Oral History Interview with Floyd R. Thomas, February 18, 2009 Page: 38
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water." Holy mackerel. I said, "This guy's crazy." So I went out there and got in about ankle
deep, maybe up to my knees and it was like being on fire. I mean, that salt water just burned
like hell on that jungle rot. I mean, it was terrible. Well anyway, it took me about 2 weeks to
get in shoulder, head high. But at the end of about 2 or 3 weeks, boy, I stopped itching and the
scabs came off and there was bare skin under it. So he kept me out there and I got probably to
be the best fisherman that Okinawa had ever seen. But I got me a pair of Japanese wooden
goggles from somebody, Okinawan that is, and put them on. I'd go along...this coral reef was
only about oh 3 foot deep. You could walk it. But everywhere out there, there may be 100
yards out or a few yards to the left or right, there was a big channel started. And it would go
down about 20 or 30 feet and it would kinda wiggle like any out in the water. Well you go along
look into that and you see fish down there, I mean big fish down there. It was channels. I
would drop a grenade. They would get down to the bottom, boom! And I would go over and I
had my barracks bag with me and I'd gather all the fish up. Sometimes I'd get as much as a
whole barracks bag full and I'd come back about noon toward the shore and all of a sudden
instead of one guy being there for lunch, there was 20 of them. They wanted fish! So I'd dump
the fish out on the ground and get my lunch and go back out. And that night I'd come in with
some more fish. Well this went on for about, oh I imagine maybe a month, month and a half, a
long time. I don't remember the extent of time but it was quite a while and Captain Bowers
would come out about once a week and he would take samples of my skin and look and see
and say, "Well you're getting better. You're getting better." And yes, I was. We become very
close friends although one day I thought he was gonna shoot me that day. One day I was out at
the medical camp waiting for him to come out and check me, and I looked down and I saw a38
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Misenhimer, Richard & Thomas, Floyd R. Oral History Interview with Floyd R. Thomas, February 18, 2009, text, February 18, 2009; Fredericksburg, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth193889/m1/38/: accessed April 26, 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.