Billy Fyffe: World War II (Part 1)
Interviewed by Joanne McMillen
Interview date June 2004
Q:
Bill when and where were you born?
A: I
was born on January 22, 1922, at Rush Springs, Oklahoma.
Q: When did you first begin thinking that the United States might get
involved in World War II?
A: Six months before it happened.
Q: Really?
A: Six months before I enlisted.
Q: Oh, six months before you enlisted?
A: Yes.
Q: OK. Did that occur after the attack on Pearl Harbor? Or did you
think that the US involvement in war was inevitable?
A: I thought it was inevitable.
Q: What was your reaction and the reaction of your family and friends
when Pearl Harbor was attacked?
A: I was fighting for my life. I was there when it happened.
Q: OK.
A: And I had no, ah, I had no connection with my family for six months
after it happened. I never heard from anybody.
Q: When you finally had contact with them, what were their comments?
A: They were worried about me.
Q: Sure.
A: And my oldest brother – I mean my brother, Jack, who was lost in
the navy, he was worried so much about it, he went and joined the navy so he
could come in there and be with me.
Q: Ah-huh. How did they finally find out you were alive?
A: About six months after the war broke out they got a letter from me
that I had written about six months before that.
Q: OK. And phone communication? Were you able to do that at all?
A: None. None whatsoever.
Q: How old were you in December 1941?
A: Nineteen years old.
Q: OK. The next question asks – you were already in the military?
A: Yes.
Q: And the following question asks if you were drafted or enlisted?
A: I enlisted.
Q: Were you worried about being drafted? Or did you enlist because you
felt like that was the right thing to do?
A: No, I wasn’t worried about being drafted. I just felt that I should
get in then. And when I got in then, I was in about two years before the war
broke out and I am here today because of that. I had learned enough what to do
and what not to do.
Q: OK. How did the other men in your area feel about serving in the
military? People in your community?
A: Well, I really didn’t know that because I was gone already.
Q: OK. So you were like the first in your class – the first in your
community?
A: Oh, yeah. I was the first in my class to leave. I graduated in May
and left in July.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: So I was the first in my class to go.
Q: Did you have plans for college while you were in high school?
A: No. I was poor as a church mouse. People don’t know what that is
today – they absolutely don’t.
Q: So what were your original thoughts about life after high school?
A: That I would go into military service.
Q: OK, so when you were in high school you were already thinking about
that?
A: Oh, yeah, I was.
Q: OK. How did your family, wife, or girlfriend feel about you going
off to war?
A: Well, the war wasn’t here then, and my mother wasn’t too worried,
and my girlfriend didn’t want me to go, but I told my girlfriend when I left, I
said, “don’t wait for me, I may not be back.”
Q: That’s not the lady that you married is it?
A: No.
Q: OK. What did she say when you told her that?
A: She looked a little dumb-founded.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: But she didn’t question it.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And she didn’t wait.
Q: Did you correspond for a while?
A: For a little while. But it got to where corresponding was one of
those things that might happen and might not happen because I went to sea as
much as six months at a time and never heard any – didn’t receive any mail from
anybody or any place.
Q: Why did you choose the navy over the other branches?
A: I just – somehow or other I just felt that the navy was for me.
Q: Ah-huh. Did you know how to swim before you went in
the navy?
A: Oh yea.
Q: OK. I was surprised to learn that a lot of people did not know how
to swim.
A: Did not know how to swim, but they went through boot camp wherever
it was and they took swimming and if they didn’t pass it they were – they made a
quick exit from the navy.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: You had to swim or you couldn’t stay in the navy.
Q: Right.
A: When I went in the navy, if you had a scar over an inch long, you
couldn’t get in the navy. Now why that was I don’t know.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I had one on the bottom of my foot that I stepped on a piece of
glass when I was running around barefooted and they didn’t see it. But when I
went in the navy there was about 37 of us went in to go in the navy and only two
made it in the navy. All the others were turned down and they went around and
joined the army.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And that took place in Enid – up in Enid, Oklahoma.
Q: Had you been on a large ships or boats of any kind before?
A: No.
Q: That would have been a new experience for you.
A: Oh, yes, very much so.
Q: Where did you have your basic training?
A: San Diego Naval Training Center.
Q: And what was that experience like?
A: (laughs) Different!
Q: Can you tell me a little bit about that?
A: Well, they had rules and you abide by the rules.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And if you didn’t abide by the rules, well, you took the
consequences.
Q: Was it pretty much what you expected it to be?
A: Yes, I think it was. They were very disciplined. As a matter of
fact, that was the most disciplined time that I’ve ever spent in my life, was
when I went through boot camp.
Q: I would imagine it gave you the opportunity to be with people from
different parts of the country you’d not met before.
A: Oh, yeah.
Q: How did that go? What were those experiences like?
A: (laughs) It was different. You’d meet a ‘wop’ from New York and
you’d meet a Cuban from Florida and there were – they were letting the blacks
come in and most of them were either officer’s stewards or officer’s cooks. And
the Filipinos were the same thing – they had a lot of Filipinos in there.
Q: Did people get along?
A: Yes, very much so. Very much so. I mean, that’s one of the “thou
shalt not do” things in the navy is fight in the navy. You get in a fight in the
navy with somebody else you you’re liable to be thrown out of the navy.
Q: Now you were nineteen?
A: I was nineteen.
Q: Were most of the men in basic training as young as you?
A: Most of them were, yes. They had older boys in there, but most of
them were about eighteen or nineteen.
Q: And how long was the training?
A: Uh, I’ve often thought about that. I think it was thirteen weeks.
We had six weeks in the south camp and six weeks – seven weeks in the north
camp. And they had big fences – ten foot fences running around them – you
couldn’t get within ten feet of that fence to talk to anybody on the other side.
When we were first put in there, we went three days in the – in the – in the
bullpen. That was to see if you had any kind of disease or anything.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And if anybody broke out with something in there, well, they were
eliminated, and if you broke out with something and they could treat it, they’d
treat you, but you spent three days in there, and then you went out and joined
the group in the south section.
Q: OK, so the north section was the holding section?
A: No, no. The north section was where you finished your training.
Q: Oh, OK.
A: And then you ended up in a holding section there, and then you’d –
but they didn’t hold long. Just as soon as you finished, they had a ship and you
went to the ship.
Q: So what kind of things did they teach you on the south side that
were different than when you on the north section?
A: Oh – marching!! Marching, marching!! And carrying a gun – carrying
that knapsack, and that stuff is heavy!
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Yes, siree! And then if you did anything wrong, well, they had –
they got you out in the middle of the night running around that track carrying
that big duffle bag.
Q: How much did it weigh?
A: Oh, my! It must have – it must have weighed about sixty-five
pounds.
Q: Gracious!
A: It was pretty heavy.
Q: Was that with your rifle or without?
A: That was without the rifle.
Q: And the rifle was – how heavy was that?
A: I don’t know how – I think it was around three pounds, I believe it
was.
Q: Is that all?
A: Yeah. It was, ah, World War I-type rifle.
Q: I would think that would be heavier, but, ah . . .
A: No, not necessarily. It was a carbine from World War I.
Q: Did you wear helmets when you trained?
A: Absolutely. Absolutely.
Q: Were some of the basic training maneuvers in water?
A: Ah – swimming?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: If you couldn’t swim, you had to learn to swim. If you didn’t learn
to swim, out you went!
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And they – they did semaphores for signalmen.
Q: What’s that?
A: Well, you learn the alphabet by making hand signals.
Q: Oh, OK.
A: And then, ah, well, you had to learn that. I’m going to miss some
of these things that we went through because I don’t remember exactly all of
them.
Q: That’s fine. That’s an important part of trying to get the stories
because it’s easy to forget some of these things.
A: But it was, ah, it was pretty rough, that basic training. They
didn’t want to make it anything less.
Q: Right.
A: That way they weeded out a lot of people they didn’t have any use
for. You know, a lot of people went in there and thought they was going to have
a easy ride (laughing). It wasn’t that easy.
Q: Was the training in the north camp the same? More intense, or how
was that different?
A: Well, up there we . . . we learned to tie a bunch of knots when you
got in the north camp. And, ah, you improved on your swimming. And you improved
on your semaphore. And you had to tie – had to fold all your clothes a certain
way to get them in these. . .
Q: Duffle bags?
A: Duffle bags, yeah. And it took a lot of time.
Q: What did you do with your free time?
A: (laughing) I didn’t have much free time! Well, one time I got off,
I think, on a weekend – one day. And I went up to a hill west of the base and
looked down on the ocean and that was the first time I’d ever seen the ocean. It
looked like the ocean just came right down and went in the ground just like
this. It was weird.
Q: And that was the first time you ever say the ocean?
A: First time I ever saw the ocean.
Q: And you were getting ready to sail the ocean.
A: Oh
yeah. Oh, I loved the ocean. I loved the navy. My wife wouldn’t understand.
Q:
OK, let’s move on. After basic training, where did the military send you?
A: We boarded a bus and went right down to the naval docks in San
Diego and I went aboard the USS Patterson, DD392, a destroyer. Went aboard that,
and as I came aboard that old second class bosunmate looked me in the face and
he looked like he had – like his face was made out of leather. I gave him an
eye, and he says “That-a way.”
Q: Presumably, they separated people from basic training – you went on
different ships?
A: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, separated them. They just – I don’t know
how they did that but they probably had an order they wanted six men for this,
and three for that, two for that, then they sent a bunch of submarines, a bunch
of battleships, wherever they needed people that they needed to replace.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They had people getting out and getting transferred. They had
replacements – they put in a requisition for replacements. And they got the new
recruits coming in.
Q: Now how did you find out where you were going?
A: I never knew until I went down and crawled on the Patterson.
Q: Until you were there?
A: Until I was there. Never knew. None of us knew where we were going.
But that was pretty good. I liked the Patterson. It was a nice ship.
Q: How large was it?
A: Fifteen hundred tons.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Now a destroyer is eight thousand tons. About six times as big as
we were.
Q: Right, but it was the same size as the other destroyers? How did it
compare with them?
A: No, ah, they had a fifteen hundred class, they had a sixteen
hundred class, then they had a – then they had a twenty-one hundred class. And
they were the squadron flagship, the twenty-one hundred class. They, they, they
weighed two thousand, one hundred tons. And they were probably about – we were
about three hundred and fifteen foot long and they were probably about three
hundred and forty foot long. Maybe three hundred and fifty foot long.
Q: When you went off to battle, you went out with other ships?
A: No, not necessarily.
Q: OK.
A: Not necessarily. If we were going for patrol duty we could have
been going by ourselves. If we – generally when they went out west of Hawaii
they’d go in groups. In other words, a whole division – four destroyers and a
squadron flanked it – they’d all go in a group and go west.
Q: OK. In what capacity did you serve during World War II? Duty, rank,
and the places where you served?
A: Places where I served?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Well, I, ah, when I got aboard ship, I was a deckhand. And they’d
separate them – they’d put them in deckhands or black gang – down below in the
engine room and fire room. You were one or the other. I was a deckhand. So about
the second day I was on there I was going up amidships and this second class
bosun’s mate had a big bucket of water there – about that big around and about
that tall, and had a sponge or two and a rag and he said, “You see that stack? I
want you to clean that up.” (laughing) I looked at that stack, and man, it
looked as big as this house! So the executive officer – a guy by the name of
Miles Hunter Hubbard, a lieutenant – came walking by there and I says, “Sir, I
wonder where I can start striking for yeoman and when?” And he looked at me and
kind of swallowed and he says, “Come with me.” Never did any work as a deckhand.
Put me to work as the log room yeoman working for the chief engineer. In other
words, they’d write up the log everyday on the ship, and then when they’d get to
it and got an officer to sign it, it would come to me and I’d type that all up
for them real nice and take it around and have all of them sign it again, and
then one went to the ship’s record and the other was sent to Washington, D.C.
That’s when I first went on board ship.
Q: OK. And . . .
A: And when I, when I first started – when they’d call general
quarters when I first went on there, I went back and I was handling ammunition
on the number three gun on the afterdeck house. In other words, it would come up
out of the chute and I’d pick it up. I was handling the powder. And I’d pass the
powder over to the next guy and he’d take and put it in the chamber, and then
they’d put the shell above it, and throw the thing and shoot it, see?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: So that’s what I did. I didn’t do that for long, I guess about six
months, and then I was on the bridge – was the captain’s speaker on the bridge.
And I stayed right there until I lost my destroyer in the Philippines.
Q: So tell me a little more about that position.
A: Well, it was critical. It was probably the most dangerous position
on the whole ship.
Q: It sounded like it.
A: Well, and whenever the Japs come in in planes and they’d start to
bomb us and, ah, and shoot at us with guns, they were only trying to hit the
bridge and that’s where I was – up on the bridge.
Q: Right, right. And you were the one who was telling the others. . .
A: I was telling everyone on that ship what to do through the
commanding officer.
Q: Ah-huh. Were there times when it was hard to hear him?
A: No.
Q: No? It was always pretty clear?
A: It was pretty dang clear. He said and he said it emphatically and
you repeated it and he listened, too. And if you made a mistake it was corrected
on the spot. I didn’t make many mistakes.
Q: OK.
A: ‘Cause you can’t afford to make a mistake when you’re fighting. I
mean, you’re firing all those guns and firing torpedoes and throwing, ah, ah,
depth charges. I mean, you just can’t do that. And all of them are listening for
instructions from the bridge.
Q: Ah-huh. Was there was limit – were there times when you were in
battle for a long time someone would relieve you or you just stayed for the
duration?
A: One time I stayed for thirty-six hours.
Q: Wow!
A: A lot of times we were twelve hours. Several times twenty-four
hours. But one time we had thirty-six hours and I was tired. I crawled up there
right beside my office and I laid down on that – on the, on the steel walkway
there and went to sleep and a man came by and he told me to go get in bed!
(laughing)
Q: So was that the position you retired from? How long were you in the
navy?
A: I was in the navy almost seven years.
Q: OK, so at the end of seven years, was that the rank that you . . .?
A: I made chief in October of 1944. And I went in in August of ’40. So
I was in there about – that was – yeah, ’44. I made chief when I was the
youngest guy in the Pacific fleet. And then I made permanent when I went to
Washington and then went back to San Diego to my reassignment. A year from the
day that you made temporary, you made permanent if you had a clear record. And
you had to have 4.0 in your conduct, too.
Q: So, specifically, what did they look at when they considered a
promotion? For you or anyone else?
A: A lot of things. You’re manners, you’re means, what you did, what
you didn’t do, what you should have done you didn’t do, you’re – you’re, ah,
you’re conduct that you got and every so often you were given a conduct rating
and then they put it in the back of your service record. That’s why I wanted
that. I wanted to show you that, but I couldn’t find it. I don’t know where it
is.
Q: You might have it next time. Did you have to take a written test of
any kind to go from one rank to the next?
A: Oh yes, absolutely. I was going to tell you about that. We studied
– there was a preliminary bunch of tests you took in order to take the final
test to make a promotion. Like going to third class, you had all of these
preliminary tests you took. It might take you three or four months – six months
– a year – to do them.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And then when you take the final test and pass it, then they put
you on a list and it goes in to the bureau of personnel and then they promote
from that list. Now you might make a hundred on your score, but if they only
promote three and you’re five on the list, you’re not going to get promoted.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And I saw that happen.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: I took a seaman first class exam that the chief petty officers
couldn’t pass when I went in.
Q: Was it difficult to find time to study?
A: Well, you just had to do that on your own.
Q: Right, ah-huh.
A: Ah, if I got everything done in the office, then I’d turn around
there and work on that, but you didn’t have much time, really.
Q: Yeah, ah-huh.
A: I took an exam and a test for everyone of my promotions from the
third, second, first, chief – I took one for every one of them.
Q: Ah-huh. Ah-huh.
A: Now a lot of the guys were lazy and they wouldn’t do that and they
never did get promoted.
Q: Right.
A: But you had to take it.
Q: I thought there was some testing for that, too.
A: Oh, yes.
Q: And even though you’re in combat, they still have the same
restrictions. That part doesn’t change.
A: Absolutely. And the ironical part of it is those tests might have
been made up by the people over in the Mediterranean area and they’d make them
so hard – that the people out in the Pacific couldn’t answer them!
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And that’s the way they’d do. They gave a certain locale to make up
the test for this bunch of people, ah, third class through chief or motormac or
machinist’s mate or water tender, and then they’d make those tests up and send
them on out to the fleet, then they’d give the tests.
Q: Ah-huh. So it sounds like the tests were written for one area, for
one geographic location, but if you were in . . .
A: At on location. And if you were out half way around the world you
were going to get that test and some of them were pretty rough.
Q: Ah-huh. The last question talked about the places where you served.
For seven years were you on the same battleship? You said until you lost it.
A: No, no, no. I was on a destroyer. I got on destroyers and couldn’t
get off until I was blown off one.
Q: OK.
A: Once they found out you could ride a destroyer, you never got –
they never gave you a transfer. I put in many times for a transfer off that
destroyer and the exec just grinned at me and put it in his little can – that
can right there by his desk.
Q: Why was that more difficult?
A: They’re hard to ride. They’re hard to, hard to, hard to keep a
mental health, ah, and keep physically fit without getting sick on them. They’re
just rough to ride, I mean, apparently you’ve never been on a destroyer, but . .
.
Q: No.
A: If you ever get on one and go to sea you’ll find what I’m talking
about.
Q: That’s why I’m asking. It’s a rough ride – you can feel the motion?
A: It’s a rough ride.
Q: A lot of people getting sea sick?
A: Oh, Lord, I saw a guy 30 years old get so seasick he wanted to
quit.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And I was a boot on there, I slept all the way through it.
Q: OK, so it’s a rough ride. Small area?
A: Small area. Very small area.
Q: OK. So how did you stay fit in an area that small?
A: Well, a lot of people vomited down there and I saw it get so bad,
it was just all over the floor. The steel deck down there and they had to clean
it up. When you get seasick, it’s tough. I mean there’s nothing like
seasickness. Have you ever been seasick?
Q: Ah, a little bit. Not like that, I’m sure.
A: I’ll tell you what, if you ever got seasick you’d wish you weren’t.
You’d wish you were somewhere else.
Q: Did they have a doctor on board that maybe gave some medicine for
that?
A: When I went in, no. But after they hit Pearl Harbor they got
doctors on destroyers, at least one on each destroyer if they could get it.
Q: Ah-huh. What about physical fitness? Weights? Working out? Was
just the job itself the way you did it?
A: The job itself kept you physically fit. I never saw a fat guy on a
destroyer!
Q: OK.
A: I never saw a fat guy on a destroyer, no sir. I went on there at
130 pounds and I got off there 130 pounds.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: It was – it was very difficult to stay on one of those.
Q: What places did you travel to?
A: Oh, you don’t want to know! I traveled to every bunch of islands in
the Pacific except the Bone Islands. Do you know where the Bone Islands are?
Q: No, I don’t.
A: They’re off the coast of South America. And I was at, ah, I was at,
ah, the landings at, ah, at, ah, in New Guinea, Guadalcanal, Buin, Gono,
Finschafen, ah, I was at the landings of Cape Gloucester, all through there – I
was at all those landings. I missed the Coral Sea and I missed, ah, where my
daughter just came back from, ah, that big island south of Tokyo – south of
Japan over there. I can’t think of it right now.
Q: OK, but you used the term you were “in the landings.” Does that
mean you actually got off the destroyer?
A: No, we were right there. We – we – we – they used us a fast troop
transport a lot of times, so soldiers would come and get on our ship and then
they’d send those Higgin’s boats around and we’d load those up with a bunch of
soldiers and they’d stand three deep – three up here and three all the way back
– and then they’d send those in to land them on the beach. . .
Q: OK.
A: . . . and then they’d turn them around and send them back. Well,
we’d just load this one little boat up, sent them in, and when they come back
they had the three guys in there that was standing up – they took a mortar shell
right in the middle of them and killed all three of them. So they brought them
all, put them on our ship. Had some baling wire there to wire them up so they
wouldn’t spread everything out on everything. . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And then threw them on the afterdeck house because they were dead.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And I’d just talked to one of them. That’s the kind of stuff that
went on.
Q: Ah-huh. So when those guys went out, did you wait for them to come
back?
A: Oh, no. We were there waiting for another Higgin’s boat to come
around to pick up some more soldiers. But when that boat came back, he had those
guys in there, so we took them on. And gave them another load and they went in.
Q: Ah-huh. Did you transport dead bodies routinely?
A: Well, we did that – well, we did when we had to.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: Ah, we had one man, one of our – I think he was a machinist’s mate,
he was electrocuted on our ship. He had, you know, one of these welding rods,
and he grabbed a-hold of the stinger and electrocuted him, so we buried him on
an island out there and then they went back and got him after the war was over
with and brought him back home.
Q: Ah-huh. What about the names of the destroyers you were on? Do you
remember?
A: Oh yeah, I can give you a few of them. I was on the Patterson, the
Jarvis, the Mugford, the Mahan, the Ralph Talbot, the Flusser, the Blue, and I
was on a destroyer-tender called the Dixie, and the Whitney – just on there and
off, just momentarily. But most of my time was spent on destroyers sea-bound all
the time.
Q: Ah-huh. What was the longest time you were at sea?
A: Six months I spent at sea one time without seeing a tree. I’d given
a five dollar bill to see a tree grow!
Q: The next question talks about your experiences and the conditions
you had to work and live in and we’ve talked about that a little bit, but can
you expand on that, like from the food that you ate to your clothing and . . .
A: Oh, well, the menu was – they had a seven-day menu and it was the
same every week for seven days.
Q: You always knew what you were going to have on Monday?
A: On Saturday we had, ah, beans and cornbread. On Friday we had fish.
Wednesday it was something else, and Tuesday it was something else, Monday
something else. Sunday we – they’d vary a little on Sunday sometime, but one
time we used all our food up and had Japanese rice for two weeks. That’s all we
had.
Q: Ah-huh. I wonder about fresh produce. Did you have some of that in
the beginning?
A: We had it if we could get to it, or get it, but, ah, the food in
general was pretty good, but, ah, I didn’t like that lamb – that Australian
sheep they put on there. Ah, the guys would go up on deck and smell that lamb
and somebody’d go baa-aa-aa, and then they’d all take off for the fantail. They
just didn’t like it. The officers, they were eating good. They really did. But
they had that – they had those cooks – those stewards that was waiting on them
hand and foot, so . . .
Q: Ah-huh. Were. . .
A: We lost an officer when we – they sank the Mahan out on the west
side of Leyte at Ormoc in the Philippines. He was a mathematician and he left
his duty station, which is a no-no, and went into his room. The, ah, officers –
where they ate was right here and then the rooms start up here, and then his was
the next one down, so he left and went in there and this plane engine hit and
killed him in there. The engine went right through his room and went down and
hit the number two handling room and set off all the fireworks. And the other
engine went up here and went through my office – went through my office and
started in through the radio room and those guys were trying to get out those –
they were back of these big radio – we had the big radio equipment in there –
and they couldn’t get out – they couldn’t get out of the way quick enough. But,
ah, we, ah, they had, ah, eight betty bombers – they called them betty bombers –
looked like a cigar up there – and they had about a half-dozen Zero fighters
protecting them. And they had just come back from a bombing run, but they still
had most of their gasoline on there, and I’ll tell you one thing. . .
Q: They did it on purpose? They flew into the destroyer intentionally?
A: Absolutely. Absolutely. They called them kamikaze pilots, and
that’s exactly what they did. We lost a lot of ships out there with those. They,
ah, we were on picket duty, on the 7th of December three years to the day after
Pearl Harbor, almost to the hour, on the west side of Leyte – you know where
that is? In the Philippines. It’s the island south of main island and on the
west side of that at Ormoc we had landed fifteen thousand troops. Lost one
soldier in the landing, and then we just were pulling back from that and these –
these bombers come in and caught us. This one bomber came in – this was our
ship, see, and he came in like that and, and, knocked every life raft ad boat
and everything off one side there. All of our life raft stuff . . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: . . . just demolished them. And then another one came in like that
and one engine went up here and one went down there. Then another one – I think
four of them hit us. And that one that hit down there, the engine went down in
the handling room – it was setting off that ammunition. It was going to sink us
– it was just a matter of time. A fire was down there.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And, ah, that’s when I sailed over the helmsman’s head and lit on
my fanny over there and the USS Ward was with us, was one hit that, and they was
using that as a fast troop transport for aviation gasoline. And they hit right
where that was – it wasn’t full of gasoline – it was all gone, but it had the
fumes in there – that thing blew up and there wasn’t anything saved on there at
all except a boat – a little boat – about a 20 foot boat floated off of it – the
rest of it just disappeared.
Q: All the people were . . .
A: All the people were gone. Killed.
Q: So what happens when your destroyer gets hit and you’re in the
middle of the ocean?
A: By golly, you – you evacuate ship when the old man tells you to.
Q: Well, definitely. Do you get on lifeboats – do you have life
jackets?
A: (laughing) We didn’t have any lifeboats! They sank the one –
this guy came along and his wing cut that one in two, and half was hanging by
this davit and half was hanging by this davit, see?
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And it was useless. All the floating rafts along there were out in
the ocean, so we all hit the water with a very few things out there.
Q: Ah-huh. It had to really cold.
A: Huh?
Q: It had to be very cold.
A: The water?
Q: Yes.
A: No, that was in the Philippines. It was . . .
Q: Oh, OK.
A: It was warm out there and then the water was just loaded with
sharks and we didn’t get one shark attack – I can’t figure that out to this day.
It was loaded with sharks. Another destroyer come around there and started
picking us up, and so he – I crawled up the side and went up there and got on
top of the – they had a vent about that big around – sucking air and going in
down center . . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: And I was sitting on top of that and all of a sudden I heard a
bunch of commotion and everybody ran to one side and I thought they was going to
turn the thing over. Ah, ah, a kamikaze fighter was going to ram that thing and
kill everybody on there that got off that other destroyer, but they shot him
down before he got there.
Q: Oh great! Yeah.
A: We had protective cover. We had a Major Bong and a Major Johnson
was our fighter cover that day out there. Both of them have subsequently died,
but they were . . .
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They were very good fighter pilots.
Q: So every destroyer had planes overhead watching out for it? No?
A: Oh, no. We had 87 raids in one – one – two days. We didn’t have any
help at all. They were just trying to get us, but they didn’t get us. They tried
desperately. They’d have give anything if they got those destroyers.
Q: Ah-huh.
A: They didn’t get many destroyers out fighting like that. The only
got – like at Pearl Harbor, they got one that was in dry dock. Didn’t get the
destroyers.
Q: When you’re transporting people who – you mentioned earlier you
were transporting some of the troops to fight – were those navy people?
