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Mr. Metzler: Let's go from San Diego to Tarala... did you go directly?
Mr. Doig: No.
Mr. Metzler:
You were assigned to the Ashland and then what?
Mr. Doig: We departed San Diego and went directly from San Diego to Pearl Harbor. Then from Pearl Harbor, our first venture out was to build an airfield on a little island called Baker Island six miles north of the equator. Mr. Metzler: So what roughly was the date then when you were in Pearl Harbor?
Mr. Doig: The later part of August of 1943.
Mr. Metzler: So it's been going on two years since Pearl Harbor was attacked so what kind of shape were things in? Mr. Doig: Pearl Harbor was awful. Pearl Harbor had an inch of oil over the top of it.
Mr. Metzler: Still? Two years later?
Mr. Doig: Oh yes absolutely thick with oil. You couldn't touch anything. Pearl Harbor at the time was a real mess. I think they'd cleaned up the majority of the ships on Ford Island, they'd picked all those up and got rid of them but no, there was still one there. In fact, they didn't know what to do with it. They wanted to put one of those wagons in dry dock or wait til they had a new one. I think the Oklahoma ended up being put in dry dock. But our first excursion out, we, I'm trying to think what they loaded us up with. I don't think we had much of anything. We had a bunch of boats we had to service all the merchant ships that had come to this island. We put the steel matting down and we carried the steel matting ashore. They put us ashore, they put us ashore and left us there.
Mr. Metzler: Mr. Doig: Mr. Metzler:
You went ashore on what? Baker Island. What, you just walked ashore?
Mr. Doig: No, we took our boat landed and unloaded.
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with James Doig. Doig joined the Navy in December of 1942. He completed Diesel School, repairing landing craft engines. Beginning August of 1943, Doig served in the fire room aboard USS Ashland (LSD-1). While he was aboard, the Ashland participated in the assaults on Kwajalein and Eniwetok. In the late 1944, Doig was transferred to USS Kenton (APA-122). They transported troops to the Philippines and participated in the Okinawa invasion. Doig was discharged in February of 1946.
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Doig, James.Oral History Interview with James Doig, May 13, 2004,
text,
May 13, 2004;
Fredericksburg, Texas.
(https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1604529/m1/8/:
accessed July 16, 2024),
University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu;
crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.