A Pacific WWII Navy Veteran's memories

7 December A.D. 2006 | Arided Navigator

[lightman]

These memoires were handwritten by my WWII US Navy Veteran father a few months before his death earlier this year. I seemed fitting to put them in digital form on this 65th Anniverary of the 20th Century's Day of Infamy and to share them in this forum.

[lightman]

Since you were all so kind as to post replies when I posted news of my father's passing in July http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1662602/posts?q=1&&page=1 I thought that you might have interest in reading his reflections.

[USMCWife6869]

Thank you for sharing. My grandfather (who raised me) was a Navy WWII vet also. I remeber being absolutely enraptured by his stories, even as a young child. I tease my dh all the time by saying my grandfather would have loved him if he weren't a Jarhead.

Thanks again for sharing your father's precious memories.

[Alouette]

G-D bless your dad for his service.

My dad is a U.S. Navy WW2 vet, he served aboard the USS White Plains in the Pacific.

[Enterprise]

You'll like this one.

[GitmoSailor]

Thanks for the Thread.

[RebelBanker]

That was a truly outstanding read on Pearl Harbor Day! Thank you very much for sharing it.

God bless you and your family.

[50sDad]

I dreamed I was in boot camp last night.

Never been in the military, and now I am too old to be drafted unless the Muzzies blow up Washington, D.C. But I've played a LOT of Call to Honor (is that it? There are so many like it now.) And in advance of today's anniversary, I was thinking last night before bed of the cut scenes in Call to Honor Pacific of the Pearl Harbor assignment.

Your character's POV is in a Jeep as your new superior officer shows you around Pearl. Nurses walking to work in the beautiful weather, off-duty sailors eyeing the nurses, the long curve past the front of the Officers' Club...normalcy. Your CO talking about how the Pacific was the aft end of Hitler's War, about what a quiet posting it would be...and then the first zero goes overhead with the "meatball" on the wing, strafing. The insane drive down to the docks, the bloody work of gunnery from the rocking PT boat, the narrow escapes running like rats inside the sinking Arizona's listing and dead hull; that game brings home the experience I hope I will never undergo, and makes real what those who went before endured.

I sit in my padded recliner and watch the war news from a pivotal conflict that was lost the day the Democrats got voted in by disaffected "independent" idiots who, made fat on Bush's Recovery, got snookered by the Lies of the Left. We cannot do enough for these brave fighters, but I fear that I know how it will end. The last helicopter out of Vietnam plays over and over in my mind.

A salute to the remaining grizzled vets who were part of the age when we knew what elemental evil looked like.

[VOYAGER]

Thank you for sharing. My grandfather (who raised me) was a Navy WWII vet also. I remember being absolutely enraptured by his stories, even as a young child.

You know the further down the road it gets age wise by the WW2 service people(male and female)I find the less the folks who were not born yet(The Depression era and the following WW2 era)give a "pinch of dirt" for our growing up and service related experiences.

I'm about "Heroed" out anyway and appreciate without measure our wonderful, brave, unselfish and many times under-appreciated service people who are serving without measure in spite of the oft-times ungrateful and un-American attitude of the "elitist" news media and the U.S. Congress!!

To whom I say "Wake up you dumb butts" before these service folk that have "our backs" now are no longer willing to serve to the death and are no longer with us!

I feel very strongly that these that now serve are the "Greater Generation"!

[Ro_Thunder]

My PopPop was a SeaBee, stationed on Okinaka in '45. God bless your dad for his service, and all those.

Ro_Thunder
USN CTT3
1988-1992

[MeneMeneTekelUpharsin]

Thanks.

[El Gato]

My paternal Uncle was part of the Naval Armed Guard on board the Liberty Ship SS William Clark, the third Liberty ship out of the Porland yard, the first being the SS Meriwether Lewis.

The ship was torpedoed and sunk by a U-Boat, on 4 November 1942, at Latitude 71 degrees 05 minutes North, Longitude 13 degrees twenty minutes West, near Jan Mayen Island in the Greenland Sea. Not exactly warm waters in November. This is an account of the sinking:

After the heavy losses of convoys PQ17 and PQ18, it was decided to try to sneak some ships through unescorted. The Liberty ships Hugh Williamson, John H. B. Latrobe, John Walker, Richard B. Alvey, and William Clarke were dispatched from Iceland in this fashion in October and November of 1942.

The William Clark, with a cargo of planes, tanks, auto tires, ammunition, and a crew of 71 men, was an easy mark for a waiting U-boat shortly after noon on 4 November. The sky was overcast, with a moderate sea running. Visibility was seven miles. The first torpedo hit amidships, flooding the engine room. The order was given to abandon ship, and after the lifeboats pulled away, two more torpedoes broke the vessel in two and sent her to the bottom. The St. Elstan and the Cape Pallister picked up the 41 survivors. One of those survivors was of course my uncle, who lost a couple of toes to frostbit.

After discovering all this, I corresponded with a former Brit Naval Officer who had served on the St. Elstan, although sometime after this incident.

My maternal uncle served on a US Navy Seagoing Tug in the Pacific theater. He spoke of helping put out burning ships, towing them in, and of a bad typhoon that did more damage than the Kamikazes had. He spoke to me of all this, although aparently the had never spoken to my mother or grandparents about his experiences. That occurred at a birthday party for my grandfather, the last time I saw him in fact. Grandpa was about 97 or 98 then, he was 99 when he died.

My paternal Uncle died a couple of decades ago, but the maternal one is hanging on. And in fact I saw and spoke with him, along with his wife and four kids, just a week ago today, at my sister-in-law's funeral.

[El Gato]

Didn't mean to imply that my Dad wasn't a veteran of WW-II as well. He was, Army. Served stateside, in radar/searchlight unit and as basic training cadre, from late '42 or early '43 'til '44. The unit he was shipped overseas with was in the Battle of the Bulge, some of the "green" troops that got shot up pretty bad I think, but he was in the Hospital in Le Harve getting his appendix out at the time. He later did occupation duty in Germany.

[lightman]

Thank you for your family's service, and for setting down some of their memories. My father seldom spoke of his Navy days, and I shall often wonder what he meant by "except Okinawa" in the paragraph describing the Arided's lack of combat experience, although I think I know.

[exit82]

lightman--thank you so very much for sharing your Dad's handwritten memoirs of his WWII service. Everyone's service played a part in the mosaic of over ten million people in service that contributed to the victory, and to the postwar prosperity.

Never is there is sense of whining or hardship--your Dad was just doing his part, as they saw it. How I wish we were as united in this present conflict as we were then.

Thank you for this glimpse to the past, as over 60 years rolls away, and we witness those actions unrecorded by history--present only in the minds of those who lived them.

This Christmas will be hard, but remember your Dad with pride. You are his legacy, and he is undoubtedly proud of you.

[OkeyDokeyOkie]

Thank you for sharing this!

[MelonFarmerJ]

Thank you so much for sharing your father's memories. Those who served deserve all honor, respect and a permanent place in our hearts.

My father was at Pearl Harbor on Dec 7th aboard the USS Farragut, DD-348, in the East Loch, and subsequently saw more action in the Battle of the Coral Sea before being transferred stateside to train others in his rating, storekeeper. He completed 21 years of service as a CWO-3 on the USS Lexington, CVA-16 in 1959, and passed in December of 1999. I miss him greatly, especially every December 7th.

I and my wife were in Kauai on December 7th this last week and were able to watch the entire ceremony of honors at Pearl Harbor that morning on television. It was a beautiful and moving tribute. If memory serves me, there were only 8 survivors able to attend this year. Their reminences were extensive and un-cut, thanks to KHNL Channel 8. The saddest recollection was of that of a Corpsman who was on the detail tasked with the weeks-long gathering the remains of those who lost their lives aboard the USS Arizona, BB-39. It brought me to tears, along with seeing the overhead view of the oil slick drifting over the ship's remains.

The National Park Service's webpage http://www.nps.gov/usar carries this comment about the oil that is still being given up to the harbor:

There were 1.4 million gallons of fuel on the USS Arizona when she sank. Over 60 years later, approximately two quarts a day still surfaces from the ship. Pearl Harbor survivors refer to the oil droplets as "Black Tears."

[lightman]

BTTT, Pearl Harbor Day, A.D. 2007

[lightman]

BTTT for Pearl Harbor Day, Sunday December 7 A.D. 2008

[lightman]

BTTT for Pearl Harbor day, A.D. 2009