Memorial Day memories Tom Smith
This is another post about my late father’s experiences in WWII, which I have covered in previous posts, but I figure if you can’t repeat war stories on Memorial Day, what is the day for. You have been warned.
My dad’s parents, as I heard it, had this friend who had been in WWI and came home in a bad state of what they called then “shell shock.” He lived with my grandparents for awhile. Partly as a result of this, my grandparents were opposed to my father joining the military in any form. As WWII approached, my grandfather used his connections in the motor trade — he was an auto parts salesman — to get my father a place in the maintenance battalion (?), the unit in charge of maintaining the innumerable trucks, tanks and other vehicles in the Army. Vital work, to be sure. But not long after he enlisted in this capacity, my father had had enough, and volunteered for Officers Candidate School, one way to get a commission and into combat.
He trained with tanks in Georgia, I believe, but came to dislike them. At least until after the war, he had a fondness for guns, and that part he liked about tanks, but he told me hated the way the drove. They were balky, hard to maneuver, and once he chipped a tooth when he brought one to a quick stop. So, he transferred to the artillery. The 105mm howitzer became his stock in trade, and there was not a lot about them he didn’t know. He became part of the 77th Infantry Division, a storied division from WWI, which bore the Statue of Liberty on its shoulder patch. It began the war as largely New York City kids, but heavy casualties as it fought its way across the Pacific turned it into the usual American melting pot, including sons of auto parts salesmen from Idaho.
The 77th fought in many bloody battles in the Pacific. They had an interesting relationship with the Marines. Asone chronicler put it
While many Army units expressed a dislike of working with theleathernecks (and the feeling was just as strong the other way), the77th believed they had earned a form of respect from the Marines,having worked well with them on Guam. Indeed, the Statue of LibertyDivision “admired them and had great respect for the way they handledthemselves so professionally. We were more than glad to have had themon Guam. On the other hand, they equally respected us for the supportand cooperation they received from us.” (Astor, 1995, p. 420) TheMarines even called the Statue of Liberty Division the ’77th Marines’ -an honour indeed.
My dad shipped out just in time for the Battle of Okinawa. A story he repeated many times was that as they were all waiting inSeattle to ship out, tension was high and nobody was in a jolly mood. Then some GI piped up and yelled, “Is this trip reallynecessary?” (That was a gas-conservation slogan of the era, but ittook on an altogether different meaning, of course, among thousands ofGIs waiting to ship out into some of the bloodiest fighting in thewar.) This got a huge laugh, the soldiers relaxed, and startingsharing cigarettes.
As to the battle itself, it was not easy to get myfather to talk about it, as is pretty common among Greatest Generation veterans. As an artillery officer, he was not involvedin the very worst of the fighting, but it was bad enough. In a storyhe told many times in response to repeated requests, he told how hisbattery of 105s was blown up when their ammunition caught fire andexploded. He told of how a shell, shooting along the ground, took offa soldier’s leg. White Phosphorus exploded, and then came raining downin its liquid fire form. He escaped being burned by holding his armyjacket over his head and taking shelter under a jeep. His CO had beeninjured or killed (I forget which) and so he took command of thebattery. I remember he expressed frustration as I talked to him aboutthese events not long before he died, about how long it took to getreplacement guns. I know artillery played an important role in theBattle of Okinawa; I read somewhere about the astonishing number ofshells that were fired. It was a dreadful battle, for the 77th and foreveryone:
The armed forces of the United States and Japan had met in a battlethat had lasted eighty-two days where little quarter was granted andproved what had been known to both sides, that the one side who was tobe victorious, would have to completely eliminate the other. Both sidesused their resources, whether abundant or not, to utmost of theirability to gain whatever tactical advantage they could. Okinawaprovided a glimpse of what might have happened if the United States hadinvaded the Japanese Home Islands in Operation Downfall.
It was only the much larger and longer Philippine Campaign that sawhigher casualties than Okinawa. The United States suffered over 51,000casualties with the US Marine Corps suffering 2,938 killed and missing,16,017 wounded. The Army suffered 4,675 killed and missing, with 18,099wounded, while the Navy suffered its highest casualty rate of the war,with 4,900 dead and missing, and another 4,800 wounded. The UnitedStates lost 763 aircraft and suffered 36 ships being sunk and another368 damaged, with 43 being so badly damaged they were scrapped. TheBritish Carrier Force (TF 57) suffered four ships damaged, 98 aircraftlost, 62 personnel killed and 82 wounded. Over 100,000 Japanese troopsand Okinawa militia (Boeitai) fought on Okinawa, although preciseestimates of their casualties are difficult due to the duration of thefighting, the inflated accounts of enemy numbers of dead, the impreciseestimate as to the numbers of enemy involved and the nature of thecombat on the island. The US estimated some 142,000 of the enemy werekilled but this is more than the total that was on Okinawa. Some 7,400combatants were taken prisoner during the campaign, as were some 3,400unarmed labourers. Large numbers of troops surrendered after the end ofhostilities. Approximately 10,000 IJA and IJN personnel survived thebattle, as did approximately 8,000 militia. The Japanese lost 7,830aircraft, some 4,600 Kamikaze crew died alongside many hundreds ofother pilots, 16 warships were sunk and four damaged while the IJN lostover 3,650 personnel in the Yamato’s sortie. Over 122,000 of Okinawa’spopulation had been killed and a culture shattered due to the fighting.
My dad retained bitter memories of the carnage among civilians onOkinawa. He told a story of a devastated patrol returning with a smallboy. His family had been hiding in a cave, and the GIs cleared it bythrowing in grenades. The boy’s parents had thrown themselves on topof the grenades to save their son. Many Japanese soldiers were burnedalive in caves in the some of the most grisly fighting of the war. As to what the US soldiers, marines and sailors suffered, one can well imagine. A long, utterly merciless fight against a dug in, fortified, and completely resolute enemy. Perhaps this captures it a little — my dad said sometimes the GIs in the front lines would call down artillery fire on themselves, because at least some of the shells would fall on the Japs (as they were invariably referred to), and in the hand-to-hand combat that followed in the smoke and dust, at least they would have something like even chances. Myfather mostly limited his comments on the fighting, however, to phrases such as”body parts everywhere.” Shortly beforehe died, he told me again of the 12 days he spent as a forward observerspotting for artillery. If two separated spotters could get a fix onthe flash of enemy artillery, which were well concealed in caves,counter-fire could be directed. My dad expressed frustration that theother observation post spent most of their time hunkered down insteadof spotting, because, they claimed, of “indirect fire.” “Still,” myfather said, “we did get two good days of shooting.” It seemed strangeand interesting to me that the first time I had ever heard thiscomplaint from him was so near his death, as if his inhibitions againstdiscussing the battle were finally beginning to relax, reminding me somehow of how his hearing went rapidly as he aged, due my wife said, to ear damage done during the war. “It happens to a lot of these old vets,” she said, and I always thought it strange, that the noise of guns half a century old could still take their toll.
I asked my dad once about how much of the two months he spent on Okinawa was he actually in combat, in the sense of being in danger of getting killed. He looked at me as if I were stupid and said, “all of it.” Somewhere in the 60 days of the battle in which my dad took part, heearned a bronze star. At least, that is what his military record seemsto indicate. He never breathed a word about it while he lived. Thisseems to have been a medal he received before the blanket bronze starsthat Truman ordered passed out to everyone who fought in the Pacificcampaign, which were much deserved as far as I’m concerned.
Shortly before he died, he told another story I had never heardbefore. He said after the island was (more or less) secure, his unitwas bivouacked, and trip wires attached to flares had been set on theirperimeter. A flare went off, and my father awakened and went toinvestigate. He encountered two Okinawan youths, one armed with aclub, who were obviously, he said, foraging for food. Many civilians,he said, simply starved to death after the fighting was over. Helooked at the boy with the club, holding him at bay with his rifle. Hesaid he thought about shooting him, as the boy looked about to swing athim. But the other boy put his hand on his companion’s arm, and thenthey turned and ran away. Later, other GIs told my father he “shouldhave shot the Japs.” But my father said, “I’m glad I didn’t. If Ihad, their blood would have been on my hands. My hands.”