I remember I was eating spaghetti at Alexandria, Virginia, with some friends of mine and the radio in the restaurant came on and said everybody in the 32nd Division returned back to base right away.

And that's when we heard about it was at 5:00, and that's when we heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

Of course, we had no idea where Pearl Harbor was in those days.

Yesterday, December seven, 1941.

A boat which will live in infamy.

I was riding on a streetcar to go to a Sunday dinner at my aunt's place over one of the stops.

A fellow jumped over onto the streetcar and said The Japs of bombed Pearl Harbor and nobody knew what he was talking about and didn't pay any attention to him.

And I didn't really understand till I got down to my grandma, my house, and I found everybody listening to the radio.

At about Pearl Harbor.

I was drafted on the night of May of 1941.

I was and had some friends in Grand Rapids, my age group.

We all got together and decided to join the Navy.

I enlisted in the National Guard in 1937 when I was 15 years old.

I enlisted in April or May of 1941.

The closer that we got to Japan, the harder it was.

I wanted to go back to Michigan.

Over 650,000 Michigan men and women served in the military during World War Two from Pearl Harbor through the occupation of Japan.

29,321 Michigan citizens were wounded in the war and 15,414 died.

Listen to some stories from that war told by fellow Michigan unions.

Their stories are too important to ignore and too moving to forget.

We chased the Japs from from New Guinea.

Then we went to different islands, some over the Marshall Islands, Carolina Islands.

Well, anyway, we chased them all the way back to the Philippines and then on up through northern Luzon in the Philippines, where the Japanese were holed up in caves.

They had they had their whole families with them in a cave, but they wouldn't.

We asked to surrender, but they wouldn't surrender.

So we did or did what we were ordered to.

We were ordered to burn them out with the flames, or which we did is terrible as terrible war.

A war as hell.

Look.

Look for your buddies and for them and me.

And you're in your scared.

Some of the guys I.

Know we laughed about.

A or what their parents.

But it's all right.

We hung out.

We kept our line.

We didn't let it.

Yamashita go.

Through us.

We lost men.

Every.

Day because Jeff.

Keep pushing and trying to get through the past.

And we'd bring them back.

And that's where I got in on it.

We'd bring them back.

We killed several Japs every day, but we kept em back.

Colonel and I are out, and we're kind of searching and diversion, and we come out of this hut.

There in front of the hut is a seven Japanese due to the machinegun.

We got in before he got us.

That was enough to punch his socks on.

I'll tell you, that will figure that son of a gun.

Well, we dug that hole, and it was all mud.

Just like, you know, when you get mud, loose dirt and been raining all day, it would just it must have been 15, 18 inches deep, the mud.

So I ask, have you got any wire that you have for radio communication?

Yeah.

Why, Fred?

I said, Well.

Grenades are not going to do very good.

We can't throw them here.

I said, I got to have a couple of hundred feet of this wired 100 period.

Why?

I should bother the tree out there and the tree over there.

And I'm going to do Grenade about two foot off the ground.

I want a wire to that one there and that tree there.

And I'm going to write a wire and drag grenade to my back.

So that way when I see these anybody crawling around tonight night, they're all I got.

Just pull that pin on that note.

The grenade is going to go.

Off and we set up a defensive line on a clearing.

They'd start to clear for an airstrip, cut the coconut trees down to about two feet, I guess.

And we were on one side and laid in the swamp.

And everybody in the base was on this line and it was 2000 feet long.

One end was into the on Stanley Mountains, the other end was into the ocean.

And that's the way the strips were over there.

As I say, everybody was on the line that was in the base and we had no reserves.

You look behind you, there was nobody there and we had an automatic weapon or some kind of every about three and a half feet, which included Colt 45.

I had a Thompson submachine gun.

We had this anti-aircraft unit, which was a quad mount of 50 caliber machine guns on the back of a half track.

And we had to dig it in because you needed to press the the guns down so it could fire at the ground level instead of go up.

And just before dusk, they formed a firmer supply.

And the Japs did to come across this clearing and the roadway pathway or whatever you want to call it, was probably only 20 feet wide.

So they had to they were bunched up.

The rest of it was jungle and ocean and they made a mass run to come across the strip and we were able to pour all our fire into that area because we had a concentration at a mass grave of over 500 that we buried the next day.

And finally he said, Fred, can you bring them grenades over to me or Well, here we are, 15 feet from me and I control them over to them.

And and we were whispering.

Like, you know.

I'll try to draw.

I got out and records all Muddy and Rain like that and I won't no all over again.

And he threw 30 some.

Grenades.

Over the.

Bank, you know, he was a. Catcher and he can really throw that grenades.

And they threw the grenades way down.

And you have to get on a down side and even from over the ridge down into them.

When you got to Saputo, I saw some friends I hadn't seen for a while and I was making a fire for a billy of tea.

I looked up an airplane flying around like this.

It has a red circle on the wing.

I thought I got to get the heck out of here.

So I took off like this round towards the river and I stopped when I was looking back over my shoulder all the time and hearing a lot of explosion from the bombs.

And.

All those big jagged vines caught me here in a side.

It hit me over, but not bad enough to have surgery or anything.

I came back to the where the station hospital had been.

They were trying to hit the hospital.

Six guys who had run and run the opposite way were killed, and I was part of the burying detailed barium.

And I knelt down in that foxhole and shot a hole or whatever it was, and I prayed same prayer and prayed for three years.

Now, Lord bless mom and dad on the farm.

And my brother Ken and Fred, who had families and to old and I, two brothers, chairman and who were married and had children, was in the army.

And if one of us boys need to give his life, may it be me.

that's not too hard to say when you're sleeping between clean sheets and San Diego were aboard ship.

But now I might be killed any moment, and I Pilots is going to come to see me just for a second.

And then I said, May it be me.

And when I did, I'd never been a more peaceful moment, more my wife than not.

That was because I knew and God, no, that I meant it.

The volcanic island of Iwo Jima lies about 650 nautical miles south of Tokyo in February and March of 1945, US Marines invaded the heavily fortified island to capture its airfields.

Of the over 22,000 Japanese soldiers involved in the battle, 20,703 died and 216 were captured.

The allied forces suffered 27,909 casualties, including 6825 killed in action.

The first and second waves landed with no resistance when the third and fourth waves landed.

The Japs came the water, artillery and mortars out of the caves and really tore things up.

We were supposed to land before 11:00 if reserve, but we didn't get until almost 5:00.

And when we did, we hit the beach ramp open up right on the beach, and we went inland as fast as we could to got up, had to climb up that steep incline of volcanic ash.

We climbed that fast as we could and went, and London all fell into shell holes, which was already there because we were in reserve and that area had been secured.

I landed in the water they call the 14th Wave.

It was perhaps a half hour, maybe 45 minutes after the first troops land.

But I landed with our reconnaissance group so that I could figure out where to land or artillery.

So we had in our battalion of artillery, we had three batteries, each one with four howitzers or cannon.

And each fighter commander was on this reconnaissance group that landed with our colonel.

And then he sent us off or one man to go near Mount Suribachi to look at the beach.

That was me.

And then the other two farther north on, I went down to the beach.

I saw that that would be about the only place where we could bring our artillery.

And so off to my right, about 40 feet private.

And Ricky says, Hey, Sarge, one in the hole here, but I think he's dead.

I yelled at him to shoot him anyway, and he tried to shoot him and his rifle jammed and I started the Jap and he was alive and he says he's alive.

Private Adams, come running over to help shoot him.

And both of them stood over the hole.

And that we have set off a charge at the empty.

I somewhat was and blew a hole in the ground for to put a jeep in Bruder, Ricky and Adams a good 40 feet to the rear and the stones are falling and the dust in the dirt.

And it was dark.

And Ricky fell on some rocks on his back and he couldn't move.

His hands were traded and Adams was on his knees, hands and knees.

His couldn't see the blinding and recall corpsman and corpsman didn't come for some time.

And finally we did what we could do.

Our corpsman glad he came and he gave administered first aid to Ricky and Adams, and we evacuated them on a stretcher.

So it took us about, maybe an hour to get free batteries of artillery ashore.

And I was the only butter commander that was available because the other two had been pinned down by Japanese small arms fire and couldn't move.

And they finally showed up after we had we were just about ready to fire some good souls off the Japanese.

We did get one our halters and through actually fired out a cave.

It was the first American artillery shell fired on Audrey.

Well, as we climbed up these levies or terraces, the Japanese were shooting from the left.

Meltzer Watching from the right of the northern part of the island rifle, and we're shooting gunfire and it's looked like a fire.

Put my hand up in the air.

I got this bullet right through my wound.

And fortunately, it didn't get any of us of a right on my group at that time.

We took a direct hit on one of our guns on the sixth day and one of our other batteries took a direct hit on our 10th day and we knocked out the Field artillery for about eight or ten days.

So the big guns that they had left were mortars.

They had what they called a 140 degree mortar, which was four or five inches in diameter with sort of projectile up.

And those were very dangerous because you couldn't hear the projectile coming through the air and when they would land and burst through, they would throw fragments of shells for 25, 30 yards on each direction.

And that's what's on the we fear of the most infantry, for sure.

And the guys are all tired or sick.

We have no officers.

We're going to go slow.

We're going to bring two armored bulldozers up and have you guide them and direct them.

And they're going to make two roads and then we're going to bring two flame throwing tanks up and they will spray the area and they will advance.

So all day long, a guy to do his bulldozer, he's one with had armor around it and had a telephone at the back.

I could talk to them.

And I was there primarily to keep Japs from coming out and throwing a satchel charge on them and destroying them.

And about 4:00 the one that had advanced about 150 yards on the road, and they brought the two flame throwing tanks and came up and they began to spray the area 5 minutes and they ran out of fluid and we came to a stop and I advanced with them and the front lines advanced with them.

We came to a ridge that we wanted and just in front of us and we all broke over that ridge at the same time, probably 150 of us.

And the Japs were dug in on this ridge, burrowed down in a little hole.

We caught them either they were sick or asleep or in a way we surprised them and they never fired a shot.

To my knowledge, I shot two of them from the hip within ten feet away and I was higher in a cave.

And the men through the Jap bodies out of the holes and then got on them and settled for our front line.

Every day we got bad news or the people getting killed.

The first couple of days were, were quite bad.

I was shot up each of those days and managed to avoid them, except for one small verse that went through my canteen and had me in the hope.

And then later I had a Japanese.

I might have a grenade that burst in there right above my back as I was lying on the ground.

That really hurt me, but left some fragments in my flesh.

And I didn't like that.

I walked over to a big shell hole where the command post was and I said to him, What do I do next?

Before they could answer, I was shot through the right leg from a distance, knocked down.

It knocked me right down.

I couldn't believe that rifle will do that.

You've seen it in movies, but I didn't think that that happened.

But it did not wear down.

I roll over on my back and wiggle my toes and say things don't think any bones are broken.

But I thought I was hurt real bad.

And I began to crawl and drag my leg.

I crawled probably five or six feet and I heard that right in front of my face.

The dust kicked up and they were still shooting at me.

And so I got up and I ran back from where we started.

And that was the end of my experience in the house.

And it would shame.

The Japanese overpowered one of our foreign observers, a second alternate who was a very good observer, and they six Japanese overpowered him and dragged him into a cave and torture him.

And two of his radio and telephone men ran into that care and and killed the enemy soldiers and dragged the lieutenant out.

But he was already dead.

That was a bad day.

And there's a fellow name of Warren Laffey who, after we went to classification, he didn't make pilot, he made navigator, but he only had a short term period and he went overseas.

I had I wrote him and he wrote me right back.

He says, Jack, whatever you do, learn all you can because I'm going overseas now.

I don't know what the hell I'm getting into.

He says, Really work hard and earn all your care.

Well, I wrote him right back.

Letter pick, killed in action.

Of course we were.

Skip bombers was right down on the ground.

And the big stuff we didn't have too much to worry about because they couldn't get down that low.

But we got in, took an awful lot of ground fire and went in, dropped our bombs and circled and went back.

Whole get bombing is probably the safest way to go.

In the celebes, the Japanese attacked pretty good runway around the end of one of the islands.

It was a nice, nice runway and there was a troop emplacement deal where they had the reserve troops.

Well, we used to bomb that quite a lot.

Dropping bombs on the runway for or 500 pounders.

So they couldn't take their planes off.

But we always used to go over at low level bomber.

The longest one we ever made is one time we were a ship had been missing.

And so we had a search and you have a pattern that you follow and you hit a certain.

But these guys on this ship, there's no word or where they were or where they could have been.

And we were flying, searching all over and we got low on gas flying back.

We had a Navy guy with us.

He was standing here as we were flying and we're just we've got to get back and have enough gas in the hat and look out and just he had a pair of binoculars.

I saw a triangle just way out there and this was that.

And we all looked down.

You don't get binoculars on it.

And I don't know, looks might be a ship, but it was a triangle.

So the pilot's is.

What do you think is better?

Look and he says, I agree with you.

Let's go and look.

And now you're just you got to get gas.

You've got to get home now.

You got to ship.

Are you going to.

We went over and there it was.

Is it run up on a reef and it broken in half and half of it was in the water.

Half of it was up on this reef.

And it was a little island here.

The guys were alive.

We could see they were in life rafts taking stuff off the ship in the thing, but they'd been gone for days without anybody knowing where they were.

So we we flew over them, let them know we dropped a raft, as I remember.

And I remember we just dropped a raft to let them know we saw them and we headed back and we we didn't go back to our squadron.

We just got in the lay and the two in them, which I guess.

We were bombing oil refineries and they would be on the south side of Japan.

So the first night we went in and we dropped our bombs and we just wrote along here looking around at the fire down below and when you drop your bombs, they go follow a trajectory along with you for a while and then they go down.

Well, we suddenly were in a updraft.

It was like being at a black elevator.

We had gotten over that burning inferno and it was carrying us up.

And so after that, when we went over the target, as soon as we dropped our bombs, we turned and got out of there close to Bombay to and left.

I was riding along.

There.

And all the slack around there and I had this feeling.

I wonder what those little buggers are shooting.

At me for.

You.

so we were nervous about engine problems because you read in the paper about recalls on automobiles.

Well, when you're out over the Pacific carrying on 4500 pounders and a tank car gasoline, you're not in a real good position for a recall.

Sometimes you'd go out on a search mission and lose planes going on a search mission.

Leon Dabrowski was a air search person from Cyprus.

And he has this little joke about you could find Japan.

All you had to do was follow the floating B-29s.

But that's not the way it was.

We've spotted this Betty and the Betty Jet.

Betty is a jet bomber comparable to ours.

Anyway, they we spotted them and they had about the same speed that we did.

And but they had a 20 millimeter gun in their tail, which had a bigger range than our 50 caliber guns.

And I was in a nose turret down there and we would get within by 1000 to 1200 feet was about our limit to shoot him.

He he would fire, he would slow down.

He was planning on darkness down, you know, and he, he would spot the he would slow down so that he could get his 20 millimeter cannon in range and fire a burst and then then speed up.

We had a lot of our shots actually.

And he was he was flying for his base because he figure apparently he figured that he would if he didn't get us and if he could lead us into his base, that that it would be that they could get us there, you know, send up a fighter or something.

And anyway, they we finally hit his gas tank and I think it was the starboard side in the wing cut fire.

We got good pictures of the plane gone down.

But it was it was it was fun to chase him.

We had he would shoot at us and then it spurred ahead.

We would spurt ahead and get the love shots on him.

And it took about an hour and a half to chase him.

One day, the pilot decided to come over about four or 500 feet in the air, and it wasn't long and the air was black.

They bought and brought in a revetment a place, I guess.

And so we dropped right down on the ground, went over the runway and dropped our bombs and went back to base more to Ireland.

We went back to the base and an Australian major briefed us on knocking out this exact revetment and they loaded this up with four, four, four or 500 or £250 bombs for them.

But he said the first run make a dry run, the first run, and then drop your bombs on the second run.

The pilot just raised up off the water when he was coming in.

He raised up quite a ways to draw their fire.

Of course, they had their fuzes got shorter and it was bursting out in front of us so you could tell right where they were.

So he dropped right down on all of us, dropped right down on the water, made the run, and they were situated in between four hills and when we raised up like that, go over the first hill, you can't see them scatter.

I think the.

First real.

Tough mission we flew as we flew out of the Philippines after a short time in New Guinea, we moved up to the Philippines and we started bombing what used to be called Formosa.

It's called Taiwan Moon, and it was heavily fortified with the Japanese, very Japanese, who hold it for many, many years.

They had fighters and they also had put me in an aircraft.

We quite often have fighter cover with us, but sometimes we did not have, Fredricka, because they could not take that range.

They could do that far.

I found out what the aircraft really was because it seemed to grow so thick you could just walk on it.

And then when you have hit, many problems got hit.

But if you didn't get hit, the vital spot, why you can keep going where you would have no idea to leave with all the training you went through and no idea really, you're hitting him or you're not hitting him and the smoke starts coming out of a plane.

And of course, you're not the only person shooting at him anyway because there's about 27 other 20 forwards in the area.

And most of those guns are zeroed in on some of them.

So you're not.

Sure that.

Your shells are getting to him or not.

So you just keep trying.

And of course, it's just a matter of seconds.

Soon he's gone and another one does.

Please, or he's coming back around or whatever.

For we're way down on the water coming in.

The bomb.

Well, when one of our ships, it was 16 ships there and took come out to do two transport and it was four squadrons of us, we were the lead squadron because they, we were the oldest ones there and we were when we got close to where they were moored up along Lady Island, we started seeing their big guns flash and it wasn't any time at all in the jet black all around us.

So we got right down in the water.

PILOT Did got right down on the water and started to make his run, dropped bombs.

When we got right up where he could drop his bombs, he started to go into a climb to clear the superstructure.

And we took a five inches right through the right wing.

And the star of the insignia went right up to the middle of that star.

And six foot of the right wing stood right up in the air.

We started falling and I thought we had gone and the copilot job both throttles right forward far as he could give us enough the all of us up and we flew out both the both the pilot and the copilot were on on the controls all the time because they were vibrating so bad.

And we got to the southern tip of New Guinea or of Lady Island.

And I don't know whether it was an old runway or whether it was just a dirt road, but we pulled in on that and landed.

I had to crank the landing gear down.

Anyway, we were the first plane on that road and wasn't long, and that road was just full of planes and a lot of them ditched out in the ocean and loading commodity that was one the but we've had others.

So many of the pilots were just young kids, too, that didn't we really didn't know what the heck we were doing a lot of the times and we had a lot of decisions that were really you know, you go through this front and you get out.

You can't turn back because you're halfway to the islands and you got only enough gas to go the rest of the way.

And maybe a gallon.

I'm in a tank, half a tank left, and you've got to find the island and the radios all shut off because there was an alert for Japanese coming in.

So you got to find it and there's rain and this is standard operating over there and you're flying all over the Pacific.

One day I went up to see my buddy up to Osaka.

This was later on after we'd been there quite a while, six, eight months.

And he took me around.

I got the pictures of it, so it showed me the cemetery.

There were 2000 of our.

Fliers buried there.

2000 people didn't know what was going on back.

Here in the States.

Just Airman Low Hill.

They were just from shot out there.

2000 President Truman stated along.

About at that time that American servicemen.

Will.

Not stay buried on enemy soil.

As soon as we get ships available, it will all be sent home.

Well, that was good to know that.

They wouldn't leave on enemy soil.

And the first day we were there, we were hit by shore batteries.

They call them shells and Jap firing at us.

And I was on a 20 millimeter gun, anti-aircraft gun.

And all of a sudden there was water splashing or something, a splashing in the water in front of me.

And I wasn't sure what it was, but it was the Japs firing at us and they were too, too low.

So then they raised their guns and they fired over the top of us.

So then they were too high.

So then they adjusted again and all the time we were firing.

Our guns are big guns in our five inch.

And then when they adjusted the second time they hit our mast up there were the captain was they didn't get him, but they got a seaman and they call him.

It was the USS Monson.

798 was a number and it was a Fletcher class destroyer, and there were about 350 feet long and 39 feet wide at the widest point.

So anyway, Destroyer is very fast, very maneuverable, but has no armor whatsoever, but plenty of armament.

And and this engagement, the Japanese were coming up with their fleet fact there were there was a four prong operation by the Japanese to relieve their troops in the Philippines.

And we were assigned the job of stopping the southernmost group, Japanese group, which consisted of two Japanese battle wagons, a couple of cruisers which are smaller and about a a dozen destroyers and Surigao straits is narrow.

Later it's and in order to get to the shores of late to help or relieve their troops, so you have to go through this surigao straits.

So they chose five destroyers to intercept these two battle wagons.

And you remember I said battle wagon, the 50,000 ton, 60,000.

They they threw a 15 to 18 inch shell that weighs maybe two ton destroyer, their main instrument against such formidable bow opposition would be the the torpedoes.

So this was at night and we were assigned we had two destroyers on one side which my ship the monsoon was one of the two and then on the other side there were three destroyers, so there was five.

And the idea was that these Japanese ships would come through and we would lay torpedoes from both sides, which we did and successfully.

We hit one battleship and broken two and the other one flew.

So it was called a full.

So we slowed down after what was left of them.

They went on through the Surigao Straits and then the Navy had already lined up their battleship and finished them off.

The ultimate one was Okinawa.

That's when the kamikazes, the Japanese planes were at their very at the very worst.

I mean, we were involved in that landing, I think it was on an Easter Sunday is when we moved in their way back and we had a lot of ships in our group.

And, you know, not only cruisers, battleships, hospital ships, you name it, everything.

And but they that's when the kamikazes, they get rich.

The very ultimate for, as I understand it, they had their funerals before they left Japan.

And I don't know how many got through.

A lot of them were shot down before they got through, but a lot of them did get through.

And I remember the first time I saw one and I couldn't believe it going into a dive and you're waiting for it to come out of its dive.

And it didn't.

It just you know, it went it dove into another one of our ships.

I wouldn't say most of them, but a lot of them were shot down before they got through.

But there were a lot of them that did get through and a lot of damage was done.

A lot of people were killed.

The second time we we got here was right in Buckner Bay.

We had to stay in there and right it all, this plane, these planes come in on us.

And I seen a couple Japanese planes come in.

They were I couldn't see them as close as I could.

You were over there and they were strictly business, I'll tell you.

They went right over us and they hit the second shift over from us.

And but then this other one come in on us and on the port side again.

And he missed the eye just as this time he glanced off the side.

We only had a few casualties that time, but these you see these come on and on.

And so I better get right and jump over the side.

You know, a lot of us thought that too.

Nobody did it.

I was back there as a group captain over these 320 millimeter guns, and we secured from general quarters and everybody went their way and I was still there.

And then lo and behold, over they were and we wouldn't call mountains, but there were hills all covered with trees and stuff.

And the Japanese came over the hills.

There was three of them kamikazes.

And I grabbed a 20 millimeter and I usually put a strap on it so that you can go back and forth.

But I didn't even have time to do that.

And and I thought, My God, here is a kamikaze.

So I fired at them and my memory is such that I could damage or see them.

I think I did see him and he turned and he went up alongside our port side and then went across the bow and then exploded before he hit a ship.

So that was I fired at him and we had 140 millimeter that got the in fact, my all 40 millimeter that fired at him between the two of us.

We got him.

And then the other two were still buzzing around and we were firing at them.

By this time, all the guns are manned and we're shooting the five inch guns and a 40 millimeter guns.

And and this one Japanese plane went right straight up and they had been hit.

It was burning and and then he turned and he dove down.

And when he drove down, he put the fire out and and I saw that he was heading for my head.

But you could see him.

But he swerved away and then he went over and he hit a a troopship.

And the other the third one just got away.

Then didn't do any harm.

But that was my first experience with kamikazes.

When I got up there and the bodies laying on all or and then we had an APD.

Yeah.

And what an 18 is shut.

They come in and try to extinguish the fires we had and to get the dead or get the wounded taken care of as quick as possible with help out.

And then we had another destroyer came for right around us too.

And so we had 14 killed and we had 5056 wounded.

All of the crew of the 300, so approximately 30 of us were either wounded or killed.

And so that night.

After we got everything, a lot of it taken care of by, they gave us all a shot of whiskey, which we needed were male.

Carl was one of the best parts of the day.

We would hear these talking about the different things going on, and all of a sudden they would be very quiet.

They had their face into the pillow and we'd go over and talk to them.

And he usually was a Dear John letter to me that was so cruel.

So many of them could take their wounds and things out there.

But a Dear John letter really was bad.

It just tore them apart.

We shipped out on the 22nd of.

April.

42, headed for the Philippines, and they diverted us to Adelaide, South Australia.

It took us about 28 days to get there.

Interesting note, we had one heavy cruiser was our escort and it was the Indianapolis you might remember, the Indianapolis was the one that delivered the atomic bomb and on the way back was sunk and the crew was in the ocean for days and days and days and days.

In July of 1945, the USS Indianapolis delivered the components for the atomic bomb to the island of Tinian on its way back to the Philippines.

It was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine.

It sunk in about 12 minutes.

About 900 crewmen survived the sinking.

Some were in lifeboats, but most bobbed in the water with only lifejackets.

Only 317 survived the elements and the sharks.

My dad signed for me to go to Navy 17 after book, and B took me to railway station, shook my hand.

We were firmly in the deck.

I want you to come home.

Well, 1945, April 45, the war was bearing down on Europe.

And I said, Dad, word for Nerva.

Don't worry about it.

They were German, ready to give up everything.

Dad phase right there.

So he brought me home.

We took the first A-bomb over Tinian.

From there we go in from Tinian and we went to Guam, refuel for five.

Then we went to Guam.

We're going to later for the seventh drawing the seventh Fleet for the way to Japan, halfway between Guam and later the two two hour period.

And we found out on July 30th, we knew that was special because the captain was told go as fast as you can.

And that's why we set the speed record between, I'd say ten in every hour.

You lose going length in the war.

One hour we knew was some high secret because the bombers anchor down in the seaplane hangar, which I said must hear from here.

That chair over there, of course, the bomb.

There were two Marines out 24 hours a day.

And the mechanism, the bomb was up in officers quarters.

And that room up there and there were two Marines on that door, 24 hours a So we knew the time was highly secret.

No one's going to get near it.

That's all we knew.

I was sleeping topside by the aliens gone because I had a 48 watch the following morning out of my twenties up on the bow.

The man was both wake me up at quarter to four.

The morning I lay down for 10 to 12 and the torpedoes hit a ten after 12 try to sleep alone.

What we do is take a navy blanket and make a little sea sleeping bag of it, fold it, fold the feet and halfway up.

And then we took our pillow or her clothing used for a pillow when the torpedo hit or how many feet I went up.

But I moved over about, 12 to 15 feet because I picked myself up.

The cable goes outside the ship.

I was hanging on that pick myself up.

I went up and over.

Anyhow, I wasn't asked where my Jack Duke was then Recorder and the quarter deck played golf aflame.

No one could get across it.

So we went forward and by that time the ship was lifting pretty much the starboard side and we could see it was going to sink, or there was about 30, 40 or 50 feet by with gone.

And the second trouble hit midship, which aviation gasoline was stored, you know, So it didn't got to a powder room.

So I blew a pretty good hole in the bottom ship.

And by that time myself and four or five other guys, he was going to think for life, left the rope to the turret of its guns.

We threw off three or four of them, but that time was really pretty good, the starboard side behind eight and it got under with big canvas bags of Cape Cod lifejackets.

We cut them down, mixed our dish them out and I got one.

By that time the ship going down, and we were like, People ask me what we got on the ship.

It where would you jump off the ship?

It Well, I didn't jump off the ship.

The ship left me a difference and sank in 12 minutes, which is very, very fast Tuesday afternoon.

The water calmed down That from the shack move in.

I see men take them for fact from here to you.

And they at night, they bounce around like a ping pong ball.

And Wednesday, the same way we try to stay in a group in the South for more or less would get in a group.

You take a person, you swim away from the group.

Why were long sharks around?

A group of five got down about 20 by the afternoon, just before dark in the water.

Who he was and he said in the water says, if they're looking for us now, they're not looking for us.

And he said, Hell, I said, we're going to die for Thursday morning, about 11:00.

That's when the first planes, bodies, they knew I wasn't picked up till Friday morning time.

The ships got there, I picked them up, start picking them up little after midnight Thursday night.

I spent four days and five nights in the Cape on life track without food, water When they stopped driving.

Survivors Survivor Gear Thursday afternoon, four us, including myself, decided to swim toward the raft, which is probably it was hard to judge because your eyes were about that far over from some blind salt water frame, probably 50, maybe 75 yards to this raft.

I was the only one made it because I'm two men.

The heart stopped away.

And Terry, you.

His name was Terry.

Robert Terry.

He was taken by a shark.

You know why I made it?

I don't know.

But I got to the raft.

The man was on the raft for over 5 to 6 of them.

I don't know if any water on the raft or food or whatever.

Anyhow, they were all areas, their heads.

They were too weak to help me.

I was too weak to get on the raft.

I never did get on Iraq, so I spent a Friday morning.

I just tied myself to the raft within the rope to go around.

It stayed there to Friday morning.

They picked me up by someplace around.

I was just after daylight, six, seven, 8:00.

I can't tell exactly what.

This is one of the greatest celebrations that we have ever seen from the marquee of the hotel After here on New York City.

People, I can estimate at least 350,000 or more.

It's pretty hard to estimate at this point.

Our cheering and screaming, making noise with bomb makers, drawing confetti and bits of paper, streamers and all sorts of things that they can find to celebrate this greatest of all victories.

The surrender of the Japanese government is a terrific sight as we stand here and see an ocean of people, the white hats and sailors standing out predominantly in the sea of then.

We were 80 miles off the coast of Japan when they dropped the atom bombs.

We were steaming along side of the.

Missouri giving and.

We never gave supplies or ammo or food or anything to anybody where we're sitting still, we had to be.

Under way.

So we shot lines across, crossed between the Missouri and the USS Truman.

And then we would take supplies and they would take them across and we'd be going about seven or eight knots an hour, maybe ten miles, ten, ten miles an hour, going along, giving them a cross.

And just as we got to bulls hulls, they came out on the deck.

It was it was I'll never forget.

And and he had a bullhorn and he said, cattlemen, gentlemen, the Japanese have just surrendered.

I think the highlight of that trip was that I was still a troop commander coming back and we were on the New York Central through Ohio.

And I had a soldier come to me and he said, Captain, he says, I've talked to the conductor and we're going to stop.

And I think it was in Ashtabula.

He says, we're going to be there about 15 or 20 minutes.

And he says, That's my home town.

I've been gone for three years.

He says, My folks and where I am, he says, You see my house from the railroad.

He said, I'd like to go up, say hello and be back on the train.

And I talk to the conductor.

I said, Okay, sure, but.

And he.

Ran all.

The way up, ran in the house, and they were just sitting there eating.

He gave me a kiss and come out the door.

They didn't know what happened.

They followed him all the way to the train.

Yelling and.

Screaming funny.

And we came in and there we pulled up in this dark.

We got off.

And the first thing I did was get in the solid country.

You were so glad to get back.

These men and women and their stories of service to our country allow us to understand the honor, courage and sense of duty.

They and other veterans displayed.

These stories also offer a glimpse of the sacrifices they made on behalf of all Americans.