Posted on 07/11/2020 1:48:56 AM PDT by sushiman
They either threw them out, or if they saw something they liked, they could take them. These images were from a sailor off of a carrier that came into the Boston Navy Yard (possibly the USS Leyte?) who had dropped negatives off to be developed and never picked them up:
They knew I was interested in these kinds of things, and they showed them to me. I wondered if these were pictures that had ever been published or seen anywhere, or just copies taken from negatives that had been on the ship.
Really enjoyed reading your memories. Thanks.
A very short session of investigation shows the Jeep Carrier to be the USS Nehenta Bay and the destroyer at the other end of the breeches bouy is the DD 551, USS Capps Both ships were in the battle of Okinawa together.
It’s a Grumman Hellcat completely enveloped in flames and a TBF that is over the edge of the flight deck.
Awesome, historically significant photos!
The Japanese often refuse to face up to their role in the war and focus on our efforts to get them to quit.
I remember vividly watching Japanese war movies on Japanese TV while I was a guest of the Tachikawa USAF Hospital in 1967. In each of them, swarms of Japanese ships and aircraft sank our aircraft carriers, one after another. Damn movies made me angry - apparently, the lesson wasn’t fully learned.
Correction, DD 550, USS Capps. Saw one hell of a lot of action.
One more recollection:
The Yokohama PX complex was also home to a three bay fire station, manned by Japanese firemen. The staff liked to keep front and rear roller doors open to provide fresh air and light for working on their Isuzu fire trucks.
I liked to whizz through the open doors on my bike, which usually brought out swearing firemen, shaking their fist at the strafing gaijin...
I never noticed but the floor held a large sheet of plywood that I biked over when traveling through.
One day, when the notion took over, I wheeled through and over the plywood and came around again for another pass.
The firemen were waiting.
I didn’t see the grease pit until my front wheel dropped in and I went over the handle bars and cracked my skull.
The firemen had alerted the Japanese police to my harassment and before I could stand up straight, officer Sase-san, our neighborhood policeman, had jumped into the pit and carried me and my badly bent bike up and out.
It was a hard lesson learned...
The Air Force realized quickly that the justification for having the 6,000 dead Marines and sailors taking Iwo and about 25,000 wounded on Iwo was predicated on how many B-29 crews they saved and the value of Iwo as an airfield to support their fighter escorts.
To aid the single-engine fights get to and from Japan, a mother ship B-29 was detailed to do their navigating for them. On one of those flights, my uncle got his only confirmed kill, a Tojo that flew into his guns.
Since the Japanese started husbanding their aircraft for kamikazes for our invasion, the Air Force directed the fighters to get down on the deck after the B-29s turned for home and strafe any target of opportunity. I have some color video of some of my uncle's strafing runs and he established a record by setting three Japanese aircraft on fire in a single run.
There was a downside to strafing down low: it's a liquid-cooled engine and if any of the thousands of rounds fired at you hit some part of that vulnerable cooling system, you were going to stay in Japan or land in the water, neither of these were welcome options.
He told me that as soon as they were clear of land, they would take turns flying underneath each other to check on that small flap at the rear of the radiator scoop: it's automatic - and if it begins to open, you have about 60 seconds to leave the plane before the engine seizes and falls uncontrollably into the ocean. He remembered friends bailing out, climbing into their liferafts, waving at them and never being seen by anyone again.
WWII reminiscence really not apropos to the article: my godfather was commanding the USS William D. Porter (DD-579) when it was sunk by a shot-down kamikaze that exploded under its keel in WWII. All the crew got off safely. The ship had a rather colorful past (worth reading about) including accidentally firing a torpedo at a battleship President Roosevelt was aboard. I read that when the Porter entered ports, other naval ships would run up flags signaling, “Don’t shoot, we’re all Republicans here.”
I love it...I spent as much time as I could afford up on that second story roller skating rink! Loved it!
They had the disco ball and everything..I remember being fascinated by the patterns as they swam by...:)
A most interesting place indeed...I was there between 1967 and 1969...
Glad you liked it...I had a major flashback when I found that picture this morning...:)
I am a very sentimental person...and the older I get, the more sentimental I become!
Hehehe...I loved the characterization! LOL, you probably made sounds as you went speeding through like "BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA BUDDA!"
American kids could be such snots!!!!
Bttt.
5.56mm
I’ve never seen those before, and I’ve read hundreds of WWII books.
Right after the war, the Japanese started an international campaign to lay a guilt trip on America for dropping the A-bomb.
Some liberal American newspaper sent out reporters to ask Asians how they felt about that. For those who suffered under Japanese occupation, the replies were variants of "Why did you drop only two?"
PFL
I tend to be focused on the Japanese, because we lost a cousin at Pearly Harbor, another fighting on Tarawa, another died on the USS Chevalier, and four of my cousins were held prisoner and routinely starved for three and a half years in the Philippines.
Other than that, no strong feelings.
Isn’t that one photo from the signing of their surrendor on the Missouri!!??
Love the stories.
“Why did you drop only two?”
= = = = = = = = = = =
Because that is all we had???
Wonder what the outcome would have been had the ‘Bat Bombs’ worked as planned....
Dresden Germany gets little mention but they went through a hellish time with fire bombing about 4000 tons of bombs and around 25 thousand killed.
Of course ‘we’ were told Japan got the ABombs for racial reasons only.
As to Japan and the ABomb, chances are that if there had been NO PEARL HARBOR there probably wouldn’t have been ABombs etc..
Don’t mess with the bull, you are liable to get the horn.
I salute men of that generation. Hope we don’t end up going through something like that again.
I completely get the Iwo Jima angle. The bloodletting was staggering. It averaged something like eight or nine men an hour for thirty days. I can understand the effort to make that mean something.
Though to be fair, if I were asked to strafe like that, I would rather do it in a Jug.
But I’ll bet they loved their Mustangs.
Great anecdotes, thanks for sharing.
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