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 1st,1944 Joe received an advancement
in rank to MMS3c – Shop Machinist Mate 3rd 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 18th. 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 21st, 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.
“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.”
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