Interview with Glenn Parkin Seaman, US Navy USS Hoel

THIS INTERVIEW HAS NOT BEEN EDITED FOR CONTENT, LANGUAGE OR HISTORICAL ACCURACY.

Geoff:  Okay Glenn, we’ve talked before, first of all how do you spell your name?

Its with two N’s, I have a brother in-law who only used one and he always kidded me quite a bit for using so much ink.  He was kind of a conservative type person and maybe that’s why he wanted to use the one N.  Even my mother on my birth certificate made a cross and put two N’s and so I followed that.

So where were you born?

In Bountiful, Utah.  I’m third generation Bountiful.

You went to Bountiful High?

Yes, Bountiful Jr. High, the only high school they had was up at Davis up at Kaysville and we used to ride the old Bamberger train, light rail, etc. up there and the kids just loved it, get in more trouble and… 

How did you get into the Navy?

Well there was three of us young kids who went and saw all of the movies with Bud Abbott, Lucas, etc. you know, and as foolish as they may be, I always felt like it'd be wonderful to get into the Navy but the Navy was a little extra special.  You had to make sure that you were in top physical condition ‘cause we had heard that they’d only take the top 10%.  And yes it was rather hard, me and the two other fellows, went down and joined the Army, and incidentally, they couldn’t pass the physical and I could and that was for four years.  And anyway, I called them up that evening and told them “No I didn’t want to go” for some reason.  Anyway, about three weeks later we decided, “Oh, what the heck. Let’s go down and join the Navy.”  So we went down and joined the Navy and it rather surprised me that I was physically and mentally fit for that.  And when I went out to the lobby after my introduction to the Navy my two buddies were still there and they could not pass the physical again. 

I’m sorry, what year was this?

1941, February 1941.  And the enlistment for the Navy was for six years instead of four, and I had made up my mind then that I was going.  And of course, my main thoughts when I went in the service is that I wanted to scrub those decks and fire those guns.  And as you all know it didn’t take very long for me to get adjusted to that, and I enjoyed it so much.

Where were you sent?  Were you sent to San Diego?

I had my boot training in San Diego, yes.  And then I went aboard ship, I was on a draft and this draft was for the Northampton and the night before that, this big warship came in San Diego Harbor and of course we all went down to the pier that evening and saw it and figured, “Man wouldn’t that be something if we could get aboard that thing?”  And my name was on the draft the following morning.  And as we went out to that ship, well, getting preparation for your sea bag and etc. it had to packed awful tight, in order to pack it.  Because the sea bag actually weighed more than I did, I at that time I weighed 132 pounds.  And as we got out of the Liberty launch, walking up the gangway, I could feel so proud of doing something like this because little farm boys from Bountiful, Utah, you know, doing something – something like this.  And it made me so proud of myself and of course I went up on that quarterdeck and saluted the ship and asked permission to come aboard from the OD and he granted it and went over there and put my sea bag down and took in the sights of the ship and etc.  The sounds of the ship will scare the hell out of you because you’ve always got your bells and your bugle and etc. and you were no;t used to it.  And then all of a sudden, when we did get aboard, one of the boat mates Mendoza Anenza, he was Portuguese, and he had tattoos all over his body and he brought us back to reality.

What was your specialty?  What were you to be?  What was your placement a crew?

Scrubbing decks, scrubbing the deck.  We slept in our hammock for about three weeks, I think it was more of initiation than anything else, but we slept in our hammocks. I was assigned to 2nd Division, its deck division and I enjoyed it.  We had control of two 5 inch, old 5 inch 25 guns up on the flight deck and a number two turret with the 8 inch guns.  My first assignment was down in the handling rooms in the ammunition area and when you go to your battle station for drills you go down through a hatch and you come to the third deck down and you go through an armor-piercing hatch, which is about 4 to 6 inches thick steel.  And they lock you in and you figure, “Now what the hell is going to happen now.”  But after all, it was a drill and you weathered out. It kind of ties a knot in your stomach because you don’t know what to expect and whatnot.

Where did you first start, were you at sea, did you immediately go to sea?

Oh yes, we were only in San Diego until the next morning then we went to sea, went to Hawaii.  And I figured, “Man, what a wonderful cruise.”  At this age, I was 19 at the time, and being in Hawaii was wonderful.

In Pearl Harbor?

Yes.

What was it like?

Well it was just excitement, new excitement.  What a wonderful adventure for a young kid, I didn’t care too much about what the World’s problems were at that particular time, but as things went on during the summer of 1941 we had heard talk about the Japanese and of course we didn’t worry too much about it.  But about the 15th of June 1941, the Cruiser Northampton and the Salt Lake City with three destroyers went out to sea.  And this is unusual because we always went out with the Carrier Enterprise.  Well, we started steaming due south and nobody knew anything about what to ask, scuttlebutt, etc.  And the next morning, right after daylight we saw a ship up on the horizon, well nobody knew what it was. Nobody. The radioman and the quarter master people wouldn’t say anything, they knew but they wouldn’t say anything.  But we did find out later that it was a Dutch Freighter. I can’t pronounce the name because those Dutch names, it’s in the book you learn how to pronounce it. I can’t.  But anyway, we heard that it was loaded with planes, supplies and etc. for General Shanault for flying Tigers over China.  At that particular time we didn’t care too much about that because we still kept heading due south and we knew that eventually were going to have to cross the equator.  And we had heard that they had a ceremony that they were going to beat the hell out of you.  As that time approached they started building some equipment on the quarterdeck and to our surprise it was a holding tank, a big one, and with kind of a boats man chair on top for your court system.  Well it was really an education for us, very surprisingly because we didn’t know what to expect from the shellback and across the equator.  And the pollywogs were the new men and they did throw a little fear into you because it was the unknown.  But the day that we crossed the equator they had quite the ceremony.  We had the royal doctor, the royal baby, and you’d be surprised what he looked like.  Old dog, I’ve even seen him smoking a cigar, taking a shower, and you see some of those guys with some tattoos you can’t even explain what they are. It’s rather embarrassing at times to even look at them.  But we did cross the equator and then we started heading south by southwest knowing that a few days we were going to cross the international dateline.  We had heard through the grapevine and the scuttlebutt aboard ship that crossing the international dateline you’re going to have to notify the Japanese.  The Japanese were very shrude people.  They had an agreement with the US and probably with Britain as well, that we could not have any battleships in the Asiatic Fleet and since the English had or conquered that part of the World at one time or another, did have the Prince of Wales in the Asiatic Fleet, and they were able to retain that.  This is why we didn’t have any in that area.  Well, what the treaty was, that anytime that we supplied the Philippines with a warship, that warship gunnage armament had to go through the Indian Ocean or to the Indian Ocean so we wouldn’t overpower that part of the World.  And apparently this didn’t happen because they didn’t want us to know where we were at.  I have read different transcripts and different books that the Japanese knew we were down there but they said that we would never get through, but we did.  We took our material over to Java and we did have a little bit of a problem going over to Java. One morning about 3 o’clock in the morning general quarters went and this was very very unusual.  We went to our general quarters station and started sending up live ammunition and at that time I was assigned as Rammer in number two gun in number two turret, so I was up where some of the action was going on, and but we still didn’t know anything about why.  As the day wore on, apparently these ships out there would not give us the IFF, identify themselves, and of course we wouldn’t identify ourselves.  I’m sure that they got a hold of Admiral Kimmell in Pearl Harbor and Admiral Kimmell would have probably had to notify Washington etc.  About four hours later we did get the message who they were, they happened to be three Australian Cruisers out on maneuvers, but this is fine but what are you doing down here in this part of the world and you shouldn’t be here.

So this is all leading up, you were beginning to see the tension.

Certainly, because we knew that we had violated the action of the Japanese.  And anyway, after we left there we didn’t worry too much about world affairs, we were going to Australia.  We went down the Great Barrier Reef and down the northeastern coast of Australia, went to Brisbane, Australia and we were down there for five days and had a wonderful time.  The people in Australia was, well you didn’t have to pay, we paid half fare for taxis, we didn’t pay any fare on the trams, on the railroad systems. Most sailors go into bars and you was very lucky if you got out of there without paying anything at all. We just enjoyed it so much.  But then back to ship and we went to Port Moresby, New Guinea and Rabaul, New Britain, and if you look at the map…

So this is about June?

This is in July, first of August of 1941.  And we went over. I was on the liberty boats but I didn’t go on the beach. I was in the group that took them over there.  And it was nothing but a bunch of headhunters in the market area, marketplace, and we have pictures of it.  Of course we went back, from there you go back to Pearl Harbor, straight back to Pearl Harbor and you have to cross the equator and the 180th meridian at the same time.  And that was a little bit special because that give us the Golden Dragon Shellback Award which I have contacted the Naval Institute and asked them how many percentage of all the world’s sea fares has ever been in that area before.  And they say, not as high as 5%, so it gives you kind of special feeling to know.

Especially a farm boy from Bountiful, Utah

Yeah, right.  What a wonderful experience.  And when I got back to Pearl Harbor I had a very very good surprise because my father was back there.  He had signed up for Federal work and he did have a chance to go to Alameda but then after I went over there then he figured as long as he’s over there, I’m going to go over there too.  So he worked in the shipyards as a ship fitter from August 1941 until about 1944.  He was there at Pearl Harbor when they made the attack and he used to come aboard ship and see us and he’d do it and so he and I would get together.

So where was the Northampton on Pearl Harbor?

As strange as it might be, about November the 27th of 1941we did not have any anti-aircraft guns aboard any of those ships, the cruisers; But they did have six 5-inch 25 open gun mounts 5-inch which were really terrible to WWII standards.  We had two 50-caliber machine guns and that was all.  Alright, so one of the Admirals, he realized this so he got two men from each ship, from the cruisers and he sent them over to Barbers Point, Barbers Point was about five miles as a crow flies from Pearl Harbor, but it was a small arms ammunition firing range over there would fire out to sea.  And there was about 10 or 12 of us that went over there.  I was over there for two days, two or three days, and one of the guys come in from chow one morning and he said, “Well the fleets going out.”  Well they can’t go out because we’re still here.

One of the two guys from the cruiser was going to Barbers Point?

Yes.  He says, “The fleets are going out.”  ‘Cause they could see the destroyers and later on they could see the cruisers and then of course they could see the carriers.  We immediately went down to administration and they kind of shrugged their shoulders a little bit and says, “Well you’ll just have to wait here until they get back.”  What would happened when Admiral Kimmell dispatched Admiral Hodsley to Wake Island.  And we went too; With the screening ships with the cruisers and the destroyers, we went to Wake Island and they delivered four or six fighter planes ‘cause that’s all they had.  And in meantime by doing this they also dispatched the carrier Lexington up at Midway and the Saratoga was going back to the States for refit etc. and there was the only three carriers that we had out in the Pacific at that time.  They delivered the planes then on the way back, you went back over or went out towards Johnston Island which is a little bit of a radar base now, but they had radio beacons out there.  All the time this was going on we kept track of the Japanese envoy that was coming to the US at that particular time let’s bring it on if they want it, I think all of the Navy men out there, I don’t know why the higher condensities of the Navy didn’t realize – maybe they did but they sure never said anything about it.  When we got past Johnson Island then Admiral Hodsley pretty well declared that he wanted to refuel the destroyers because you want to keep them topped off pretty heavy because if you make a speed run you’re going to be in trouble with those little things because they use so darn much fuel.  So we went into our refueling mode, the cruisers, the cruisers and the destroyers.  And on one of the destroyers that the Northampton was doing, we had a little bit of a problem because these lines that you, refueling lines that you pass over that we had two of them at that time, are all controlled by manual control to keep the things out of the water because the ships are moving, I don’t think they’re over 100 yards or 100 feet apart and they’re not going very fast.  We had some awful rough water out there and what had happened is the ships came together, they all of the lose lines etc. to bring the fueling lines etc. up out of the water, then they just parted, they separated.  And as it did that it parted all of the lines, the refueling lines, the hosiers and everything.  And of course the refueling line is just like an old air hose with a lot of pressure just flopping around, just blowing oil all over the place just making a big mess.  Then the trouble came with the hosiers, that’s a 3-inch rope, it drifted back and it got caught in our screws then wound around our shaft and it just brought the ship to a screeching hault. And we had to get divers, we had one diver aboard ship but we had to get other divers from other ships to come over and help him cut it loose.  You talk about an omen maybe that was an omen, because it delayed the task force 24 hours, otherwise the carrier, the Enterprise task group would have just been tied up in Pearl Harbor when they made the attack. Maybe it was a good omen that this happened.  They were only 125 miles away from Pearl when the Japanese made their attack. In fact, they sent some of the ships or some of the planes in to help them, but of course, the people at Pearl Harbor shot them down, how many there were I have no idea.  But there was a number of US planes off the carrier Enterprise that were shot down.  We did not, or they did not know as far as reality until one of our SOC spotter planes came back and it was shot up with holes. 

Tell me, how did they tell you Pearl Harbor had been attacked?

Well they, well apparently announced it over the loudspeaker.  But what had happened, I was over at Barbers Point, the guys told me all of this after they got back.  But I was at Barbers Point and we could hear the shelling, we could hear the bombs, we could see the smoke, but we couldn’t see anything else, occasionally we might see a plane.  We’re over there with the guests of the Marine Corps, they’re the trainees, they’re the teachers of all of these weapons and whatnot.  We had one old 40 millimeter Buford and we had one 20 millimeter that was active that could be fired. We didn’t fire it, the Marines fired it.  That morning one of the guys was just coming back from the chow hall and he says, “They’re bombed Pearl Harbor, they bombed the Harbor.”  And of course we were waiting for them to come and get us to take us over to Pearl, What good would it do for a half a dozen seamen to go over there?  Anyway, they did take us over there about 9:30.  And we got over there to the Liberty area, Liberty launch area, about 9:30 and everything was pretty well completed then. It was one hell of a mess, you know as far as battleship row and whatnot.  But that’s where most all of the destruction was, except the dry docks.  We had the Pennsylvania in dry dock with the destroyer Shaw and maybe a couple of others they had blown up.  We got over there and they didn’t have anything for us to do they, just told us to help out where we could but there was no sense of sending us over to Ford Island, so I went looking for my father.  I went down to the shipyard.The shipyards, by the dry dock area is where his maintenance job was, but I didn’t get a chance to see him. They told me that he was around someplace,but they didn’t know for sure where. I just told one guy that I talked to, “Well tell him that his son’s okay.”  And of course I didn’t see him for about a month and a half or so.  But anyway …

What were your feelings when you first heard it?

Well you get that empty kind of an empty gut feeling in your stomach that you know something is going to happen but you don’t know what.  And or something is bound to happen and you wish that it were, it would happen to that extent.  But it was kind of excitement, a little bit of excitement, because nothing happened to us.  Now I think those poor guys on the Arizona, in fact one of my friends from my school days was killed on the Arizona; his name was Charles White from Bountiful.  Anyway, the task force came in the next morning right after daylight and within a half an hour's time I was back aboard ship.  Of course we refueled the ship and brought on supplies and the whole task force was back out at sea the next morning.  And we headed towards southeast as near as we could tell, we headed toward Panama.  Whether the Japanese were going to hit Panama or not it had been a likely place for them, but we were out for about three weeks.  And then we went back and re-supplied. We didn’t stay in port very long, maybe for a day – day and a half and that was about all.  And this was with no liberty, hardly anything at all, it was just nothing but work to get back out to sea.  And then the 1st of February we went down and to let the Japanese know, with the task force and they shelled the Marshall Gilbert Islands and Enewetak, Kwajalein. We were assigned to the little of Wotje and I believe that’s where the US probably thought the Japanese would come from if they was going to attack Pearl Harbor.  But we did that and I think our main objective was to let them know that they had not sunk the complete Pearl Harbor.  They did damage a lot of old outdated battleships, but they did not sink the Pacific Fleet of Pearl Harbor, because we had our three carriers, I would say 15 to 20 cruisers that were light and heavy, with 25 destroyers and that’s still a pretty good force.  And of course, come the 1st of March…

Well maybe we should just get right to the duel…

Let me, I think this one little item might be important.  Okay, you refer to Saipan, Guam area and then Tinian.  Well, go on up the chain, go on up that chain until you hit Marcus, find out where Marcus is, Marcus is not very far from Japan.  Well we went into Marcus and we shelled it the 1st of March, just to let them know that we were still there and that’s what it did.  And after we got through bombing that place, just to let them see us, then we went down to Bougainville down the Solomon’s.

When you shelled Marcus Island how did that make you guys feel?

Well at least like we’re getting close, close to home base more or less, you know.  Then we realized what we were doing which made a lot of sense.  And then we went back to Pearl Harbor. We got four hours liberty and that’s when I first saw my father for the first time. He came aboard ship and he worked aboard ship and I got a chance to see him and spend a little bit of time with him.  We went out to sea with the Enterprise and we started heading northwest and out on the horizon one morning was this carrier with all of these big planes on it. We found out it was the carrier Hornet and it had Army planes on it.  Well then we started heading northwest, well what the heck are we going to do?  And that was past Midway. Well the first thought of the first scuttlebutt aboard ship was that we was going to Vladivostok, Russia.  We might get in but how are we going to get out?  If anybody knows where Vladivostok, Russia is.  And then there was a bunch of weird scuttlebutts going on and apparently it was going on the carriers as well.  So Admiral Hodsley decided that he better inform the crew what they were going to do. So then he told the crew that they were going to go bomb Japan.  Well that lifted up our spirits.

Did anybody cheer?

Oh yeah, wonderful.  But how in the hell are we going to get those planes off that carrier deck?  Because we had never seen that before and never even heard of it before.  Alright now, as we headed towards Japan, one morning, it was an overcast morning, the heavy crews of Salt Lake City and the light crews of Nashville come in contact with three or four Sampans, fishing fleet or whatever they referred to, and all of these ships had radios on them.  Well they went out and they sunk them within oh maybe five or ten minutes or so.  And they they got a transmission off and they were afraid, our Admiralty was afraid that the Japanese had picked this transmission up, and then what the heck do we do now?  Well, a wise decision was made at that particular time, we better top off the destroyers in case we have to make a speed run.  Now the Japanese are 8 or 900 miles away. If they got the transmission it’s going to take them a certain period of time to get their mines and their other planes together, and its going to take them a period of time to get from there to here.  We had five hours. Let’s use the best of it.  So we went into our refueling mode to top off the destroyers.  By that time it was about 5 o’clock in the afternoon, early evening, still no sign of Japanese planes.  They’re sure not going to hit us at night ‘cause they don’t have radar, our radar wasn’t that good, lets keep on going.  We left our destroyers behind and we went flank speed due west, the two carriers and the cruisers and the destroyers were left behind.  Now to verify this, the following morning right after daylight we launched aircraft.  Now I know that you have all seen the planes take off from the carrier Hornet, they was taking off the carrier Hornet. When they did that the pictures were taken off of the Northampton. We were back there on the stern watching them take off.  Alright now when a plane either takes off or approaches a carrier they have two destroyers, one on the stern and one on the bow to pick up the pilots in case they have an accident.  We didn’t have any destroyers so the cruisers slipped in there and took the position of the destroyers, that’s why we were so close when we took those pictures.  And right after the planes had all taken off, we sat there and watched them and that third one just about didn’t make it.  Of course they all got airborne and made a big circle and headed west. We made out an 80 degree turn and headed east at flank speed, just as fast as those ships could go.  Within 12 hours we’d come in contact with our destroyers and we were far enough away from Japan and still no aircraft from Japan, indicating that they never did receive the warning, or never took head of it, the same way that we never took head of the warning we had prior to the Japanese attack.  And maybe this is one of the big blunders of the war, I don’t know. I would hate to digest it, or hate to say yes or no.  But anyway, when we went back to the destroyers, we dropped back to moderate speed, about 15 knots, headed towards Pearl Harbor.  We got pretty close to Midway, about a day and a half, then we automatically started picking up speed.  Well as we picked up speed we knew darn well that something was happening someplace else that needed our attention.  Well we went into Pearl, refueled and we was out of Pearl within hours, heading due south at flank speed.  Well, all the time these destroyers had been topped off, we got down around Samoa and you don’t worry about the equator anymore ‘cause that’s in your past. We were down by Samoa, well our destroyers were running out of fuel.  One afternoon we’d seen six destroyers, they relieved the ones we had. They probably went into Samoa or whatever and refueled and we kept on going at flank speed.  We missed the Coral Sea Battle down there by one day. They had sunk the Lexington and gees, we just tried to but we just didn’t make it.  So we turned around and headed back to Pearl at moderate speed, and a day and a half later we recovered our destroyers that had left us to refuel.  We got about a day out of Pearl and we picked up speed again realizing that something else is coming on, but where?  Well that was Midway.  We went in Pearl and we was scheduled for dry dock, scrape off all the barnacles and, you know, make the ship go a little faster the same way with all the rest of the ships, but this did not happen.  We were in there for two days, re-supply, fuel, etc. and we were out of there with the Enterprise. And of course shortly after we went out to sea then they switched us over to the Hornet. The Hornet was the carrier that we had and so the other ships went with the Enterprise.  And then a few days later we had heard that we were going to be helped out with another carrier and it happened to be the Yorktown that was damaged down in the Coral Sea Battle. That rather surprised the Japanese that either a new carrier or how did we get that one repaired so quick and back on station.  The information we received from our headquarters was not too much, occasionally some of the scuttlebutt would filter down from the radio shack etc., and that was around maybe June the 3rd.  Well June the 4th is when they hit us and when we hit them, and later on in that afternoon is when they made the attack on the Yorktown.  Of course we were at our battle stations for three days continuously, except at night and then at night you do have a chance to go hit your bunk maybe for 10, 15, 20 minutes because they will set what they say is condition to, that’s four on watch, four hours on and fours hours off just continuous.  And this is not too bad but you still had your other shipboard duties to perform, so you’re a little bit busy, when do you take time to even brush your teeth?  But you’re so busy.  And of course that particular morning, we could see the planes.  From where you’re at aboard ship, out at the horizon is right close to seven miles before the curvature of the earth starts to go down, and anything on the other side of the curvature of the earth is referred to as hole down.  But we could still see the carriers. We could see the Hornet out on the horizon, we could see the Enterprise, we could see the Yorktown.  But miles between the two ships it could have been 14, 15 miles which is a considerable space.  But we could see the air action, you couldn’t see the planes per say, you could see them when they caught fire when they were hit and you could see the carrier burning when it got hit etc.  But the Enterprise and the Hornet just sat there and waited there for three days.  And then of course on the 4th and on the 5th is when we caused all the damage to the Japanese, but they eventually sunk the Yorktown, and of course they sent in the destroyers and picked up a lot of the survivors and…

So did you guys encounter any Japanese?

No, we just sat there just bored to death.

But you could see it all?

Oh yeah, you could see it, you could see all of it but you just sat there waited.

Describe it again for what you could see, a little more detail.

Well like I said, you could see the smoke; the planes were so far away and so small that you couldn’t see them unless they were hit.  If they was on fire, you didn’t know if it was one of our fighters or one of their bombers, torpedo planes or what.  But then when they hit the carrier you could see the smoke and the fire.

Could you hear the explosion?

Oh no, you’re too far away.  You’re too far away you’ve figured 7 or 8 miles, maybe even as far as 10 and its not like you’re ground, that sound pretty well dissipates so much out there in that ocean.  But it was quite an experience and…

So after Midway, tell us what happened.

Well of course we went back to Pearl, and that’s when we went into dry dock. We were into Pearl for about two weeks ‘cause every ship there had to go into dry dock and get repairs.  We did have liberty again four hours at a time and it doesn't give you much time. You leave the ship at 4 o’clock or I mean at 8 o’clock in the morning and you’re back aboard ship at 12.  By the time you get in town, maybe an hour an hour and a half, and its going to take you that much time to get back so you’re not in town very long.  And a lot of the guys would go down to the bars, they’d go down to the grocery stores and some would go down there would go in a bar and you’re either sitting in there for 15 minutes for two drinks and that’s all. Otherwise you’re going to, because there are 10,000 other sailors outside waiting to get in.  And anyway, at that particular time they would even cancel the liberty for the Army because there was so many sailors in town.  Now I’m speaking of downtown Honolulu, I don’t mean Waikiki beach area, of course out at Waikiki beach there were only Hawaiians out there that was the only thing in that particular area, but it was an education.  But about three weeks after that then we headed south, and of course we didn’t have any idea of what we were going to be doing.  We did go down to Noumea Caledonia, if you know where that is.  At that particular time it belonged to the free French, and the free French at that time didn’t know what they wanted to do. They didn’t know if they wanted to go with the axis powers or stay with the allied powers or not.  They were not going to let our task force in Noumea and we had to have a pilot aboard ship to get in because the channel inside the harbor was so small, they weren't going to let us in.  So apparently Admiral Hodsley got a hold of Admiral Numets at Pearl and he says, “Give them an ultimative of 15 minutes, make up their mind in 15 minutes and if they don’t, you take it.”  Well they did. They informed the free French, “We’ll give you 15 minutes.”  They immediately sent out pilots to aboard the ships to help us bring in, didn’t waste any time and of course that made a good base for us.  Right after that was when the carrier, that was around September, that was when the carrier Wasp was sunk.  One morning you got up on the deck and just as far as you could see, ships. They had the battleship Washington, I think it was the South Dakota, and a bunch of cruisers and carriers, and by that time they had brought the Wasp over from the east coast.  Well all of a sudden all hell broke loose.  The Japanese fired submarine fired two torpedoes at the Wasp and it wasn’t that far away from us. We looked at it and a destroyer went up alongside of it and pretty soon two torpedoes in the destroyer, I think it was the destroyer Porter. 

These were loud explosions?

We couldn’t hear the explosions; we could see the blast and the fire and everything.  Well the ships just scattered, and where in the heck they went to, I don’t know.  But the Washington, the battleship Washington was hit by two torpedoes and of course it didn’t phase it too much because it got hit in the bow and it wasn’t a bunch of supplies and stuff like that, and they did have watertight integrity aboard the ship.  And then, they did sink the Wasp, the carrier Wasp and the Porter.

Did you see it go down, did you see the Wasp?

No, no, no the ships just scattered, they just left and no.  Within 10 or 15 minutes or a half an hour later it was nothing but smoke on the horizon, that’s all we could see.  But it just hit and ran up to the Solomon Islands. Then about the middle of October, we were pretty well in the showdown with the Japanese about a lot similar to what it was in Coral Sea Battle.  They made contact with us and we made contact with them.  Now if you go back to that book that you have and if you look at it real closely you can see the Japanese planes coming straight down on the carrier Hornet and they’re not very far in the air, and they speak of the first kamikaze planes that ever attacked it was over Okinawa.  Well I disagree with them because we have seen the Japanese crash into the ships long before that happened, and of course they, did that to the Hornet.  Well after the Hornet was…

Did you see that?

Oh yes, oh yes.

Tell us the some of the detail about that.

We got hit with about 85 dive-bombers that one morn, dive-bombers and torpedo planes that one morning.  Well we had aired bedding because they have cots aboard those ships. At times and we aired bedding and different parts of the ships will have it at different times and this happened to be the first and second divisions…

Air bedding?

Mattresses.

And they just let the air out?

You’re right and they’re all snapped all along around the lifelines on the deck, it’s quite a sight.  But anyway, during the engagement here come about 10 or 12 torpedo planes, the dive bombers are coming down, the torpedo planes are coming in and you get to a point, which one are you going to shoot at first?  You better hurry because he’s going to hurt you.  Well I don’t know who made the decision, I imagine it was the Skipper that made the decision, he trained out the 8 inch and there was 2 barrels or 6 barrels at the 8 inch up forward and they was just waiting for those torpedo planes to get into a certain height or certain distance.  Well, all of a sudden they fired and they hit the water and those torpedo planes hit the water and when that water settled down there wasn’t a plane in the sky.

So the waterspouts…

The waterspout came up and they went right into that waterspout and there wasn’t a plane in the sky.  But it sure tore the hell out of that bedding.

What was happening with the dive-bombers in the meantime?

Pardon me?

What was happening with the dive-bombers?

Well they, the anti-aircraft back aft were taking care of them as near as they could.  But like I say, that was when the Hornet was hit. We got a bunch of near misses but we were not hit.  Then later on that day we took the carrier in tow under air attacks.

You were towing with a carrier?

Yeah we were towing. They run hosiers back, big cables back and forth and…

This was to the Hornet?

To the Hornet, yes.  And we towed it for about, oh about 3 or 4 knots or something like that, but it didn’t work out.  And we, under air attacks, broke they line.

That must be quite an experience to tow a carrier under attack.

Well that we did.  It’s in that book.

That must be quite a…

Yeah it’s in the book, but the lines are not taught they’re not straight, they’re sagged down, just the weight of those darn things would pull them.  But anyway they, let the carrier go and most of the carriers that has been sunk was sunk by our own destroyers. They would send them back after dark and sink them with the torpedoes.  They did the Yorktown, I think they did the Lexington; I know they did that with the Hornet, and just so they won’t fall into enemy hands, because they’re more of a hindrance to you.  And after, after the Hornet was sunk then that kind of put us in limbo. There were 4 or 5 cruisers plus the destroyers and that threw us in kind of a limbo type thing because we weren't operating.  They had to a lot of reworking or apparently they did, and of course that’s when during the invasion of Guadalcanal, they would use these cruisers. That’s where the Vinsins the Quincents and the Astoria were under aircraft protection, the morning they got sunk. 

So you were off of Guadalcanal?

We weren't very far away when all that happened.

Were you giving fire support to Guadalcanal?

Oh yes, we’d go near maybe two times a week.  One group of ships would do it one maybe two days, and another group of ships would do it, you know and different things.

So could you see Guadalcanal?

Oh yes, oh yes.

What did you see?

Not a heck of a lot, it was just nothing but an island.  You couldn’t tell the difference between roads or anything to that nature.

Could you see where your shells were hitting?

You might see a disturbance, but where we were we wouldn’t see anything because we were in housed in the turret.

Were there Japanese planes in the area?

Yeah, we were always being harassed with those darn things.  Maybe for a few minutes the anti-aircraft would start the firing.  And when we were in Pearl after the Midway Battle, they started to put in more anti-aircraft protection on those ships, and at that time they put a British Pom Pom, it’s a 1.1 type thing.  And on the end of it, it looks like an eraser, and that is a detonator.  And even the raindrops will set that darn thing off, and it was so bad, it was so bad.

How do you mean bad?

Well do a little research on it.

No, you tell us.

Well we, it happened, it happened to us one time.

What happened?

We had them there at Santa Cruz when the Hornet was sunk and by that time I was in the anti-aircraft area because I had gone through school on that apparel.  And their trays was a lot similar to our 40 millimeter rack but they was so flimsy and it seemed like you bump the darn thing and the whole thing would fall out the bottom.  It has to be fired for that little tip to detonate, so it wouldn’t blow if it hit the deck, it may if it hit it hard enough but it didn’t do it.  But one of these times it happened that way and we were unable to fire when the planes were coming in. We just sat there and watched them, just kind of like a front row seat in a sense.  But the Japanese were very good; when they came to you they made sure they got a hit.

Alright, we’re now back to where the Northampton gets sunk, so tell us about that.

I just said after the carrier Hornet we were pretty much in limbo so to speak, not necessarily but we were on hit and run, going in and shelling and getting out and going back and doing it and…

When you say hit and run…

There at Guadalcanal.  And this was going on maybe two or three times a week, if it wasn’t us it was somebody else, some other cruisers with destroyers,  but the night of November the 29th I believe.

October?

No it was November.  We were in Espiritu Santo. It's about 900 miles due east of Guadalcanal.  Well about 20 minutes to 12 we got word to get underway.

This is at night?

Yes.  And this is something that never happens, but then it was an emergency.  And we went out of that harbor with our gangplank still hanging on; we hadn’t had time to recover it yet.  I’m going to tell you, these boilers were always cranked up to respond immediately and there was 5 cruisers, there was the New Orleans, the Minneapolis, the light cruiser Honolulu, the heavy cruiser Pensacola, and the Northampton with destroyers.  Well, we went out of there and the next morning we were steaming at flank speed going due west.  And in the process I was looking for a buddy of mine was in the air group and I couldn’t find him. I found out that they had left him behind, they had taken only one aircraft and they’d taken the other one off. We have two parts so they can replenish them if they have to.

These are little seaplanes?

Yes, spider planes, two-winged planes, float planes that land on the ocean etc.  And later on that day we started dumping all the anti-aircraft fuel over the side because we knew we were going to get into something and they were just getting prepared.  Well darkness came and we still headed due west and we went, if you know where Salville Island is, we went up around Salville Island and before we went around it we made radar contact with the Japanese there on the west side of Guadalcanal.  They were unloading troops, destroyers etc. because most of their things were with destroyers, more so than transports, okay.  And as we came around in back of them, what kind of a battle group we were in, I have no idea, but it was terrible and we later on will realize why.  We opened fire about 20 minutes to 12 and at that time I’d been transferred from the anti-aircraft group to the radar division and my battle station at that time was back in second combat area with our Commander, Commander Shetsky, and what we used to refer to it as back two.  But about 20 minutes after 12 we ceased firing and that whole horizon was on fire now. What the heck it was, I had no idea.  It could have been ammunition barges. I don’t know, but the whole horizon was burning.  Well about that time, we swung our guns in and a short time after that we heard a big explosion by up forward.  Wondered at that particular time, wondered what the heck that was.

Did it shake the ship?

No, just a big old flare and it was about 300 yards away from us.  Secondary con was an area about 7 or 8 feet width, and you could get 4 or 5 guys in there with telephones etc.  And a few minutes later another blow, well what the hell’s going on, you know, we didn’t realize just what the heck it was.  Well, about that time, a few minutes later nothing happened.  What would happen, the Minneapolis took two torpedoes long launch torpedoes and blew its bow off as you can see in those pictures.  About 5 minutes later here comes the New Orleans, two long launch torpedoes blew the other bow off.  And about the time that the other ship was going to get its torpedoed and made it turn it into port that was the Honolulu.  Here come the Northampton, we got two torpedoes in the stern, about that time when they hit us. They weren't over 30 feet from in that area where they hit ‘cause we weren't that far away. But luckily, the hits were under the water and it didn’t do us any damage at all, only to the ship in that general area.  Well you blow a hole 15 feet in diameter; you’re going to take in a lot of water, a lot of water in a hurry.  Right after we got hit, 5 minutes later here come the Pensacola and it got two torpedoes in the stern, there was 5 cruisers, 4 of them out of action and one of them sunk within 3 hours.  In other words, the Japanese, when they go out to do any damage they’re going to make sure they’re going to do damage, and look at the total destruction that they had.  Well Commander Shetsky said that he was going to go up on the bridge and he left, he said, “You men,” “go down on the quarterdeck, help out where you can and just stay out of trouble, okay?”  In other words, “Don’t add to the confusion.”  So he left and I went to hang my phones up and I saw that Commander Shetsky had left his 45, his side arms, hanging on the phone jack and I picked up, a beautiful beautiful gun.  And Bernice Shaw was a 3rd Class Quartermaster and he said, “I’m going up to the bridge,” he says, “I’ll take it up and give it to the Commander, okay?”  So I gave it to him, and I think nothing of it. We went down to the quarterdeck and at that time they was issuing out old Springville guns, WWI guns. We had the old steel pot not the old WWI steel helmet.  They did give us life jackets because the big tower that housed the catapult to shoot the float planes off, is where they keep a lot of that material, it’s out of the way.  And by that time they was giving us all this material and I got two bandoliers of ammunition. They were the belt type stuff which is terrible because they found that out in the cold winter that they freeze.  Well I figured I could lick the whole Japanese Army the way I was outfitted at that particular time and it wasn’t very much longer before, the Skipper gave the order to start abandon ship, because he knew eventually as the ship listed to port it just threw our starboard screw right out of the water.

There was no fire?

Very very little, ‘cause see all of the explosions were underneath.  We did get a little fire but not very much because everything was back aft.

I guess everything is clinging in general, what was the noise like?

Well you get the initial explosion, a lot of that is muffled because it’s underwater and it was hit in the heavy machinery area, so immediately it’s going to list, its going to take a big strong list, but we did have a little fire but not very much.  Like I said, most of the explosion was down, it’s not in your fuel compartment areas and so it didn’t rupture a lot of the fuel lines etc., fuel lines probably yes but not in large quantity.

So you were really starting to list at that time?

Yeah, immediately it went into a port list.  And they put over some conger nets and they started, they told to us to start.  I was with some of the first group down there, so I went over as the ship was listing. You’re afraid to step on the guy down below you but you got to keep it going because the guy up above you is going to step on you so you've got to keep going. You just have no choice.  You get down and you drop your foot down and there’s nothing there, you get down to the end of your conger net and there’s nothing there so you have to drop.  And as I dropped I hit my backside on the beels keel, if you know what the beels keel is. It’s a ship that sitting upright, there’s a keel down here below the water, on both sides, it keeps the ship from rocking so much.

It’s a slight bulge isn’t it?

It’s like a stabilizer and of course as the ship listed it just brought that darn thing right in that general area.  Well I wasn’t the only one that hit the darn thing and as it does it gives you a flip.  And you hit that water with that darn kapok jacket on and immediately it wants to float, your body with all of the weight on it wants to sink and it just grabs you right against your throat so tight. What you generally do, well of course what we did as far as I think the same as the rest of them, you immediately drop what you have on you.  And the bandoliers went off the side, the rifle you drop and you're just trying to stay afloat and the whole time you’re trying to pull down on things, as far as I can understand you jump in a swimming pool and try and undo your shoelaces. Its practically impossible unless you happen to pull the right tab.  And one of the guys did pull out a knife and he happens to cut them, that’s about the only thing you could do.  And on some of them, some of the other men cut them all and they’d take it off and just hang on to it, that’s the best thing to do with the kapok.  But and then as time wore on, we were only in the water for about 4 hours but it was dark, you couldn’t see.  The men were talking to each other. They weren't hollering to each other because it was kind of a close knit group, but some of them said that they could hear Japanese talk because the sound would carry over the water.  And now how far the Japanese were, I had no idea.  But the destroyer that did the damage had been hit with one of the salvilles (?) of one of the ships. Okay, it had been hit.  And he was pretty much not completely dead in the water, but he was pretty badly damaged and he just sat there and put torpedoes in his ship and went by.  But that ship did eventually leave. It was sunk about 3 months later by a submarine.  Anyway, during that night there’s a little bit of commotion but not really a lot until later on we could see a whaleboat, and then a little bit later we could see the silhouette of a ship, assuming that its one of our destroyers.  And then a little while later they would occasionally, you would see a flashlight or a battle lantern, they wouldn’t leave it on very long, just turn it on maybe to identify or do whatever they wanted to and then turn it back off again.  But then we did get picked up later on by the destroyer Fletcher. Now they say that the Fletcher was the1st Fletcher class but it wasn’t, it was the 2nd one.  If you want to do any naval research, do the research on the destroyer Nickel, Nicholas, it was the first one thar makes no difference at all. Anybody that wants to make any research on them can do that.  But we did got picked up by the Fletcher and of course it took us to Espiritu Santos and in fact, the next morning I happened to run across Bernice Shaw, the third class quartermaster who I had given the 45 to, and he still had that 45.  Anyway, later on that day he ran across Commander Shetsky and Commander Shetsky said, “Let me keep it for you.”  Because he says, “If I don’t, somebody else will take it away from you.”  So he did and when he got back to the States Commander gave it back to him.

When that ship was going down, what were you thinking?

We were close enough to see it.  Like I said, it did have a little bit of fire around, not a heck of a lot.  So I don’t think we were over 100 yards away from it when it went down.  A little bit I guess ‘cause we couldn’t see anything, but we could see the darn thing roll over and then sink straight down.  Well, we just lost a home.  It kind of, kind of hope you get picked up, but we did within a short period of time. That was a wonderful experience to know that you were going to be picked up, and it did happen and they took us down to Espiritu Santos and then to Noumea, New Caledonia.  We were down there at a survivor’s camp and they had men down there from the cruisers, the Canberra, this is an Australian cruiser, the Vincents and the Quincents and the Astoria and the Atlanta and the Juneau and the Northampton and, oh hell, there are others you know.  And the Japanese did raise havoc with the US Fleet down there at Guadalcanal.  They were using different war tactics. They were doing it a lot different than. Our tactics weren't any good.

Where did you go and where were you reassigned after that? When did you finally get back onboard ship?

Well, after that we went to survivor’s camp down there. Then we eventually made it back to Pearl Harbor on the liberty ship Kenmore.  They gave us a job to do. We started to scrape and paint and stuff. It was an old pleasure ship from Asia because it had the stairways on it and the whole thing up, but they brought it back from Asia and they made a refer ship out it a refrigeration ship out of it. And while the guys was doing painting and whatnot, one kid knocked a hole right through the bow kit of the ship and when he reported it, he got up to the Skipper and the Skipper said, “No more scraping paint.”

It was that old?

No, oh hell, it was an old old bucket.  But anyway, so then we didn’t have any work to do so we went up topside and played pinochle.  Maybe 4 or 5 guys would play pinochle and we’d kick off our shoes and take off our shirts, and within a week we took all of our clothes off completely.  We crossed the equator on Christmas Day and when I got back to the states I think I went on liberty, or on leave about the 2nd or 3rd of January. I was just as brown as old piece of leather, I mean all over my body.  Of course we were all that way, but we got back there and we got delayed orders for the heavy cruiser Boston back in Boston, Quincy, Massachusetts.  I went home and of course, that’s when my wife and I got married and then we went back to Boston. We still had work to do out of Quincy, and they housed us at the Fargo building.  It was an old hotel in South Boston Navy Yards, and about 3 months later I had my wife come back. I got room for her and we spent a very enjoyable summer of 1943 in the Boston area, and I enjoyed it. I’m sure she did also but we did enjoy it very very much.  But we had a little bit of a problem aboard there because they had about 500 experienced men. They had a lot of new men from Minneapolis, service schools etc.  And we did have a problem.

And when did you get on the Hole?

It was right after that. I was transferred to the west coast and me and my buddy got into a little bit of trouble and we found out that we were better off overseas than we were at home, so we put in for overseas duty and we were shipped back over to Guadalcanal.  A year later I was right back in the same place I started from and that’s where I picked up the destroyer Hole.

What were you assigned to do on the Hole?

Well, I’d been at a break for a little short time and I was broke right down to sea again, I was back out there scrubbing those decks and firing those guns.  But nobody got hurt on it. It was an experience but nobody got hurt.  But what makes it odd for this, a friend of mine that I had met down in Australia, its in the book there, and he – its rather odd when a person or persons gets into a little bit of a problem, they split you up immediately, but in this case it didn’t happen, didn’t happen.  Wherever I went he went, wherever he went I went, and this was unusual.  We figured we would get split up when we got transferred overseas but it didn’t happen.

You were on the Hole?

We both went on the destroyer Hole, and we made the best of it. Do your work, but it generally it doesn't happen, okay.  But in this case, now if you refer to as an omen, maybe this is what destiny, I don’t know.  But one strange, very strange thing happened, Phil also got married and he received a letter from his wife, and she asked him for a divorce, but you couldn’t divorce a service man at that particular time.  In that letter she also sent him a picture of a 3-month-old baby girl. This tore that poor kid to pieces. You know he cried about it and he told me about it.  And anyway, about a week before the destroyer Hole got sunk, Phil give me that picture.  Now that’s rather strange, that is rather strange for a man to take a person, I was a stranger to their family, to do something like this and he did, he give me that picture.  Well Phil, apparently he got killed. He listed as missing.  But now I’m going to relate a little bit of a story that I hope Ralph over there will put it in his book because I think it’s rather important.  To understand how some of these Commanders can be, we had liberty on an island out there one time and we was issued two cans of warm beer, and on that island they had a USO show, with Bob Hope, Francis Langford and Jerry Colona.  We could hear them but we couldn’t see them, we was so far back in the group, maybe a little bit of spot down on the stage.  Well Bob Hope and Jerry came out, cracked a few jokes, Francis Langford sang a song and then they immediately passed the word for task force to report back to the ships immediately – of course that was us.  We went, we were on submarine patrol with two other destroyers and Captain Thomas, he said, “Well, this won’t happen to us anymore because we’re going to have our own party.”  And the next time we go into a big port he said, what he did – we went into a big port a few weeks later and they cleaned out one 40 millimeter gun tub and filled it full of beer, cases of beer.  We assumed we’re going to have a pretty good time or whatever, well it never happened.  Because every time when we’d go out to sea, about 5 o’clock every night the stewards mate would come down and unlock and take out enough beer for the officer’s.  Well this is alright, rank has its privilege, I respect that, but this happened and happened and then it just kept on happening.  Eventually they were getting prepared for the invasion of Leyte. We were down at Manus and we got a new Skipper.  And Captain Thomas was promoted to Screen Commodore and he wanted to be aboard our ship, the Hole, on the next upcoming invasion and he knew about that and we didn’t.  So we get a new Skipper, we put out to sea and we started getting bad weather and a day or two later we found ourselves right in the middle of a hurricane and those hurricanes aren’t gentle.  Anyway so, they landed troops on Leyte. I think it was October the 20th and this was about the 22nd or give or take a day.

This is the Philippines?

Yes sir, yes, for the invasion of the Philippines.  Some of the men aboard ship and who they were I have no idea, it makes no difference, decided they were going to go in there and take some of that beer.  So they go in there right after the stewards mate got the beer one evening right after dark, and they went in there and took a case of beer, cut the lock, took the beer, put a new padlock on it and they had, I’m sure it was the Engineer Force, I’m not sure, but then they had the facilities to chill it.  And they probably had it chilled and drank and enjoyed and within 4 hours and all the evidence was exposed over the side.

So, on October 24th hurricane in the middle of the invasion of Leyte Gulf.

And Commander Kempberger was madder than a hive of hornets ‘cause he hadn’t found anything at all.  He was going to have another shakedown the next morning and he was going to go through that whole ship.  Maybe it’s a good thing the Japanese did sink us ‘cause I think that sucker would have court marshaled every man on that ship just to prove a point. But it didn’t happen. The morning of October the 25th, we had a normal general quarters secured at daylight and I was just getting ready to go down to chow ‘cause I had to go down and have an early breakfast and get back up on the gun mount.

Which gun mount are you on?

Two.  And this is 5-inch, 5-inch 38.  And about that time general quarters went, we could see the shell hits throughout the carriers and this reminded me a little bit of the early days of the war.

Tell us how big your little force is; tell us how big it is.

Taffy three.  They made a great mistake when they attacked Palew Islands ‘cause they were going to use that as an airbase for the invasion of the Philippines.  But they finally realized that Palew was too far away so the only thing they could do was improvise a little bit.  At that particular time I’m sure they had trouble with Admiral Halsey because Admiral Halsey would not give up any of his carriers, and at that time he had about 15 of them.

These are those big carriers?

This is the Essex Class; they’re bigger than the Hornet and the Enterprise etc.  These are nice nice carriers.  He wasn’t going to give up his for Admiral Kincaid or General McArthur, so they had to go back and rethink this and as they did they came up with the idea of using the jeep carrier.  The jeep carrier was designed to transport aircraft.

It’s small?

Yes, but not to go into battle like it did.  Now in order to give enough flight planes in this area they came up with three Taffy’s – Taffy One, Taffy Two and Taffy Three and each Taffy had six carriers.  You would think this was an enormous amount of planes, it isn’t.  For the simple reason that each carrier would hold approximately 35 planes.  You start breaking that down into fighters and into bombers and into torpedo bombers etc. you come up with about eight operational planes per unit.  Yes, you get a lot of them together and you’ve got a sizable force.  Well these Taffy Three’s were about 50 to 75 miles apart from each other.  Taffy Three happened to be the northernmost group and at that particular time of the day I could see all of these bomb hits (at least what I thought were bomb hits), actually they were shell hits coming fairly close to the carrier and years ago what they did at the beginning of the war when a plane would come back they would have to ask and get permission to drop their ordinance.  When they came back they would always drop them before they would land on the carriers.

Is this in case they hadn’t used it?

Right, but they would always designate an area for the planes to do that, not close to the carriers.  All of the shell hits were close to the carriers and I said “this is crazy.  Something’s screwy.  What the hell’s going on?”  At that particular time I went down to my locker and I made a comment to myself ‘I hope I get by this day’.  I pulled out two packages of cigarettes, I got in my wallet and I pulled out two condoms.  A lot of people have asked me “what the hell are you doing out there with condoms?”  If you go back to the Guadalcanal era there was a major who requested 1,000 condoms and one of his commanders said he must mean 10,000.  Anyway, they cleaned out all of Australia.  What they would do with these is put them over their barrel and keep the mud and water out.  Now if you want to see a sight, see a bunch of marines walking down there in that situation, which I have seen many times.   All right, when we were down in Numea, New Caledonia waiting for transportation back to the states that’s where I got my ration of two.  I put them in my pocket and they were there all through the summer of ’43 and you know I pretty well forgot about them, but that particular morning I got them and I put my cigarettes in there and put them in my breast pocket and I forgot about them.  I went topside and by that time General Quarters was going and I wasn’t very far from my gun mount or my battle station.  I went up there and in a five-inch gun mount there are about seven men.  You have the trainer, the pointer; you’ve got two men on the hoist for the shells, one for the projectile and one for the powder.  You’ve got the gun captain up there and I’m sitting over here on a little chair watching pointers.  What I’m doing is keeping everything pointed together because the closer that pointer is the more precision you’re going to fire.  We started cranking in our distance of 20,000 yards but it wasn’t until about 15,000 yards when they first started giving us the first report and it went into 12,000 and it kept going down and we kept asking “have they trained out the torpedo tubes?”  No they had not trained out the torpedo tubes.  What happened at the beginning of this whole thing, there were two destroyers and one destroyer escort in the back of the group and they were all going south at slow to moderate speed when all of this was going on.  When we started seeing the shell hits, we immediately went into making smoke screen from whoever was firing on us to keep them from seeing us.  Why they hadn’t picked them up on radar?  Who knows, that’s a good question?  Anyway the destroyer Johnson, Commander Evans, and I and I don’t blame that man one bit for what he did, he immediately made a 180-degree turn and went into the Japanese at flank speed.

There was a Japanese task force after you?

This Japanese task force, or Admiral Halsey’s task force – Task Force 38.  A lot of people have them confused, 38 and the 5tgFleet is confusing.  Task Force 38 is under Admiral Hadlsey; the 5th Fleet is under Admiral Spruence.  Now getting back to our first discussion, Admiral Spruence was the admiral on the north end.  He was a cruiser division admiral and he is the one that followed Admiral Halsey all over the Pacific and that’s why Admiral Halsey picked him to overrule and he jumped over about 20 senior officers when he was appointed commander in charge of Midway on the carrier Enterprise.

So the armada is coming?

All right, on the afternoon of October the 24th, the air group from Task Force 38 had seen Admiral Katera’s forces trying to come through San Berdino Strait.  That is north of Samore Island and there are only two passages through the Philippine Archipelago and one through San Berdino Straits, north of Leyte and one Surigao Strait south of Leyte.  They had two fleets coming up Surigao Strait which they annihilated on October the 24th.  That’s when they crossed the “T” if you go into that jargon.  So then the air had sunk the Mishishi, that’s a 17,000 ton 18 inch battleship and at that particular time Admiral Korida turned and went west.  The report that Admiral Halsey received at that particular time on one of the ships that the Japanese were retreating, but no, they were not retreating.  Right after dark Admiral Koreda made a 180 turn and went due east at flank speed.  He crossed through the north passage of San Berdino Straits at about 2:00 in the morning and he went due south.  The idea was to all meet down there at Leyte Gulf and retake or annihilate the landings etc. which they could have done very very easily.  Admiral Halsey at that particular time went over the airwaves and informed Pearl Harbor, Admiral Nimitz and Admiral Kincaid down at Leyte that he was going to form what they referred to as Task Force 34 – that was the heavy battleship group.  Because Korida came through with four battleships, six cruisers and 12 destroyers which is a pretty good heavy force.  Anyway, in the meantime the Japanese Vice Admiral Osowa with his carrier force of three carriers were coming around Luzon up the north, but he didn’t have any planes on his carriers, I think he only had about 34 on three carriers.  But he was a decoy for the whole program.

He was going to sucker Halsey west.

And he did.  He broke radio silence, Admiral Halsey picked it up and fell for it and took his whole fleet north and did not organize Task Force 34 and he did not even leave as much as a destroyer as a picket ship guarding San Berdino Straits.

So how many destroyers?

Taffy Three had had three destroyers and four destroyer escorts.

How many escort carriers?

Six.

So you’re a tiny little fleet and this huge Japanese task force is coming up?

They crossed the passage of San Berdino Straits at about 2:00 in the morning and they came in contact with us at about six or right after daylight.  They were still about 25 or 30,000 yards in back of us.  The firing that we encountered to begin with was more than likely from the Amado because he could fire 30,000 yards.

The Amado was what?

Was the largest ship the world has ever known.  It’s a battleship bigger than the Iowa, the Missouri, the Bismarck or whatever you want to sink because it had 18-inch guns on it.

And it was coming right at you?

And it could go as fast as our destroyers with no problem.  It was coming right at Taffy Three.  Anyway, at that particular time about 20 minutes after six Commander Evans on the Johnson Destroyer confronted the Japanese at flank speed but he took a battle degree on one of the battleships – the Congo I believe, but the Congo was 18,000 yards away from him and that’s quite a distance.  As that ship was coming towards you and of course when you’re shooting broadside you’re going to turn broadside.  Well instead of making one torpedo run and firing one or two torpedo’s he fired all ten torpedos at once.  That’s just like throwing a handful of rice at a bird – you hope one of them hit. Well it didn’t happen.  He made 180 degree turn and he retired.  In the Morrison book of Leyte it mentions in there that he ‘retired’.  He didn’t retreat; he said he ‘retired’.  Well to me that means something – where the hell are you going?  Where are you going to retire to?  That means you’re out of it.  Well where he was going I have no idea and I don’t think he did either.  By that time Commodore Thomas, the screen commodore, was waiting for orders from Admiral Ziggy Sprig on the Kitkin Bay, and it never happened.  I think that man was out of his gourd because he didn’t until about 20 minutes after six or 6:30, some even say 10 minutes to 7, but the timeframe there is very very important because he eventually gave Commodore Thomas permission to make torpedo attack.  The Herman was about 3,000 yards away from us so we made 180 degree turn and went back into them at flank speed under smokescreen etc.  We took a bearing, the destroyer hull took a bearing on the battleship Congo and the battleship Haroona and we fired two torpedos and then eventually went back into our smokescreen.  Admiral Korida made a mistake and he admitted it later on that when they first came in contact with US forces. He ordered ‘General Attack’.  Well the general attack with the Japanese forces meant apparently that you pick out your own target.  This is kind of a helter skelter type of an engagement and when the hull made the torpedo attack on the Congo apparently it missed. 

You’re being bracketed by shells the whole time?

Yes, and we’re being racked pretty heavy and we’re not close enough to them for us to fire our little five inch 38’s.  Of course our little projectiles are about that big and theirs are about six foot six.  Anyway, the lookout’s on the battleship Amado seen two torpedo’s heading in their direction and so the Amado made a 180 degree turn and headed due north at flank speed to evade those torpedo’s.  Well by doing so it took him ten minutes to go up there, the torpedos ran their course, ran out of fuel and sank.  The Amado turned around and that put him 20 minutes behind his fleet.  You couldn’t have semi fore because it was a cloudy drizzly day. You couldn’t see lights and he lost all control of his fleet.

But he was still coming at you?

He was still coming.  They had 12 destroyers but they stayed with two light cruisers.  They did not use their destroyers and if they would have coordinated their attack they could have used two destroyers per ship, and could have sunk every carrier we had with torpedos.

When did they hit you?

Immediately, our first hits by a lucky hit from them was in our radar.  It was above the bridge and it knocked out all automatic controls so everything after that was manual.  You train those guns and they don’t move very fast but if they have electric power they move pretty quick.  So everything was manual, we were firing at the closest ship that we could site on.  We have records of making hits on the Japanese battleships and even the Japanese battleships admitted to being hit.  We didn’t cause a lot of damage; we caused a lot of confusion.

This is the charge of the light brigade?

Yeah.  Commander Cutler used that in one of his books but I think I beat him to press.  I put that in my book many years ago.

So you’re taking hits and you’re having trouble with everything on board and are you taking more hits?

Right.  Actually through the whole engagement we have a diagram of 25 known hits but they said that we got hit with over 40 major projectiles.  Luckily they were armor piercing projectiles because if they hit the thin skin of the destroyer they went right through it without exploding.  They would tear piping and whatever.  There was so much, I wouldn’t say confusion.  There was no loud speaking in the gun mount.  I looked at McDonald and I couldn’t do anything because I wasn’t getting any readings from CIC, so my job was completely stopped and they were firing on any target that was presentable to them.  At that particular time I would trade off with McDonald, he was the trainer and one time I traded with McDonald and I smelled a cigarette. I felt myself at that particular time, if the Japanese don’t blow us to hell he will because he was smoking in a gun mount.  But it did happen and the barrel on the 5H, you didn’t have to hit the lever to fire it, it just automatically cooked off.  It warms up in a hurry.  Yeah, just as soon as they’d roll that canister of powder in there she’d blow.  Just as soon as it went in there it hit the lever and took off.  But then they had already passed the word to abandon ship but there in gun two we hadn’t heard it. Somebody came up and started beating on the door and of course they opened it up and they told us to get out.  As I went out it was a mess, because we had a 40mm gun tub on the port and starboard side of the gun with two guns in each one of them and there were dead bodies around. My first thought was to get down to see where my buddy was.  I went by this one kid ‘Krup’, he had one of his legs blown off and there was an officer trying to put a line around him to help him and I was there and helped him for a little bit until we got another blast of shrapnel and that’s when I got hit in the legs.  It wasn’t life threatening but it was still there and of course I didn’t know it, there was so much darn excitement etc.  Then Krup slumped down so we figured he was gone and the officer said “let’s get the hell out of here”.  So I took off and I went back aft to see if I could find my buddy Phil which actually was a mistake on my part. But, the further I went back the worse it got because all of these men were out in the open.  There about midship there’s a break between port and starboard and I went through there and there were so many men that were piled up there it was terrible and I just made up my mind then, I said “get the hell out of here”.  So that’s when I left and I went back up there but I didn’t have a lifejacket and I saw one other guy up there and I asked him and he had just come out of Gun One and he said “yeah, there’s something hanging up there” and I went up in Gun One and there was a rubber inflated unit and I picked that up and I went back and I could still hear the projectiles flying over the ship.  Some of them would sound about like a freight train.  They would tumble and cause so much roar.

So did you go into the water?

I think I said a little prayer to my mother, my dear wife and I said to myself “It’s a hell of a long way for a swim back to San Francisco”.  I threw my life jacket in and I jumped in after it and I swam away from the ship, I don’t know, maybe 50 yards and I turned around and looked back and it was going down then.  The funny part of this was they were still firing at it and they were still hitting it as it was going down.  There were a couple of them that went right over the top of it. You could hear them as it went down.  Right after that it was so peaceful and quite.  Everybody was just sitting there bobbing up and down in the water.  After that you could hear…well you come to your senses a little bit I believe and you realize what’s around you and you try to get together and I swam over to this one group – we had floater nets. We didn’t have any life rafts, we just had a floater net.  A floater net is just a net that is not attached to the ship, when the ship sinks it just floats off with rubber and probably….

So the Amado is coming right toward you…

When the Amado came by we weren’t over 50 yards from it and that’s not very far away.  We had one of the kids that had to push himself away from the side of the ship so he wouldn’t get caught in the screws in the back.  He drifted right in to Samar Island, the natives picked him up.

On the bridge of the Amado you said there was a guy you saw all dressed in white.

Okay, this was the deck just a little bit higher than the top turret, it could have been the poop deck or whatever but there were three men up there.  You could see them because you could see the other guys running around the ship.  But there were three men up there and as they went passed us they saluted the men in the water.  This could have very easily been Admiral Katura for the simple reason that he had been on a ship that had been sunk the previous day.  If you go back and research that, they came from Borneo. They didn’t come from Japan. They came from Borneo and that was the northern fleet.

So again, they came by and they saluted you?

Yes.  It just gave you a little bit of a feeling more so than what the Japanese army would be.  Maybe they had a little bit of compulsion there. 

So you’re drifting in the water and you don’t know what’s going to happen to you and these people salute you?

Yes, they saluted us as the ship went by.  When we first saw the Amado go by of course your first impression is to observe any movement and you could see the men who were in whites running and even pointing to us and until your concentration took over and you noticed the three men up there on the poop deck about maybe two decks above the main deck, and as the ship went past us they saluted us.  This has been reported in a number of incidents by different people.  Even the incident from one of my shipmates who were on the destroyer Johnson, also mentioned that.

Who do you think might have been saluting you?

It could have been Admiral Katura himself or his staff.  To give you a little extra recognition that the Japanese navy had more so than the army had.

How long did you float in the water?

We were there for three days, well going on to three days.  It was over 53 hours.

When were you found?

We were picked up by a LCI and this LCI came from Leyte.  He didn’t know, the skipper in this little floatilla didn’t know…he knew that there was trouble up there but he didn’t know how he was going to recover any of them so he got permission and go up there and hug the coastline.

Was this part of the invasion fleet?

Yes, and after his troops were on the beach then of course that put them out of business – the landing craft.

What were you thinking when you were in the water?

There are a lot of things that go through your mind.  The first night was terrible because some of the guys were wounded severely and most of them died.  The next morning you’d try to take inventory as much as we could and as one of the men would die you’d try to take off his K-pod but you couldn’t because his arms were stiff from rigormortis.  So the best thing to do was to just turn him loose, take his dog tags off and let him go and he’d float out there maybe five yards, not very far away and the sharks would get him and just tear him to pieces.  And it kind of makes you, you can’t describe it, it kind of makes you a little bit apprehensive because you might be next.

And you had no food, no water?

No we didn’t have any. The second day we found a crate of potatoes but we lost them during the night, we had no way of flashing them to the floater net of so we lost them during the night and no, we did not have any.  On the second day we did see some men, oh I don’t know, maybe 50 yards away because you get into those high swells and stuff like that.  Charles Sampson and I swam over there and retreated and that’s where Captain Kempberger and Commodore Thomas were in that life raft, although the life raft was in pretty bad shape. It was upside down and it was tore up pretty bad with shrapnel etc.  But all in all, there were about 28 guys altogether.

Now you had a condom full of cigarettes on you.

One of my buddies said he’d give his soul in hell for a cigarette and of course that particular time I reached in my breast pocket and I could feel them but I figured, oh they’re all soggy.  But I did get it out and by the time I got it open and got, my fingers were so water saturated that I’d touch one and the water would just flow right from one end of it to the other and by the time you got one out and finally got some gofer matches to light it, it did take quite a considerable time, but we did But it made us sick.

So after you were recovered you went where?

After we got picked up we, they give us some coffee or soup or whatever we wanted and that’s all we did.  I thought I was in pretty good condition and I tried to stand up but I couldn’t stand up and nobody was able to walk.

OK, I didn’t want to interrupt you but we’ve run out of time today, we have so much we’ve covered. Can we have you back and just finish off?