Chapter 31 - 1997 -Joe Recalls the Battle of Okinawa

Chapter 31 Version 2

1997

“ACORN 29 waited about five months to go to Europe but were never called” recalled Joe.

Joe rarely mentioned what he did in the service to his family. He told his wife Jane never to ask him about the war back in the 1940’s and she never did. Joe was slowing down and he was recalling growing up and going to school as he sat in his glider rocking chair with his feet elevated. He did not want to go through another heart by-pass operation and his diabetes was getting worse. It was a weekend afternoon and Joe and John were in Joe’s living room at Laurel Park in Northampton. John grabbed a piece of blank paper and started to take detailed notes of the conversation.

“We went to California on a ‘troop Pullman” which was a boxcar with six bunks high. The railroad trip took five days. We went to Port H (Hueneme, California) near Oxnard and retrained for the Pacific. Then I was at 29 Palms in California in the Mojave Desert to maintain planes practicing for dive bombing.”

“It got up to 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the daytime and we were living in tents so when it got down to 60 degrees at night we thought we were going to freeze to death. For R&R we went to Ojai.”

On November 1^st,1944 Joe received an advancement in rank to MMS3c – Shop Machinist Mate 3^rd class which made him a petty officer. Two days later, Joe left on his annual leave and took a train back to Massachusetts across Kansas. He had a 15 day furlough – 5 days home in Massachusetts with five days travel time to and from home. His leave was over on November 18^th. Then again it was a case of “hurry up and wait”. But this time ACORN 29 was eventually called to be part of the invasion of Okinawa in the spring of 1945 about two years since he joined the navy. A troop ship, the SS Robin Wently, left from San Pedro, California with Joe aboard.

“First we went to Hawaii and going over the Pacific was as smooth as glass then to the Marshall Islands, and then to the Carolines. When we arrived at Okinawa, ACORN 29 was divided into six units with me in the last one.”

“The first units of ACORN 29 were involved in action taking Okinawa. The sixth unit was on Okinawa one week after the first assault. Fighting was still going on inland. I never had to do my job as a motor man on a three man crew of a landing craft on Okinawa. At the beginning, there were twelve hour shifts from 6pm to 6am hauling gasoline in fifty-five gallon drums from Buckner Bay up to the airstrip. We couldn’t use our headlights so that we could avoid sniper fire. There were tiny lights on the truck in front of you so you had to be very close or you would lose your way.”

  

 “The safest place to sleep was on the beach except at sunrise when the kamikazes came. They flew in very low over the beach and out into Buckner Bay where the ships were. As soon as you heard the air raid sirens, you got off the beach as fast as you could. The anti-aircraft guns on the ships would be trying to shoot down the kamikazes so they would be shooting straight into the beach and a lot of guys were killed from friendly fire. “

The Americans did something very different with their pilots than the Japanese that gave them a decided edge. The Americans rotated their pilots from the front lines and the experienced pilots were used as instructors for the new pilots that were being trained. For the Japanese, it was a one-way ticket to the front lines. With MacArthur severing Japan’s supply line for oil from Southeast Asia through the Philippines and Borneo, pilot training was curtailed to conserve fuel. The result was many inexperienced Japanese pilots over the skies of the Philippines  and Okinawa. The kamikaze also did not need much training and the fuel for a kamikaze mission was only enough for a one-way flight. This also eliminated the possibility that a kamikaze would return to base. There were also kamikaze piloted bombs that were dropped from mother aircraft. These manned bombs glided to near the intended target before the pilot engaged a jet engine. These manned bombs would have caused more damage than they did if the pilots had more training. Their accuracy was their overall problem.

The kamikaze was not limited to the skies. There were a variety of ships and submarines outfitted for suicide missions. This included the world’s largest battleship – the Yamato. Five days after the start of the invasion of Okinawa, the Yamato and nine  escort ships set sail from Japan to Okinawa. The mission of Operation Ten-Go was to beach the Yamato and any surviving escort ships in shallow waters off Okinawa. The Yamato would then be used as a stationary fortress to wreak havoc with its huge deck guns on Allied positions on Okinawa. The Yamato was spotted and sunk by aircraft before it ever approached Okinawa. The battleship as an instrument of war was fast becoming a relic of obsolete technology as was demonstrated with the sinking of the German Bismarck and the British Prince of Wales battleships.

“After Okinawa was secured, I made parts for airplanes and did maintenance on aircraft. The kamikaze attacks continued. The Seabees in ACORN 29 got the Yonubaru airstrip up and running. The four engine bombers were hitting Japan and Japanese controlled areas in China from Yonubaru airstrip.”

“I would go up in the planes when they were testing replacement parts I had made. I went up one time and the brakes failed when we were landing. The plane stopped just short of the junk pile at the end of the runway. That was the last time I went up in a plane on Okinawa.”

The Battle of Okinawa is referred to as the “typhoon of steel” with fierce ground combat, flying kamikazes and an armada of ships. The navy combat deaths ended up at 4,907 with 34 ships sunk and 368 damaged - nearly all by kamikaze attack. Fifteen amphibious craft and twelve American destroyers were sunk. Allied losses include 763 aircraft and the army suffered over 7,000 killed in action and over 31,000 wounded. For the Japanese the losses were staggering with the destruction of about 1,900 aircraft in kamikaze missions alone and over 110,000 killed in action.

The island was riddled with caves and the Japanese were holding out inch by inch. The only way to clean out the caves were with grenades and flame throwers. It took 82 days to secure the island. Lieutenant General Simon Bolivar Buckner was killed four days before the island was declared secure on June 21^st, 1945 after the initial landings on April 1 which was also Easter Sunday. He was killed inspecting the front lines when an artillery shell exploded nearby peppering him with sharp shards of coral. He was the highest ranking American officer killed during World War II.

War correspondent Ernie Pyle was also killed by a Japanese machine gunner in an area that was supposedly clear on the small island of Ie Shima off the western coast of Okinawa. The difficulty in securing both Iwo Jima and Okinawa made the planners of the mainland Japan assault raise the expected casualties in the upcoming invasion of the main Japanese islands.

There was a photo group attached to ACORN 29 on Okinawa and Joe collected a number of generic photos of the island along with group photos of his unit. He also brought back some coins, Japanese paper money, bullets, a knife, a mirror decorated with used antiaircraft shells and his white sailor hat. These mementos were stored in a white shoebox on the top shelf of his closet. Some pictures showed cliffs and caves on Okinawa.

“Some of our guys were pretty macho. There were Japanese soldiers holding out in caves on the cliffs and our guys would put a knife in between their teeth and go into the caves after the Japs. They would go in but no one ever came out.”

Chapter 30 - 1944 - 1945 Stanley in the Philippine and Borneo Assaults

Chapter 30 Version 1

1944 -1945

“When they hit the Philippines, I was in the invasion of Leyte and Luzon” wrote Stanley.

On September 19^th, 1944 Stanley was approved for a rate change from Fireman Second Class (F2c) to Electrician’s Mate Third Class (EM3c) signed by Radar Electrician H.R.Berent and approved by the Rocky Mount’s Captain S.R.Patten. On October 1^st Stanley signed the appointment to Petty Officer.

The next day on October 2^nd, Stanley was “Initiated into the Solemn Mysteries of the deep by Neptune Rex, Ruler of the Raging Main, and members of the Royal High Court, thereby qualifying under the title “SHELLBACK” while on a secret mission of war.” as the ship crossed the equator. He had previously entered “The Imperial Main Of The Golden Dragon” when he had crossed the 180^th meridian during the assault on Kwajalein.

His service record includes the following page including combat days January 9, 10 and 12 in 1945. 

  

                                                                                                                                                           After the Battle of Leyte Gulf, the USS Rocky Mount became locked into General Douglas MacArthur’s goal to liberate all of the Philippines. Admiral Nimitz had a different goal going into 1945. Nimitz wanted to carry the fight toward the Japanese homeland as quickly as possible with a naval blockade and extensive bombing campaign. His first objectives were to be two islands closer to Japan – Iwo Jima and Okinawa - to be used as staging areas for the bombing of the major Japanese islands using the new B-29 four engine bombers. With the Rocky Mount supporting MacArthur, a newer amphibious flagship would be used at both Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The AGC-12, the USS Estes, was a new amphibious flagship named after Estes Park in the Colorado Rockies.

Following the October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf and the December 11th sinking of the USS Reid, the Philippine island of Mindoro was invaded on December 13^th in order to provide a base for aircraft to cover for the upcoming Battle of Luzon. The major Japanese defenses for Luzon were near the capital city of Manila. On the western coast of Manila Bay was the Bataan Peninsula that separates Manila Bay from Subic Bay. At the mouth of Manila Bay, was the small island fortress of Corregidor. A few days after Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941, the Japanese invaded the Philippines pushing the American and Philippino army forces to the Bataan Peninsula and Corregidor. MacArthur himself withdrew to Australia in April 1942 and vowed to return to liberate the Philippines. He ordered his troops to surrender to the Japanese as they were low on both food and ammunition.

The United States had a stormy relationship from the start with the Philippines. Admiral George Dewey defeated the Spanish at the Battle of Manila Bay in 1898 in the Spanish-American War. The Philippinos wanted to become an independent nation but the US wanted to annex the islands so the Philippine American War was fought over the next three years with the deaths of over 4,200 American and 20,000 Phillipino combat deaths and an estimated 200,000 in civilian collateral deaths. In 1933 the US Congress passed a law over President Hoover’s veto to grant independence to the Philippines after 10 years of Commonwealth status. This plan was put into effect in 1935 with independence to be granted in 1945.

MacArthur returned to recapture Luzon Island and Manila in early 1945 with nearly the same amphibious flagships used at Leyte Gulf. Instead of attacking Manila directly by sea, the Allied forces landed at Lingayen Gulf north of Manila as the Japanese had done in 1941. The Rocky Mount transported Major General Rapp Brush landing on shore on January 9, 1945. The landings were not opposed on the beaches but the Japanese again used the tactic of fortifying the mountains inland and relying on its kamikazes to inflict damage to ships. Meeting the troops landing at Lingayen Gulf was US army Captain Russell Volckmann.

The Philippine resistance movement on Luzon was headed by Volckmann since 1942 when MacArthur left Corregidor. Volckmann had ignored MacArthur’s order to surrender to the Japanese and escaped from the Bataan peninsula with other Philippino troops. He quickly provided intelligence on the Japanese positions to General Krueger who told Volckmann to resupply his Phillipino insurgent troops from ships controlled by Admiral Royal on the Rocky Mount. But before Volckmann could go, General MacArthur wanted to see him. When Volckmann met MacArthur he didn’t know if he was going to get a reprimand for not following orders to surrender in 1942 but MacArthur congratulated him on his initiative and made him a colonel. MacArthur also provided a PT boat to take Volckmann out to see Admiral Royal on the Rocky Mount. Volckmann would rise to the rank of brigadier general and later literally wrote the book on insurgency and guerilla tactics for the US army. He went on to found the US Special Forces which came to be known as the Green Berets.

The Rocky Mount acted as MacArthur’s communication ship for the next five weeks during the Battle of Luzon as army troops fought their way south toward Manila. Before leaving for Leyte on February 20^th, the Rocky Mount visited recently captured Subic Bay and Mindoro Island. Accompanying the Rocky Mount to Leyte were two US destroyers and two Australian men-of-war.

On March 8^th, the Rocky Mount set sail for the next landing at Zamboanga on the southern island of Mindanao with Generals Eichelberger , White and Doe on board. The Rocky Mount stayed for two weeks at Zamboanga before departing for Subic Bay. There Brigadier General Barham of the Australian Army came aboard on April 4^th for transport to Morotai Island. Morotai is the northern most island in what became Indonesia. It was captured in 1944 in preparation for the assaults on the Philippines. While at Morotai word was received that President Roosevelt had died and memorial services for the commander in chief were observed.

On April 23^rd, Australia’s Brigadier General Whitehead came on board for the assault landings on Tarakan Island in Borneo. The shore bombardment at Tarakan hit an ammunition dump and blew up with such force that all the ships in the transport area were severely shaken.

On May 3^rd the Rocky Mount headed back to Morotai Island to prepare for the next assault. Major General Wooten, Royal Australian Army boarded for the Brunei Bay Operation in Borneo. The assault was on June 10^th. The Rocky Mount stayed in the assault area for a week before heading back to Leyte.

The stress of these successive operations took its toll on Admiral Royal. On June 18^th Rear Admiral Forrest B. Royal died in his cabin from a heart attack. A funeral was scheduled for two days later at Tacloban, the capital of Leyte Island. The sailors on the Rocky Mount avoided the main course during meals as they headed into Leyte when they learned that Admiral Royal’s body was being stored in the meat locker. On June 20^th the crew along with Admirals Kincaid, Halsey, Kauffman and other senior officers paid their last respects to Admiral Royal.

On June 23^rd, the Rocky Mount started an extensive overhaul and conversion along side the USS Vulcan at Leyte. Plans were now being drawn up for the invasion of the Japanese main islands. Operation Downfall would consist of two successive assaults with Operation Olympic, the landings on Kyushu, scheduled for November 1, 1945. But Okinawa still needed to be secured and its airfields readied for the bombing and final huge assaults on Japan.