Today is April 23rd Tuesday. My name is Laura
Vargas and I'm interviewing Clarence Martin
about his experience in World War II and his
interview, his war and military experience
overall. Are you aware that our conversation
will be recorded and that the tape and transcription
will be placed in the Lee College Library? Do I
have your permission to do that? Yes,
you do. I'm just going to give you a rundown of
what happened. I went in service and in
January of 1942 we pulled into Pearl Harbor,
saw all the ships that had been hit by the
Japanese, including the Arizona, which was
still on fire. And we had to remove what's
called corpses from the USS California. And
from there we were on convoy duty from San
Francisco to the South Pacific and did that
until November of 1942 when our ship was
transferred to the Aleutian Islands. I was on a
cruiser to Detroit, in case you want
to know the name of the ship. And we stayed in
the Aleutians for a period of five months.
During the winter of 1942, March of 43 when I
was transferred to the USS Frankfurt. It
was transferred to the Atlantic fleet. We
escorted convoys to England, Ireland, North
Africa, Egypt, Murmansk, Russia. Until 1944 we
were transferred to Portland Harbor in
Great Britain and became the flagship of the
Destroyer squadron 18 and participated in
the invasion of Normandy. We were on line for
40 days. We used every round of ammunition
we had on board ship and had to return to
England for a reload. And after Normandy,
which was about probably two months, we were
transferred to the invasion of southern France,
which was in Toulon. It was T-U-L-O-N I think
it was. We were engaged in several battles
of German gunboats and took a bunch of
prisoners, which I got pictures of in case you
want to
look at them. And then I returned to the Navy
out to the United States. And there I was
transferred to the Ordnance School in Anacosta,
Washington. Well, it's actually Anacosta,
Maryland. It's southern from Washington, D.C.
We stayed there for six months. We got
shipped out and transferred to the U.S.S.
Providence, which was another light cruiser.
The day we entered the east side of the Panama
Canal headed for the Pacific, Japan surrendered.
We returned to Boston where I got this chart.
That's about it. That's a short synopsis
of what happened.
Q. Describe what your daily life was like, like
what you ate, what you slept in.
A. Well, I was a gunner's mate. So I had to go
up and maintain my gun so I didn't
have to go to the station. I was cleaning the
guns, firing them, loading them, keeping
them ready for action at different times. We
were also on a generally an eight-hour
watch at least once a day. We had a watch
station where we had to stand and observe
any action out in the water like periscopes or
other ships, anything that would be hazardous
to our ship. Then we had to clean the gun
station with soap and water and hose it down.
We had to load ammunition from the magazine,
what they call the magazine where they keep
all the ammunition. We drank a lot of coffee.
Q. What time would you go to sleep?
A. Well, depending on what watch. If you're on
the 11th or 7th watch, usually you didn't
have to go to sleep. If you were on the 12th or
13th watch, you didn't have to go to sleep.
If you were on the 12th or 13th watch, you
didn't have to go to sleep.