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Mr. Doig: Oh, but we got back on again. They just wanted to say they were in Mexico.
Mr. Metzler: Oh, I see they wanted to say they actually stood in Mexico. Mr. Doig: Yes. Well, seventeen year old kids do that stuff. Laughter Mr. Metzler: So you could say you were in a foreign country. So you made it to San Diego. Mr. Doig: Yes, we were stationed at the San Diego Destroyer Base and we were using landing craft. We would get Marines aboard and we'd take them out of the bay, out to the beach, and we'd land them on the Pacific side of the bay in San Diego. We did that for about three months. Mr. Metzler: What kind of landing ships were they using? Mr. Doig: All these landing crafts, they had LCV Ps which were landing craft vehicle and personnel. You could put a jeep in it and you could put men in it. They almost never put a jeep on it, it was just too small, and it was plywood with a steel ramp on it. Mr. Metzler: This was what they used to call a Higgins boat, wasn't it? Mr. Doig: Yes. They were all made by a couple of companies, Higgins was one of them. And then what we, what our ship was built for, was a LCM, it was bigger, they were fifty foot long and they were steel. They had a big steel bottom and they would carry a tank, we carried Sherman tanks on them. Mr. Metzler: So LCM... Mr. Doig: Landing craft mechanical. There were a lot of other designations that came along. LCT, landing craft tank, it was a much larger ship that would carry a lot of tanks. They'd run up on the beach and drop the ramp and they'd run off with them. That's what we were doing. We went to fire training school in San Diego and Camp Pendleton was just up the beach from us there. They'd always pick up Marines and shuttle them down to us. We would train with them on the beach.
Mr. Metzler: What was your role in this? You were trained as a diesel mechanic.. Mr. Doig: These LCMs had two diesel engines in them and we watched the operation of the engines and we'd make sure they didn't get choked up with sand when we hit the beach. They had big filters on them and we had to take care of that and maintain the engines.
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with James Doig. Doig joined the Navy in December of 1942. He completed Diesel School, repairing landing craft engines. Beginning August of 1943, Doig served in the fire room aboard USS Ashland (LSD-1). While he was aboard, the Ashland participated in the assaults on Kwajalein and Eniwetok. In the late 1944, Doig was transferred to USS Kenton (APA-122). They transported troops to the Philippines and participated in the Okinawa invasion. Doig was discharged in February of 1946.
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