By Dwight Daniels
The aircraft carrier Randolph was tended by an unidentified support ship as it underwent repairs in March 1945 to mend the massive hole in its aft flight deck.
Robert Miller felt as safe March 11, 1945, in the central Pacific as he would have if his warship were anchored in San Diego Bay.
Miller, a young supply officer aboard the destroyer escort Lewis, and his fellow crew members were enjoying a rare luxury – a movie.
Suddenly, a massive explosion erupted on a ship moored next to theirs in the western Caroline Islands. The aircraft carrier Randolph was in flames.
"The sky forward of us was lit up like the finale of a Fourth of July fireworks display," said Miller, who was 22 at the time.
He didn't know it then, but he had just witnessed the aftermath of a kamikaze attack.
The pilot of a Japanese twin-engine bomber had smashed his plane into the Randolph's aft flight deck, killing more than two dozen crewmen and injuring many more.
On Veterans Day 2002, with talk of war and reports of suicide attacks back in the news, people like Miller can't help but remember the long-ago sacrifices of their brothers in arms.
In the chaos that day 57 years ago, Miller and others manned their battle stations in case there was an attack on their own ship while the Randolph's sailors fought flames that threatened to consume the carrier.
A second attack never materialized, but rumors swirled around the Lewis' decks for days as to what had caused the explosion aboard the bigger ship, Miller said.
"It was not like today. We were never told for sure," said Miller, 80. "I had to be satisfied with the scuttlebutt."
More than 50 years later, Miller finally resolved the nagging question. He arrived at the truth in the oddest fashion – while reading an obituary in July 1998 in The San Diego Union-Tribune.
In an article tracing the life of Jesse C. Madden, an 88-year-old retired Navy lieutenant commander who served as a flight-deck officer aboard the Randolph on that day in 1945, Miller learned the carrier had suffered a kamikaze attack.
"Twenty-five men were killed and 106 wounded in the attack, which damaged the starboard side of the carrier just below the flight deck," Miller recalled reading in the article.
But at the time of the incident, Miller had little time to worry about the statistics of war casualties. His ship was soon to be heading out of its Ulithi Atoll anchorage on combat patrols and anti-submarine warfare duty, and to support the invasion of Okinawa.
Confined to their ship, the Lewis' crew members focused on the small pleasures of life, such as letters from home and movies, to block out the death and destruction.
Ironically, the film Miller believes he and others were watching the night of the kamikaze attack was "For Whom the Bell Tolls," a war movie based on the Ernest Hemingway novel.
It was obtained from another Navy ship through a trade of 300 pounds of frozen boneless beef – including Grade A filet mignon – from the ship's rations.
Miller, in charge of logistics, was behind the acquisition. "With Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper, (this) was the most sought-after flick in existence," he said.
His captain had insisted on the deal.
"He'd told me, 'Get that movie at all costs,' " Miller said.
The lieutenant junior grade ordered signalmen to transmit "blinker" messages spelling out terms of a deal to a potential trading partner. The signals were relayed from ship to ship because the vessel with the film was out of direct blinker range.
That ship wanted the quality beef in exchange for Bergman and Cooper.
Miller and a three-man crew took a 17-mile journey on the Lewis' whaleboat to pick up the reels. Miller later traded the movie to a third ship for 300 gallons of "real" ice cream – another wartime luxury.
"This movie has stuck in my memory for more than 50 years, not so much for the entertainment value . . . but for the ordeal and hazards in getting it," Miller said.
As the war continued, Miller drifted further away from the attack on the Randolph.
"There were so many other exciting things going on," he said.
When the atomic bombs were dropped on Japan and the war in the Pacific ended, Miller left the Navy, attended law school and built a successful practice in civil litigation in Tucson.
He married and had four sons, but lost his wife and two boys in a plane crash during a vacation trip to Mexico in 1966.
Miller bought a second home in La Jolla in 1968 – it was a favorite family spot – and has lived there about half of his time since he retired in 1982. His two surviving sons are attorneys in Arizona.
Miller supposes that if he had tried, he could have looked up Navy historical accounts of what happened the night the kamikaze hit the Randolph.
Had he known Sal Rizza, Miller could have received a firsthand account.
Rizza, 77, a retired insurance executive, confirmed from his Florida home that it was a kamikaze attack that nearly destroyed his ship. He was a 19-year-old seaman then, assigned below the Randolph's flight deck to tie down planes.
A member of the Randolph Association, a confederation of sailors who served aboard the carrier over the years, Rizza said he was playing cards below decks when he "felt a huge thump."
"I said, 'Holy cow, what was that?' " Rizza said. "There was chaos, people running everywhere, with smoke and hoses.
"I went down and got my (gas) mask. You could smell the fumes through the ventilation system. When I got up (on deck), sailors were trying everything they could to help out."
The victims had all been on what is known as the fantail, a designated smoking area at the stern. Two of Rizza's friends were killed.
"They did the same job I did," he said. "We worked together. I often wonder, there but for the grace of God go I.
"It's just fate."
The blast was so horrific that recovery crews were still pulling out bodies three days after the attack, according to a diary kept by one of the Randolph's shipboard physicians.
"Find a few more bodies in the debris," an entry from March 14 states. "Several of our (injured) men die on board the USS Relief (a hospital ship)."
The carrier stayed at Ulithi until early April for repairs, and rejoined the fleet for the Battle of Okinawa.
Miller said reading about the Randolph's fate in Madden's obituary rekindled fond memories of a trying but eventful time.
"I'm just fortunate I came out (of the war) not having been wounded or injured," he said. "And my time in the Navy was some of the happiest, (most) fulfilling days of my life."
