his diesel training class. Another sailor who left for training when Lester did returned to the Jarvis but died when the ship went down. Sometimes God has other plans for you.

  Lester was stationed on the LST 838 from January 1945 to March 1945, until it was decommissioned in Portland, Oregon. The LST 838, renamed the USS Hunterdon County, went on to serve and earn awards in the Vietnam War.

  “I don’t regret one minute of my time in the navy.” This quote summed up Lester’s thoughts: “The only way you can preserve history is in black and white—things happen to computers.”

  Robert Crouch—US Navy

  USS Sacramento, Pearl Harbor Survivor

  “The harbor was a mess because of all the oil.”

  Bob, twenty-two years old, joined the navy on September 30, 1940. He had been working at Diamond Chain in Indianapolis and going to night school at Butler University. He thought he would join the navy, get his two-year commitment over with, and go home. The Empire of Japan changed Bob’s plans.

  Bob began his navy career in Michigan City and the Great Lakes, going through the St. Lawrence River. Their first stop was the Boston Navy Yard, where the ship was to be painted and overhauled. Early in 1941 they went to West Virginia; Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Jamaica; and the Panama Canal to San Diego. “We then went over to Pearl Harbor. It took us a long time to get there because the ship, or gun boat, could only do fifteen knots.” In May 1941 Bob arrived in Pearl Harbor.

  December 7, 1941

  The day began about eight o’clock in the morning, and Bob was still down below. Then they sounded general quarters, and he went to his station. There was an awning on the front of their ship that had to be removed, so Robert was up there with a butcher knife trying to cut it down before they could fire their guns. He finally got it down.

  “So this guy and I went to the machine gun. Next we were in the harbor trying to pick up the dead. The harbor was a mess because of all the oil. We burned up the motors in the motorboats because of all the oil in the water.”

  Robert went on to explain, “First thing they hit were the airfields...They destroyed them totally. We never got a plane in the air! A bomb went down the turret of the Arizona.

  “The carrier Enterprise came into Pearl Harbor to give the island a little protection. Unfortunately none of the ships were warned, and as they flew over the center of the bay, we shot all of them down in less than a few minutes. By nightfall we all had a firing course that covered the sky. The minute they went inside the pattern, the sky lit up like a light. Later we were told that most of the pilots ejected, but I don’t know how true that was.”

  How did you feel when all this was happening?

  “Scared. We had general quarters, and I was a machine gunner. We think we were credited one time with one plane, and we got lots of shots off in the harbor. The Japanese targeted the battleships in the harbor. The submarine dock was full, but they never touched it. They never touched any oil fields. They were after the six battleships.”

  Bob credits the installation of a big crane on the dock beside the Sacramento with saving their ship, possibly their lives. “The dock we were tied up to, directly across from Battleship Row, was very, very large. As a matter of fact, we could play limited softball on the dock in the evenings. At four thirty on Friday night, when the shipyard workers went home, they parked this enormous crane, about thirty to forty feet high and about twenty feet wide, on the rail tracks of the dock right next to our ship, the USS Sacramento. Actually it was within a few feet of our gangplank. We were mad as hell because it interfered with our playing softball or passing the football in the evenings and on the weekends. It saved our butts because the Japanese torpedo planes could not get in to us.”

  December 8–10, 1941

  “Beginning December eighth we started to lay out bodies, identify them, put them in white sheets, and put them into wooden built caskets. We then dug graves up in the hills by Pearl Harbor and started to bury the dead. The graves were mostly dug by hand. We dug the graves with picks and shovels. They were forty inches wide, ninety inches long, and three feet deep. I am not sure whether or not they have ever reburied the people; I have never asked or been back there to see them. The fuel oil spilled in the harbor was a great health hazard. A lot of fires, and the stink was very bad, and our eyes would burn like they were on fire.

  “Starting at noon, and for the next two to three days, we were busy picking up the injured and the dead, which was a horrible scene. The oil from the hit ships had all leaked into the water, coagulated like lard to about a foot and a half deep, which made it next to impossible to get our motorboats through it.” He went on to say, “There were eleven or twelve of us digging with shovels and picks. The next day the city brought some diggers, so we didn’t have to use shovels and picks. It was sandy soil up in the mountains.” Bob said he dug eleven graves by hand.

  December 17, 1941

  “We then stayed in Pearl for about another week, getting fueled up, taking on supplies, and getting ready to go to sea. We were dispatched to the island of Hawaii, with the main town being Hilo. Our duty was to try to protect that part of the Hawaiian Islands and serve as a lookout ship for Pearl Harbor. We stayed there for some time and helped them build a fighter plane landing strip. When we left there, we were sent to a southern island, Palmyra. Lucky for me, our ship was too slow to work with the Pacific Fleet. In Palmyra we took care of six torpedo boats for abo
ut two months. Then they sent us back to the US, San Diego, to train merchant marine sailors in the use of artillery. They were used to protect the merchant ships carrying supplies to our men.”

  Bob told the story of when President Franklin Roosevelt had a secret meeting with Stalin and Chiang Kai-Shek after dark. “We were docked in San Diego, where they were working on this ship, the USS Baltimore, and we didn’t know what was happening until a day or so later. When we get underway, maybe fifty miles out, all of a sudden there are all these ships. One ship throws a cable to another ship, and here comes President Roosevelt.”

  One funny story was when they thought they saw a torpedo in the water, which turned out to be a whale! Another time they saw what looked like a torpedo, and the general alarm was sounded. This time it turned out to be porpoises.

  Should we have dropped the atomic bomb on Japan?

  “I thought it was perfect—the best way to save thousands of lives. It was a way to show them [the Japanese] that we could destroy them.”

  Celebrities and Golfing experiences

  He met the Andrew Sisters, Sammy Davis Jr., Carol Lombard, Hedy Lamar, Peter Lawford, Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, and Frank Sinatra at various clubs. Bob was quite a golfer and played golf with many 1940s celebrities—Elvis Presley, Gary Player, Buddy Hackett, Andy Williams and Paul Anka. In the military he played golf with Admiral Chester Nimitz. Also Bob played golf with then President George H. W. Bush and Vice President Dan Quayle at Andrews Air Force Base. President Bush gave him a commemorative crystal glass golf club and golf ball.

  Return to Pearl Harbor—

  In 1974 Bob and his granddaughter returned to Pearl Harbor, but he does not care to go back again. He still has bad memories of what happened that day. Bob knows a fellow crew member, Paul Kennedy, also on the USS Sacramento that terrible December day. Bob said, “I saw some of the Japanese pilots that day who were flying just above the water.” He just kept shooting at them.

  Paul Kennedy—US Navy

  Pearl Harbor Survivor

  “I was looking up at him, and he was looking down at me. He had his canopy down.”

  Paul had just finished filming an interview for the History Channel a few weeks prior to my visit, so it was an honor to be able to sit down and visit with him. It was an emotional and humbling experience to listen to all the pain that still remains with Paul after more than seventy-five years. His story is peppered with references to God and how he credits God for looking after him and keeping him safe.

  Paul had just turned twenty-one years old on December 2, 1941. He was stationed on the USS Sacramento, a gun boat, docked at Pearl Harbor. Paul entered the naval reserves in 1938 at the navy armory on Thirtieth Street in Indianapolis. He was called into active service in 1940.

  There were about 275 guys who had all been together in the reserves. The ship sailed down the St. Lawrence River; in Boston, Massachusetts; and in Norfolk, Virginia. There were stops at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; the Panama Canal; San Diego, California; and ending at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. They arrived in Pearl Harbor about August 15, 1941. He was at Pearl Harbor from August to December, just enjoying his time in Hawaii.

  On the night before the blitz, he was on duty from midnight until four a.m. “I was relieved by a former football player and stayed up and drank coffee with him until about five thirty a.m. His plan was to sleep all day Sunday; however, that plan was not to be. Well, the Japs came in, and the general quarters alarm went off. I thought it was a drill.”

  His buddy, Brown, threw the covers off of him and said, “Kennedy, come on, the Japs are bombing the hell out of us. Go to your battle station. Get your gas mask and your helmet.”

  “I knew he was not joking. I didn’t even put my pants on. I ran up the ladder to the deck above.”

  Just as he was going up the ladder, there appeared a large plane with a big torpedo. It was the first torpedo that was dropped that morning. Lieutenant Mitsuo Fuchida was the one leading the raid. Paul saw him in the cockpit of that plane. It was coming in low and slow. “I was looking up at him, and he was looking down at me. He had his canopy down. As soon as it cleared our ship, he dropped that torpedo in the water, and it went across the harbor. I watched it, as I had never seen anything like that before. It hit the battleship Oklahoma, and that battleship was on its side in twenty minutes. Fellows were scrambling for their lives and trying to get out before they drowned. Lot of them started swimming across the harbor toward us. We sent boats out there to pick them up. We took them aboard and took care of them until later.” Later in life, Mitsuo Fuchida became a Christian evangelist and moved to the United States.

  “A lot of the guys went down with their ships. Then a lot of torpedo planes came in dropping torpedoes. The Japs were after the battleships—any big ships. There were forty-four torpedoes dropped. Every time a torpedo would hit a ship, it would open up a hole, and the oil would run out into the harbor. Eventually the oil in the harbor was six inches thick on top of the water. There were some dead men lying on top of the oil, and our ship, as well as other ships, sent boats out to get them, and a Jap plane came strafing the men in the lifeboats. The boats were unprotected, but these guys would strafe them.

  “As soon as I saw that torpedo drop into the water, I went to my battle station. My job was to use the flags and run them up the pole. All this time there are planes dropping bombs on ships. So there are Japanese zeros all around. One of these planes dropped a five-hundred-pound bomb on the battleship USS Pennsylvania. The Pennsylvania was in dry dock. We were sitting at dry dock a week prior to where it was sitting now. So they had moved us out and moved us closer to the dock, so they could move the Pennsylvania in.

  “The pilot did a good job because he killed some guys that were in the gun turret. As soon as he did that he turned the plane around and headed for us and started strafing us.” Paul went on to say, “I am up there without any protection, and I think I am going to die.” He said, “I could hear the bullets hitting the bulkhead all around me. You can’t see them, but you can hear them. “So help me, God put a shield around me. I know that I had a shield in front of me. Since I was sixteen years old, I have been a child of His. He saved my life about four or five times.”

  The plane missed everybody aboard Paul’s ship. He was shot down by the Sacramento’s gunners as he went over. “So, he paid the price,” said Paul.

  As soon as that happened, the USS Mugford and the USS Jarvis were to get underway. “The skipper on the Mugford called over to us and asked if we could spare any fifty-caliber ammunition. Our skipper said, ‘Sure.’” He ordered Brown, Kennedy, and Benefield to move the ammunition over to the Mugford.

  At that time Paul weighed about 125 pounds. The cases of ammo weighed about seventy pounds each. He carried cases two at a time over to the ship three times. “The adrenaline was flowing freely in my body,” said Paul. While he was doing this, the ship pulled up the gangplank and started to move out. He asked permission to stay aboard, which was denied. The skipper told him to jump, so he did, and the fellows aboard the Sacramento caught him by the arms. He bumped his nose and knees but was OK. He didn’t break anything.

  “By this time, the battleship Nevada was underway and trying to get out of the harbor. All those airplanes concentrated on sinking that ship. They would have done it too, if the Nevada hadn’t beached itself.” Paul remembered, “It beached itself on Hospital Point.

  “Things were not going good at all. People were getting shot up. In an hour and forty-five minutes, we lost twenty ships, 2,335 killed, and another 1,143 wounded. There were some things that happened...” Paul trailed off on that thought.

  That night three planes from the aircraft carrier Enterprise flew over Pearl Harbor. “They were told not to fly over Pearl Harbor, but they did. You can’t tell a flyboy anything! So help me, it was the most beautiful pyrotechnic display you will ever see in your life.”

  The planes were shot down. Paul said, “The pilot who survived said if he could have gotten out o
f his plane, you could have walked to earth on the lead that was coming up, and I believe it.”

  The USS Baltimore was tied up next to us. “I told one of the guys to get a rifle and patrol back and forth over on the Baltimore. He said, ‘What for?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, just keep your eyes open.’” Paul continued, “About three thirty in the afternoon, he hollered over to me that he just saw a periscope come up and go down.” Paul got in touch with the officer of the day, Lieutenant Adrian Marks from Frankfort, Indiana. Lt. Marks called the base, and they sent three PT boats over there. Paul continued, “They started dropping depth charges. The Japanese midget submarine beached itself, and the Jap surrendered. It was on display at Pearl Harbor for a while until Japan wanted it back. So they gave it back to Japan.”

  As a side note, Paul said, “Adrian Marks was a private pilot and had a pilot’s license before he entered the service. He wanted to join the navy air force, so he got permission to be transferred to Pensacola, Florida. He went down there and got his wings, and he wound up flying a PDY on patrol duty. He was the pilot of the plane that rescued many of the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. He asked for permission to set the plane down in the water, and they said no.” He went on to do it anyway, and many of the survivors who had been in the water for four days were saved. “He saved a lot of lives.” Paul did the eulogy for Adrian’s funeral.

  A day or two after the war started, “There was a Japanese submarine that lobbed three torpedoes into Hilo, Hawaii,” said Paul. “There was no navy down there to protect Hilo, so we went down there. By golly, it was like going on a vacation. There wasn’t nothing going on down there. The war was going on in the Pacific and in Europe, but we are sitting down there going on liberty every three days. I got so bored; I wanted to kill Japanese, and I couldn’t get to them.”

  Well, it so happened that a yeoman from Paul’s ship fell and broke his arm, so they sent him to the hospital. The yeoman wrote Paul a letter saying he was in the transfer division. Paul wrote back, “Get me off this ship.” Brown, Benefield, and Paul were sent to San Francisco. Paul said, “It was just like sending a letter to Santa Claus! We were packed and off that ship in thirty minutes, after we got our new orders.”