Mostly we were looking after them and administering pain medication. We had one tuberculosis patient, bleeding, coughing up blood, and he was the only one we had sitting up on the one seat we had there. Usually, most of it was pain; codeine and morphine were the only medications we carried, and then we had penicillin. We gave penicillin shots every three hours. We had no ‘facilities’, you might say, for any medical treatments or anything aboard plane; this was mostly for transport and keeping them comfortable. As I said, that was ancient. We were just starting out and it was the best we could do. I believe today they must have everything more so then we did. Of course that was quite a while ago, but you know, we did the job.
The patients were on the plane continuously until they got to Hawaii, then I do not know what they did. They probably rested and once they had been checked out, they would take the long trip home. This was definitely discharge; they would not be going back into battle. We also had prisoners of war. Once I had a plane full of prisoners of war, 28, they were all ambulatory and walking around in all; I remember that one plane full.
They tried to have the safest planes for us. Sometimes something was wrong with the plane and we had to go back and change all of the patients and had them all moved into the new plane, but that didn't bother me. I was not scared of enemy fliers, because they had fighter pilots on call or on the alert all the time.
We were not at the battle areas at all except for the trips to Okinawa. We went in at midnight and we flew in from Guam or Saipan or Tinian for eight hours. We took off at midnight so we landed at 8 o'clock in the morning, daylight, and on the first trip I had, our Navy was shelling the southern tip of Okinawa and that is the closest I ever came [to the battle zone]. The Japs did fly below the radar on the island at Biak as I was stationed there. I had taken off with a load of patients at 7:00 pm and they flew in at 7:30 pm while we were loading another plane! They just dropped the one bomb, but no one was really injured. They hit the area, but that is the only time I came close to any actual fighting. But we had to make it pretty safe for the patients, you know at the time, as we were transporting them.[75]
Nurses relaxing, Guam. Donald P.Quarters collection.
Courtesy Jackie Quarters.
‘You’ve got nothing to work with, Jimmy.’
Within the space of seven weeks, the band of 1st Marine Division brothers from the North Country near the “Falls”—who had forged their bonds at boot camp and in combat at Peleliu—would be broken up for good. Jack Murray of Hudson Falls was stateside with his knee wound sustained on Peleliu; Harold Chapman of Gansevoort and Jim Butterfield of Glens Falls would be the next to fall.
Jim Butterfield
On Okinawa, you have to remember, we were only about 150 miles from Japan itself. Japan was next on the list after Okinawa. So every day and every night you would get air raids. They had young kids flying these planes—they were dying for the Emperor. It was a great thing to do. You were going to go up there to heaven, or so they said.
When you looked back on Buckner’s Bay at night, you would see all our ships would go back out to sea—because it was dangerous to stay around. We had two hospital ships there. The hospital ships would be lit up at night, and the Red Cross was supposed to be on them. These guys [the Japanese] weren’t supposed to hit the hospital ships. But I was up on the ridge, and I said to my friend Chappy, ‘If I get hit, Chappy, you make sure they don’t put me aboard one of those things.’ But Chappy got it before that.
Harold Chapman and Jimmy had been through boot camp together, and were in the same outfit, G Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marines, where Jimmy was the squad leader. Jim usually checked in with his friend every morning, but on May 5th, Jim was tending to one of his badly wounded men and did not see him. Word came to him later in the day that Harold was killed. The loss affected him deeply. Sixty years later, he recalled, ‘It really took the wind out of my sails.’ Not even the letters from his steady girlfriend back home, Mary, cheered him much in the weeks to follow.[76]
Still on the Shuri Line, Jim was severely wounded in the head two weeks later. Over 60 years afterward he came to my classroom with his wife Mary and good friend Dan Lawler. His humor still intact and on display, Jim poignantly recalled the experience of struggling to accept the fact that he would never see again.
Jim Butterfield
I enlisted into the United States Marine Corps the seventh of December, 1943. I was 17 years old then and I went because I wanted to help fight the good war. My mother didn’t want me to go. Mary didn’t want me to go. But I heard they threw a party after I left. [Laughter]
Mary Butterfield:
Yes, we went to school together and Jimmy left six months before graduation. I told him ‘don’t go until after you graduate’, but he wanted to go. He was afraid the war would be over before he could get in. So he went in, in December, and I graduated in June.
Matthew Rozell: You were high school sweethearts?
Jim Butterfield:
Mary and I have been palling around for over 60 years now.
Mary Butterfield:
Well, we’ve been married 61 years.
Jim Butterfield:
She couldn’t wait to get married, but I think she’s changed her mind a couple times since then… [Laughter]
It was an exciting time, it was an adventurous time, and it was a proud time. I lasted 61 or 62 days up to Okinawa before I got hit. Danny was fortunate—he got all the way through. Right, Dan?
Dan Lawler: Ninety-eight days I was there.
Matthew Rozell: Mary, do you remember getting the news that Jim was wounded?
Mary Butterfield:
Yes, I remember. This girl who lived on our street was going steady with this Navy corpsman, and he wrote a letter to her, telling her that Jimmy was very bad, that he was wounded through the eye. She came over that Saturday morning, I remember, and she told me. I was surprised, and I called his mother. And she said that she got a letter from the government only telling her that he was wounded. But that’s the way that I found out about it, about how he was wounded on Okinawa.
Jim Butterfield:
Well, the first letter that they got was telling them that I was temporarily blind at the time. When I got hit, we were going to take Shuri Castle because the 6th Division was already in there, and they were catching it real bad. So they decided to put us in there to pull some of the people away from them—to give them a hand.
We were doing very well. It was a beautiful day when we started out. I had gotten seven Japs when they attacked the perimeter that night, and I thought I had a good day in front of me. So as we were moving along, somebody behind me yelled, ‘Whitey just got it!’ He was a friend of ours. So I turned around, and I saw him rolling down the ridge. He got it in the head, and the face too. So I told this Marine next to me to take the squad, I’ll be right back. I figured it was an easy job to do because it was downhill. So I ran down and grabbed Whitey by his belt. We went over a little ridge, and I thought we had enough shelter.
Wana Ridge. Shuri Line. “A Marine of the 1st Marine Division draws a bead on a Japanese sniper.” National Archives.
Then a couple of other guys came. I said, ‘Look it, we have to get a corpsman up here, I think Whitey’s going to go into shock.’ You see when you got hit, you didn’t always die from the wound. Sometimes you went into shock. Shock could kill you. So I turned around to say something to him, and that’s the last I remember. I don’t know where that guy, the shot came from. I got it with a rifle [shot].
I lost part of the right side of my face. I don’t know if it was a day, or two days later—I don’t even know really what happened to me—the enemy laid a mortar barrage when I was on my way to the hospital at the beach, and I got hit again, in the face! That took care of the other side of my face. I was 14 months in the hospital having my face rebuilt, and that’s why I am so good looking today. [Laughter]
This is a small world we live in. A guy named Joe Gavita from
Glens Falls was the corpsman at that station. Of course I knew Joe before that, and Joe was taking care of me! I don’t remember this at all. He said I carried on a conversation with him. I was telling him how bad it was up there. I don’t remember that. The next thing I remember is, I woke up in that station and what a headache I had! Oh! Talk about a hangover!
The corpsman came and said ‘How are you doing?’ I said, ‘How about loosening up these bandages, they’re killing me.’ He said, ‘No can do.’ So I sat up in the sack and started to unroll it myself. The next thing I know, I got a shot in the arm and I was knocked out again. The next time I woke up, I woke up in an aircraft. A C-54 transport. I never flew before. I had no idea where the hell I was! I put my hand out on the deck, and I just could not put it together—that I was in a plane! Someone must have had a word out to keep an eye on me, because the next time I reached out there, there was a patent leather shoe. I moved my hand a little bit, and there was a nice ankle with a silk stocking! [Some laughter] I thought, ‘Jesus, I have died and have gone to heaven!’ [Much laughter from students] I started running my hand up that leg, and she said, ‘I think you’ve gone far enough.’ [More laughter]
She said to me, ‘Jimmy, would you like a turkey sandwich and a glass of milk?’ I said ‘Real milk?’ She said, ‘Real milk.’ I said, ‘You bet your life!’ She brought it down, and there had to be something in it, because I was out again. I woke up in Guam, in the hospital. I was there about three weeks, I guess. I got an operation there. I didn’t know they did it. But what was left of my left side of the eye and face, they took out. Now see, these people knew that I was not going to see again.
The doctor came up. I said, ‘How am I doing, Doc? I have to go back up there. They’re short of people.’ He said, ‘You’re doing fine, my young boy.’ That was all I would get, see? Do you want to hear this whole story? [Teenagers: Yes!]
They took me to Honolulu. The nurse said, ‘You’re going to like it.’ I said, ‘Yeah, that will be nice. Now how about a cigarette?’ [To the young people] We smoked them then; we didn’t know they killed you... So she said, ‘No you can’t. They’re putting fuel in the plane.’ I said, ‘I’m dying for one—let me have one.’ Then she let me have one.
We flew into Hawaii, and it was a beautiful hospital. It was overlooking the Pacific. Down below you could see Diamond Head. Now, I couldn’t see any of these things. But I was told all of this stuff.
I still had the bandages on. They were teaching you little things, like to sit down at the tray, how to eat. Now, the first thing they teach you is, you work by the clock—like your milk would be at 1:00 o’clock, your bread at 9:00 o’clock, your potatoes at 6:00 o’clock. Things like that you had to start learning, see... I went along with this, still not thinking—and this is how stupid that you can be—that I wasn’t going to see again. Nothing in my mind thought that [being blind] was going to happen to me. I was getting around. I always had somebody with me.
So this one day, we were sitting there, and this guy said, ‘Jimmy, I bet you five bucks you can’t go to the head and back in five minutes.’ Five dollars is pretty good money. I had done it before already, so I said, ‘Yeah, I’ll bet you.’ So I did a good job—I got to the men’s room, the head. But when I came back, I took a quarter of a step wrong, and I ended up in a long, not-too-wide closet and I didn’t know how the hell to get out of there! Then I start sweating. I was all bandaged up, and underneath my bandages was Vaseline, gauze. I thought, ‘Geez, I’ve got to get out of here!’ Five bucks is five bucks, and I had lost it already.
I finally got out of there, and I went over and sat down. I said, ‘How about a cigarette?’ Someone handed me a cigarette. There was a Zippo lighter. Guy goes like this [holds hand up, makes flicking motion with thumb]. My whole face goes up in flames! [Laughter] I had this guy who was nearsighted next to me, trying to put it out [he laughs], and all he did was fan the flames... you’d think you were back in the foxhole again! The nurse comes running over, and off go the bandages. Fortunately, I did not get burned. So she says, ‘Give me your lighter! Give me your cigarettes!’ She took them away from me. So all day long, I’m bumming cigarettes and a lighter. Then I’m going over and putting them underneath my mattress. Now that nurse is standing there watching me do this, and I don’t know she’s doing this. So I get up about 4:00 o’clock—I feel under the mattress. There was no lighter, no cigarettes. The nurse says, ‘You want a cigarette, Jimmy?’ [Laughter]
I’m sitting there one day with one of the guys that was just in from Okinawa. I was asking how they were doing and stuff, and this guy sticks his head in the door. He says, ‘I’m looking for Jim Butterfield.’ I said, ‘He’s right here, what do you want?’ He says, ‘It’s Dick Barber, Jim.’ Now this is Dr. Barber from Glens Falls. I had no idea how he knew I was there. He was stationed there. I get a nice lieutenant-colonel walking into my room—my stock automatically goes up! He says, ‘Let me look at your face.’ I said, ‘Dick, you can’t do that. This is a Navy hospital, I think they’ll frown on an Army guy doing this.’ He said, ‘I want to see what they’re doing to you.’ So he looked. This man knew right there that I was never going to see again. He never said a word to me. I don’t think he ever told anybody back here at home.
I didn’t know, until they told me there.
So here’s the climax. Every morning there was inspection with the doctors. So the doctor came around that morning. He said, ‘How are you, Jim?’ I said, ‘Fine.’ He said, ‘You need anything?’ I said, ‘Nope, I’m doing fine.’ He says, ‘Well, are you used to the idea?’ I said, ‘Used to what idea?’ He said, ‘That you’re not going to see again.’
Well, you could hear a pin drop. I said, ‘I don’t think I heard you, Doc.’ He said, ‘You’re not going to see again.’ I said, ‘What?’ He said, ‘Didn’t they tell you in Guam?’
I said, ‘No! But it’s a good thing that [first] doctor isn’t here, because I’d kill him!’ I got so mad! I couldn’t really grab the idea. I’m not going to see again? … What the hell did I know about blindness? Nothing!
I said, ‘How about operations?’ He said, ‘You’ve got nothing to work with, Jimmy.’
So a pat on the shoulder, and he just walks away. The nurse comes over and says, ‘The doctor wants you to take this pill.’ I said, ‘You know what the doctor can do with that pill?’
Mary Butterfield:
Don’t say it.
Jim Butterfield:
I’m not going to, Mary.
So I had a hard... two months, I guess. I kept mostly to myself. I wouldn’t talk to people. I tried to figure out what the hell I was going to do when I got home. How was I going to tell my mother this? You know what I mean?
So they come around and said, ‘You’ve got a phone call.’ So I went in to where the phone was. They were calling me from home. They got the message, see... This one here was on the phone [points to Mary]. I said, ‘Looks like things have changed, kiddo.’ She said, ‘No, we’ll discuss this when you get home.’ She was already bossing me around. [Laughter]
But that’s how I found out, and that’s how it happened. And after a while, I just started to live with it.
There are not days—even today—I go to bed and I wish I could see. So much I miss. I miss watching a nice girl walking down the street. I miss seeing my daughter, my wife. I even miss looking at Danny. [Laughter]
Mary Butterfield:
But you see, I’m only 17 to you now. That’s a good thing.
Jim Butterfield:
Since we got in the conversation, when I dream, and I do dream, everything is real. Everything I knew before, I see it as it was then, not today. My wife and daughter would never get old in my eyes. When I dream of Mary, she’s still 17 years old.
Mary Butterfield:
But you never saw your daughter.
Jim Butterfield:
I dream about my daughter. Mary’s caught me doing this. We lost our daughter a year and a half ago. But I sit ri
ght up in bed and I’m trying to push away that little cloud of fog in front of her, but I can’t quite make her out.
Mary says, ‘What are you doing?’ I say, ‘Just dreaming’.
Jim Butterfield was nineteen years old at the Battle of Okinawa. [77]
In the final push at the Shuri Line that cost him his eyesight, the Marines lost over 3,000 men and the U. S. Army even more. When the island was declared secure near the end of June, in Lawler’s K/3/5, only 26 Peleliu veterans who had landed with the company had survived Okinawa. It had been the bloodiest campaign of the Pacific, with over 12,500 Americans killed or missing and nearly three times that number wounded. For the Japanese, no accurate counts are possible, but perhaps 110,000 were killed.[78]
Jim Butterfield, 2000.
Author photo.
chapter fifteen
Redemption
As spring 1945 turned to summer, Okinawa had fallen, the war in Europe had ended, and the air raids over Japan were reaching a crescendo. In Japan, the prisoners tried to hang on. For many men, punishment was becoming more severe, and resignation and despair set in to overwhelm them. Joseph Minder was still slaving in the copper mine in northern Japan, but was determined to remain focused on survival, and getting home.
The Things Our Fathers Saw—The Untold Stories of the World War II Generation From Hometown, USA-Volume I: Voices of the Pacific Theater Page 17