This is January 21st, 2007. My name is Larry
Rabelais. I'm the interviewer here, and we're
at the Bush Gallery of the National Museum of
the Pacific War.
I'm interviewing Colonel Kenneth Harrell, and
this interview is taking place here in the
conference room in the Bush Gallery itself.
view is in support of the Center for Pacific
War Studies archives for the
National Museum of the Pacific War Texas
Historical Commission for the
preservation of historical information related
to this site and that takes care
of the paperwork. So then I'll turn it over to
Ken Harrell and let him start
from the very beginning and we'll let her rip.
Well I was born in Rosebud, Texas
July the 25th, 1925. About the age of two or
three, we moved to South Texas to a
little town called Beeville, Texas, and I was
raised there and went to school
there. And the question is, where did I learn
about Pearl Harbor? I was sitting
out at Yonkins drive-in with a little girl that
we'd started a school together
her name was Marjorie Malone and we were
listening to the radio and they broke in
to tell us about the Pearl Harbor. So you have
a specific memory of that woman? Yes
I do and then my dearest dearest first cousin a
guy by the name of Joe Ramis
Jr. was drafted and he went to the West Coast
and I couldn't stand it that he
was gone and I wasn't. So the next year in 1942
I convinced my family that I
had to go into the Marine Corps. You were
pretty young then. I was 17. 17, barely of
age. Did they have to sign for you? Yes they
did. Yeah okay. And I don't think
they were ever sorry they did. They were scared
lots of times but never never
sorry. I joined the Marine Corps in August the
7th 1942, went to MCRD San
Diego, was trained out there and further
training up in Camp Pendleton. I went to
radio school and became a CW operator and went
back to Camp Pendleton and was
chosen to become a member of the dearly beloved
Amtrak outfits it and they
scared me to death. I went across 101 to what's
now called Camp Del Mar and they
put me in an Amtrak and we went out in the
Pacific and the waves were rolling
and it damn near rolled the thing over. Now is
that the thing that's sort of
called an alligator? Yeah, well the alligators
were the first and they
progressed from there. They didn't go real fast?
No, that's what we carried the
troops in and supplies in things like that.
There were pretty thin-skinned
vehicles I think we have one out here in our
combat zone and it looks like it's
just sheet metal. I'll tell you more about that.
Okay. When I was sent overseas
in June of the following year June of 43 I went
to Pearl Harbor saw the
devastation there and from there we got aboard
an LST which I had never seen
before. Did they roll as badly as they say?
Well they had these flat LCI's
mounted one on each side of the thing and we
carried those all the way down to
Australia. We landed in Melbourne and I joined
the First Marine Division down
there. Now that's not 1st Amphib, that was 1st
Marine Division. 1st Marine
Division and then I went into the 1st
Amphibious Tractor Battalion, joined them
and just before the operation that was to take
place at Cape Gloucester. Were
you actually an operator of the Amphib unit, of
the alligator, you were just? No, I
was a radio operator. You were a radio
operator, okay. The, we made our first
landing was a practice landing on Goodenough
Island right off of New Guinea.
That was the name of it? Goodenough Island.
Okay. And G-double-o-d-n-o-u-g-H.
Okay. And the island did have several Japanese
on there which we proceeded to
chop up with our .50 caliber machine guns that
we had mounted on the thing. And we
were told there weren't going to be anybody
there, you know. Anyway, we did our
practice landing and then we made our landing
at Cape Gloucester on December
the 26th. Now Cape Gloucester is part of New
Guinea? That's correct, no it's part of
New Britain. New Britain? Yeah. Okay. Which is
right off, right off, real almost
attached to that. Go ahead, I've got a little
map I'm gonna bring out to help
myself for you. Okay. But you can go ahead and
continue while I'm looking. Well the
landing that we made at Cape Gloucester was
relatively an easy landing and we
didn't have too much trouble until after. Was
the beach vegetated or was it a sand
beach? No it was sandy and it was vegetated
also there was lots of
underbrush and the rain down there just
absolutely made the whole island a
quagmire. They did have a pretty good size
airfield there. The Japanese
had that, so we utilized that. And the reason
that we went there, I have
since found out, was to furnish an area where
they could attack Raval. Which is
the big Japanese bastion. Right. In that area.
There was a Colonel Chesty Puller
who had the first Marines. Me with him. Needed
some radio operators to go on a
walk across Cape Gloucester and fortunately I
was a CW operator and he
chose me or somebody did. I went on the. Was he
himself gonna go on this one? Oh
yeah. Chesty was? Absolutely. He's pretty tough
dude I gather. Yes he was. He had a
little breast just like a chicken you know it
just we spent quite a few days
out there and I got my first wound got shot in
my left arm right up so we y'all
were it was just like the elusive Japanese
patrols that were just sort of
more y'all being they were way up get way up in
these coconut trees and other
big okay there and most of the fire was sniper
fire which we were able to get
rid of them right quick. That was 6.5
millimeter I think it was a small
caliber. It's like a 223. Yeah. And when we
finished up the operation there we
went to a new place in the Russell Islands
called Pabuvu. I've heard of that.
And Pabuvu was the new headquarters for the 1st
Marine Division. It was on a
on a coconut plantation and there were coconut
trees every 20 feet. You could
put a 16-foot perimetral tent in between four
of them. So it had been occupied and
was plantation type scenario. It was a French
mandate. We, as soon as I got
there they transferred me over to the first
Amtrak. No, I'm sorry,
they transferred me to the 6th Amphibious
Tractor Battalion, which was
across the bay from Pabubu. I don't even know
what the name of that
island was. I think it was no name. And we
formed a new unit over there to make
the landing in Peleliu. Now were you like in a
squad? Were you detached as a
radio man or you would be attached to different?
I was attached. CPs maybe or to
a command post? No, I wound up in the command
tractor for landing it for Bravo
company and not to attain. Oh okay. And I was
in Baker company and I didn't know
anyone. So we took off and we had all of our
practice landings at Guadalcanal.
At Guadalcanal it had already been taken. Oh
yeah. And so it was more or less
stabilized there and so y'all just practiced
there. And we made a couple of
landings there. And from there we went on and
made our landing at Peleliu. And at
Peleliu, we were in the second wave, had just
gone in on Orange Beach 3 and
dumped our load and we were backing back out
and got about 50 yards off of that
thing and it was a big gun right on the flank
of us on a little strip called No
Name Island and they proceeded to put two
biggies right through the side of
our Amtrak and it blew up the back end.
Fortunately we had nobody back there but
two machine gunners and it killed both of them
and it went through and I
immediately hit my seat button it up up the
seat goes and I hit the thing to get
the lid open and I stood on the top of that
thing and jumped out into the water.
So so the alligators are not open to the top? I
thought they were open to the top.
Not not in the cab. Oh at the catch right
there's a cab in the front I remember
seeing that, yes. None of our Amtrak's had tops
on them until after the 50s and
this was not an alligator, it was a water
buffalo. It was what they call an LBT4
which is the same thing as you've got over here.
I crawled around on the
reef out there and I was bleeding pretty bad
and I didn't know...
So it sank? The WT4 sank?
Well, no it didn't sink. We were sitting right
on about that much reef and I was
cutting my hands all to pieces and my knees but
trying to crawl because I
didn't have any shoes on.
It blew your shoes off?
Yeah. And I don't know, I had little pieces of
metal all over me.
Now how far from the from the beach itself were
y'all on? About 50 yards.
We were backing out. So you had water sort of
deeper in between so. Well the
water from the edge of the reef to the beach
couldn't have been more than a
foot and a half. Oh is that all? And I got out
to the edge of the reef and was
picked up by LCVP and they took me over to the
command boat that was controlling
the entry of all the various LBTs and LCBPs
into there and my executive
officer happened to be on the thing so he asked
me if I was hurt and I said no
he said well what's all that blood about and I
said I don't know and they
proceeded to give me a t-shirt to wear and then
they gave me a gunner's helmet
from their 40 millimeter gun tubs, and they had
a great big red dot on it.
That's a great big helmet. Yeah, it's a big
helmet, it had a red dot, and handed me a
Thompson submachine gun,
and several clips of ammo, and said you need to
get back on in there and get
with your unit. So they put me aboard another
LBT that came by. So your unit
was ashore then? Well, some were not, some
were, we, some we never found.
Let me stop and ask you, let me stop.
And there was a 75 millimeter gun set up there,
and they were able to fire right straight down
the beach.
And I have no idea, we lost somewhere over 200
Amtraks in that landing.
My goodness. Now in the Amtrak that y'all were
in, you were up in the front cab compartment as
a radio man. Right.
Now were there some troops in the back other
than the gunners?
No, we had already landed on the beach and they
had all taken off and we were backing back up.
And our procedure was we had to back off the
beach and with the ramp still down.
and we got about 50 yards off the beach
and the gun hit us right in the middle of the Amtrak.
So you'd already discharged your cargo.
Okay, let me stop and test it.
So you've just been hit and two gunners in the back.
Well, they had one.
Oh, one.
And he was killed probably?
Oh yes.
Did the shell detonate inside?
Yeah, it did, and there was a compartment, an
airtight compartment, one on each side.
And when it exploded inside, it had gone
through the armor plate on the outside and
exploded inside the other.
And that killed the guy immediately.
Now I truly don't know what happened to the driver.
I have never been able to find out.
They show him that he was dead,
but I don't know how it happened.
Did you get some shrapnel on you, obviously?
Oh, yeah. Alrighty.
So were you taken back for treatment there
or you went on into the beach?
No, I got out of that Amtrak just as quickly as
I could.
They had a means for you.
The seat would jack up
And then you would open the lid on the top of
the thing and you'd stand up and then get
out of there.
Just bail out over the side. Right.
I think you said previously the water was
pretty shallow there.
It was very shallow.
This was a solid reef for about 300 yards.
And I crawled out to the edge of that thing and
I cut my hands, my knees, and my toes.
That stuff is short.
Oh, that stuff is really bad.
And there was a little boat picked me up and
took me over to one of the little DEs that
was out there.
And when I got aboard, well, my executive
officer was still on there, or he was on there.
And so they proceeded to clean me up, give me
some clothing to wear, since I didn't have
anything left, really.
And they put new pants on me and a new T-shirt
and a great big old gunner's helmet that had
a big red dot on the thing, handed me a
submachine gun, a Thompson machine gun, and
said, go
back to the beach.
Oh, my goodness.
No mercy on you there.
It wasn't for anyone, really.
This was totally a Marine operation, from what
I understand. Yes.
back to the beach now, they defended at the
beach pretty strenuously, well it was a pretty
small island, I mean really. Oh yeah. And it
was a little bit from, since I've talked
to you, I've gone on the website and looked up
some aerial photographs and they did talk
about the fact that they did not realize that
it was really that hilly and pockmarked and
rocky. That's right. Apparently it was hidden
by vegetation, so the aerial photographs did
not give the correct indication. It looked
pretty flat, and it wasn't.
No, I'll assure you it wasn't flat.
So they were in caves and in bed?
They mined for phosphorus there.
That's right.
And they had those mines, and then since they
found that they could do this, they had been
digging holes in that darn thing for years and
years and years.
The Germans used to have Palau or the Palaus
and the Japanese picked it up right after World
War I
and they had all that time to prepare for something.
On the island itself then, as you advanced further
inland and y'all cleaned out different areas,
was that over fairly quickly
No, it sure wasn't.
They thought it was going to be, but it didn't.
We were told it was going to be a six-day
affair or something like that,
even six or seven days.
And we got as far as the edge of the airfield
that first night,
and there was lots of fighting and stuff like that.
Then they pulled me, I had joined the 5th
Marines there, just, I couldn't find my
battalion CP at all, and I finally found it the
next day.
And the first thing they did was have us go
down to the end of the island in our Amtraks,
and we would be directly across from a little
island called Nicosimas.
And we were to be out on patrol there in the evening
because the Japanese were landing troops
on barges up in there.
Oh, they were still bringing reinforcements in?
Oh, yes, they were.
And we had the rare opportunity of being able
to really clean up all of those barges that night.
We stayed a couple, three more days
and they decided to put some troops across there
into Nicosivas, and we took troops across from
Palau to Nicosivas, which was only about
300 yards, 400 yards at the max, and it was a
hot little engagement.
They were trying to defend that one too, huh? Yeah.
There was a little airfield on the thing.
Oh, really?
enough for a little airfield? Yeah. Now you
said that I believe y'all were getting air
support once y'all were able to capture the
airstrip on Peleli, y'all were getting some
air support from some of your planes that were
actually landing and taking off there.
Corsair is by the dozen. Really? Yeah. That's a
good ground support plane. Oh, tell me.
Well, all I can remember is just looking up and
watching them drop napalm on top of that
dog on Bloody Nose Ridge, just plant there and
take off, wouldn't even raise their wheels
up, they'd just take off, drop it, make a turn,
come back and land.
I didn't realize they were using napalm that
early in the war, but I guess they were. Unbelievable.
Now this would have been in 43? 44.
44, that was in 44, okay.
And okay, let's see. All right, so you were in
and around that engagement for some time then?
Yeah, well, I was there only five days. I got
bayoneted right there.
Oh, that's right. That's right. You mentioned that.
That was a night action? Yeah.
And they took me off the next day.
Okay. And that was a charge, like they did a charge?
Yeah, it was called, we called, it was called Banzai.
Yeah, Banzai.
They would scream and holler, you diaboreed.
They actually did that.
That wasn't just in the movies. Absolutely.
They actually did that.
And I understand your foxholes were not too
deep because it was pretty hard coral and
you couldn't dig.
Well, we had these little pickmatics, which was
a pick on one end and a shovel on the other.
Yeah, I know.
I've handled one of those.
We'd sit there and pound that damn coral.
Nothing would happen.
Like, every now and then a chip would fly.
Can't dig a foxhole too well in that.
So I believe you said that you were able to
shoot the gentleman that bayoneted you?
Yes I did.
I was fortunate enough that he didn't kill me
so I proceeded to kill him.
They had, from the ones I've seen at the museum
here, they had long bayonets.
Well, as a matter of fact, this guy didn't do
it with a rifle, he hit it on the end of
a long stick. Really?
And I know that the personnel there of the
Fifth Marines
picked that thing up and took it with them.
I'll be darned.
I was hoping they would send it to me as a
gift, you know.
Well, I noticed you've got a couple of Sumerai swords
on the wall over there.
Oh yeah, well, the real one is right up there.
Oh, I see.
At the bottom, and it, I got that later on. Yeah.
Okay, so you were sent back to a hospital ship
eventually, and I believe you said to New Zealand.
Right, I went to Auckland, New Zealand, to a
little hospital they had there in the city.
That wasn't so bad there, except I'm sure you
weren't there under pleasant circumstances.
Well, they were enthusiastic in trying to help,
just as the Australians were.
Was that army medical staff or New Zealand
staff that...
Well, it was New Zealand plus Navy staff.
Oh, really?
And I believe you said you were there probably
for maybe three months or so,
recuperating or some time.
A lot of the dates have kind of vanished in my
mind over the years,
and I'm not sure whether I was there two months or...
But it was a pretty good while. Yeah.
And so the type of wound that it was, was in
the abdomen area.
So I guess it healed reasonably well enough to
put you back.
Yeah, as a matter of fact, when I got back, I
was fine.
You felt okay. Yeah.
And so where were you sent once you were discharged
from the hospital area?
What did they do with you then?
Well, I took a boat.
I went down into the Russell Islands, which is
just south of Guadalcanal, and they discharged
me there, or let me go there, and I rejoined my unit.
I thought I was going to rejoin my-at the time
on Peleliu, I was in the 6th Amphibious
Tractor Provisional, and that thing had been
decimated, and it was canceled to the rest
of the world, and I rejoined the first
amphibious tractor battalion.
When I was on the internet, I actually looked
up the battle, and I looked up a site that
had all the people that had been killed and
wounded, and of course your name was on there.
And it stated that you were in H & C Company?
H & S.
H & S Company, right. Yeah, and I noted some
other people that were in there, and I tried
to remember their names, but I forgot now. I
thought you might remember some of the names.
You know, a company is not that big, and you
would know if, especially if it was an officer.
And there was one officer in particular that I
remember, but I can't remember his name.
But anyway, so yes, you are listed on the list,
that's for sure, at that point in time.
So anyway, okay, so you were in the Russells
now, you're reassigned to a different unit now.
A made-up unit, I guess.
No, no, no.
It was an existing unit?
Yes, it was an existing unit that I had been in
for the Cape Gloucester operation.
Oh, okay. We covered that earlier in the
earlier tape.
Right. And we were just preparing, getting
ready to go to Okinawa, which was April the 1st
of 1945.
That's right. So from late 1944, then you were
wounded, then that carried over into early 1945,
and then you were reassigned then. So this was
April of 45. So the war is
approaching an end but there's still a lot of
action getting ready to go.
Oh yeah. Okinawa. Were you in the Okinawa? Oh
yeah. Okay. So you were still a radio
operator? Yeah, as a matter of fact I was a
radio operator for the CO. Okay. H&S
Company. Okay. And we landed a little late, you
know, there was nothing going on. We
were able to pull up to the beach and there was
a cliff there that we had to
climb up ladders to get up to the top of the
thing. So they didn't resist y'all at
the beach? Not very much. Not until you began
to go inland. That's right. We
we were on the north end of that thing and of
course when we moved inland we
We also turned north, and actually there were
lots of troops, but not that many.
They were having hell down on the south end, so
we turned around and went the other direction
about two weeks later, something like that.
Now, Okinawa's a pretty good-sized island
compared to what you had been.
It actually had little villages and stuff like that.
Oh, yeah.
Lots of towns.
Naha was a pretty good-sized town.
Was there any resistance in Naha at that time?
Oh, yeah. Couldn't get to it.
They had that thing really well covered. Defended.
So, then y'all turned and headed south to assist.
Now, there were some army units involved in the
Okinawa operation also.
I never did run across any, but they were there.
All right. Any notable action that stands out
in your mind in that port after y'all turned
south and trying to ferret them out of those caves?
The Japanese started firing these great big rockets.
Oh yeah, I heard about that.
They were unbelievably large and made lots of
noise. Sounded like a train going through the sky.
And all over the south end of that island,
there were tons and tons of little openings
into the earth.
And you'd go inside there and there'd be bigger
urns full of the ashes of the people who had
died up there.
And we would always go in one of those things
where we'd get a real big heavy attack.
and I know my mother asked me after I told her
about it she said what are you doing there with
all those dead people and I said well I didn't
want to be just like them. Yeah well that was
their burial methods I guess of the natives
that had lived there for that was the way they buried
there. That's correct. I guess they cremated
them and so they all used those for shelter and the
Japanese were firing these uh sort of unguided
rockets just in a general area and lots of them
I understand. Yeah.
It's hard to pinpoint where their launching
sites were, because I think they were on the
back side of the hills, in some cases, firing over.
We had one interesting operation in which I
wound up being the guy that told everybody
what to do.
We went way down the island, down below Naha
and down below Kadena, where we were fielding
the mail landing, the Marines were already down
there, and a lot of them were killed
and a lot of them wounded, and we picked up a
complete load.
They put these stretchers in there and they'd
go across and each end would be on a beam
and then you come this way and you can do the
same thing.
Now these were LVTs or alligators?
No, LVTs.
LVTs, okay.
In fact, these were LVT-3s.
The 3s had twin Cadillac engines in them.
One on each side and we were really proud of them.
Now you say, once before you talked about the
armor that they had.
Now the one I've seen, whatever that is down
there in our combat zone.
That's a 4.
Okay, the armor is awfully thin. When you say
armor, it isn't a whole lot of armor.
Sure as heck isn't. It doesn't stop a .30
caliber bullet, but that's just about it.
Yeah, so it's just relatively thick sheet metal
is really all it is.
The only, I used to laugh, the LVT-3 armoureds
were originally packed 37mm cannons on and
then they finally upgraded it to a 75mm howitzer.
Mounted inside the main.
Mounted inside the turret.
Oh the turret.
Yeah, it was just exactly like a tank. And
they, poor things, you'd hit them with a
baseball bat, you know, and they'd just crumble.
There was almost too much gun to put on that
thing anyway.
Oh yeah.
Okay, so y'all had helped, not rescue, but take
wounded troops out of that tough end
of the island down there. And were you, okay,
were you wounded in any place in Okinawa?
Oh, yeah.
Oh, you were? Uh-huh.
When did that happen then? After that or before that?
It must have been after that, because we went
back to our command post area and there was
a seawall right there, a little entrance, kind
of a creek coming out, and it was a seawall.
And the Japanese had tried to make several
landings in there, several different nights.
So, they were bringing troops around, maybe?
Yeah, they were trying to get them behind.
pockets yeah okay and I know we were part of
the defense structure there we
put our LBT right behind the thing and we'd
have our weapons just above where
we could fire and early one morning after
wonderful C ration breakfast I was
walking down towards the seawall and all sudden
I saw this jet pop up and he had
All he had was a hand grenade and they were the
type where you had to hit them to prime them,
get them released, and he popped it on his own head.
On a helmet or on his head?
On his head. He didn't have a helmet. He'd been
shot and everything else.
Anyway, we had to shoot him, but the explosion
from the hand grenade did a pretty good job on
him also.
Well, you picked up some shrapnel from that? Yeah.
What distance are we talking about, because I'd
heard that some of their grenades were
not very effective.
Oh, I might have been as far from here to that
wall, maybe fifteen or twenty feet.
Oh, that close? Yeah.
Yeah, I understand their grenades were only so
effective, but if you were close enough
it did matter.
You betcha.
Okay, so did that put you out of action a
little bit or not at all?
No, it really didn't.
They were just flesh wounds, they weren't deep
or anything like that.
So the Okinawa operation was pretty much it
then in terms of combat for you at that point
in time.
Y'all probably were then preparing for the
mainland invasion after that?
Yes, sure were.
I don't think there was any, was there anything
after, was Saipan after Okinawa?
No, no, it was before.
It was before, okay. And y'all were not
involved in Saipan?
No, not at all.
Not a particular unit, okay. Now that's, I want
to, for the record, that was sixth amphibious tractor...
Not, not in Okinawa.
Not in Okinawa.
It was the first amphibious tractor that they had.
First, okay. Because I was noticing they, they
were careful about, in that computer
listing they had as to listing the 6th and the
1st and different different units.
There was another one, there was a duck out
that the army sent in and there was also an 8th Amtrak.
I don't know what happened to any of them. But
you guys actually, I mean you weren't just
riding around in Amphibs, I mean you've also
had action and fought, I mean you weren't just
They were after us, I'll tell you, because we
were packing the troops and the supplies.
No, it's strange, but the islands were so damn small.
The penalty was just...
It was.
It was small. It felt confined to your area,
which might be six square feet.
You know, that's where I'm living.
I looked at the aerial photograph of that and I
was a bit surprised as to the fact that we
would commit so many troops to something that
seemed so small and so, there was some
discussion as to whether or not it was even
necessary to have taken Pell.
And historians, after the fact, now see that,
you know, maybe it really wasn't necessary.
Well, they didn't need that airfield. That's
the reason we went there, to get the airfield.
It was to support MacArthur, I believe, for the
Philippine's operations.
Now, y'all were not directly involved in the
Philippine operations.
That was mostly an Army, I think, mostly an Army.
That was all Army.
All Army operations, right.
Now, after Okinawa then, that simmered down.
Then what happened to your unit or yourself at
that point?
Well, they literally got rid of our unit and
broke it up,
and I wound up in the first motor transport
battalion and they sent us to
North China. Okay, I remember that, all right.
And then as soon as I got there they
transferred me out of that unit and put me at
the Division Communication Center.
This was in Tien Sin? Tien Sin. Yeah, all right.
Now that's up in the more
northern part of China. It's colder there. Yes,
it is. Very, very cold. How did y'all
travel there by rail, I assume? By train?
Well, what we did was we landed at a little
port called
Tangkou, and they put us aboard a train and ran us
inland there. I think it was about 20 miles, ¢10,
something like that. And that's the way we
traveled there.
If you went to Peking, you did the same thing,
traveled by train.
Now, this was sort of winter time there, so it was...
Well, it was September when we got there, and
by the 1st of November it was starting to get
really cold,
and then that winter was just fierce.
Just cold, or did it have any snow?
Oh, yeah, lots of snow.
Now, you said before in a previous tape, which
I messed up, but we're redoing this now,
that there were Japanese units that tactically
had technically had surrendered but they
weren't enthusiastic about surrendering.
That's correct.
When I was still with the motor transport
outfit, we were stationed at the race course,
what they call it, Mashando.
And the race course, we were able to put out in
the center of the thing
the equipment that the Japanese had that we
were bringing in there and there was
a tank battalion of Japanese brought their,
they drove them up to the front
gates and we let them in and they drove them
out and then got out and saluted all of us
and then marched over to one spot. And leaving
their equipment there? Leaving their
equipment there. Including tanks? Tanks,
artillery pieces, lots of trucks. Now you
And you got to see their tanks up close.
We have one example over there at the combat
zone there at Fredericksburg.
Boy, they were really primitive in terms of
rinky-dink looking things.
I'll tell you what, I saw a BA Ohrman at
Peleliu absolutely almost cut the top off of
the tank.
Oh, they had a few tanks at Peleliu?
Oh, absolutely.
In fact, if you go there, they still got one
right where I remember the darn thing got hit.
That's right.
back many years later, 50 years later or
something like that.
I went back in 2004.
Oh my goodness.
And that was the 60th anniversary.
The 60th anniversary.
What a great, I guess a great thing, I mean
memories are all right there.
I will never get over it.
Now how were you able to get to Peleliu, I can
understand you would fly to maybe New
Zealand or?
No, no, you fly from, we flew to Hawaii, and
from Hawaii you fly to Guam, and from Guam
you start going south and you go to Yap.
By flight?
By flight, and then you fly from there to a
town called Karor, which is the capital
of Palau.
Okay, which is an island chain.
The big island is called Babelthorpe, and we
flew into Karora, and from there they
transported us.
By boat?
No, no. We took, there's a big bridge going
from Babelthorpe now over to some other little
island there, and that's where our hotel was
that we were going to stay.
day and from there each day we would take a
boat to Palo Alto.
Okay and not too far?
No, no it was a good hour and a half trip.
But it was great.
How about that and of course vegetation has
probably grown over a lot of it over there.
Oh it doesn't look like the same.
Of course artillery had pretty much decimated
everything when y'all were attacking which
made it look pretty bare at that time. It was
bare. Yeah, they all had cleaned it out. But those
coral hills and knobs and whatnot, I'm sure
that's all still embedded in the forest along with
everything else. The Palauans and the Palau
people in particular have sealed off that island.
You can walk and you'll see shells laying
there, helmets, bayonets. It's probably
considered the
national treasure or historic treasure or something.
For them, I guess it is. I know they arrested
some guy and took him off the island because
he picked up some souvenirs that had gone into
one of their caves. They've got a lot
of those caves up there that are still sealed
up and they know that there are a lot of Japanese
in there.
There are dead, so they're basically burial
sites in a sense.
And the Japanese have built a great big Shinto
memorial thing up on top of one of the hills there.
And they really show high respect for the
operation there.
That was a difficult one for them, of course
they lost almost all of their people killed
and a few, I guess a few captured.
I think they took six or something like that at
one time.
I'm trying to remember from the network site
that I pulled up how many they estimated Japanese
were defending the island. It was more than I
would have expected for such a small place.
I think the Marines might have underestimated
Debrass, underestimated what was there.
Let me tell you, the intelligence overestimated
or underestimated.
And I know that the few flights they took over
there, they showed actual copies of the
aerial photographs and it just looks like a
flat little few scrub kind of thing, island,
but that's not what it really was.
I've got a ton of pictures. I'll be happy to
show you after this is over.
Well, all right. Now let's go back to North
China now. The Japanese, oh, you mentioned
something before in the North China Operation,
you all also helped to release or help free
French Canadian Marines that were in a Japanese
camp. I'm curious as to how in the heck they
ended up there.
They were in an embassy there, the French
embassy. See, Tencent is broken up into what
called, I don't know whether I can even
remember the name or not, but each area, there was
a French area, the English area, the German,
and all of that, and they had a compound there.
Different nationalities had their own compound.
And then there was, on some of the streets,
there were gates that they could close off
that particular area.
So they happened to be a unit that was trapped
there, I guess at the beginning of the war probably.
Oh yeah, well actually they were picked off by
the Japanese in the 40s, early 40s.
And so they'd been imprisoned in this camp a
long time, I imagine they were ready to
see you guys.
Yeah you bet, and there was an absolutely
unbelievable number of white Russians in there. Really?
The whole doggone town was just loaded with them.
Russia is the nearest neighbor to the north, I guess.
Yeah. Once you get through Mongolia, you've got
it made.
So this would have been in late 45, early 46 or
somewhere in there?
Late 45.
Yeah, the winter of 45, 46, right.
And you were there for some time?
Well, I was there until February.
Until February, okay.
We walked across the ice and went on aboard an
LST that carried us over to a ship called
USS Wakefield.
It was a Coast Guard-operated ship, and they
took the bulk of us back to the States.
Okay, and that would be San Diego? Uh-huh.
Now, were you discharged at San Diego?
Yes, I was.
And you headed straight home?
Absolutely. Happy to go.
To Texas. Yeah, in February or March or
whenever that was, that's probably ready to go home.
Let me tell you about some guys that I was with.
That would be good, for the record.
I had four great friends that we all went
through radio school together.
and we were all ready to go out there.
One of the guys' name was from Los Angeles, and
his name was Cummings.
I don't remember what his first name was.
The other guy, who was really my closest
friend, was a guy by the name of Joseph L. George.
His family were Portuguese, and they were
fishermen out of San Leandro, California.
Then my other two buddies were part of a
triumvirate that we had.
One guy was named Virgil Haberty.
He was from Arizona.
The other guy was John Hall from Oklahoma.
And the third one in that triumvirate was Ken
Harrell, Texas.
They called us the Three Horrors sometimes, and
the Hellions most of the time.
stuck together pretty much through different actions?
Yeah, well, we were all together for the Palau
operation, lost Virgil Herberty. Cummings
got shot, I got stabbed, and you know.
Well the attrition rate during that campaign
was pretty horrendous. There was a lot of
wounded. I want to say around 6,000 or
something like that wounded and I think 1,700
dead or
something like that in that little operation.
These are the kind of names that, see, when
they do, when the researchers come in to trace
back, it's sort of important. Now, have you
met up with these gentlemen at any reunions
since then?
I haven't seen any of them.
Since then.
have had correspondence with Joe George, and he
now lives up close to Fresno. He retired,
I think he was a J.C. Penney manager and
retired. No, I haven't seen any of them. I
don't know
whether I recognize them or not.
But during that short period of time, y'all's
closeness was pretty intense, I imagine.
Oh, it was unreal.
Well, Ken, that covers the war pretty well.
This is the second tape, an attempt to interview
Mr. Harrell, in which I forgot to turn the mic
on for the second half of the first attempt,
but I think we've covered everything on the
second one. And between those two tapes together,
we have covered pretty much the activities of
Mr. Ken Harrell, who later on went on into
the Korean War, became an officer, and retired
from the Marine Corps after a number of years.
And with that, I'll close. And again, I'll
thank you on the tape for having participated
in the National Museum of the Pacific War Oral
History Program. This tape will be made
available in a hardback form to Mr. Harrell for
his editing, and in final processing will
be put into the final records of the museum.
Again, I thank you very much.