[Richard Misenhimer] My name is Richard Misenhimer,
and today is May the 2nd, 2006.
I'm interviewing Mr. Cleatus,
C-L-E-A-T-U-S A Lebow,
L-E-B-O-W, one word,
P O Box 96, Memphis, Texas 79245.
His phone number is (806) 259-2427.
This interview is in support of
the National Museum of the Pacific War center for
Pacific war studies for
the based forest information, Greater World War II.
Cleatus, I want to thank you for taking
time to do this interview today.
I want to thank you for your service to
our country during World War II.
The first thing I need to do
is read to you this agreement
with the National Museum of the Pacific War
to make sure it's okay with you.
When I do these in person, of course,
I give it to the man to read and he signs it.
But since this is about phone,
let me read it to you and get your approval.
Is that okay?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Sure.
[Richard Misenhimer] The heading says,
"The National Museum of the Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission Fredericksburg,
Texas oral history project."
The purpose of the National Museum of the Pacific War
oral history project is to collect,
preserve, interpret the stories
of World War II veterans,
home fund experiences,
the life of feed animal trust with limits and
the old limits hotel by
names of the tape-recorded interviews.
Audio recordings of such interviews
become part of the center for Pacific war studies,
the archives of the National Museum of Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission.
These recordings were made available for
historical and other academic research
by scholars and members of
the family of the interviewee.
With the undersign have read
the above and voluntarily offer these
National Museum of the Pacific War full use of
the information contained on
audio and video recordings or
written texts of these oral history research interviews.
In view of the scholarly value of
such this research material we're hereby
assign rights type of interest pertaining to it,
to the National Museum of the Pacific War,
Texas Historical Commission. Is that okay with you?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay, fine. Thank you.
Now, the next thing I need to do,
we need to get an alternative contact,
a name and a phone number one
of your children or someone.
In case, for some reason, we go to contact you and
you relocated or something we can find you.
Is there someone you might give us that name?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] My son.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Son is Jerry Lebow.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] His address is 1205 Farley Street,
F-A-R-L-E-Y, Pampa, Texas.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I'm going to give you a zip.
[Richard Misenhimer] All right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] 79065.
[Richard Misenhimer] You have a phone number for him?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
(806) 665-8778.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. Good. Appreciate that,
thank you. Let me ask you.
My first question is what is your birth date?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] February the 8th, 1924.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where were you born?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Happy, Texas.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have brothers and sisters?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Many of them.
[Richard Misenhimer] How many brothers did you have?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, let me get a refresher.
I have got four brothers.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I had four brothers and six sisters.
[Richard Misenhimer] There were 11 of you?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I'm the old.
[Richard Misenhimer] I'm sorry.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes. I'm in the middle
man of the old brother.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. 11.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Two brothers older, two
younger sisters older, three younger.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. That's quite a family.
Were any of your brothers in the World War II?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
Well, one of them was in World War II.
The two younger ones were in Korea.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did all of them come
home from the war?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Good. How about your sisters?
Were any of them involved
in world work or in the service?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] My next young sister
took nurses training through the Navy.
[Richard Misenhimer] All right. Now you grew up
during the depression.
How did the depression affect you and your family?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] How did it affect us?
[Richard Misenhimer] Yes, sir.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, I don't
know (inaudible) it was all we
ever knew up to that time.
In my age, we didn't know
that things could be a lot better.
We didn't hurt or food or anything.
My dad worked on the railroad.
He never did lose his job during expression.
Of course, the railroad furnished house and stuff.
He made his pretty good shape.
I chopped a lot of cotton.
A lot of cotton pour a lot of bowl work.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you all live in the
country or in the town?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Lived in town in construction
house on the railroad.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you go to high school?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Abernathy.
[Richard Misenhimer] Abernathy.
What year did you finish there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Nineteen forty-one.
[Richard Misenhimer] What did you do when
you finished high school?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I was working in a grocery store.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then when did you go into the service?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] February of 1943.
[Richard Misenhimer] Now, December 7,
'41, I'm sure you remember Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Do you recall hearing
about that and where you were when you heard about it?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yeah. Well, I heard about it.
Me and my girlfriend and my next oldest brother did have
a girlfriend sitting in
the dad's backyard in a car listening to the radio.
We heard the news there.
[Richard Misenhimer] What was your reaction to that?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, we just thought that
the Japanese couldn't possibly
carry on a very little war and things.
Probably it'll be over in a matter of weeks.
Everything worry about.
Yeah. Not different.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. That's right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Our original thought though.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. All right. Now,
what did you do by the time between
then and when you went in
the service in February of '43?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I worked in that store.
[Richard Misenhimer] The whole time.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They had a work deal store,
had a grocery store drive goods and everything,
but I worked primarily in the grocery store.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then you went in '43.
Of course, I know some of these answered,
but you went in the Navy.
How did you choose the Navy?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I just be like, I'd rather be there
being army or a Lubbock.
I had a quota of seven men who were Navy that day.
The Navy recruiting officer had been
the sports reporter for the Level Capitalist journal.
I knew him and he knew me.
I ask for the Navy and I
think probably through his knowing me,
I got in the neighborhood with six other guys.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. That was Lubbock where
you were sworn in, right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Where did you take your boot camp in?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, went up from Lubbock to San Diego.
[Richard Misenhimer] How did you travel out there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] By train.
[Richard Misenhimer] How was that train trip?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It was boring,
but we wondered what was getting into it.
[Richard Misenhimer] What did it take?
A couple days or how long?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes, two days.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have any place to sleep or
just set up in the chair cars?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No, I just set up a chair car.
[Richard Misenhimer] Had you been away from
home very far before?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No, not by myself.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Just going off and so on.
Going up over visit grandparents.
[Richard Misenhimer] I see.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Then when you
got to boot camp, what was it like there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, it was pretty unpleasant.
All the shots were took warranty and
drilling out on thing to exercises.
But that just get good minutes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. Where did you live in there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] What?
[Richard Misenhimer] In barracks?
Where did you live in there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Oh, in barracks, yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] How was the food there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] About average, one too bad.
[Richard Misenhimer] What are some particular things that
happened at boot camp that you remember?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Some of the things
I remember in boot camp?
[Richard Misenhimer] Yes, in boot camp.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, we were drilling marching out on
grinder one day and
two P-38s were surfing around doing some stuff.
They met head-on right
above us and found ocean not too far away.
I would never forget that.
[Richard Misenhimer] That would be yes.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I boxed.
We had a smoker on Saturday.
I signed up boxing it and I outpointed the off box.
Of course, the company I thought I
was some hero for that next.
I got up to the ring.
I got through the first round.
Remember coming out the second round,
I woke up about four minutes later in the dressing room.
I got in there with a semipro and he put me to sleep.
[Richard Misenhimer] Your boxing career
didn't last too long then?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yeah, well
that narrative used to have
smokers on the ship stuff a little bit.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Captain McVay was the
heavyweight champion
of Annapolis when he was going through.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, that's right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] He likes boxing so we
had some smokers there.
I was a featherweight champion on the ship.
[Richard Misenhimer] Anything else on boot camp you recall?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No, not that much.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then where did you go from there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We went into general
detail at the destroyer base,
which was just adjacent to the boot camp in
San Diego and I spent almost
seven or eight months there.
During that time, I went to rangefinder school
at the destroyer base.
It was a five-week rangefinder school. Bad with grains.
I graduated fourth in a class of 120.
[Richard Misenhimer] Good.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I got a 3rd Class rating for that and
I was (inaudible) first.
We chipped a lot of paint
off the submarines and put red lead on them,
stuff like that on shore detail
when they could catch us and get us on
a working party.
[Richard Misenhimer] This was next to the party
where you took boot camp then?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] To where?
[Richard Misenhimer] This was next door to
where you took boot camp?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Anything, in particular,
you recall from that place and that time there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No, I don't remember much in that place.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then where did you go from there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] In the early part of December,
I shipped out from San Diego on
a minesweeper that was supposed
to be going to Pearl Harbor.
We got a little ways out and there came up a bad storm.
We had to go back into San Francisco.
I was so seasick.
It took four days and nights to get up there.
I was seasick but I never
was seasick after that, thank goodness.
But we put into
San Diego and went to Goat Island which is
under the Oakland Bay Bridge
and they put me on inshore patrol.
I was on shore patrol every 30 days.
On the job one thing I did
was take a prisoner from there
that had jumped ship in San Diego.
I took him from
San Francisco back down to San Diego on a train.
He was a great big old guy about six feet tall.
He weighed about 220 and I weighed about 130 pounds.
I had a big old 45 strapped on the side of my hip.
He asked me, "What would you do if I
broke the rules and tried to get away?"
I would say I'm tough to him.
I said, "I would shoot you because I
don't want to take your place."
He said, "I believe you would do it."
Of course, when we got on the train,
two shore patrol got on there with us
and they kept a pretty good eye on us.
I delivered him and that
was about the extent of my experience on Goat Island.
We stood watch at night and walked around it.
Then I shipped out from there.
[Richard Misenhimer] Let me ask you a question. You said
you didn't want to take his place,
what do you mean by that?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Didn't what?
[Richard Misenhimer] You said you didn't
want to take his place.
What did you mean by that?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They left us under the
impression that if we
were escorting prisoners and they got away,
we had to take their place
[Richard Misenhimer] That's what I thought.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) it's been idle
talk or something.
[Richard Misenhimer] When I was in the Army,
they said the same thing there
too. I never escorted any.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It might have been true.
[Richard Misenhimer] At least they had
everybody believing it.
Then you left San Diego again, you say?
Where did you ship out from this?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] From Goat Island at
San Francisco on an LST,
a little flat-bottomed thing.
You know what an LST is.
It took 10 days and nights going up and down
the waves with that flat bottom
slapping against the water going,
10 days of misery getting to Pearl Harbor.
[Richard Misenhimer] On your way to Pearl Harbor,
were you by yourself or escorted by other ships?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We were by ourselves. I hadn't
really thought that much about them.
We were by ourselves on that LST.
There were no other ships around.
[Richard Misenhimer] This would have been in December '43,
January '44, somewhere along in there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It was January '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have a job on the LST
or just a passenger?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Just a passenger.
There were 10 passengers on there.
There wasn't any room for us to try
to do any job or things.
The guys that had them, did them.
[Richard Misenhimer] Then you got to Pearl Harbor.
What happened there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] At Pearl Harbor, they put us up at
Camp Aiea in barracks.
I was there three days.
On the third day,
that morning I was on a work detail.
They had just read in the Oklahoma,
and I went down about three holes deep into it.
Through the openings,
they were letting buckets down on ropes draining it out.
We were filling those buckets up and they were
hauling refuse up from the bottom of that thing.
There were lots of
bones in those buckets, it looked creepy.
At noon that day, while I was sitting there eating,
they passed the word for 10 guys to lash and carry,
to pack up our gear, and report to a dock.
There was a truck that picked us up and carried us to
the dock where the Indianapolis
was (inaudible) Indianapolis.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you know you're going to be
assigned to Indianapolis?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No.
[Richard Misenhimer] Not until you got there, though?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It was the first ship
I was officially assigned to,
not as a passenger or anything.
I was thinking when we pulled up to
the dock and saw the ship.
I thought, "Man, that's a sleek-looking ship."
She was a beautiful ship.
[Richard Misenhimer] It was.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] As soon as we got up the
gangplank and got off there,
they took the gangplank away.
They couldn't wait for us to get there.
They were hurting for rangefinder operations.
[Richard Misenhimer] I see.
That was your job on there then, right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
That's what I did at general quarters.
I was a rangefinder operator on the after-gun turret.
It gave me a ringside seat
to see everything that was going on.
[Richard Misenhimer] What rank did you have at that point?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I was a 3rd Class Fire Controlman.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's a 3rd Class Petty Officer,
right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Tell me a little bit
about Indianapolis.
What was the armament on that ship?
What guns did it have?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We had three eight-inch gun turrets.
Each turret had three guns.
We had eight five-inch 25-millimeter guns and
six quads 40 mounts and about 18 20-caliber guns.
[Richard Misenhimer] The 20-millimeter? Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] My job in the antiaircraft offense
was firing one of the quad 40 mounts.
[Richard Misenhimer] Doing what? Firing did you say?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yeah.
They were operating from a little director.
The guns were down
one deck and the director up above on another deck.
We did the range (inaudible) and
the automatic firing.
[Richard Misenhimer] Tell me about your rangefinder.
What did that look like and how was it?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, the rangefinder
on the eight-inch gun was
18 feet long and it had two end windows on it.
It was a coincidence rangefinder where you had
to line up like the stump of a tree or something.
You could see half of it through one end of it
and half through the other.
You had to line them up and when you
did, you had the range.
Of course, we were doing spotting too.
When we weren't actually firing our guns.
We were telling the other guns
and planes what they were hitting instead.
The rangefinders on
the five-inch guns were stereoscopic rangefinders.
They had a little diamond reticule that
went out and when you turned
your knob if you were right
over whatever you were ranging,
you could read the range on the dial.
That was a condition 3 watch when we
weren't in the battle zones or battle wars.
They were only about four at this stage, whatever does.
That's where we stood watch on
them at sky forward
which was right in the middle of the bridge.
You had to go across the bridge to come up into
it to watch it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you operate both
of those rangefinders?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes, sir.
[Richard Misenhimer] What were some other
things that happened when
you first got on the Indianapolis?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] The first day I went on,
it was just a bad afternoon
and I was going to go on watch at three o'clock.
They told me it was in the sky forward which
is a five-inch gun they had on the bridge.
The fire control workshop was back aft.
The guys told me how to get up there.
I took off and
I missed going up
the stairs, which I was supposed to take.
I started down the main deck.
The Marine guard
(inaudible) stood there and didn't allow me.
He said, "Halt" and liked to have scared me to death.
He said, "Where are you going?"
I told him where I was going and why and everything.
He said, "You can't go forward here."
He says, "the Admiral and
Captain are taking their walk."
Admiral Spruance and Captain
McVay were there taking their afternoon walk on the bow.
The Marine guard
told me how to get up to where I was going.
I felt dumb but I had
never been on a ship that big before.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's fine. Your first time, right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Had you on a Navy ship
before that one?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No. I guess the LST and
the minesweeper before we got to Pearl.
[Richard Misenhimer] No comparison to those?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Oh, no.
[Richard Misenhimer] The LST, I think you
know the people on them,
call them a large slow target.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yeah, I heard that. (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] That's what LST stood for.
What else happened there on the Indianapolis?
When you left Pearl Harbor then,
where did you go?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I don't know. We would take our food,
small store stuff and then
we'd come back to Pearl Harbor.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Sometimes a spy ship would come
alongside and take on spies.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Anything that's a good deal,
we can get our hands on, we'd steal it.
We had that and
a whole little screen then it was
a lot little (inaudible) screen.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] There were very big cases
of dry cereal like
Post Toasties and in
those cases there'd be individual packages.
Somebody cut a hole just the size of one of
those little individual packages right down on
the corner of the screen where it was folded out.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We cut that case,
we reached in there and by the time they'd gotten to
the bottom of that storage room cereal,
(inaudible) case would be sitting there empty.
There wouldn't be any cereal in it.
They would take the box to workshop.
They let us have milk.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Because we had a coffee pot up there.
We had milk put in our coffee so
we had milk for our cereal.
That's some of the
things I could never forget.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah,
that's good I'd like to hear those things.
Right. Go ahead.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] First take on supplies
we would get a case of eggs.
They have them in the workshop.
We'd boil the eggs in our coffee pot,
that was a treat, little boiled eggs with syrup.
We found the butter galley,
we'd take it up
there when we have little hot boiled eggs.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay, good.
Now when you left Pearl Harbor that
first time, where did you go?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Went to Tarawa.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They had been there and
supposedly had secured the island December of '43.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] But the Japs had
another foothold somewhere,
that's more troops or something come in.
We had won back there, bombard it
about three days a fresh contingent of Marines.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) to Tarawa must
be in early January of '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay.
Then you went back to Pearl from there?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I don't remember trips
we made back to Pearl.
But from Tarawa which was more of Gilbert Island.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We went to the Marshall Islands
and participated in
occupations of Kwajalein, Majuro.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Then (inaudible) docks.
It all took place between
the whole of January and March of '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Somewhere in there,
we did go back to States.
I believe the first liberty I had,
got to come home was October '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) therefore I had
to come home.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] The rest of them included
the Asiatic Pacific Raids that
ended around the 1st of April in Peleliu, (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] The Marianas operation
was to capture Saipan.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] This was June to August of '44.
The battle of the Philippine Sea (inaudible) Guam.
That was all one operation
or engagement that we really got a star for.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) earn 10 battle stars
and I was on there for the last eight.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Starting with,
you have Gilbert Island
going all the way through Okinawa.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay. Now you
mentioned the Battle of Philippine Seas.
What all did you do during that?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, specifically on
19th of June of '44,
we got close to the Japanese Navy,
whatever they had left of it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We shot down four (inaudible)
Japanese planes.
I got credit for one off my 40mm gun.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I painted another rising sun.
I had one rising sun half and another full.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I was credit for one plane.
(inaudible) .
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Now were these Kamikazes
at the point or not?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They weren't too bad.
[Richard Misenhimer] No, they weren't Kamikazes then,
I don't think, right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Okay, then after the Marianas
and Saipan,
just then in Saipan,
just on last day or two before they secured the island,
our soldiers had taken the whole thing
and the Japanese back
to I think the southern end (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] There was a pretty good-sized hill went
up and a cliff that went off into the water.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They were making
all the Japanese civilians
that were still on the island,
(inaudible) jump off that cliff into the ocean.
There was about 200 feet down and probably rocks.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] One woman, I don't know,
she looked to be around
20-25 years old had
a little boy that would've been about three,
lean in, and she was carrying a baby in her arm.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] When they got to the
end of the cliff she just
flung him out and jumped off after him.
I (inaudible) you I couldn't see
that anymore but I still can.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It was bad.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. You actually
saw that happen there,
you know?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] You were closer to shore
where you could see it, yes?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes. That's why I said had
a really bad seat (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] From Saipan then,
we went to the battle of the Philippine Sea
which they called in two days,
I think the 19th to 20th of June of '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We immediately went to Guam
and started bombarding there.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Okay.
[Richard Misenhimer] In July 21st when
they started to bomb.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We captured Guam, we secured Guam.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We immediately went from Guam to Tinian.
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We've been to Tinian before bombarding.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We bombarded for about a month,
the big ones.
Shelled it too, but didn't do much
good because they were dug in.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] From Tinian, we went to
the Western Caroline Island which is Peleliu.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yeah. All of them.
In October we fought and we secured those rocks.
Then we come back to the States.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] As for (inaudible) after that was over.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay, now the Indianapolis
got hit by Kamikazes some time that was later, was it?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. I'm not trying to
get ahead of the story,
but tell me about going back to the States.
Where did you come back to in the States?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] When?
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, when and where?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Came back to San Francisco.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay, and that
would have been in the fall of '44 or some time?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] October of '44.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We went to dry dock for repairs,
upgrade the radar and stuff on it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Got to go home on two weeks' leave.
[Richard Misenhimer] You got to go home did you?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] That was the first time
I had been home since
I left in February of '44, I mean of '43.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah. February of '43, right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, you know,
I went home at the end of boot camp.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay. All right.
Yeah, okay.
Now had the Indianapolis
suffered any damage up to now?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We got hit by one (inaudible)
three shells I guess,
hit the smokestack real bad. Saipan.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] A guy on one of the
five-inch guns which are nearby
got hit by shrapnel in his hip.
He got a purple heart.
Then we would ask him
(inaudible) where he's going to wear his purple heart.
Told him not to be sitting on it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
That came hurting worse than shrapnel.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] That side of being hit
or anything or a small firearm,
would probably got hit by 50 caliber.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) rifle or something
from time to time.
That was real bad.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. Though let me digress a minute.
You walk across
the equator on the way down right?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] All right.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you cross the equator?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes.
[Richard Misenhimer] Did you have any kind of
ceremony when you did that?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Very short because
we didn't have the whole day,
and all the stuff that usually goes with it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We had other business.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. All right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I don't need to remember exactly.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. But go ahead.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) or something to
get my mind going again.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] (inaudible) caused it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. Tell me about in San Francisco,
you had some overhaul on the ship.
Just the general maintenance is that what it was?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Yes. They upgraded their radar.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] older type, popping on the new radar.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Things like that.
[Richard Misenhimer] All right. Then when
you got back from your leave, what happened?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Okay we had been living in (inaudible).
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Mare Island,
while they worked on the ship.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We got back from leave probably
about two weeks before we moved back on ship.
Shortly after that, we took off again.
for the South Pacific.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. This would have been
the spring of '45 now, right?
Or it was on the '44? When would this have been?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Early '45.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I'm trying to think
where we went to before we went to
Guam and then up to Iwo Jima.
We participated in raids against Honshu
and (inaudible),
whatever, on the mainland in Japan.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Early in February,
we were escorting ships.
Their planes went off to carriers and bombed and
strafed Honshu back then.
[Richard Misenhimer] You all didn't get close enough to
bombard it yourself though?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] No. We went in
about 30 miles from Honshu.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, that's pretty close.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] While we were doing that raid,
the aircraft carrier, Franklin,
was hit by a suicide plane
with a bomb and was almost sunk.
It was sitting there dead in the water.
Another ship tied onto it,
and we towed it back.
I guess they went home from Iwo Jima,
but we stayed back and helped fight
off airplanes and suicide planes.
They were pretty much in the mix by then
[Richard Misenhimer] Right.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] When we got back to Iwo Jima, we stayed.
They took Franklin home,
I suppose (inaudible) I don't know where to.
We started bombarding Iwo Jima
and did the landing
on the 15th or 19th for that year.
[Richard Misenhimer] February 15th, I think.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They secured the island,
I think, the 6th of March.
[Richard Misenhimer] It says here February 19th,
they started at Iwo Jima.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] From the range finder
on the morning of the 22nd,
I saw them put the flag up on top of Mount Suribachi.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, did you? Tell me about that.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Okay. We had been
bombarding about halfway up the mountain that morning.
They told us to hold off
on bombarding because some of our soldiers,
the Marines, were going up the mountain.
We were standing at ease watching for it.
I saw them raise the flag.
My division commander
was down in the plotting room,
and I was on the range finder on the eight-inch gun.
I asked him, "Lieutenant,
have they secured the island?"
He said, "Lebow, you know better than that,
they haven't secured it yet.
Why do you ask?"
I said, "Well, they just raised the flag
on top of Mount Suribachi."
He said, "The hell
they did," and then I said, "Yeah."
I don't know if they
verified it from the bridge or whatever,
but in a little, they passed
word from the bridge that the flag had been raised.
We hadn't secured the island,
but we had an American flag
flying on top of Mount Suribachi.
Everybody on the ship must have hollered
because you could have heard it more than a mile away.
Anyway, that was the original flag-raising.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, the first flag, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I didn't know they were
going to have it reenacted,
a picture taken, and everything.
I didn't see the one where they took
a picture of it and everything.
I saw the original one.
[Richard Misenhimer] That's interesting.
How long were you there bombarding
Iwo Jima then?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] We started bombarding at least two
weeks before they landed.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They were dug in that mountain.
They said that up on the side of the mountain,
it looked like a beehive.
They had little compartments with
windows and stuff opening out and facing the ocean,
on the side where people could land.
The ones that landed said
it looked like fireflies up there,
when they were shooting at them.
They said they could go from the top of
that mountain all the way
down to ground level and underground,
and they could get out of the mountain.
They were really dug in and everything.
A marine lieutenant from Lakeview, Texas,
which is 12 miles from here in Hall County,
was the commanding officer of one of the details
of Marines that raised the flag,
one of his guys was in that bunch.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] He had gotten shot. The lieutenant
himself had gotten shot in the food the day before,
and they had taken him out to
a hospital ship to doctor his foot that day.
They may have let him go back on
the island to go up there and see the flag.
He's still alive.
They live down there in Abilene, Texas.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
I'd like to get his name after a while.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Okay. That same morning,
later after they raised the flag,
one of our ammunition ships got blew up.
It got hit by a kamikaze plane.
They got them right there.
They were running the ammunition to Iwo Jima,
and a suicide plane hit it.
Of course, it blew up.
It was the biggest 4th of July fireworks I ever saw.
After I got back home, the next time,
I found out that one of my best friends
from Abernathy High was on that ship.
He got hit. In fact,
he was the son of the agriculture teacher
at Abernathy school.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, yeah, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] He was a good friend.
I'm glad that I didn't know at
the time that he was on it because
I would've been real
depressed out there trying to find him.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] He wasn't there. After we
got through with Iwo Jima,
we went to Okinawa then.
About the middle of March,
we started bombarding it.
On the 31st of March,
the day before they landed,
they landed on April 1st,
we got hit by a suicide plane.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. How did that happen?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, I had been on watch from midnight,
four o'clock that night.
If you stood watch on that shift,
you didn't have to get up and go to GQ.
You could sleep in until eight o'clock.
I was still in my bunk,
but the guys that went to general quarters,
they're secured from it and were down eating breakfast.
All of a sudden, they sounded general quarters again,
so everybody took off topside again.
They said they
didn't know where the plane came from,
well, from Okinawa, I guess,
because they had a lot of them there
in places that we couldn't get to.
Anyway, one of the guys that was on
the 20-millimeter anti-aircraft gun
was the only one that got
back to his gun and fired a few shots at it.
The plane hit us right on the side of
the ship and had a 500-pound bomb under each wing.
One of them went down through the ship.
It went through the dining hall
or galley and through
the sleeping quarters down below it.
The other one went down outside.
The one that went through the ship blew up
after it went out the hull of the ship.
It made a pretty big gash in it.
It blew up our freshwater generator.
It killed nine guys
that were in the mess hall
sitting there in the table eating.
Their table would have been at
the outside edge of the ship, at the hull.
I was in my bunk just in
the next compartment over when that went through.
I was probably 25 feet
away from where the bomb went through.
Thankfully, it didn't blow up then,
and it went on out.
That one guy that I said were shooting,
he had his 20-millimeter gun.
About a foot,
I guess of the tip of the wing of
that plane broke off over
the gun thing and went into
the gun tub with him and broke his leg.
He was the only guy topside that got hurt.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It sounds like a weird coincidence.
[Richard Misenhimer] Yeah, that is.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] That particular gun tub
was one that I maintained,
the director on it,
the shields, and everything on it.
I had to clean up the mess in it and everything.
I got part of the wing,
aluminum, and took it back to the workshop.
A bunch of the guys cut it up and made
some bracelets out of it.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, yeah.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] I started to make a bracelet,
but never did get
it finished, and I brought it home with me.
The next time I went on leave,
I don't know if I left it on
purpose or accidentally left it,
whatever, anyway, but I left it at home.
I still have that piece of that suicide plane.
[Richard Misenhimer] Oh, okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] A little piece of (inaudible)
about an inch-and-a-half wide,
maybe four inches long.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. This bomb that went
clear through the ship,
it didn't hit the armor plating then, right?
It was above the armor plating?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Well, it went out through
the armor plating,
or I guess below the armor plating.
(inaudible) where it hit us would've been
inside the ship about maybe 8-10 feet.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Then it went down through the decks.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] Then out through the bottom,
so I guess armor plating wouldn't
have been that far down the bottom.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay. It came out
under the water then?
[Cleatus A. Lebow] It exploded under the
water after it got out of the ship.
[Richard Misenhimer] Okay.
[Cleatus A. Lebow] They sent underwater.