This is Pete Jensen. Today is March 29, 2011.
I'm interviewing Mr. Al Wiseman.
This interview is taking place in the Nimbus
Hotel in Fredericksburg, Texas.
This interview is in the 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.
Al, if you'd like to start off, just give us
some information about, you know,
know where you're born, your family, where you
went to school, that sort of things.
Okay, I was born in Chesterton, Indiana,
September 2nd, 1922, and my parents, my father
was Leonard
Wiseman. My mother was Albertina Bellot. My
grandparents on my dad's side, the family
I eventually come from Prussia, Germany, and on
the other side, my mother's
family was from Ireland, and her father was
from France.
parents, if I've heard, was married in Paris.
Where did you go to school?
I went to Chesterton High School and I got out
in 1942.
And then how did you decide, I guess you
decided on the Navy?
I decided on the Navy, uh-huh.
Why did you decide the Navy?
I always wanted to. I wanted to be in the Air
Force, but I couldn't make it. So I had
a chance to. When I was in Great Lakes, they
wanted people from the submarine, but I changed
my mind. I wanted to be regular Navy.
Submarines are a little close? Yeah.
So you joined the service when? When did you enlist?
And you, where did you have your basic training?
I went to Great Lakes.
I had about three and a half weeks training.
All they did was test me for women.
And I never got any other training except drilling.
Oh, is that right? Mm-Hmm.
And then what was your first...
You went from Great Lakes...
Where did you go from Great Lakes?
I took the troop train to Charleston, South
Carolina and caught the U.S. Green in Charleston.
What was your duty on the U.S.S. Green?
At first I was a seaman.
What were your daily tasks?
First I was Dick Hamm, Peyton, and all that,
and at the battle stations I was lookout.
And I also was a lookout ordinary, you know.
What kind of ordnance did they have on that destroyer,
the green, guns and that sort of thing?
They had these small guns,
what do you call them, the three inch or
whatever it is.
And they had 20mm and 40mm, and one time in
that ranch we got some of the Army, some of
those small, we put them on the ship, machine
guns like, you know, I can't remember what
they are now, but I didn't have nothing to do
with the guns.
Where'd you, okay, you got on the Charleston,
you got on the USS Green, where'd you go from there?
Well, they were still working on the ship,
repairs and that, and we had a trial run to Bermuda.
After that, we escorted a couple ships to
Brazil, Rio De Janeiro.
Did you get any time on shore at Rio?
About a couple of days.
You can't believe this.
In Trinidad, we stopped at Trinidad first,
and the vice president, Admiral there,
at 4:00,
it was white shorts.
He had to have white shorts.
I think he was making money off of it.
But we went into VLNA Zero with white shorts on
and they wouldn't let us go on, the English
would go on shorts, but we couldn't wear our
shirts on Liberty.
The Navy said you couldn't? Yeah.
How about Bermuda, did you like Bermuda?
It was beautiful and there was army, army was
making trench holes in Bermuda at that time.
They were making what?
Trench holes.
Oh, okay. Yeah.
They thought the Germans were going to land in
Bermuda, but they never did.
And the soldiers were complaining about
cigarettes because they weren't having any cigarettes.
We escorted the Queen Mary to Bermuda, and I
guess they had to worship, liquor and stuff
for the taverns there, and no cigarettes, and
these guys were saying, we never get any cigarettes.
The Queen Mary, they had taken that over,
right, the Queen Mary made like a troop ship
or supply ship?
And going over there, when we was escorted with her,
the captain told them to slow down.
They were going 18 knots, and we couldn't keep up.
We'd fall apart. Wow.
How many ships escorted Queen Mary?
I think it was only one then.
There might have been another ship.
I think all I can remember is with that one.
You also, you made trips to the Mediterranean?
Well, the first time we went overseas, we went
to Casablanca after the troops took over Casablanca.
They were still thinking there was Germans
around there yet, you know. I don't know.
But later on in the Mediterranean, I went to
Oran. I spent a lot of time in Oran.
And eventually-
Where's Oran?
Oran's in Africa. It's in Morocco.
Oh, okay.
And then another little place,
I can't think of it now, a little town where
the French got their-the French
Legions got their fort and everything. I can't
think of it now, but that's where we did some
of our training to land in southern France.
Same place, the Foreign Legion?
Yeah, in that area. Then we went to Palermo,
Sicily, and then we-
What did you do in Sicily?
At one time we didn't do much of anything, but
the second time we'd come in there we
had to get repairs, but our zoo was where we
trained with rubber boats, trained the
troops for the invasion of southern France.
We had the fellows we were training there, we
didn't take them, somebody else probably
did. And we went to Santa Mia, Italy and the
special service horses were there. And the
night before we left there, we had a smoker,
there was a box in there, and they got rid
of everything. The next day, I guess it was
about 11:00 at night, we went into France
and these islands there.
We left those guys off in rubber boats.
You pull the ship,
you cut the rubber boats off
and they'd paddle in, you know.
Oh, that was for the invasion of France.
Yeah, we were in there before D-Day.
We were the first ships in there.
Oh, okay. Wow.
So, did you stay in that area or did you just
let the people off with the rubber boats?
When we was going out and there was an extra
ship that wasn't supposed
to be with us, you know.
And USS, I think it was USS Summers, he was the
ship, he was the only one that was supposed
fire because we didn't want to fire our guns
because the Germans would hear us, you know.
So they hit this ship and I asked the officer
on the ship, I said, who was that? He saw us,
probably the Greek ship, just sorry it was with
us. And about an hour later he came and told me
I could see the guys in the water flaming
around and firing and he told me it was a
German torpedo
boat. It was pretty close to our ship.
And you sunk another ship there?
Yes, a torpedo ship.
And as we went out at daylight,
the task force was coming in,
and all our planes were up above.
I looked up, and it looked like a thousand
planes up there. I was going,
I hope it's not you Germans.
I hope it's our planes, right?
Did you help rescue those men from that ship?
Somebody else did, we didn't.
But then we went to Corsica and picked up more
ships, more men to take back, or we drop
them off someplace, I don't know.
After that we went to this island and they had
white flags up and they told me afterwards
that they had stovepipes there.
thought they had guns there, but they had steel
pipes hooking up to fool us, you know.
This was the Germans or the Tets?
Yeah, the Germans. The Germans had steel packs
on this island. So they captured them all.
About 2:00 in the morning they went in and
captured them all. At that time they
They said, we'll kill everybody but two.
They didn't kill anybody.
They took them all prisoner.
But you see, in the Navy,
when you land on an island or some place,
you got those lights that go to sea
and on shore they don't see.
So that's how you know where to land the troops.
Because the sea base come in
and check the water for mines and everything.
You want to be sure you go in the right place,
you know.
The Seabees do that?
No, not the Seabees, the, what is it?
The Navy special.
What, like Frogmen?
Frogmen and that, yeah. Yeah.
They swim in, right?
They swim in the day before and hide,
and then they turn the lights on at night.
And they're hiding all the time,
hoping that they get far and nobody finds them,
you know.
And the lights, they shine out?
I'd see, but I'm not sure, you can't tell it.
Okay, wow.
Where'd you go?
Did you go other place in the Mediterranean
area, or?
We went twice to Corsica,
And I, this isn't about the military,
but I went in a house that Napoleon lived in at
one time.
How'd you get to see that?
Oh, we went ashore there at Liberty, you know.
I can't believe it was an English style
kept calm with wooden siding and that, you
know, in Europe.
In Europe, everything's stone in there.
This was an English-style home.
I don't know how it happened,
but it's like a modern, around our area,
the wards and all that, you know, signs.
I was surprised to see that house,
it was so modern-looking.
It was a little old. Yeah.
Well, after you left the Mediterranean,
you came back to the States then?
Yeah, we come back to the States,
And we got-they worked on a ship and all that.
And then we went to the Panama and go to the
Panama Canal. To-
The Pacific.
South Pacific, then. Uh-huh.
So you-
And we stopped.
It was an all-alone fuel.
We stopped at-I don't think this is Monticello
or something-it begins with M. It's a
where they pump the oil out of the ground, they
have the things up there, and they have a couple
of seamen and a chief or something over there,
just enough for fueling a ship. So they fueled
our ship. We was lucky to get to San Diego. It
was so thick in that I was down below deck,
so I'd have to clean these burners all the time.
And we got to San Diego,
go, we couldn't go any place then. We were
supposed to go to, where the Marines and all
that was killed, what's the, what's that, Jamma
Dees Island, where everybody got killed?
Ewo Jima. Ewo Jima. We didn't know that. They
didn't tell us that. But after the war, we
were supposed to go there. So as soon as they
got us going, we went to Guam and Saipan and
we went to the Okinawa.
What did you do in-what was your mission there
on those islands? Move troops around
or what was-
When we went to the islands, we escorted ships
up to Okinawa and then we was there where
there's about four aircraft carriers and our
ships were supposed to-these aircraft
carriers had marine pilots on it waiting for
the Steves to get the landings on the beach,
you know.
And so they did that, after they did that, but
a Betty bomber come in close to our ship
and the Navy planes just changed it.
So one of the pilots, the head pilot, said
something on the speaker and he cut ahead
and he shot the Betty bomber, that's a light
bomber, you know, and he was going to try
you get that aircraft carrier next to us and
you land in the water about four or five hundred
miles, four or five yards from us, but the-
It was a Japanese bomber?
Yeah, a Japanese bomber, yeah.
Trying to get to the aircraft carrier?
Probably kamikaze?
Yeah, but I was surprised that the aircraft
carriers firing at the-the Navy pilot went
right through the stuff and shot at the
Japanese. But I'm sure they had bullets in the plane.
Because everybody is fighting, you know. So
then after the invasion there, we spent time
there for a while and then we'd go back and get
supplies and stuff. One time we went and
got this ammunition ship and they parked
someplace else and it was blown up that night.
But as
soon as dawn comes, the Japanese planes would
come in and bomb our ships.
Bob them?
Yeah. And the plane would hit them, you know.
How close did they come to your ship?
fire, but at one particular time, everybody in
the ship was shooting at this, all kinds
of stuff, the Japanese come in and hit the
hospital ship right where the hospital ships
are lit up, you know, where the cross is, he
hit the plane there, there was all wounded
men and stuff on there.
So did you ever get to the Philippines? Yeah.
We went to, heading for the Philippines and we
didn't know it at that time but it wasn't
too far from Indianapolis when they got shot.
We didn't know that.
But our escort was, we was probably, I don't
know the details, but we was looking for submarines.
We was probably looking for that submarine.
We were on the side there and we sat in a
couple of different places and I sent one
of my buddies out in the jungle there.
He was taking care of the wounded.
He was taking tags off the wounded guys and
taking care of them.
He was my classmate.
Then we went to Manila and pretty soon all the
ships were getting into the middle for
the invasion. We were on the beach that day and
we heard that the Japanese were going
to surrender. I didn't know nothing about the
atomic bomb at that time. Maybe somebody
did but I didn't.
Where were you, you say, when you heard about
the atomic bomb?
on. But see, then after that, they sent us, as
soon as Mark Arthur and them signed the
peace treaty, they sent us into Nagasaki to get
our prisoners of war out. And you know,
they were from, some of them were working the
steel mills and the roads and everything.
They were from every country, Indonesia, from
the Navy, Army, what have you. And they had
ships in Okinawa, I think it was three ships in
Okinawa, and we'd go, when we, we, you know,
we had, they had to take their clothes off and
dye them, and all that, and burn their ship,
their shoes and clothes, arrows and clothes,
take a shower and everything and all that,
and then they, after they were all set in it,
they'd send them down and give them a feed,
feed them, you know. They'd only let them get a
few slices of bread because they said
that if the guy ate a half of a loaf of bread
or something, it'd kill him.
They hadn't eaten for so long, I guess, or so
little that it wouldn't let them eat a
lot. Wow.
So I walked all over that Nagasaki-it was an
Army ship-it might have come from the cruiser.
But we all had a chance to go through the-dive
all through Nagasaki and look at it all.
What did it look like?
Nothing left.
where the steel mills were and the submarine
base was and all them things, they missed that.
That was the slums and all the best part of the
Nagasaki was destroyed. Wow.
What did you think about them dropping the
A-bomb after you heard it?
Not surprised, real surprised.
It saved a lot of lives though, I guess.
Yeah, it sure did. It was sort of cruel, but we
would have lost probably a million men
if we landed in Japan, if they would have
decided to fight to the end.
When we went into Nagasaki, they had the white
flags up and they had a little channel we
we went by and we went by where all these ships
were being built, the hulls, they didn't
have enough fuel or something even to operate
again, you know, things were, you know.
How did the Japanese treat you when you went in there?
Well, I was in assignment to have the tie up
the ship of the Army ship come in with
the army troops to police it and we was running
around this submarine place and we was going
in these offices and this Japanese policeman
comes, you boys can't do that, get out of
here and he gave us a baseball and bags, go out
and play baseball.
It's a Japanese officer, a cop.
A policeman, yeah. They could all speak English.
Yeah. So you were taking prisoners of war out
of Japan?
Two times. And the third time we was going to
go, the typhoon got us.
Where were you at when the typhoon hit you?
We were tied to this ship that repairs
everything, I can't think of the name of it now.
We had boat boilers tied down, we were working
on them, so they got rid of one of them.
This guy, this officer, this is tenor, I can't
think of the tenor now, but then the officer,
the captain on there says, if you don't leave
in a half hour, hour, we're going to cut them.
The sailors had their, they cut the lines on us
if we didn't.
So we got a tie boat to haul us out because we
didn't have no power.
So we had one boiler maker, you could make
lights, but we couldn't go anyplace.
So we went out in the harbor and we dropped our anchors.
And when it hit, believe it or not, we lost one
of our anchors.
Can you believe that?
We lost one of our anchors.
I guess about 5:00 at night, we didn't know it,
but that's when we hit this little island.
Eventually, we were going to abandon ship.
We had SOS and they told us we were better off
than some of the other people.
They couldn't get to us then.
And the captain decided if we would have
abandoned ship, we'd all been gone.
It was still that bad.
So 2:00 in the morning, we got blankets and
stuff, 2:00 in the morning I could
see a dark thing in front of the ship there and
pretty soon we realized we were on this
island, drifted on this island.
And about 2.30 or something, two sailors
yelling from the island, they lost their ship.
And we told them to stay on the island and we'd
pick them up in the morning.
And they couldn't trust us because they walked
all night on the island saying there
was nothing, you know.
And so they swam through that oil because our
ship had oil and everything out of oil
and water and everything.
And they were cut up from the coral and that,
and they had to clean up, clean those two
sailors, clean all them off and get all that
oil off of them.
And next morning they asked permission to go on
the shore because they were looking
for their buddy.
Their buddy couldn't swim.
They were tied to it.
They were all in this little raft, three of
them, and they tied into this island.
Believe it or not, the next morning they found him.
They raft flew him on the shore and he couldn't
swim at all.
They picked him up and they went back to our ship.
I think the next day or that day they got a
boat together
and took him over to Okinawa so they could take
care of him.
So your ship was, went aground and it was just
of no, they couldn't salvage it then?
Underneath, like I said at the first, the
water, about two foot of water after deck,
all the water and oil and everything is coming
out. It was shot.
Yeah, it was a pretty old ship anyway. It was
worth anything then.
What year, when was this, what year?
That's been 45, right? 45.
We were shipped back October 9th, 45. Wow.
And how were you rescued then?
We lived on that island and we had four
amphibious boats.
They got one of them together and an officer
and a couple of the men went and opened Okinawa
And we went to different army and maybe
anything to try to get some food.
So the first day they got some steaks and army
gave us Army K-rations.
So the first day on the island we all had a
steak and some french fries. Wow.
And from then on we had two army k-rations a
day, one in the morning, one at night.
What was in the k-ration?
I mean, they had different ones, but I liked
the dinner one. It had cheese and it had a
little piece of coffee, to make coffee, and the cheese.
Whatever, the dinner was real good. I always
took a dinner if I could get a hold of it.
Had cigarettes in there, right?
Yeah, one cigarette. Yeah, one, two, two little
cigarettes, I think, in a thing. And, uh,
at nighttime,
after we got about going back and forth to the
Oak Mall,
we'd get two cans of beer every night. Wow. And
we were there for four or five weeks. And one,
and one day the,
what, Army chaplain, Navy chaplain, a bunch of
them come on over shore, and they said,
we gotta get you off this island.
Beer was probably warm, though, right?
You didn't have cold beer, did you?
I guess probably warm, I can't remember.
But some of the guys would take the beer and
hide it
until they had two or three nights
and then drink it all at one time.
I always drank my two right away.
Because there was a little spring on that island
when our army landed on that little island,
there was a little island, a mile and a half by
a block or so, that's a little island that was.
The Japanese had took all those people off that
island, but we didn't know that,
and the Army went through there and checked the
whole thing out, and the Army stayed there a few
days, and there was a spring on that island,
and so they had a 40-millimeter thing with them,
they could take a shower and everything, and
they put some stuff on there, so while he was there,
we could go get to take a shower and wash our
clothes and stuff. We had to walk to it, you
know, through the jungle and
then, and
we'd wash our dungarees and stuff on the boat.
It was October, you know, and everything dried
so nice, and
You had a pretty good life on that island then, huh?
I wanted to stay there a while because the
paycheck would go on and I didn't do nothing.
I had, I stand one watch with an officer on the deck.
I don't know if they've changed it afterwards,
but you're supposed to always have somebody on
the deck.
I don't know what the conditions are, but I
know I stood one out of the 45. I don't know
why, but I
did run into a guy when I was by myself going
through the island. I was going to the spring
by myself.
I run into this guy. He was in Okinawa, and I
guess he didn't have anything, and I didn't
have anything.
And I just looked at him, I went that way, he
went that way.
He was probably looking for some of the stuff
he hid on the island.
I don't know what he was doing.
But you can't tell them from the Japs either,
you know.
They all, they look a little bit different,
but how do you know, though?
But he didn't have nothing, he was harmless.
When you, after they got you off the island,
then what'd you do?
They put me on a hotel, a floating hotel for a
couple of days, then they put me on the beach.
And I was on the beach maybe a week or so.
Every day we'd sign up, we wanted to get out,
you know.
So they sent me on, and I can't remember the
aircraft carrier.
I got on this aircraft carrier and a lot of the
guys were shipwrecks around the island too.
We all went to Shanghai. And I missed all my
buddies, they went somewhere else.
But afterwards I found out this one boy, at
least one or two of the guys that I was with,
went on other ships on Shanghai, because he
told me after he was in Shanghai,
I spent, I must have spent close to a year or
something on the island, on Shanghai.
But after that, things were getting a little bad.
We took some military stuff to Korea and they
took it off and they launched it off.
I didn't get into Korea.
We took the stuff, our army stuff, into Korea
and left.
Evidently, they were preparing for the war, you
know, at that time, you know.
It was a good thing I didn't join the reserves
because I would have been back.
What ship did you go on after the Green?
I was on the Carter-Hull in Shanghai.
That's Carter-Hull, H-A-L-L?
C-C-R-T-E-R, I think it's. Hull, H-A-L-L.
Yeah, okay.
It's number three.
And that was the-
It's a ship that repairs amphibious.
It's like a swimming pool in the back.
The big door and the amphibious ships go in to
get repaired
and they run the door up and they got big pumps
that pumped all that water out of the,
and so they can work on these ships.
So it's like a dry dock.
Dry dock, yeah, dry dock, that's what it was.
And how long were you in the Carter Hall?
Well, it must have been close to,
I went back to the States on it after that, you know.
And I was taking care of the,
we were putting in mothballs and I was doing
the typing.
nobody could type and I wasn't a very good
typer. And I was supposed to take care of
the engineering rooms, all the stuff. The
clock, you'd put it down. Whether it come
from barefoot, let them steal. Everything, you
had to put down in each room of the apartment,
you know. And so I was having trouble heating
up and they got a young kid, he didn't know
how to operate either, and he would do it like that.
And funny, nobody on the ship could type or
they didn't wanna.
Yeah, wouldn't admit it.
Yeah, and I was an amateur.
But then what happened is, this one guy on the
ship, second class, he was a problem.
problem. He went on liberty. And somehow they
must have sent, he needed another second-hand
order to enter. And so they decided to send me.
And I had my sea bag and stuff waiting
for the Navy to take me over to the Columbus.
And the captain come off. He says, I'm sorry
about it. I'd like to have you stay, but
somebody had to go, and the other guy is on leave.
I never talked to him, and he didn't even know
where he was. He was the captain. He
talked to me a little bit there.
So that's how you got on the Columbus. Why did
they send you over there? You said somebody
had to go.
They sent me, they needed some guys on the Columbus.
And so I was in charge of a boiler room, you know.
And I had about 12 or 13 guys ahead of me.
You understand, I'm coming on a little ship
and I'm on a big ship and big stuff, you know.
And I had 12 or 13, I was supposed to have
those guys
do my work for me and that.
They were nice guys, they were younger than me,
but so then they needed a guy from the
S-tory, he was just a little ways from there,
they said they needed another one, but when
I got on there they had enough second classes,
I don't know, but they sent me on there
and we went to Guam.
When we come back we trained the Navy Reserves,
every weekend we would take them out to fire
the guns or whatnot out of San Diego.
JZ That was on the Astoria?
EF Yeah.
JZ So how long were you on that?
EF Rest of my term of service.
JZ When did you get out? When were you discharged?
EF I got out in 48.
JZ Oh, 48.
EF I got out a couple of months before I got
out a little bit early. I had six years.
So you just, you weren't too far from the
Korean War, in 1948.
Well, we dropped a slice, one slice off before
we come back to the States.
And I probably, if they would have, if I would
have signed for the Reserve, they would have
probably dropped me.
What about, tell us about the bell from the USS Green.
Well, Joseph Roosevelt-what was his first name?
-Joseph Roosevelt, at the end when
he retired there, they decided on giving him
the bill because he was a captain.
And so he lived in Long Beach, New York, and he
had it in his yard.
And somewhere along the line somebody stole the
bell and it ended up in a pawn shop or
whatever it was.
Sometime along the line this woman seen it and
she thought they wanted to sing some ships
and that stuff and they were picking up all
kinds of stuff like that.
So she seen that bell and she looked at it and
I don't know if she had enough money at
that time or not.
she went back about Christmas time, she bought
it for her husband. And they took it back
and shined it up beautiful, made a wooden frame
for it and everything. And then they
looked up, they wanted to find out about the U.S
. Green. Eventually, they find the guy
as in charge of our ship reunions. Eventually
they bought the bill to us. Every meeting,
you know. Real nice young people from
Connecticut, I guess they were from. And at
Christmas time
they sent me a Christmas card. They're real
nice people.
So, who has the bell now?
They still got it.
Oh, they have it, but they let you...
I thought it was funny that the captain's seen
the bell and that, and his family and all that,
and they didn't say nothing. Maybe they thought
the guys had given the bell back.
He was so nice. If they didn't want to give
that bill up.
I was reading an article, we talked earlier
about the fact that that was the only USS
Green, but I understand that's not correct.
No, there's a U.S. Eugene Green, I don't know
if it was commissioned or not in late years,
because the only way I knew it,
my daughter got me a plait with the green on it,
and I says, that's the wrong one,
that's not the right green.
So, that was maybe five, six years ago or so, maybe.
She got it over in Alaska.
I don't know how she got it, but it's a little thing.
But it's a different ship.
Yeah, that modern ship.
Yeah. So I kept it anyway.
Did you-do you have any other stories or
anything that happened while you were on ship?
Well, what about-I tell you about our jetty in
Newfoundland. We went up there from New
York and they took all the watches and
everything off the ship and they put these
wires, big
cable wires around the ship. They demagnetized
our ship so that the magnetized torpedoes
wouldn't hit us.
Oh they demagnetized it? Yeah. The torpedoes
were, they worked based on...
It's a lot of the German ones were torpedoes,
magnetized you know. So I don't know if that
helped or not, but after that we was around
there going after the submarines and
one time we went past Iceland and all those
ships were blowing into there,
were cut right into the merchant ships and all
cut in one hair, one hair. And I didn't
know that there were still German submarines
around there. I don't know how we missed them all.
So how did you-the group you were in sank
several submarines. Yeah.
Well, they just dropped depth charges over the
side or-
You didn't have torpedoes, did you?
We'd drop depth charges, and this particular
one, we must have dropped it down two or three
days before that.
Maybe the other destroyers do, but early that
morning when it's getting light, after the
ship I could see the submarine on the surface
right away.
I reported it, and probably it was they knew
about it before I did maybe, I don't know,
but the Navy bombed it then.
I think it was 52 men or I can't remember, but
some of them were injured and I think
they all lived.
This arc here shows, let's see here, was it 52
or a little bit less?
I read where the Germans, they captured, you
know, I can't find it here, but they talked
about how many-
We had a doctor on our ship. You know, most
ships couldn't have a doctor, because we
were always in a bad way that we had a doctor.
And they were going to send four of the Germans
over to our ship because they needed medical
attention, and they changed their mind. I
And I think they all went on the aircraft
carrier, I'm not sure.
24 Germans were captured from that one U-Boat.
I think they all lived in-I think they dropped
them off in Norfolk, Virginia, I don't know,
where the aircraft carrier went after that.
And at that time, they had senators and
representatives from Washington, D.C. on the
aircraft carrier,
And I guess they got the thrill of their life,
but when they went back and told Ruse about
how bad it was, and that, they gave us the unit
citation, and it just took you, you don't
get it right away.
About a year later or so, they give it to us.
When they pinned it on us and that, there was
only a few of us left on the ship when
that happened.
We were all transferred.
I think there's only 13 left.
These sailors thought we were heroes.
What was life for you like in the Navy?
You enjoy it?
Yeah, most of the time I was.
I was a seaman and then there was a Spanish
chief on there and he told me when we was
in New York. I'll give you liberty as long as
you're cleaning up the chief's department.
He told me, and they had a kid that fed the
chiefs, but he says if you're in New York
or any place, he says you can go on liberty or
he can go on liberty. Somebody has to feed
the, Owen, we had two of us, he said, you could
take his place, feed the chiefs, you
could go to Liberty every night as long as we
were in Liberty, and that was pretty nice
because when we went to Londonderry after that,
I could go to the beach in Londonderry
every night as long as we were there, you know.
Yeah, in London?
Yeah, Londonderry.
Where's Londonderry? Ireland.
Oh, Ireland, okay.
It's a little ways, not too far from Belfast,
Belfast, and.
Well, the weather was, you were like in the Mediterranean.
Yeah, I was a lookout for a while after that,
and then I had, when I was a,
I had a carbon cleaner, he took me off for
three months,
and he put me in charge of the paint locker,
take care of all the paint on the ship.
When you go dock, you paint the ship.
And then I had to get a Mexican boy
to help me clean the things
that I couldn't keep up by myself.
And after that I decided
I don't want to be a seaman anymore.
And I talked to an officer,
they needed three guys,
two from the engine room
and one for the boiler room, I guess.
And I told him my dad works in steel mills
in Gary, Indiana,
and I'll probably end up there.
I'd like to be in one of the places.
I'll put you in the boiler room then, he says.
So I was fireman first, they gave me,
I mean, seaman first, they gave me fireman first.
We're transporting to the down below the,
after that I was third class and second class,
but after that, the war was getting towards the end,
I didn't care if I had anything, I wanted to
get out.
Like you were up in Ireland, you were up by
Iceland, during the time of service you must
have been through some real cold weather and
warm weather, right, in the Pacific?
Well, up there in Iceland, when you pass the
ice grifts, you know, the temperature drop
about 15-20 degrees. Our way was out there in
the south of Iceland. We went across the
ship this one time and they went and shot over
the ship and it was a port-a-quay ship.
And so I was supposed to go on a boarding party
on the ship, but I told him I couldn't,
I didn't haul load the Thompson seams, there
was one in it, but I said, I don't know how.
He said, I don't want you to, and he got
somebody else.
I wanted to go.
But the officer, if I would have been there, I
would have stayed in that boat with the boatman.
The officer and a couple of sailors went on the
ship and checked the cargo and stuff.
It had all salt on there. Salt to go to the
Grand Banks. Portuguese was fishing there for
the beginning of time, even before Columbus.
Nobody knows that, you know. But they had
So much fish, they have a big ship there, makes
a salt there, a big ship would take
all the, after they got rid of the salt, they'd
go back to Portugal with it.
So that's one of the reasons why, that time was
a little, we also, in the beginning of
of the war. We were down there in the southern
Atlantic and a big ship was out there. We
found out it was an Argentina ship and it
wouldn't sail back to us. We shot over the
mask and it sent us back. Evidently it was okay
because we didn't go aboard it. It was
It was a real big ship, current supplies.
So we didn't mess around.
We wasn't gonna take no chances.
In the room with us too is Al's daughter,
Mary, or Juanita.
Do you have anything that you'd like to ask
your dad,
or anything you've...
No, through the years we've heard some pretty
good stories and it was quite a time he had.
So what did you do after you got out?
Well, I was in St. Peter, St. Peter, California
a naval base. And when I got out, so then
I-actually I would go home. I got a train
from Los Angeles to go home. I got about $300
discount or something, not very much, but
then I went home. I said, I'm going to do
nothing for a while. And just a few days before
Before I got home, a storm went through, an
earthquake went through part of the port of
Dessner-Shesterton, and by the time I got
there, things cleared up.
I worked at this-there's a plastic shop a half
a block from our parents' home, and
And so I went over there and I think I was
going to work for a while because I was looking
for something.
I wanted to be in the postal system, but I'm
glad I didn't.
I worked there a few weeks, not very long, and
me and this other guy wanted more money.
They told me, making signs, you know, basic
signs and stuff.
And they said if you made 300, 400 every day,
we'd give you an extra day pay.
And I told them, Friday give me my money, I'm going.
So Monday morning I went to U.S. Steel and I
was hired right away.
And I asked to be on maintenance on the repair
of anything that broke down on the cranes
or whatnot.
So I got over to the number one Opera Harden,
Gary, and the boss in charge of quick vacation
is another guy in charge.
He says, well, this guy from maintenance didn't
like to run the crane, he wanted to get off
of it.
He says, I can't give you anything but a crane job.
So, instead of starting down the line 1, 2, 3,
or whatever, you go down, I come a creaming
right away.
I was pretty lucky, you know.
Not everybody's that lucky.
So I worked the old, I worked in the stockyard
for a while.
Then I went to the mow yard, and then I went,
then after that I went back to the stockyard
because they were getting bonuses then.
After that, things were changing and they built
that new, it's not new anymore, Open Heart.
It wasn't a caster at that time, it is today,
but I was on a brand new crane, loading scrap
for these big boxes.
Before you know it, I don't know, you probably
knew about it, they had the little boxes they
they load, the cranes there, we'd load a big box
and if they, up aboard, they called you,
they put copper in or something.
The old motors and stuff, they'd estimate
how much copper was in that and they'd put it
in the,
you know, I don't know what you did in the mill,
but you went in the mill?
Yeah, I worked with a steel producer.
I mean, I was actually in the business plane,
but I worked with steel producing,
Scheduling the open hearths and the casters
and things like that, so.
My dad worked for Power and Fuel.
And once I was in the crane, after that,
he worked at three open hearths,
and I was working there at that time.
I think they changed it around,
the open hearths kind of slow down and that.
And as I seen him down there that night,
I had a few minutes off, and I go out and talk
to my dad.
He had Mexicans and people working for him.
He's a boss of power and fuel.
Tell him about Lonnie, how he's kind of
organized your ship reunions and how he's so dedicated.
After the ship was, we had to take ammunition
stuff off the ship, you know.
We went, up front they took all the ammunition
stuff out and so I was working down there
and they sent me back to the after part, I'm in
the days, you know, from all them fuses
and stuff.
And this officer says, you're going to have to
help these guys going on the after deck.
And a young kid, he's just been on the ship a
little while, he said, I'll take your place
for 15 minutes.
We were all ready for 15 minutes, kind of the
fumes, because the guys died down there
from the gas fumes.
So they all went down there, and all of a
sudden I seen the guys dropping over, and
I tried to go down, the big guy stopped me, and
they all died of gas.
One ran into the gas and he died. Just like
that. And one young officer, just come on the ship,
he was on the top of the steps and started to
go down and got him. And so after that,
the kid that lived next, slept next to me in
the bunk, he was a gunnery officer,
He was an uncle to this fellow that helped
organize-we had this Navy-but this guy,
I think he was an Army CIA or something.
He wanted to help with the ship because of this
uncle that lost his life.
And so him and another, pretty soon we had, at
that time we weren't had too many guys,
but pretty soon everybody got together and they
could, from the ship, from all times
we had ship, and he helped on the ship, he took
the ship from Java, from this other fellow,
and every year he'd write us and tell us where
we were going to have our ship reunion,
if it was Norfolk or New Orleans or Florida or
whatever and evidently he had connections
because he got permission to go to Okinawa and
bring his uncle back. They buried him in
Pennsylvania. So he really thought a lot of his
uncle and they were, I think they were pretty
pretty well that he had to have money. He was
over in Germany. I don't know what he
was doing in Germany, but I think he was with
the CIA or something like that for the government.
He sent me a cap like that, and I sent a check
back to him. He said, I don't want your money.
I can think of all the guys that shipped,
at Capra's ship at Christmas time.
So he had a couple dollars.
So he organized all the reunions?
Yeah, at the end, yeah.
And he was a real nice guy.
He called me a while back.
He's got a home in Georgia on an island,
and every winter he spends it,
he'd be coming home, he's probably home now,
He spends all winter on this island.
He's been real good to my dad
because my dad was close to his uncle
toward the end of his life.
I used to talk to his uncle a little bit.
I didn't know his uncle very much,
but he slept in the middle where I lived in Iceland.
Oh, we were very close together.
Real close together, yeah.
Yeah, and he was older than me, the boy.
He had a lot more experience than I did,
but he was a gunnery.
Anything else you want to ask? Or can you
remember things or anything that he didn't tell?
I remember how jittery he was after he came back.
Remember when I was a kid and I dropped that
book on that floor?
Boy, he just jumped like it's, bam. He was like
that for a long time.
You know, for some reason, the 4th of July, it
bothered me a little bit.
Even though our gun had small guns compared to
the bigger ones, but
Noisy. He'd wake up screaming. We can hear him
and stuff for a long long time
I'd wake up once in a while, but one time
Well, here's a story in Shanghai. I was down in
the boiler room and
The seamen opened up a little thing, a mop in
the deck. They poured this water down where the
oil was
So, we had trouble with the boilers. One
minute, they'd be burning like heck for three minutes.
And I was down there by myself, and Officer
Dick went back to the fantail
and called me and he says, what's wrong? I
said, we've got oil in the oil.
I said, I need help. He said, get somebody to
come down and help me.
So, that lasted for a couple of days.
One time they changed the tank for me
and then went back, but he said,
we've got to get the water out of the oil.
And when I was down there by myself,
they sent a guy down after that, a young kid,
to help me, the stand watch.
And the flames would shoot out the sides of the
boilers there
and that way, when it was burning,
next time it wouldn't be nothing at all, and
I'd have to change the fittings,
small, big, whatever, try to control the
temperature of the gates.
And he says, I've got to go to the bathroom.
I said, you're not going anyplace.
And I said, you've got to help me.
And so when we finished swatching that, he must
have went to the officers and stuff.
He said, I'm never going to go down there again.
I was trying to do my best, and it was scary,
you know.
I could have blowed the boiler room up. Wow.
That was my, and about that talk about, she's
saying, I lived, I slept in the apartment
up above and at the portholes you could look
out and I could see the smokers just from
these stacks. I wake up during the night, I see
that, I go back to sleep and I wake
up again. I'm still going back about the boiler
rooms. It bothered me for a while,
for about a month I think, a little bit, you
know. Not the real bad, but it bothered me
I think something's going to happen. I was
going to die down there. I wasn't going to
give up, but this kid didn't want to stay with
me. I had a lot of experiences.
Yeah. Think of anything else you want to say here?
Well, on the Astoria, when I got off in the
Columbus, there was quite about three or four
water tenders on there and I didn't get along
with them pretty good.
And I was supposed to work on the valve, you
know, and I closed different valves and I asked
them and they wouldn't tell me nothing.
And so, I left one valve open. It was the one
that I was going to work on, and so it blew
into my eye here.
And so, when I went to San Pedro that morning,
they went to the doctor that day on the ship.
So, I woke up in the morning, I couldn't see
out of my eye.
And I was going back to the ship, the sun was out,
and my breath, I was running water, you know.
So I got on the ship, and I think the doctor
was on the beach the night before, been drinking.
He tried to do something.
He says, I'll send you to the Naval Hospital.
So they worked on me.
They thought that was metal or something.
And this Navy doctor says, you know,
you had something in your eye for a long time,
but you just pushed it farther in.
So, they worked on it, they tried everything,
and eventually they got it out.
First they thought it was metal, and it was
metal. I don't know what it was.
So the worst part about that was, the next day
I had to go back.
They'd take me back because I have a patch over
my eye.
And so, the next day two Navy doctors,
specialists, checked my eye.
in it. They said, oh, your left eye is just as
good as your right right now. But they
were checking it, and they put that stuff in my
eyes, you know, and I told them, I had
one sailor there, I said, you better give me
some of that stuff because I'm going to
pass out. You know, your eyes are real
sensitive. They were playing with my eye,
churning different
things in my eye and so I expected about a
month I wore the patch over my eye and that
ship they put me on a pump to work on that
needed to be fetched and I had a light back
in the corner and I got one eye.
Hey, can you imagine trying to, I don't know if
they told them to do that to me or not
but it was rough.
So pretty soon one officer comes to me and
says, you don't get along with these guys
very well. I said, I'll put up with them. I'm a
little, I'm kind of. He says, I got
a job for you. He says, I'm going to give you
the job in charge of the stilters making
water for the ship. I says, okay. So one of the
things, Steven, he was on there for a
He showed me how to operate all the stilters.
I'd have to have four hours off, same as they did,
but I wasn't in charge. I had a chief and an
officer. The officer never came around.
The chief came around once in a while, but it's
a speckled plan. We had two boilers.
Supposed to make about a thousand gallons of
water from one blaff, and most of the times
we'd get 900 or 800. If you got trouble one
time I had, I was running it
perfect at first until I had trouble one night
and it got salted up and so I
popped, popped, popped, opened up thing, popped
it over in the water and started all over
again and it got a little bit bad again so I
popped that water
into the drinking water for the ship and then
when it got real good again I give
all the good water to the boiler rooms for the
boilers because those copper
things in the tubes there if they get clogged
up oh you want them to keep
you make around that sea you won't have no
water or nothing you know
And so I'd have to clean them out then and
that, but as far as I was on there, I never had
any trouble with the raps after that.
But that was a good job. I didn't have to put
up with those other guys and that. They were
older than me.
me. Sometimes you go to a bar or something from
a bigger ship, they'll pick on the other
guys and fight. They get drunk and they fight
with each other. It's a screwy mess, you know.
How old were you then? You went in when you
were 18, right?
I'm 18.
19 when you went in the service?
I was, a little while after I was on, I was
probably pretty close to 20 when I got on
the ship maybe, because I went to Bermuda on my birthday.
And when you were released you were about
twenty-five or twenty-six?
Twenty-four and a half maybe, I'm not sure,
around there close.
Now that one ship, is that Astoria or Astoria,
is it A or E? A.
A, okay.
Oregon, you know Esri, Oregon?
She kept saying this or that.
Okay, I had it spelled wrong.
I wondered.
Well, I think...
We got part of it anyway.
Yeah, I got part right, got part of it spelled right.
I think...
Some of it.
Well, I want to thank you for spending the time and...
Some of that stuff is...
They will appreciate some of that stuff I said.
It's always interesting to listen. I read quite
a bit of history now, but it's a lot
different when you hear somebody that was
actually there versus reading in a book. Did
you ever see anybody like Nimitz or any of
those people?
One time the Vice-Admiral, right-hand man maybe
I guess, I think it was at Carter Hall
before we'd come back to the States, he
inspected, on a Saturday, inspected the ship
and all that.
They used to look and see because your shoes
are polished in the back and all this, and
he comes to the front.
he said something to me, this is a good sailor,
he come around and he said to me, he says,
he said, look at my ribbons and stuff, he says,
where did you get that citation? I said
U.S. Green, never heard of it. I said, see I
was in the Atlantic Ocean, I got that in
submarine duty. Oh, he says, you're a good
sailor or something like that. They don't
talk to everybody, you know. They did talk to
me, though, at that time. At one time,
they saw the guy, he said, that guy needs a
haircut. You can't be perfect all the time.
My dad has quite a few medals, so he's...
I sent for my medals, you know. I got the medal
of Pacific American. I found out I could
get medals from the Philippines. Twice I sent
to them, the second time I sent to them with
copies of my papers, you know. And they wrote
back and said, we quit giving our medals out
from the Philippines. You can imagine how many
medals they'd have to give out. I think
I had two or three medals I could have had from
the Philippines, but I didn't get them
because they wouldn't give them to me.
He said he enlisted in the VFW. He has the most
medals of anybody there.
Was that right?
I didn't know it until my uncle told me.
My uncle, my brother, I mean brother signed me
up for the VFW because he wanted me to be on
his bowling team.
What was I going to say about that?
Oh yeah, Martha was, she was in charge of the,
she was a utility and her husband was
commander of the EFW.
And I was sitting next to her after, a couple
of nights later, I was sitting next to drinking
to her and she said, you know, you've got the
best record in here.
I said, how do you know?
I said, I take care of stuff for my husband.
Then I said to my brother just before we left
here, he went to Cipriani and Charos and everything.
He's probably home now. But he goes, he was on
the Mekon. He was on this, he was in the, maybe
on the Korean, I don't know.
But he went all over. Goodwill, Sweden,
Germany, and Africa. He went everywhere.
He just went like a tourist then.
Yeah, he had a good time. He got in trouble too though.
You know, he was in charge of the boats for the
Liberty people.
There was one boat and he had to come over and
get the last four officers off the boat.
He's the coxswain on the boat and he's got an
engineer on the boat.
And so, that day or the day before that, he
told that officer that this boast condemned us
no good.
It's unsafe. So, I don't know if my brother had
any drinks then or not, but the officers were
all drunk.
And he had a cabbage box or something out there
in the water. They sunk.
So they all swam ashore.
And so they're trying to court-martial my brother
because it's all his fault, you know.
And he, I don't know how many times
he went in front of them people before they
cleared him.
You know, they can always blame somebody.
The officers, I don't know what the officers did,
they should have stuck up for him, you know.
You know, you can't see nothing in the dark,
hardly, you know? Right.
Plus, like he said, it was, that ship was, the
boat was actually, it should have been a contaminant.