Don Edward Stanius
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Unit Info: USS Paducah
Oral History Interview with:
Don Edward Stanius - Veterans of USS Paducah (WWII Vet)
Born 1921, Hibbing, Minnesota.
Interviewed by:
Daniel Hartman
Program Director of Veterans’ Memorial Hall
Transcribed by:
Karin Swor
Program Assistant of Veterans’ Memorial Hall
In attendance is Mike Malone - Veterans' Memorial Hall Intern and Maggie Youngren - Veterans' Memorial Hall Intern
This interview is between Dan Hartman, (DH) director of Veterans' Memorial Hall and Don Edward Stanius (DS)
DH: You said you were born in Hibbing. Did you grow up in Hibbing, Minnesota?
DS: No, my dad was a driver for the Greyhound Corporation and before it was Greyhound, it was Mesabi Transportation at the time, and his run was from Grand Rapids to Ely. It became Greyhound. I do not know where that name came from. They expanded from there; they started the Duluth run. I found out one thing from my dad, the highways were not plowed by the county in those days. Greyhound plowed them. All the guys that met the two crews, St Louis County decided to take over the plowing of all roads. The two crews Greyhound and St Louis County, would meet in Cotton, and the Greyhound guys would kid the St Louis County guys; "you are new we will teach you how to plow the roads." We moved here in 1925, because I started school at the elementary school on London Road. What the heck is the name of that one it is still there?
DH: On London Road?
DS: Yeah, 18th Ave East, on the lower side. Anyway, I started kindergarten there and when they purchased, we moved from there to right in the area of the mall in Woodland. The beauty shop that is on the west side of Woodland Ave is a house. That is where we lived, and then I was in the first, 1st grade class in Chester Park Elementary School.
DH: So you were in the first 1st grade class?
DS: I went to kindergarten out there on London Road.
DH: So you can say you outlived Chester Park Elementary, in some ways.
DS: And then some.
DH: Question about that? So you lived in Woodland for a while?
DS: We lived there and then my father purchased a house on 19th Ave East and 10th Street. I grew up there. I went to Chester Park Elementary, East Junior High and Central High School, the old building. I was one of the architects on the new building, Central.
DH: Has Woodland changed a little bit since you grew up there in the 1920’s?
DS: Well, when we lived there by the mall, across the street was nothing but a rock pile, nothing but trees, there wasn’t anything there. My mother didn’t like to live there, because she said every time she looked out the window during the week there was a funeral going by. You know the cemeteries up the hill, Forest Hill, those cemeteries up the road. She was tired of looking at funerals going by.
DH: Did she enjoy the move to 19th and 10th?
DS: Well, they were there many years, I do not know when they left.
DH: Growing up in the 1920’s as a kid, was it a pretty fun time do you think, being a kid? Like was there a lot to do?
DS: As a youngster, we did all the things like other kids do. Going to Chester Park School, I can remember chasing a girl one time. We were going home and running alongside a barbed wire fence swinging my arm, running and got a big gash on my arm. I learned that I do not chase girls.
DH: So what other games did you play with your friends, as a kid, in the 1920’s?
DS: Kick the can, we played that every night. You had to have that going, we played that thing every night. We did that mostly at night.
DH: Were sports a big thing back then?
DS: Not really. We, well, when I got to East Junior, Jim Plaunt, he is dead now. He had the Plaunt Company. They lived behind us. There was a vacant lot next to them...there is a house there now, that vacant lot was our baseball field. We played baseball and football there. In the winter time, we ran our own hockey team. We did not have any fathers yelling from the side that you are not doing it right, or some dumb thing like that. We had our own puck. If somebody called a foul, or something we didn’t agree with, that guy would take his puck and go home, and the game was over with. Same with baseball; we played, it was just kids. We set up our own teams. We were from the Chester Park bunch. Up there. 15th had there own team. We played just like we do now, but we ran our own game. No adults there. We got along just fine. No problems at all.
DH: So was hockey a pretty big sport up here at the time, like it is now?
DS: It had to be. We had to have something to do. Cause we played hockey, crossed country skied and the ski jumped at Chester Bowl.
DH: Was ski jumping pretty big back then?
DS: Oh yeah, It was a Sunday thing you went to watch. They had a big jump and a small one. They had a skating rink we played hockey on.
DH: So you yourself did you use to ski jump?
DS: No, I cross country skied. I still have my ski's. They are up in the garage. They are not these short things, they are Finnish skis, and they have to be 7ft long. So when you fell with them you were really tangled up.
DH: And when you were growing up did your parents stay together.
DS: Oh yeah, divorce was not a big thing in those days. We had one member of our family get divorced; an Uncle, and we thought that was terrible. But then you never heard of it.
DH: What ethnic background were each of your parents from?
DS: My dad came over from Sweden when he was 4 years old. And then he moved to southern Minnesota. My grandfather had been a salesman in Sweden, and he ended up being a farmer down there, all his life.
DH: Did he enjoy his new occupation more?
DS: I think he did. He had his own property, and they would go in there and stake out a claim to a piece of property and that was your farm. It became your property.
DH: And that was your father, or grandfather that did that?
DS: My grandfather did that.
DH: So what side was your mother from? Was she Swedish as well?
DS: She was German and her grandparents came over from Germany. She was born on the farm that they founded and neither one of those two people could speak English.
DH: So neither one of her grandparents spoke English, just German?
DS: Just German.
DH: Was there ethnic background pretty important to them? Like was it something that was brought up? Something that they displayed in their foods, quite a bit? Your parents as well?
DS: No, they, it was like a big melting pot. They would get together on Sundays. They would go over to my Grandparents place and in the 30’s, when it was tough, they would get a bunch of people there on Sundays. They knew where to get a meal. Grandpa always had plenty of food on that farm. They would flock in there on Sunday from Minneapolis.
DH: But there wasn’t any in the food he prepared; he didn’t make any Swedish meals?
DS: Meat and potatoes.
DH: What religious background were your parents?
DS: My mother's side was Methodist, and my father was Lutheran.
DH: Did they attend religious services quite regularly?
DS: I think they did. On my father's side because that bunch is buried within a mile of the farm. Everybody. I even had 3 uncles that left the farm and were bound and determined to become engineers. So they went to Chicago and all became mechanical or structural engineers. Spent their life there, and when they died, they brought them back and buried them at the farm. So they came back to home.
DH: Kind of coming back to something you brought up earlier. You said your father worked for the Greyhound Company. Did your mother work?
DS: No, she was always a homemaker.
DH: I imagine she had enough to do at home.
DS: Well there was only two of us kids. But she managed, she was kind of a gadabout. She made friends easily. Went to parties, played cards, raised kids.
DH: What were some of the common activities that your parents might have played back in the 1920’s that maybe people don’t do so much anymore...that might have changed?
DS: They played a lot of cards. Most of the summers were spent out fishing. That is about all they did.
DH: Any certain lake in particular?
DS: No they were all over the place. Then they would take our boys. My boys and take them fishing when they were kids.
DH: Are you a pretty big fisherman, yourself?
DS: Oh yeah, I have a boat on Lake Superior. I go out fishing there. I don’t have it in yet, but my wife is laid up so it is slowing me up. I have to do everything, cook. I finally found someone to mow the lawn. That helped.
DH: I imagine. We talked a little bit about this earlier, but the different neighborhoods you lived in. Can you describe them a little bit? What was unique about 19th and 10th, that may not be unique today?
DS: There were people that lived there. Some were plumbers, some worked for the county. One family bread winner there was a skipper on one of the ore boats. So it was a mixture. They were into everything. Groceries.
DH: Did the neighborhood get along good?
DS: Oh sure, no problems.
DH: This is kind of moving into a new era. Moving into the 1930’s. Could you tell when the depression hit Duluth?
DS: Same way, same time as it hit the nation as a whole. About 1932 it started going. 1929 was the fall. It took a couple of years for it to bottom out.
DH: But you could really tell it was here. There were a lot of people going through hard times.
DS: Oh yeah, there was a difference in people in those days. Now a day, if they don’t have a job they go down to the county, usually get some money or unemployment. Those guys would never admit that they do not have a job. They got up every morning and they left that neighborhood and they went downtown looking for a job. They would take any job they could get. They would not sit home.
DH: In your family. Did the depression hurt your family?
DS: No, my dad was one of the first 5 drivers that Greyhound hired. And he worked all the way through the depression. He did a good job.
DH: And I bet he was happy about keeping that job.
DS: Oh yeah, he drove the run from Duluth to half way to Chicago. The reason he did that was he was the senior driver at the time and he could pick the run. That was the longest run that is where you made the money. More money the farther you go the better you were paid.
DH: And were there several of your friends that their families were hit pretty bad by the depression?
DS: Not particularly, everybody survived, one way or another. I do not know of anybody that was really down and out.
DH: Kind of a follow up question on that was, how was it being a teenager during this era?
DS: Well you didn’t have a lot of money to buy gasoline to take your girlfriend out.
DH: So what did you do then?
DS: Well, my dad had bought a 1930 - 7 passenger Buick, that he rented out to Greyhound here in Duluth, in the spring. And that car was used to run passengers up the North Shore cause that was a paved road to Two Harbors, but from there on to Canada, it was dirt and mud and some gravel. They could not run buses on that so they would run that 7 passenger Buick up there.
DH: And you were able to take that out some times?
DS: Yeah, I would take it out. We had as many as four couples in that car at one time. You would sit everywhere. You know it had jump seats. We would have 8 of us in that car rolling along at one time.
DH: Where would you go?
DS: Well, we used to go to Superior. I guess it is like it is now, you can go over there and get a drink without anyone asking how old you are. We would go over there and dance, fool around. We had our own house parties. Stuff like that. There was not a lot of entertainment, if they had it. We didn’t have any money to go to the Armory. There were dances there, but we didn’t have any money to take our girlfriends. We did it once or twice when we became seniors in high school. We just didn’t have any money. Gas was 12/13 cent a gallon. You could take your girlfriend out for, I know I did in high school. A little over $2, for the whole evening. The Lyceum Theater was the top theater in Duluth; long gone, that was a nice theater. It had two balconies above the main floor. Balcony, and then what they called angels way up in heaven, way up in the air, you were way up, man you were looking down on the stage. We used to go there. Take your girlfriend to a show, then go to Millers over in the Medical Arts Building. We would go over there and get a chocolate coke, I haven’t seen it in years, a cheeseburger...
DH: And the place was called Miller’s?
DS: Yeah, Millers restaurant.
DH: And how was the chocolate?
DS: It was a, first time, always a restaurant, across the street was a first restaurant, you know. What do they call them a auto something or other, where you go in and pick your stuff out it was all in a big bank. You open the door and take what you want. Miller's was the hang out for kids.
DH: Were movies pretty popular back then? I heard there was ah?
DS: We had good movies. They were a lot better than the stuff, the garbage they have now. I wouldn’t waste my time.
DH: So what were some of the movies that came out back then, some that you really enjoyed?
DS: I couldn’t even remember any of them.
DH: You just remember that they were good movies.
DS: They were all good movies, no foul language. The first shady word we heard was when we were young adults. I don’t give a damm who said that. The country is falling apart.
DH: It definitely has come a long way since then. And this is kind of moving into the Navy Reserve. Was there any family history in the Navy that made you want to enlist in the Navy?
DS: It was in those days money was hard to come by and it was hard to get a job. If you had a job that paid 25 or 30 cents an hour, man, you had a real job. So a lot of us joined the Navy Reserve and a bunch joined the 125th field Artillery. You know $21.00 a day once a month. That was once a week drill.
DH: Any reason you picked the Navy Reserve over the 125th ?
DS: Sure, if we go to war, I am not going to die in a trench, I will die on a nice clean deck. Not a mud hole someplace. You could kind of see the war coming. All you had to do was watch Hitler.
DH: And so that was a good question to follow through, did you think it was coming, for sure?
DS: Well, we had a little bit of a warning. We were supplying the English and French with armaments and stuff like that. We sold them a whole bunch of destroyers. I don’t know how many of those were the four fifers from WWI. I left her on the YP61 which is a yard patrol vessel, but it was a drill vessel with the Paducah. The two of them. We knew something was up, because they wanted to move the yard patrol vessel. Orders came to send that thing down to Toledo, Ohio. Some of us volunteered to take it down there. It is only about a three day ride and come back home. That is what we planned. That is not what happened. We got down there and they activated the reserve unit here. Ordered them to take the Paducah down and there was no way in God’s green earth that we would come back and ride that Paducah in place of a good berth on that sub chaser. No Way. So we went down with it. We took it down to what people call it; the Brooklyn Navy Yard, but it is actually the New York City Navy Yard.
DH: Before I get far ahead of myself, I want to go back and talk a little bit about you enlisting in the Naval Reserve. What year did you enlist?
DS: 1938.
DH: And what were some of the common things that you did for training after you enlisted?
DS: During the summer, you took a cruise. That was mandatory; you belong to the reserve. You took the Paducah, it went down and there were 4 other vessels. We met in Lake Michigan, because that was the only lake out of the 5 lakes that you could have a gun aboard ship. Two of the vessels were armed with 4” guns. So we would go into lake Michigan and we could fire at targets.
DH: And when you went on the training. Did you go on the YP or the Paducah?
DS: Paducah for training.
DH: Some questions, before WWII, maybe before your time, there was this thing called the Canoe Boat Races that the Navy Reserve put together. Do you remember anything about this?
DS: No.
DH: I am slowly learning a little bit about them. I am trying to learn more. I am having a hard time finding anyone who knows anything about it. Another thing, could you describe a little bit about how the Navy Reserve base used to be, where you trained at, and what the facilities looked like?
DS: The vessels were kept down here. It is the Coast Guard dock now. There was a big, two story building. That was building. But we drilled at the Armory. That was plain marching drill. They would teach you all the basics of seamanship. How to tie a knot and how to untie it.
DH: That was at the Armory?
DS: Yeah, basic seamanship. They taught you as much as they could there, when the summer cruise you were on deck.
DH: How many would be on these cruises?
DS: There would be a total of over 100, close to 200, all total. They wouldn’t all be on the Paducah, they would be on any vessel they could get them on. There were excuses for jobs and stuff like that. Nothing like getting out on Lake Superior in the morning about 7am, and scrub a wood deck down while they pump Lake Superior water on that deck while you are barefooted. Scrub it with sand. If you were sleepy, you weren’t sleepy long.
DH: Was there anything else unique about training on Lake Superior back then that maybe is a little different now?
DS: No, they really didn’t. They will run the Paducah out once and a while just as a training thing. We would take the YP down to Bayfield and areas like that. A crew of about 25 on board. Take it down on Saturday and Sunday and come back Sunday afternoon and tie up.
DH: Would you say that sometimes it was enjoyable or was it all work?
DS: No, when you get down there you would be busy during the day. You would be back in at night. Sometime they would anchor out with the YP, but not very often. They would go into the dock and you could go ashore. All kind of new girls.
DH: Were there any cities in particular that you thought were fun to dock at, for that reason?
DS: No, it, eh, you just do your job. Get your line on the beach and snub her up, tie her up for the night. Next morning you were back at it. We slept in hammocks on that thing there were no bunks. You had a hammock that you hung through the overhead.
DH: I imagine that wasn’t too comfortable?
DS: Well you slept on your back all night and you are right next too each other. In that area at Rivalry, you had to get up get out of that sack, get dressed and get that hammock down. You would have to roll that thing up, double it over is what we did. Bring it up on deck and they had a hammock storage thing on both sides. That are where you slept became the mess hall.
DH: So it very similar to a sub? A lot of the spaces were multi-uses.
DS: At Rivalry, you learn to get up quick. You do not waste any time. Because they come down and a paddle bang you on the bottom. Come on Rivalry would come and blow the bugle, of course, if you did not get up the Master of Arms would come down and cut you down, with a knife, to the deck and if you were sleeping you were awake now.
DH: And did that actually happen to some of the guys?
DS: Oh yeah, they did not monkey with you. One way or another you were going to hit the deck.
DH: And I guess about the YP? Can you describe what was unique about the YP61 compared to the Paducha? What made it unique as a boat?
DS: It had crews quarters. We had bunks there. The galley was not used for anything except a mess hall. All day long. It was empty except at meals and the cook was there all day long. This was 1940 and they had a mess cook (black) for the officers but they would not let him sleep up forward. He had to sleep on the bench in the mess hall. He did not sleep up forward with the crew.
DH: Even up here.
DS: Yeah, he did not sleep up forward with the crew.
DH: Does that seem kind of weird to you now? Or is that?
DS: Well, we knew the guy from the neighborhood, we went to school with him. But in the Navy, they would not let him sleep with the white guys up forward. He slept in the mess hall.
DH: Did that ever bring up any contention with the crew?
DS: No…Bill Moppins. Bill was pretty well known before he died. All his kids went to the University of Minnesota. Bill got himself a degree…times change.
DH: Yeah, but he was kind of understanding of the situation it sounds like?
DS: He was good natured. He did not make a big deal out of it, nobody did. There was not a picking of the crew, that was the way the old man wanted it. That is the way it was.
DH: That is just weird, in Duluth he was integrated with everyone else and it was not an issue.
DS: He was part of the crew that lined up on the deck on drills and stuff like that. When we went on the summer cruises, he worked in the officers quarters.
DH: Move on a little bit with the YP then. As a ship, was the YP a sub chaser?
DS: Well, you have to understand we were poorly equipped. We were in tough shape I think. We had some new destroyers and there were some. Roosevelt started to build the Navy up which was a good thing. The YP was never intended to be a sub chaser. When we brought it down to the navy yard they put a 3” 3” riffle and a Y gun on the back Y shaped; that thing had pieces that slid down into the barrel that carried depth charges. And you put a charge in it and pull the lanyard...BOOM, out of both sides it would go. When you spotted a sub. As you would pick it up with sonar. And we had racks on the back and we could start dumping them off the back. But that ship was not fast enough hardly to get away from its own depth charges, it would blow the stern off at 15/16 knotts. Big Deal. On top of that if you were out to sea, you were on sub patrol and you had a 3” gun, the subs you are looking for are carrying a 5” gun. They were nice if the didn’t take picks eyes, because they could have stood off with that 5” gun and used us for a target practice, there was nothing we could do about it, we‘d get blown away.
DH: Were you a little worried about that?
DS: Nah, we didn’t worry about it, we were too dumb. We never worried even when we got out in combat. You didn’t worry about your life.
DH: Did you actually go in combat anytime on the YP?
DS: No, thank God. We had two Lewis 3006, Lewis guns, one on each side of the bridge. That was from WWI, with a big round magazine like that on it. Those guys that you are going to be opposing picking at you with a 50 caliber, you wouldn’t last very long.
DH: What was your primary duty as a seaman? What was your role on the ship?
DS: Seaman, just that, handling lines. I had the stern line. Then I went on as a Gunners Mate 3rd Class, Petty Officer and I made it. There was another fellow that made it at the same time. He made 3rd Class Bozeman. The two of us were always getting into mischief when we went ashore, so when we made 3rd class Petty Officers we were transferred. I am out of here.
DH: What kind of mischief were you getting in to?
DS: Well, maybe drinking a little bit too much at times at times, fights now and then.
DH: Was the guy that you got in trouble with, was he a friend of yours, pretty good?
DS: Yeah, him and I would hang out together. He just died here, we buried him about a 3-4 weeks ago.
DH: Was he from the Duluth area, too?
DS: Sure.
DH: And what was his name, may I ask?
DS: Rasmussen, Bob, we hung out together. He was a Bozeman Mate 3rd Class. I was Gunners Mate 3rd Class. So they got rid of us in short order. Less trouble without us.
DH: Good time while it lasted though, I bet?
DS: Yeah, by that time we were in Bermudas, but I got transferred off the ship there and I was sent to the Naval Operating base there in Bermuda which was an extension of the Norfolk area, and then they needed a 3rd Class Gunner's Mate to instruct on heavy, light and heavy machine guns. I wasn’t an expert then, but I was, when I left that job. I taught anti aircraft fire. That is where I got attached to the Atlantic Air Arm, Navy.
DH: When the rest of the group was activated, were you getting a little more realistic about the fact that you were going to be at war soon. Were your friends talking about it?
DS: My dad warned me about it. The day we left Duluth with the YP, my dad was, I was taking pre-engineering out at the Duluth Junior College. My dad brought me down to the ship, of course, I brought my sea bag with me. I had to have some clothes one thing or another. I was on the stern line then, so we were tied up there and they fired up the engines we were about ready to shove off. My dad said, he was on the dock, it is too bad you couldn’t stay here and finish your engineering degree, and I said dad, we are only going to run this thing to Toledo. I will be back in 5 days. He said, I am going to tell you something, son. You will not back for 5 years. He was right, I got back 5 years later in September. I left in October. He missed by 1 month.
DH: Pretty incredible.
DS: Yeah, he could see it coming. I didn’t, and he did.
DH: And did he tell you why it was coming? Did he try to explain it?
DS: You just won’t be back for 5 years. And he was right.
DH: Was your father still proud of the fact that you were serving?
DS: Oh, yeah.
DH: Did he ever try to talk you out of it? Or anything like that.
DS: No way to get talked out. You decide you didn’t want to be in the reserve anymore and you probably end up in the Navy Houscow, for an undetermined amount of time. You would go to jail, and they wouldn’t monkey with you. You would be a deserter.
DH: And kind of a similar question. I had talked to some other people, prior, that said when they enlisted that they did not know how long they would be in the reserve, and they thought they might be stuck for life, doing the reserve.
DS: No, no, when you signed up, you were in for 4 years. You made a commitment for 4 years to belong to the reserve, and there you were.
DH: And something, I guess I am a little curious about this, a lot of people I am sure, including your dad, knew the war was coming. Were there a lot of people in the Duluth area who were maybe trying to protest the war? Or try to stop it.
DS: No, well all you had to do was watch what was happening in Europe.
DH: But there weren’t people trying to keep the US from entering the war?
DS: Not that I remember, nobody would have the guts to go out on the street and do that. You might get your head caved in pretty well, in those days. Somebody would punch you out sure as hell.
DH: And so what happened, earlier you told me you went to New York City on the YP? So, what happened on your journey following that? And where did you go from there?
DS: On my way into the Navy yard, we left Halifax, this is just, you could see what was coming then. It was I think.
DH: And what was the dates on this, too? Was it before or after December 7?
DS: It would be a year before 1940, in the fall of 40, October. We had left Halifax, and we were going to the New York Navy yard and we ran into. I think it was 50 four stack destroyers, that the United States gave to Britain, because to bolster their Navy. Because Hitler was talking about invading England. They need those ships. We ran into them at night. Instead of running behind each other, they were running abreast. And here we are coming the other way and as far as you could see were destroyers. We met them and passed them at night. We picked them up, of course, on the radio. They knew we were coming, and they knew where we were. We had lights on.
DH: Was it kind of an amazing site to see, at night? All those ships?
DS: It was impressive. They were all being run by American Crews, and they were all running at pretty close to full throttle. They were really cutting it.
DH: They were going to England. Pretty much?
DS: They were going to Halifax, and there they would take on the British crews there. The idea was to get them up there with the American crews to train them how to run those 4 pipers. They took it from there and took the ships to England.
DH: So it was very obvious at that point what was going on? And what happened after that?
DS: Well we took the YP into the New York Navy Yard, and they moved us into a yard in the East River. It had been, they were building tugs for the Navy, and we were about the same size as the tugs, pretty much. So they put us up there for an overhaul and putting transmissions on the engines so you could get reverse when you wanted it, you know, to back down. To back into the dock. Before, you had to stop the engines, change a cam and crank it again, because you had to restart the engine, shoot the compressed air to it, put the engine in reversed, by that time, you could be ½ way up on the dock. It has to be something faster than that. They put transmissions on them, but they put guns, depth charges, y guns, machine guns, that was all put on there. We were bright and sparkly, and we came back down the river to tie up in the Navy Yard. The North Carolina was a new battle ship at the time. She was tied up in there and we were suppose to tie up in there in the same slip but on the other side. Somehow the skipper lost control. He got the big thing sitting there concerned him a little bit, and he tried to make a sail boat landing and currents caught us and put us into the side of the battle wagon. So we got that destroyed the one side of the bridge. Bridge wing. So they pulled us over on the other side. The skipper on the North Carolina sent over his maintenance crew and they rebuilt the bridge while we were tied up. Put it back together.
DH: Did the skipper give you a lot of grief about that?
DS: No, it is just one of those things that happen.
DH: But you didn’t catch much flack for that at all?
DS: No, they repaired it. The maintenance crew needs some experience, so they sent them over there and let them do the welding, put everything back together, straighten things out, cut new steel, or what ever we needed.
DH: I am going to skip ahead a little bit. To December 7. Were you still with the YP then?
DS: I think I was transferred out by then. I was attached to the machine gun, anti aircraft machine gun training at Bermuda. I had been taken off the ship.
DH: How did you like Bermuda?
DS: Well it is a rock about 500 miles out. You get tired of it. It is not too good. It is about the size of Isle Royal.
DH: Really?
DS: 45 miles long, about the same length. Not much to do there.
DH: So everyone got a little bored it sounds like then.
DS: Yeah, it ah, I wanted to get off. I made it well known that I wanted to get off that rock. I made life miserable every time I seen the Chief Gunner; "lets get me out of here, I just want to be off." He told me when he got tired of it. He came and I was belly aching one day, and he said I got a deal for you. I am going to give you a 30 day leave. Man, I didn’t know you loved me that much! But what I didn’t know was; I got the 30 day leave and went home and had a gay old time, was suppose to pick up my orders at Minneapolis, at the post office. I was sent to the receiving ship at Boston. I was put on as a Master at Arms at the British section. I had all British sailors. But I had a British Master at Arms with me, so we ran that show on that floor. And when you are assigned there on a receiving ship, that is just a stop between your next assignment. I had some experience watching how the British run their Navy. That was kind of fun to watch. These guys that went ashore and got tangled up with too much booze and girls, and whatever they got into. They would bring them up on a deck court martial, and I could sit there and watch them. Those guys would stand there at the deck court martial. The officer would read the charges and there was no guilty or not guilty. I’m innocence. Nothing like that. They would just tell those guys your taken down one rating. They would walk up and rip the rating off the sleeve.
DH: No questions?
DS: No questions.
DH: So, were you kind of impressed with the British?
DS: No, there is no doubt that the British are good seaman, and all that, they have made their mark on the world. So have we. We respect each other. The only problem with that was when I got Bermuda and every Saturday night was a fight with the British, because if there was a British Cruiser in, then the British sailors were on shore. Well you can bet your boots that there would be a real wing ding somewhere.
DH: Were there or was it National Pride, usually?
DS: We would call them Limey. We didn’t have much patience with them and we made it pretty apparent. Sooner or later it let to fists to cuffs. It was always like that. There wasn’t much to do on Bermuda; see, I got there early when the base was just being formed, and I got myself a girlfriend so I was pretty well set. Then the thundering herd came in and there wasn’t enough girls to go around. And I still had my girlfriend anyway. Life wasn’t to bad there. I had some friends there. Some people from Nova Scotia, well to do, they had property there. I met their daughter. It was their daughter. They had a very nice home on Bermuda. They invited me out to dinner a lot of time with my friend, along with my friend, the two of us guys. They treated us good. It was a real nice deal. We could go out there and have dinner and visit with the family, it was just like being part of the family, it was nice. We were lucky.
DH: The girlfriend that you had, did not become your wife, or is it?
DS: No, I left and she found somebody else. Fickle, you know how women are. I never heard of her again.
DH: Did you ever try to be in contact with her again?
DS: No, I found out. I forgot how it came back to me. I was out in the Pacific by then, and she had taken up with some other sailor after I left.
DH: Not British, though?
DS: No, he was American sailor, and the thing he didn’t do was tell her he was married. The next thing you knew she was in a family way and where it went from there I don’t know. It wasn’t very nice. I don’t think. I feel sorry for the sailor and go in like Bermuda, or any other foreign port like that, and you screw up that way, the ole man is going to be looking for you, you can bet on that. It affects his public relations. Boy, You are going to be right up front.
DH: So you got out of that trouble?
DS: Yeah.
DH: And so, when did you meet your wife? After the war?
DS: No, I have known her ever since I was 5 years old.
DH: But you didn’t get together until after the war?
DS: Yeah, I took her. She had two sisters, so I was originally going with one of the girls, and she got married. I wasn’t ready to get married. I didn’t want to get married. She got married. Then, I took out the youngest girl and she got married. I went back to the ship from leave. I came back right just before the end, at the end of war. We came back to get hammered out cause we got hit out there, and we had to be repaired in Bremerton, Washington, so I came home on leave. My mother and Dad and her folks were old buddies. They played cards together and that kind of stuff. My mother called her folks and told them to come on down and sit and visit. And Don Solman, bring Adeline with you. So she did. She came down with them. I said to her, she was sitting on my lap. Those brass buttons impressed her. I said, "what are you doing tomorrow night?". She said, "I am going out with you!" That took care of that. From there on, that was in the spring, and I was released from service in September 45, and we were married in October. Whirlwind romance.
DH: Sounds like it. I will probably get back to that a little bit later in the story. So when where you, back up quite a bit, you were in that part of a ship that was going to be shipping you somewhere else soon? When did you finally move on to somewhere else?
DS: That was in to a Boston receiving ship, and I was transferred to the Wasp within 30 days.
DH: Were you happy about that? Nervous?
DS: It didn’t bother me at all, walked up and man this thing is big compared to the sub chaser.
DH: You want to describe the Wasp a little bit? What was...?
DS: The Wasp was a 1,000 foot aircraft carrier. I was part of the base crew; about 2,500 men.
DH: So you are part of the base crew?
DS: Yes, the squadrons that came aboard were attached to the ship. They came and went. They would be on with us then we would relieve them and send in another squadron. But we stayed. We were the ship's crew.
DH: And where did your journey start? Was it in England?
DS: I got on board in Boston. We ran it down to Trinidad, for a shakedown, came back up, and we left Boston. Went to Norfolk for degaussing, that is the system of that they put on the ship so you do not attract magnetic mines. That is what they did up there in Chesapeake Bay.
DH: Was it a pretty big ordeal?
DS: No, it did not take long to do it. Just some equipment and stuff. We had a squadron with us when we left, and we went through the Panama Canal and up the West coast to San Diego and out to Hawaii, Pearl Harbor for a few days.
DH: What year was this when you were in Pearl Harbor?
DS: 44, I think.
DH: And when was the first time you saw combat? Or did you?
DS: 44.
DH: Was that shortly after Pearl Harbor? Or on the way?
DS: No Pearl Harbor, happened before; that happed in 41.
DH: I mean did you see action after Pearl Harbor?
DS: There was no action out in the Atlantic; just sub patrol. We left there and went to Pearl, and we had to take a cruise by Midway. For some reason they always send ships going out by Midway. You get a look at Midway on the way out.
Second disk:
We are continuing again. We left off at Pearl Harbor and you were going by the Midway.
DH: Do you want to describe what you saw at Midway?
DS: That was shortly after the battle at Midway where the American forces and the Japanese forces had a shoot out. The original Yorktown and one other first-line ships. The American’s got sunk there. But the Japanese lost 4 Aircraft Carriers in that meeting, and that was for all practical purposes, the end of the Japanese Navy. They had to have air support just like we did, and if you didn’t have air support you are in tough shape, and boy, your days are numbered. We went from Midway down to Palaugh first. The Plaugh is a group of islands there and there is one island in there callled Plaugh. They call them the Plaugh group. That was a fleet anchorage. That was southwest of the Philippines, so that was before the invasion there. We joined the fleet there. We had a total of about 8 or 10 big carriers. We needed them because the Japanese didn’t have carriers, but they had land based planes. We were right at their back door. So they would send their planes off the land bases, and we would send them off the carriers.
DH: At this point were you seeing a lot of combat yourself, or were you actually seeing fighting going on?
DS: Oh yeah, on our first runs out, we got in it real quick. We hadn’t gotton very far. I forget where the hell we were at. They were up around Guam somewhere. The way the Navy travels with the carrier group, there are 2 carriers, 2 light cruisers and about 15 destroyers in a pod. Those are 4 pods wide. You can see the other ships the top of their mast 20 miles away. So we were from end to the other end 80 miles. That is the amount of the sea we covered. The Japanese attacked from Guam the bases on Guam they had to be. The first time we got jumped, we got jumped by 8 dive bombers. You could see them way the hell up there, stacked up there like Hollywood style. We could see them, and of course, they could see us. Well, pretty soon they gave us the Hollywood stuff. Peel off like that. They made a mistake. You don’t do that when you attack a carrier because if you come out of the same hole, you are dead. You’ll never make it, your dead, you won’t make it anyway, your dead quicker, put it that way. We had the first 5 peel off and we went right up the line. We hit the first one and we took 5 airplanes just like that. Boom, boom, boom. Splashes behind us and the other 3 decided it wasn’t conclusive to longevity to take a crack at us. But I know one thing, there was never an airplane that attacked my ship or if it had we got them on the way in or the way out but they never lived to tell it. They never got back to the base.
DH: I imagine you got a little nervous though every time it happened. Especially the first time.
DS: The first 5 that jumped us it was right above my gun mount, and they were right above us. I got a recommendation on it, somewhere in my records. I don’t keep that stuff along. There was a recommendation and somehow they got pictures of me. They took movies on our attack, to see who was doing what I guess, and they must have had my gun mount back there. We were doing the right thing. You don’t think of doing, when you are in a spot like that, the fact that you might get killed was never in your head. I was never afraid and not that I am a particular brave person, but it never entered my mind that I could get killed. I knew I could get killed. I am not going to get killed. You never think of it.
DH: You just weren’t thinking about it.
DS: One of my gunners mates - we had to send him back to the states cause every time we went to take a crack at the Japanese; why he would break out from head to foot in like hives. Man, he suffered. It was nerves. So he was useless to us. Send him back. That was the only guy I ever seen that ever had a problem.
DH: And he was ok pretty much until he had to do it.
DS: Just as soon as you pulled up the anchor and went into combat, that was it. He would break out. We got rid of him, we had to. What the hell; what’s the sense, he is useless on a gun mount. You couldn’t trust him, you know, you have to rely on the other guy doing the right thing so you stay alive, too.
DH: Pretty heavily.
DS: So you know.
DH: Did you guys keep track of how many planes you shot down? Some guys actually competed with each other? Is that the case?
DS: Well the ship's planes in combat in the air, shot down 30 Japs. We shot down 16. So we didn’t do too bad either. They were attacking the ship and never made it, none of them ever made it back they died.
DH: This was just something you kind of did. You knew it was your job and you did it.
DS: Oh yeah, one of the last times I went into combat there was somebody; Japanese must have really Inspired that guy, cause he was flying a two engine, what we call a Betty, cause we identified them that way. There were Judy’s, there were Betty’s, there were Zero’s. And this was a Betty; a two engine plane. We were running with our pod, two carriers, two cruisers, and they spotted the guy coming up behind. He was only flying 50 ft over the water, and he flew right into the back of the formation. As he came up, the destroyers took a crack at him and none of them hit him. So my mount was right in front of the bridge, and I had a 40mm quad. I should have brought a shell in. It is a machine gun but the shells are about that long. Each clip holds, I think, holds 5 rounds, each barrel shoots 120 rounds a minute and we had 4 barrels so we could put 480 rounds in the air in a minutes time. My mount was right in front of the bridge, the bridge was right behind me, and two 5” twins in front of me. My mount sat right there, heavy machine gun, boy they are good, and they are powered there run by a hydraulic electric motor, hydraulic for training and of course for elevation. I could hear them. We are on gunnery control. I am listening to everybody and I could hear the guys talking from aft of me. They are coming up on the starboard side. You could hear them firing back there, trying to pick them off. So then I take them out and omp. There we are, sitting and waiting for them to come into sight. You know he is coming up from behind and here he comes, we are sitting there waiting for him and he gets up to where I wanted to commence firing. Just as soon as I started firing, he turned in toward us, with a torpedo run, he was going to get us, except I got him first.
The Skipper was taking evasive action too, at the same time. There was a light cruiser on our port bow, and were sitting here, and as that plane came up, there was going to be a torpedo run and we new it. He started turning and that plane followed around and he was going to hit us on the side. That is the place to hit us, and he came around too, and we were turning and he was still coming straight in. You weren’t really aware of what was happening but what happened then. The light cruiser that was on our port, right on our port bow, became broad on our starboard bow. Now they are playing us here and I am hammering away at them and all of a sudden, I see the whole left wing from the engine out, go thumb, through the air, and the plane flipped at the same time and I saw the torpedo go flying through the air. I thought geese. I thought of it afterwards, well, a couple of things must have happened, but I think the guy that was in the glass in the bombardier was sitting there with his hand on the release and when they lost the left wing and that thing went up, he must have grasped and closed the release on the torpedo switch, and up in the air it went and guess what? It hit the water and right into the screws on that cruiser, stopped him dead. Just about. There are four props on a cruiser, it picked off the back two. So he was still under way so he could get out, but he got him.
DH: But they lasted ok?
DS: They didn’t get hurt. I don’t know they might have lost some people on board. Killed from the torpedo. It went into the two stern screws and slowed them down.
DH: But it didn’t go into the carrier, for sure.
DS: No, it missed us where we were. That torpedo was out of control, man, you should have seen that thing fly through the air. It was a pretty good piece of machinery; 20 feet long. You know something like 15 to 20 feet long.
DH: I imagine people had to be a little nervous watching that torpedo fly through the air?
DS: I knew it wasn’t going to hit me, anyway.
DH: I guess, follow me through your journey some more, as you went through the Islands and then you said you went through Guam.
DS: Well, we went into Guam. We were at the invasion there and we were right off shore. We took the next two islands too, Saipan and Tinian are right behind. So we took them out, too. You were getting the taxes, it was a full time job, really. In those days, in the fleet, when you are battling those guys cause it went into the night, twilight light light look out. You could be cruising along and all of a sudden a big row of flares, and boy are they pretty. You had better look the other way, the got you silhouetted. Start firing the other way the planes are going to be coming on the other side.
DH: What kind of shifts did you have? Like did you have to stand guard for a couple of hours or were they 8 hour shifts?
DS: No shifts. You stayed there until the shooting was over with. They sent you up, what we call sea biscuits, you could throw them things through armor plate. And a cup of coffee. That is what you get to eat. Spam, I love it to this day.
DH: Really? What?
DS: That’s what you get, you get Spam between a roll. Good thing you had good teeth.
DH: That’s what they are serving this weekend at the Dedication Memorial, not the only thing, but, I thought that was funny.
DS: Yeah, we got Spam and that was it, but you stayed on usually you might get in combat during the day, a few times you did, yeah. But at night, the fun usually started and it would last till midnight or so. You could see the other fleet, the other pod, you could see the tracers going. They don’t see us over here, thank God, so they looked the other way, they are getting it, and then it will be our turn. Usually they would shut down about 12:00/1:00 at night, but then they used to put up like a drone like, but it wasn’t a drone. There was somebody flying the plane. He would fly around just to let you know, cause you would pick him up on radar. We knew he was there, but how many you don’t know, cause radar wasn’t that good. We knew they were there. They wouldn’t take a run. They would just be patrolling, watching, they were keeping track of you so when daylight came they wanted to know where you were so they could smack you again.
DH: How close did you get to the mainland Japan, or did you not go in that direction.
DS: 40 miles, that was close enough, and that was the last battle I got in up there, almost got killed.
DH: What was the battle?
DS: Well, what we were doing was bombing Hiroshima, and what was the other one, what was Yakahoma whatever it was? We were up there bombing factories because the way the Japanese have, they have their airplane factories and manufacturing guns and whatever. The factory would be here but they live all around that thing, the people, in bamboo huts. So when we attacked the factory, it also burned them out, they’d loose their homes, cause all the bombs that hit the factories, it would start fires all over, and those are nothing but bamboo and cloth and whatever. It was home to them, till they get burned out. We weren’t among their favorites, the aircraft carriers, they wanted to get us. But we got within 40 miles of them. When you get close like that you have to really stay on the ball because you can get killed quick. An airplane can come in awfully fast, there are not traveling at the speed of sound like they are today, but they are moving 400 miles an hour on attack, and catch up with you pretty quick. When you get in, like we were nearly gone, we were being jumped all the time there. Saipan, we went through Lady Gulf, invasion of the Philippines, Okinawa, amd we went down and attacked Vietnam. The installations they had down there for fuel oil, Japanese. We went down there and shot them up. I was there before my kids got there.
DH: Did you ever talk to the fighter pilots at all, and ask any of them? Did they ever talk about what they were bombing at night?
DS: We called them Airedales, and they stayed to themselves, and we stayed to ourselves. Airedales and ships crews are too different identifies, but we talked to some of them, yeah, they shot, like I said, their aircrews 30 planes confirmed killed, we had 16 so that wasn’t bad. We had shot up as much as they had. But they could, you can see, well. There is where the operation started. There in 44, the Morotai's, the Bonin's, the first battle of the Philippines, see, that is where we got tangled up with them; that is where we jumped with 8 dive bombers in one shot. We shot down 5 right away. Western Carolina Islands, Leyte Gulf.
DH: Are there any other memorable moments?
DS: Yes, the last one, I damm near got killed that time.
DH: Well, what happened in that scenario?
DS: Well, we were 40 miles off shore, off Japan, we were traveling under an overcast sky, of about 5/6 thousand feet, maybe. We had some shooting during the day, but it wasn’t, what we were doing was. The Japanese were trying to fly planes down to Okinawa. They were trying to bolster their forces down there, and our job was to stop those planes before they got there. I do not whose idea it was, on the ship, but I got orders, came down from gun control, shut down the mount, shut the hydraulics down, everybody stayed on their station but shut the hydraulics down. I looked at that overcast and I thought I am not shutting no hydraulics down because by the time somebody breaks through, by the time guys punches that button, it is going to take 4/5 seconds and your dead, you’ll never survive. So I just let the mount run, everybody else shut their mounts down. We are sitting there maybe 15/20 minutes, guns were loaded, everybody was sitting, guns were horizontal. Just like that, boy, here he comes right through the overcast, right straight at us, cause the bridge was right, the islands, were right behind me. The bridge that was what he was after. He was a Kamikaze. He was going to take us out. He didn’t get to damn far, cause all I had to do raise and commence fire, and I had him and he was dead. And he would have killed us all. But I do not know what happened, we had taken the plane apart almost, the 40mm, the 40mm hits you there isn’t going to be much left. There was an explosion up there. I don’t know what the hell caused it. He must have been carrying a bomb or could have been that or anything, gas tank, I do not know. Anyway there was an explosion and that plane flipped like that, and it went down right tight against the ship on the other side. It hit the deck elevator a little bit. If that explosion hadn’t happened he would have us. He was right on me and the bridge. That ship, if that had happened, it would have been the end of combat for that ship. That was close enough.
DH: Did anybody ever come up to you and thank you for not turning off the hydraulics?
DS: Nobody knew that. But I have the recommodations here. They said I placed the gun in automatic rapidly. The hell it was. It was sitting there in automatic. Everything was ready to go. I didn’t hear a word from the bridge except one officer came out, and I do not know it was, all he said to me was I was looking the other way and one of the gun crew punched me on the back. I turned around and he was standing on the wing of the bridge. All he said was no shooting, gunner. Ya, know we are lucky. I got a bronze star out of that. The war was over before it could be awarded to me. They wrote me from Minneapolis, and told me to come on down and they would make a proper presentation, but I was tired of the Navy by that time and I didn’t go. I said send it up and they did. I don’t have all the battle ribbons I had, but those stars are battles. Naval battles. And one of them is a silver one, that one there, that counts for five battles, five naval battles, so right there the is 5,6,7,8,9. Here is a V for valor on the Bronze star. I don’t have the victory. I have to get these things up to date, because I don’t have a victory medal for the war. I forgot where that one is from. This is off my cap. But, I wish I had gone down now, because the kids would have a photograph.
DH: I’ll show these people, if that is all right? Oh, when you were at Pearl Harbor, was Pearl Harbor fully repaired or was there still a lot of damage?
DS: It had been repaired, what the heck was it, I think we tied up at Ford Island, yeah we did. There was a WAVE barracks right next to us, right next to where we were tied up on the dock. We were tied up here and there’s the barracks and it was two or three stories high. Whoooo what we did! We, eh, couple of the other Gunner Mates and myself went up, we knew when there is a WAVE barracks and right in the middle is where the showers are. It was warm and there were things ventilating so we had to ventilate the building by opening the windows. They opened the windows from the top down so you could not see in. So we went up on our gunnery station, up on top, and we had a scope with a lens about like that. Shhhhh my she has a mole on her shoulder! We never let it get out. The Old Man would have said something anyway. We had some fun there, what the hell.
DH: Some guys that were there did some surfing, did you ever?
DS: What?
DH: Surfing?
DS: Out on Waikki Beach was not much of anything. The Royal Hawaiian was there and the beach was there. Very little else. There was a couple of souvenir shops. The street had been laid out, you know for expansion, double lanes and big grassy middle strip. We went down to the beach and had a couple of snorts. We went over to one of the souvenir shops. Have you seen these little things that you can buy as they are shrunken heads, made out of rubber? You could buy them there, and they were the real McCoy.
DH: A lot of vets have certain souvenirs, that they keep. I mean lucky charms. Did you have any of these?
DS: No I didn’t have any lucky charms.
DH: Things like that you couldn’t get rid of, like you wouldn’t clean your socks or anything like that?
DS: No, I didn’t sleep down below a much, because I didn’t get caught in a Torpedo hit. I slept up over the flag deck. I could roll over in my bunk and it was 40 feet to the water. We used to buy a brand new set of dungarees, and they were awful stiff and stuff to wear. We would take and tie a line on them and drag them in the ship’s wake from up on the overhang. Let that flop in the water and drag it for 3 or 4 hours and when you brought them back up they were nice and soft. Beside that you looked salty in them, a little worn.
DH: You shot down several Japanese planes. Were any of these guys alive? Did you ever take them on board as POW’s? Anything like that?
DS: They transferred a prisoner. Somebody got a Jap shot down in our squad. He had survived the crash. I do not know if it was a single plane, single pilot, an observer, or just a pilot. Anyway, they sent the captain's boat over to pick the guy up and brought him back to the destroyer. Then they brought him over to us cause the destroyer had no detention facilities. They pulled up behind us and we shot a line over to them. I guess that Japanese thought we were going to drag him between the ships. You know, we put him in the breaches boy and then brought him across. He only knew one word in English. We took him out of the breaches boy when we got it on the stern of the carrier, he looked at the Old Man, and said "Son Of A Bitch"; he said that was the only word he knew. He knew that. It was quite a ride over I would guess. I wouldn’t, from the bow on that destroyer up to the stern of the carrier.
DH: How far of a distance was it from the Destroyer to the Carrier was it?
DS: You are running a couple hundred feet. Being you are out over the open water. It is impressive. If someone slowed down on the throttle you are going to get dragged.
DH: When the battle of Midway took place, I am sure you heard of it before you got there.
DS: Yes.
DH: Was it a pretty exciting day for you?
DS: No.
DH: You had to be pretty happy about the news?
DS: We were glad of it. We kicked their pants and that was fine.
DH: And was there a celebration party that day in the Navy?
DS: No, we never celebrated anything like that. Somebody got killed, either a Japanese family was sort of a son or...
DH: Or vice versa. On the day we dropped the bombs did you hear about it before the surrender or after?
DS: No, I was back in the states by then, cause we got hit.
DH: So they did get hit eventually then.
DS: Yeah, we had a plane came in from the stern and dropped a 500 pound bomb. He hit us midship. He killed about 120 guys, burned about 200. Flash below deck.
DH: You knew a lot of those guys I bet?
DS: A lot of them died on the way back. We buried, well it took us 3 days to bury 120 guys at sea. The only thing the parents get out of that is we give them the coordinates where he was buried at sea. That doesn’t mean much here as it is out in the middle of the ocean. The only ones at your funeral, if it’s you, is your shipmates, standing there. It is a pretty short funeral because it is a production. You sew the guy up in a body bag and you put a 5” shell at his feet, so you sink. Your funeral is just about 10 seconds long. They lift you up on the rig. The pastor says a few words and swish, your gone.
DH: Pretty emotional 3 days, I imagine?
DS: Well, I am sorry (crying).
DH: Do you want to move on to something else?
DS: Well we didn’t bring anybody back, there was no room to take any causalities back, you couldn’t bring them back. They were taken off the ship, the hospital ships so they were burned. The guys that were killed were buried within the next 3 days, or so. But you had guys down in the sick bay and burned pretty bad and they knew they weren’t going to live. We would bury them at sea, like that. We never brought any back. We buried the last guy at sea coming in, one day out of Seattle. I don’t know if you guys seen that, but that is the Wasp, the next one is the Yorktown, and I think the next one is the Hornet. This is the Lexington here. This was taken, I think, in Ulithi, yeah. What those were are the big lagoons that were formed in the South Sea Islands. They were volcanoes. This is the top of the volcano, that was where the anchorage was, yeah, this rim out there, it was part of a reef, so they would come in and blow a hole through the reef and then they would bring the fleet in and anchor them in here. That was the only way they were secure.
DH: Safe from any other ships?
DS: Subs. Once and a while, they would pull something unexpected, we were anchored like this. I do not know where the hell that plane came from, but it must have been the Philippines. That guy came in on one side, there, he flew right over the carrier sitting in a row like that, and plunk in the water right on the other side, he didn’t drop a bomb or didn’t do a damn thing, but he sure made us pay attention.
DH: I just can’t imagine going through what you guys have gone through.
DS: Well, it’s, my gun mount was right up behind there, with the two ones right up there, 5 inch twins, and my gun mount was right behind it. It was the quad. There were two 40mm quads back here, and one up under the bow there and one under the flight deck here, and one on the stern. These are 20mm mounts here. When I first went on the ship I was a Second Class Gunner, and I had charge of the 20mm batteries, which were smaller guns but they are still a hell of a big machine gun. The shoot a shell about that long.
DH: Did it take awhile to get used to shooting something so horrible?
DS: No,the 40mm you are standing on top of that; it’s a platform, and you have four barrels man you can really. That is what I call my Chicago piano. There is where she got punched, and blew the galley out. I wasn’t mad at those guys. I never said for all the bum chow you made me, you got what you deserved or anything like that. Here are all the enlisted men on board. See planes were shot down by the squadron there, and here is the squadron here. Nobody ever made a run on us that we didn’t get them on the way in or the way out. They never lived to tell about it.
DH: And so after the incident on the way home was it kind of a relief to come back to the United States or was it pretty sad?
DS: No. We were glad to get home. Guys got killed, but they were from all over hell. They were from all over the United States. When you got in, you were not allowed to say anything or what ship you were from. It used to be in the Navy, in the peacetime, you had the name of your ship on your hatband, enlisted men. Well, before we even got in the war, they took those hatbands off and you got the US Navy, that was it, for enlisted men. You weren’t allowed, and you kept your mouth shut. I don’t know how you are suppose to keep anything quite like that when you come in to Seattle, Bremerton. You come into the straights there and into Bremerton and that baby when it is dry dock is nothing small. It is a good size ship. It is 60 feet from the the keel to the flight deck. It is a pretty good size ship; 28,000 tons, and they are small by today’s standard.
DH: Still very large.
DS: Yeah, they are huge. They are 1,000 footers. But they, those days when they were flying fighters, when you were launching fighters, they went on the harder up. The guys that were flying torpedoes bombers and dive bombers that were carrying heavy loads of bombs, they would go to the end of the flight deck and they would disappear. You couldn’t see them for a minute. What they do? You would see them come out and they would line up on the side. And they are about level with the fight deck and they are slowly gaining altitude but they get over on the side, because if something goes sourer, that ship is going to run over them. They don’t want to do that. So they get over to the side to form a line and slowly climb up. But the fighters were quick.
DH: I actually have seen quite a few video clips of the bombers going off and they just disappear.
DS: Yeah, they just come off, you don’t see them. Swish, they are gone.
DH: Was that kind of weird the first time you seen it?
DS: Yeah, well you kind of expected it.
DH: Because you heard about it.
DS: You watch the other ships by you and if they launched, you could see what was happening.
DH: Then how long was it before you went from Seattle back to Duluth?
DS: I went on the first bunch, I think. We were sent back, when we got into Seattle, they let one half of the crew go because they put the ship in dry dock and started welding it back together again. That bomb explosion was pretty tough. Down below deck it blows the hell out of things and the flash that goes through, you get burned. Fried. Some of the guys that died were stuck right to the bulkhead, like in a vertical frying pan. Anyway, I came back here and then I went back to the ship and the second bunch went and then we pulled out of there and went down to San Francisco to get our planes, squadrons. I was transferred off there. Another guy and myself were transferred off because there were two many chiefs. We only rated 3 and there were 5 of us. We were the two youngest. The other guys had time on us and rank. They had the choice, they could either leave or go. They went back off because in those days they were talking about invading Japan. Nobody wanted to be part of a new crew going out. They wanted to be on the carrier. Guaranteed to get off shore anyway.
DH: Were you very scared, not scared, people were definitely ready to invade Japan, that was the thought then?
DS: No, we figured the next stop was Japan, and nobody wanted that one. I read a lot of professors that said, you know, we should never have done it. The hell we should never have done it. We should have dropped it. Why should we want to kill our guys? They started the war, we didn’t. That would have been a hell of an invasion. That would be tough, if you thought we had causalities up to that point, and you have not seen anything yet. I was on the east coast when they dropped those two bombs. Then I got transferred back and I got transferred off the ship in San Francisco, and I got to Treasure Island that was the receiving ship there. I checked in, and the guy said; "chief do you have any time coming", and I said "yeah, I have 15 days, only one half of 30." You are suppose to have 30 days a year. He said you be here in the morning, your going home, so I did. I went home for another 15 days and then I picked up my orders, again at Minneapolis. And when I got that order, I looked at it and it showed my next station would be at a shore station in Chesapeake, and I thought I went from the frying pan to the fire. From a Carrier, now we are talking about an invasion, and I thought where I was assigned to was a bunch of landing craft and teaching stations. How to run that stuff, how to run invasions. I thought; "here I go again." But when I got there, I found out it was a Naval Training Station and I would be pushing boots. So that worked pretty good.
DH: At this point, had Hitler already committed suicide and was the war in Europe done at this point already?
DS: Yeah, pretty much. It was right at the end of the war.
DH: Did you feel a big sigh of relief when that was done, too?
DS: Yes, you bet. We had gotten into Bremerton, like I said, and they put us up in dry dock and started welding things back together again. The hanger deck on that ship, a bomb went off below the hanger deck. It went through the flight deck, through the hanger deck which is an armored deck. I think 3 inch steel. It went through that thing and went part way through the deck below it when it exploded. Just like a firecracker in a tomato can. You know how the can bulges up. Well, that hanger deck had a bulge in it. I don’t know how the hell they ever got that out of there, but boy, they did. They got it back down. I went on leave and then the next bunch went on leave and left there and went to Frisco and picked up our squadron, and then I was transferred off with another guy. I think the other guy was a Chief Bosun, and him and I were transferred off. When I got into the receiving ship at Treasure Island they asked if I had any time coming. I said, "15 days leave, yet." They told me to be there in the morning to pick up my leave papers. I went home, spent two weeks, picked up next assignment at the post office in Minneapolis again. Then I though it was for a training station in Chesapeake Bay and I thought, "boy, from the frying pan into the fire," like I said. I went off a nice clean aircraft carrier and now you are going to end up in landing craft. I thought, "oh boy." But when I got there, I was put into a boot pusher.
Like Great Lakes, Illinois, or one of those training stations. They wanted me to go out to San Diego. They wanted me to go out there, and they wanted me to reenlist. I said I would reenlist if you give me Great Lakes. They wouldn’t give me Great Lakes, and I said "I have a little Ford sitting out here in the street, give me my papers and I am on my way." So I drove 1,300 miles from the East Coast to here without stopping. Just for gas. I was glad to get out. They wanted me to come back down here in the Reserve and teach gunnery, but I would go down there and get around that Navy bologna and I would just walk out. It was all right when I was in the service, but in the peace time, I didn’t want to be in the Reserve again. I might have got jerked in again when Korea came along.
That was another concern too, that there would be another action someplace and I might get another free ride out and this time it would be worse. I just didn’t want to sign up again. I went down here to the base for two-thirds at a time. I had enough experience shooting airplanes down. I instructed at it for quite awhile. I instructed when I was in Bermuda, and not only American sailors, but British and we also instructed the French. They had an interpreter and taught them how to take a 20mm apart, how to trouble shoot if something wasn’t working right, and stuff like that. And of course to lead because they would throw targets for us and we would hammer away at the target. Then they would drop that target, and at the end of the session, we had a small rowboat and we would go out and pick up the target up and bring it in and see how many hits we made.
DH: Did it come out pretty good usually?
DS: Oh yeah, we cut the cable a lot of times. In shooting a heavy machine gun like that, you are not shooting through a ring site you know and playing that cross out in front of the plane. They were more sophisticated than that cause we had a mark 25/27 sight, or something like that. It was a box about that wide that sat right on top of the mount, like on the 20mm, or right in front of the director operator and the cross hairs in it. All he had to do was put that cross series on the target and there was a gyro in it. The faster you moved your cross hairs the more lead, it put you out. It automatically had a cathode feed lead, and what you had to have was a guy that was good at estimating distance, so if you knew there was 500 yards to the target, he would set that on the side and that would dial that site in and you would hit him. So we were on the receiving end of it. The attack was always coming at us, so you didn’t have much to do about lead. You didn’t have to worry about it. He was shooting at you and all you had to do was shoot back. You shoot quicker than he does. That is what you do. Beat him to the punch.
DH: Once again, back to VJ day happened, it had to be somewhat of a relief to know it was over?
DS: Yeah, there was a lot of happiness. We were at a training on the east coast when it happened. When the war ended, we were all relieved, everybody was happy. Nobody, I can’t remember going out and getting tanked up or anything. The war was over. Thank God. How soon can I get out of here? I wanted to get home. I must have I drove 1,300 miles.
DH: Before you took that 1,300 mile drive, you met your wife prior to that?
DS: Wife and I? Yeah, we were going together then.
DH: But you weren’t married yet then?
DS: No. No we got married right, within 30 days of when I got her. She made damn sure I didn’t get too far. Yeah, we have been married 62 years now. A long time to put up with one women I tell you. I do not regret any of it. We have had a very fine marriage. We always, I can’t think, some marriages where they fight back and forth. We have never had any fights, we have some discussions but nothing that really got hot. Like nobody goes to bed and don’t speak to each other for the next week. We don’t do that, not in my family we don’t. You open your mouth. You give the other one a piece of your mind at that was it. Now what is the next discussion.
DH: Shortly after everyone returned, the Paducah group, the group that meets in West Duluth, right now. Were you part of that group, right away?
DS: I got out pretty quick. My shipmate and I, we were. He was with the destroyer out there, and he was part of our destroyer screen at times. He got back here pretty fast because he was my best man. One of my best man I had three guys stand up for me.
DH: And who was your best man?
DS: A fellow by the name of Bill Robinson, and he was with the 125th.
DH: Yeah, I run across his name a lot.
DS: He was my best man. Bob Rasmussen was the second in command on that, and my brother-in-law, Bill Krause, he was with the 125th, too. He was married to my wife’s sister, and I went with her before he did.
DH: The group that gets together in West Duluth, have you been a long term member of them?
DS: Oh yeah.
DH: Since they started, pretty much?
DS: Yeah, I miss it now in the winter time. I am sitting down there in Florida. So I don’t make them. Steve is always on my cell phone telling me if I am in town, don’t forget our meeting. I can be sitting in Florida and punch it in, and this is Steve again.
DH: Why do you think groups like the Pudacah group and the YP61 groups get together, like after the war what make people want to hang out?
DS: We had our own friends within that group that we hung out with. We had a gang of guys that some were in the 125th, and some were with the Reserve and then there was one guy that joined the Coast Guard when we left. He was the youngest one. All of those guys are dead, and there are only two of us left now. Wes Harkins and myself. The only ones out of that gang. Wes was a yeoman. He spent. His war was spent up at Dartmouth or one of those. He got himself a college education. He could get himself into a deal like that it was pretty nice. He didn’t have to. He didn’t get into the war until the invasion of Okinawa, and I do not know if he came out on a supply ship? Most of the shooting had been over with by then. It was pretty quiet. Life was pretty easy. Chief was the best rank or rate in the Navy. You have the world by the tail and nobody questioning you. You get to run your own gun crews and that is it.
DH: Were you pretty proud of that rank?
DS: Oh yeah, there weren’t too many Chiefs at that age. I was 24 years old. I had to be one of the youngest in the Navy. I got that for shooting first. I got a couple here you can have. Here is a picture of the ship coming into some heavy weather out, it was coming home from, I wasn’t on the Border then, I was off the ship, they ran into heavy weather off England bringing back soldiers from overseas. Boy, that whole bow end was supported by that structural frame. I must have given them to you, maybe. There is the crew, a bunch of guys that left. This is a, this is for a Bronze Star. This was Commander Huff; he was a gunnery officer on the ship.
DH: Before I say anything else, I once again want to thank you for what you have done and you obviously have had a quite a stunning service.
DS: Well it leaves it mark on you. It was a five year run. My dad was right. I do not know how he got so smart as he was only a bus driver?
