Oral History Interview with William Sloman Page: 16
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next morning, and we were headed to Johnston Island. Well,
we went to sickbay, we got our shots. All of us went by
the paymaster and drew some money. I don't know how many
used it on clothes, you know? And we went on liberty and
the next morning at roll call, it was all called off,
you're not going there, you're not going to Johnston
Island. Now that's twice that I was scheduled to go
someplace and overnight, they changed it, or within hours.
Well, as I say, we had a five-inch gun set up for a time,
for target practice. They brought us in about midnight one
day and we started loading the Castor, the USS Castor. We
worked around the clock getting it loaded. There was no
word about where we were going and we didn't get any word.
Oh, we could store our footlockers and my laundry had just
come back, and I just put my whole bundle of laundry in the
footlocker. It was a footlocker that I had built, because
we didn't have footlockers in Pearl Harbor. So I would
have clean clothes when we go on liberty, you know when I
got back, from wherever I was going.They didn't tell us where we were headed until we got out
of the harbor, and after we got out of the harbor, they
told us that we were -- our destination was Wake Island.
Now, we had a lot of short timers in that group, and they16
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Oral History Interview with William Sloman (Sound)
The National Museum of the Pacific War presents an interview with William Sloman. Sloman joined the Marine Corps in October of 1939. Beginning early in 1940, he served in the 1st Defense Battalion, D Battery. In February of 1941, he deployed to Hawaii. In December, Sloman participated in the Battle of Wake Island. He was captured by the Japanese, survived transport aboard the hell ship Asama Maru and imprisonment in Zentsuji POW Camp in Japan. He was liberated in 1945, and discharged in early 1946.
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Sloman, William. Oral History Interview with William Sloman, text, Date Unknown; Fredericksburg, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth1606153/m1/16/?q=%22%22~1&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting National Museum of the Pacific War/Admiral Nimitz Foundation.