Today is Thursday, 4 January, the year of 2001.
I'm interviewing Mr. Warren Decius in
Fairfield, California.
The interviewer is Bruce Petty.
When you were born and where you were born?
Oh, boy.
What do you reckon?
In the old man's mind, boy.
I'm going to make it tough on you.
I'm, uh, what, 92, and my memory's pretty fair.
I interviewed a retired admiral, Francis
Thomas, he was 95 when I interviewed him, he's 75.
I was half my time as an enlisted man and half
the time as a commissioned officer. And
I was very fortunate, I retired as a lieutenant
commander and that's the equivalent to a major
in the Air Force or Army.
Now where were you born?
In Lassen County, California. That's the
northeastern part of California, right
alongside of Nevada.
What was your father doing up there? He was in
logging or something?
no logging in that area then. That was a very
impoverished, poor, desperately poor area,
and all the work was related to agriculture.
And my folks were persistent in struggling
and finally got out of that area in just about
World War I time.
No, how long had they been there? What took
them there to begin with? Were they second
or third generation?
Beg your pardon?
What took your family there to begin with?
Well, they were born, no, they came there. My
father was born in California, my mother
in New Mexico, and my grandparents all came
there by covered wagon. They were pioneers.
The name of the original planner or un-planner
of this tribe of ours came from, well, the
Alsace-Lorraine country in those days and
Germany had owned them for a while
and France and they were Huguenots so they had
to get their ass out of there.
Some of them went into Holland and Great
Britain or England and this old first
fellow of mine, he joined the British military
to come over here and straighten out the colonists.
You could see that they were losing, and he hid
out for a little, just about two years.
Then he came back into prominence and joined
the colonists, and he later became a segment
in the Army that developed into the
President's, I'll say, bodyguard.
And at the close of the war, he was granted a
large tract of land in Virginia.
And at that time, Virginia was all one state.
wasn't Virginia and West Virginia and of course
I've been back in that area and
and I had a distant cousin that collected a lot
of material on that
tribe of ours and he traced it back to the
Roman soldiers, some of the Roman
soldiers. Now this is the family name is Decius
again? That's where that Greek name kind of gets
in there. It does sound very ancient, yeah. It
does sound like a Greco-Greco Roman name, Decius,
yeah, so that's how we got over here.
God, that old guy that came to this country, I
can't think of his name right now.
But anyway, how come I got around to where I
was born was my grandparents were pioneers.
Pioneers, okay.
Came in there by the covered wagon.
Okay. And you enlisted in the Navy when?
December the 3rd, 1928.
I, my folks were living in San Jose and I was
sworn in the Navy in San Francisco.
You were how old then?
Nineteen. I graduated high school. I could
sense that there was no work available. So
I went down to the officers of the military
recruiting places, and there was no advertising
in those days.
I was accepted in the Navy.
They didn't want anybody.
There was no appropriation, but for some
unknown reason to me, I was accepted.
So I shipped in the Navy and went down to San
Diego for recruit training.
Okay, just to make sure I'm getting it clear.
Go ahead.
So I had quite an illustrious career, but I
never tried to make myself very prominent.
I knew that an enlisted man went in the
military to work, and that's the only reason he
was there.
He wasn't there to be a big show off and up
before the public, get in there and do your
work and behave yourself, if you wanted to
advance, and I wanted to advance.
Well, I didn't advance very rapidly in those
days, and finally we started to prepare for war.
About when?
and things opened up and I advanced rather
rapidly in comparison to what we did before.
Now what year would you say that we started preparing?
About 19, let me see, around 1938.
Okay, so your first ten years.
C. Roosevelt came into power and he knew we
were going to have war and he sat on his ass
with old
a pipe smoker, the secretary of the
Hall-Stemson. I can remember him as a pipe smoker.
I remember John MacArthur was a pipe smoker. I
remember the Secretary of State Cortal Hall.
I think that's what this fellow was. I'll think
of his name, maybe. I go with those,
recall their names once in a while to see how,
really to refresh my memory.
So I had what I considered an illustrious
career, very interesting.
People hear me tell some of the stories of my
experience as a sailor, and I've been encouraged
to get a recorder and write a book, and I don't
care to-nobody gives a damn what you
did or who you were. It's what you are now.
It was a real renewed interest though in World
War II right now. As a matter of fact, there's
some very good books that have come out that
have been very popular with the public.
But I really liked the Navy.
Were you a corpsman from beginning to end?
Well, I was listed as an apprentice seaman.
Then I was chosen for the hospital corps schools.
Hospital Corps schools, and I went to about a
four-months Hospital Corps training program
in a school.
What year was that?
I graduated in, oh, about June of 1929. I went
to Seoul Hospital in Maryland for my
basic, well, training duty. I acquired a
reputation of a good worker, and I got the
go to work in the operating room which I
thoroughly enjoyed and I'll always claim
that I was one of the best minor surgery first
aid men in the Navy and I was a
damn good operating room technician. And later
on I moved in back of a
typewriter and I could rattle those keys pretty
well. From there on I started into
administration. Now did you serve mostly on
ships? Pardon? Did you serve mostly on
ships in those early days? Half the time
probably on ship duty and half the time
as shore and I have quite a record for sea duty
for a hospital corpsman. A lot
of them wanted to stay on shore duty. Well I
made it possible for some of them
Because I did a hell of a lot of sea duty, and
I liked sea duty.
Those line captains, especially the academy
ones, were damn good personnel people.
They knew how to handle discipline.
Medical doctors became commanding officers of
their hospitals.
They were the old father type, every son of a
bitch should be excused once for killing
his mother.
That's what they thought?
That's what I considered.
These are all my ideas, not theirs, but they
were nice good people, they were good to me,
I guess his time was in the day, they were damn
good doctors, especially those ones I
worked for in the operating room.
But if you want to hear, I think my, any
contribution would be to really prior to the
World War
because after we were in the war and I went to
sea, it was routine duty, but our ship
did a hell of a good job and we were in every
theater of operation that our
country had relative to the war and we did a
damn good job.
You said you spent some time in the Marianas?
We were there and prior to the
war I did about two years duty on Guam and I
was an outdoor guy and I was on an
outstation called Agate and I patrolled our
district or examined it and I knew
it and I got to see the inland part of Guam and
some of the beauty that some
people never saw. By the way, do you happen to
have a business card? I have a very difficult
time with names, even including my own.
Oh, thank you.
So did you get to know any of the natives very well?
Did you get to know any of the natives very
well on Guam? Outstanding.
They were the most lovely people I've ever
lived with, and I didn't take advantage of
and they were most considerate of me. I was on
an outstation for one year,
delivered native babies, saved a couple of
lives, did some good good first-aid
work with shark bite on one man.
All I know is they were Chamorros. We used to
call them Chamorros in those days. They
are Guamanians now.
Well, the Chamorros in Saipan call themselves
Chamorros in Saipan.
So anyway, are you interested in the part that
the sailors knew in general were common
about war with Japan?
I'd like to hear what you have to say about it.
You said they-
What years were you in Guam again?
Well, when old Roosevelt came into office, and
the royal clouds gathered in Europe, those
sailors have a strange sense of knowing
behavior of man.
So the word got around all of a sudden, God
damn, we have trouble with, in Europe we're
going to have trouble with the Japs, by God
they called them Japs then, and we were encouraged
to call them Japs during the war.
And I have to be very careful to say Japanese
around when I'm select company, and sometimes
with these sexual intellectuals, I'll call them Japs.
By God, I wasn't a prisoner of war or anything,
but I had several friends that were prisoners
of war.
And they didn't live long after the war.
And it amuses me about these fat people
in the United States.
They have glanier troubles.
Well, we had some fat sailors.
Now, I don't know whether they had glanier troubles,
but the damn loafers were always hanging around
the galley.
When some of them became prisoners of war,
their granular trouble was promptly cured
because they lost a hell of a lot of weight.
And that I can attest to because I saw some of them
that were liberated after liberation.
In fact, we picked up a whole prison camp
for the Philippines on that hospital ship
and brought them back to the United States.
And when those fellows told me the treat they
were given,
I have no damn sympathy for any abusive person.
I don't give a damn who he is.
And those Japs thought they were gonna win the war.
And I did too when they hit Pearl Harbor.
I said, boy, we're headed down the drain.
How we won that war, the Japs must have been
more confused than we were.
These four heifers that couldn't work at a
defense plant and going to Bible school.
We had more people going to be priests and
preachers going to school than you could shake
a stick at.
These are people already in the Navy.
You're damn right.
By what years were you in Guam, can I ask you that?
In Guam?
Yeah, what years? Late 30s? Early 30s?
Part of 1935, 36, and 37. Then I went to Parris
Island, South Carolina.
and those ladies were the most kind person and
honest people I've ever lived in their neighborhood
in any place in the world. Now I suppose it's
all changed now because the Japs have come in there
and started businesses. And whenever you have
Japs, you have a cunning, cunning businessman.
I don't give a damn who he is.
Yeah, they're still very nice people, but
there's a lot of...
They're good people, and they're industrious,
and leading up to a thing I'll tell you about,
a fellow that had, used to be called
Shinnehara's Gas Kitchen.
Shinnehara. The Shinnehara family's still
there, huh?
in Guam. Good man. We used to go down there
once in a while to have Shina Harrah's Chinese
food and he was a good man, good business man.
So one time this little first class petty
officer. Some of these men that I'm going to
use their names were real good men.
This guy's name was Ralph Metinette. He was a
first-class petty officer.
Hospital corpsman. And he asked old Shinohara,
he said Shinohara are we ever
going to have war with Japan? Very intelligent
man. He was in the officer category of the
Japanese Navy. There were about five or six of
them there in Guam. The businessmen in
the capital of Guam, or Ganya. He said, he
answered, this was a very political answer.
Well, he says, you have a nice pet dog and you
keep him in the backyard. And every day
you go out there with a big club and you beat
that dog. And he keeps backing in, backing
in, backing in against the fence. Someday you
back him into a corner and he's going
to come out and he's going to bite you. And
that's what started me, the word sanctions
weren't used in those days. But I found out
right then that sanctions don't work because
we put Japan in that category with scrap metal,
oil, steel for construction for the Navy.
How'd they get it?
They went right down through Java in that way
and took it, rubber, oil, and they built
a hell of a war machine.
And they made a big mistake when they hit Pearl
Harbor, they didn't have an invasion
force to come with them.
There's nothing to it.
So I say you're going to have sanctions against
it, sanctions against that, it doesn't accomplish
a damn thing, but it really gives a person
that's dependable or dependent upon industry
and commerce and business to survive, going all
over the world today with this hot air
Clinton campaign.
Well there comes a Mr. Bob and I'll see how
long this will be.
So that was my education to come along and then
you helped me remember, come back I'll
tell you about these Japanese that were
situated in Guam in strategic places.
And one of them they had a name of Okinawa, he
was out there in Agate.
And so, I acquired about four or five fighting
cops, and in the evening, nice weather, we'd
take a rooster down to a little place in the
center of a little town, a little district,
and we'd, what we called, train the fighting cops.
So one time I said something, I said, hey
Okinawa, so Joaquin Carbolito, nice Fella,
he said, Warren he doesn't speak English, he
doesn't understand you.
I said, Keane, the hell he doesn't.
I said, that God damn Jap knows every word you
and I say.
He probably speaks better English than either
one of us, and I really believe that.
He was out there in Agate, now out there in
that district of Agate, there was a point
out there, you get up on top of it and look out
in the ocean, Aleepan, in fact the natives
used to go up there at night with a big net,
you know, to get fish. And the flying bats,
the natives called them Faneehee.
Faneehee, that's right, the fruit bats.
And once in a while they'd catch one. You could
look out and really see. And the Navy
patrolman, or this Marine patrolman that had
the district, he and I used to walk that district.
And we'd go up there and once in a while we'd
see Japanese men of war up there.
Those Japs knew Guam Island for invasion places
better than we did, I do think.
So long about that time came along a bill in
Congress to improve the island of Guam.
A god damn guy from the state of New York,
Hamilton Fish, his last name was Fish.
I still see that name once in a while in politics.
They talk so much about the money and
everything, but what they really had planned to
do, our
country was to fortify that island, especially
the harbor. The harbor I think was called
Apra Harbor. And there were about three little
ships used to supply the island of Guam. And
And I did a little duty on one of them, the USS
Gold Star.
It would go to Japan, China, and get supplies
and bring them back to Guam, Philippines.
And then after you were on the island, I mean
the military people, about a year, you could
go on what they called a health cruise.
Well, I was on that ship for several months. I
was on it when they went to the Philippines
for repair and overhaul.
What kind of ship was it?
We had a place called, in Subic Bay, the Dewey
Floating Dry Dock.
And what kind of ship was this then?
Like, what kind of ship was it then?
This was a little supply ship.
Auxiliary ship. So all the way back from Japan
they'd go up there to get coal. China they'd
go up there to get produce just for the
military people to have a good cruise and our people
do a little intelligence work or lack of
intelligence, whatever you want to call it. But anyway,
That was a comical old ship to be on.
I did not particularly like it because of all
the mixed type of passengers, webbing
with children.
It was really a hooligan navy, so I asked if I
could go over to the hospital for duty.
But anyway, those Japanese were really good
intelligence people.
And so when the Japs captured Guam, all those
people appeared in their Navy military uniform.
Even Japanese who had been living in Guam?
Japanese businessmen. So I knew several
corpsmen in Guam that were captured in
prisoners of war, and I saw a few of them after
the war that were interned. One I'm
gonna name, his name was Johnny Proak. I guess
P-L-O-K-A. Johnny Proak.
damn good man. He was a qualified Navy and
bomber. During one of his tours in Guam, he
married this native girl. The father of this
girl was the president of the Bank of Guam.
I can't think of his name, but anyway, so he
was captured there.
Then long after World War II, I went back to
Guam on this aircraft carrier I was on.
Which one?
USS Valley Forge. There were two then, the
Boxer and the Valley Forge. And some of these
used to kid me, I was a commission officer
then, of being a good politician. Two aircraft
carries a Navy, I'm on one of them. I must be a
good politician. Well, that made it possible
for some of those people doing duty in
Washington to-
Maybe I can ask you a couple of questions.
Where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed?
I had just been transferred off this transport
to USS Shelmont into the naval base in Norfolk,
Virginia for assignment.
I was a first class petty officer then.
So where did they assign you from there?
Where did they assign you from there?
I went to work for a couple of damn good men,
they were building a hospital, I'll say in
Norfolk, it was out in the area called Lahaina
Roads, excuse me that's all I want to know.
Lahaina Roads, so you were sent to Hawaii?
Beg your pardon?
You said they were building a hospital in
Lahaina Roads?
There used to be an old army base there.
I knew quite a bit of things about procurement.
This is Lahaina Roads in Maui, Hawaii?
No, this was out in Norfolk called, no, it's
called Hampton Roads.
Oh, Hampton Roads.
So, I was assigned to the headquarters of the
6th Naval District. They had an old woman
there named Brannan.
Eliot C. Rowe, Jr.: Brannan?
He was a lieutenant. He was World War I, he
was, I think, a lieutenant. Well, I don't
know whether he was called back to active duty
or not. And then they had a Captain Medical
Corps, an old man, and then myself always
referred to him as Grandma Moses. The name
Navy was full of a lot of old people in the
commission category in those days, before
the war.
They couldn't do a god damn thing and didn't
intend to, so when the war came along they
found out they better get some young people in
those top Navy jobs.
Buller Halsey, Chester Nimitz, Howling Mad
Smith. God damn boy. Now with the exception
of Chester Nimitz, if it hadn't been for the
war, nobody would have ever heard of those
people. They were fighters, but I'll tell you
by God, they had guts. Now I respected
those fellas, and by golly I'll tell you this,
they'd go in and fight.
Did you know any of them personally or not?
Did you know any of them personally?
No. No. And I just figured that I was there to
do a job, and I tried to do a good one.
And I gave them a good shot. And by God,
they're taking care of me now.
And when did you retire? What year?
February 1959, a long time ago, I'm so old that
people think I helped build the pyramids.
But when I came in the Navy, I didn't think I'd
ever own anything or have anything.
twenty-two dollars a month. But that was a damn
sight better than walking the streets
looking for work.
That's how much you were paid when you first enlisted.
First one in.
Now, when did you go aboard the hospital ship Refuge?
Well, I was advanced in the rate and finally
appointed a warrant officer.
That was about 1942 or 43, about the time we
went into war.
Well, Chrysler sent me to a naval hospital up
in Portsmouth, Virginia.
There were so many people around there that
they didn't know who each other was.
They didn't know whether they were working
there or visitors.
Finally I wrote to this lieutenant down, he was
down in Washington, and I said there must
be some place for me for sea duty.
I said, I worked for him and a warrant officer,
chief warrant officer, putting in that hospital,
building that hospital.
And I gave them a good shot and they were sure
good to me.
By God, he came back and I was given orders
to go down to Baltimore for this ship
to be converted to a hospital ship.
Got on that thing and went to sea, and I stayed
pretty quiet because it was good duty, everybody
had a job, they knew what they were supposed to
do, and by God they did it.
Wonderful group of people.
Our medical unit came from that entire group,
they came in this entire group, oh, outstanding hospital.
I can't think of that name either, but oh man,
they were great.
And we had a staff of nurses, and a chief nurse.
By golly, they knew their job.
And that chief nurse, by the way, was a little
young nurse on the hospital ship, was on the
USS Relief when I was a young hospital corpsman
and worked for this lady's sister in the operating
They had Navy nurses on the hospital ship?
Navy nurses were always on hospital ships all
the time that I was in the Navy.
Okay. You don't remember any of their names?
In those days, they weren't commissioned.
Oh, they weren't. Okay. Do you remember any of
their names?
All the ones I worked for, I remember their names.
The one that you just mentioned, the chief nurse?
Her name was Marin. Marin.
Boy, she was a top-notch gal.
A career nurse, Huh?
A career nurse? nurse?
You bet.
Yeah, okay. Now when did the refuge go to the
Pacific? The refuge, when did it go to
the Pacific?
They went every place.
We started off, we would go to the
Mediterranean and bring back patients from
there to those
hospitals on the East Coast. We went up into
the Atlantic, North Atlantic. They took us
up there to Ireland, going to use us on the
Normandy invasion. And the weather came up
was so brutal. In fact, they had that battle
all planned, and oh, Mr. Eisenhower, and Ike
General Eisenhower?
Yeah. They said, well, we'll go through with it.
And I'll tell you, that was a
summer gun. Well, the sea was so rough, they
didn't send us in there because
there's no way we could have brought patients
aboard. So we went on down to
Mediterranean and we were in that group that
invaded southern France. Well, what a
campaign. And our troops, land-based troops,
sailors, soldiers,
marines and ships. They swept down through
those German Army so rapidly
that we brought they brought those patients
aboard. We got underway to get
them off. Had two German soldiers. Well, I
guess they swept down there to the
much this guy looked like he was going to live,
so they put him in stretchers and brought
him out to the ship.
They didn't know he was going to live.
Well, we headed back to Naples. That harbor was
in just a disarray, but our people, the
CB's and those people got in there and
established a peer and we unloaded those
patients and
we had a cheap hospital corporal there who
could speak enough German to get a little
history on those fellows. And his name was
Fuchs-Kruger. Some of those names I'll never
forget. So anyway, we were in the harbor there
at Naples for a while, and I knew a lot of
people in the Navy. I was a guy that got
acquainted. Went over to shore and I ran across
a fellow
I knew, and he was a lieutenant junior grade by
that time, and I said, ìHey, old-timer,
you have any access to any vehicles? Some of us
would like to get to go to Pompeii and Rome.î
He gave me a note to go over to see the fellow
in the transportation pool. Well, we went
to Pompeii and we were the only people there.
There was a native guy that came along and
we gave him some money and he took us around
the old ruin. That was quite a historical
old place. And of course there was no precious
metal in there. So I asked this one fellow
we went into kind of a little shop. I said, do
you have any cameos? He said, yeah, but
I don't have any jewelry. I said, let me see
some cameos. Well, he had cameos. Trays of
them. So my wife had a cameo, I think she got
from her mother. So I remember, and I
got a cameo for a ring and two little earrings,
and I matched them up pretty well.
Finally got back after the war. I was sent to
San Diego, and my wife had those little
cameos made into a ring and earring.
Well, from there, we loaded patients and came
back to the United States, and then we went
to the Pacific and South Pacific. Well, out
there in the Pacific, we were in the China
Sea. We were around the Philippines, Okinawa.
The South Pacific, we had to go down and we
we had base hospitals. One of them was a little
group of islands called the Admiralty. And
we would bring patients back from the combat
area, load them right on board from the combat
area. Now, this is where I lost all my desire
for any more war. Bring those young boys,
Gung-ho young men come in the Navy, they were
going to whip the Japs single-handed.
Poor little guys, burns, gunshot wounds,
shrapnel wounds.
Those soldiers were out in the jungle, but we
had hoisted them up by stretchers and put
them on their ribs stuck out. It was sad, but
it didn't bother me then because I was
young and I didn't have much emotion. But I
thought, those poor young men have never
had a chance. But that war did one thing that I
remember. The advance in surgery, prosthetic
surgery, dental surgery, medicine that we never
would have had if it hadn't been
for that war. Later on after the war I came
into shore duty at San Diego. I was
attached to the hospital corps school that was
a part of the hospital. I'd see
those young men, war casualties, have lips
made, eyebrows, ear lobes, and I'd watch
them their rehabilitation, they'd have like for
make lips, put in a fixed
position like this. Put their arm up over there?
Yeah, it was fixed there because
they drafted tissue off their forearm and made
a lip. Really, and their arm had
to stay there for a while? Now this all was a
result of the war, they'd never
done this before the war? No need for it.
There's all innovation
Even because of the war, Huh?
The Dene people made jaws.
Out of what?
From other parts of bone?
And even made bone, grafted bone, and that was
most wonderful to me, and medicine.
Now to get back a little bit before the war,
when Hitler went on his mad campaign to purify
by the race, those good professional people,
doctors and chemists and scientists, we opened
up and got them into our country. They played a
very important role. They brought what in
those days was called sulfanilamide, the
forerunner to penicillin and all that. Well,
the atomic bomb.
Well, some of these immigrant doctors and
chemists and scientists that were brought
over, did you ever meet them as part of the medical?
At the Naval Hospital in Portsmouth, Virginia,
I was there, and they had two or three of them.
And I always made it a point when I stood
watching to be up to where they were.
They were fine doctors, professors, spoke
better English than we did, and intelligent.
And they wanted to get out of Hitler's Europe,
is that what it was?
Well, if they wanted to live, you had better
get out.
Yeah, because a lot of them were Jewish?
And so they did a great job for us. Well,
anyway, I began to think of this war business.
I had two young sons, and I thought, man, they
won't be long. They'll be in draft age.
How old were they then, during the war?
they were in probably what you call middle
school in those days. But it doesn't take long
to beat the draft age, I'll tell you that. Well
anyway, I thought boy
that'd really be something to be called back to
active duty
and my own sons be in the war and I would be
too. But anyway the country couldn't stand for
any more war when it was over and no one else
could do so we had some years of
peace such as it is and there's been
hostilities everything ever since Christ
was an apprentice seaman and it's always gonna
be and this hot air Clinton running
around establishing peace. Why doesn't he save
his wind to blow cool off hot soup? But
that's the nature of the guy and I don't know
whether we've seen enough of him in the last
of them or not. But anyway.
Now going back to when you were still in the
Pacific, do you remember any special incidences
that really stand out in your mind?
Yes, I do. One of them, we went into a little,
a little cove, a little atoll or little Knoll
was called Windy. And our old skipper was a
merchant marine man. He was a captain on
tour ships and that type of boat.
Now, Windy, where was this island Windy?
It was in the South Pacific, and all I know is
this, our ship received word to go in there
and pick up two aviators that had either been
shot down or out of fuel. We went in there
and that old skipper put that damn ship that he
was running in that little cove. We took
on those two fellows and he got us the hell out
of there. I'll tell you, that took a well
qualified man on the bridge to do that job. All
the thing you saw in there was outriggers,
but that was one of the most remarkable things
that I saw in navigation during World War II.
They sent a ship that big into a little lagoon
to pick up two people. You'd think they'd
send in a P.B.Y. or something to pick them up.
Did you get to meet the pilots at all?
The what?
No, I didn't, I wasn't that kind of a guy, you
know, to get around. I went up to see
when I'd look, when we'd load patients I'd look
at the names of the ones we'd picked
up to take back to base hospitals and for
evacuation to the United States by air. Well
once in a while I'd see a name that I
recognized. There were two in particular. One
was a young
fellow that was an ensign on this old
four-stack cruiser, Omaha, when I was on there.
I was
a first-class petty officer. His name was Hart.
His father was an admiral out in the
The Asiatic fleet, Thomas Hart, Tommy Hart, and
he was a tough one. He was a rough guy.
Now how did the young Hart, how was he wounded?
No man.
When he was a lieutenant, you knew Admiral Hart
when he was a lieutenant.
No question.
Now this guy that you talk about, Hart, was he
the son of Admiral Hart? Yeah.
And how was he wounded?
The most even-tempered, considered person that
I ever knew as a young officer.
He was an ensign on this USS Omaha.
So one day, he used to come to sickbay for
something, and I was a pretty good hospital corpsman.
and I say that because I was given recognition
for it.
Anyway, one day I said,
Mr. Hart, is that old Tommy Hart in relation to you?
He said, he's my father.
I said, Jesus Christ, it's a good thing you
told me,
I'd never suspicioned it.
I said, he was a rough old customer.
He says, yeah, that's what I hear.
Well, anyway, he was on there. He had leukemia.
And the thing is, our doctors did a damn good
job. We got him back to a base hospital in
Admiralty Islands. I guess the word went on
ahead make ready to get him back to the United
States because he didn't have
long to live so I'd go up and see him every
couple three times on the trip
back another one was a fellow that was a chief
hospital corpsman and I can't
think of his name and he was a prisoner of war
and the Japs had a lot of
prisoners there at that camp, and this fellow
was in charge of the burial pool. So I went
up to see him and I said, well, I'm old Warren
Deacius. And I said, how the hell are you?
Boy, he said, I don't know how I made it, but I
did. And he told me about the burial
crew had four men that dug the funeral place,
the burial place, and brought the deceased
out there and lowered him and filled in the
grave. Well, the Japs did not feed him very
much. So one time he went to this guard or
warden or prison guard, and he said, my men
just cannot work any longer. They are just
given out. He went out there and just whipped
the hell out of them. Well, now he said they
can do it. That was a treat they received.
So when anybody starts these Pollyanna people
that paid those Jets $20,000, they didn't
pay any of our people a damn cent, and I don't
think that goes along with war. But anyway,
that was a treatment those men received at
German camp. I said, well, do you know what
happened to that guy?" He said, yeah, he was on
watch in the guard tower when those army
raiders came in. One fella put a shot in that
guard tower, blew that Jap all to hell.
Well, whatever kind of a firearms they had.
See, they had special ammunition, different
kind of gun. So, he said, I know what happened
to him.
Now, the other fellow was that Johnny Polk.
When I came into Guam on that aircraft carrier,
I went ashore. Some of the Natives were still
there. Johnny Polk had been liberated from
the Jap prison camp, came back to Guam. He had
a wife and some children there. So I looked
up and I found out he was there. I went around
to see him and I said, well, Johnny, how did
like the vacationing in Japan. He said, my God,
they took us from here and up to Philippines
and finally into Japan. They put me to work in
the coal mines, damn few clothes and barefoot.
He said, the soles of my feet were black for
two years.
He said, boy, those people got their money's worth
out of us for work.
Kept the railroads up, all that prison labor.
Anyway, he didn't live so very long.
And there was another fellow that was on duty there
when I was there, for duty and long,
a fellow named Jeremiah Cruz, we call him Jerry
Cruz, kind of overweight a little bit.
Well he came out of that prison camp, he wasn't
overweight. He came back to the United States
and he came to the Naval Hospital in San Diego.
So I went to see him. Later on he was transferred
over at the hospital, of course, school, and he
was my boss. Now, he was a good man. When
he was on the job, he was all job. Anyway, he
and I got along real well. We always did,
even out in Guam. Now, he didn't live very long
after he got out, but he lost a hell
of a lot of weight and he made an effort not to
ever gain it back. Boy, those fellows really
had a rough time. I think he was a prisoner
there in Billabid or Santa Tomas, one of those
in the Philippines.
Santa Tomas was a civilian. Yeah.
Now, those people that came down that Tan
Peninsula, that death March, that's exactly
what it was, and the hell of it was. There were
a few Navy nurses in that thing. Of course,
being on this transport, we took some of those
gals out there. So working in their sickbay
on this transport, I came to know some of them.
At least there were Navy nurses or Army nurses
that you took? Navy.
Really? Is that what they did in Navy nurses?
Oh, there were a lot of Army nurses out there,
too. Now, when you knew somebody that was
in that category, you had a hell of a lot of
different feelings. Now, these people on
the West Coast, when those Japs lobbed a couple
of shells over on the beach from a submarine,
One down around Ventura and one up around Oregon.
These civilians were pretty frightened.
They lobbed themselves in the sandbar?
That was one of the reasons I think they
incarnated some of them and took them inland or
put them
in concentration camps or whatever you want to
call it.
I always call it, they put them in safety camps
so they didn't get left on the street.
These civilians would have murdered them.
Now they didn't have to go to these
concentration or privacy camps, they could have
gone way
inland and wouldn't have gone to what they call
a concentration camp, but they didn't
elect that.
And I'll tell you, they had better homes up
there in Tule Lake that were built than
I lived in an enlisted man on shore duty over
there in Mare Island, those old World War
one barracks. So simply it's something that I
had and it was always in the Dictionary
and I would tell those little young sailors
where they could find it and it's always there.
I don't have any. But Bob takes care of mine.
Now was the refuse involved at all in the Iwo
Jima landings?
Beg your pardon?
the refuge, your hospital ship, was it involved
in the Iwo Jima landings? No.
Or Okinawa?
No, no. Well, we came into Okinawa not during
the combat time, but later on and picked up
patients and brought them back to, where the
hell was it? And then they would fly them
back to the United States.
They were bringing a lot back to Saipan because
they had a number of hostels there.
And then, when I went ashore in Guam to see
some of those natives that I knew, those people
had a mighty rough time. Yeah.
And how about any Section 8 cases?
Did you have to deal?
Section 8 cases from combat fatigue, did you
have to deal with any of those?
They call them Section 8s, people who cracked
up emotionally, you know, the psychological
cases from combat.
Oh, Christ's sakes, that's a subject with me.
Those psychiatrists really screwed up the Navy,
as far as I'm concerned.
Somebody didn't want to do anything, an
enlisted man, said,
go see the psychiatrist. He wasn't got anything.
He had a psychiatric problem. From then on
he had it made.
But how about people like Marines who had been
like three or four weeks in combat? Did
you ever see situations like that?
Well, it's bound to affect a person. I knew a
few hospital corpsmen that were with the
Marines on those invasions. And this one fellow
told me, he said, I got along fine till I
came along and there was a stack of bodies
there and one of them was my good friend.
He said, now buddy, that really jarred the hell
out of me. You can understand that. But
I made a good effort to develop a good veneer,
show very little emotion in public, but I
tell you what, I don't want any more of those experiences.
Now did any of your sons ever go into the
military or did you, your sons, did any of
your sons go into the military?
Yes, the draft law was still in effect.
The big expression then for these great
educators was they haven't found themselves.
Well these sons of mine would bring that home
from school.
counselor. I said, well, you know what, you're
going to find yourself, you're
going to finish high school and either
graduate, but the end of your senior year
you're going to enlist in the Army. They didn't
want a career, and you're
going to, that's where you're going to find
yourself. Now parents are always concerned
to have things better for their children than
they had, and I agree with that most of all.
The military is a lot better now than when I
went in as a lad, and I want you to have
your share of it. And I knew the requirements
of going into the reserve for two years or
three years, and I told them, and I recommend
you go in for the three years. You complete
that, you're all through. You go in for two
years, you go two years active duty, and I
I think about five years in a reserve unit. I
said, that is very unpleasant. Well, the
older one, three years, he just thought he was
giving too much of his time away. They
had one of those great counselors that could
tell these students just what they wanted
to hear, oh, he was a great guy. As an
educator, I do not know what he ever taught anybody.
I knew him fairly well.
Well, anyway, the one that went in two years,
they worked him only for a fair you-will when
he came back and was in that reserve. The
agreement was, I will be retired out of the
Navy, but I'll get a job, go to work, and make
sure that you can go to college to get
a degree.
Then you're not going to go up there for any
social time or big romantic affairs.
It's for an education and all work, and the
money that I make will get you through college."
Well, the older one was a good student, and he
did very well in college.
The other one was a great social guy.
He went to what they call those days,
junior college, which is now community college.
I never saw a book or a damn thing,
but he was of legal age, you know.
Politicians, very easy. 18.