Neale S. Kapuscinski
Era: World War II
Military Branch: Navy
Neale S. Kapuscinski was called to active duty from the Naval Reserve on November 3, 1940, in Duluth, Minnesota.
He was a Boatswain's Mate 1st Class.
In his words: "First assigned to the Reserve training ship USS Paducah , a patrol gunboat...remaining on her for a brief period to North Atlantic submarine patrol duty and also as an escort vessel in New York harbor. Next, Paducah was assigned to train Armed Guard gun crews to man the guns on Merchant vessels....My next assignment was with the permanent Shore Patrol at Norfolk, Virginia. Eight months later I was transferred to a destroyer base in San Diego, California for further transfer to the Pacific fleet. I was sent to Pearl Harbor as assistant chief master-at-arms, Headquarters Squadron, Fleet Air Wing II, Kaneohe Bay, Oahu.
"After 10 months I was returned to the mainland for training in rescue-salvage operations in the Pacific Theater. I was then assigned to USS Snatch (ARS 27), a 214-foot seagoing tug outfitted with the latest nautical and rescue-salvage equipment and carrying 10 deep-sea divers with a crew of 100 men and 7 officers. She was designed to refloat grounded vessels and to raise sunken vessels. We refloated grounded vessels in the Marshalls and the Mariannas groups and raised sunken vessels in the Philippine harbors of Manila, Leyte and Ceybu, towed them out to sea and scuttled them. This was to clear the harbors for fleet vessels and future shipping.
"While tied up to a burned-out wharf in Ceybu, we recovered an intact Japanese two-man sub that had been scuttled and was buried in the silt beneath our ship. When the discharged point system was inaugurated after the Japanese surrender, having the most points of anyone aboard, I was the first person to be transferred back to the United States for discharge. And this aboard a Liberty ship as a first-class passenger."
He was honorably discharged on October 13, 1945 at Minneapolis, Minn.
Source: Hometown Heroes: The St. Louis County World War II Project. 140.
