Today is September 3rd, 2004. I'm interviewing
Mr. Bill Parker. This interview is taking place
at the Hilton Hotel in San Antonio, Texas.
This interview is in support of the Center for
the Pacific War Studies, Archives for the
National Museum of the Pacific War, Texas Parks
and Wildlife for the Preservation of Historical Information.
Well, first of all, thanks for taking the time
for this little interview. I usually
like to start with where you were born, when
you were born, and just a little
personal background. I was born in Norfolk,
Virginia, May 17, 1927. Grew up in a
little town adjacent to it called South Norfolk
and went through, it was in my
last year of high school when I joined the
Marine Corps. I worked, I remember, I
remember I was 14 years old when we attacked
Pearl Harbor, listening to that on the
radio. We didn't know it was the Japanese. The
guy was giving the report was
something like the one they heard on the
Hindenburg. He was real emotional. These
planes are hitting, oh I think I see a meatball
on the wing. We didn't know what a meatball was
and I
worked in the shipyards all night, went at
night and went to school in the
daytime as a welder and then I joined the
Marine Corps. What year was that?
44. Okay. I joined the Marine Corps at the end
of 44 and they were
pretty slick. I got my papers, I had to go to
Richmond. There was no recruiting
offices anywhere except in Richmond. Caught the
bus and went to Richmond, got
the papers came home and went through all the
crying and oiling my mother
raised and finally got her to sign the papers
and carried them back up and he
said you want to go into the duration in six
months or the regulars and I said
duration in six months he said well we got a
quota he said we'll call you so
I don't want to get drafted and get 18 anyway
long story after about three or
four calls and he kept putting me off. I got my
papers changed,
went up there and he handed me a meal ticket
and a ticket had me on the train
headed for Parasol on that day but he had me
for four years in the regulars. So
then I had probably the lowest amount of points.
I think my points was 14 or 16
or something and being a regular didn't make
any difference anyway. And then
after I had been in, I was in the 2nd Battalion
11th Marines when I got to
China and we had a platoon sergeant come out
that had been a regular before
World War II. Real sharp, tall, gruff guy.
Says, I'm gonna call out names and each
name. I call out, excuse me, I want you to fall
into a new platoon over here.
Call names, call names. It was about eight or
nine I was left and then
he said you men are regulars and these
slimeballs over here are reserves and he
used language and went on that they were the
lowest thing in the world and if he
ever caught one of us even speaking with them
we'd be reprimanded and that's
when the last reserves went home and there
wasn't many of us left that were
really on demand after that. Mm-Hmm. This was?
That was 46. Mm-hmm. So you went right
from Parris Island to China? No, no, Parris
Island, I got to Parris Island, went
through boot camp, then got sent to tent camp,
Camp Lejeune, and went through ITR,
Advanced Infantry Training, and funny old
Chesty Puller, you ever heard of him? He
was battalion commander of the ITR. He had
little signs all over everywhere
something eluded, no Marine ever died because
he wasn't trained. And went
through, they did, it was well, we were well
trained and I guess we were being
trained for the invasion of Japan is what they
said. And then while I was down
there, World War I ended and then World War II
ended and they broke us up and
shipped us to California. We got on a troop
train with it was boxcars with
bunks made out of two-by-fours over there. Took
us about five days to get to
California. Pulled off every time another train
would come by, we had to take a
side and got, and then they broke us up and
people were sent everywhere. Some
guys went to the MPs, various jobs of base
work, and I got sent to the PX at
the 17th area and I stayed there a couple of
months and then I got picked
up for the 90th draft and went overseas and
went to, got aboard a ship in San
Diego, went to from San Diego to Hawaii. I
think she spent the night in Hawaii. We
didn't get off the ship and then to Guam. We
got off at Guam and was billeted in the
old Third Marine Division area and we stayed on
Guam a couple of weeks. Didn't
know where we were going. Then we got aboard, I
think it was the Charles Carroll was the
ship I got on, and we went to China. From
there, I didn't know where we were going.
They didn't have any idea. We start seeing
junks when we got near there, and then they
would announce that we were going into China.
And then it got, I guess you heard this before,
the ship couldn't go in, couldn't go over
Tangkou Bar up the river, so the ship anchored
out they start over the cargo nets and we all
had to go down into small boats
that didn't have much draft to get over this
bar and up into the river where it
stops. Where exactly did you land? Tangoo. Okay.
Some call it Taku or Tangoo and then
it got on we spent the night there and some old
Japanese barracks again racks
were made out of two by fours. So I assume by
this time the hostilities are
over? Oh yeah yeah this was the other guys had
come off of Okinawa into
China a good four or five months ago and they
were raring to go home. We were
replacements. Okay. And we went on up by rail
to Tien Sen. Got to Tien Sen I got
assigned to the French arsenal into the 11th
Marines which was the artillery and
then when I got to the French arsenal I got
reassigned same day to the 2nd
battalion level Marines which was up in Peking,
Peking and that was in the
American Embassy so I got sent up there and I
put put better than a year in up
there and when the Marines finally left in 47
we went to Guam and formed the
first everybody went home but the regulars
formed the first provisional
Marine Brigade and on Guam I got sent from
there back to China to Tsingtao.
There was Marines left in Tsingtao, they
cleared everything out up in North
China except Tsingtao and that became known as
the Sixth Fleet FMF
Westpac and we stayed, I stayed a year there. I
ended up with about total over
three years but I got about three or four
months and the brigade on Guam went
back again and then February of 49 there was a
Navy communications ship, Ricardo
or something, we left off on there and that was
down, that wasn't the last ship
but that was, they were getting us out of there
pretty fast and it was all over
with Chiang Kai-Shek had already gone to Taiwan
months before. We didn't even
know he had left the mainland. So you guys
were, like when you were at the
embassy in your first trip over? Yeah. This
hostility was, everybody knew
this was happening, right, the Nationalist
Chinese and the Communist, this was an
ongoing fight and everybody... It was, it was a
very, very miniature of the type of
thing that's going over in Iraq today only we
didn't have it it wasn't as much
but they were they had a little bit of sniper
stuff we got we had a patrol that
was bringing our supplies up out of Tencent and
they were ambushed and it
was funny it was a place it where there was
dead space called no community you
the radios wouldn't work. And so that finally
they had a Jeep that broke out
and headed back to Tennyson when it broke out
and came to Peking. And I was on,
they gathered up a patrol real fast and I was
on patrol to go down for the
relief of them. But when we got started down we
never completely got there. They
had already, it was over with and they were on
their way back coming up. They
had put a, the roads were kind of high over
there, built up, and they had had a
Chinaman with a cart and a donkey across the
road. It stopped the convoy and when
the lieutenant got out to go up to talk to him,
that's when they opened fire, they
killed the lieutenant. I think they got the
machine gunner, it was a machine gun
jeep, but there was four killed that day. They
took the bodies and brought
them back on up to Peking to the American
Regation, but it was stuff like that
that periodically happened over there.
It wasn't a great, it wasn't like
they're doing over there, it was a miniature of that.
What were your general duties? I mean were you
infantry? No, I was artillery, I was
artillery and, and they looked into, when
the last ones I was telling you were
going home, they looked into the record and
saw that I had worked as a teenager in a
shoe store on Saturday selling shoes and they
came over and sent me to the PX
and that's when Trowbridge was a PX officer and
he was in the 5th Marines I
was in the 11th Marines and so they detached me
over there to run the PX. I
went over there and replaced two men and they
were chopping it a bit they wanted
to get out of there and I took over 18 year old
PFC took over the PX and ran
to PX for about a year and his, he was my
officer, he was a fine gentleman too and he,
5th Marines moved up to Tangshan and so they
transferred me over to H&S
Company, 5th Marines and I stayed there and ran
that till they came back down,
the main body, but he never came, he went on
from up there, I think he went back to
States. What um, what shape was China in after
all this Japanese occupation? I
mean. Oh God it was devastating, it was
terrible. Well it was. Poor as they could be.
It was
really, I mean they were really in bad shape.
All the way it was that way the
whole time we were there and it seemed like
Chiang Kai-Shek I guess could never
get it pulled together. The Communists kept the
pressure on him and they kept
the pressure on. We were kind of playing in the
middle, keeping them apart. When I
was in Peking, they brought a whole bunch of
Army colonels into that area and they
took some of our people, Marines, Army, and
they had a Chinese nationalist
officer and a Chinese communist officer and
they made up little groups and they
would go out in vehicles and radio jeeps and
they'd had a radio operator the
colonel and the two officers and interpreter
and they were going around
trying to stop this the little firefights of
this war and negotiate and
that went on for quite a while up in Peking but
it all just fell apart they
couldn't couldn't get it stopped. General
Marshall came over and he was in the
American Embassy where the he was in the
American village that didn't stay in
that American Embassy and he tried and while we
were there he according to the
scholar he washed his hands and of it went back
to the States you just
couldn't, couldn't get them to get together and
they just kept on
fighting and the communists kept getting
stronger and stronger.
Chiang Kai-Shek had the cities, the communists
had the countryside. That's
where you had to watch out anytime you sent
vehicles or anything out into the
countryside. Wasn't allowed to call them
communists. In Chinese, they were
called the Balu's, and Balu in Chinese means
8th Army, that was the 8th Army, the old
commons thing. We had to speak of them as
bandits, we wasn't allowed to say commons, had
firefight down and you can get a man coming
here a little later, SOPR, they
had a firefight, ammo dump got down in Tangu,
where we came in at, they attacked the ammo
dump, killed some Marines, blew up an M7. The
M7 was a tracked 105, it was called a
tank destroyer, and they destroyed one of them
and killed some people.
I forgot what I was going to say.
Well, I can add a place for you.
Okay, stay around.
Well, 11.
Easy place.
Yeah, it's easy.
Where were we going with this?
This is who?
They talk about the ammo dump.
Yeah, they hit an ammo dump down there and
killed some people.
and killed some people, Soper will tell you
more about that, but they were, fire from
things like that just kept, oh, they hit them
and as they were leaving, they were called in
our air, marine air, and the marine air, I
talked to some men who said they were in the
air wing and heard the conversation and the
aviators were saying that they saw these
people, they were carrying ammo on carts, they
were carrying their dead on carts,
and every firefight seemed like we got a good
advantage on them and they were
carrying their dead and we would go down and
strafe them. They wasn't allowed to say
communists, they had to say bandits. And they
denied them. That happened several times.
How many, how many Marines were over there?
When we were first one of the, I've heard
figures but it's about 30,000 of us I
think when we were full-strength. They had
the 6th Division in Tsingtao and the 1st
Division up in Tien Tsen in Peking. But
after the, after they all went up home at
the end of 46, I think we were operating
We had PFCs as first sergeants, active first
sergeants. We didn't have any very
many senior NCOs, and our officers were way
down, you didn't see an officer. It was shortly
realized, they'd take the airplanes and fly
them out on a patrol, and they were the old
Corsairs, and on the spindle in the front,
those boys would paint them red, and they'd go
out in the morning, and they'd come back, and
they'd go in
and then paint them yellow and the same planes
would fuel up and go back again.
And we were just trying to make them think,
they would take the machine guns and those
little outposts we had
and they saw the people right there watching
them all the time, the villagers,
and they'd bring out the machine guns and test
them, take a machine gun and go back in like it
had tested right and bring the same gun back again.
We were trying to make them think they had
three machine guns and make it look like they
had ten.
Right. But it was all kinds of stuff like we
didn't we didn't have a whole lot of
people we were bullshitting them a little bit
until the last part when we finally went out.
It was just a weird place. I saw that the thing
that stuck in my mind it was colder than hell
over there one time. I had on a parka and I was
cold. I was walking down the street and a damn
young Chinese boy, looked like about 13 or 14,
came out with shorts on, got on his
knees and beat his head on the concrete trying
to get donations. They were
getting real mad shy over there. I don't say
how he could even made it.
Did um, I assume by this time all the Japanese
had been rounded up? Yeah, when I first got there
had Japanese working parties. The Japanese
soldiers, when that war was over
they were just as polite as they could be when
they were walking down, we were
walking down the streets, they would salute us.
They got disarmed and we were
repatriating them back. It took a long time to
repatriate them back. They had a
lot of, had all their civilians over there,
their wives, families, and things.
There was a lot of Japanese civilians that was
over there and they were slowly
be in process to put on trains. Marines were on
the train guards to guard them. Had
to guard them because the Chinese would get
them if they could and they'd
carry them to the ports and repatriate them.
And that went on throughout the whole of
46, repatriating the Japanese. But we'd get
them on working parties, they were just as
docile as they could be. Didn't have any
problem. And there's a story that I think it's
pretty true that I've talked to guys that was
there that they had lines up
there in Tangshan and the communists would come
in and come through the lines
and that made indications they were going to
come through anyway to go after the
nationalists and they got a Japanese major
prisoner there and reissued them
their rifles. They went in the lines with the
Marines and held the Chinese
off that. Yeah. And when it was over it turned
their right foot all back in.
When you signed this form all you're doing is
giving us permission. I guess survival is a
pretty powerful motivator.
Yeah it is. I guess it is. You signed that
right there.
Well you say there were very few officers there?
Yeah, we were low on officers and NCOs. As I
was starting to tell you,
A friend that just died, his name was
Cherbonneau, and as far as we were
concerned then we were teenagers, he was an old
man. He was 31 years old. He was a
PFC and he was the first sergeant of his
company. The company I was in had a buck
sergeant as the first sergeant and it was...
that we did? No, we didn't have, we just didn't
have the T.O., the T.O. was the way they came
to the organization,
just didn't have the strength and then they
started coming, when I was in Singtow,
the Marine Corps went down to what they called
a two-year regular, we made fun of
them and they could come in for two years,
enlistment was four years, that's
what they got me for and we started getting
them, a bunch of them was coming
in the same time two year right now.
We're getting things, we have plenty of people
coming back up.
But there was a while there right after the 46
when all the people went home that we were low.
Testing, testing, one, two, three.
What was your general feeling about your tour there?
It was an experience.
I enjoyed it.
and it was different. Do you ever feel unsafe?
I mean, did it feel like you were going to be
overrun or
was there that sort of feeling? There was times
I felt unsafe, but yeah, unsafe you would,
you'd learn
where you would go, you know, I wouldn't want
to wander down into an area where there was
no American or other servicemen, or get on a
vehicle and go out down the road away from the
city, it would be unsafe there, but there's a
rule, I didn't feel
completely safe but I didn't want to scare you.
You know living here you go down to the
grocery store or the shopping center, you get
out of your car and you're thinking about
whatever you're thinking and you walk on into
the, you never look left or right or care who's
around you, there you would always look and see
who was, pay attention, that sort of thing.
A.m. did I am you're well supplied I mean you
always have everything you need it
over there supplies pretty good we wasn't plush
well supplied it took a while when we first
went that took a while to start
partners and win and where are you things like
at the end that when we're
down in Tsingtao it was pretty good, it was
well supplied down there. See then we were
part in Tsingtao, we were part of the 6th fleet.
I forgot his name, the admiral that
was in charge of that, he was the Supreme
commander and that was the Navy and they
were, we got good supplies coming in Tsingtao.
Navy was, there was a seaport, we had all kinds
of stuff.
where were you born? Dinsen-Chan, Dinsen-Chan,
okay, that's where you did it.
Let's see, where I was. First division, Rocky,
the division was there at 45, I guess when the
bandits, for lack of a better word.
nationalist, yeah, when they... The bandits are
the communists. Right, when, did they come like
in a rush?
Like in 49? When everybody finally left? I
mean, did you have to... No, no. It's a gradual thing?
Tsingtao, Tsingtao was worse than... Well, see,
when we went into Peking, they were
saying ding how thumbs up and they were
cheering us and the banners across the
street were still there because I got in
January and it was several months and
been there before but banners were still up
there with pictures of Chiang Kai-Shek
on them and in English had Chinese and also in
English and said he was the
liberator of war. He had won the Pacific War
and everybody was cheering us and at
that point we felt pretty proud you know. It
didn't take very long the Russians
had gone in and taken over Manchuria and they
came down and had big
demonstrations against the Russians and then it
wasn't long before the
demonstrations turned around and the famous
expression Yankee go home and they were
having demonstrations against us. So the whole
thing had turned around.
That's over a period of time that we're talking here.
That's a period of time from 46-49. As I
started to tell you when I went to St. Kyle,
having been through that up in Peking when I
went to St. Kyle, it was an unsafe place.
They were looking for you. You got off the base
or you strayed off somewhere.
You had to watch out for Rickshaw before you
got to ride in, you know, where he would take
you, you better know where you're going.
He could take you somewhere you didn't want to
go. You're like getting into a taxi and he goes
the other way.
In Tsingtao, we referred to the Chinese in
Tsingtao as being more communist influenced, I
guess, I don't know.
In Tsingtao, the relation was a whole lot different.
So, there was no, well I guess, at what point
did Chiang Kai-Shek, did he leave before you
guys or after you guys?
See, I didn't know it then, I found out later
after we got back that Chiang Kai-Shek I was
talking to, somebody, some history place up in
Quantico said hell, Chiang Kai-Shek,
had left the island, had left the mainland
several months before. They were already in
Taiwan and we were still left, and we were the
last contingent that kept getting smaller and
smaller and smaller.
I talked to one of our members and said he was
in the last ship that left, and they had gone
down to Shanghai trying to pick up missionaries
and Americans that would come out,
and they came back up to Tsingtao to get them
out and he said they had moved down and had a
like an American compound said when they came
in they saw the flag flying over the American flag
and they were wondering what was going to
happen if there was going to be pressure put on said
and the flag came down and the gate opened up
and the Marines come marching out in formation
down to the dock and said they had their dog
with them, I think his name was Lockerbox,
he said. Said the dog was marching right along
with them and they got to the dock and they
loaded up and the Chinese never did anything
and I guess they figured they were leaving
so why attack or anything, they didn't want to
aggravate and he said when they left they
left the dog on the dock and the skipper of the
ship with another dog aboard and they
were all upset to sail away and saw their dog
sitting down there. That was his
main point, that dog. But he said they were the
last, I talked to the guy that said he was the
last ship that the last ones left on.
Did you stay in the Marine Corps after all this?
No, I went home and got out and my time
was up I left in February as soon as they got
to Quantico and got discharged and they
asked me I want to join the reserves. I was a
corporal. I said no. He said well I didn't want
to go to any
meetings, training. They said well we'll put
you in the inactive reserve you don't have to
go to
meetings there. I said no I didn't think I
wanted to go. He said if you go to war again
you're trained
said you'd be called back in. There's a private
said but you can save, you get,
save your rank, you come back in. I said if I
don't have to go to meetings
anything, okay, and I signed up for it and I
went to the University of North
Carolina, got accepted there and was in school
there and I got word that I was
gonna get called back and I did a foolish thing
when I got the
University of North Carolina they had ROTC Navy
and a marine major was the
executive officer and they had a captain as the
CEO and the marine major came over and said
sawing the records there, the former Marine
said, we'd like to get you in the ROTC, and I
sort of smart-knifed him, said I don't want to
do that, blow over something, you know, and I
wasn't interested, and then some time later, I
got tipped that it was orders coming to me, and
I ran down to him and said, uh, maybe I've
changed my mind, I think maybe I'd like to
join, and he said, no, he said, I flipped the
records, and he said,
He said, you can't be over 26 years old when
you receive a commission.
He said, you'll graduate in June and you'll be
26 or 25, I forgot which, but anyway, you'll
be 25 or 26 in May and you'll graduate in June.
I said, that's just one month.
He said, yeah, I know.
I said, could I get a waiver on that?
He said, I wouldn't even go to the captain and
ask him to try to waiver something.
So I learned a lesson there about smart mouth.
But anyway, I drove up to D.C. to the 5th
Marine Corps Headquarters.
Our first president of the China Marine
Association, I didn't know him then, was
Sergeant Major McKinley.
McKinley. And I didn't even know him then, but
he said, your orders are in the mail.
He went back and looked in his records, so I
got called back for Korea.
and then went down to Camp Lejeune, got married
and when that was over you had
the when the call back that it was Truman's
year they called it had a year
added on your enlistment, Reserve enlistment
and I got out I chose to get
out and I got out, worked for a while and I
decided to go back in. I went back in and I stayed
until... I have a brother. First day of
January, 74. Really? He's 7 years older than I
am. Made a career out of it.
And my mother and he? Yeah. Had some pretty
good days. Ended up as a warrant officer.
What do you call a... Have you ever heard of
Leatherneck magazine? Mm-Hmm. Ended up being an
officer in charge of
Leatherneck magazine for about three and a half
years. Really? I went to Vietnam three times. A
lot of Russians lived in China.
One time I was with the American embassy. With
the Marines there was a platoon
I had two platoons of embassy guards. You don't
want to know anything about Vietnam, do you?
You want to talk about that? No, I don't want
to know anything about that.
But anyway, I come back from Vietnam and that's
when I got out in 1974, February of 74.
but as a friend of a friend.
Well just sort of personally, you see a lot of
difference between the Marines
when you joined up and when you left. Oh my
God, yeah, the people, the equipment.
The equipment's the biggest, yeah, well like
when we were on Guam and I was in
the Brigade and Bon Guam on the way out there,
water out of a canteen, water out
of a Lister bag, water out of a Lister bag,
that was some terrible tasting stuff.
And all the guy, and I'm not knocking it, the
technology, the guys over in Vietnam, I mean
over in Iraq, they got water in the bottles,
you see them walking around with the bottles of
water. So their equipment, oh there's so much
difference and stuff. I think the
spirit of them are all still the same. That
they're well-trained and they're good fighters
and all.
Team, they all work as teamwork. They watch
each other's back. But it's just
entirely different than what we were. Mess duty
now is kind of, there's no more
mess duty. You have cooks and all. It's
contracting and all that. They have civilians
over in Iraq, making meals, serving the tables.
I went to Quantico. We had a reunion in Quantico
last year. We were in Washington, D.C. last
year and went down to Quantico and had lunch in there
and we were really surprised. It was all
civilians. You walk in, sit down, and it's
amazing. We never
had stuff like that. Which is good for them,
but it's a different world than what we did.
mm-hmm and I guess in World War I if you
compared World War I to what we were
we were probably a whole lot better off than
they were. It's impressive. Had a
funny thing in St. Towers, had a guy, a staff
sergeant, I guess he had gotten kind of
shook up in the head and he had World War I
victory medal and World War I
the occupation of Germany. Shaved his head,
staff sergeant, which is a
staff, so back then the Staff Sergeant Marine
Corps was pretty prestigious, the three top
ranks, and he refused to eat in staff mess. He
came down to our general mess and he
refused to eat with a tray. He brought down
this meat can and cover. You know what
that is. You have a thing it's about this big
around and it has compartments in it
and a lid to it you see it comes over and you
can carry that in your pack in
there. It's called, you open it up, but you had
trays you can go through. He refused to
eat out of his meat can and cover and all, but
he was a World War I veteran and when I
I was in a brigade on Guam. We had another
weirdo in the Marine Corps, cooks and
musicians. They didn't call them corporals or
sergeants, they were either a cook or
assistant. A corporal was an assistant cook, a
sergeant was a cook, and a
staff sergeant, I was chief cook. Corporal was
assistant field music, sergeant was
a field music, this guy was a corporal
assistant field music, a short guy, and he was
our music in Guam, blew the colors up every
morning and down every evening, he'd
been on the Pan-8, and you figure the time that
he'd been high in the world could he have
never gotten no higher than corporal or
assistant field music. That's too
weird, the time I was in that scene was the one
he was a veteran of. When I first
went to Marine Corps all of our officers,
senior officers, were most of World War
I veterans and commandants and all of that were
World War I. But it's a big
difference today, they're highly, I think, they
got guns that pick out, they got this
lazy. Very accurate. Anything other any other
comments about China? Well, I appreciate
you taking the time to talk with us.