THEY REMEMBER WAR   « Table of Contents

Robert (Bob) Petzold and his wife LaVerne are founding members of Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. They have three children (including a son, Robert John, now deceased) and three grandchildren. Their oldest daughter Laura s an antique dealer in Milwaukee, WI. Their youngest daughter Mary retired from Fortis Assurance Company. Bob Petzold is a retired Service Officer from the Disabled American Veterans organization and a combat veteran of the Korean War. He served in the U. S Army from February 2, 1952, to November 3, 1953. On February 22 and April 3, 2010, in Oak Hammock's Meditation Room, Bob related details of his experience in Korea. On March 27, 2010, Bob recalled his work on a PTDS project while with Disabled American Veterans.

I finished high school and went into a carpenter trade. Then I was drafted. I was first generation German-American, knew German, studied it in high school. I figured the Army would send me to Germany. But they sent me to Korea. We were told we were being sent to Korea to fight communism. I really didn't know what communism was. What does a communist look like? I think their main purpose was to fill the ranks in Korea with warm bodies.

The Korean War was really two types of wars. The war started on June 25, 1950, when the North Korean Peoples Army (NCPA) aggressively crossed the 38th Parallel into South Korea. Two days later, Truman mobilized U. S. troops to assist South Korea with what he called a “Police Action.” We entered the war under United Nations Command (UNC). The North Koreans pushed the Americans and South Koreans back to the Pusan Perimeter. In September 1950, General MacArthur sent troops into Inchon and split the North Korean Army. UN forces were able to break out of Pusan. They eventually drove the North Koreans out of South Korea and advanced all the way through North Korea up to the Yalu River. In November 1950 the Chinese entered the war on the side of North Korea. That started the second war in Korea. The Communist forces had Russian supplies, including MIG planes, and they overran many UN positions. UN forces had to strategically withdraw back to an area around the 38th Parallel. For the rest of the war there were attacks and counterattacks by both sides. Neither side gained much ground. A lot of shelling, trench warfare, hand-to-hand combat! Lines kept changing. The war ended with an armistice in late July 1953.

I got to Korea in August of ’52, arrived at Pusan, rode a train to our replacement depot near the 38th parallel. I was assigned to the 4th Squad of Easy Company, 1st Battalion, 17th Regiment of the 7th Division. The 4th Squad is the Company’s Weapons Squad, in my case the light machine gun squad. Our unit was stationed on the MLR [Main Line of Resistance]. It was a long trench, about 65 miles long, and stretched across the country. No Man’s Land and the 38th Parallel were north the MLR. We had the high ground south of the 38th Parallel.

Across the valley from us was Old Baldy about 1,250 feet high—towered over everybody. It was bald on top from all the shelling it got. We called Old Baldy “Papa San.” Northeast of us were a bunch of hills that both sides fought like hell for. Places like Porkshop Hill, T-Bone Hill, Alligator Jaw, Jane Russell Hill, and others. The enemy'd set up on a hill. We'd attack and take it. Then they'd attack and take it. We'd run up and take it back. Back and forth, back and forth. Many casualties: total American dead and wounded around 150,000!

“Baptism” by Fire

Starting in October of ’52 our unit moved around for 14 days. We were trying to confuse the enemy. On the 15th day we got extra ammo and grenades. We were told we were jumping off to take Jane Russell Hill. Jane Russell was in an area called the White Horse Triangle. That hill had breasts like Jane Russell in the Outlaw movie (Laughs.) We climbed up Jane Russell shooting and screaming, trying like mad to scare the enemy. Lieutenant Fernandez and I were first to reach the crest of the hill. I just happened to be one of the first up there. Heard shots, thought they were coming from our men. Saw a Chinese grenade, knew we were being counter-attacked—all hell broke loose—grenades coming toward me—I dove to the side—lay on the ground—no trees, no cover—made myself small as I could—took two grenades off my belt, hurled ’em over the crest of the hill. That was my “baptism” to combat. Lt. Fernandez threw his grenades over the crest. The others kept pitching grenades to Fernandez and me with the pins in-tacked. I must’ve thrown 15 to 20 over that crest. This went on for over a half hour. All of a sudden the firing stopped.  

Captain down at the bottom of the hill yelled, “Take the forward slope, men!” Lt. Fernandez yelled back, “Fuck you! There’s Chinks over there!” We finally took the ridge line and prepared to dig in for a counterattack. Shale was slippery, hard to dig your boots in it. Took my shovel, dug a hole in the shale. About three inches down I saw a finger, about 1 ½ inches. Picked it up, threw it down the hill and kept digging. We beat off another counter-attack. Held the hill through the night! In the morning we turned it over to ROKs [Republic of Korea troops].

The Chinese had 57 mm recoilless rifles. They’d shoot at us from caves. Unless you could put fire right in the cave, you couldn’t hit ’em. We’d see ’em digging holes in No Man’s Land. They had so many men. Sometimes the fighting was hand-to-hand. My division was called the “Bayonet Division.” I didn’t have to use my bayonet, but some of my friends had killed with bayonets.

In early December ’52, we were taken off the line and sent to Koji-do to guard North Korean prisoners. It’s an island off Korea. This was supposed to be our R & R [Rest & Relaxation]. Three of us were assigned to guard 30 North Korean prisoners. We each had an M1 with a clip of eight rounds. My friend Domenic Colameta had news pictures of GI’s captured by North Koreans in 1950. The GI’s had their hands tied behind their backs, left to freeze out there. Domenic said, “I’m gonna get one of those SOB’s.” One day crates of food came in. We ordered prisoners to unload the crates. During the unloading one prisoner lunged at Domenic (I had the feeling the guy slipped). Domenic shot him. We yelled “Anjo” (sp?) at the other prisoners; it means “lie down.”

After that, guys from CID [Criminal Investigation Division] took Domenic in a room and questioned him. Domenic said he was lunged at. Then they took Andrew Thomas in a room and read him Domenic’s statement. Thomas supported Domenic’s story. Then they called Petzold into a room. I said, “Yes, the guy lunged at Domenic.” The guy was dead; I couldn’t bring him back. Sometimes we’d harass prisoners to keep ’em on edge. After the man was shot, Domenic, Thomas, and I weren’t allowed back in the prison. If we’d gone in there, the prisoners probably would’ve jumped us. Three days later we were invited to the Officers’ Mess for a steak dinner. I hadn’t had a steak in a long time. Man, it tasted good!

Chinese and North Koreans were kept in different prisons. The North Koreans I knew were nice. They didn’t want to be in the war. They preferred surrender over fighting. We didn’t feed them American food. Fed them food they were used to, like squid, squid juice and rice.

In January ’53 we went back on line. We got a new CO, Lieutenant Warren Webster III. Rumor had it he wanted to make points with the top brass. Many guys wanted the CIB [Combat Infantryman Badge]. Those who personally fought in active ground combat while an assigned member of an infantry unit are eligible for the CIB. In the latter part of the war, a lot of the action was taking prisoners. Webster decided to take a night patrol and go to the foot of T-Bone Hill and grab a prisoner. He ordered us to start firing our weapons to flush out Joe Chink. Well, we all know every fifth round in a machine gun belt is a tracer. Joe knew this too and could zero in on the flash. In came Joe’s mortars. We got to the foot of T-Bone; we took so much fire we scattered to the three winds. Several of our guys were wounded, but we made it back to our post. Next morning we found out one man was missing. Not sure, but I think his name was Rodriguez. After that, Webster set up a buddy system. You had to know where your buddy was at all times.

On the line we operated in hooches. A hooch had four men. At night one guy manned a gun bunker; the other guys slept in the sleeping bunker few yards behind and to the left of the gun bunker. We had a 30 caliber water-cooled machine gun and a smaller 30 caliber air-cooled machine gun. The bunkers were covered with timber; on top of the timber were sandbags. We had four cots in the sleep bunker. Each cot had metal stakes and comm [communications] wire over the stakes. You felt the wire when you were lying on it. Whatever you did in the day, you were exhausted at night, fell asleep easily. It was really cold. I slept in a sleeping bag with everything on but my steel pot and boots. We had a pot-bellied stove with a tube to a 5-gallon can of fuel.

February 17, 1953, was my father’s birthday. About 2 a. m., I woke up really hot. Looked up and saw flames dancing down at me from the bunker’s log ceiling. Unzipped myself, jumped up yelling, “Fire!” I pulled one guy off the top bunk and grabbed another guy off the lower bunk. We rushed outside and yelled to the gun bunker guy and we all cleared out. The fire was blazing hot. We were lucky to get out in time because Joe Chinese started shelling us. Our ammo started to explode. We lost everything we had in those bunkers.                    

Webster’s “Super Patrol”

On February 19, 1953, Lt. Webster asked for five volunteers to go with him on a “super patrol.” The objective was to go to the foot of Old Baldy, grab a Chinese and bring him back. Domenic Colameta, Jim Bierman, and two other guys volunteered. I volunteered too, but Webster ordered me to lead another patrol. My group was to go to a spot among three trees on the valley floor. We were to meet Webster’s patrol by a tree that had a plowed island around the base. At 4:30 p. m. Webster’s patrol started crawling toward Old Baldy. We waited behind the line for Webster’s signal. At 7:30 he called; eighteen of us started out. I was carrying a radio, carbine rifle, and a 45 pistol into No Man’s Land. I thought, “How cold it is! I’ll be glad when this night is over.” The temperature plunged to zero that night.  

My point man found the meeting spot—in the middle of a rice paddy. When we got there, I started placing my men to cover the area with crossfire if needed. I placed three men. I was going back for the fourth man when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Then I felt the most searing pain I’ve ever felt in my life—I was hit in the base of the spine, couldn’t move, shell-shocked. You don’t yell out “Medic” because he’s the one the Chinese want to hit. I called “Hack”! Hack took the radio off me. He cut open my pants, gave me a shot of morphine. I felt immediate relief, like I was floating five feet off the ground—felt no pain but I felt fear. I realized we were under attack. I couldn’t move, couldn’t do anything but bark commands.

Webster’s patrol came toward us. That gave us 24 men against about 100 Chinese. Webster and his guys got killed. I’m not sure what killed them. Chinese kept picking at the rest of us. Radio was damaged, had no way to get help but flares! I told my rifleman to shoot four flares: for tactical assistance, medical assistance, artillery assistance—can’t recall the fourth one. Now we’re bathed in light. Didn’t want to be hit by our artillery, but we needed help—we’re being fired at—they’re throwing grenades at us. You couldn’t see the grenades; you just heard when one hit the ground—you waited for the explosion and your body to take another piece of hot metal. I caught shrapnel in my legs, spine, shoulder; it hit my shoulder and tore off my helmet and a piece went into my skull—that’s how I lost a lot of hearing—I picked the shrapnel piece out of my head the night before my wedding.

Rest of the night more and more grenades went off around us. One of my biggest fears was being buried as waste in a rice paddy; the fields were fertilized with human manure. I was engaged to LaVerne at the time. I thought about her and my parents, wanted to go home. I could do nothing but bury my head in the stinking rice paddy and pray. I prayed: “God, if you pull me out of this, just tell me what to do and I’ll do it.” I prayed the “Our Father,” kept praying it over and over—I kept passing in and out from the morphine.

One time I woke up, saw a group coming towards us. They weren’t quiet—I knew it was our guys. Chinese wore soft shoes; they could step on a twig and not be heard. I said a special prayer, “Thank you, God, for taking me out of here!” Lt. Richard Whitson and his men had to fight their way into our perimeter. Once inside they secured the area. This must have been 12:30 a. m.—all of a sudden they were gone. They didn’t have enough litters to carry four of us back. Thought I’d had it; I was gonna die in this stinking rice paddy. I said goodbye to LaVerne, my Mother and Dad and prepared to die.

A senior medic from Whitson's patrol stayed and took care of the four of us. He was a sergeant from Headquarters Company and didn't have to be on that patrol but he was. He took care of us the best he could. He caught a lot of shrapnel from Chinese grenades and was hurt bad. He got the Silver Star for that. I wish I could remember his name.* He's now deceased.

Playing “Possum”

Sometime during the night I noticed the enemy jabbing at some of us, leaving others alone. I played the most “possum” I’d ever played in my life; put my 45 to my head and waited. No Chink was going to take me prisoner. I heard how they tortured our men. One of their favorite tricks was to hit you in the temple. They came within about three feet, then left. They thought we were dead. If they’d come any closer, I would have pulled the trigger.

Actually, Lt. Whitson moved off a ways with his patrol and radioed for further assistance. Lt. Jack Sullivan came with a patrol and additional litters, and Sullivan's patrol and Whitson's group came under fire and they had to break through to us. They arrived about 4:00 a. m.  I was never so happy when I heard their crunching boots. They put me on a canvas litter; I’m cursing ’em, yelling “Ouch—don’t bump me, damn it!” We got to the foot of a hill and I saw a personnel carrier with a white star and I knew I was finally safe. I had been in the process of becoming a Catholic and had been given a scapular for protection. You weren’t supposed to wear anything around your neck but dog tags. They put me in an aid station; a priest gave me the last rites. Then they strapped two of us onto a bubble top chopper. We took off; I thought I was gonna fall off. (Laughs.) They took me to the 44th MASH unit. For five days I didn’t recall anything. When I woke up I had all these tubes in me. On the opposite wall was a calendar with a picture of Marilyn Monroe. Thought I’d died and gone to heaven. (Laughs.)

I was treated at 44th MASH less than a month. I had the Red Cross write to LaVerne for me. Here’s the letter:

44th MASH  APO 301

Feb. 26, 1953

My Dearest LaVerne,

By now you know I have been wounded over here in Korea, but don’t think of it as being the worst. The medical aid that we have over here is the best.

I would like to be writing this in my own handwriting, but it’s only a week since I’ve been wounded and I’m still a little shaky, so I’m dictating it to the Red Cross.

In a few days I will be evacuated to Japan for further treatment until I am all okay.

Darling, this will not in any way change our future plans. You can count on that.

All my love,

Bob

P.S. Say hello to the rest of the family.

P.S.S. Don’t write me until I send you a new address—I won’t stay here long enough.  

On Feb. 27 my parents got this telegram. My Dad kept it in his wallet till the day he died.

Next I was sent to a hospital in Seoul. Have no idea how I got there. I was treated in Seoul for about month then sent to Tokyo Army Hospital in Japan. Up to that point I’d been bed-ridden. The wife of General Mark Clark, UN Commander, visited me at bedside; we had a nice chat.

Maurine Doran Clark with PFC Robert F. Petzold March 10, 1953

By the time I got to Tokyo Army Hospital I’d dropped from 165 to 128 pounds. I had a fine Japanese nurse. One day she asked, “Do you want to walk, Private Petzold?” She gave me a high wheelchair and taught me how to walk. After a while I put on enough weight to be sent back to the states. They put me on a MATS plane [Military Air Transport Service] and we flew to Wake Island. Flying into Wake, I looked out the window and saw what looked like a long white tape of an air strip. I thought about all the lives we lost on this island during World War II. We got box lunches then took off for Hawaii. I was at Tripler General Hospital in Honolulu for two days. From there they sent me to Camp Roberts in California then to the Percy Jones Army Hospital in Battle Creek, Michigan. LaVerne and my sister Shirley flew to Battle Creek and visited me. I finally left the hospital on August 21, 1953. The next day LaVerne and I got married at St. Michael’s Catholic Church in Milwaukee.

Bob Petzold in Army hospital pajamas with fiancée LaVerne Millonig (l) and Shirley Petzold (r) ca. April 1953

How was morale in Korea?

When I got to Korea, morale was very good. There was a lot of camaraderie among the guys I served with. But we didn’t call each other by full names. You didn’t want to get too close to anybody. Nicknames gave you a distance. You’re part of family because you’re all in the same combat boat. You looked forward to rotating out. You rotated with 36 points. Basically you put in a year. We got along very well with troops from other countries: English, Canadians, Columbians, and others. We were all unified under the UN. I think the UN concept worked pretty well in Korea.

In 1995 they dedicated the Korean Memorial in Washington, D.C. I’m glad I went. At the memorial they divided us into service branches; then each branch split into various sections. I looked for people who’d been in my unit. I met Joseph Gonzalez. He was not in my unit, but we’d eaten chow with his group before we went on Webster’s “super patrol.” Gonzalez had seen the tracers and muzzle flashes from the action we’d been in. He said, “I never thought I’d see another man alive from that patrol.” He later wrote a book called The Battle at the 38h Parallel [Hellgate Press, 2001]. He did a lot of research for the book. He interviewed a number of us who’d been in the battle, and we’re mentioned in the book.

In the late 90’s I met Jack Sullivan, lieutenant of the group that rescued me. We met in a restaurant in Indianapolis and talked till early in the morning. He signed me up as a member of the 17th Regimental Combat Team Association. Not too long after that Sullivan died. I went to his funeral on a cold rainy day at Arlington National Cemetery. So far I’ve met five people who were part of the first and second rescue parties the night I was wounded. I called Dick Whitson who led the first rescue effort. He said, “When we meet, either you’re gonna kick my butt for leaving you out there or shake my hand.” (Laughs.) We met, shook hands and hugged each other.

Bob Petzold (l) and Dick Whitson (r) at reunion, 17th Regimental Combat Team

I never will forget the letter I got from the U. S. Army charging me $96 and a few cents for damages the night our hooch burnt up. I got the letter in July of ’53 when I was still in the hospital. I wrote back and said, “Check the carburetor!”

I assume you didn’t pay.

Correct! (Laughs.)  

Corporal Robert F. Petzold’s Decorations: Purple Heart, Combat Infantryman’s Badge, Korean Service Ribbon with Bronze Star, UN Ribbon,

* Anyone who was in the Kumwha Valley in Korea the night of February 20, 1953, and knows the name of this sergeant, please contact Bob Petzold via this website, contact@writecorner.com .

Bob Petzold, DAV Service Officer and the PTSD Project

I went to work with the DAV in 1961. I had a two-year training program and eventually became supervisor of a four-man, two-secretary office in Milwaukee. During and after the Vietnam War we worked with a lot of Vietnam vets. They’d complain and say things like, “I was in a war that nobody else was in.” DAV personnel who’d seen action in World War II and Korea wondered what was so different about these Vietnam guys. At first, they seemed like cry babies. We’d been in combat and didn’t carry on like these guys. During the Vietnam War the whole American society was changing, and of course the DAV realized that.

In the early 70s Dr. John P. Wilson contacted our DAV Headquarters in Cincinnati. He’s a psychologist and wanted to do a study of Vietnam vets. He asked for $10,000 in funding and got approved. Wilson drew up a 3-page questionnaire of 75 to 100 questions. He had three people to help him. The DAV gave him the names of a number of Vietnam vets. The questionnaire was sent out and 400 vets agreed to be interviewed one-on-one. During the project two dropped out; they felt the questions were too personal. Wilson and his team were able to get answers from the other 398.

At this time, the VA said that if a vet was diagnosed with anxiety neurosis up to one year after his separation from service, he qualified for a service-connected disability. After that one year he didn’t qualify. The Wilson study found that many Vietnam vets hadn’t sought any treatment for their mental problems. The ones that did go to the VA didn’t get any help because the VA said, “You’ll get over it.” So a lot of them distrusted the VA and the government. Most of these guys weren’t professional soldiers. They’d been drafted out of peaceful situations in the states. They’d been given minimal training and sent over to kill foreign people in a very unpopular war. The enemy they fought wasn’t just men in uniform. The enemy was women and children, all kinds of civilians you wouldn’t expect to be fighters. I had 16 weeks of infantry training, much more training than most of the Vietnam guys I worked with.

Wilson and his team concluded that these Vietnam vets were suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After that, the DAV called every one of their offices in the U. S. and asked them to send one person, preferably a combat veteran, to Washington, D.C. to learn about this new disability. I was the only combat vet in our Milwaukee office, but I didn’t want to go. It had been over 30 years since I’m been in combat. But I went on to Washington and spent two weeks studying post traumatic stess with other DAV personnel.

We learned that the disorder occurs generally six months after a traumatic incident. It doesn’t have to be a wartime thing. It can be a trauma in civilian life, like a traffic accident. The symptoms are recurring nightmares, personality changes, and suicidal thoughts. We studied particular cases and tried to pick out causes and effects of the disorder. After that, the DAV went to the American Psychiatric Association and asked them to include PTSD in their manual. I came away from Washington with great sympathy for vets who had this problem. I thought they deserved the Purple Heart, but you had to draw blood for that. Of course, mental hurt can be worse than physical hurt.

After Washington I had to do a combination of things in Wisconsin. I had to get Vietnam vets to come to me and tell me their stories so I could help them. I had to canvass mental health providers to find vets suffering from post traumatic stress. This work had to be done gratis, without any financial assistance. I probably gave about 50 presentations. I had my own material: audiotapes, videotapes, pamphlets. My DAV pamphlet talked about Dr. Wilson and the study in Washington. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association included PTSD in their list of mental disorders. My pamphlet stated this fact.

The DAV told me to find a “storefront” where I could interview Vietnam vets with symptoms of post traumatic stress. “Storefront” meant a special place not connected to the VA where I could privately talk one-on-one with a guy. I selected a place on the second floor of the War Memorial in Milwaukee,* made sure it had minimal furniture. I wouldn’t dress in a tie and coat like I used to at work. I dressed down, wore leisure clothes like the Vietnam guys and grew a full beard. I was trying to understand them, trying to get them to be comfortable and trust me.  I’d meet a vet at the door and we’d shake hands.

They first drew back, not sure about me. They’d say things like, “Don’t know why I’m here. My wife sent me here.” I first asked basic questions: branch of service, time and place of service. If he told me he was in Vietnam in ’68, that was a bad time for him because of things like the Tet Offensive.** Another bad time for vets was ’75 when Vietnam was taken over by the communists. I’d get calls from spouses and sweethearts asking me to talk their loved ones, got calls from relatives too. In 1985 I had an onslaught of people wanting to talk about the bad time in ’75. I listened to horrible things. Their combat memories sounded very real. After three or four hours listening to a guy talk, I’d say, “I think it’d be good if you expressed  your feelings to a mental health provider one-on-one and get in group sessions with other Vietnam vets.” If I was convinced a vet had service-connected PTSD, I wrote it up in a report. A mental health professional had to sign off on my recommendation in order for the vet to get compensation.

I remember working with Bob Cook over in Madison [WI]. Cook was a Vietnam vet who started out as an unpaid counselor for DAV. Later he became a VA counselor. He organized a combat vet group in Madison. I sat in on a session. Bob Cook’s an excellent counselor. He’s probably still in Madison counseling veterans.

Dealing with Tragedy

I tried not to schedule more than two appointments a day. If I had three interviews, it was too much and my wife would know it. I found out that vets wanted a weapon in the house; it was their security. One question I asked was, “Do you have a weapon near your bed. If you have a weapon, where are the bullets? If your weapon has bullets in it, please do everybody who loves you a favor and take the bullets away.” I didn’t want them to sleep with a loaded weapon.

I worked with a guy in Milwaukee who kept having nightmares about his combat in Nam. There was no medication then for this kind of thing. I advised him what to do. He had a number to call any time he was feeling bad. Thought I was helping him work through his problems. I tried to assist his girlfriend. One day I got a call he’d committed suicide. This shocked me to my core. It was starting to work on me. It was too much. I called a number in Washington, D. C. and got in touch with a DAV psychologist. Thank God, he helped me work through it.     

Eventually the VA accepted PTSD as a genuine disorder. There is no time limit now for vets with severe anxiety related to combat experiences. There’s medication now for guys like the Milwaukee vet who committed suicide. These are great improvements.   

* A stunning landmark on Lake Michigan in downtown Milwaukee, the Milwaukee County War Memorial Center houses the Gallery honoring Milwaukee County’s 3,472 War Dead from World War II and the Korean and Vietnam Wars. It became the first Vietnam Memorial in the country. It is also known as a superb location for wedding ceremonies and receptions, banquets and meetings of all kinds.

** The Tet Offensive was a military campaign conducted by the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese Army against forces of South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies. Begun January 31, 1968, the first day of the Vietnamese lunar calendar and a holiday, the offensive failed to achieve its military objectives. However, it turned many minds against American involvement in the war.

Frank N. Pierce and his wife Jo Ann are founding members of Oak Hammock. A few days before our interview, Frank invited me to their apartment to see his Navy materials. In the corner of the sun room sits an exquisite model of the USS Mattaponi, AO-41, the fleet tanker Frank served on for nine months, 1946 – 1947. “It was made by a man in St. Louis, Michigan. I bought it in 1994 for $5,000,” Frank said of the model. He then showed me albums containing vivid photos and writings he did during his naval service. For 14 years he has been editor and chief writer for On Station, a newsletter detailing the history of the Mattaponi. After military service, Frank graduated from The College of Wooster with a major in Liberal Arts and from the University of Missouri with a M. A. degree in journalism. During 14 ½ years in business, he worked in professional advertising with Kroger Company, J. Weingarten, Inc., Crown Zellerbach Corporation, and Grant Advertising. At the University of Illinois, he got his doctorate in mass communication with a minor in marketing.  He taught advertising at the Universities of Illinois, Texas, and Florida. The last 22 years he spent at UF where he served as the first Chairman of the Department of Advertising. I interviewed Frank in Oak Hammock’s Meditation Room on March 26 and April 3, 2010. He later provided more written information for this history.   

My mother was a Quaker; my father was a Methodist. We lived in Lake County in Northeastern Ohio. Before the war, my family had been Republican and isolationist. At that time, we really didn’t want to get involved in foreign affairs. We didn’t know anybody who’d been to Europe. We wanted to mind our own business and wanted Europe and other countries to mind theirs.

I had one year at The College of Wooster before I was drafted in May 1943. I finished electrician’s mate service school and was assigned to the Naval Air Technical Training Center (NATTC) in Jacksonville, Florida. This place was not popular with a lot of guys. Some called it “a horseshit base.” I liked aviation electricians mate (AEM) work better than just electricians mate work. I was always interested in weather, kept weather records for many years. I wanted to be an aerographer, but the Navy needed electricians. The thought that I might be buried inside some ship somewhere doing electricians mate work didn’t excite me at all.

I was motivated to take the officer candidate test because the Navy promised a college education and a commission. About 300 men took the V-12 test at NATTC in March of 1944. Only twenty of us were selected to be sent to a college that offered the V-12 program. By then I was a Petty Officer 3rd Class. No one else in my AEM unit took the test. All the other members of my graduating AEM unit were shipped to California naval bases or assigned to aircraft carriers in the Pacific. For three weeks I was the only one in my barracks. I was awaiting orders and did a little reading and some writing to pass the time.

In the Navy’s V-12 Program

In 1944 the war was going pretty well. I certainly felt I already had a hand in it because I’d been in service for 13 months when I was assigned to the Navy’s V-12 program at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. I now had a chance to become an officer and this pleased me significantly. I’d be able to put my education thus far into practice while becoming even more educated. I spent three terms at Denison. Each term was four months. Half of all courses were assigned by the Navy. Others were electives. My professors at Denison were civilians, but the Denison V-12 Program was generally similar to the curriculum of the first two years at the Naval Academy. I took six or seven courses a term, including liberal arts courses and one in propaganda analysis. Two Naval Reserve officers in command of our V-12 unit made certain each man’s selected courses fulfilled the Navy’s educational requirements. We were under naval discipline at all times. At Denison I also lettered in baseball as an outfielder.

What did the propaganda analysis course entail?

We studied how propaganda praises things and manipulates opinions. We examined enemy propaganda, mainly the Nazi kind. We read Goebbels’ speeches in English and wrote papers on how to combat his tactics. I remember after Germany surrendered seeing pictures of brutal Japanese. One said, “Remember me? I’m still here.” I had the feeling that we were being prepared to invade Japan.

I was too young to know about propaganda then, but I recall posters of Japanese stuck on telephone poles; they looked scary, like monsters. How did you feel about the possibility of being part of the invasion of Japan?   

Germany was still going strong in 1944 despite the Allied invasion of Normandy; Japan still seemed extremely resilient. We and our allies seemed fairly likely to be the final victors. But when? All we knew was that Japan would have to be invaded just as Germany would have to be invaded. I don’t really believe I thought much about what part I might play as time moved on. I had a lot of hard studying ahead of me and I better get cracking on it if I wanted to remain in the program.

After Denison I was sent to Harvard where I was taught by naval officers. I spent another three four-month terms of NROTC training [Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps].  My group was training to be Navy line officers, and we stayed together in a dormitory, Eliot House. Half of my Harvard courses were Navy ones. I took Seamanship I and II, Navigation I and II, a course in damage control, and one in ordnance and gunnery. I took two courses in creative writing, one in poetry, one in stratigraphy (a geology course about rock layers), one in meteorology, and a course in piano terminology. I played on the Harvard baseball and basketball teams (the B team in basketball). I didn’t letter in the sports because the College ruled that Navy men played on “the informal sports teams” that academic year. That was the only year that Harvard has been invited to participate in the NCAA men's basketball tournament.

My favorite course at Harvard was a writing course taught by Professor James B. Munn. The course had 15 students. Two of us were Navy men, one student was a reporter for the Boston Globe and one was a stringer for Time magazine. Professor Munn lived in a home near where Washington took command of the Continental Army. The greatest accolade Munn could bestow upon an individual was to read aloud all or part of a piece a student had submitted. He read a portion of one of my stories. I walked out of the class ten feet tall. It was one of the greatest feelings I’ve ever had. Professor Munn and I corresponded for more than 20 years afterward. He and another creative writing instructor at Wooster are the greatest teachers in my experience.

In June 1946 I received my commission as an Ensign in the Naval Reserve.   I was assigned to the USS Mattaponi, AO-41. AO means Auxiliary Oiler. Before the Navy got it, the Mattaponi had been a Standard Oil ship, the SS Kalkay. After she was taken over by the Navy, the Mattaponi became the 41st tanker in the Navy's consecutive numbering system. Its most common name was the “Mattie.” In the summer of ’46 we called her “Mad Mattie” because things often went wrong. There was always a problem in the engineering area. All the ships had problems. They got beaten around by waves. Water lines break; hatch covers freeze shut or pop open unexpectedly; hawsers and wires break, electrical problems darken the ship unexpectedly, etc.  When we were coming into the Port of Naha,Okinawa, the anchor wouldn’t drop on command and we damaged our propeller on a coral reef before we could stop our momentum.

During the Vietnam War the ship was called the “Angel of Market Time.”  “Market Time” was the name of a naval operation during that war. The Mattie participated in it as one of several oilers replenishing U.S. destroyers, cruisers, and carriers then patrolling the coasts of Vietnam.

During my time as the ship’s navigator (July ’46 – April ’47), it was one of ten oilers involved in transporting Saudi Arabian diesel oil, lubricating oil, and gasoline to Far Eastern ports. This Saudi Arabian oil contract lasted from June to December of' '46.We made two round trips of 14,500 miles each. The first trip was from Yokosuka, Japan, to Ras Tanura in Saudi Arabia and back to the Asian ports of Buckner Bay and Naha in Okinawa. The second trip was from Japan to Saudi Arabia, then to Manila in the Philippines. During my time aboard the Mattaponi, she steamed 36,000 miles in the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Persian Gulf. One stop we made was at Eniwetok Island. We picked up an empty gasoline barge there, towed it 2,000 miles and dropped it off at Pearl Harbor without stopping. In all, the ship made three trips then from Japan to Saudi Arabia and back to Far Eastern ports. I was on the latter two of these three trips.  

They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters.

(Psalm 107:23)

I was happy to be in navigation. Four of us ensigns had to keep journals. We were assigned certain topics like making diagrams of fire-fighting systems, piping, storage places for sea water and distilled water, etc. Our journals were judged for accuracy by two officers. However, the Navy didn’t afford me enough creativity. I was in foreign places and wanted to be a foreign correspondent. My private writings aboard ship consisted of descriptions and impressions of people, places, and things. I wrote detailed letters home. Here are some examples. You can keep them if you wish.    

A passage from Frank’s shipboard writings, mid-January 1947:

However far a ship may wander over the trackless waters of the earth, men guide her course. Men chip her rust and swab her decks. Men splice her lines and air her flags. Men cook her meals, clean up afterward, launder her clothes, distill her drinking water, tend her boilers. Men guide her helm, stand her watches, and record the events of each watch in the log. Men nurse her engines, and treat her sick and wounded. Men plot her position at every opportunity, and inform her captain. Men deplete her supplies, read her mail, speed her up, slow her down. Men stagger under her motion and curse her for any reason. Men sleep on her, tell stories in her wardroom and mess halls, wash their faces, shave their beards, work at her desks, bang her typewriters. Men man her radars, her guns, her directors, her control stations, her fire stations, her collision quarters. Men muster aboard her after the dark is gone. Men spin her valves, check her draft, pound her nails, connect her hose lines, operate her winches and boats. Men leave her on liberty and come back.

A ship is a world. Men live on her.

I wrote a long letter to my family at Christmas time in 1946. I wanted to give my parents, brother, and sisters a sense of what my shipboard life was like as we sailed past Bataan and Corregidor and steamed into Manila Bay. I really tried to think of them as aboard with me as my shipmates and I reached the end of an arduous journey.

Four parts of Frank’s December 26, 1946 letter from Manila to his family in New Concord, Ohio follow:

Dear Folks,

For you back home it is Christmas with snow falling and a cold wind from the north whistling around the house and a gray sky lowering. For you it is Christmas, with presents and love and good wishes and being remembered by your friends as well as by the other members of the family. For you there is a warm feeling inside as you think how lucky you are in comparison with some other families and other communities and other nations that you know of. For you the wind is not through the room, but outside it; while many families know the opposite.

For you there is food on the table, and laughter, and women, and the house across the street. For you there is the hill with the snow blowing down it, a frosty window, and perhaps a Christmas tree. And there is the thought of the future—perhaps only tomorrow night, but at least a future with each one of you in it—and a genuinely terribly-needed feeling of togetherness as one unit, one group.

The presents were opened today. Dad got a few small items—the usual lot of a father because he is the hardest member of the family to buy for. Mom got more and the children more yet—because they are easier to supply with useful gifts. Perhaps there was even a present for me laid under the tree, to be opened when I get home. Perhaps not, but it makes no difference.

Today it is the day after Christmas in Manila. It is hot, over 90 degrees, and still. The cool breeze never blows here, and never will. The snow never reaches the ground. There is no house across the street, no hill with the snow tumbling down it, no frosty glass, no Christmas tree. There is no family on ship, and there are no presents. But there is one exception.

Every man on board got the only Christmas present he ever expected out here. Every man on board is now happier, his morale has gone up temporarily once more. Because the mail came in today.

Not since we left Yokosuka on November 15 has there been any mail. No one missed it at sea. Everyone thought about it occasionally, but no one really missed it. There is no way to get it to us there. But in port it is different. In port the mail should come. And if it does not come, everyone gets mad. Today the mail came on board—but only six sacks for six weeks. It is not all of it, but it is something. I got 15 letters from many of my friends, and letters from you. It was very nice to read your handwriting again and find out what has been going on in that crazy country about a hundred thousand miles away. It was my Christmas present—the best one there is….

Frank and Captain Robert W. Wood as the Mattaponi nears Bataan Peninsula:

“You know, Pierce,” he says, “this is the day before Christmas.” He looks thoughtful, musing for a while before continuing. “But I guess it’s a better one than those poor guys spent out here five years ago.”

“Yes sir. I guess it is.” My voice is soft.

“I had a brother out here then,” the captain says. “He was a major in the Army. He was killed. Some plane laid a bomb almost on top of him, I guess.” He stops for a little time again.  

I know what he is going to say next because he has told me about his brother once before and has probably forgotten that he has ever mentioned it. He is going to fill me in again about his brother.

“I’m sorry, sir,” I say.

“I’d like to find his grave while we’re in this time,” the captain muses. “Last time I was here was before the war.” He is not looking at me as he speaks. He is looking at the heaving sea.

“Yes, sir. We’ll make it,” I say. “We ought to get in about two hours after dark tomorrow.”

“Damn them!” says the captain, suddenly angry. “Damn them!”….

Frank’s shipboard reflections on Bataan:

I look at the land. We are coming in from the west toward a steadily heightening peninsula—Bataan. The Bataan peninsula. So this is where MacArthur fought and the Japs had their great day. This is the place where the U. S. lost a lot of guys and a lot of material. This is the peninsula where the Death March took place. This is what men fought for, and the captain’s brother had died someplace on, and we are now taking bearings on. This blue, hazy wall in the distance, twenty miles away, toward the rising night, high and rugged in two places, then lower in the center. This is it, and I am seeing it. To the left is Subic Bay, where the mountains fade into nothing, and left of that is the north-stretching island of Luzon idling towards Lingayen Gulf.

And far away, just on the horizon, is a speck, a little low mound, a blue island like all blue islands—only this one is named Corregidor. And to the right even more, to the south, the southern part of Luzon beyond Manila Bay….

The executive officer and Captain Wood comment on Corregidor

“Beautiful,” says the commander. It’s the executive officer, Lieutenant Commander Krupa. He’s speaking to the captain.

“It certainly is,” the captain responds, pointing. “There’s Dougout Doug’s* home. They say he lived in the highest house on the island. It certainly is wrecked. Those buildings to the left were barracks, and those closer over here, too.”

“I see them, captain….”

“You know, it’s a funny thing,” says the captain again softly. “One of the most beautiful sights from Manila is a sunset over Corregidor. But from Corregidor you can never see Manila….”

* Pejorative nickname for General Douglas MacArthur.

I recall the day after we arrived in Manila going up to the flying bridge to look around with my field glasses. I saw a number of sunken ships. The Bay is about 10-15 miles across but not much deeper than 40-50 feet. In the next few minutes I counted more than 400 sunken ships before I quit. And I hadn't even scanned the entire bay. Casualties there had accumulated from the very beginning of the war with little to nothing done to rid the harbor of their hulks. It made careful navigation extremely important to avoid these sunken obstacles. Actually, the ships I could see were those that had sunk and were resting upright on their bottoms. Others that had turned turtle and gone down on either side or their superstructures were not visible easily.

Government building in ruins, Manila, 1946

Captain Wood didn’t command the respect of most of us. As a CO he was rigid, inflexible, narrow. I wrote about him in some detail in my private shipboard journal.

Fortunately, I had the privilege of serving under a fine CO, Captain Henry Jarrell. Captain Jarrell came on board for 10 ½ months, and I served with him part of that time. He was one of the first American military men sent to China to learn Chinese. He was an excellent source of information. He would alert us to what we could expect at various places in Asia, how to get along in Shanghai, and other helpful information. I remember being with him on a visit to the Ginza [shopping and entertainment area in Tokyo]. In a store he read the characters on five pieces of furniture and determined they were Chinese-made. During our stay in Yokosuka, around July of ’46, I recall him saying, “In the next war, the Chinese will be our enemies, and the Japanese will be our friends.”

Excerpts from Frank’s memoir of a visit to Nagasaki on August 19, 1946

…Shortly after reveille on the morning of Sunday 19 August, the Salamonie’s captain inquired of our CO if there were three Mattaponi officers who’d like to join a Salamonie party of 57 officers and men on an all-day train trip to Nagasaki and back. Ensign Armin Richter and I volunteered immediately. We were joined by Ltjg Harold A. Davis, MC, our ship’s doctor. For the three of us, it seemed like a great way to spend what otherwise would be an idle day. The Salamonie’s cooks provided all 60 of us from both ships with bag lunches and canteens of drinking water.

Nagasaki was only 30 miles from Sasebo by air, but by railroad it was a much longer 70 miles. Kyushu Island was extremely rugged in this area. The railroad curved incessantly, and several times the route passed through long, dark tunnels. These harrowing transits proved a disaster as far as everyone’s uniforms were concerned. We found no way to cut off the whistling air vents in our car, which blasted us inside every tunnel with asphyxiating clouds of black smoke from the train’s inefficient soft-coal burning engine. By the third tunnel we were hot, dirty, disgusted, and bedraggled. We finally reached Nagasaki at 1130. There the Salamonie officers freed everyone to roam as they pleased but ordered us to be back to the train station by 1500. [T]he Salamonie officers and men went in one direction while Ensign Richter, Doc Davis and I went in another….

Nagasaki and the contiguous neighboring town of Urakami lay in a sort of bowl surrounded by high hills on every side except one where a long arm of the ocean reached in. Many of the area’s war plants had been located in Urakami close to a small, muddy stream that was moving languidly toward the sea. Several Mitsubishi factories there produced the famous and dreaded “Long Lance” torpedoes which had devastated Allied cruisers as well as other war vessels and civilian ships during the early part of the war.

Dr. Davis, Ensign Richter and I began our tour by making a sort of figure eight around the southern area of the two cities. We looked first at the ruined city hall and a Catholic Church, then swung part way up a hill through a graveyard. By then we were hungry, so we picked a place to eat our lunch of sandwiches and orange sections. That completed, we walked back down into the valley toward the ruined manufacturing plants which we had seen from the hill while eating lunch.

When we got into that area, we found that everything there originally had been almost totally destroyed, burned or crushed….

We went up another hill to see a building which we learned later had been a Medical School. We guessed that it was within a mile of ground zero, and from a distance it looked reasonably undamaged. However, when we reached it and went inside, there were no windows or doors in any inner walls still standing. Instead the floor was partially filled with reinforced concrete masonry, twisted steel fingers of various kinds of medical equipment, broken glass, and great amounts of fine, white-colored dust. Idly, I bent down to the floor in one room to pick up a small fused glass blob. It was dark in color and encrusted inside with cinders. Upon examining it carefully, the three of us concluded that it probably had been a laboratory test tube. Now it had been melted and hardened into a small, dirty, biscuit-like mass. I decided to keep it as my tiny souvenir of the power of the bomb and its fiery aftermath. I still have it today. It did not occur to me at the time to consider whether or not it was still radioactive.  

We learned later that this medical school building had employed approximately 300 people before it was destroyed in the blast and the fire which followed. Not a trace of any of them has ever been found. They and much of the building’s contents had simply disintegrated.

Our final visit of the afternoon was to the major Mitsubishi factory area. If our assessment was correct, these huge war plants were located less than a mile from the bomb’s epicenter. Now they stood as twisted, blackened iron skeletons interwoven with rusting steel beams and sagging metal supports. Each structure remained leaning away from the blast center at angles up to 45 degrees from the vertical. All were totally ruined.

The only features of construction which seemed to have withstood the awesome power of the explosion at least partially were chimneys, many of which appeared almost undamaged. However, we did see other chimneys which were bent halfway up.

Richter, Doc Davis and I found we had little to say to each other during our three-hour tour. We looked at most of the ruins silently, trying to figure out in our own minds what kind of structure had existed there before the plutonium sunburst did its awesome, instantaneous work. Much of the time we had no idea of what we were looking at. As far as the Japanese cleanup efforts were concerned, all we could see that had been accomplished was the clearing of paths past the innumerable piles of rubble plus the building of a number of small, wooden buildings.

Ruined building in Nagasaki. Japanese workers in foreground.

Fairly near the end of our visit, three young Japanese children peaked from behind one of the buildings and regarded us fearfully but also with curiosity. By chance we had not eaten all of our orange slices at lunch. On an impulse, we offered each of the children a slice. They looked intrigued, but made no move to approach us. A moment later a man appeared briefly from behind the building to check on what the children were doing. When he saw the orange slices being extended, he nodded his head quickly to give the children permission to approach us. They did so hesitantly. As soon as each of the orange slices was in hand, they immediately disappeared behind the building again.

We returned to the train station a few minutes before the 1500 deadline and rejoined the officers and crewmen from the Salamonie for the trip back to Sasebo. We talked very little among ourselves during the entire three-and-one-half hour ride. Each of us was thinking about the sights we had seen and going over them again and again in our minds. Unfortunately, the infuriating black coal smoke in the tunnels affected us all and Doc Davis became ill during the ride.

When we reached Sasebo near sunset, we walked eagerly to the ramp where the Salamonie’s boat was scheduled to pick us up …. [A] strong wind came up….It began to blow gravel chips and choking dust over us in a real dust storm. There was no place available where any of us could get out of the stinging wind. Our only defense was to hunker down with our backs to the near gale in the hope that the boat would arrive soon….

By the time the Salamonie’s coxswain and boat crew finally arrived about 2100, everyone from both ships was in an extremely foul mood. We were dusty, gritty, dirty, profane and totally dry-mouthed. Then, when the boat did moor, the coxswain told us we’d have to wait further until he fixed the craft’s bow light….By then everyone from both ships was so angry that they overruled him immediately, piling aboard and shouting at him to get this obscenity craft moving. So the abashed coxswain took off into the dust storm while one of his boat crew stood in the bow swinging a flashlight….

During the ride Doc Davis began throwing up over the side. Fortunately, soon after we left the ramp the wind died, and we had clean air to breathe again….I remember that the first thing I did after helping Doc Davis to his cabin was to take a shower and change clothes. After that I felt considerably better….

Did you or anyone you knew then express the view that the atomic bombing was overkill and there might have been less extreme ways to get Japan to surrender?

I certainly didn’t and I don’t know anyone who did. There was no guilt feeling about the atomic bomb. We wanted to end that war. It had gone on too long and cost too many lives. The feeling was: the Japanese started the war and we’ll finish it.

Besides the Nagasaki visit, what other ways did you spend your off-duty time?

I wanted to put my off-duty time to good use. Many Navy guys just wanted to go to bars and get screwed. I was one of three officers who never did those things. I didn’t smoke or drink. I came into new places, wanted to see new things and cultures, and write about them.

Scenes of Yokohama and Tokyo (from Frank’s letter to his family, August 4, 1946)

…All over the place [Yokohama] are rusted iron scraps of machines, and buildings. Mile after mile is like this, just barren, with junk piles and stone rubble about….It is amazing, and hardly seems as though bombs did it. It just looks as though somebody moved out and tore the buildings down, and let the weeds grow up. For ten miles or so to Tokyo, the scenery is like this….[T]he damage is total; whatever was here is really gone, and nothing will be here for a  long time to come. Not a building! It is amazing.

The Japs say all this damage was done in one raid of 300 Superforts [B-29s] with blockbusters and incendiaries. The fires started burning uncontrollably for three days, and the bombers came back each night guided by the fires. I am glad I was not a Jap then.

When we got to Tokyo, we got off at the main station, which is being rebuilt. It was burned out by bombs, and they are reconstructing it again….[T]he Captain said that we should walk down to see the Ginza, which is the main shopping district. We spent about an hour and a half just window shopping. We went into stores (the ones that were still standing, or rebuilt) selling all sorts of things: knick-knacks, jade, star sapphires, paintings, silks, hardware, and anything else anyone would ever need. We priced a piece of jade jewelry at 6,000 yen or $400. We browsed around, took pictures, looked in windows, and had a very good time. Then we looked at all the sidewalk merchants and their wares. The sidewalk merchants here were at least clean; over in Shanghai they were filthy….

We wanted to see Hirohito’s palace. It was only a couple of blocks down the drag the other side of the railroad station from the Ginza. We walked around two sides of it, but could see nothing outside the moat and high wall which entirely surrounds it. All the gates were guarded by Allied MPs, and there is absolutely no admittance to anybody…. Most of Tokyo is not leveled, but only burned out. Walls tower up but there are no roofs, or anything inside. A great portion of the city is this way….

Here’s a picture of me in front ofthe Supreme Court Building in Tokyo where the war crimes trials were held. It was closed the day this picture was taken; I wasn’t able to get back to Tokyo to see inside it.

In a Yokosuka geisha house (from Frank’s letter to his family, November 13, 1946)

Several evenings ago six of the ship’s officers and myself [sic] went to a geisha house for the evening. Please do not get the idea that a geisha house is the equivalent of a prostitution house in the U. S., for it is not at all. The geisha girls are members of one of the best occupations in Japan. These women have advanced to the highest standing they can achieve over here.

The geisha house is run by Mama San, a woman that [sic] used to live in Oakland for 16 years. She has been back in Japan for the last 18 years, so her English is not too good, but she still understands us and we can talk to her. That is quite fortunate, since the girls themselves speak only a few words of English….The house is very nicely constructed, although of rather frail build. There is no heat that I could find, with the result that it is chilly. First we ate at a long low table, perhaps a foot and a half off the floor. We sat on cushions, drank cokes, and talked with the girls as much as possible while the meal was being cooked. The meal (we had taken the precaution to eat well on the ship before we left) was cooked over coals at one end of the room, and was finally finished. So we ate with chopsticks as well as possible a dish called sukiyaki….

It was strange tasting stuff. It seemed to be the bodies of very young birds that had been hardened somehow. Not very appetizing at all, I thought. But I ate some and tried to learn how to use chopsticks….

The girls knelt down beside us in their flowery kimonos and drank cokes and ate the stuff as though they relished it. They also saw to it that our glasses were never empty of coke, service which rather gripes me because I hate to have anyone hover over me when I eat. But it is the custom for the women to wait on the men hand and foot....The other officers had brought along some whiskey, and they drank this with their cokes. I did not have any of this. However, the girls drank it right down as if they subsisted solely on alcohol. Only one of them got drunk, but two of our officers were quite drunk after an hour or so. One of them just lay around and went to sleep afterwhile [sic], while the other lay around on the floor pinching the girls who came near. It was quite disgusting to me to see a grown man make such a fool of himself.

After the sukiyaki, there were dances by the geishas. They did the customary bowing to each other, to the accompanyist [sic], to the guests, and then started their dance. The dances were strange, with the dancers cutting figures and poses such as you have seen in pictures….

The doctor [Harold Davis] and I asked Mama San about things interesting to us and she told us a great deal. She told us a story of a couple of the dances, how the conditions were in Japan during the war, and answered other innumberable [sic]…questions for us.

We had brought along a few records and played them on the phonograph for American-style dancing. The girls were good dancers, but it is hard to talk to them. So everyone just danced about in silence.

About midnight we were ready to leave, after a pleasant evening….  

Love to all, and I’ll be seeing you sometime next year.

Frank

Let’s conclude with some information about your wife and family.

I met Jo Ann Bell of Dilley, Texas, in late 1949 when we both were in the University of Missouri’s Graduate School of Journalism. We married in 1951 after she received her M.A. degree.  She worked as a writer for a national agricultural magazine when we lived in Cincinnati (1951 – 1953). During our years in Houston and California, we were in the “baby business”—four children in six years. At the University of Illinois, Jo Ann worked full time as a writer in the university’s agricultural office. Her earnings allowed me to continue my doctoral studies at Illinois. After we moved to Florida, she spent 22 years as a full-time writer, editor and professor in the Institute of Food and Agricultural Science at UF. In 1984 she was elected the national president of Agricultural Communicators in Education, only the third woman ever selected and the second person from the state of Florida. In 1996 she retired from UF as a professor emerita.

We have two sons and two daughters. Each has at least two university degrees. Our first son works in Miami as a translator for EFE, the Spanish news agency headquartered in Madrid, Spain. Our second son is a computer programmer in the Washington, D.C. area. One daughter is a librarian here in Gainesville. The younger daughter is between jobs just now. We have five grandchildren.  

Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen was born and raised in Copenhagen, Denmark, the youngest of four children of August Krogh and Marie Krogh, both eminent physiologists. August Krogh was a Nobel Laureate. Bodil has four doctorates, 1st in odontology, 2nd in physiology, and two honorary ones. She did important work on fluid balance that gained national and international recognition. Her landmark paper in the American Journal of Physiology (1955) “forced people to reevaluate their concepts on the way in which urea was processed by the mammalian kidney.” Her achievements include the first permanent research scientist at the Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory in Maine, the Ray G. Daggs Award from the American Physiological Society, and the Society’s first August Krogh Distinguished Lecturer of Comparative Physiology. She was the Society’s 48th President and and for many years was its only woman president. (“Living History of physiology: Bodil Schmidt-Nielsen” http://advan.physiology.org/cgi/content/full/30/1/1)

Life in Nazi-Occupied Denmark

All out war against the Germans was futile. They would have crushed us in minutes. We Danes were very angry at the Germans. At first we used passive resistance. For example, if we went to a restaurant or public place and if Germans came in, we would give them the cold shoulder and we would leave. In 1943 when the Germans went after the Jews, we became more aggressive. The King of Denmark strongly opposed Nazi treatment of the Jews. He was very brave and rode through Copenhagen on his horse to show his opposition to the German occupation. My father gave some Jewish scientists a place to stay in our villa and a place to work in the laboratory connected to the villa. The Danish underground had brave people. They blew up a rifle factory the Germans were using. One time they came up to this Danish man who was collaborating with the Germans. They pulled him off his bicycle and they killed him. Duus Hansen, my first cousin, ran an underground radio station. My brother Erik had become known to the Germans as a resister, and he had papers showing some Danish underground activities. He was also housing resisters in his home in Jutland.

Two Gestapo came to search my brother's house. My sister-in-law was there alone. A stack of my brother's papers was visible on his desk. The top part of the stack contained some papers that the Germans would find incriminating. One German noticed the stack and began to go through them. The other German went upstairs where the children were. He came out with tears in his eyes. The children reminded him of his own children back home. He asked the other German to come up there. While they were upstairs, my sister-in-law very bravely took out the incriminating papers and put them at the bottom of the stack. When the Germans came back down and went through the papers, they didn’t find anything.

In 1945 The Germans put my brother in prison in Jutland. The papers charging my brother with resistance activities were at Gestapo headquarters in the Shellhus [Shell House] in Copenhagen. Some of the most prominent Danes and freedom fighters were imprisoned and tortured in the Shellhus. The Danes were in the top area of the building, and Germans were in the bottom area along with papers incriminating a number of Danish freedom fighters. The British did not want to bomb the Shellhus for fear of killing the Danes. Our underground insisted it be bombed because many Danes would have been killed if the Germans forced prisoners to give up vital information. The British hoped to kill the Germans in the bottom area and spare as many Danes as they could. Royal Air Force planes made a low-level attack. One British plane hit a lamp post and crashed into a school beside the Shellhus. British planes mistakenly bombed the school and 125 people were killed, including 86 schoolchildren. Other British  planes destroyed the Gestapo headquarters; the Shellhus collapsed and many Germans and a few Danes died. In the part of the building that wasn’t destroyed one top Dane took a table and knocked the door open. A German guard stood there frozen with fear. The Dane yelled "schlüssel" and the guard turned over the keys and our man was able to free the prisoners. I wish I could remember that man's name. 

The British air raid destroyed a number of incriminating papers, including those against my brother Erik. The Germans didn’t have anything to prove my brother was guilty, so they let him go.   

After a German attempt on my father’s life, my father escaped to neutral Sweden. The Danish Underground negotiated with Sweden to accept Danish Jews. Many Jews escaped to Sweden. Niels Bohr’s mother was Jewish and he was one of those who escaped. Many escaped with the help of Danish fishermen. After a while the underground supplied boats so people who wanted to leave wouldn’t have to depend on the fishermen. Anybody who wanted to go to Sweden could go in these boats. All the Danish Jews got a chance to escape in these fishing boats or in other boats commissioned by the resistance movement. The Jews who chose not to go were sent to Theresienstadt, an awful concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. Dr. Erik Warburg, a prominent physician, chose not to go and continued his medical practice and helped many people.

On May 5, 1945, our trusted maid came rushing into the house and said, “I saw something horrible this morning. The Germans were taking naked bodies off a ship and loading them into a railroad car.” At the time the German military was collapsing. The Russians were closing in on them from the east, and the Germans were trying to destroy evidence of their horrible crimes. We didn’t know anything about the Holocaust then. It was not until long after the war that I learned about the Holocaust. It’s a scary thing to realize that people can hate others so much that they lose complete respect for them as human beings and commit murder.

After the war, my father said he would have to wait and see what his German colleagues did during war before he could respect them. He later said that most didn’t pass the test. After the war, in my work as a physiologist, I met a number of German scientists. When I was at Duke University I had dinner with a German who was knowledgeable and friendly. During our conversation, I asked him if he had ever been to Copenhagen. He said, “Oh yes, during the war!” I was so shocked I could hardly finish my dinner.   

I became close friends with several German scientists. I was most impressed with the work of Karl J. Ullrich and invited him to work with me. He and his wife were Catholics and were against Hitler. Ullrich helped me set up my laboratory for micropuncture at Duke University. Micropuncture became one of the most important techniques for kidney physiology. I also published important papers with Karl Ullrich. One example is a paper on urea transport in the collecting ducts of rats on high protein diets. Another paper was about urea transport in the collecting ducts of rats on normal and low protein diets.

Through my scientific work I was able to trust and work with scientists who had been part of a nation that had persecuted so many. At the end of the war Germany was devastated. I remember being at a scientific conference in Vienna after the war and seeing so few Germans in attendance. Many Germans in the academic and scientific communities did not survive the war.   

The morning after the German capitulation, I saw two young German soldiers sitting in the gutter in Copenhagen looking so dejected. I suddenly felt sorry for them. I was surprised at this feeling because we had suffered so much under German occupation. Perhaps I felt that these soldiers were no longer enemies but suffering human beings too. War does not kill compassion. It is alive on all sides.

William (Bill) Tango and his wife Carmen are founding members of Oak Hammock at the University of Florida. Bill is a retired school principal from South Florida, and Carmen worked in that area as a librarian and teacher. We looked through Bill’s scrapbook of photos and news clippings about his Navy experiences in World War II. His war account follows:

Code Work, Kamikaze Attacks, and the High Value of Navy Sheets

I went in as a seaman, became a radioman, and eventually made Radioman Second Class. The rank’s equivalent to one of the Army sergeant ranks. The test I took in basic training showed I had aptitude for radio and code work. They sent me to Keystone Radio School in Pennsylvania. I got very good at Morse code. They gave us a test every Friday. The tester would speed up the code rate to see how fast and accurate you were. Top five guys on the test got a full weekend pass starting on Friday. The rest had to wait till Saturday for their pass. I was usually in the top five. 

My ship was the USS Appalachian. It was an amphibious communications ship. I believe there were only seven of these in World War II. I stayed on the Appalachian for the duration. I was in four invasions: Saipan, Guam, Leyte Gulf, and Luzon. We were also involved in two major sea battles in the Marianas and at Leyte Gulf during the invasion of the Philippines. The Marines suffered very heavy losses on Saipan. One reason was there wasn’t enough shelling of Saipan and many Marines were cut down on the beach. Saddest thing I saw was killed and wounded being brought back in rescue boats. Each ship had a sick bay, but there was only so much room to handle the dead and wounded. I saw guys in terrible shape: legs off, bodies bloody, mangled. They were taken from first one ship then the other. Medics were desperate to find a place where the wounded could be placed and cared for. 

We didn’t want to repeat the mistake made at Saipan, so our ships and planes bombed Guam day and night for three weeks. Every enemy gun knocked out meant many Marines would not be killed. I mainly took code during these operations. Code came in a five-letter group, a space, and another five-letter group and so on. I didn’t know what it meant, just took it down and handed it to another guy to put in plain language. I also gave target coordinates to our pilots.

Admiral [Richard] Conolly was nicknamed “come in close Conolly.” He’d get as close as he could to the enemy shore. One time we were firing 5-inch guns at the shore. I was on deck then. Conolly kept giving orders to move the ship closer and closer; everyone was tense and unhappy. Finally he stopped; the Japanese opened up at us. Their shells dropped about 10 or 15 yards in front. We were bouncing around a lot but we weren’t hit. My guess is Conolly knew the range of the enemy guns.

Your Oak Hammock bio lists five Bronze Stars. What did you personally do to earn these?

The Navy awards a Bronze Star for every major sea battle and for every invasion of enemy territory.  We were involved in three invasions and two sea battles; so I was awarded a total of 5 Bronze Stars. I came close to death six or seven times. We had to dodge torpedoes and mines. Several times we were almost hit. You could see the torpedo coming; the ship had to outmaneuver it or be hit. There were times when I’d be in the code room working and hear our 5 inch guns start firing. When they fired, you knew the Japanese planes were pretty high. But when our 20 and 40 millimeter guns opened up, you knew a Jap plane was diving toward you—kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission! I got really worried. Just held my breath! That plane’s coming in at tree-top level and they’re either gonna shoot him down or he’ll crash into us. I got so scared I stopped taking code. Just held my breath! This kind of thing’d go on all afternoon. One day I was on deck and a suicide plane was coming right at us. I had to decide whether to jump or stay on ship. I thought, “Oh my God, I’m gonna die at 19.” We made a sharp turn and the plane flew over us. I saw the pilot in the cockpit; he hit another ship about 100 feet from us. The kamikaze went down 3 decks and 35 men died. We were just lucky. In war luck plays a large part in whether you live or die.

Folks in the States really didn’t know what all was going on with the kamikazes. The Japanese almost won the war with those attacks. It was a very effective strategy; they sunk and damaged a lot of our ships. We put out smoke screens which thwarted some kamikaze attacks.  

I hated those helmets. They were hot and heavy on your head. If you weren’t on duty, you could walk around, take a break, etc. One time I was on deck without a helmet. An enemy plane swooped in and strafed us—row of bullet holes right above me! Whenever I start to complain about little things like having to get up two or three times a night to pee, I think, hey, I’m here and I’m in pretty good health and darn lucky. I could’ve been killed over there at 18 or 19. You’re gonna die from something. 

Code taking is tedious work; you have to break occasionally and try to relax. We enjoyed going up on deck and watching the dogfights. I saw many planes drop from the sky, theirs and ours. Our guys shot down over 300 planes in one day. It was called “The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.” Here’s a news article about it. Whenever a Japanese plane went down, we cheered. But when you stop to think about it, a guy’s dying and you shouldn’t be cheering. Wish I could find those Japanese letters a Marine gave me. Apparently they were letters written to loved ones back in Japan. Even though they’re the enemy, they write home but they’re killed and the letters don’t get sent—another sad situation.

If you find those letters, I know somebody who might be able to translate them.

Okay, I’ll look for them again.

The Japanese used all kinds of ways to attack us. They’d hide under debris in the water: boxes and other objects. They’d float close to our ships and try to blow us up. Any boxes got near us, we’d fire on ’em. Every so often, I’d see machine gunners cutting loose at crates and other things in the water. The Japanese would take American planes that’d been shot down and repair ’em. They’d fly the planes to our bases, and throw grenades in the cockpits of our planes. One guy told me he was on guard duty with a sidearm and he saw this American plane fly in; Japanese guy got out—for a moment they just stared at each other. Our guy got scared, took off running and the Jap chased him. He ran so fast in and around parked planes, he found himself behind the Jap and shot him in the back and killed him.

In combat areas radiomen worked 4 hours on and 4 hours off. So did the radar guys. The other day I had dinner with Stanley Wolfe [another Oak Hammock resident]. He was in radar and started talking about 4 on and 4 off. You never got enough sleep. You’d see guys sleeping all over the place. Had to get your own replacement! If you couldn’t wake him, you had to do his shift. Man, I hated waking replacements. They’d resist, curse you, kick at you, even threaten to punch you out. The only way to get ’em out was to grab their feet and pull. Some were bigger and tougher than me. It wasn’t easy dealing with them. From then on I always treasured sleep. Now I sleep 8 or 9 hours.  

The chief form of entertainment in the Pacific was movies. The Navy had a real caste system. The film couldn’t start till the CO sat down. Officers sat on buckets and enlisted men sat on the ground. When the Marshall Islands were secure, we went there for liberty. They were pretty shot up, not a leaf on the trees. (Japs used to get up in trees and gun down Marines. The Marines got wise; first thing they did each day was machine-gun the trees.) The Marines had dug little holes and we all played a coconut game. Roll a coconut in one hole you win, role it another hole you lose. I didn’t see any natives in the Marshalls. I guess a lot left and others were killed. 

On New Guinea we traded with the natives. They wouldn’t take anything but coins; they valued coins according to size. They thought a nickel was worth more than a dime. I was on liberty one time, just wandering around by myself. Natives started coming up; they were mostly naked. I took out a silver dollar and they surrounded me with spears. I thought, “Oh my God, just like in the Tarzan movies, they’re gonna boil me in a pot.” They crowded closer, jabbering, stretching out their hands. Then I realized they wanted to trade cat’s eye seashells for my silver dollar. I gave it to the highest bidder and got several cat’s eye seashells. They have two black marks—that’s how they got the name. They’re very rare.

The Japanese stripped the Philippines bare. The people didn’t even have sheets. A Navy guy found he could sleep with a girl if he gave her a sheet. The word got around. Sheets got very valuable. It was an economic thing. (Chuckles.) I recall going to the ship store to get toothpaste. There was a long line of guys buying sheets. Soon guys were running out of sheets; they were too valuable to sleep on. Guys stole sheets. They went on leave and hid sheets in their pants so the officers wouldn’t see them.

Didn’t the sheets give them a noticeable bulge? (Chuckles.)

Guess not. They got pretty ingenious hiding them. When another ship pulled near us, we’d signal we wanted to trade movies for sheets: Betty Grable, Tarzan, or some other popular film. They’d signal back, “Good deal!” We’d send films on a pulley and get back a basket of sheets. When they found out how valuable the sheets were, they were furious. See, this is a good lesson in economics. (Laughs.)

Often times I had to stay on the ship and take code while other guys went ashore. They’d come back and tell me their stories. At New Caledonia there was the Pink House. It sat on a hill and closed early in the day. When I went ashore, I saw guys running like mad up the hill to the Pink House, kicking up dust to make the deadline. The prostitutes at Pink House were French gals. The word was you could stay with a girl till your feet hit the floor; then you had to pay and get out. 

At Pearl Harbor I got more liberty. The prostitution houses were always on the second floor. Below people were shopping and doing everyday things. The houses were like department stores. I didn’t buy any girls, but I went in with guys who did and looked around. A girl cost $3 for 3 minutes. “Around the world” cost $4. There were rooms set aside for certain acts. If you wanted “Old Fashioned” you went to that room. If you wanted “Frenchie,” you went to another room. Rooms were ethnically set up. If you wanted a Chinese girl, you went to the Chinese room. If you wanted a French girl, you went to the French room. I don’t recall anybody ever choosing an American girl.

The Navy knew all this was going on; they condoned it, even gave shots to counteract venereal disease. I never saw any guy with venereal disease.

Yeah, the war was bad and you remember how bad it was. But you also remember other things. There were the humorous things and fun times and things that make you laugh to this day. 

In addition to his five Bronze Battle Stars Bill received these awards:

                                                      American Theatre Medal

                                                      Asiatic Pacific Medal

                                                      Philippine Liberation Medal

                                                      World War II Victory Medal

Alvin Warnick is a founding member of Oak Hammock at the University of Florida and a retired UF Professor of Animal Science. A widower, he is the father of two daughters and a son. He has seven grandchildren and seven great grandchildren.

On December 7, 1941, I was in Chicago as a guest of Swift & Company, the meat-packing firm. I was one of 30 land-grant students, including E. T. York [now Chancellor Emeritus of the University System of Florida]. We students got to Chicago because the company liked our essays on meat-packing. I was there three days, December 5 – 8, 1941. I’d never even heard of Pearl Harbor. Like everybody else, I was upset about the Japanese attack. I realized it was war for the U.S. and I’d be involved. In June of ’42 I graduated from Utah State University with a degree in Animal Science. Before I graduated, I had a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin.

I was trying to earn money for graduate school and started working for the Army Corps of Engineers on the camp project to relocate Japanese. They had been living on the West Coast. My job was checking in lumber and building materials shipped in from the Northwest. The materials came into Delta, Utah, by rail. After they were checked in, they were hauled to the relocation camp in the Topaz Mountains about 15-20 miles away. 

What were local attitudes toward the camp and about Japanese Americans being forcibly removed from their homes?  

At first the local community was apprehensive about the camp. There was some feeling of it being unfair, but of course this was wartime and we were all very upset at the Japanese and Hitler. I left before the camp was finished, before the Japanese came in. I did some checking recently when I went back to Utah. According to my nephew, his father (my older brother now deceased) told him that many of the Japanese were well-to-do people. The camp consisted of barracks in close quarters and was weather-proofed. The Japanese were able to circulate in the area and go shopping in Delta. The local people didn’t seem to be worried about them. The camp helped the local economy. The Japanese were very industrious people. They improved the outside of the camp with gardens and flowers. However, I’m sure they were upset at being forced to live there. I don’t know whether they were supervised when they went out in the community.

On September 4, 1942, I volunteered for induction. Most of us were anxious to be involved in the war. We went in the service to do a job and get it over with. Some misrepresented their age to get in. I scored high enough on the test at the Fort Douglas Induction Center to be assigned to the Army Air Corps at Traux Field near Madison, Wisconsin. My hearing wasn’t good enough for radio operator and I became a radio mechanic. We repaired communication equipment in the radio school. It wasn’t long before I was shipped to radar school in Boca Raton, Florida. We learned how to operate and repair IFF radar equipment [Identification Friend or Foe]. We were sent from Boca Raton to Atlantic City where we got basic infantry and overseas training.

I think we realized the dangers of war. If I go overseas, will I ever come back or not! But I started looking forward to the adventure. I really wasn’t that worried. I felt God was watching over me. I have always been a practicing Mormon. I prayed each day as if I was at home. I take a little book of Mormon with me at all times. Young Mormons have the opportunity to get a patriarchal blessing. That blessing states your lineage and blesses your potential. The blessing says if I’m called to military service, serve willingly, and keep all the Mormon Commandments that I will be protected. That blessing and my faith gave me a good feeling of security to meet whatever challenges I had to face.

When I was stationed at Traux Field I used the occasion to meet three professors I expected to have at the University of Wisconsin when I got out of the Army. Each one was very nice and invited me into his home. Professor Bohstedt was Chairman of Animal Science then. He told me, “Alvin, your assistantship will be waiting on you when you get back.” I had every confidence that I would come back and would study under those professors.

In April of ’43 our group that had trained at Atlantic City sailed from New York to Liverpool, England, on the USS Mariposa. The trip took 9 days. We were trying to dodge German U-boats. We took a tortuous route, went south then north. Fortunately we didn’t run into any U-boats. We were assigned to the 8th Air Force and sent to radar school in South Kensington, England. We lived in a Red Cross facility near the school. I was very impressed with the RAF students. The British were kind, very helpful, and their instruction was very good. On weekends, the British showed us sites in London and along the Thames River.

From the radar school we were assigned to the 100th Bomb Group located near the town of Diss in East Anglia. We were assigned to barracks according to our job. We worked in a shop. At first there were only four of us radar mechanics, one per squadron. By war’s end there were 90 radar mechanics. Our job was routine repairing and training of navigators to use the GEE Box for short-range navigation, 300-500 miles. We never flew. Our job was to teach, install and repair the equipment in the B-17 bombers.  

We became close to the people we worked with: the mechanics, navigators, and radiomen. We didn’t have much contact with the pilots. I’m sure the pilots had fears. In some of the early missions 30 planes, each with 10 men, would be sent out; only 20 returned. Each pilot had to fly 25 missions. They were looking forward to finishing their missions and getting out of harm’s way. They ranged in age from 19 to 25. Some were no more than 19 or 20. Flying a B-17 was dangerous work and took quite a bit of courage and daring. The young pilots tended to be more daring. On D-Day we didn’t lose a plane. Some of our crews flew three missions on D-Day. They’d fly over drop their bombs, come back, and fly another mission. By 1944 the Germans were running out of steam. I have a friend named Robin Baxter. Robin’s father was Rudolf Baxter who came here after the war. Rudolf was drafted into the German Army and flew a Messerschmitt night fighter. Rudolf said the last five or six months of the war the Germans had planes but no fuel. He died a couple of years ago.

How much evidence of the war’s destruction did you see?

I saw planes coming in badly shot up. Some came back with only one engine working. It was a miracle they could fly at all. The worst thing I saw was a plane with a hole three or four feet in diameter. All that was left of the radio operator was blood and body parts. One morning we were out on the flight line and heard the red alert. We ran to a ditch. A German plane was aiming for the runway but his bomb hit off to the side. Our planes were still able to take off.

Toward the end of the war, the Germans started launching “buzz bombs” toward London. The buzz bombs were unmanned missiles the Germans launched from Holland. I never saw any buzz bombs, but I sure heard them. They made a hideous noise. As long as you could hear them, you knew the bombs were on their way to someplace else. Our shelters were made of concrete and brick, but we didn’t use them much.

I was in the Army over three years. Here’s the uniform I wore. It’s still in good shape. I made Tech Sergeant. These stripes represent 2 ½ years overseas. I got the ETO medal [European Theatre of Operations] and the Good Conduct Medal.

I assume you married after you got out of the Army.

Yes. I married Barbara Webster on August 20, 1947. We had a happy marriage of 56 years. Barbara got her master’s degree in Human Genetics and became a Teaching Assistant at the University of Wisconsin. She was active in the Ag Women’s Club at the University of Florida and served as its president. She died of lymphoma in 2003.

Wilse (Bernie) Webb is a retired Professor of Psychology. He held professorships at the University of Tennessee and Washington University in St. Louis, headed the Aviation Psychology Laboratory in the Navy School of Aviation Medicine, chaired the Department of Psychology at the University of Florida (UF), headed the development of a psychology laboratory and a graduate program at UF, and was honored as Distinguished Research Professor at UF. His many publications include Biological Rhythms, Sleep and Performance and Sleep, the Gentle Tyrant. Mary, his wife of 65 years, died in 2007. He has three daughters, one son, eight grandchildren and two great grandchildren, all of whom live in Florida.

On February 16, 2010, I interviewed Bernie in Oak Hammock’s Meditation Room. He talked about some of his experiences during World War II.   

World War II actually made the United States. Before that we were in the Great Depression. By the time the war started, we had not recovered from it. My father had lost his lumber yard in Yazoo City, my hometown. I was a student at LSU barely scraping by on $35 a month. My mother was the springboard of my life, a dynamo and a grande dame. She got a job in Roosevelt’s CCC program [Civilian Conservation Corps]. Eventually she headed this program in Yazoo City.

The war created us in the sense that it got us out of the Depression. It took us out of our hometowns. We rubbed shoulders with people from every walk of life. The war put women in the work force, gave impetus to new opportunities for minorities. Rosie the Riveters brought home paychecks; family incomes greatly increased. The United States didn't suffer as badly as other countries.

Serving in Aviation Psychology, U. S. Army Air Corps

I had a wonderful war. When it began, I was playing bridge in a frat house at the University of Iowa, where I was a graduate student in psychology. My college major was the reason I had a wonderful war. Two years before the war, John Flanagan had started the Aviation Classification Program for the Army Air Corps. Flanagan was an expert in applied psychology and the Army made him a colonel. When the war broke out, Flanagan sent letters to all the psychology departments to get people to work in the Aviation Classification Centers. I was one of them. In fact, about a third of my class enlisted in this aviation psychology program.

Our job was to test prospective pilots, navigators and bombardiers to see if they were trainable or not trainable. We tested their motor skills, math abilities, emotions, and other qualities they’d need to function in combat. When you put a person in a bomber or fighter plane, you better have the right man for the job. We tested 100 men a week.  There were three Aviation Classification Centers: one at San Antonio, Texas; one in Nashville, TN; and one in California.

This was a marvelous program. I was promoted to Master Sergeant. But after eight months in the program, I saw that the war was not what I expected. My father had served in combat artillery in World War I. I wanted the kind of challenge he had. So I applied to Officer Candidate School hoping to get in the artillery. I was commissioned but they sent me to Adjutant General School. This was not what I expected either. Eventually I was sent back to the Aviation Classification Center in Nashville and became a member of Flanagan’s staff.

Flanagan assigned officers to collect data on people who passed or failed in the flight training programs. Our job was to find the successes and failures at every level of training. I got involved in evaluating how accurate fighter pilots were in shooting at tow targets. A plane would tow a target across the sky and a fighter pilot would shoot at it with colored bullets. One fighter used red-colored bullets, another green-colored, etc. They’d fire at the targets. The targets would drop to the ground. My job was to read the targets and see which pilots excelled and which ones didn’t. I sent the information back to the Classification Center. This exercise really didn’t help the pilots that much. There was always a delay in their finding out how they did. These pilots were flying the fastest trainer planes we had. They were being prepared to fly P-47 fighter planes.

I found out our P-47 pilots were going to Okinawa. I went to Flanagan and asked for TDY [temporary duty] to Okinawa. On the way over, our troop ship almost got hit by a Kamikaze suicide plane. I was stationed at Ie Shima, a small island two or three miles from Okinawa. Ie Shima had been taken, but there was still scattered resistance from the Japanese. About three days before I got to Ie Shima, Ernie Pyle [war correspondent for Scripps Howard newspapers] was killed there. It was very sad. The GI’s loved him. The nearest thing we came to danger on Ie Shima was from Japanese planes. They interrupted many of our evenings trying to bomb our air strip. Another danger was falling debris from the shells our ships were shooting at the enemy on Okinawa. What goes up must come down. You can’t fight a perfect war.

Major Problems in P-47 Missions Against Kyushu

Our P-47’s would take off from Ie Shima and fly 500 miles to attack Kyushu, the southern-most island of Japan. The P-47 was effective in air combat and particularly good at ground attack. Fully loaded, it weighed up to eight tons. That’s why it was called the “jug.” It was a very strong plane. We heard that one guy in Europe banged into a mountain with the thing and was still able to fly it back to base. The main complaint about it in Europe was it was a very heavy, slow climber.  

For missions against Kyushu the P-47 was the worst plane for the job. We lost ten P-47’s at Ie Shima. The runway was short, about 3 miles long, often soggy. The planes couldn’t get up enough speed to get off the runway. If they weren’t going at a safe speed and didn’t brake two-thirds of the way down the runway, there was disaster. Another major problem was that P-47 pilots didn’t have any intensive training in navigation. They navigated by eye. They had to fly 500 miles to Kyushu, fire their rockets, drop their bombs, and fly back. This flying was particularly perilous at night. We lost a dozen planes that couldn’t find their way back.

P-47 missions against Kyushu were useless. Our B-29 bombers had already wiped out many Japanese towns. It became apparent the P-47’s were being built up for the invasion of Japan. We all knew this invasion was in the works. Without the atom bomb, P-47’s would have had a major role in attacking troops and positions on the Japanese mainland.

Earlier you mentioned flying over Kyushu during the fighting. Would you give some details about that?

We were using B-25 bombers for navigation, as lead planes for the P-47’s in their attacks on Kyushu. I admired the combat pilots immensely and wanted to be like them. I wanted to test myself. I asked a B-25 pilot if I could fly with him and his crew as an observer on the Kyushu missions. He said, “Hell yes!” (Laughs) We circled at 8,000 feet over Kyushu. I watched as the P-47’s dropped bombs and fired rockets at Japanese positions. I went on three such missions.

Okinawa was bloody and nasty. The Japanese were ordered to fight to the death. It was a rare thing for Japanese to surrender. I do recall a few poor, bedraggled ones swimming from Okinawa over to our island. They were desperate to surrender to us. Our unit on Ie Shima had no guns to guard them. We were completely unarmed. We had to borrow guns from the only personnel who had them: pilots and MP’s (Laughs)

Everybody in the military then knew we were saved by the atom bomb. We felt good times were coming. I am most grateful for my four years of service in World War II. They were my formative years. I matured, advanced to First Lieutenant. By the time I got out of the Army, I had found my mission in life in the field of psychology. While I saw little brutality up close, I had friends in Mississippi who did. “Wild Bill” Hagman and Joe Curran volunteered to be aviators. Wild Bill was basically blind in one eye, but he finagled his way through the entrance test. He got in the Air Corps and bagged two German planes. He and Joe Curran saw some brutal stuff, but it didn’t break them. It made them.

I really believe that many of us who served during World War II were better for the experience. 

What led you out of academe into the Aviation Psychology Laboratory in the Navy School of Aviation Medicine?

After the war, I  had been plodding along as an assistant professor of psychology, first at the University of Tennessee where my family and I had lived in "apartments" converted from Army barracks and then at Washington University in St. Louis. At U.T. in Knoxvillle my department chairman was Jim Elder who laid a sound foundation, and I am pleased to have been a part of it. But Washington U. offered me more money. I had three kids, increasing responsibilities and need for still more income. Because I had published, made Teacher of the Year and was in my third year at Washington University in St. Louis, I went to the department head and asked to be promoted to associate professor. He said it was a matter for the dean. The dean said this kind of promotion could not be given until after the fourth year. He liked to call Washington U. “the Harvard of the Midwest.” I called some people I had known in the Army and got a referral to the Naval Station at Pensacola. The Navy offered me a GS-12 civilian job at $12,000. I took it. It proved to be valuable experience that helped me in my return to academe. 

What were your duties in the Laboratory?

I worked there five years, 1953–1958. Basically, I did the same thing with Navy pilots that I did with Army pilots during the war. Our lab was involved in early astronaut training. Men were being trained to operate complex machines. There was a completely new perspective on space. The question was, How do we measure the effects of space on astronauts? We went to Langley Field where the astronauts were training and presented them with a set of tests to take. All but one said, “Your tests are ridiculous. We’re perfect.” (Laughs) One said to his fellow astronauts, “Aw, c’mon! These fellas are just trying to do their job.” Do you know who that one astronaut was?

John Glenn.

Right! He was a stellar gentleman. Trying to evaluate these astronaut candidates with a battery of tests was like trying to test Army pilots who had come off combat missions. Both groups didn’t have their minds on the tests. The Army pilots were so grateful to be back alive, that’s all they were thinking about.  After I left the Navy Laboratory and returned to academe, I did some consulting for the government. Did you see that George Clooney thing The Men Who Stare at Goats?

No, but I read about it. It’s about paranormals in the U. S. Army, isn’t it?

Yes, and it’s bullshit. I got involved in similar mess with the government. They had stolen a sleep machine from Russia. I was called in to evaluate it. I tested it and found it was worthless. (Laughs)

Bernie Webb’s military decorations: Okinawa Campaign Ribbon, Pacific Theatre Medal, World War II Victory Medal, Good Conduct Medal.

"They Remember War" Table of Contents