The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
Mr. Zambrano: Mr. Nemec: Mr. Zambrano: Mr. Nemec: Mr. Zambrano: Mr. Nemec:
No. Okay. Little Joe is, in case everything falls, your gas tank is getting shot up and gas ran out and all that, you turn the Little Joe on enough to get out of there. It's a Little Joe to start the motor if the gas tank has been punctured or something happened to it; you could depend on Little Joe to get you out of there. And then there was the black box; we had a black box. On Okinawa we started a black box. You know what a black box is on airplanes and all that; it tells you what's happening? Yes. Well, they invented a gyro stabilizer. You know what that is? Yes. All right. Gyro stabilizer is a box about that big. We had a guy named Girouks. He was four years older than I was, and I was, on Okinawa I was already well past 30. They made me and him, gave us a little training, the only ones to break the seal on the black box. We can break it and see what--and fix it. We had a little training on it, not much but a little is better than nothing. You could take it out of there, take it with you, and crawl out of there and leave the tank behind. You could crawl out of there from the bottom there and get to a safer (unclear). The tanks had a communication there, a telephone right there in the back. You could communicate with somebody laying on the ground. Then they had an opening in the middle down there; you could drive over a dead Jap or a hurt Jap
and open the tank and pull him in without bringing him in through the top. Down on Okinawa, you had a long trail down there to get over the hill and there were so many booby traps. The tanks had to travel the same place. I don't know whether they planted the traps there that night. One morning the tanks, they didn't go side-by- side too close on account of bombing. Maybe about 50, maybe 100 feet or so, they traveled in a row to go to the front lines. Hit a
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with Frank J. Nemec. Nemec joined the Marine Corps in early 1942. He received light and medium tanks training, and served with Company B of the 1st Tank Battalion, 1st Marine Division. He participated in the invasions at New Britain, Peleliu, and Okinawa. Frank also served at Guadalcanal, New Guinea, Pavuvu, and the Goodenough Islands. He spent 28 months in the war zone, plus a 3-month occupational duty in China after the war. Nemec’s unit was awarded the Presidential Unit Citation for the Guadalcanal and the Okinawa operations. He was honorably discharged on 3 July 1946.
Tools / Downloads
Get a copy of this page or view the extracted text.