[Rick Pratt] This is Rick Pratt.
Today is January 31st, 2002.
I'm interviewing John Wilson.
This interview is taking place in
the Menger Hotel, Downtown San Antonio.
The interview is in support of
the National Museum of the Pacific Wars Center
for War Studies,
for the preservation of historical information
related to World War II.
Mr. Wilson, thank you very much for taking the time to
relate the experiences you underwent during World War II.
To start with, I would like to ask
you where and when were you born?
[John Wilson] Born in Florid, Illinois, 1922.
[Rick Pratt] Okay. What were your parents' names?
[John Wilson] Harold and Nora Wilson.
[Rick Pratt] Where were they born?
[John Wilson] My dad was born in
England and they lived on the South Coast of
England until they immigrated
to the states when he was about 21 years old.
My mother was born in Southern Wisconsin,
Norwegian background,
and (background) grew up
in a little town of Argyle, Wisconsin. (background)
[Rick Pratt] Did you have any siblings?
[John Wilson] I have two brothers, younger. (background)
[Rick Pratt] What were their names?
[John Wilson] Richard Lee and Robert Bruce.
[Rick Pratt] Where did y'all go to school? (background)
[John Wilson] Well, all of us went to school in the Philippines.
(background) I went through high school.
My brothers came back to the states,
so they actually finished
high school in Southern Wisconsin.
[Rick Pratt] Why were you in the Philippines for your schooling?
[John Wilson] Well, my father
worked for Allis Chalmers out of Milwaukee and was
doing field engineering work and they
offered him a job in the Philippines in 1925,
for two years to supervise
installation and training people to operate
some steam power equipment at Sugar Mill,
North of Manila, about 45 miles.
The two years continued.
Thereafter, he went to work for a company that
represented Allis Chalmers and stayed in the islands.
Both my brothers were born over
there in Fort San Diego in a hospital.
[Rick Pratt] When did you come back from the Philippines
to the US? (background)
[John Wilson] I left in 1939,
graduated from high school,
and worked my passage to
San Francisco on a US Army transport grant.
(background) Then went to University of Wisconsin.
(background) I was in ROTC and
graduated in 1943 into the army.
[Rick Pratt] You went straight into the army after graduation?
[John Wilson] Yeah. (background)
[Rick Pratt] Why did you choose the army? (background)
[John Wilson] Well, I suppose,
now living in the islands was real
exposure to the military.
A lot of kids
I went to school with were in my scout troop.
It seemed a natural proper
thing to be involved with the army.
To some degree, of course,
we had no idea it was going to be a war at that time.
But I think it was a military connection.
A couple of boys,
for instance, in my scout group, the younger ones,
their father was Captain Hugh James Casey, at the time.
During the war in the Pacific,
he was Major General.
(laughing) Hugh James Casey, Chief of Engineers.
We had a little bit of a military background.
(background)
[Rick Pratt] Were you assigned to
a particular branch or Squadron at this time?
(background) Describe your early army training?
[John Wilson] (background) Because of the change
in the way they did things with the advent of the war,
instead of going to a summer camp
as part of the ROTC program,
I went to officer candidate school after I graduated.
That was at Fort Belvedere,
Virginia, the engineering school.
Then had various training assignments.
(background) I was within half a day of being shipped to
North Africa and instead
got shipped out as
a replacement officer to the South Pacific.
(background) A boat from San Francisco
to Noumea, New Caledonia.
Then on up, we
stopped at Guadalcanal and then to Bougainville Island.
But the war there was over essentially,
and so the project was getting
ready for what turned out to
be an invasion of Philippines. (background)
[Rick Pratt] You were with the sixth Army,
what was your position?
(background)
[John Wilson] I was with an engineer combat battalion
on Bougainville Island.
(background) Then in the preparation
for the landing in Philippines,
they organized a new separate company
to maintain engineering equipment,
and with a mechanical background,
that seemed a logical spot to be.
I was a reconnaissance officer
and the engineer battalion,
and then I switched, so I was
a platoon leader in a separate company.
We spent time from once we left the island,
obtaining equipment and training,
and getting ready to do our job on Luzon and
(background) made the Luzon landing at D Plus One,
which was better than D-Day.
Although, the Japs vacated pretty rapidly from
that immediate area. (background)
(inaudible) stayed with the company until,
near the end of the war.
But was on the church service for more than a month,
I guess, along with
39 other military people
that had relatives in the islands that were imprisoned.
We had a private first-class
and a full colonel in this little group (laughing).
I was second lieutenant at that time.
One of my best friends from
the Philippines was in that group,
and he was a captain who had
been in the year with the tankers.
But he was at that point assigned to
the Philippines Civil Affairs Unit on Louisiana.
[Rick Pratt] This is a friend of yours from when you were in school?
[John Wilson] Yeah. From high school?
We graduated the same year.
[Rick Pratt] What was his name?
[John Wilson] Abner Pickering.
[Rick Pratt] Abner Pickering.
[John Wilson] It was a remarkable collection
of people that were on this temporary duty.
One of them was the company commander of
a Signal Company in six army.
When we were entering Manila,
I had an engineer track and I was
towing a Signal Company trailer,
(laughing) and a Jeep with a general officer in
it hailed us and wanted to know what I was doing
towing his six army trailer.
(laughing) I told him, he just go on.
(laughing) That's a triviality of a war
going on in here. (laughing)
[Rick Pratt] Well, did he go on?
[John Wilson] I went on with the trailer and we
drove into the internment camp an hour or so later.
The tankers had arrived the night before.
Actually the part of the Japanese cadre was still
hiding out in the education building
in Santo Tomas at the time.
[Rick Pratt] Oh, yeah.
[John Wilson] They were still there.
[Rick Pratt] Now, when was this,
this was like right after the time of deliberations?
[John Wilson] The official date was February 3th,
when the tankers drove in.
It was that evening actually.
I got in there on February 4th.
[Rick Pratt] It was pretty quick.
[John Wilson] It was very fortuitous and
quite an experience with
so many old friends from school,
and teachers and friends of my parents.
[Rick Pratt] When you did get back to the Philippines,
when you did go involved in the liberation of Manila,
did you run into any other friends, or any other people?
Did you have family
and friends back there that you were looking at?
[John Wilson] Well, they were all interned.
[Rick Pratt] They weren't at the same address
that they were the last time.
[John Wilson] That's right. They were all at just one address.
University of Santo Tomas.
Of course, over time,
most of them disbursed back to the States.
Not all of them.
The number of friends of my dad
that were there and some that
stayed and over for awhile
to work with the power company and things like that.
Most of them were shipped
out within six weeks to two months, I think.
[Rick Pratt] Shipped out back home to the States?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] What was your specialty?
What did you train for?
Most importantly, what will you say you did in the army?
[John Wilson] Well, the job I trained for it would be
a platoon commander of an engineering company.
Well, or some other similar job in
engineer battalion and that's where
I joined in Bougainville.
Now, by the time I got to Philippines,
I was in a separate company
whose job was to maintain engineering equipment,
bulldozers and graders and tractors or whatever,
anything you can imagine.
We had a repair shop in effect
and rebuilt whatever came in some way or other.
Sometimes it took a bit of ingenuity.
I remember reading the instructions on
some piece of equipment and then it said in effect,
if this and this doesn't work,
call your nearest (inaudible) dealer.
(laughing) Actually, we found Babbitt traces.
Jeff had left and re-Babbitted bearings rings.
We did whatever it took to fix the equipment up.
I did that through
most of the war in Louisiana.
[Rick Pratt] What is the difference between
an engineering battalion and a construction battalion?
[John Wilson] Well, it could be the same thing,
though engineering battalion we
built floating bridges for instance, or Bailey bridges.
Fixed bridges. Actually the
night before I got into Santo Tomas I was
waiting in the ditch across from
the (inaudible) brewery while my former engineer Alfred,
put a floating bridge across.
We had to wait for the bridge in order to enter Manila.
[Rick Pratt] Bridge to the brewery or to Manila? (laughing)
[John Wilson] To Manila. It was
a strange evening though because
there was a lot of activity in and
out of the breweries, you might guess.
Filling helmets with beer
with a bunch of firing going on,
but I couldn't see who was shooting who.
One of the others waiting to cross the bridge was
a Signal Corp Lieutenant
who finding I was familiar with Manila,
I wanted to know location of various buildings,
because he had an assignment to take pictures of
a parade scheduled the next day
or two, which never happened.
It was strange, confusing.
[Rick Pratt] Were they or anticipating a liberation parade by then?
[John Wilson] Yeah. Well, I think what actually happened,
the Japanese General declared
it an open city at about that time,
probably that night that we were coming in.
But the Japanese Admiral for Santiago didn't agree.
It ended up that it was not an open city.
The North half of the city was open,
near the river and the river divided
the city everything South of it.
The war went on for another month.
It's rather a weird circumstance
to be relatively peaceful on the North side,
say relatively, we got shelled by the Marines.
On the other side, Japanese Marines crossed the river.
[Rick Pratt] The river divided Manila?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] In North-south?
[John Wilson] Yeah. Actually, pictures and all of this,
General MacArthur showed up at the internment camp.
I was there, I saw him
a lot of friends of his were there.
Few hours later, mortar shells
started landing in the same yard.
Several people were killed and injured.
Fortunately, MacArthur wasn't there.
If they had fired in the morning,
many people would have been killed because
the yard was jammed with people.
We were all out there in front of the main building,
and by the time they lobbed those shells over,
there was nobody there.
[Rick Pratt] Nothing left in front of the building either?
[John Wilson] Well, it hit a couple of spots.
But most of the shells were harmless, but not all.
There were several people,
in fact in the building they were injured or killed.
Very weird contrast of. (laughing)
[Rick Pratt] You joined the service in '43.
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] Somewhere '43.
[John Wilson] That's right, yeah.
[Rick Pratt] You trained in?
Virginia.
[John Wilson] Virginia in the States.
When did you get your assignment to go in specific?
[Rick Pratt] It was spring of 44.
[John Wilson] Okay, so then you were shipped out of San Francisco?
[Rick Pratt] Right.
[John Wilson] You came to Guadalcanal.
[Rick Pratt] No, we came to New Caledonia first.
[John Wilson] New Caledonia first?
[Rick Pratt] Yeah. Which was really a transit spot,
it was quite peaceful a lot of military Navy that were
on RNR would pass through Nemea headed
for New Zealand maybe or just stop there,
and as a replacement troop,
we landed there until we were assigned to
a unit and then moved on North.
I was there for about a month,
I guess three or four weeks,
and then on another ship headed North to Bougainville.
But all the action was over then when you got there?
[John Wilson] Well, the Japanese still
occupied the majority of Bougainville.
It was all over in Guadalcanal and
actually the Japs were unable to resupply them,
so they were farming over on
their side and we were getting ready to move North.
It was quiet there, rather strangely.
Once in a while, they catch
a Jap trying to watch one of our movies.
[Rick Pratt] (laughing) When they asked for subtitles (inaudible).
[John Wilson] (laughing) Yeah, that's a lot of strange contrast.
They just liked for that matter,
being incentive to mass
and the first extra food
that became available was from the Catholic.
There's was a Catholic university and
a Catholic priest occupied a building there,
and they had a large supply of kidney beans.
That first night, the dinner
was augmented with kidney beans.
The next day the food we brought
in was disbursed and
they started feeding a little better.
My first dinner there actually old
friends a Goodier family
and then was and still is a good friend,
so I had dinner with Ben and his two sisters and
his mother and the dinner was
mostly kidney beans and stuff that looked like grass,
they called tolinum that had coconut oil poured on it.
I went very hungry then ate three dishes of
that kidney bean stuff and was sick the next day.
(laughing) The next day we got some better food and then
soon more food came in and our military set up
a station hospital adjacent
and started trying to
help the people that were really sick.
There were some in pretty bad shape in fact
a friend of my dad's was in
the hospital and I saw him just before he
died and it was malnutrition.
[Rick Pratt] Slow death?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] Well, you all came
into Manila on the third and the fourth?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] Describe coming into the camp,
describe what you did then before during that liberation?
[John Wilson] Well, (noise) coming in was strange from
a general officer inquiring about the trailer I was
pulling to right at
the entrance of Santo Tomas was a good-sized,
burned-out Jap track with
their bodies hanging out all over,
and once established there and having a vehicle,
I was able to take friends here and there.
Ben and his mother back to their old home in the islands,
and we dug stuff up in their yard they had
buried and get stuff
out of the attic that had been hidden.
Right across the river they're burning
down and shooting and
one thing another and so I was occupied with that.
Another friend of mine, Roger Shade,
he was a kid at the time.
He was in Santo Tomas and had worked with Carl Mydans.
Carl Mydans was a life photographer
and he had been liberated on
the grips home about halfway through this,
the only group that was shipped back from the islands.
Carl came back in on with
MacArthur still as a photographer,
but Carl and Roger were good friends.
Carl was 15 years old or something.
Anyway, I met Carl and I had wheels,
so I took Carl places and it took
a couple of hours fortunate circumstances but
my friendship with Carl,
see there were other camps not yet liberated.
The military camp at Cabanatuan had been liberated,
but the other civilian camp at Los Banos,
about 40 miles South of Manila,
was still in Japs hands.
Carl knew how they were going to liberate it.
It was absolute secret.
He told me just enough and I didn't tell anybody,
I promised not to.
But today we're going to have the 11th airborne drop on
the camp and a military group of
amphibious tractors crossed part of
the lake and land on the beach
there behind Jap lines and evacuated some 2,400 people.
I knew how, I didn't know when.
That time on my hands during this little gap,
I went over and visit my old combat battalion
and when they found I was there,
the S2 got a hold of me right
away and he had a whole lot of questions.
"What's the road like South of Manila?"
Well, as a kid probably you wouldn't know,
I mean we didn't drive cars over there then.
But I had bicycled the road so I could tell
him about the bridges and there were
no wide streams and no big problems and so forth.
Little bit later, he called me
back and he says is your dad,
(FOREIGN) and I said yes,
he said I'd leave in the morning and nobody
else in that outfit knew they were
moving out at midnight that night,
but they were saying it was to
protect the road and makes sure that
vehicles could get through and
that parachute drop was 7:00 AM the next morning.
At about that time I was driving south.
It was a little weird because there were no soldiers us,
or anybody else from the Manila South Road.
I just drove south and see
some Filipinos and say American soldiers this way?
Yes. We kept driving and we met
the amphibious tankers coming back from Los Banos.
(laughing)
[Rick Pratt] You told me before that your father was in prison?
[John Wilson] Yeah. He was in
prison at Santo Tomas and then at Los Banos.
(crosstalk) I met him on his liberation day.
[Rick Pratt] It was more than going home?
[John Wilson] Yeah. This was-
[Rick Pratt] Now, what day did you liberate Santo Tomas?
[John Wilson] I think that was February 23rd. No, 21st.
No, it's right, the 23rd
because it was 21 days afterwards I think.
Actually, I was the only one doing that.
Now, my good friend,
I mentioned Abner Pickering,
his dad was there too.
That evening I had told
Abner I was leaving in the morning,
do you want to ride with me?
He said no, nothing's going to
happen, so he went with me.
I didn't tell him that his dad was
going to be liberated because I've been sworn to secrecy.
[Rick Pratt] His father was there too?
[John Wilson] Yeah, his father is there too of course.
He got on down to Monte Lupa where they brought them all.
The next morning, news was (laughing).
[Rick Pratt] Did you find your father there?
[John Wilson] Yeah. Most were tremendous.
[Rick Pratt] But that was probably one of the best days of your life?
[John Wilson] That's right.
[Rick Pratt] I guess then your family was,
your father had still been living in the Philippines.
Did he stay there after the war?
[John Wilson] Well, no.
(crosstalk) He had gone back
by forcing my mother and brother to stay in the States.
Well, they had booked passage to go back,
but for various reasons state department,
it's just that they did not go and I guess
actually once they missed the ship some way.
They were in the states, which is very fortunate because
my mother's health she would never have survived.
My dad had gone back and then stayed there.
Of course, when the war broke out,
why he was involved in.
I'm trying to get
some things done at
Canadian Navy Yard and things like that,
so he was caught.
He had thought by himself he could get away probably,
but really nobody got
away except for those few on a submarine out of Kragen
or why our whole military was isolated
there and eventually the Baton March.
[Rick Pratt] There wasn't a whole lot you could do to stop them.
[John Wilson] Yeah.
Sometimes you make your own luck,
but much of it was still a degree of
luck of being able to be there at the time.
[Rick Pratt] Did your father come way back home to the states?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] Right after that?
[John Wilson] Actually, there was a lapse of time and (noise) I stayed
with him at the setup there in Monte Lupa.
Until, well for
a couple of weeks and she still
didn't have a shipment home,
so my outfit had moved on south of there a little ways,
so I went back to outfit and took it with me.
We shared a tent there for
several more weeks and then I took him back to Monte Lupa
and I hit it off on
that plane down to
another Island and shipped back home. (laughing)
[Rick Pratt] That was good you got to spend some good time.
[John Wilson] Yeah. We had a good time together.
Unbelievable. Some others like
Abner Pickering his dad
shipped out eventually too but again,
he was stationed after that at
the Philippine civil affairs officer in Manila and,
actually, he moved into his old
house (laughing) We lived there for a while.
It was damaged but (laughing).
[Rick Pratt] Still no place like home.
[John Wilson] Yeah. They made him Mayor of Pasay which is a suburb of
Manila for a while
until the civilians could take over again.
(laughing) I say mayor, he was whatever,
I don t know, commanding officer
or something anyway. (laughing)
[Rick Pratt] Well, how long did you stay in the Philippines?
I continued on there with my former unit and then
later with an engineering and construction regiment
that was organized
over there to build
hospitals up and back near LingayenGulf.
The hospitals being planned
for casualties from proposed landing in Japan,
which didn't happen, unfortunately.
I'm sure one thing is
whatever people say about the atomic bomb
it's saved a great many Japanese and American lives.
As the casualties, if we had had to land by
force then Japan would have been huge on both sides.
That's what we were doing, we're building hospitals.
I did that until my number was
up and I shipped back to the states.
When was that, that your number was out?
[John Wilson] What time did I get home, Jane?
[Jane] Spring of 1946.
[John Wilson] Yeah. Spring at '46.
Incidentally, we got married
while I was at Fort Barbara in '43.
[Rick Pratt] You had somebody to come home to.
Where did you live when you got out of the service?
Where did you live, where did you home?
[John Wilson] Back up a little as I mentioned,
my mother and younger brothers stayed in Wisconsin.
After I went overseas,
Jane went back to Madison, Wisconsin.
She was a hospital dietitian,
so she worked in Madison till I got out of the service.
Then we went to New Jersey because my dad,
the company he worked for in the islands,
had an operation in New York City and he worked there.
Lived in New Jersey, so I headed for New Jersey.
We did together as we were looking for a job.
The next thing is decide what
work I wanted to do and so forth.
We went to New Jersey
and next-door neighbor of
my dad's worked for Babcock Wilcox and he says,
why don't you interview them
and talk to General Electric and others.
I went to work for BMW and spent
about three years in various field training jobs,
and then we moved to Dallas '49 and still live there.
[Rick Pratt] It was a lot worse than living in Dallas?
[John Wilson] Yeah. It was very good timing because
things are really growing and
changing and there are lots of newcomers.
Easy to make friends,
lots of things to do.
Well, I had a pretty simple career.
I was put in three years in the army,
19 years with Babcock and
Wilcox and 29 years running my own business.
[Rick Pratt] Was that 29 years running your own business?
[John Wilson] Yeah.
[Rick Pratt] That's where the story is coming from. (laughing)
[John Wilson] Yeah. I have a few,
but I was very fortuitous to the way things worked out.
My youngest brother who graduated from college after
the war and was in
the Signal Corps and then back as a civilian.
He moved to a new job in
Dallas where we both
talked about having our own business.
A couple of years later,
while some things were changing
and his company was going to send them to
Missouri and my situation was changing I said well,
now's the time so we started our own business. (laughing)
[Rick Pratt] Did you stay in business together for a long time?
[John Wilson] Yeah. Although he got out
first for various personal reasons, family.
I was going to retire at 68 and it
turned out in order to complete the closeout of
the sale of a business and all, I retired at 71.
[Rick Pratt] Well, you got a couple more years?
[John Wilson] Yeah. Not complaining.
[Rick Pratt] Well, I want to thank you for taking the time
to talk with us about your experiences.
Can't thank you enough (laughing).
[John Wilson] Okay.
[Rick Pratt] What you've done for our country.