Okinowa
I really appreciated Whiteside
taking care of me; the longer I could stay on the ship with hot food and a dry
bunk, the better. We sat on deck that
night after a good meal, feeling sorry for our friends in their foxholes and
eating cold K Rations. Then the Air Raid
Sirens sounded. Everything was, of
course, blacked out and there was no moon, but we could hear the lone Japanese
plane circling low over Buckner Bay seeking a target. We did get a glimpse of him, shockingly near,
as he passed over us to crash with a tremendous explosion into a destroyer (the
USS Warren we heard) about 400 yards away.
The ship sank in less than ten minutes. We set up an emergency room in the Officer's
Mess and the Doctors and Nurses, most of whom were still on board, spent the
rest of the night treating the wounded survivors that were picked up by small boats. We enlisted men did what we could, which
consisted mostly of carrying stretchers to the Emergency Room and cleaning up
the patients so the professionals could provide for them as best they could
with the inadequate facilities
available.
I had seen trauma cases before, even several at a time
when motor vehicle wreck victims were brought to our Hospital Emergency Room,
but the number of casualties and the severity of many of their injuries were
shocking. We REALLY WERE IN THE WAR NOW. I suspect it was a sobering experience for
most of the Doctors and Nurses as well.
After virtually no sleep, we were wakened shortly after
dawn by loud air raid sirens. We were
supposed to stay below decks during an air raid, but after what we had seen the
night before, there was no way Whiteside and I were going to obey that order.
We made our way to my protected spot between the two winches and were treated
to a rare spectacle. It was like the
opening few minutes of duck season in a public hunting area near a large city. Japanese suicide planes were everywhere and
hundreds of ships were firing every antiaircraft weapon they had at them. We would cheer when one was hit and crashed
smoking or in flames into the water. I
didn't see any ships hit; some probably were, but our casualties were not
announced. We were told that 98 Japanese planes had been shot down in the
attack.
After those two educational experiences, wet foxholes and
cold K Rations didn't sound so bad. We
"lucky" enlisted men selected to stay aboard and unload the boat had
tacitly agreed to stretch it out as long as possible. Whiteside, who was good at summing things up
in few words, succinctly said something like "I don't like being a sitting
duck on this boat. Let's get this son of
a bitch unloaded so we can get on solid ground and dig deep holes to hide
in." He didn't get any argument
from me or anyone else in the crew.
We soon joined the rest of the outfit;
we were right, they were sleeping in pup tents, in soaked blankets (we didn't have sleeping bags) and eating
cold K Rations. The foxholes were only used
when the air raid sirens sounded, usually only once a night --never in
daylight. I don't know the conditions
under which the Nurses and other Officers were existing, and never gave it a thought,
but I can't believe they didn't have it better.
It wasn't long before we erected Squad Tents, in a double
row with a company street between them, with folding cots so our blankets
usually stayed dry. The tents were
designed for twelve men, the number in an Infantry squad (hence the name
"squad tent"), but they put all the hard drinkers in one tent. There were thirteen of us, so we were a
little crowded but we made do. The company street was a sea of mud and the dirt
floors of the tents weren't much better.
We wore combat boots, often without socks, except when we were in our
bunks.
We could depend on at least one air raid alert every
night. The Japanese seemed more interested in keeping us awake than actually
killing us, and we hated them for it. We
would hear the first alert, loud sirens, when the Japanese planes took off from
airfields I much later learned near Kagoshima, on the tip of the southernmost
main Japanese island. The final, Red
Alert, was sounded when one or more Japanese planes approached Okinawa.
Initially, we would all go to our foxholes at the Red Alert and try to keep our
feet out of the water in the bottom for the hour or so of the alert. Usually nothing happened and we would return to
our cots after an hour of so in a muddy hole in the ground half-filled with
stinking rain water when the All Clear sounded.
Gradually,
more and more of us would ignore the alerts and go back to sleep. The cots with dry blankets felt even more luxurious
during an air raid alert. But one bomb
dropped near enough to shake the ground was enough to send all of us in a frantic
dash for our holes. Closer attention was
paid to the sirens the next night, with compliance gradually tapering off each
night until another near miss got our attention again. Unfortunately, those
"near misses" sometimes got other GIs who were also ignoring the air
raid warnings.
The 31st Station Hospital was never fully operational on Okinawa. The Island was officially declared secure a
few weeks after we arrived and, even though fierce fighting was continuing, there
were enough field hospitals already operating to handle the casualties. We were being held, still packed, to be the
first hospital ashore in the invasion of the Japanese Homeland. WHAT AN HONOR; we were really looking forward
to that. Mostly we marked time; we set
up a small operation, more like an aid station and dispensary than a
hospital.
There were numerous remnants of combat around us, burned
out American tanks (sometimes with the incinerated crews still buttoned up
inside them) dead Japanese that the Americans hadn't had time to collect for
burial sprawled around the tanks and elsewhere like swollen, rotting grotesque
dolls with flies crawling in and out of their exposed body orifices. The area was dotted with the openings to
caves, many of which still contained Japanese stragglers all of whom were eager
to greet any American stupid enough to enter in search of souveniers with a
grenade or sometimes a rifle shot if you ventured within range.
With little to do, some guys would organize a "Jap
Hunt", checking out a vehicle and extra ammunition. The chances of finding a Jap were a lot
better than getting a shot at a whitetail buck during deer season, but I
figured I hadn't lost any Japs that I wanted to find. I accidentally found a couple who took shots
at me when I visited the famous Shuri Castle or the few other remaining tourist
attractions of Okinawa. Like the whitetail
buck, I turned tail and got the hell out of the area as quickly as I could
without exposing myself further.
Mostly, we in the "Drinker's Tent" drank whatever
we could get as long as it was alcoholic.
We quickly drank up most of the whiskey we had brought from New
Caledonia that the ship's crew and the Sea Bees that helped unload the hadn't
found. We scrounged seven
"Jerry" cans on which we neatly stenciled a day of the week. Then we "obtained" raisins, dried
apricots or any other dried fruit, sugar and, most importantly, yeast from the mess
hall. The "Monday" can batch,
with the appropriate mixture of the constituents (a closely guarded secret)
then filled with water was lined up on a neat rack we had built behind our
tent. Properly prepared and given a week
to "work" the "Rasin Jack"would attain about 10 % alcohol
level.
Each night we drank the "Can of the Day",
washed it and started another batch to be drunk a week later. Bob Jackson found me one day, took off his
2nd Lt. insignia and joined us one night.
We put him to bed in a vacant cot and he declared the next morning,
"this is the worst hangover I've ever had"; we were sort of proud of
that, officers couldn't handle our Raisin Jack.
We also found a Black, called Negro back then,
Quartermaster Company that had liberated a Japanese Still. They sold moonshine or white lightening for
$25.00 to $50.00 a quart, depending on demand and ability to bargain. You brought your own bottle and we carefully
checked out several to get the most "bang for the buck". That led to a few confrontations with the
Still operators over the capacity of our bottles, but it was all in a spirit of
good clean fun. Business was so brisk
that you usually had to place the mouth of your bottle under the end of the
copper "worm"and wait for the alcohol to condense and drip into your
bottle. You could shoot a little craps
while you were waiting if you were so inclined; you might even pay for the
"White Lightening". We drank
it immediately; if it cooled we called it aged.
The officers found enough for us to do to keep us
busy. We dug latrines for the officers,
nurses and enlisted men and covered them with tents, with wooden floors and a
wooden frame for the tent; of course we built seats that consisted of a long
box-like structure open on the bottom and with holes cut in the top to sit
upon. That was a real luxury, to
defecate sitting down and out of the rain.
Because there were still a lot of Japanese stragglers around at night,
mostly trying to steal food, we were required to carry a weapon and an
"on" flashlight if we had to go to the latrine after dark (for
olfactory reasons they were some distance from the sleeping quarters). I occasionally wondered if that made sense:
any Japanese infiltrator had an illuminated target.
We also built a large Mess Hall, shared, I believe by Officers
and Enlisted Men. There we could sit
down on wooden benches and eat from trays on wooden tables, both the benches
and tables, of course, having been built by the Enlisted Men. There our C rations were hot. Actually, we had a variety of meat and vegetables,
all canned (even the eggs were dehydrated) but we didn't complain because it
beat the hell out of what we had been eating and what the troops in real combat
still were. That meant back to KP, but
now everybody wanted it because it was out of the rain and wasn't as much work
as digging latrines or carrying boxes of Hospital supplies, besides there might
be an opportunity to "requisition" some dried fruit, sugar or,
especially, yeast for Raisin Jack.
Much of the hard physical work involved assembling all
the hospital equipment and supplies, most still crated from the New Caledonia
move and laboriously unloaded, sorted and stacked under shelter after our
arrival in Okinawa, for the invasion of Japan.
No one bothered to tell us that the Ryukus, of which Okinawa was the
largest island, were part of Japan (we
had already invaded Japan) . A lot of us
would have settled for that; we were not looking forward to landing in Japan
with the prospect of every Japanese man, woman and child fighting to the death
for the Emperor and the Japanese Empire.
Nobody asked the Mexican enlisted men under General Santa Ana how they
felt about charging the Alamo, but I'll bet they would have voted to let the
Texans keep it.
The Air Force was doing its best to soften things up for
the invasion. Every morning many planes
would take off from the nearby air field, circle until the entire force was
assembled and leave to bomb the Japanese Mainland. Most of the bombers were B24s (Liberators)
because we were so near to Japan. There
were a few B29s, but most of them were stationed on more distant islands
because of their greater range. We were
never told of their targets, the results of their raid, or any loss of planes.
We heard a rumor one morning that a "Super
Bomb", something called an Atomic Bomb, had been dropped on a Japanese
city, Hiroshima, that we had never heard of and that it had wiped out the whole
damned city. That was just too good to
be true: rumors were the opiate of the troops; reality was nightly air raids
and the certainty of going in on the third wave in the impending invasion. Unbelievably, the Authorities finally told us
something; it was announced later in the day that a new type of bomb, the most
powerful in history, had totally destroyed Hiroshima with unknown but
great casualties. We were happy that a
lot of Japs had been killed, but the suggestion that this meant the end of the
war was near (advanced by a few fellow Enlisted Men) was generally ridiculed. Hell, the Japanese LOVED to die for the
Emperor: we had seen it in our own experience.
Two or three days later (we didn't have calendars
available and seldom knew the exact date; it didn't really matter because it
was a different day (we occasionally argued whether it was a day before or
after than in the U.S.) the Air Force dropped another Atomic Bomb, this time on
Nagasaki. Shortly thereafter the Emperor
announced that Japan was Unconditionally Surrendering. We were understandably ecstatic: no more air
raids and, best of all, no hitting the beach in the third wave.
When the announcement was made that the Japanese had surrendered
and the war was over, almost everyone got their shovels from their combat equipment
and went out to dig up the last bottle or bottles secretly buried for the hoped
for end of the war or, more likely, to be drunk just before embarkation for the
invasion. The announcement was made
shortly after nightfall and the celebration was highlighted by light: all the antiaircraft
searchlights were probing the sky, almost every weapon in American hands was
emptied into the air, especially tracer
ammunition and rockets that exploded to provide light. When I began hearing "rain" falling
around me and not getting wet, I took my last bottle of Major Larson's Seagram
VO for a last session in my foxhole.
There were rumors later, almost certainly exaggerated, of hundreds of
casualties from the falling ordinance.
Recordings of the Emperor's speech of capitulation and Japan's
surrender were put on vehicles with loud speakers and driven all over Okinawa,
broadcasting the news to Japanese troops holding out and stragglers hiding in
caves or other inaccessible locations.
Also broadcast were instructions to surrender and how to do it, dictated
by some Japanese officers who surrendered when they heard the Emperor's
broadcast. Reportedly, a few Japanese officers
rode around in jeeps with loud speakers assuring the Japanese soldiers that it
was not an American trick. A date and time
was set for the surrender of the remaining Japanese soldiers on Okinawa; all
were to report with their weapons to a specific location, where General
"Vinegar Joe" Stilwell and a contingent of armed American troops
waited in formation to accept their surrender.
Some of us, vaguely realizing the historical significance
of the event, drove over to witness the ceremony. It was incredible: Japanese troops led by
their officers, in polished boots and Samurai swords, and fully armed enlisted
men in formation marching in to surrender their weapons, then stragglers in
small groups of two or three and even alone, all coming in only because the
Emperor had ordered them to. We knew
from frequent encounters that there were a lot of Japanese soldiers still out
there, but we could hardly believe what we were seeing. They soon outnumbered
the troops accepting their surrender and the stacks of surrendered weapons kept
growing. I've heard and read various
figures, but apparently more than 30,000 Japanese soldiers surrendered. It was almost like the jokes about Custer at
the Battle of the Little Big Horn, "Don't take any prisoners,men" and
then "Jesus Christ, look at all them fucking Indians".
Shortly after the Japanese surrender we were hit by the
real Kamikaze or "Divine Wind" that had saved Japan hundreds of years
before and could have saved it again if it had come a month or so earlier. The most powerful typhoon in history hit
Okinawa in Mid-September. The Barometric
Pressure dropped to a low that has not been matched more than forty years
later; winds of more than two hundred miles per hour were recorded before the
anemometers blew away.
Everyone and virtually everything was housed in tents
when the typhoon hit; the tents were blown away long before the winds reached
their maximum strength. We lay on the
ground, dripping wet with all our rain gear on, holding the tent ropes in a
vain attempt to keep our tent from blowing away. When the wind began to increase we were
thrown about like multiple end men in a giant crack the whip game; those who
were not knocked senseless by being dashed into the ground by the flapping
canvas dropped off as the tent, rent into large sections, became airborne.
Anything loose on the ground became a potential lethal projectile. Steel helmets (used by field soldiers as wash
basins and for shaving by driving three tent pegs into the ground as
supports--the water could be heated by building a small fire under the helmet) blew
about like autumn leaves; tent poles, cots, and almost anything lighter than a
truck might go sailing by. Everyone
headed for shelter once the tents were gone; most for the Okinawan tombs
(concrete and built into the hillsides) that offered the safest refuge
available. Whiteside and I, along with
J. D. Sheppard (another Texan) opted for a nearby small stone stable, built into
the corner of a stone wall. We had
appropriated it for our own use to stable some horses we had found wandering
about. We moved the horses out and moved
in for the duration of the typhoon.
There were probably two or three others sharing our
quarters whom I don't remember. We were
reasonably comfortable, with sleeping bags on top of piles of straw and mostly
dry, but we were hungry. After a couple
of days, with the typhoon winding down, we somehow obtained a box of 10 in 1
Rations (10 in 1 Ration was one meal for 10 men). It included a can of bacon, cans of various
vegetables, crackers, marmalade or jelly, butter, candy and cookies and a pack
of cigarettes and matches. We built a fire in the middle of the floor and were
frying bacon in a mess kit when Lt. Korn, the Motor Officer and Whiteside's
boss entered. He said "that sure smells good; I haven't had a bite to eat
in three days. What is it?" I was doing the cooking and I forked out a
few slices, put them in another mess kit and handed them to him, along with
some crackers, jelly and other goodies. "It's bacon, Lt. Korn, we got some
coffee, too." "I can't eat
that", he said, "I'm Jewish".
I said something to the effect that I didn't think God would hold it
against a Jew eating pork to keep from starving to death, but if he didn't want
to take the chance, it wouldn't go to waste.
He said, "Sparks, I think you're right, but I'm not going to enjoy
it; it's just for survival". From
the look on his face while he was eating, I was pretty sure he was enjoying it,
but none of us said anything.
When the storm finally subsided, we survivors emerged
from our emergency shelters, bedraggled and homeless, to a scene less
devastated than Hiroshima or Nagasaki but about the maximum destruction that
nature could inflict without help. Nothing
was standing; the wind had leveled everything. Our fancy Mess Hall had been
picked up and deposited, almost intact, over a nine foot fence on top of the
Medical Supplies Depot. Of course, all out sleeping tents had blown away and
our belongings scattered.
There were, of course, no official statements of the
damage other than general statements to the effect that we had survived the
worst typhoon in history with minimal loss of life and property. We could tell the latter statement was
Bullshit by looking around; THERE WAS TREMENDOUS LOSS OF PROPERTY. We heard rumors, probably exaggerated, of the
hundreds of ships that went down and the thousands of fatalities on land and at
sea, but I've never seen an authoritative summation of the cost.
Now that the war was over and we did not have to invade
Japan, new plans had to be developed.
First, though, a Rotation System, was set up. Points were awarded for the number of months
spent overseas, for battle stars, and various esoteric criteria. All the "old timers", Officers and
Enlisted Men, were sent back to the States and suddenly we were the "old
timers". We received replacements, mostly teenagers, but also a few
"lucky" fellows who had been wounded in Europe, sent back to the US,
then ordered to the Pacific Theatre.
Nobody was happy, but they were the most unhappy. I had been overseas 20 months and expected to
go home on the next boat once the war ended; after all, we had gone overseas
for "the duration" and innocently assumed that meant for the duration
of the war, not the duration of our lives.
Instead, we bade our Officers and older Enlisted Men farewell and loaded
the boat for Korea. By then we had all
been promoted at least once and we made sure the replacements did most the
heavy work loading the boat.
