Edgar mentioned Miles Spooner, another marine, and Leland Hubbard, who didn’t make it. They spotted some sharks. There were eight- to ten-foot swells. The men started to drift apart, but they tried to stay together.
First Day
When morning came they could take inventory. When someone with a temperature started to hallucinate, they took off on their own. They didn’t make it. “You hear a scream, and the kapok jacket goes down and springs back up. Fins and blood.”
They were desperate and losing boys. They were having trouble staying together. It was 110 degrees at times, and they were desperate and struggling. They were so thirsty and tempted to drink seawater. One sailor drank some. Within an hour he started to hallucinate and thought his buddy was a Jap. He tried to kill the person who assisted him. They may have had to drown their own buddy.
Second Night
“It is about eighty-five degrees, but you are soaking wet, and the body temperature drops too far, hypothermia set in. Especially those guys that only had on skivvies.” Edgar was lucky to have had on his work clothes, which helped to hold in his body heat.
Many were desperate for water. “You have to swim all the time to make it. The more you swim, the thirstier you get. You are tempted to drink the seawater. Their lips are chapped and bleeding, and they get oil and salt on them...they are parched. It’s raining—thank the Lord! Well, if you open your mouth, the oil is all over you. You take those greasy hands and get a tablespoon full.”
Third Day
“Eighty men are now to seventeen. There are lots of guys praying. By now, what are you doing? The kapok jackets are not holding our heads out of the water. We are seated in them now.”
“They came up on a swell, and they could see in the distance a little raft made of crates that were lashed together. There were five sailors, but no one was on the raft. They had kapok jackets they had taken from some men who had expired. They were drying out the jackets. They were trying to paddle to the Philippines. The men didn’t know the Philippines were five hundred miles away!” They joined the other five sailors heading west.
On another swell they saw something out there. Edgar found a crate of potatoes. Again he said, “Thank the Lord.” The first one was rotten, but he grabbed another one and peeled it with his teeth. Then he put some in his pockets. His buddies came on out, and they had a picnic of sorts eating the potatoes.”
“It’s dark when someone comes to the raft. It’s McKissick, another member of the USS Indianapolis crew.”
Fourth Day
“Where’s Spooner? We turned loose of the raft during the night.” There were three left in his group now. One of the sailors gave up and died. They saw a plane, a B-25, Edgar thought, coming in low, two thousand or three thousand feet. They had been spotted by the aircraft. The pilot saw something from above and went down to see the debris, sharks, and men in the water. He radioed back and said, “Ducks on the pond”—code for men in the water.
Another pilot came on the scene and said he saw more sharks than he saw boys. They were going to do something even though they were not supposed to land in the water. “It was a no-no. They can’t leave these guys here to wait for help. They picked up fifty-six survivors.”
Cleatus Lebow—US Navy, USS Indianapolis Survivor
“I watched the raising of the first flag raising on Iwo Jima from the deck of the USS Indianapolis.”
Cleatus Lebow of Memphis, Texas, was in Indianapolis for the weekend activities honoring the survivors of the USS Indianapolis. This was the seventieth reunion honoring the survivors. There were thirty-five survivors left; one had died only the previous day. His family was there in his place—that’s how much the reunion means to these families.
Cleatus entered the navy on his nineteenth birthday. He has attended all but one of these reunions, which gather all the remaining men from the USS Indianapolis and give them the honor they deserve. Paul Feeney’s grandson placed his daughter, Kayla, in Cleatus’s lap and took a picture. Cleatus was amused that Paul’s great-granddaughter had the same name as his own great-granddaughter. It’s a small world.
Cleatus was a range finder operator. It was like radar, and he said, “Yes, but you use your eyeball.” He looked through eight-foot gun turrets that were twenty feet long, to see what was happening on the sea and on the islands they were bombing.
He was the only man who had his name misspelled on the USS Indianapolis Memorial. The memorial has all the names of the men who served on the ship engraved in granite. The lettering has his name with a capital B; however, he spells it with a small b—Lebow instead of the incorrect LeBow. He said, “It really doesn’t matter.”
It was a very warm, humid day, but Cleatus was eager to talk about what happened to the USS Indianapolis. He has been on the honor flights to Washington, DC that left from Amarillo, Texas. They go for three days instead of the one day Indiana WWII veterans are allowed.
Cleatus has spoken to school groups and said, “I told them I don’t take many showers or go swimming, but if you offer me water, I’ll drink it.” It was a warm day at the reunion, and he was glad to have a bottle of water.
“I watched the raising of the first flag raising on Iwo Jima from the deck of the USS Indianapolis,” said Cleatus. He talked some about Okinawa when informed about another veteran, Les Brown, who was a survivor from the Battle of Okinawa. On Cleatus’s hat were eight stars, one for each of the eight campaigns in which the USS Indianapolis was involved. He was involved in all the campaigns, from the Gilbert Island on down. These campaigns are listed on the memorial. When asked where he was for the other campaigns, he laughed and said, “I was in high school.”
Cleatus Lebow was a gentle, unassuming man who said, “Thanks for caring” when thanked for his service. He was in a wheelchair and wore a hearing aid, but his mind was very sharp. He remembered that day in July and the men who were on the ship.
He told a story about shooting at a tin building on an island. “There were about one hundred Japanese who went out the door. One man jumped on a bicycle and went up the hill.” When asked if the one on the bicycle was killed, he said, “I don’t know. Many of them went to caves to hide.” There was so much bombardment that the ground was leveled off in places.
Cleatus said he was fifteen feet away when the bomb went into the ship. He was in his bunk when the attack took place because he had late watch that night.
The rest of the story is chronicled in the previous section. Cleatus was rescued from the water after the German sub attack on his ship.
After a wreath was placed on the memorial, Cleatus sat reverently in his wheelchair, perhaps remembering those men in the shark-filled water or those sailors who went down with the ship. Cleatus was twenty-one years old when the ship sank.
LaPorte, Indiana
Kingsbury Ordnance Plant
“The Kingsbury plant was built on a twenty-square-mile plot between 1940 and 1941 to be one of the largest shell-loading plants in the nation.” The plant was built in rural LaPorte County in Northern Indiana. The thinking at the time was that this location was in the middle of the country and away from major populations. “The War Department constructed a new town right outside the factory gates. Kingsford Heights consisted of more than 2,600 dormitories, trailers, and prefabricated homes.” (indianapublicmedia.org)
As with other war-material plants in Indiana and other parts of America, there was a need for workers. Since the majority of young men who were physically able were fighting in Europe or Japan, it fell to women to fill these jobs. “Work at Kingsbury was dirty, difficult, and dangerous, and African American employees were consistently assigned to the most hazardous tasks.”
As with the airplane factories that were camouflaged, Kingsbury was making materials for the war effort, thus security was a consideration. “The plant’s design reflected the potential for disaster—four separate buildings were partially underground, so if one exploded, the structural integrity of the others would not be compromis
ed.” The pressure of producing for the war only compounded the physical dangers that were common to ordnance work. (Indiana Magazine of History)
The Kingsbury factory was made up of employees who were “measuring and pouring explosives into artillery shells, bombs, land mines and grenades of all shapes and sizes.” Certainly sounds like a recipe for disaster. However, no accidents in the factory have been noted. Instead of a “Rosie the Riveter”, the women in the plant had their own mascot, “Tillie the TNT Girl”. This was dangerous work for women who made up half the factory, at this time. “Pouring TNT, and other explosives, was a common job at the plant for WOWs, or Women Ordnance Workers.” (Indiana Magazine of History)
Estel L. Harshman—Ordnance Plant Worker
By Linda Harshman Leffler
“Everyone is celebrating your birthday.”
Being almost thirty years old when the draft for WWII began, and being married and having one child, Estel was not drafted into the military. He relocated from the small town of Stinesville, Indiana, to join hundreds of others working at the Kingsbury Ordnance Plant near La Porte, Indiana. He was employed immediately and worked at the dangerous job of building shells for large weapons. The plant employed so many workers, there was not enough housing for all who came, so the government built barracks-type housing for the workers. Parkview Heights near Knox, Indiana, was where Estel; his wife, Ila; and their baby daughter, Linda, lived. All the housing looked exactly alike and was within walking distance to stores and the plant.
Gas, eggs, shoes, and many other products were rationed, and citizens received rationing books, which had stamps with which to purchase items. When the stamps were gone, one had to wait until it was time for new ones to be issued. Many women also worked at other employment. The children living in these housing units were cared for by mothers who stayed home. All of them became friends. The neighbors were friendly and took care of one another.
The daughter of Estel and Ila has only faint memories of this time, as she was born in 1941, before the bombing of Pearl Harbor. One memory was her father taking her to LaPorte to get a dog. The dog and girl were very attached to each other, but one day Brownie disappeared, and Estel went door to door asking about him. Her dad whistled at one door, and the dog immediately came running to his true owners.
Another memory was walking to the grocery store, and on the way home Estel carried a sack of groceries in one arm and young Linda in the other. He tripped on a railroad track, and both sack and Linda went flying. The story was always told that he was much more concerned about his rationed eggs than his daughter!
The last memory Linda had was of V-J day, August 14, 1945. Many people traveled to Knox and surrounded the courthouse, shouting and cheering. Horns were blowing, and people were dancing and singing. Four-year-old Linda, who had been born on August 14, 1941, asked her father what was going on. She very clearly remembered him telling her, “Everyone is celebrating your birthday.” Linda said, “This is a great memory to this day.”
The KOP, Kingsbury Ordnance Plant, closed shortly after the war, and the Harshman family moved to Greencastle, Indiana, where both Estel and Ila found work in a grocery store.
Part 8
Famous People
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
FDR, the thirty-second president of the United States, served from 1933 to April 1945. FDR was well known for his famous quote concerning the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor; on December 8, 1941, he called it “a date which will live in infamy.” Anna Johnson remembered when Roosevelt visited Evansville when she worked at Servel. President Roosevelt came to town on the train. “They wouldn’t let us get within a block of that railroad crossing,” said Anna. Another Evansville resident, Harold Norlin, who worked at Bethesda Naval Hospital, said, “I saw FDR come out of the elevator at Bethesda Naval Hospital.”
Eleanor Roosevelt
Anna Eleanor Roosevelt was first lady from March 1933 to April 1945, when her husband, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, died in office. During World War II, she “divided her wartime work in to three categories: refugee issues, home front issues, and soldiers’ concerns.” Connie Norlin, who worked at the State Department in Washington, DC, said, “I used to see Eleanor Roosevelt often going to lunch but never talked to her.” A veteran, Bob Pedigo, told a story of seeing Eleanor early in the morning, about 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., near a subway station. She asked him, “What are you doing here at this time in the morning?” He thought, What are you doing here at this time of the morning?
James Stewart
Jimmy Stewart was a well-known movie star and military officer. He was born in 1908 in Indiana, Pennsylvania, and died in 1997. He enlisted in the US Army. Since he had flying experience and an interest in aviation, he rose to the rank of two-star general in the Army Air Corps. Later Stewart was in the Air Force Reserves.
“In November 1943, he flew 20 missions over Europe as a captain of a B-24 Liberator in the 703rd squadron, 445th Bomb Group.”
Stewart told his men when they were readying for a mission that would take them over Sweden, “Anybody caught with skis and yodeling will be frowned on.”
WWII veteran Bob Pedigo, master bomber, knew Jimmy Stewart, as he was Bob’s briefing officer. Bob said, “Jimmy Stewart was just as nice as everyone thought he was.”
In 1987 Bob Pedigo met Jimmy and Gloria Stewart in Palm Springs, California, for a reunion.
Bob Hope
Bob Hope was an American actor and entertainer of troops in WWII and many other wars as well. “He provided a welcome respite for the U.S. forces, a reminder, in Hope’s words of what they were fighting for.” The US troops looked forward to being entertained by Hope and the beautiful ladies who accompanied him on tour to remote locations where soldiers were stationed. “In 1997, Bob Hope was named an honorary veteran by the United States Armed Forces.” He
wrote a book about his experiences entertaining WWII troops, entitled I Never Left Home.
James Pike, a WWII veteran from Evansville, said of Hope, “I liked him. Some of the sergeants and noncoms got in the front row. Bob Hope told them to move to the back and let the soldiers up front. So they did.”
Bob Poole, a WWII veteran from Indianapolis, said he saw Bob Hope in Leyte, Philippines. Bob Hope sure got around the world!
Dick Robinson, a WWII veteran from Indianapolis, summed it up well: “The USO was their entertainment—Bob Hope and the young ladies to dance with. The Red Cross brought coffee and donuts. They took their chance with their lives for us. This was the fun part of war. You could get a break from the war for a while.”
Orchestra Leaders and Singers
Probably the most well-known orchestra leader was Captain Glenn Miller, whose plane was lost over the English Channel in December 1944, on the way to France to play for American troops who helped to liberate Paris. The plane and Miller’s body were never recovered. His signature song, “Moonlight Serenade,” was a favorite of WWII P-47 pilot Allen Sanderson, who saw Glenn Miller at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama, in January 1943.
Sanderson said, “I remember going to the Cavalier Hotel to hear Jimmy Dorsey play and Helen O’Connor perform.” The historic hotel was built in 1927.
Lucy Wahnsiedler, a WWII Evansville factory worker, said, “Well, it was big band era. They had dances down there [in Evansville]. Glenn Miller’s band came here too.”
USO Canteens
There was an USO canteen on Eighth Street in Evansville because there were so many soldiers from Breckinridge, a US Army base south of Evansville. The building is torn down now, but the four
large pillars that were on the front of the building are now positioned on the riverfront in downtown Evansville, honoring veterans of war. WWII vet Dick Robinson said, “The USO was their entertainment.” Many soldiers were happy to have some respite from the rigors of the war. The 1940s movie Hollywood Canteen portrayed actresses and actors entertaining the troops.
Lucy Wahnsiedler, a WWII factory worker, said, “They
had a USO here [in Evansville] and dances.” Lucy didn’t attend the dances, since she was dating a soldier, but her sister-in-law, Dorothy, went to the dances at the USO in downtown Evansville and to Breckinridge army base one time. “There were soldiers everywhere in Evansville!”
The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters—Patty, LaVerne, and Maxene—entertained the troops and were very popular in the 1940s swing era. One of their albums showed the sisters in uniform. One of their most popular songs was “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy,” about a swinging soldier playing reveille in Company B. They were nearly as committed to entertaining the troops as Bob Hope. They toured and sang all around the world for the military and did some movie work. A couple of films featured the Andrews Sisters and the USO canteens of WWII. One of their more successful military films was Hollywood Canteen.
Harry S. Truman
Truman, the thirty-sixth president of the United States, succeeded Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR died in office on April 12, 1945, when the Second World War was near its end. The United States had been involved in the war since December 7, 1941, and the nation was ready for it to be over.
Truman ordered the atomic bombs to be dropped on Japan after millions of leaflets were dropped on Japan, warning them of the devastation that would follow. Harry Truman visited and conducted military business from the Little White House in Key West, Florida.
WWII United States Allies
Australia
Australia was not prepared to fight a world war and was grateful to the United States for their help keeping the Japanese from attacking Australian shores. Many American soldiers were stationed in large cities in Australia. As the war continued, Aussie soldiers fought alongside British troops at the Battle of Britain. Australian troops were sent to the Burma and India Theater.
WWII Heroes: We Were Just Doing Our Jobs Page 24