The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater

by Matthew Rozell

  Joe Minder

  July 1 through July 3, 1942

  Many men broke out with pellagra, beriberi and scurvy, while others started losing their eyesight. At this time the Japs decided to give us a little meat and mungo beans. I feel a lot better now but still darn weak. Weighed 115 pounds on July 4.

  August 1 to August 31, 1942

  Still getting small amount of meat and beans but in too small amounts to do us much good. I started suffering from pellagra and scurvy along with others this past month. Many men still dying. Jay, Brozoski and Nelson died recently. Three large details [men who would be used as slave laborers] left for Japan.

  September 1 to September 30, 1942

  Have regained a little strength back. Worked on latrine digging details and wood details outside of camp, also went to Cabanatuan once to load rice on trucks. Managed to get a little food from the Filipinos when I was on some wood details. Pretty risky business getting food from them, when our guards weren’t looking, but we took those chances anyways.

  October 1 to October 20, 1942

  Had several hard rains in the past 20 days, making mud ankle deep here. Japs have allowed us to have religious services but have placed certain restrictions on the way we worship, such as denying the chaplains the right to preach the gospels. I received communion on October 4 from Chaplain Brown.

  October 28 to November 29, 1942

  ‘Fifty Men to a Bucket of Rice’

  Marched to Camp I at Cabanatuan, a distance of six miles, which is the main prison camp here in the Philippines. Food is scarcer now than anytime so far. Fifty men to a bucket of rice! The living conditions here are much worse than at Camp III. This camp is located in the center of huge rice paddies with swampland all around us. The flies and mosquitoes are terrible. Two months ago they had a death rate which averaged 30 or more dying a day. Death rate has dropped somewhat, however we still have a death rate of 18 or more per day [out] of the 7,000 men who are packed here under these horrible conditions!

  Prisoner of War Route of Pvt. Joseph G. Minder in the Philippines, May 1942-Oct 1944. Drafted by Susan Winchell-Sweeney.

  Chief Anderson and several other men from my company died. Volunteered for burial detail and have been carrying out men and burying them for the past two weeks at the rate of 15 per day. The first day was rather tough, but I don’t mind it too bad now. The expression on some of their faces was horrifying at first, and not being embalmed, the smell was terrible, but I soon got used to it. Most of the men weigh less than 100 pounds when they die but occasionally we run into one which is bloated up with beriberi and weighs twice his normal weight.

  The cemetery that these boys are buried in and the improper conditions which these darn Japs force us to bury those boys is horrible. Thank God, the mothers of these poor boys can’t see any of these horrible sights.

  November 30 to December 23, 1942

  Things are beginning to look a little brighter around here now. The Japs have allowed the Filipinos to send us meat, mungo beans and various other food items. Rainy season is nearly over so we go from one barracks to another without walking in ankle deep mud. Above all, our death rate is about half from last month. My pellagra and scurvy is almost gone but my eyes are very weak, due to certain vitamins which this diet lacks.

  December 24, 1942

  Attended Midnight Mass outdoors. Our arrangement was very simple, but this Mass was more impressive to me than any Midnight Mass before in my life. The altar was constructed of rough boards, the best we could get, and was covered in white sheets. Colored bottles were cut off and candles placed in them, God only knows where they came from, served as lights for the altar. To make it more impressive and beautiful, it was an extremely clear night with the moon and stars shining down on us as we prayed and worshipped there in our simple but heart touching way. I’ll never forget Christmas Eve 1942 as long as I live.

  December 25, 1942

  Christmas Day! Although we can’t be home with our loved ones, we have plenty to be thankful for. This morning we all received a No. 10 package per man along with several other small gifts from the Philippine Red Cross. Much bulk food also came from the American Red Cross, which will be rationed out through the mess hall. But best of all, many new types of medicines came with the American Red Cross food. I know there were men today who offered prayers of thanks who probably never before in their life thought of thanking God for his wonderful blessings. This is the happiest day so far for most of us since the war began! Morale is sky high around here tonight.

  chapter four

  Into the Fray

  Back home, every morning brought more news. As the situation in the Philippines was deteriorating, the American public clamored for action. The President expressed his desire to the Joint Chiefs of Staff for a military response to Japan’s attacks to boost public morale. Out of his wishes evolved the top secret planning for the Doolittle Raid, where aircraft carrier based planes would drop their bombs over Tokyo and Yokohama, and would attempt to crash land in China. The heavily modified B–25 bombers would be guided by a volunteer force of pilots who would train secretly before transferring to the West Coast to commence the operation. It was a deadly mission, as no one had attempted to fly a bomber off one of the early aircraft carriers.

  Dorothy Schechter was a young civilian worker who had a ringside seat to the secret preparations for this first offensive action against Japan, a raid now legendary for its audacity and daring. She was in charge of accounting on various Army Air Corps bases for goods brought onto base to be sold to military personnel. At one base in South Carolina in early 1942, she was the only woman authorized to be on the premises, which made for some interesting moments.

  Dorothy Schechter

  When I got there I was the first woman on the base. They had no other women and they put me in a tent [laughs]. And one of the strange things about being the only woman on the base is the fact that there is no latrine for women on a base! And they suggested that I use the men’s latrine, but call the military police each time I had to use it, so you can imagine what it was like for me. I had to call them up and say ‘I have to use the latrine’, they would come and everything. They had to have their military arms with them, and so that’s what I had to do. They were all very nice about it. But then after about a month they decided they needed to do something more than that. And so they found me a desk in the administrative building, which was very near the hanger, and they also made an actual ladies’ room for me!

  While I was on the base there working, there were a lot of B–25s… I don’t know if you know what they are. They are military bombers, small ones, twin-tailed. And I saw there were a lot of them and I had been told this base was a transitional base, from one-motor to a two-motor plane, which was very dangerous. There were numerous crashes. We would be working and the lights would go out and we would know that there had been a crash.

  Practicing for the Doolittle Raid

  I did not know at that time that most of the B–25s were for Jimmy Doolittle’s group that he was forming. Of course my whole story, it’s like a jigsaw puzzle. I knew what I experienced, and then during the years that followed I learned from books what the rest of the story was, so that I had to put it together. So what I am saying to you is the combination of the two. But I have material that proves that it’s all part and parcel of a real story.

  So the master, the first sergeant, called me up one day and said to come up to the hanger area, up on the catwalk—you know what that is? Well, you know what a hanger is? Huge, huge big place where they repair the airplanes. And then up along around the inside is like a catwalk. You go up the metal steps, you can walk, and you can see through it, and he said to come up to meet him and not say anything. So I went up the back way and went up on the catwalk, and he put his finger to his mouth [makes ‘shushing’ gesture]… We looked down at a group of men and that was the first time I saw Jimmy Doolittle…at that time he was going to several B–25 bases, gathering men,
the best of the B–25 pilots for the eventual raid over Tokyo off of the aircraft carrier Hornet, and it was the first time they had ever done that, to have bombers actually take off from an aircraft carrier. And they were sent to Columbia Army Air Base, which is in South Carolina, where I was. All of them were there for a while.

  I thought there were a lot of B–25s. I couldn’t imagine that a small base like that would have so many of them, but even they did not know what they … were going to be doing. They thought they were to be watching for submarines in the Atlantic. They were supposed to be doing this sort of thing and they didn’t know until they got on the Hornet, at sea, what the actual thing was about…

  There was some crazy training going on. And of course, I didn’t know what it was about. But they were putting chalk across the runways, with a flag on either end. And they took me out and showed me one, and the pilots had to take off before they hit that chalk mark on the runway. But the soldiers were telling me the strange part of it was, as soon as the pilots knew they could do that, they moved the chalk line closer and closer to the start point.

  Well, we had no idea what it was, but they were training them to take off from the aircraft carrier—and they did it, every single one of them. And then they made a book and a movie from the raid called ‘Thirty Seconds over Tokyo.’

  “Take off from the deck of the USS HORNET of an Army B–25 on its way to take part in first U.S. air raid on Japan."

  National Archives.

  Launched on April 18, 1942, 600 miles from Tokyo, the sixteen-bomber raid did little physical damage, but it did bring the war home to Japan in a way never experienced before. In the United States, it was considered a success and garnered much attention at a time when America was still trying to come to grips with how exactly to stop the Japanese offensives.

  Internment

  Later in the war Dorothy was assigned to the West Coast, where she encountered many Japanese-Americans interned during the war.

  Towards the end when my husband [a lawyer in Army intelligence] was shipped out to California, I followed and there I did the same job I did in all the other air bases. I had to go every morning to the satellite base, collect the money, and see that everything was provided for the soldiers. And the first few days, I didn’t see anybody. But after a few days there were two ladies of Japanese descent who came to stand near where I drove my car up to the office. And they just were standing up like this and bowed, and I said ‘Good morning’ and they said ‘Good morning’. They seemed happy that I was talking to them, and then I went on about my way.

  But after a week or ten days there were more and more people coming to greet me with this bowing thing. And I thought ‘What’s going on?’ Finally one of the ladies spoke and said, ‘Is there any possibility that you could buy something for us from the main base if we give you the money for it?’ and I said, ‘Of course! I’d be glad to do it.’

  I did not know they were Japanese internees—I did later, and as it turned out, I was in the middle of it. And this is what I did for them all during the time I was there. And they were so appreciative of it, if you realize how much they lost… they had their businesses, their homes, everything was taken away from them, and they were sent into camps behind wire… And it wasn’t only about 20 years ago that the United States made some attempt at remuneration, not too long ago. But they of course didn’t get nearly as much as what they should have gotten.[21]

  Miracle at Midway

  At the same time the men and women at Corregidor were being forced to capitulate in the Philippines, the first major U.S. naval engagement against the Imperial Navy was shaping up at the Coral Sea in the South Pacific bordering New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, and New Caledonia on May 4‑8, 1942. The Japanese, bent on making a landing at Port Moresby in their push for isolating and perhaps invading Australia, were surprised at sea by the carriers Lexington and Yorktown. This was the first sea battle in history where the opposing fleets never even caught sight of one another, separated by 175 miles of ocean as the carrier‑based pilots inflicted all of the damage. Each side lost a carrier and had the another heavily damaged, so in conventional wisdom the engagement was seen as a draw, but it highlighted the American ability to level the playing field against a more experienced and aggressive foe.

  A month later the Japanese sent a strike force of over 150 vessels to attack the U.S. base in the Midway Islands, a thousand miles from Pearl Harbor. The plan was to lure the remnants of the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor and annihilate it once and for all, eliminating the strategic threat of the United States in the Pacific. It was not to be; Navy cryptologists had broken the operational code of the Imperial Fleet, and the Japanese trap backfired. In an amazing show of daring, Admiral Nimitz ordered his heavily outnumbered fleet out of Pearl Harbor to try to surprise the Japanese. Despite incurring early and heavy losses, the ‘miracle at Midway’ allowed the United States to send Admiral Yamamoto’s fleet limping back to Japan short four of the six aircraft carriers with which they had attacked Pearl Harbor six months previously. In addition to losing nearly 250 aircraft and over 3000 men, the Japanese High Command placed wounded survivors in quarantine and kept them from their own families to contain news of this astonishing defeat.[22] Historian John Keegan called it “the most stunning and decisive blow in the history of naval warfare.”[23]

  John A. Leary, July 1943.

  Courtesy Leary family.

  John A. Leary was born in Hudson Falls in 1919, and finished high school in 1936. As a kid he was interested with events unfolding in Europe, and kept a scrapbook of world events that would later prove to be prescient in regard to what destiny had planned for him. Like many boys, he was fascinated by flight and the dashing aces of World War I, and in hanging around a local airfield, he got the feel for the canvas-covered biplanes of that age. The old hands took a liking to him, and John was taught the rudiments of flying at age twelve.

  After high school, young John tried to enlist to fly, but his father put an end to that idea, for a time. Instead, he went to Syracuse University and immediately upon graduation in June, 1941, was accepted into the Naval Air Service. A year later, he was commissioned as a Navy pilot and mastered aircraft carrier takeoffs and landings, first in the Aleutian Islands, sometimes flying by instruments due to the dense fog and darkness, calculating life and death mathematical readings in his head to get him back to the ship. In a 2001 seminar, he offered his perspective on these first major naval engagements in the Pacific.

  John A. Leary

  Midway was the turning point of the war. We had been at the Battle of the Coral Sea where we lost the carrier USS Lexington. The Yorktown was badly damaged, but anyway, the Japanese did not continue to invade New Guinea or Australia.

  Days later, after Coral Sea, when we arrived at Pearl Harbor we thought we were going home because the Yorktown was so badly damaged. But Admiral Nimitz had other ideas and he outranked most of us [laughter from audience]. They put on civilian workers to repair the damage and when the Yorktown sailed 72 hours later, it had quite a few civilian workers still aboard repairing. They never mentioned their losses in the war.

  The Yorktown was lost at Midway.

  Yorktown was hit again at Midway and they did abandon ship, but she stayed afloat and looked like she could make it, so about 200 men went back on board and unfortunately they were still on it when it was taken down by a submarine. But the battle was won principally, I think from our intelligence, because we outmaneuvered and outsmarted the Japanese... But with the help of God the battle was won by the American carrier pilots, and [those] on Yorktown went over and landed on Enterprise, some on Hornet. So we were holding our own, and later I ended up at Guadalcanal, not too long after the Marines landed.[24]

  chapter five

  A Turning Point-Guadalcanal

  In any war, an apt metaphor is that sometimes hands are forced to be played before all the cards have been dealt. So it would be at Guadalcanal, the six-month long battle that pitted you
ng Americans for the first time offensively on land against veteran Japanese troops who were being reinforced on almost a nightly basis. While military planners in Washington debated these Marines’ fate, they would fight on tenuously to survive. Indeed, it would be the incredible actions of these men against overwhelming odds in the vicious jungle fighting that would simply force the establishment in Washington to take notice.

  As the first months of 1942 unfolded, an all-out military offensive against the Japanese seemed simply out of the question. General Alexander Archer Vandegrift began pulling together his 1st Marine Division that spring, and advance elements were gathering in New Zealand. It was expected that the division would have an additional six months to prepare for amphibious landings and jungle fighting, and no American offensive action was planned until early 1943. However, in mid-June following the victory at Midway, intelligence showed that the Japanese were constructing an air base in the Solomon Islands at Guadalcanal. If they finished it, the noose menacing Australia would be complete and the Allied counteroffensive would become very difficult to implement and sustain. An amphibious landing had to be implemented immediately, the scale of which had not been attempted since the Allied disaster during the World War I debacle at Gallipoli in 1915—and with much less time to plan. ‘I could not believe it,’ General Vandegrift later recalled of the plan[25].