This is Ed Matchler and today is May the 13th, 2004.
I'm interviewing Mr. Jim Doig here in
Fredericksburg, Texas.
This interview is in support of the Center for
Pacific War Studies Archives
for the National Museum of the Pacific War,
Texas Parks and Wildlife
for the preservation of historical information
related to this site.
Jim, let me start out by thanking you for
spending the time to share your experiences
with us
And let me ask you to start by telling us when and
where you were born, a little bit about your
family, high
school, Et cetera.
BURROWS I was born in Detroit, Michigan.
My parents both came over from Scotland, and I
went to
high school at Redford High School in Detroit.
I didn't finish.
I left high school when I was 17 and went in
the Navy.
What was your birth date?
My birth date was 10-26-25.
What did your father do for a living?
My father was a blacksmith.
A Blacksmith?
Wow, that's an old skill that's still being used.
And brothers and sisters?
I've got one brother, Earl. He was a Navy pilot
in the 1950s.
Okay. And so you didn't finish high school.
Tell us what happened.
Well, I was a very poor student, and my folks,
I think, were real happy to see me want to go
in the Navy.
And they let me go when I wanted to.
I went with a buddy of mine that I was in the
Boy Scouts with,
and I didn't see him again for three years.
I went to be in the Navy with him,
and that's the way it happens when you're in
the Navy.
I went through boot camp with him, and that was
the last I saw of him.
Why the Navy?
Well, I just thought you had a clean bed every night,
and I didn't want to be living in a foxhole.
It just appealed to me better.
No particular reason.
So, where did you actually then enlist?
In Detroit.
In Detroit, and then it was off to boot camp,
is that right?
January, or excuse me, December the 24th, 1942.
We went to Great Lakes.
Day before Christmas.
So you obviously must remember when Pearl
Harbor was attacked.
That's an odd thing.
I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was or what it really
meant when it happened.
I didn't, it didn't really register with me how
significant that was at the time.
But I don't think I was too much different than
a lot of
people didn't realize what was going on at the
time, and not paying that much attention.
Right. So, December 1942, you're in boot camp,
and where was that?
Great Lakes, Illinois.
Great Lakes. So, what was boot camp like?
It was a little tough. I was fortunate that I
was right out of high school, and I didn't
have any problem studying. A lot of the guys
had been out of school for a while and they
couldn't sit down and really concentrate. I was
fortunate in that manner, and I was
in pretty good shape. They wound up doing some
seven-mile marches in the dead of winter
there, and I remember the chief wound up with a
frozen ear. He was an All-American tackle
from Ohio State. All the chiefs at Great Lakes
were all football players at that time.
So a little frostbite, Huh?
It was tough. You're running for seven miles
when it's freezing outside, and you don't
mind keeping running because you're anything to
keep warm. But it was a very big change.
I realized they put me on watch one night, and
I was standing on the watch, and I hear
some guy say, stop or I'll shoot, and he shot.
And I don't know whether it was somebody going
over the fence or what it was, but at that
time they said the Marines were all patrolling
the place, and they gave them a carton of
cigarettes and a transfer if they shot somebody. Really?
They were out of there.
So it was out of there good or bad?
it was good for them because they didn't want
to get tied up with having to shoot somebody,
but it happened.
And it was a, that brought everything real down
close when you heard something like that happen.
Right, right.
So you just did extended marches and physical
fitness stuff. Right.
You trained to shoot a firearm or any of that? that?
Oh, well, at Great Lakes, yeah, we did fire a
rifle at
Great Lakes, but they didn't really trust the
sailors too
much with firearms.
So how long did boot camp last?
Three months.
Twelve weeks.
And I went home on leave, came back, and I was
assigned to Navy Pier in Chicago, going to
diesel school there. And I spent three months
in diesel school at Navy Pier.
So diesel school means learning how to repair
diesel engines.
Right. How they run right from the ground up on
a diesel. And I just took an aptitude
test and I wound up in that class. And that-the
whole Navy Pier at that time, I don't know
I don't know if you're familiar with Navy Pier,
but it was a big, long pier that stuck out in
Lake Michigan.
They had all kinds of different schools there
at the time.
They had aircraft gunnery schools and aircraft
mechanics schools.
They had chef's schools.
They were teaching guys how to be chefs in the Navy.
all sorts of varied occupations in the Navy at
the time.
So it was a big training facility.
Very big.
And I remember that one of the heroes of the
time was Joe Foss,
who was a pilot at Guadalcanal and later became
governor of Utah, I think.
Anyway, he came and gave us a speech
about how the guys were repairing his planes
after they came in with them all shot up
down Guadalcanal.
And these are the guys that he was speaking to,
you know, mainly.
How important a mechanic is. Right.
You know, and what your job really meant something
when you come in with a riddled up plane
and they put it back together for you
and you can use it.
So where did you,
where were you housed when you were there,
you know, being trained at the pier?
Did they have housing right there on the pier? Yep.
Yeah, it was a great big barracks, and they had
different schools in different areas,
and they had a couple of ships out in the lake
where they were landing airplanes on.
They'd take them off from the land and land
them on the decks of these converted carriers
out there.
And it was a training ground from the word down.
So you say converted carriers.
There were tankers, I think, and they converted
them into carriers.
They put a deck on it and called it a carrier.
That's right.
I heard that they had-well, I know they had at
least two of those ships.
I just read where they're picking up the
remains of a lot of the planes that went off
the things in the bottom of Lake Michigan.
They're still there.
They're still picking them up.
up yeah yeah and that fresh water kept them
pretty good yeah yeah so how did it
go with these old school was that something
that you really seemed I yeah
I enjoyed that I liked mechanics and everybody
that got out of that school
came out a second-class petty officer three
months later you were you're
getting your second-class petty officer which
was you know unheard of and I kind
wondered why they were giving us a rank like
that, and somebody said that, well, if they
give you a rank like that, that if you're a
prisoner, they'll treat you better.
And I thought, geez, well, there's a good idea.
Any help that you can get in prison might be useful.
My goodness.
But I don't know whether that was true or not,
but they made all the guys that went
through that school second-class petty
officers, which was quite unusual at the
time, I think. So you came out a second-class
petty officer? Right. And then what
happened? We got sent down to San Diego, got on
a train in Chicago. Nobody knew
where they were going. They had absolute
restrictions on where we were
supposed to be going and well one guy says well
we're going to New York well
you know we're watching the Sun set down here
though in the direction we're going
we're not going to New York well we wound up
going to San Diego and so this
was a troop train then yep so these were
passenger cars that had been converted
to carry troops or these were old old things
everything that would roll on the
on the railroad, they used at that time. This
had a boiler in the corner, had wicker seats,
pulled down bunks, and you wouldn't dare open
the window because nothing came in but soot,
black soot. And I remember they said, don't
anybody get off the train, we're leaving the
country. They were going into Mexico. Well,
there wasn't a soul on the train. Everybody
jumped off
because he said stay on you know that's all
they needed to hear was don't get
off and they all got off but at some point we
we went down there the track
must have gone into Mexico and then back up
into San Diego I don't know how that
happened. But some people jumped off? Oh but we
got back on again but they just
wanted to say they were in Mexico. Oh I see
they wanted to say I actually stood on the soil
in Mexico. Yeah.
You see. Yeah.
Well, 17-year-old kids do that stuff. Right.
Now, you can say you were in a foreign country,
but we didn't know what was coming. Yeah.
No, we didn't know. No.
No, we sure didn't.
So you made it to San Diego. Yeah.
And we were stationed at the San Diego
destroyer base.
And we were using landing craft.
They were teaching us how to use landing craft.
And we would get Marines and come aboard and we
would take them out of the bay out to the
ocean and land them on the beach on the Pacific
side of the bay that we were at in San Diego.
And we did that for about three months.
So what kind of landing ships were they using?
Well all these landing craft, well they had
LCVPs which were landing craft vehicle and personnel.
You could put a jeep in it, and you could put
men in it.
They almost never put a jeep in it.
It was too small.
It was just all plywood with a steel ramp on it.
This is not what they used to call a Higgins
boat, was it? Yes.
They were all made by a couple of companies.
Higgins was one of them.
And then what our ship was built for were the
LCMs, the larger landing craft.
They were 50-foot long, and they had a big
steel ramp on them, and they would carry a tank.
We carried Sherman tanks in them.
So L-C-M. L-C-M.
Landing craft.
Landing craft mechanical. Mechanical.
And there were a lot of other designations that
came along later that I didn't really
- L-C-T was supposed to be a landing craft
tank, and it was a much larger ship and would
carry a lot of tanks, they'd run up on the
beach and drop the ramp and they'd run off
with them.
Well, that's what we were doing.
We went to fire training school in San Diego,
Camp Pendleton was just up the beach from
us there, and they'd always pick up Marines and
shuttle them down to us and we would train
with them on the beach.
So what was your role then in this?
I mean, you're trained as a diesel mechanic, I assume.
Well, these LCMs had two diesel engines in them
and we watched the operation of the engines
and made sure that they didn't get choked up
with sand when we hit the beach.
They had big filters on them and we had to take
care of that and maintain the engines.
Who manufactured these diesel engines, do you remember?
Gray Marine.
Marine was the manufacturer of most of these diesel
engines that we were using.
And the ship that-well, I won't get in-I'll get
in the head of myself before I get
on the Ashland, but, well, they just-we just
trained there, you know, and the
The first group of ours that-with a gang that
we went into the-we went into the naval
destroyer-the San Diego Navy base there.
A group of them wound up going, and they got
sent to Attu in the Aleutians.
That was the first group that left our place
that we knew that got shipped out.
They went to the Aleutians, and that didn't
last very long.
I think they were back before we knew it.
it was a quick deal, but they, well, we learned
that we were going to wind up getting in harm's
way when we left there.
So you're starting to figure out where you
might be headed.
Yeah, and I asked for a transfer and the guy
said, you're crazy, he said, the only place
you're going to go is west, and so I said, I
don't care, I've been kicked out every bar
in San Diego. I said, I'm ready to get out of
here. I think it was within a day or so
I wound up on the Ashland. It came in and no
one knew what it was and never seen it
before and nobody had ever seen anything like
that before. They were all very curious about
what it was. It had lots of guns hanging off of
it and a big hole in the middle of it and
they couldn't figure out what it was.
So LSD was the-
Landing ship dock.
dock. That's a big ship. It's 450 feet long.
And what it did was it ballast down.
It had tanks all over it, and they would
ballast it down and drop the tailgate in the back
end and the well deck inside. And the well deck
inside, it was the whole width of the
ship 300 feet long, and we had 14 landing craft
inside there with tanks in them.
And we would just, as soon as the water would
come up and we'd float, we'd drive them
up and make a landing.
Okay, so the ship, if you were going to do a
landing, would the ship get in as close
as she could and then-
If you say five miles as close as she could-
Is that right? Yep.
They would go out basically out the back of the
ship and head in to the beach and line
up in whatever unit you were supposed to hit
the beach at.
They had different groups were running in at
different times and we were all supposed
to be on a time schedule.
The only landing I made there was at Tarawa and
the boat I was on got tangled up with
a line, and none of us knew it at the time,
when we left the ship about 3:00
in the morning to make a landing, about 8:00 in
the morning.
Well, let's go from San Diego to Tarawa. You
went directly there?
No, no, no, we did not.
So you were assigned to the Ashland. Yes.
And then what?
We-the Ashland departed San Diego and went
to-went directly from San Diego to Pearl Harbor.
And 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.
Okay, so what roughly was the the date then
when you were in Pearl Harbor?
August, the latter part of August of
43. Okay, so it's been going on two years since
Pearl Harbor was attacked. Yeah, so what
what kind of shape were things in? Oh, Pearl
Harbor was horrible. Pearl Harbor
Pearl Harbor had an inch of oil on top of it,
all the water all over. Still?
Oh, yes.
Two years later?
Oh, yes.
Just 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 over on Ford Island.
They picked all those up and got rid of them,
but there was still one there.
In fact, they didn't know what to do with it.
They didn't know whether to put one of those
wagons in a dry dock and try and rehab it
or wait until they built another one.
They finally wound up putting it in-I think the
Oklahoma wound up being put in a dry dock.
And our first, like I say, the first excursion
out, we-I'm trying to think of what they
loaded us up with.
I don't think we had much of anything.
We just had a bunch of boats, and 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.
Well, they put us ashore and left us there.
You went ashore on what?
On Baker Island.
On what kind? You just walked ashore?
No, we took our boats and we landed and we unloaded.
So these were the LSM's?
Yes, the LCM's.
We took them ashore with all the gear and they
gave us a tent.
And I remember the first night we were there,
somebody sounded an air raid alarm and everybody
started to run.
And I wondered, where the hell are you going to run?
There was no place to run.
So I ducked underneath the floor of this tent
that I was in.
I looked around.
I was the only one in this tent.
Big, huge tent.
I was the only one in it.
Everybody else, well, the guy that I was
supposed to sleep with jumped in a latrine slot.
Mexican kid that had just come up from Mexico
into Texas and joined the Navy.
He couldn't even speak English. And-
I didn't know that they did that. Yep.
They put him in the Navy real quick. Yep.
I guess a Navy person is a Navy person.
That's right.
If you wanted in the Navy, they'd take you.
At that time, they were taking everybody.
But we hauled all this stuff ashore, and the
Army engineers put this airfield down.
So how big was Baker Island?
Big enough for an airfield, I guess.
Well an airfield, if you run it out into the
ocean on both sides, they put P-40s on there.
brought in P-40s from China and the guys that I
they must have put them on
carriers someplace and they took off from the
carriers and they landed on the
island and they see old flying Tigers yep and
they did a loop before they
landed because they couldn't slow it down fast
enough to to land on that
short runway they came in and did that and
landed I couldn't I could I couldn't
believe it when I looked in that one a cockpit
I'd have been crushed in one of
those cockpits, and the guys were coming out.
They were 6'3", 6'4". Their knees must
have been up around their ears, but-
So it was really tight to be able to even land.
Oh, unbelievable. They were-and they were-I
thought were a great plane. They really knew
how to fly them, but I don't know what-how they
got involved after we left the island.
So how long were you there?
Uh, a month.
And so during that month, basically, you built
that landing strip with the steel mats. Yep.
Well, we didn't.
The Army did.
The Army had been brought ashore.
And so what were you doing during that time?
I was shuttling.
I was on the night shift.
I was on from six at night until six in the
morning, unloading merchant ships.
And we'd go out and pull alongside a merchant
ship and beg them for a sandwich and some
coffee because when they-and the Ashland dumped
us off on the island, they gave us nothing.
There was nobody to cook, nothing.
So you were on what, K rations, C rations?
There was a bunch of K rations, and we were
supposed to make do with that.
They gave us a big garbage can and a boat
paddle and said, there, you can put it over
fire and heat your stuff that you open the cans
and throw it in there and that's what
you're eating.
Well, the first time I came back hauling some
Navy or some Army gear, I landed, I was a
sergeant in Army uniform and I got in the Army
chow line.
That's the only way I could eat because we
didn't have anything as far as the Navy was concerned.
They just got rid of us.
So the Navy guy, so the Navy just kind of
dumped you there?
They dumped us on the island.
your rations, and the Army guys got real food.
Well, they'd set up a regular campsite for
themselves, you know, and they had cooks and everything.
And one of the officers, I'm standing in a chow
line with my tray, and he says, where
the hell did you get that?
And I said, oh, I swiped it off one of the
sailors over there.
I had a tray, and they all had mess kits.
The Army had mess kits.
And I'm standing there with a tray, and that
kind of gave me away a little bit, but
he didn't seem to think too much about it.
I had Army fatigues on.
Where did you get the Army fatigues?
On a busted-somebody's gear broke when we were
bringing it ashore, and I just picked
out a few pieces and kept them for myself to
get-to put on and use.
Were any of the other Navy guys able to do the
same, or were you the only one?
I don't recall whether they were, how they were eaten.
I was, everybody was really looking out for themselves.
It turned out to be a real mess there, that
little deal just didn't go
over too well with me, because...
So they really dumped the Navy guys there?
Oh, unbelievable.
So the Ashland just sailed off after you guys...
Well, the Ashland, after we, after the boats
got out of it, they tried to pick up their
stern gate and they broke the cables on it and
they couldn't get the stern gate
up. So they had to go all the way back to
Christmas Island and pull alongside of a
dock and have the gate pulled up for them
before they could come back and
pick us up again. So how far was Christmas
Island in the neighborhood?
Yeah, a couple hundred miles. It was, you know,
it was between Pearl and where we
were and I don't know just exactly how far it
was but I know the ship spent a
whole day out there running as fast as it could
trying to get that gate up so
that they could get it pulled up and they never
did so they just had to leave
the gate down and head for where someplace they
could get taken care of.
And that was how experimental the Ashland was.
It was... Was she the first?
Yep, the first of its kind. So she was LSD one?
One. With with complete British
design. It was all designed in Britain, and I
don't know whether the engines were British
engines or not. They were three-cylinder steam
engines, and very crude, ancient, old engines,
and they were always falling apart.
But you never had to work on those, right?
No, I didn't work on those at that time.
So when she was sailing and you were on her,
what did you do?
Because your ships that, I mean, your landing
craft that
had the diesel engines, they were basically not
being used.
No, they weren't.
And well, we used to have, they would make us
stand watches.
We would stand lookout watches.
And after we had used the ships on a couple landings,
the boats on a couple landings, the guys had to
work on them after that, doing repair work
and different things.
We found out real quick that when you land some
of these landing craft on a coral beach,
the coral just opens those things up like a can opener.
We wound up exchanging all of our boats down
in-I think we exchanged the boats down in
New Caledonia, and they put great big wooden
planks on the bottom to keep the coral from
tearing open the bottoms of them.
So did you experience this after the Baker
Island incident? Yes.
So you were at Baker Island for a couple of
months and then the Ashland came back.
Well it came back right away.
It came back as soon as it got its tailgate up,
it came back right away.
But we hung around until, like I say, Ashland
just rode around out there until we were done
with our job, and then they took us, they
didn't take us all back, we left a crew there forever.
I mean, there was a crew there to handle any
ship that came in, they would go out and meet
it and bring in all the gear.
This was a Navy crew?
One of our boat crews.
We left a whole boat crew there.
Still eating K-Rush. Yep.
know how they set, I hope they set them up
better than that, but when we left
that's the way it was. Well in the Navy they
picked up a couple of
policemen from Honolulu that had been on this
island before and they were going
to bomb or blast out all the landing area where
we could come in with the
boats and they had dynamite. Well as soon as,
while these couple of Hawaiian
guys were on board ship, they were eaten with
the officers, they were really being taken
care of.
As soon as they hit the beach, no one knew them anymore.
They just dumped them.
They were through with them, they did what they
wanted, they showed them how to get on
the island, where to land, and they basically
were dumped off.
The Navy just forgot them.
I couldn't believe that they would do that, but
they did.
And they just handled them terribly.
So anyhow, Baker Island is now behind you and
you're on the Ashland and she's headed
back to Pearl?
Back to Pearl.
And then what?
And then from there we went to Noumea, New
Caledonia to pick up the 2nd Marine Division
tank group who had tried to put Sherman tanks
on Guadalcanal and found out that they didn't work.
too thick for a Sherman tank, and so they
brought them all off the island.
And they-
So the LCMs could handle the Shermans, but the
Shermans couldn't handle themselves
once they got into that thick jungle?
No, they couldn't handle a big, thick jungle.
So they-in fact, I think they took some lighter
tanks in there and tried to use them.
I don't know what they would have been at this
time, but I know that the 2nd Marine
Division had been in the Solomons and were
brought out and brought back to Nouméa.
And they were very gung-ho to go when they told
them that we were going to make a landing.
They didn't know where we were going to go, but
they were ready.
They had been sitting there for quite a while,
and they were very eager to go.
And so you picked them up?
Picked them up and headed for Pearl, or headed
for, we didn't know where we were going,
but we headed north and we rendezvoused with
the group that was coming in there and we
sat off of the Gilbert Islands there and landed
at Tarawa.
When did you find out where you were headed?
I mean, how did you find out?
Well, the Marine commander held a meeting on
board ship, and we attended the meeting.
He told us that we were going to make a landing
at Guadalcanal, which had been occupied by
the Japanese for about eight years and was well fortified.
You mentioned Tarawa, now you mention Guadalcanal.
Oh, you should know that Guadalcanal is where
the 2nd Marine Division had originally come
from with their tanks.
We picked them up at Noumea and brought them up
to Tarawa. Gotcha.
And we made the landing on November the 20th, I
think it was, at Tarawa.
Yeah, what was that like?
Oh, that was a real mess.
I think we were supposed to be about the third
wave to hit the beach with our tanks.
I can't recall what time that was, but we left
the ship, like I say, 3:00 in the morning
to get five miles away with the landing craft
and line up and go to the beach.
The boat I was on got a line tangled up in one
of the screws, and we only had one engine.
engine. We couldn't get the engine to go. It
would just lock up. So we were trying to
make the landing with one engine.
How did that work?
Well, that didn't work too good because a
couple of the officers on the boats that were
going ashore saw us lagging behind and they
thought we were trying to goof off and get
out of the landing. And one of the guys, they
told us that one of the officers was going
to take a shot at us with a .45, just to get us
going, didn't know that we only had one screw.
So we were very, very late hitting the beach.
But we put our tank on shore.
So this tank that's on board, is it a Sherman? Yes.
And I guess you had that one engine full
throttle all the way?
All the way.
Just wide open all the way.
They hit some coral and the coxswain stopped
the boat, thinking that we were far enough
ashore, and when the tank took off out of the
boat, it went up and just went straight down.
Well, it tore all the cables off the ramp and
just knocked the ramp straight down.
And I don't know how, but it wound up getting
on the beach, and it disappeared.
It went right underwater.
So the water was so deep that the...
The water had to be eight foot deep.
The tank literally submerged.
It went right down and it just kept...
But it didn't come out.
It'd come up on the beach.
That's amazing.
Oh, it was.
And there was no protection for the engines.
Later on, later landings, right away, they put
snorkels on them, back them, so that they
could get air and get exhaust out of them.
But they didn't have any of that with these tanks.
They just didn't realize.
So they were learning on the job training?
Oh, it was all on the job from the word go.
And I remember sitting there a couple of days later.
We had enough boats tied up.
We must have looked like another island.
We had a big, huge pile of landing craft that
we were all tied up sitting there.
We were all done making our landings, and we
were doing whatever we were supposed to do.
I'm just why it looked like a Path A news
newsreel with these planes coming in and
bombing the thing, you know, and it was just
unbelievably bombed the living daylights out of
that place and
Didn't seem to hurt anybody No
I guess when you're dug in no matter how many
bombs you hit with it
it didn't make a bit of difference and you would
sit up watch a
Wagon of sitting over there lobbing in 15-inch
shells and they were just bouncing off these
this great big bunkhouse they had, they had a
big huge bunker, a bunker, well it
was a, it was a, I understand it was supposed
to have been a like an
ammunition depot for them, but also a command
post, but it was all made out of
logs and coral. Those big shells didn't even
penetrate them, would get
stuck in it, a 15-inch shell just gets stuck in
it, coral. And... So you were
observing this when you were on shore then? No,
we were on the boats. We never did get ashore.
Okay, so you didn't get ashore, but the tank
did. Oh yeah. Now what happened to the LCM?
Well, we backed it up. Now we only got one
screw and we can't get the ramp up. So we can't go
forward because we'd be taken on water. Right.
So we backed up all the way to the ship five
miles away with one screw.
I can't remember what time it was when we got back.
It had to be much later in the day when we
finally made the landing.
And then it was that much later in the day-it
was that evening by the time we got back to
the ship.
Of course, they brought it on board and took
the line out of the screw and put new cables
on and we were ready to go again.
But very fortunately for our gang, on the
boats, only one guy was killed in that landing.
One of the Coxsons, he got his head blown right
off, and he was the only casualty that
I can remember.
This was on your LCM?
No, it was on another one, one of the ones that
went in before us.
But all the LCMs successfully delivered their tanks?
Well, they all, I don't know if they all, yeah,
they all got on the beach, because they
were all broken down within the next day.
The Japs had magnetic mines that they were
throwing on top of the back of the tanks and
blowing up the engines on them.
And all the tanks were knocked out within the
first day.
So they, I remember talking to a couple of guys
on the tank after the invasion and saying
that he woke up, he couldn't stay in the tank,
and he woke up in a foxhole or a bombed
out bomb crater. He woke up and he was sleeping
next to a Japanese guy and didn't even realize
it. And he woke up and he shot him. Luckily, he
woke up before the other guy did.
So they were sharing a-
They were sharing some place to sleep. They
hadn't slept in, you know, probably 36 hours. And-
Isn't that amazing?
four days to secure that island and the Marines
lost a thousand men and they
lost four thousand men and for such a little
piece of land it was ridiculous.
So did you have any interactions or any chance
to talk to the tank crew on the
tank on board your LCM? Just a very little bit
after after the they got they
We brought them back on board the Ashland and
we went back to Pearl Harbor.
So after they had lost their tank?
Well, I think they left all the tanks on the island.
They didn't even bring them back.
So the tank crews-
The tank crews just came back on board the ship.
Did you talk to them before you landed? I mean,
was there any-
No, not very much.
There wasn't too much communication with the
tank crews.
How big a crew on the LCM?
Four guys.
Okay, so there's you a coxswain coxswain and
two deckhands. Mm-hmm and There
There was no place to go
the coxswain had a little turret that he was
sitting in and everybody was also standing on
the deck and
No, I'm a woman. No
No, and they would no one had a rifle. No one
had a pistol
They wouldn't, like I say, they didn't trust
sailors with guns.
And I realized why later because one of the
guys that they did give a gun to shot himself
with it.
He was horsing around and the gun went off.
It was an accident.
Yeah, it was an accident.
It hit a set of bits and it come back and hit
him in the leg.
So they said, well, there's why we don't give
sailors guns.
Okay, so you're back on board after Tarawa, and
what next?
Well, one of the kids, one of the other kids on
the boat crew was told that he was going to be
sent down to the fire room.
He was transferred off the boats into the fire room.
Fire room on the Ashland.
On the Ashland. And he didn't want that.
He wanted to go back on board the boats.
So I told him, fine, I'll trade with you.
So I went down to the fire room.
I never went back on the boats again.
And I stayed in the fire room until I got off.
And we had made another landing at Inuitok and
Kwajalein after that before I left the ship.
So what did you do in the fire room then?
I had a regular shift tending the boilers.
So these are oil-fired boilers?
Yes, oil-fired.
Bunker fuel type?
Well, they've got big long injectors in them.
and you hook up a fuel line to them, and you
open it up and get the fuel flowing.
The fuel is heated, preheated, because it's
like tar.
If you don't preheat it, it just won't flow at all.
They put little injectors on it and get the
spray out, and it'll ignite.
It was a learning experience for me.
I'd never seen a boiler in my life before, and
it was something new to me.
You were trained on dieseling.
Yeah, I kind of enjoyed it when it started out.
I'd get a sunburn and I'd go down below
and I'd spend four hours below and I'd come back.
I didn't have any sunburn anymore.
It would just sweat right off.
It was 120 degrees down there all the time.
Must be hot down there.
Oh, it was just terrible.
And it was a, it didn't have like the newer boilers
had covers on around the boiler
and all the air was pushed in around this jacket
around the boiler.
didn't have that none this this was just an
open room and all the air pressure
from the blowers were just coming right down on
top of us that's what was
keeping the fire in the in the fire pot in the
chamber and you were just it was
just like a sauna from the minute you got down
there so you needed plenty of
water no yeah yeah we drank a lot of coffee
yeah and so what
you have 12 hours on, 12 hours off? No, four
on, eight off. Okay. Four on, eight off.
So you had two four-hour shifts a day? Yes.
Okay. So that was after those two
landings or before those two landings after
Tarawa that you that you were in
in the fire room? Yeah.
It was after a trial I went down into the fire
room and when we went up to the Marshall
Islands they landed at Inuitok and Kwajalein
and I was in the engine room at the time,
in the fire room.
So you didn't really get to see what was going
on there.
No, and that didn't bother me a bit.
Yeah, I bet.
And I'd seen enough of that that when I found
out what landing a tank was all about
But I'd had enough of it when I'd seen it.
So after that, then what happened?
Where did the Ashland go?
Well we, I'm trying to think.
We went back into Pearl again.
I know-
Now did she sail alone or was she part of a
fleet or-
Well, when we went down to Noumea, we sailed
with one destroyer with us.
And I remember sitting in the galley and Tokyo
Rose telling us how all you brave boys on
the Ashland will wish that you hadn't joined
the Navy because we're going to sink you.
So she knew the ship by name.
How do you think that could possibly be?
Harbor had to have been so loaded with spies.
There were so many spies before December the
7th, and I'm sure they were there long after that.
They just knew everything that was going on.
That's amazing.
So how did everybody feel when they heard Tokyo Rose?
We kind of laughed it off, but we kind of
wondered how she knew, too, who we were.
But like I say, they sent us down there with
one destroyer.
I remember a couple of occasions where they
said they spotted a submarine and the destroyer
was going nuts chasing around trying to figure
out where it was.
We couldn't make any speed, nineteen knots is
the best we could get out of this thing
we were on.
When I first got on the Ashland, I found out
that the majority of the guys that had been
assigned to that were all survivors off of
different ships. Oklahoma, the West
Virginia, and Chicago, whatever was sunk, they
wound up on that thing.
Yeah, how interesting.
And they just took guys from everywhere and put
them on there.
So this is when she first came into the Pacific?
Well, when she went from, she was put in, she
was in Alameda, she was built in
Alameda up in Frisco and she came down to San
Diego and when I met these guys
and found out that the majority of them were
were all they're all older guys in
the Navy and I think average age of us guys on
the boats was probably 20 and
these guys were all like almost 30 which is old
you know to us and but they were
were all survivors and there was a couple of
guys, a couple of Boson's mates that
ran the starboard crane on the Ashland, these
big huge cranes they had.
They would swing fifty tons on one of these cranes.
They could pick up a tank and they were really
fun to watch.
They used a Boson's whistle.
Never talked to one another.
was with a bosun whistle, and they knew how to
run this crane.
It was beautiful to watch.
You must have heard some real stories from all
of these survivors. No.
No, I didn't.
Funny, they just didn't talk about it.
I don't know why, but never got much out of
them, and nobody ever seemed to pump them
out about it.
Go ahead.
And they didn't, like I said, didn't really do
too much talking about it, but this one
Sully, this one bosun mate, he told the yeoman,
he says, I want you to put in for a transfer
for me every day that I'm on this thing.
He says, I got to get off of this thing.
He says, I came off of the USS Oklahoma.
I was in the Navy, and he says, I wound up in
this bucket, and he says, I don't even
what the hell it is and I got to get off of
this thing.
So he didn't like being on it?
Oh, he hated being on that thing.
Why would you guess that is?
Well, he thought he wasn't in the Navy anymore.
He was on a man-of-war and he winds up in this thing
and he didn't even know what to call it, you know.
And I think he was right in a sense that it
seemed like
they had abandoned him and just shoved him off
on this thing.
It didn't feel like you guys were exactly in
the mainstream.
Well, we were Navy, you know, we were we were a
bunch of guys that just joined and
he'd been in the Navy for 10 or 11 years and
He knew what he was doing. He was a great bosun
mate, but I
mean they had that feeling about they were just
kind of
They'd been lost, you know, and here I am
On a battle wagon and I wind up in this thing.
How could that happen? You know, they had that feeling
And there were guys in all areas of the ship
that were, like I say, there were survivors off
of everything.
And I didn't realize that until I'd been on the
ship for a little while and got talking to people.
So did they all want off?
No, no, no, no.
Just some of them?
Some of them. The majority of them, I think,
were just happy to be there.
But he was very indignant about it.
I met him a while back, a while later,
and I met him in Long Beach.
And I asked him, I said, hey, Sully, how'd you
make out?
And he says, oh, God, that was a mistake.
He says, I wound up on the Pennsylvania.
And he said, they were all loony.
The Pennsylvania hadn't been ashore in two years.
And he says, when I got on there, they were all
running around
shooting each other with wooden guns. He says
they were
just as loony as a bunch of bats. He says they
were just
crazy. And he says, I'd been better off if I
stayed on
the Ashland. He says at least the guys there were
sane. But like I say, that ship hadn't been
ashore in
two years, and they were a little stir-crazy.
So you stayed on the Ashland.
Some of those guys went elsewhere. Yeah.
Well, I got transferred off the Ashland rather quickly.
They took eight of us, and were going to send
us to a big diesel engine school in Cleveland,
Ohio, GM school.
Roughly what time was this now?
What was the date roughly?
That had to have been like January or February,
about March of 44, when I left.
And eight of us got transferred off.
And what really made me mad was they sent us off
and we got on a merchant ship to go to the States,
to go to Frisco.
And the next day, the Ashland was in the States.
So why they sent us off, but that's the way the
Navy was working it.
They didn't know what was going on from one day
to the next.
But we had a terrible time on that.
And they had like about 14,000 guys on this
troop transport.
It wasn't even a troop transport.
It was just a merchant ship.
The Liberty ship? No.
Hell, it was older.
The Liberty ship was new.
This thing was an old bucket, and it was a mess.
So, what was big diesel engine school like?
You can't ask me that.
I never got there.
Tell me what happened.
Well, when we got to San Francisco, everybody
got to a place where they called Treasure
Island right in the bay.
He was interviewed individually, and you just
told him what you were doing and your experiences.
I don't know what I said to this guy, but he
got the impression that I could-I think
because I was down in the engine room, in the
fire room, that he got the impression
that I could do other things other than diesel.
He transferred me to Terminal Island in Long
Beach, San Pedro to pick up a new, have a
new ship and troop transport.
So I got transferred.
Everybody else went to Cleveland, the seven
guys went to Cleveland and I went to Long Beach.
To a troop transport? Yep.
What ship was that?
That was the USS Kenton.
How do you spell that?
T.O.N. Okay. So what were your duties on the
USS Kenton? I was an auxiliary
maintenance man, more or less. I was supposed
to handle where they had a
couple of diesel engines, diesel pumps for
water pumps, and I was maintaining
them and I was looking after the steering
motors and they wanted me to look into the
refrigeration units and just whatever would
come up and I was supposed to maintain the
gear in the galley, take care of any problems
that they had in the galley.
They used diesel oil to cook with, and I had to
make sure that I would keep all the lines
full and keep everything running.
But I didn't have any-all the time I was on
there, I never had any watches to stand.
I was on my own all the time.
Well, that must have been nice.
Oh, it was beautiful.
After it gets a little monotonous after a
while, when you don't have any specific
things to do.
But I remember one time up in the Aleutians on
that ship, we spotted a mine floating,
a mine was floating around up there, and they
asked me to come up on deck.
And I had just gotten all cleaned up and out of
the shower and standing in a chow line
and I had to go up on deck and they said, the
fog horn won't work.
We've got to get the fog horn to work.
So I climbed up on the mast and sat on the fog
horn and tried to figure out what was
the matter with it.
It ran on steam and somebody drained the line
down below and they finally got the thing
going and here I am straddling this thing.
And man, when that steam came through that fog
horn, it about burnt me in half.
But that's the kinds of things that they had me doing.
I didn't have any specific thing to do while I
was on board.
When we made a landing in Okinawa-well, no,
that was after.
I was bringing troops back from Japan to Okinawa.
And we pulled into Okinawa, Buckner Bay there,
and the ship wouldn't steer, it would only
go in one direction.
So here we are going around in circles, and
they called me up and, hey, what's the matter
with our steering?
I said, what are you talking about?
He said, I never even saw the steering.
I said, how do I know what's wrong with it?
So it was a guessing game from there on, and we
found out within about half an hour what
it was and fixed that.
Well, you must have been a pretty good problem
solver on a lot of different things then.
Well, it got to be that point, yeah.
So this troop ship went up to the Aleutians, is
that right? Yeah.
Well, we were carrying troops from Seattle
to-well, that was on a routine, that was
after the war.
Ah, you were up there after the war. Yeah.
So you're on the troop ship here, and it's 44. Yeah.
And so complete the story on where you went
with the old U.S.S. Kenton.
Well, the Kenton was being built.
When I got down there, there was one guy in
charge of the U.S.S.
He happened to be a kid from, he was from Down
River in Detroit, and he and I kind of
clicked it off a little bit.
I had just gotten back from 30 days leave, and
he said to me, hey, do you want some leave?
He says, I'll give you another 30 days.
I says, I can't.
He says, I'm broke.
I says, I couldn't even go on leave if I wanted to.
I like the idea, but I can't go.
I was assigned to a barracks, and people would
keep coming in there.
They were being assigned to the ship as it was
being built.
I don't know how long I was there.
I was probably there three or four months.
Anyway, they asked me to go to work in the Navy
Yard, in the shipyard.
They were looking for people.
The government wanted more people working in
the Navy Yard, or the shipyard.
So they hired-
But not as a civilian. No.
Still in the Navy.
Still in the Navy, but working as a civilian in
the Navy Yard, in the shipyard.
And I went in there.
That didn't last very long.
All I can remember is Hollywood people coming
in and making speeches to the workers at lunch
hour and amazed at the number of women that
were working in the shipyard, welders, really
good welders too.
The Rosie the Riveter's, right? Yes.
You never knew who they were, because they were
all dressed up in all this leather gear,
and they'd throw the mask up, and, oh my God,
it's a woman, and here you are talking
about something that you shouldn't have been in
front of her.
But it was amazing that they built ships,
unbelievable that they built ships.
the different things that people would come in.
They'd come in drunk, and they'd drink all day,
and I don't know how they did their job.
While they were building the ships.
While they were building the ships,
and pipe fitters, and just absolute ridiculous stuff
that went on, and they still got ships built.
I am not saying everybody was that way,
but there were enough of them around
to really screw things up,
and why things didn't get screwed up more than
they did,
I'll never know.
That was a real eye-opener to get thrown into
that and see how people were working during the war.
So you were actually working on the Kenton
then, is that right?
No, whatever ships that were being built.
Okay, but the Kenton was under construction still.
Yes, it was under construction.
So when she was launched, you were on her.
I was. I went aboard when she was.
You were on her first crew. Yes.
So who was your commanding officer?
You know, I can't think of his name.
Let me ask you a more general question.
What was your general opinion of the officers
and the leaders that basically, you know, you
guys worked for?
Well, I thought that the captain of the Ashland
was very outstanding.
I thought he was really a good man.
I didn't think too very much of the executive
officer, who later became the skipper of that ship.
In fact, I was just talking to a guy today that
was on it when the executive officer
became the skipper, and I heard some really bad
stories about different things that happened
when he became captain.
But I remember, I don't know what time that we
were in Pearl, but one of the times we
came back to Pearl Harbor, like I say, I can't
recall after what incident it was, but Nimitz
came on board, and he naturally had never seen
anything like that before, and our captain
was kind of showing him around.
This was on the Ashland?
On the Ashland.
So did you see him?
Yes, I did. I saw Nimitz. I didn't get very
close to him.
He was speaking with a captain.
Right after that, we wound up with what they
call a splinter deck.
It was a mezzanine deck that they had built
over the top of our well deck.
I think Nimitz must have had something to do
with that,
recommending that they put a deck over it would
give them more area to store things
and utilize areas that weren't being taken.
So you think somebody mentioned that to Nimitz?
Or he mentioned it to us. I don't know which
way it went.
But shortly after that we wound up with a
splinter deck.
And this guy was telling me today that shortly
after that it came off.
It didn't work out. They tore it out.
But I mean it was things that were that the
Ashland was used for so many different things
well, they were they were they were bringing
larger ships on board to repair them and
With a splinter deck on the way in there. It
was just getting in the way and so they just
ripped it out
But they did so many different things. They
brought PT boats on board and tried to fix them.
They brought
Could they fix the PT boats?
Well, they were working on them. They'd bring
them in and work on them.
In fact, they had a big typhoon during the
Okinawa fiasco,
and they had three PT boats down in the well
deck then during that typhoon,
and they were just matchsticks after that typhoon.
They would just beat all to pieces.
They were all plywood, and there was nothing
left but a bunch of sticks.
And some engines.
And engines, yeah.
And the tires. Right.
Tell me about that typhoon.
What was that like?
I rode that typhoon out on the Kenton, and I
don't think we hit the main part of it,
but we did a 45-degree list on that thing, and
there were tin cans that rolled right
over and sank.
That's how bad it was.
But the Ashland, at one point, they were
bringing PBYs on board trying to fix them.
They've got photographs of bringing the PBYs
into the well deck.
So they could get something with wings like
that in them?
Well, yeah, if you had that water inside the
well deck high enough,
you could bring them in and they would go right
over the deck.
They tried everything on that ship.
They really give it a good wringing out, you know.
You know, they built 52 of those things. 52?
52 was the last one they built.
So what's your opinion, then, of the success of
that design?
Do you think that was...
I think it was fantastic.
It was very unique.
And they finally learned how to utilize it.
And I think they did a good job with it.
They had many, many more landings after we left.
We were in Guam one time on the Kenton, and we
could not get the anchor up.
We had loaded up with troops to go to-I think
we were going to either go to Iwo Jima
or Saipan with these troops, and they could not
get the anchor up.
They worked half a day trying to get that
sucker up, and they just finally had to cut
it off.
And I understand that that is a real big no-no
in the Navy when you lose your anchor of your ship.
So that was the kind of a skipper we had on
that ship.
He was bad.
Oh, he was bad.
He had served on a tanker someplace, two years
in a tanker.
It never got underway.
He was just servicing ships that came in to the
harbor, and he would fuel them.
Never got the ship underway.
So he didn't know it.
He absolutely didn't know what he was doing
with a ship.
And he had been sent back once before the war.
They brought him back in, and he had already
lost-he had gone, I think, from a commander
or down to a lieutenant commander previous to
the war.
So there was some good ones and there was some
bad ones.
There was some bad ones, yep.
Were there any 90-day wonder type commanders,
or I mean officers?
Oh, there were officers, yeah.
A lot of 90-day wonders,
but they didn't have any huge positions.
How did they do?
Did they do well?
Well, if the smart ones,
they pretty well kept their mouth shut
and they just followed what was going on and
they got along great.
But if they tried to muscle it a little bit,
then they'd get in trouble.
Because they just didn't have the experience.
They just didn't know what was going on.
So where were you then when the war ended?
Well, we were off of Okinawa someplace when
they dropped the bomb, and I can't recall
just exactly where we were.
But you were in the Okinawa area?
Yeah, we made the landing.
So were you involved in Iwo and Okinawa as far
as being there on the troop ship?
Well, we didn't hit Iwo.
We went to, on the Kenton, we went to Leyte and
Cebu and Samar.
We made three different landings in the general
Philippines area, in that area, the landing.
So when the troop ship would go there, they would
just launch the, bring boats up alongside the troop
ship and transfer them.
And load them up and go on to the beach. And there
was no fire coming at us off the beaches. No.
Ever run into kamikaze problems?
Oh, at Okinawa, yeah. We had, there was quite
a few ships that were hit with kamikazes, and we
were bringing, I remember bringing a couple of
guys on board that their ship
had been hit by a kamikaze and they were just
black like a cinder they just got
burnt terrible and they were unfortunately
still breathing and but
they just they couldn't do anything for him
they just tried. So they had been in the water
then after their ship had been sunk? No, I
think what happened they were
down in the engine room and the plane went down
through the engine room
and the bomb exploded in the engine room and
these guys were caught down there and they just.. .
So this was on a destroyer?
No, I think it was a troop transport.
Oh, okay.
But, I mean, there's like 4,000 ships out here
in this bay
and the first thing they said was,
don't anybody fly out over the area where those
ships are.
Well, we pulled one of the Navy pilots out of
the water and said,
who the hell shot me down? What are you doing
flying out over here?" He was chasing a
Jap. He just got excited, and we shot him down,
and the Jap got away. And that's what
would happen. And he just got excited and lost
the sense of where they were going. But
the Kamikazes were really raising hell. They
did a job on a lot of different ships.
So, the war is over now, and what happened with
you then?
Well, we-I started hauling troops from Frisco
and Seattle to Japan,
and we'd make-and we'd haul guys back that had been-
We'd go down to Okinawa and pick up guys and
bring them back to the States.
They were getting mustered out.
And we were just making a regular round robin.
It would take us 14 days to get from Seattle to Tokyo,
and then back again and back again.
And we did that for about six months after the war.
I got out in...
So this is late 45, then?
Yeah, I got out in February of 40, out of Great
Lakes, I got out in February of 46.
So if you, as you look back on that whole
experience, what do you think was the most
humorous incident that you had happen to you,
if any, something that kind of sticks in your mind?
I can't really recall something like that offhand.
Didn't seem to be a whole lot of laughing going on.
No, well, one of the ridiculous things I recall
was down in the destroyer base in San Diego,
we used to, when we took the troops out and
made landings with them out on the beach,
They'd bring us lunch out there, and it was ham
sandwiches and coffee.
Well, one day, I don't know why, but I decided
that I wasn't going to go out there that day.
I was just going to goof off, and I went to
sick bay.
Well, 500 guys got tomaine poisoning that day
out of these ham sandwiches.
And they came back, and they were in such a mess.
God, they didn't know which way it was going
first, and they were just running all over
the place, and they were really, unbelievably sick.
And some of them didn't get sick until they got ashore.
They were on leave, and they were running
around San Diego, and they were getting sick
and throwing up all over the place, and we were
hauling guys all over.
And later on, I laughed about it because it got
so ridiculous that you didn't know which
way to go if people were just getting sick all
around you. So they ever find
out what the source was? Yeah those ham
sandwiches and and luckily I goofed off
that day and I didn't get caught in it or I'd
have been one of them. It was the
only time I ever really remember saying I'm not
going out there today I'm gonna
go to Sick Bay. Well your timing was good. It
was just perfect. And then as you think back
what what do you feel like is the most
distressing or disturbing incident or
period during that whole experience well the
landing at did Toronto just it
changed me completely I think it finally I grew
up a little bit on the way up to
At Tarawa, we crossed the international date
line and we missed a day, and it happened
to be my 18th birthday.
I was 18 on October the 26th.
We made the landing on November the 20th, and I
grew up in a hurry right there.
You wake up in the morning on the boat and hear
a thump alongside the boat and look over
and it's a guy floating in the water and just
bodies laying all over the place.
There was nothing you could do.
It was something that you didn't really want to
be involved in again.
So how did it change you then?
Oh, I think it just made me a little more serious.
At the age of 18?
Yeah. Maybe it was about time. I don't know.
Well, no, it just seems awfully young to me,
but that's the way it was. Yeah.
So, when you were over there, how useful or how
was your communication back stateside?
I guess you got mail, you sent letters, how did
that work?
Well, yeah, I did get letters, and I was very
poor about writing letters.
I think my mother had every letter that I
wrote, and there must have been half a dozen
of them, and I was really very poor at that.
In fact, I ran across a couple of those airmails.
I used to draw pictures on them and just try to
make things kind of lighthearted, but I
could see after I got home that they had to be
wondering what the hell I was going, what
was happening to me, you know, because they
didn't hear it from me for such long periods
of time.
And, well, I was afraid that, for one thing,
that they were censoring.
We couldn't tell them where we were.
They just, hey, if you were telling them where
we were, they were going to tear it right
out of the, just a razor blade and get it all
out of your letter.
They must have had a lot of people cutting up
letters somewhere.
Oh, they had to be.
And, well, and the funny, one of the funny
things when we were in boot camp, half of
guys there's a there's an area in Detroit
called Hamtramck and they're all
Polish and we had a lot of guys on in the
company that were Polish and they
spoke Polish and they wrote Polish so they're
writing home to their
grandmother in Polish and the company commander
says what the hell is this he
says I can't censor this I don't even know what
it is
he says I'm I'm not I'm not even sending the
letter period I don't know what it
is. We need a Polish censor. Yeah and the only
guy that was the guy that could
really read and write Polish good was a guy
named Riley of all things and he was
from Hamtramck. Must have been Polish on his
mother's side. Oh he had to have some Polish in him.
Oh he was alright but they were they were
trying to get him to help censor
the mail and I don't know how that worked out
because I know the company
commander was really upset trying to read these
letters but. Well did you have
any buddies that you were particularly close to
during the period or did you
move around enough? You know one of the guys
that I'm with here right now Dana
Andrews he was. Was he the one that we met at
your table? Yeah right yeah he was on the
boats with me. He was a motor machinist mate
and on the boats and we got
transferred off the ship together and he went
to school in Cleveland and I didn't.
Oh, he was one of the seven that made it to
Cleveland. Yes, and we've been friends well
ever since I
got hooked up with the reunion group here and
the Ashland group. The first I
heard of it was in 96. I don't know what took
so long for me to get to hear about
it but that's what happened and so I bumped
into him then and we've been
seeing each other well we haven't seen one
another now for four years but I'm
trying to think where I think it was a Kentucky
was the last one he was at and
he he doesn't like to make all these East Coast
things we have a lot of
reunions on the East Coast and that's a long
way from him from Chico California
But he's already been on the road a month now
to come here.
He hauls a travel trailer and he's got it over
here in that RV park.
And that's the way he travels.
They go all over the country every summer.
He puts on 6,000 miles this summer just
waltzing around.
But we've been buddies over the years.
So, when you mustered out then, briefly, what
was the rest of your life then?
You went back to Detroit? Yeah.
I went back to Detroit and finished high school
and got my diploma.
I went to a veterans school and within, I don't
know, a few months I had got my diploma
And then a friend of mine, unfortunately, got
me a job.
And he got me a job at Kelvinator Refrigerator Company.
And I went to work there, because jobs
were really scarce in 1946.
My father was working at General Motors,
and they'd been on strike for six months.
When I got mustered out, I think I got $300.
and I had to give it to him right away because
he was broke and things were quite tough at
that time and I don't know, unfortunately I
didn't get settled down right away and
When I got out, I was twenty years old.
I just kind of horsed around.
I spent four years working at Kelvinators, and
we made all the refrigerators that everybody
needed in four years.
They filled the line, and so they just cut back
on refrigerators, and I wound up without
a job.
They almost closed the whole plant down.
If you didn't have 20-year service, you
couldn't work there.
So I got a job, I was out of work for getting
unemployment for a while, and I kept telling
them at the unemployment office that I wanted
to be a draftsman.
And they said, well, you know, how can you be a draftsman?
I said, well, I did some drafting in high
school and I enjoyed it.
And they said, well, we don't have any
openings, you know, and they kept telling me that.
This woman evidently heard me complaining about
that and she says I've got a nephew that's a draftsman
and he's maybe that he could help you and well,
she gave me the number and I went over and they
hired me and
I've been getting a couple of dollars an hour
Well, I think I get $2.5 an hour at the time.
Well, he cut me down to a dollar an hour and
I said I don't know if I can work for a dollar
an hour. He said I'll tell you what he says
If you do, all right, he says I'll give you a raise
I'll give you a dime a week until we get you up
where you belong."
So it worked.
I was on the board designing work for ten years
after that.
And I wound up in a welding company and went to
work with a friend of mine.
And I worked for him for thirty-nine years.
And he finally threw me out when I was seventy-four.
and the rest is history as they say. Yes. Okay,
well is there anything else you'd
like to take the opportunity to add to this
discussion? I don't think so, I
think that pretty well covers it, unless you
can think of anything. To me I
think that we pretty well rounded it out. Okay,
well I appreciate your taking the
time to share your experiences. You certainly
saw a lot of the Pacific from
a lot of different viewpoints over that period,
and I appreciate your
taking the time to share it with us. Well,
thank you very much. Okay, well thank you.