Leon T. Gagne
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Marines
Leon T. Gagne of Duluth, Minnesota, enlisted in the Marine Corps on June 3, 1940. He was a Sergeant, crewman and gunnery captain, 5-inch 155 m.m. field artillery in the 6th Defense Battalion, Pacific Theater.
He was shipped to Midway Island, September of 1941. Three months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, and three Japanese ships approached Midway Island that same night. "We signaled these ships to identify themselves. Instead, they fired upon us. We immediately returned fire, causing them to retreat back out to sea but not before their ships became badly damaged.
A few hours after this attack I had my knee operated on...was given a sedative and kept in sick bay. During the night the sirens sounded. I was alone in sick bay, everyone was running to their positions and cover. I left sick bay, found my rifle and headed for the beach. I found cover under a shed where I passed out from the sedatives. Next day I woke up to someone calling my name. It turned out to be a false alarm the night before...."
"For the next six months Midway was on the alert....We had shortages of food as well as other things. PBY planes were able to get our emergency supplies to us. After the Japanese took the islands of Wake and Guam, we were told to get rid of all our letters and pictures so the enemy could not use them in the event our island was captured also.
"We were told the Japanese would be attacking our island on the morning of June 4, 1942....From what we understood later, there were about 60,000 enemy troops attempting to take over Midway. We had a little over 2,000 Americans stationed there. I heard President Roosevelt say on the shortwave radio that he didn't expect Midway to hold out.
"On the morning of June 4 we could see Japanese carrier planes approaching our island. The sky was very clear. The first to attack us were the medium bombers, then came the dive bombers. The last to come were the fighter planes which did their dog-fighting over the island. A lot of our installations were knocked out during the bombing raids.
"We stayed in trenches and L-shaped foxholes for cover during the dog fights. The Japanese planes were strafing us so closely overhead we could see the enemy pilots' teeth....I was clutching my Rosary so tightly it broke into three pieces. On several occasions when they (Japanese pilots) left carriers to come in to strafe us, our own fliers went out over the Jap fliers and concentrated their attack on the carriers. With the carriers sent to the bottom, the Japs who strafed us dropped into the sea like so many lost ducks when they found that they had no base to return to."
He served outside the continental U.S. from July 15, 1941, to April of 1943, and from September of 1943, to March of 1945.
He was honorably discharged October 18, 1945 Marine Barracks, Great Lakes, Ill.
Source: Hometown Heroes: The St. Louis County World War II Project. 85.
