This is Brainerd Parish. Today is September
21st, 19- what is it, 19- 08.
No, it's 2008. I'm interviewing Mr. Al Joudy.
This interview is taking place at Fredericksburg
High School in Fredericksburg, Texas. This
interview is in support of the Center of 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.
Your name is Al Jowdy? Correct.
And Mr. Jowdy, where were you born?
San Antonio, Texas.
And when were you born?
July 19, 1927.
And what were your father and mother's names?
My dad's name was Fred Giotti, and he was from
Beirut, Lebanon.
My mother was first-generation Italian.
She was born in San Antonio, and her parents
were from Italy.
And what did your dad do for a living?
He was a butcher by trade.
And did your mother work, or was she a homemaker?
No, she was a housewife.
Did you have any brothers or sisters?
Oh, yeah.
There were a total of nine in our family, five
girls and four boys.
And where did you fit in?
I was number six.
You were number six.
Where did you go to high school?
Jefferson High School in San Antonio.
And did you enlist in the Navy?
Yes I did.
When did you enlist in the Navy?
In July of 1942.
The reason why I broke my collarbones when I
was playing football, and my dad didn't
like sports he felt like that if you could play
you could work and help
support the family so when he found out about
it he was very upset so I
threatened to join the Navy and he said well on
your birthday I'll sign even
though he thought I was kidding and I wasn't.
Do you remember where you were
when Pearl Harbor happened? I was my cousin and
I were sleeping in the front
room on a fold-out couch and when they came and
told us that Pearl Harbor was
bombed I had no idea. I didn't even know where
Hawaii was much less Pearl Harbor.
You know that we had no television we might
have had a radio but it was all a
mystery to me. And when you did enlist in the
Navy where did you go once you enlisted?
I signed up at the post office in San Antonio
on a Wednesday, it was my birthday, we caught
a bus and we went to Houston, Texas and we went
to the railroad station where the Houston
Astros baseball stadium is today.
They put us up in the Rice Hotel and if you can
imagine a kid coming from a family of
of nine with one bathroom and three bedrooms.
And they put two guys to a room.
I thought I died and went to Heaven.
I mean, you know, big fancy mattress and air conditioning
and a shower, and I didn't have to wait.
As I told my wife, I went from talking to the
nicest recruiting
guy you ever met.
So when we woke up the next morning and had breakfast,
and we went down and got sore in,
I went from a guy that was extra nice to the biggest
screamer you ever heard of.
And the funny part of it was, when we got ready
to leave,
well, going back to San Antonio, the first
thing they told us,
don't bring any jewelry.
Well, I didn't own any, first of all.
And I had $0.25 in my pocket, of which
I spent a nickel catching the bus to go down to
the post office.
So the guy said, don't bring, no, just bring
shaving equipment.
Well, all I needed was a toothbrush and toothpaste.
I didn't even shave.
So I had no jewelry.
I had a T-shirt on, and in those days we called
them dungarees.
They called them blue jeans, now with tennis shoes.
That was it.
So the next morning when we got up, got sworn
in, they put us on the S.P. Railroad-I mean
S.P. Troop Train.
And these were day coaches, no air, and you sat
up straight.
And I remember we left Houston.
By the time we got to El Paso, it was over 100
degrees because it was in July, and every
train that came by, we got sidetracked, you know.
So we ended up taking us probably five days to
get to L.A., and then we caught a bus,
went to San Diego.
We got there about midnight.
And they shaved all our hair off our heads and
they washed us down, I guess with Lysol,
threw all our clothes away and gave us a sea
bag because in those days wherever you went
you brought your mattress with you.
You had a hammock, which we didn't ever use,
but you had to bring your mattress and a sea
bag and the mattress covers what you put your
clothes in.
So they laid out your clothes and you had to
stencil each one of them and you put them in there
And after we took the shower with lye salt or
whatever they sprayed us down
We got to bed
probably about 2:30 in the morning and
San Diego at night is pretty chilly and here we
were just in our shorts walking around barefooted
And Reveley was like 5:30 in the morning
Now, when you're used to just rolling over and
you're going to take your time, this boats
a mate came in with a big nightstick, and he
beat on all these hammocks, and you got
out of bed, and they gave you 15 minutes to get ready.
Well, I didn't have to shave, so all I had to
do was wash my face and brush my teeth.
I had no idea what leggings were, and being
left-handed, apparently I did everything wrong,
And we had to fall out from Buster in 15
minutes from Brevely.
We got out there and I'm sure we looked like a
bunch of sad sacks, you know.
So after the screaming, then you marched four
abreast and you had four mess halls in a row.
So the first line would break off and they gave
you 20 minutes to eat and then you fell
out again and then when the screaming started
about how to put on your leggings, they take
you up on a platform about probably 50 feet off
and you're supposed to jump in the swimming pool.
When you get in up there and you got your
dungarees on and a shirt and shoes, when you
hit the water you're supposed to take your
shoes off, tie the shoelaces together, put
Put them around your neck so if you're close to
coral reef you won't cut your feet up.
Take your dungarees off, tie knots in the
bottom of your pants leg, right at the bottom.
Swing them over your head and you catch air and
you lay in the crotch.
And it'll hold you up for about two hours.
Then you squeeze them out.
And that was a practice.
Then you start with the shots and you're in a
quarantine camp the first week.
Well I was there three days and it was time to
go to the next step and I got the mumps.
Now you can imagine how I felt having the mumps
around these guys 18, 19, 20 years old
and they had a pretty good idea I was too young anyway.
So I went to the hospital and I was probably
there two days and the next thing I learned
how to do was handle bedpans and making a bed.
At the end of eight days of boot camp, when I
came out I thought I was going to join the
company again.
They had me pack my bag, we got on a train,
went to San Francisco, Treasure Island, they
They put me on a transport.
We went from there to Pearl.
We checked in at the receiving station and
about fifty of us were assigned to go to Pearl
Harbor and start pulling bodies out on all
those ships.
Now those ships had been sunk for probably
eight months by this time.
So they had strong lights.
A lot of those battleships were capsized.
They just cut holes in the bottom of them so we
could go down in them.
Pearl, whether you know it or not, is very shallow.
That's why a lot of those ships, you know, they
were still, the decks were still awash
and they were sitting on the bottom.
We did that for about two days and all of a
sudden, every night you'd go back to the
receiving station and they always had a list of
who was shipping out and so forth.
So I noticed that I was supposed to go on this transport.
I went aboard the transport, they must have
picked up five to seven hundred Marines.
Now I was in ship's company and they told me
this, they said, you're just a passenger
and I'm thinking, where am I going?
You don't have to know.
So you did the chipping of the paint and all
the dirty work for them.
We got to Guadalcanal, and we unloaded the troops.
We left Guadalcanal.
We were out maybe two days, and we got hit by a
torpedo and sunk.
Well, we survived in a raft.
Now we were luckier than the guys with Indianapolis.
We did have planes that dropped supplies to us
and a canvas to get the sun off of us,
and we had two or three rafts, and we tied them together.
There were sharks in the water, but in the old
days a raft, the top floated and the middle
sank down to about your waist if you stood up.
But the ruling was that if anybody was hurt,
they got on the inside and the other guys
just hung on the side or sat on the side.
So we were in the water for about two weeks.
But the best part of it was that we had
supplies and we were out of the sun.
It wasn't the most pleasant thing in the world,
but when you're fifteen I wasn't scared.
I was too stupid, I guess.
I really don't know, you know, it's been a long time.
And we took turns.
Another raft we found and it was flat.
So what happened was you'd have three guys
getting that raft and sleep for about two
hours and the other guys would be hanging on
the side watching these and you'd flip flop.
But we were always in contact with the ship.
I mean they knew where we were.
The ships couldn't stop because there were
submarines in the area.
That was the main reason.
We got picked up and they sent us to New Mea,
New Caledonia.
And while we were there they furnished us
clothes, it wasn't our size but it was clothes.
We stayed there probably three or four days,
then the word got out that the WASP, which
was an aircraft carrier, got hit and they
needed somebody to go out there and pick up survivors.
Well there was a couple of destroyers in port,
so they took all of these guys, whatever they
called us, we thought we were orphans, and put
us on there to help them.
We get alongside the Wasp, and I don't know, it
was a short time later, that same submarine
that sunk the Wasp put a torpedo in us and blew
me off the ship.
Now we were in the water probably another four
days, but it was a lot better.
I mean, you had more people, you had a lot of
brass, you had flares, you had ships around
They were picking up what they could.
You know, they'd pick up a few guys and then
they had to keep moving.
So anyway, after that ordeal, back to New Meo,
New Caledonia, while I was there, there
was a guy there that I thought was smart as hell.
He's probably 18 years old, big farm guy from Mississippi.
He said, hey, Johnny, why don't we get in submarines?
We can go to New London, Connecticut.
He said, we can get out of all this crap.
Man, me, yeah, that's a great idea.
They put us on an aircraft carrier
that was going back to Pearl.
We got to Pearl.
They took us over to the sub base.
And they assigned us to the skipjack.
And it had came back from a patrol.
We worked on it for two weeks.
And I kept asking this boatswain man,
well, when are we going to New London, Connecticut?
Any time now.
When the ship was ready, he came up to me and
he said,
do you still want to be a submarine?
Oh, yeah.
He said, you are one.
You're assigned to this ship.
I said, how about New London?
You want to be a sub, do it.
I'd already made the commitment.
We went out on a patrol in the China Sea.
Now, you're a crew member, so you
don't get to look through the periscope.
It's all scuttlebutt, whatever you hear
somebody say.
They spotted some ships.
We fired like 20 torpedoes, and they were all duds.
Supposedly, one of them came back towards us,
and we had to crash dive.
Again, this is all hearsay, because they
don't tell the crew anything. We were ordered
back to Pearl to see what was wrong. On the
way back, I got double pneumonia. When I got to
Pearl, of course, they didn't want me because
of the lungs. So they put me in a hospital. I
was there about two weeks. The Salt Lake
City had just came back from the Savo Island
attack, and they were in dry dock. So I was
assigned it, and they had just put the 40
millimeters on the ship.
Before that they had 1.1, and they added 20, 20 millimeters.
So they added six quad sets of 40s and 20, 20 millimeters.
So we were in port-well, they were there in
November and December, and around the first
part of March we were assigned with an old
four-piper destroyer, I mean light
cruiser, the Richmond, and the Admiral McMorris
was on it with four destroyers
and we were assigned to patrol the Bering Sea
because the Japanese had
occupied Attu and Kisco. I mean you remember
they had a two-pronged fleet
when they went to Midway and we intercepted the
code so they just let
them go up there. We relieved the Indianapolis
that had been patrolling up
there that whole time. We relieved them. On the
26th of March we couldn't have
been up there over two weeks. Cold, miserable,
and in the wintertime it's so
foggy you can't see the blackboard and it's
cold and the seas are rough.
Not on March 26th we woke up for routine
general quarters like we always did an hour before
We go to our battle stations and we're sitting
around there griping because we had to be-and
About that time, over the PA system, they said,
General Quarters, this is no drill.
Well, we were already there, man your battle station.
All of a sudden, we went from doing about
fifteen knots to twenty-five.
What happened was either one of the destroyers
or our radar-in those days, radar wasn't
that great.
I mean, they could pick up a whale and think it
was a Bogey.
So we got the word that there were three
Japanese transports that we were going to put supplies
I think it was that too.
Well as we made the approach and it was the
Richmond and the Salt Lake City, two destroyers
ahead and two behind, battle formation, boy we
were going to have a turkey shoot.
Well about that time they had two heavy
cruisers and three light cruisers and six destroyers.
The transport turned and left and went the
other way and we were in battle formation
so we fired the first round.
Now we had ten eight inch guns on the salt lake.
The first round the fire control went out so
everything was manual.
As both ships were firing, and of course the
destroyers couldn't fire because they didn't
have the range, so at about 18,000 yards these
six-inch guns could reach.
We were fortunate.
We got a hit on the first heavy cruiser,
knocked it out of action for, I don't know, a short
period of time and then it came back.
As the heavy cruisers were firing more, the
Richmond had to drop off because they couldn't
couldn't get within range.
So what they were trying to do is keep the
light cruisers from trying to circle us.
So we had a running battle, probably two hours,
then all of a sudden there was no way.
We were going the wrong way away from Dutch Harbor.
We were going towards Komodarski.
The Curly Islands were along the Russian coast.
So what the captain was trying to do was circle
around and head back the other way.
Well they cut us off so we couldn't do anything
and the next thing you know-and when you
were on the forty millimeter on the stern
there's nothing you can do.
Aircraft, you know, our Army aircraft guns
couldn't do any good.
Five inch were out of range so it was strictly
the main battery, eight inch.
As we started turning, those turrets start
turning aft, and they had a cutout cam.
They could only go so far without shooting into
the ship.
But the concussion on the stern, we had four
hundred rounds of forty millimeter ammunition
on the shield.
And the directors were about twenty feet off
the main deck, the guys that did the spotting
and did the shooting.
And those eight-inch guns, a concussion just
blew them off.
And we had canvas that covered the shells.
The canvas was tearing apart so they had us
abandon ship and right below was our magazine
plus the chief's quarters.
So the generator was down there that controlled
the gun.
We would go down there and after a while the
guns were dead astern as far as they could
go and the concussion was just tearing out everything.
So the thing about an old heavy cruiser, they
had to come down to loading position where
the newer ones they could load from any position.
We were not actually a turret, we were actually
a mount.
So they'd come down to load, and when you'd
hear that air blow to blow all of the barrel
clean, you'd run up there, you had an escape
catch, and you'd start throwing those 40 millimeters
over the side.
And when you'd hear that breech block close,
you'd go back down.
And they were firing.
Now the battle lasted three hours and 25 minutes.
It was the longest sea battle in modern Navy history.
In the meantime, as we were doing this, then
they assigned us the two after turrets were
running out of ammunition.
So we had to go below decks, go all the way
forward to turret one and two.
They weren't firing.
And we broke every Navy rule in the world.
We opened the magazines during battle.
We had some dollies.
Some guys put those shells on, they weighed
about £275, put the dollies down.
Other guys got a couple of pieces of rope and
put a couple of half hinges, one on each
side and you were hitting those deck plates and
they were bouncing and all you could see
was those shells splashing along the side.
Fortunately, as I was going by the well deck
you got two caterpillars that hold our scout
As I went by, an eight-inch shell hit that
airplane, and shrapnel flew all over, and
I got hit in the arm.
I didn't think much of it, and a corpsman came
by, and he pulled out his knife, burned
the end of it with a mat, and dug it out, and
he said to me, I'll get you a Purple Heart later.
And I said, okay.
So we went on about our duty.
The only reason I injected that, because later
on, two years ago, three years ago, this sore
was always there, always had a scab, and I'd
hit something and bleed, and finally this
doctor told me, he said, I want you to check
that out.
I checked it, and I had a cancer, and it was
about that deep.
That had nothing, it could not have been, it
could have been from anything.
The only reason I brought it up.
Another reason I didn't want the Purple Heart
is because I knew they'd notify your parents.
And my mother was a nervous wreck because I'd
already screwed up.
She went to the Navy Department because I
hadn't written home in six months.
So needless to say, that chaplain, and you had
that restricted mail, you know, you could
only write on one side. He wanted me to write
six pages. I couldn't write one page. You
couldn't tell him where you were, you couldn't
tell him what the weather was like, you couldn't
tell him what you were doing. So the lettering
started about this big and then I got there.
He'd wad it up and throw it away. Finally I got
it all. So I definitely didn't want
her to know. It's kind of hard to explain to a
lot of people the pride. I mean, when
I put on that uniform I felt like I was ten
feet tall. I mean, there was nothing in this
world that could have changed my mind even
today. There is absolutely nothing. And when
I tell you, at a 15-year-old dummy, those were
the best years of my life, three and
a half years.
I met some of the greatest guys in the world,
guys that I used to think were hayseed, dumb hicks.
They were from farms, but they were the true friends.
I mean, these guys were the ones that knew from
the old school how to help somebody out.
I had an infant that taught at either Yale or
Harvard and he took a liking to me and
he had a pretty good idea I was too young.
He was assistant division manager.
So he said to me, how far did you go in high school?
I said, you know, I went first year.
He said, we're going to get you a
correspondence course and before you get off
this damn ship
you're going to have your high school diploma.
Yeah, sure.
I thought he was full of it.
Every day he took time out of his own and we
would go down in chief's quarters right
next to those generators and he would drill me
until I finally got it right.
And it was people like him that, you know, that
it is hard to describe, it really is.
The loyalty and the togetherness we had, I
mean, these guys, even though you would go
on the beach and you would fight another ship
or you would fight amongst yourself with me
and Odyssey, when it came time to the nut
cutting, they were there.
Anyway, after all this action, then we got hit
in one of our fuel tanks.
water went in and you saw steam come out of the
stacks and they ran up the flag
my speed zero so we were dead in the water and
the Richmond is God knows
where she wasn't close now this is hearsay the
guy said to me then goddamn
Admiral said goodbye and good luck the four
destroyers stayed with us we're
dead in the water. They had us on the fantail
because what happened was our rudder went
out and they were steering from after steering.
And we only had five degrees either way. Now
I heard all this afterwards. We are bailing
water. Now if you can imagine the water is
very cold. So we are bailing water and the
chaplain comes down. I remember his name was
Hodges. I don't know where he got that whiskey
from, the ward room I guess, and
he came down. I'm 15, I didn't even know how to
drink. I didn't smoke. You know,
they must have thought, what is this stupid
idiot doing? We're really losing
the war. I took a swig and I couldn't breathe.
I was more worried about not
breathing than I was that cold water a second.
So when the captain said
Abandon ship and you'll last about a minute I'm
looking at the other guys and
you know they just kept bailing so I just kept
bailing. I don't know how long
it lasted all I remember was being on the stern
you could feel that vibration
what happened was those guys in the engine room
had shifted fuel tanks to
the other one and they got up some speed and
you know like a bunch of high school kids.
We were going crazy, you know.
Here we are in our shorts and it's cold and we
got oil all over us and just cheering,
you know.
I can't tell you what happened.
I can tell you what I heard.
Two destroyers laid smoke screen around us.
You got to remember it's broad daylight, clear weather.
The other two went in on a daylight torpedo
attack, which is suicide.
And at 9,000 yards is maximum, you know, you
don't even-not even close.
Whatever happened and whatever they did,
because those guys were the heroes, I mean, little
old tin can out there taking eight-inch shells
all around them, and they got hit.
Finally the Japanese, for some reason, broke
off and left.
We got up enough speed we had about a 15-20
degree lift from our heads.
We only lost two men, don't ask me why or how.
And here we are hollering like a bunch of
teenage kids, cold, and finally we put some
clothes on.
And we went to Dutch Harbor, and these four
destroyers, you know, they were our godsons.
They were telling us what heroes we were
because we kept it going.
And these four cans, as we called them, they
saved our butts.
Nobody talked to the rich ones.
We didn't even want them around.
Anyway, we got patched up, went to the States,
some guys got leave, but I was only in-I
don't think I was in seven months by this time.
EFKINSON I see.
Well, let me ask you, what was your job on the
Salt Lake in this battle?
BELL I was assigned to the Ninth Division, which
covered that part of the fantail.
In other words, you scrubbed that deck, you
chipped that paint, your battle station was
a 40mm, and I was the second loader at the time.
So you got a guy that's down in the magazine,
and you got what we called escape hatches.
He's passing up, you got four of them, because
you got four guns.
You got four guys down there, they're passing.
So you were like the second loader? Yes.
And you know, second loader, he wasn't real
smart, you know, all you had to do, you had
to remember to hold it up here because you had
a clip that held the four shells together.
And you didn't want to touch any of those
releases because they'd come apart.
And you held it like this because as it went
up, and the platform was about this high,
So that guy, the first loader, he's got to hand
it to him so when he grabs it from underneath
and he puts it in, he wants to make sure so it
doesn't cock.
If it cocks, he'll jam the gun.
So that gun captain has to pull the lever back
that drops the breech block down that
has a firing pin, and even though the other
three guns are still firing, then you've got
to straighten it out, start all over.
Well, after, and you said after about seven
months you'd been in, and then some people
went on leave.
They got leave.
What happened to you? Nothing.
I mean, I got, they told me, I said, well, why
don't I get leave?
I had two ships, yeah, but you were a
passenger, you weren't ship's company, so it's
not recorded.
I thought, thank you.
Anyway, they want on leave and it's shocking.
This guy's going to take me ashore in San
Francisco and teach me how to drink and smoke.
I'm going to be a big salty dog.
So I'm sitting in this bar and I don't even, I
order bourbon and Coke I think.
I'm trying to puff on this cigarette, it tastes
nasty and I'm coughing.
A friend of mine, a boatswain mate off the ship
came in, he said,
Jaddy, you better be sober, you son of a bitch,
because your mother and your sister are right
outside in the cab.
Oh, my God, how the hell did they know I was here?
Anyway, that was the light side.
We had a good time for eight or 10 days that we
were there.
They went back.
We got patched up, we went back to the
Aleutians patrolling.
I think we helped cover the landing of that too.
I remember it was cold as hell and it wasn't
like anything in the Pacific or the South
Pacific, even though the Army had a lot of
problems because of the weather, because all
your equipment would get screwed up and the fog
and so forth.
This was towards the end of 1943.
We went from Thalweather Gear, when we got to
Honolulu, we turned it all
back in. Now we went from weather that was like
thirty-five cold to Hawaii where it was
seventy or eighty. We took on fuel and
ammunition and minor repairs, and the first
place we
went was Tarawa. We call it Tarawa. Whatever
they say, historians or whoever, the only
thing I have against historians, theirs is all hearsay.
They weren't there.
What I saw maybe the guy on the bow didn't see
and what he saw maybe I didn't see.
So my version of it on those 40mm on the stern,
those Japs had captured some 6 or 8 inch guns
from Singapore and brought them to Tarawa.
So when you go on a bombarding run, you start
off mainly, I'm going to say 18,000 yards.
So you're only going two or three knots, which
is maybe five miles an hour, just to keep
you steady.
And you have whatever section you have, you
make that all the way to the end.
When you make it to the end, you make a turn
2,000 yards in and then you come back.
Now the 8-inch are firing because they are the
only ones that have the range.
As you close in, then the 5-inch, you got
8-inch and 5-inch.
And them Japs start shooting those shore
batteries and I dont care what anybody says.
Every shell looks like its coming at me and
every third ones got a tracer, thats
how they spot them.
I don't know.
J.C. had to be looking after us.
I mean, here we were, and I thought, there's no
way we're going to get through it.
First one is over, second one's short, so we
expect the third one to be over.
They never got our range.
We had splashes.
We get to the end of the second run, and then
you hear a whistle, which is collision.
I think it was a Princeton, but it was a
converted carrier, a Jeep carrier.
The rudder jammed, and it was heading for
a-right for the fantail of the stern.
And you seeing this damn ship come at you, and
I didn't know whether to abandon ship
or run forward.
And all you could feel was the ship vibrate,
and we were backing down, and it just missed
our bow.
But it was a constant-not only did you have to
worry about the enemy, you had to worry
about your own.
And some of those guys-and I'm sure they didn't
do it on purpose-they were firing,
we called them washing machine charlies, these
Japanese observation planes.
They sounded like a damn washing machine and
they'd get up real high and especially at night.
They knew you were not going to fire at them,
so they would just keep you away.
And some of those guys were shooting twenty
millimeter and they could not reach.
So all you could hear was that shrapnel coming
down on the deck and I am thinking, this,
what are we doing?
We are supposed to be winning the war.
Anyway Tarawa was bad.
When we finally left and we were there, I
thought Tarawaóit is no comparison to Iwo
Jima, but at that time, you know, this guy was
talking about the Marines did not get
the Navy support.
If he had said that at Tarawa, I would agree
with him because there were not that many there.
We could have bombarded more.
He never told you about howling Mad Smith, that
goddamn Marine General, that waited for
the tide to come out before they landed.
He was supposed to do it when the tide was in,
but he didn't.
See these guys tell their side of the story.
I like this guy, but I don't like the idea of
him saying the Navy's fault, we didn't
give them enough support.
Maybe we did, maybe we didn't.
I wasn't an admiral.
I do know that that howling mad man, that's how
he got his name, he didn't give a shit.
You know he said, I'm going to take the island
in four days.
He didn't care how many got killed.
I hated McCarthy, but the one thing I can say
about him, he was a lot more cautious.
You know, and he took a little at a time.
This guy here was gung-ho.
Hey, maybe that's the way they're supposed to
be, who knows?
We took a lot of casualties and they did too,
but you know, they want to be simplified and
be the heroes and remember all-hey, that's your
end of it.
We took a lot of heat.
We took-they never mentioned that suicide
planes started before EWL.
I mean, they started before the Philippines.
I see.
I wasn't aware of that.
Oh, yeah.
In fact, if the truth was known, we started it.
Colin Powell-No, Colin-what was that guy?
Was his name Colin?
In the Philippines, when the Japanese
attacked-he was the first suicide.
And I was thinking, his name was Colin, I dont
think it was Powell, but anyway.
EFKINS So after Tarawa, where did you go to school?
MURPHY We went from there to the marshals,
Kwajalein and what was the name, there was
Apamama, there was Apamama, but the biggest one
was Kwajalein, and they landed there.
It wasn't that big.
The outer island of the Gilberts, which was
Tarawa, that's the reason why they wanted
midway because that was the next step going
towards Pearl.
So when we knocked them off at the Gilbert's,
then we went to the Marshall's and we were there.
From there, we called it R&R, we went to
Ulysses or one of those islands.
We got replenished and we went back to Pearl
because we had been hit and we got repaired.
we joined task force 58. And what was task
force 58? That was Hawsley's group.
When you look out there and you see 25 carriers
and about 20 battleships and
about 50 crews, as far as you could see there
were ships. Now this was late 44. I
don't know if you remember when they called it
the Great Mariana Turkey
shoot I've heard of that yeah yes well they
were bombing Pearl not Pearl
Harbor but truck which was our Pearl Harbor
they didn't want to land on it
and they were knocking out their airfields at
Peleliu and Yap because
that was the next step towards the Navy wanted
Formosa dug out dug wanted the
Philippine, you know, with our show return.
Anyway, it so happened that that day in
Bingham, you know, we finally saw some action because
there was aircraft near.
The American fighter pilots shot down like 400
Japanese planes.
They call it the great American turkey shoot at
the Mariana.
And there we went back to Ulysses, a little
rest and recreation.
Then we headed for the Philippines.
And Leyte was where we landed the troops.
And the next funny story is the troops were
inland, and the next thing you know we had
to stop firing.
We were bombarded.
We had to stop firing.
So what the hell is going on?
And here you see Doug Odd Doug with his old
entourage and cameras on the beach.
This guy with that stupid corncob pipe and the
sunglasses and he's waiting to show where
I shall return.
Well, the first one didn't take till he took
two or three times.
These guys are fighting, you know, three or
four miles ahead of him.
All of a sudden we got a call, three heavy
cruisers, four destroyers, we are going to
go bombard Iwo Jima.
First of all I did not know where the hell Iwo
Jima was, I had no idea, no air coverage,
so we made a speed run.
We got there at midnight and the lights were
still on the beach, we caught them completely
by surprise.
We bombarded and it didn't take them long to
turn off those lights and start shooting back.
We were probably there forty-five minutes,
whether it was a diversion, I couldn't tell
The only thing I can tell you, we were there.
The next morning we zigzagged and stayed under
cloud cover trying to get away from any aircraft.
There were probably six Bettys, as they called
them, two-engine bombers, and they dropped bombs.
We shot a few of them down.
We get back to the Philippines, all of a sudden
we're assigned a task force 58 which was Hoseley.
He wanted to go chase that ghost fleet that the
Japanese had.
We take off and the tankers couldn't keep up
with us, we were going so fast.
Anyway, wherever we were, the next thing I know
we're in a typhoon and it's tossing
those battleships around, if you can picture a
battleship fully dressed at about seventy
thousand tons, flipping them in the water, you
see the stern come up, you could see the
propellers turning and the carriers were taking
water on the flight deck.
It was a disaster for three or four days.
Now my opinion, he should have got court-martialed.
I will tell you later on in the story.
We finally got out of it.
It was either three or four or five destroyers
capsized, so there was a lot of guys in the water.
The word that I got was, we can't stop and pick
them up, we've got to head back, because
the Japanese fleet came around and they were
behind our landing force and the only thing
were there were those little jeep carriers, the
Liskom Bay and I forgot the Bell of the
Woods or whatever.
And here this guy was chasing a nobody fleet.
One of the admirals that was in charge of
either a cruiser or a division or whatever,
he just told them screw you.
He stayed there and I think that he picked up
about 600 men of the 800 men were there.
Now they couldn't say nothing to him because it
would make Hawsley look like crap.
So anyway he got out.
We get back, and by the time we got back, all
of the carriers released their airplanes,
and of course, you know, we were still a
hundred miles away.
So that's how they attacked those ships.
Now the old battleships were in the Saragossa
Straits, and they knocked them off.
After all of this screw-ups, it was time for
us-we went back to the States.
This was 1944.
I see.
Did you go back to Pearl and then the States? Yeah.
I get back to the States and I finally get a
15-day leave.
Fortunately, a guy told me, if you go to
Sacramento, they've got-at that time they
called it
SAC base there and there's Kelly Field in San
Antonio, you can get a flight, I mean
you've been out at sea for a long time.
I get there and there's a room full of colonels
and admirals and generals and here I am a
seaman first, so the guy said, let me see your
orders, I'll show it.
He said, you've been out at sea that long,
hasn't you?
He put me up in the front and you can imagine
what these admirals, I got on that airplane
and flew home and you know it was not only was
it a free ride but I had a 48
hour pass before my leave started so I'm home a
day before I see so I get home
and it's in July at the same time they're
landing in France they're also
landing on Guam and Saipan that's why you never
heard a big story because
Europe was first.
The big show was there, and these guys caught
hell on those two islands.
We were in the States.
When we came out, we were there forty-five days.
We got fixed up, and we went back and joined a fleet.
Then we were with them at Yap and Peleliu.
In the meantime, after Iwo Jima, they sent us
to Hahajima, which is nothing, and it's
a hundred and fifty miles closer to Japan.
There's nothing there, and I've never figured
out why these three heavy cruisers and four
destroyers went. Whether it was diversified, I
have no idea. Everything
went well except the radar picked up about 20
torpedo boats coming out of a
cove or something. So we start firing and
they're firing and one scared the other
or whatever happened we both broke off and we
headed back. The Iwo Jima
campaign was the bombardment. The one thing I
didn't have time to tell them
there, when we left our bombarding position to
go back to Saipan to get
more ammunition, the Pensacola took our place.
Before we got out of sight she got
hit three times right where we are. Oh is that
right? It is amazing and they showed
the screen where she got here and that was her
sister ship and I thought boy
somebody's really looking after us. Anyway we
followed the landing we were
there it seemed like forever. I mean it was got
to where it was routine. You were
shooting at planes in the daytime and
bombarding and you were general
quarters and I know those guys had hell on the
beach and they were serving
sandwiches which which didn't make any
difference it was other things more
important. The whole thing was like really a
nightmare I mean all you could
see was that ugly Mount Sarabachi and you think
and it was always a cloud
cover and it was cold. The greatest thing that
happened as we swung around to make
our second run. Being on the stern as we
sung around, I happened to be looking up
at Mount Suribachi and I saw them raise
the first flag. Every ship in that Harbor
blew their foghorn. Oh, is that right?
If I would have told you that I had
tears in my eye and I could have stuck
out my chest and hit the wall, I mean it
was one of the greatest feelings in the
world even though they did it we didn't do a
damn thing we were just supporting
care I don't understand or maybe I I'm missing
something the our generation
just I don't know what Jerry they don't
understand that flag waving or you know
If I was younger and I went to a football game
and they're playing the National Anthem
and you got some guy sitting there with his hat
on and drinking a beer and talking, in
my day some guy would come up and just knock
the crap out of it.
I don't know what happened to us.
What we did, did we give them too much, didn't
we tell them enough, and when I hear people
come up to me and I have spoken at a few of
rotary clubs and this one guy asked me, he
said, ìWell, didnít you feel bad when they
dropped the atomic bomb?î And I looked at
him and I said, ìYou know, the only reason I
felt bad is they didnít drop it on Tokyo
or Yokohama or drop more.î ìHow can you say
That?î I said, ìIf youíre
was at Okinawa or Iwo Jima, you would have been
just like me.
When you saw those suicide planes and the
suicide swimmers, suicide boats, and they
just didn't give a damn about life.
They were sending ships out that had enough
fuel to get there, but they couldn't get back.
And I must be missing something.
I don't understand why these people are blaming us.
And you get some of these tree fuckers, as I
call them.
You know, they're going to save the world.
And you've got some jackass that wants to run
for president,
said he threw his medal, thinking, you son of a bitch,
you weren't in the war zone long enough on a river
that you could do all of that.
And you have people like that gal,
And them guys were in prison at the Hilton.
And and they make a hero out of her.
Am I missing something?
Did I do something wrong in life?
Did you have any experience of any
kamikaze constantly every day?
The thing about it is you gotta remember.
When they first started.
These poor little ships DE destroyer
destroyers were based 150 miles closer to Japan.
They called it picket duty.
Their job was to pick up bogeys, as we called
them on the radar, and relay it to the fleet.
And every carrier would send every fighter they
had available to greet them.
The guys on the radar might pick up three or
four hundred bogeys, that's how many planes
to be a-the fighters would meet them, they
might shoot down 250 or 300.
These guys were not experienced.
They knew how to take off and crash into somebody.
I wouldn't say they were sitting ducks for the
fighters, but they didn't have to worry
about them shooting back because they didn't
have any.
So they shot down a lot, but there was always
at least a hundred to get through to the fleet.
First of all, they'd head for any ship, any available.
So they might come at you and you're shooting
at them, you might shoot them down, they might
miss the target and go over.
And somebody in Japan decided, we've got to get
rid of those pickets first.
So those pickets caught him.
We must have lost a hundred of them.
They were crashing into them, and those ships
weren't that big, they'd have a five hundred
pound bomb.
So from the pickets, they start moving in.
Then they decided to Hell with any capital ship
other than carriers.
They're the ones that are giving you the most trouble.
So what you had was the carriers down the
middle, the battleships next, the heavy cruisers,
then the light cruisers, and then the destroyers.
So they had to fly through a lot of flack
before they got to them.
still we got. Did the Salt Lake ever, did any
of them ever hit the Salt Lake? Never
hit us. They flew over our stack and crashed
into, I think it was one of the
battleships. We never, all we got was
fragments, but we never got hit. We saw a
lot of ships get hit, the Bonhomie Richards,
the Bunker Hill, I mean and one
One airplane would hit one of those carriers,
and if they had their aviation fuel on, I
mean, I saw one of the elevators just blow
straight up in the air, so it was not a sight
to see.
What about-you talked about some of these
suicide boats that would come out after? Yes.
What were those?
I mean- No.
They would be like a motorboat.
Oh, I see.
And then when you were at anchor, especially at
Okinawa, you had Caramaretta, which were
the transports and the tankers were there.
And you'd go in between, you'd take on fuel on
one side and ammunition on the other, and
you'd go back out.
These guys would swim out to a boat and try and
go up the anchor chain and just kill somebody.
So after a while you had people stand and
watch, look out for suicide boats and suicide swimmers.
Well what about, so after Ojima where did the
Salt Lake go?
We went to Okinawa.
And I see.
We were there two months, it would just seem
like forever.
They had it set up, at least at Iwo, when you
ran out of ammunition, you had to go back
to Saipan, and then on the way back you get a
little rest and recreation, you pick up
a few supplies and come back.
At Okinawa there was no relief.
No relief in Saipan.
And that guy didn't mention that the whole
friggin' fleet was there at Okinawa.
Well, the fleet took a lot of damage at
Okinawa, didn't it?
Oh, yeah.
We lost, as I said, more ships and more men at
Okinawa than we did the whole war.
You know, they talk about Pearl Harbor, but it
was a disaster.
But it was nothing like Iwo and Okinawa.
Nothing at all.
I mean, we lost, man, one ship might lose 1,500
men, those carriers.
Do you recall where you were when the atomic
bomb was exploded, say, over Japan?
Where were you at that time?
A. We were sitting in Saipan.
We were taking on stores and the next move was
going to be Japan.
We had already, after Okinawa, we were already
patrolling the China Sea for mines.
had minesweepers there and we'd bombard Japan a
little bit and of course at that
time I mean the Navy would send three to four
hundred planes at one time over
there and the b-17s were taking off and if they
were shot up they could land at
Okinawa I mean Iwo Jima so they had fighter
coverage by this time so then
Then after this, I guess it was going to be a lull.
So I guess the planners were trying to figure
out what we screwed up and what we didn't,
what we were going to do.
I don't think anybody was looking forward to that.
I mean, we'd hear stories about they'd have the
women and children sharpening cane poles,
you know.
If they'd just kill one, that would be enough,
and I'm thinking, it's ridiculous.
Anyway, that's where we were.
Now, for a guy to hear me say atomic bomb,
I didn't have any idea what they were talking about.
Today, he'd probably think that's crazy.
But I'm thinking, how can a little boy
weighing £5, I think they said,
drop by parachute and it wiped out 50 or 60,000?
I thought, they're so full of crap.
What these guys won't tell us.
Next thing I know, they dropped another one.
Then all of a sudden, as we call it
scuttlebutt, this guy's telling me, hey Jody,
the war is over.
Sure it is, yeah.
Then after it finally sinks in, all of a
sudden, or at least me, I felt like an orphan.
What the hell am I going to do?
I don't remember any part of civilian life.
Well, let's say when that happened, what was
the mission of the Salt Lake City after that,
immediately after?
nothing the Missouri which was bullshit because
it was Truman's and Doug I
don't know it should have been Nimitz instead
of him I don't know who's pull I
don't have any idea I wasn't there but all of
the newer capital ships went to
Tokyo Bay I see we went up there and being a
gunner's mate we escorted senior
officer I think he was a commander and they met
us and as we were walking down
the street the Japanese their courtesy was to turn
their back to you. I see. Because they were
ashamed and believe me I had a BAR
that I'd never fired I wouldn't know what to do
with it anyway because I was
a gunner's mate we went to a warehouse and they
gave every guy on the ship a
Japanese rifle and a bayonet and every officer
got a saber so they signed a
peace treaty which we weren't part of you know
it was all the big shots we
went back to the ship we waited for they had a
hurricane going on there we waited
for it to end up we had to be in the states in
Portland. Okay so you were
making a speed run back to the back to Oregon
we were going to celebrate Navy
Day in Portland Oregon well we hit a typhoon we
finally got out of it and the
scariest part for the war being over as we
approached the Columbia River you got
freshwater pouring into saltwater. We hit a
wave and it rolled that cruiser over
at about 38, 40 degrees where spray was coming
down the stack and I'm thinking
I'm not going to die and I'm right here and the
war is over. So anyway we
celebrated Navy Day in Portland, Oregon in 1945.
Then my next assignment we took
off half of the crew and we left them there in
the States and we made speed
runs to Inuita I think and we'd pick up 500
troops and bring them back. They'd
take the other half off and rotate. I made two
or three of that we call a
magic carpet run. That was part of that
Operation Magic Carpet. So because I was
too young and I wasn't married I didn't get off
the ship until the end of
November and they sent me back and they had a
place called Camp Wallace which
was south of Houston and just north of
Galveston and it was an old army blimp
base and that's where you went for your
discharge and they called them
ruptured ducts. I don't know if you remember
that or not, but it was, it
looked like that was your discharge. When I get
there, thank God guys, they giving
you a physical on the ship at Treasure Island,
you get there another physical.
None of these doctors in a hurry because they
got to stay in. So you get in line
and the line's from here forever. And I'm in a
hurry. I'm only 200 miles from home.
So I thought, every day, you got malaria, so
they take a shot, blood out of here, check
it, it's negative, next day they take it.
I think it's positive.
This went on until just before Christmas, I
went over the hill.
I was there about four days and I came back,
and of course medical people don't know crap
about military.
The guy said to me, the longer you're going to
do that, the longer you're going to stay in.
I said, the longer you keep me here, the more
I'm going to go back.
He said, we'll take your clothes away from you.
Anyway, he didn't, and I did it two or three times.
Finally, I got out the 17th of January of 1946.
I made the mistake of hurrying to get out.
I joined a reserve.
I made a couple of cruises during peacetime,
then I quit.
And in 1950, they came to my house and told my mother,
your son's got a report to San Diego.
And I told the guy, I don't have any clothes.
I don't give a damn.
Here's your ticket.
So they put me on an ammunition ship.
I reported to San Diego.
They put me on an ammunition ship.
And I went to Sasebo, Japan.
And we served in Korea for 17 months.
I see.
And I came back.
And the guy said, do you want to re-up? No.
So that was the end of mine.
Well, thank you very much, Mr. Jowdy.
We certainly appreciate this.
OK, I hope I wasn't too boring. No.