[Floyd Cox] This is Floyd Cox of
the Admiral Nimitz Museum in Fredericksburg, Texas.
I'm here interviewing Arwin J.
Bowden for the Nimitz Museum oral history program.
I'm interviewing Mr. Bowden in order to attain
his recollections of the war in
the Pacific during the Second World War.
The interview is taking place on March the 9th,
year 2000 in San Antonio.
Mr. Bowden, could you tell us a little bit
about your background, where you were born,
and when you were born? (noise)
[Arwin J. Bowden] I was born on September the 18th of
1923 in Wichita Falls, Texas.
My dad was helping build the waterworks there in
Wichita Falls at the time and we lived out on
the old petroleum road
on the eastern side of Wichita Falls,
and he also had a fairly good sized garden,
call it a truck farm,
and sold fresh produce to the people in Wichita Falls.
Then we moved out to Wheeler,
Texas and he worked on
the waterworks out at Magic City, I believe it was.
Then in 1926, 1927,
my uncle died there in northeastern in
Wilbarger County and left
her wife and eight kids and a farm.
We moved in and dad bought the farm adjacent to my aunt
and oversaw the farming
of both farms for a number of years.
I went to school at Elliott, Texas.
Up in that county is commonly
called the Bug Scuffle community.
[Floyd Cox] Bug Scuffle?
[Arwin J. Bowden] Bug Scuffle. (laughing) In fact,
we'll have another Elliott reunion
the first weekend in August of year 2000.
The Bowden family is trying to coordinate that reunion.
Then I graduated from Oakley Union High School in
1941 and went and started school down at Hardin College,
which is now Midwestern University in Wichita Falls.
I helped my brother-in-law who lives south of Jolly.
Jasper Williams helped him harvest the grain and
plow the 200 and
some odd acres of farmland that he had down there.
Then I go into the trade school there at Hardin College.
I learned to operate machine tools
and acetylene and arc welding.
I thought I'd go to work in the Defense department
down maybe at North American down at Grand Prairie.
I moved down to Fort Worth and
then after three or four months and nobody
wanted to talk to me because I was 18 and
couldn't pass the physical to go
into the industrial world.
My boss, I was working parking
some cars at the parking lot in Downtown Fort Worth.
My boss was an ex marine and he spent
a lot of time introducing me to
the recruiting depots over in Dallas and in Fort Worth.
Of course, he spent a little bit of time telling me
all about the dress blue uniform too.
[Floyd Cox] The pretty part?
[Arwin J. Bowden] Yeah, the pretty part of it.
Finally, I decided that
I wasn't going to get into the industrial world,
so I enlisted in the Marine Corps in May the 8th of 1942.
We were sent to San Diego.
From Wilbarger County up in
the lush farming land of Northern Texas,
it was quite a shock to wake
up on the TNP railway of West of
(inaudible) and then out in
the Greece wood and sand dunes and everything out there.
(laughing) In El Paso,
we didn't see anything but the railway there
for our layover there.
It was, I guess,
20 years before I got back in El Paso,
but I remembered El Paso del Norte as a stinky,
dusty, smelly little old
Mexican town as far as I was concerned.
It wasn't anything famous about El Paso.
Anyway, we got into San Diego and by
way of Los Angeles and problems there.
But I was assigned to a platoon
395 and in the Recruit Depot at San Diego.
After quite a struggle, well,
we made it through that part of the indoctrination.
I figured we were all going
into an infantry company is somewhere
some kind because they were filling out
the bottom end of the second Marine Division.
They had us lined up
and ask us what we wanted to do in all this.
They said marine aviation communications?
I said, well, that's good enough and I stepped forward.
(laughing) The next next thing I knew I was in
radio school there on the base in San Diego.
Finally graduated from that and was assigned
to Company D of the second Pioneer Battalion.
That was my APO address for some time.
[Floyd Cox] Let me ask you, what did you
learn in Radio school, Morse code or?
[Arwin J. Bowden] Well, yes, International Morse code.
We had flagged sim 4,
we had telephone basics,
electronic basics, electrical basics.
We learned, we had the past 15 words a
minute to get out of the radio school.
Then but later on,
as proficiency got a little better while in New Zealand,
I helped to put out a battalion newspaper by copying from
the trading language stations
in the KFS in San Francisco, I believe it was.
[Floyd Cox] Yeah.
[Arwin J. Bowden] But anyway, we sailed on the President Monroe,
it was his one of the Madison liners
somewhere along 1st of November of 1942.
If I recall,
the President Monroe could handle about 825,
850 paying passengers and
we had over 3,000 Marines on the thing.
[Floyd Cox] Wow, that's close quarters.
[Arwin J. Bowden] Yes, it was.
Of course, we could quickly
overrun the sanitary facilities.
They built a sheet iron buildings up on
the deck and slanted
the trough and pumped seawater through 24 hours.
(laughing) Somewhere along the line,
old Lee V. Powell,
who was the original lone ranger,
it was in our outfit,
and he wrote a masterpiece,
that stinking port side had.
But I may still have a copy of it somewhere,
but I haven't seen it lately.
But it was a dandy.
We landed in Wellington, New Zealand.
After a direct run from San Diego,
we didn't stop anywhere,
we were convoy all the
way and ran straight to Wellington.
Then we were moved out to Peacock or Achy
over on the west coast of the the North Island,
about 30 miles out of Wellington.
[Floyd Cox] Let me ask you, did you know where you were headed?
Once you were in New Zealand,
did you know what your objective is going to be?
[Arwin J. Bowden] Had no idea when we left San Diego where we were going.
We never did know where we were going.
(laughing) We just loaded up and went.
(laughing) We built the camps for
the three infantry regiments,
the 2nd, 8th, and 6th.
Maybe up here to put it in numerical order,
2nd, 6th, and 8th Infantry Regiment.
Then we built our camp up in
the hills and we called it a Camp Judford.
We were there, we built it,
I guess, at long early part of either-
I'm going to say probably January of 43.
We built our camp up in
the hills and that's where we stayed until we
left New Zealand and
along with the 1st of November of 1943,
we load it out and I was assigned to the part of
the party called shore party and these
were people who handled
the material as they were being landed on the island.
All of the material is coming in, supplies,
that sort of thing, landed on the beach
and the short party tried to handle all that.
Being communicators, the only thing
we had to worry about was getting the radios,
telephones setup along the and
we had the job of communicating back to the ships
and letting the ships know what we needed and where we
needed it and they had their (inaudible) each beach.
We left Wellington, New Zealand and went up to
the hybrid ease and set
around there for a few days and then
left in a big convoy and headed to the Gilbert.
Well, when after we had
headed to the Gilbert and we got out,
I don't know, two or three days or so out,
well, they told us where we were going.
We were going to the Gilbert Islands
and we called it Tarawa,
a toll and Betio in particular,
that was the island that had
their ship on it and that's what we needed.
We needed we were eating the airstrip on
Betio and the Japs hadn't quite finished the air field,
but they certainly had finished all of
their or most all of their reinforcement in
defense of the island and I've always wondered whether or
not the Japanese learn
a lot from our defense of Wake Island.
When they started setting up the defenses on Betio.
I always wondered that
I think maybe they learn more than we did.
But I was assigned to the third battalion,
second marines and our job was the radio team that I was
with they had landing and Hudson and myself,
were the radio people and I see
a Landing was a corporal and Hudson and
myself were private first-class and we load it
out from ownership on
the landing craft and headed in about,
we were supposed to land at 9 o'clock,
but Japanese got firing back at us,
which we didn't think
that they were going to be able to after
the enormous naval bombardment and aerial bombardment,
we didn't think that they'd be able to do much.
In fact, we thought maybe that
the Navy is going to shift
we are seeing some ice cream
about middle of the mornings.
[Cox Floyd] You had a rude awakening that was.
[Arwin J. Bowden] That was a rude awakening and the tabs were very low and
the boat that I was in
hit the reef and
an amphibious tractor came alongside and as about,
I don't know, 20 hours or so all floated off
the boat and of course we
had to keep our radio team together.
The three of us had stayed together,
so that we'd have all the parts
because each one of us was
carrying an essential part of the radio station.
[Cox Floyd] Was this one the first wave?
[Arwin J. Bowden] We were in the third wave.
We were third wave and by that time the Japanese
had been able to
reorganize after the bombardment and they,
they came up and laid it on us.
We had it in
our landing area was
designated about middle of the beach on the red one,
which are tried in the throat or the upside down
bird and we got probably within,
we were being fired on all the way in from
about 900 or a 1000 yards out.
Then when we got in close to 200 yards,
so from the beach, we really called it then.
We were all most of the water's edge
and either 77 or 37 Carlson the port
side and we were dead in the water and shot
a bunch of people who have
big shelves coming through the alligator.
People were getting blown old pieces.
I jumped out on the starboard side of the craft
and landed in maybe probably maybe need deep,
water, something like that.
About that time, the whole tank
exploded in the fire everywhere.
So I tried to get underwater
and there wasn't much water to get under.
My clothes were about all burned off of me.
I still had my shoes,
my leg and zone but
the modern Greece and over pretty well burn off.
I had second, third degree burns.
My face and my arms, my back,
both legs had shrapnel all over me
and I had a piece of shrapnel hit
me in the left buttocks
and traveled about a foot up through me
and then I hit between
the shoulder blades with a piece of shrapnel back,
bounced off of my office
go on the right side of the head.
Then I had a piece hit me in the left arm,
went through and bounced off my elbow and
bone and left a pretty good scar there for
awhile and then got to suffocate under the water.
So came up to get a breath air and I still in the fire,
went back under and moves a little further out.
I don't know how far it went out.
I'm just trying to get out of the fire.
[Cox Floyd] Right.
[Arwin J. Bowden] Came up and take a big gulp and went back underneath,
I said, "Hey, they're no fire there."
So I I come back up and I could breathe a little bit.
But there's so much smoke and fire and
the water was a fire
where the fuel from a tractor had spilled out.
It gave me a lot of cover and the men are sitting duck.
Otherwise, I'm right out in the open.
But there was another Amtrak about, I don't know,
200 yards out to look like it hadn't
burned and so I started working
my way up toward it and hiding
behind everything anything is floating in the water,
try to move over and hide behind it
a little bit and go into shell holds,
rest a little bit if it had something to hide behind.
There is much of floats
them everything you could think of in the water.
[Cox Floyd] Right.
[Arwin J. Bowden] I made it on out to the tractor and
eventually there were six of
us got behind the tractor out there.
Both the name of Missouri,
the roads, castle,
coronet, Libian and myself.
There are six of us wound up out there
behind the amphibious tractor
that hadn't burned and we were pinned down.
We were out in the open.
Then there's no way that we'd go anywhere.
[Cox Floyd] Let me ask you this, you probably all about teenagers,
weren't you, 18, 19 years old?
[Arwin J. Bowden] I had turned 20 in September and this was November 20th
and I don't know after a couple hours away.
We look in under the tractor and we
could actually see the Japanese defenders in
the seawall and one time I thought I was
close enough and I recognized him if I met him
on the street (laughing).
We weren't 100 yards.
I don't think 100 yards,
we might have been a little further than that.
But anyway, we were pinned down there in Missouri,
decided he was going to try to make it out to
attract a little further out and
he took off trying to run through the deep water or so,
and he might have made 50 feet
and they hit him with automatic fire from both sides.
His body was still floating
face down at sunset that evening,
right out there in front of us.
When it started to get
dark when we started trying to move out,
Castle and Rhode had both died
before noon and (inaudible) was dead.
I just left Levy and Crunet and myself.
Levy had a piece arrival stock about an inch square,
driven in the back of his left thigh in the explosion.
Then he also had
45 caliber holes that
it had exploded in the fire and they were deeply
embedded in his right thigh.
Then (noise) Crunet,
I believe it was his right leg was crushed.
I don't know what happened to him,
but it was of no value to him.
He had to swim or drag-along wherever he went.
But then it started getting dark when we
(noise) moved out and got
fired on and driven back
into the tractor and then the Jap
started coming out on the reef and
they were shooting and barinating everything that moved.
Corpse, everything else out there.
One of them came up each side of
the tractor and Levy grabbed
the one over on the port side and he killed him.
But in the process he got his hands cut up pretty bad
and he got hold of the Jap bayonet.
One of the guys that were dead
had his rifle and there's
(inaudible) had the bayonet fixed on it.
When I became aware of
the Jap coming up on the starboard side,
I hit him with a bayonet and then I took off.
I have time to leave
because there's some others coming after it.
[Floyd Cox] You bet.
[Arwin J. Bowden] I made it a few feet out there and
there's light machine gun gotten down on me and it
looked like it was going to cut me all into pieces
and fill in a shell hole and he quit firing.
I got to move on out
after a bit and got out to another tractor.
I still had my cable and my knife.
I said, well, I got to
find out if there's anything or anybody up here.
I went up side of that tractor.
Talking and beating on
the side of it with a knife as I went,
but there wasn't anybody at home but
I got in and searched around, there was nobody.
There weren't any bodies even in that tractor.
I searched around on the bottom and found
a little package of rock hard candy.
To say this was close to midnight
and we'd been in the water since 9:30 that morning.
I also found a belt in plate and tight belts.
I took it and the candy
and went back into the water and I
could hear a boat open up the way.
I headed out toward the sound I could hear.
I didn't know how far out,
but he was out beyond the edge of the reef.
Just about the time we got to the deep water,
Crunet came along and he and I both got on this belt.
When we inflated it,
only one side of the thing would inflate.
But anyway, it is enough to keep us both afloat.
We moved on out.
I don't remember, the landing ship but it wasn't an LST.
But anyways, one of the smaller ones that
landed tanks and such.
There was a big SAR299 radio
was on there that I had operated down in New Zealand.
There was an old boy from Texas on every one of
our truck drivers second battalion,
he was on board.
They locked us over and we picked up Levy.
We were over on the right-hand side of the pier and near
(inaudible) I think that's the name of
the sunken ship that the
British had sunk the ship couple of years before.
The day the D plus one,
the Japs had some machine guns setup
in that old sunken ship.
I think Eddie Albert was
telling quite a bit about that when he
was running around in his salvage boat,
picking up bodies and
checking the tractors that was
floating out the sea and all that.
I think he was part of
the return to Kerala
50 years afterwards or whatever it was.
Anyway, they took us
past the end of the period over
to the destroyer Ringo that
was sitting over on the left side of the pier that
had been hit three different times
with the Japanese artillery.
They took us into
sick bay and patch this up as best they could.
I had maybe five or six (inaudible)
on my stomach and had that maybe or more on my back.
(noise) It looked like
somebody had taken a writing "thunder" at (crosstalk)
[Floyd Cox] (inaudible)
[Arwin J. Bowden] Those machine gun bullets
that before I fell in that hole out there on the reef,
that old boy, just my razor cut me into
half and he was close
enough and he didn't not going to (inaudible)
on my stomach and my back.
Anyway, they patched us up and in the next morning,
they loaded the cell phone,
another landing craft and took us out to USS Dorian.
There we got some additional medical attention.
That island waiver must have been two miles.
It was a terrible smell.
It was awful.
I know the guy that owned the island itself,
they complained about it being so stinky,
and hot and that's the rollers right on the equator.
[Floyd Cox] Right.
[Arwin J. Bowden] I wish you could have talked
to Marshall Jones.
Marshall, he was in 18
that landed the morning
of D plus one and they took a beating.
They really took a beating.
Marshall works for the telephone company,
and I guess I'd worked with Marshall for five years
before I ever knew he was in 2nd Division.
He has since passed away and it's buried up to Blanco.
Then we made a run of
about 23-24 miles from the Gilbert's into Hilo,
Hawaii and offloaded those that were not wounded,
and then offloaded those people,
and then the rest of us they took up to
Navy number 10 at Pearl Harbor on Aiea Heights.
As a battleship man told me when I
was back there in Hawaii and 86 as well,
I spent a couple of months,
up here in Navy number ten,
all he said, yeah, that's my life sick bay
on the battleship.
(laughing) I said, yeah,
but it was pretty good side of placement house up there.
(laughing) While we were there at Navy number ten,
those hours that were ambulatory that could,
we were farmed up
out on the little parade ground that we had out there,
and Admiral Nimitz came out and made a speech and
then some of the officers he didn't,
but the officers that came
along pin the purple hard on us.
But didn't get to see Admiral Nimitz at one time.
[Floyd Cox] Let me ask you this,
what was your impression of him?
That one impression?
[Arwin J. Bowden] I thought he was just easygoing.
He wasn't a more of a nut.
He wasn't real agitated or anything like that.
He just to common easy-going feller that
didn't didn't impress me as
being over aggressive or anything like that.
[Floyd Cox] Or impressed with himself.
[Arwin J. Bowden] No.
[Floyd Cox] Like MacArthur might've been.
[Arwin J. Bowden] Those two guys were absolutely
totally different as far as I could see.
If maybe I shouldn't say it,
but if I'd had the PR staff at MacArthur had,
I'd probably been the most over rated
PFC in the Marine Corp.
(laughing) But that's beside the point to.
[Floyd Cox] No. (laughing) It's fact though.
[Arwin J. Bowden] Of course, after MacArthur went back to the Philippines,
the Marine Corps had a
155 of artillery outfit that went along with them.
This was published in some of the Marine Corps papers,
they had a sign out in front of
their 155 headquarters (laughing) or so.
It says, by grace of God and a few Marines,
MacArthur came back to the Philippines.
(laughing) You got me off on it on a subject.
That's this part of the war
(crosstalk) in the South Pacific.
But anyway after,
let's say we got into Pearl about
the 5th to 7th of December,
and the I was in the Navy hospital there until
mid January and they
dug out some of the stuff and patched me up,
and treated the burns
and had to take
a new picture of me and all that sort of thing.
[Floyd Cox] Let me regress a little bit.
When you had all these wounds and you're out there
on the wreck the Amtrak,
did you have any morphine or any kind of?
[Arwin J. Bowden] Nothing.
[Floyd Cox] Just cut it out.
[Arwin J. Bowden] The only thing you could do.
It's surprising how clearly you can think,
and how clear your mind is,
even though you beat all the pieces and you
wonder a couple of times there I faded off that.
I just wondered if I was going to
just die right there. I didn't know.
No, we didn't have morphine
to even give the guys that were beat up
a whole lot worse than I.
I thought I was pretty fortunate,
compared to the Levy and Quinnette,
and of course the cars on roads and Missouri,
they were dead by noon.
As far as I know,
we had 13 men communications section and
a 20 men group that they
were to act as security and unloaders,
and this thing on the beach,
and as far as I know,
Levy and Quinnette,
and myself were the only survivors out of 33 men.
[Floyd Cox] That is a high casualty rate.
[Arwin J. Bowden] Well, there's no good reason why it wasn't 100 percent.
Because they had every chance
in the world to kill all three of us too.
But after staying couple
of months at Pearl Harbor, Navy number ten,
sent me out to (laughing) the replacement depo,
we call it the Dust Bowl and I think it is now
the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
Anyway, I was out there waiting
for the transportation back
to the unit down on the big island.
Went back down there and rejoin the unit,
and a couple of days
after I got back down there, they made me corporal.
Man, I'll make a $64 a month.
That has a high cup. (laughing)
[Floyd Cox] Then we worked there.
We the Second Battalion work the peers.
We were doing stevedores.
In fact, we're doing most of the guys were,
I was still in the communications end of the thing.
We set up that will be the 72 switchboard.
We set it up in one of the gun towers.
We were actually quartered in an old PW camp.
They're just out of Hilo.
Then we went up to camp, draw up on
the other end of the island known as side of Monica.
We trained up there for the next operation.
We set up a PA system and telephone radio system.
Therefore, a British officer who came in and
demonstrated the light tank with a flame thrower on it.
This thing could throw a flight,
a stream of burning napalm, a 140-yard.
That was scary for me because I
hadn't been three or four months.
I've been burned up pretty good and the flames.
I didn't relish fooling with that thing.
But anyway, we loaded it out,
we maneuvered off from the island and
landed on the island of Maui and practiced landings.
Then we went from there to
any way talk in the Marshall Islands.
Then from the Marshall Islands,
we went to the Marianas and in the interim,
(noise) I was called
by the ship when we've got the lever,
had gone out on the beach to Honolulu,
and then we got back to the ship.
I was called out and went reported
to lieutenant Sebastian Minsky.
This old boy have been
on the Fordham University football team.
He was a big rascal.
His face was big as both mine put together.
But anyway, we went out to the Dust Bowl and picked up
an 81-millimeter mortar platoon that
these kids had just come out of the state,
say they were raw recruits,
had very little training in
mortars and I didn't know anything about a motor.
I was at communicating.
(crosstalk) Without radio and telephone,
man I didn't know anything about more,
but what the heck.
Anyway, we took these guys board ship
and wet nurse them all the way up
to Saipan and we've got Saipan
and we were still aboard ship with the smarter people.
We finally went down the nets, the web.
Some of the wounded were already main,
brought back board ship.
We were still on board.
We find it with them.
We were out here circling around,
waiting to go in.
Here's this radio man
out there with a bunch of mortar people.
They're not supposed to be in charge as well.
[Arwin J. Bowden] An urn at 64 dollars.
[Floyd Cox] I was fixing to earn it.
I'll guarantee. (laughing) We went from there.
While I was searching around out there with the motor
soon here came a captain skiff
of speed boat running off and run me down.
It was ordered to board this speed boat
and it seems that
they wanted me go back to communications.
We went over and there was
an amphibious tractor sitting out there waiting on me.
When I got there, there was
about five other guys on board and they had
their radio gear and some water and then it got me.
(laughing) We made a while run into the beach and we
landed just about the junction
of green one and red three.
We hit the beach and he ran us crosses
the Sheraton canola airstrip was just in
there 50 yards and he took his clear across
the airstrip and into a little brushy area over there.
[Arwin J. Bowden] You were on this track (inaudible)
[Floyd Cox] I was on the old amphibia,
what we call the alligator.
Now they had some little different versions
that were called Buffalo.
Then they had some,
they started arming of this and put in here
a lot heavier armor on
these amphibious tractors later on.
He ran as clear across
the strip and dropped us in this little brushy area
over there and sweetly
ask us to get off his craft in a hurry.
(laughing) in so many words.
We unloaded and we looked around
their friend they ain't
no marine on that side of the airstrip.
We decided the best thing for us to do is
grab her gear and head back across
airstrip and get back
over where we had some friendly as over there.
Sure enough, there's a couple of snipers
out there that are working on us.
None of us got hit but we lost two,
five-gallon jerry cans full of water,
taken hits and we lost those.
Some of our clothing was hit.
We had bullet holes through
our clothes through her trousers.
But we got in and then we set up our radio there.
Then after so long time or we moved on up,
they pulled us off the beat.
We were taking quite a few casualties in
the infantry regiments and they
moved the special troop off the beach.
We had pretty well secured the beach and everything
was supplies were coming
in and we were in pretty good shape there.
They took us in our radios and we went on up with
inventory under the mount to patch
up with a little mountain in the middle of the island.
There's 1,500-2,000 feet up.
We fool around there for a few days and then we went back
on the west side and went into the city of Garapan,
which was the capital of the Northern Marianas.
The Japanese had blown the thing
old pieces and there was bills,
sea mens intersection to
the streets and we had a lot of snipers
and we got in
to checking out some sellers and person paying the other.
Man I ran into
a complete set of hand-painted channel dishes.
I wish I'd had a way to get them back home.
(laughing) I had a rifle, no radio, no.
I didn't have any way of doing it.
But the first night that was spent in Garapan,
we set a radio up in a concrete building.
That was a Japanese barrier crypt.
They had shelves all the way
around and had earned setting placement.
We set up our radio in there.
Then the 27th army division cut a cross-section,
took over the front lines.
About I don't know
where the middle of the afternoon and we fell
back half mile or
a mile back and about two o'clock in the morning,
the Japanese made their final run at us.
They overran the army front lines.
They are 10th marine,
were supporting the army.
They were armies artillery.
We lost 105 artillery pieces in that blast.
We were back in line pretty quickly
by daylight where we were already back up into the land.
From there to the north end of the island,
it was kill or be killed.
That was all there was to it.
It was probably half a mile area right north of
where the 27th front lines
where there's probably 3,000
dead bodies along through there.
They just took bulldozers, trenches along this.
Same bulldozers just pushed the bodies off
into those trenches and covered them up.
Then we went on up to the north end of the island
and we gave them some of them surrendered,
some of them wouldn't, and those wouldn't, should have.
But we saw some of the Japanese.