I was aboard the destroyer USS The Sullivans (This ship is correctly titled USS The Sullivans, the only navy vessel with "The" in its name) in the South Pacific. It was commissioned and named in honor of the five Sullivan brothers from Iowa who all perished when their ship, the USS Juneau was sunk during the Naval Battle for Guadalcanal. This destroyer was 330 feet long stem to stern . We had about 330 guys on board. So, we always said we got a foot for every guy. It was the only destroyer in the fleet that had a marking on its #1 stack – it had a shamrock for the Sullivan brothers. They were Irish and this was the only ship in the fleet that was allowed to carry any distinguishing feature. When The Sullivans was put into service out of Mare Island, California, the Navy assigned as many guys with the name of Sullivan to it as they could find who were not related in any way to each other. There were 66 men on board by the name of Sullivan! When I got on board there were about 300 men on that ship who hadn’t had their feet on dry land for  a year so. They were kind of a "different breed." That’s pretty confined quarters for any length of time.

Our overall mission was to knock off as many Japanese as we could and to win the war. My tin can (destroyer) was part of one of the four task forces in the South Pacific. A task force was made up of several carriers, a battleship or two, a cruiser or two and seven to eight destroyers. I was a third class petty officer and a sonar man.  At times, USS The Sullivans was part of a picket ship network during the battle for Okinawa. It was our job to use radar to locate kamikazes and to warn other ships in time for them to be shot down. We always liked to think that we helped to win the war. We shot down about ten planes, and we had a couple of sub assists in sinking enemy subs. We just gave a lot of cover and protection to our task force. So we’d like to think we had something to do with winning the war.

 When we were in the Pacific and in the battle zone, this was what we did: we went to general quarters (battle stations) and shot down Japanese planes. I was a sonar man and I worked with the sound gear. We tracked subs and sank them. Typical day? Why, that was kind of a typical day! You’d have calls to general quarters and you’d try to eat something in between.   When you’d get a little bit of peace, then you’d tried to get a little sleep. Every day wasn’t like that, they were all different, but after a while, why, they all just run together. You put them all together and maybe one day was a little different from the next.

 We didn’t have any telephones out there and the only way you could communicate was by letter. I didn’t get many letters because they didn’t catch up with us very often. We didn’t get to enjoy any holidays. Instead of a nice Thanksgiving turkey we had mutton stew. The mutton came from Australia and it was pretty terrible. By the time they retired us from the Okinawa campaign we weren’t getting any fresh supplies and we were just about to run out of food. It was slim pickings. It got to the point that the flour had weevils (bugs) in it. Have you ever eaten a piece of bread that looks like it has poppy seeds in it?  Ours weren’t poppy seeds – they were weevils. That didn’t hurt you though, you could eat it. You could pick out the weevils or just put some butter on it.

 During battle I did a lot of praying, whenever I got a chance. You can pray and you can pray silently when you’re doing other things. That was the greatest outlet that I had for my fear. I was scared. The fear you had all along was fear of death. That was certainly a real fear. When they’re shooting at you and shells are popping all over the place and bombs are dropping everywhere, death would be your biggest fear. After all, there were a lot of guys who didn’t make it. One early Sunday morning about 6 AM during the five month battle for Okinawa, we got up when we were called to general quarters. My bunk was way in the back part of the ship, so I didn’t have to go very far to get up the ladder and to find out what was going on. I got up and looked out and there was the USS Bunker Hill, an aircraft carrier, which had been hit by two kamikazes. Everything was just exploding over there. We went over to help however we could. We fished about 170 guys out of the water who had to jump off the ship or, you might say, "get cremated"! They had turned the ship into the wind, so the flames were blowing to the aft of the ship and those guys had no place to go but jump into the water, and so they jumped. If they didn’t break a leg or something jumping off we fished them out.   There’s an old wives tale – they say you don’t have to worry about sharks if there are a lot of explosions going on.  One of the things I learned that day is that isn’t so. In the South Pacific blood attracts a lot of sharks. So we saw a lot of them get. . .well, it was a messy situation, but we were able to fish about 170 guys out of the water.

 The one picture that still sticks in my mind from the battles was that of a plane flying over and all the shots from the ship going off. It just looked like one massive hailstorm. That’s the best way of describing it. The shells dropping in the water and exploding in the air and everything.  It kind of looks like a hailstorm mixed in with a great big Fourth of July celebration. It was a vivid scene, all right! The only thing you could think of was those weren’t firecrackers going off. All that looked like hail coming down in the water were shells, bones and stuff like that. I guess that’s the best way I can describe that.

 The funniest thing I remember was the favorite sport of the captain of our destroyer, who was quite a marksman. He liked to shoot fish with his carbine. Have you ever tried to shoot a fish as it comes streaking out of the water? I mean that was about the funniest thing I can think of because every once in a while, he’d hit it! Trying to shoot fish with a gun is funny to me, but he did it, and he’d even hit them every once in a while! He’d just raise a lot of Cain (I mean noise) when he’d shoot at them with his carbine.

I guess the thing I’m most proud of is that the good Lord gave me the ability to serve on board the ship The Sullivans. He protected me the whole way through. With God’s help, I was able to come through it alive! My experiences in World War Two gave me that kind of thanksgiving to the Lord that He brought me through World War Two. I just tried to live my life from that time on in kind of a grateful manner.

Fighting the war was worth it. You always hate to see someone get killed but by the same token, the Japanese attacked us. They made a big mistake.   Later it came out that the admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor attack (he was killed later on in the war) said that he was certainly sorry because he aroused a sleeping giant! When they bombed Pearl Harbor there wasn’t anything else to do:  Just like when you run into a big bully.  You could be a lot smaller than him but if he starts hitting you, why, you don’t sit back and take it before you start fighting back. And that’s what we did. I think it was worth it – the war in Europe as well as in the Pacific.  Why, if we didn’t fight back, maybe none of us would be here today. I always said that I admired Harry Truman because he caught a lot of flak for dropping those A-bombs. Every time I hear somebody getting mad at him because he dropped them, I always say; "Well, look at me because I probably wouldn’t be here today if he wouldn’t have dropped the A-bombs."

When we were heading back to the states, the war wasn’t over yet. It was over before we went back out to sea. Our orders were to go back to Japan. If it hadn’t been for Harry Truman dropping the A-bomb, I probably wouldn’t be here today. It would have been horrible. On Okinawa near the end of the war they captured very few Japanese because they fought like the kamikazes. Those guys knew when they took off that they were going to die. That was the nature of their beliefs and everything.

I didn’t like hearing about all those people dying in Hiroshima. That was horrible but by the same token if it hadn’t have been for that I might not have made it through to the end because we were supposed to go back and invade the Japanese islands. I guess if you want to look at it as revenge, it was like what you might call a payback.   That’s how a lot of people looked at it at the time. At the time they dropped the A-bomb the majority of the American people were certainly in favor of it because they knew it was going to save the lives of a lot of their loved ones. So they were real happy to see that happen. It was only after the so-called "do-gooders" got a hold of it that it came about the thing that "Truman should never have dropped the bomb." They weren’t there at the time, that's the only thing that I can say.

 I had just gotten back to San Francisco from my overseas leave on V-J Day. I was on the last bus out of San Francisco back to Mare Island where my ship was anchored. I never doubted that the Allies would win the war.  I guess being an American and knowing what had happened to us, that they had attacked all my friends and everybody on board, there was no doubt in everybody’s mind that we were going to win. Defeat didn’t even enter into our thinking. We just knew we were gong to win, because we knew that right was on our side.  Everybody who believed in the Lord knew that God was on our side.

You asked me if World War Two could have been avoided?  NO!, not unless we had just rolled over and given up and that’s not our nature. Americans don’t do things like that. We usually have to have our nose bloodied a little bit before we get mad enough to do anything about it. I don’t think there was any way of stopping World War Two from happening. Now that it’s all over and people reflect back on it, I suppose there’s a misconception out there that it could have been avoided. I don’t see how, but I think that’s one of the biggest misconceptions that people have about World War Two.

As far as fighting a war being a moral thing to do, I guess I probably have a different opinion when thinking about it today than I did back then. I didn’t really know the Lord back then like I do today. So today I’d probably say fighting in a war isn’t the moral thing to do. Back then I just got mad when I thought of all the things that happened at Pearl Harbor and all the thousand of guys who were killed in Pearl Harbor and afterwards in the fighting. Why, I didn’t think anything about picking up a gun and shooting Japanese at all. I didn’t think it was immoral at all back then. Today, I’m a little older and I guess a little wiser and knowing the Lord, I don’t know if I would do the same thing today or not. I probably would, as far as defending my country and defending my loved ones goes.

Americans were much more patriotic during the war. It was a different time we lived in back then. I think our patriotism was drawn out by being attacked by the Germans and the Japanese. There’s something in the American people that really brings them all together and they stand united. I was in the Reserves during the Vietnam war. Though I wasn’t over in Vietnam,  I had a lot of friends who were over there. What really saddened me was so much of the attitude towards Vietnam that turned towards the individuals who served over there in Vietnam. The attitude that Vietnam wasn’t a worthy war and that the servicemen were second class citizens because they were over there. That’s what saddens me about that whole thing. Back then in World War II there was a lot more patriotism. I do think there’s more today than there was during Vietnam. I'm not saying Vietnam was something that should have been avoided, but I think it was a war we shouldn’t have been in.

When I got back from the war I tried to be a different type of person than I was before.   I wasn’t bad when I went in World War II but I had a lot more things on my mind that I wanted to accomplish. So I guess I was a changed person in that respect. I wanted to get back into school. I wanted to get my education and get on with my life. I kind of missed out. Over there when you’ve got nothing to do but look at the water day after day you’ve got a lot of time to think about what you’re going to do when this thing’s over. I guess that’s what I thought about, to have more of an aim in my life as to what I wanted to accomplish in my life when I got back.

My family was happy to see me, at least they acted like that way! We had a celebration, being a family again. I wasn’t married at the time and didn’t have a girl friend. I had two sisters and my Mom and Dad. They were happy to see me. It was quite a few days before I had any fights with my sisters!

I got out of the Navy in ’46 and then turned right around and enlisted in the Reserves. I was in the Reserves from 1946 until around 1970 when I retired. When I got into the Reserves they commissioned me as a supply officer.   Supply was right down my business administration alley. I was stationed at other bases, but was at the old Naval Air Station in Olathe (Kansas) from 1953 on. As a Reservist, I flew all over the world. I flew airlifts in Vietnam. I stayed in the Reserves about 28 years total; 4 years active duty and so over 20 in the reserves.

As far as my hopes for the future, well, I just hope that our country can keep their head screwed on right and keep trucking along the way they have. I mean there’s been a lot of things that have happened in the past years that just get me to scratch my head as to what’s going on. I think for the most part people still feel the same way about freedom and I think there aren't any big threats staring at us internationally. Why, I think we’re pretty much on the right track because of the Cold War. We never did fight Russia but Communism was a big threat for a long time. Now that we've "defeated" the Communist movement , I feel a lot better about the chances for peace in the world, as long as we stay strong in our armed forces. I guess that’s the thing that’s kind of disappointed me especially over the past eight years is the way they’ve let the military drain down and used them as "policemen" all over the world. I don’t agree with that. I think we ought to be strong and stay strong. I think with that there’s great hope for the future.