Going Home
Finally, in late January of 1946, I was notified that I would
be "rotated" soon. I didn't
really believe I was going home, but I prepared for it "just in
case". One barracks bag packed with
everything you were supposed to have and nothing else --I did take along a
Japanese sword and a Japanese rifle, but I left the Thompson Submachine Gun I
had found on the battlefield
near Shuri Castle and carefully
restored to working order with liberal applications of bore cleaner, oil and
elbow grease, and the 45 Caliber Automatic I had bought from a New Zealand
soldier in New Caledonia (He said he had taken it off the body of an American
2nd Lt. on Bougainville) with our rookie housemate whom I had tried to educate
about gambling. I also left him some contraband,
much of it carefully packed into a large statue of Buddha, that he agreed to
mail to me in the US.
I not only didn't receive the package, I never heard from
him. He probably looted the Buddha
before I got on the truck to the Port of Embarkation and sold the machine gun
and 45 on the black market. I should
have known better than to trust a replacement; I guess he got even for the $100
lesson with the Pinochle deck.
On the long awaited morning, a half dozen of us,
including Whiteside and a great
crapshooter from Tishimingo, Oklahoma, climbed into the back of a
"6x6" with our barracks bags for the ride to Inchon and home. I don't recall a tear being shed at leaving
our buddies; we were euphoric and a little drunk from farewell toasts and
anticipation.
It was all business at the POE, the people there were NOT
going home and were apparently unaware that we were all heroes of the Pacific
War. The first night we were assembled
in a large room and a Master Sergeant explained the ground rules. "Before you get on the ship you and your
barracks bag will be searched; I am going to leave this room and anything you
want to leave here willnot be identified." The loot deposited was amazing -- guns, tools, battlefield souvenirs
and luxury items "liberated" in Korea that wouldn't pass the scrutiny
of inspection. The sneakybastards made
their point; we walked on the ship without anyone looking in our bags.
There
were a large number of us packed like sardines on a large ship, but you
couldn't make us mad; we were supposed to disembark in Seattle, Washington, but
a North Pacific storm
caused a change in plans and we
were diverted to San Francisco. Even a
seagull hitting me in the hair as we passed under the Golden Gate Bridge could
not dampen the joy; after all, I had been shit on for years.
“WELCOME HOME".
We off loaded (disembarked) on Angel Island in San
Francisco Bay; we could see Sausilito on one side and San Francisco on the other,
but we couldn't go to either. The only
way to get off the Island was by ferry and transients were not allowed to
board. We might as well have landed on Alcatrez, our nearest neighbor. I guess the Army was afraid to loose us on
San Francisco after our years of deprivation in the South Pacific. Rape and pillage were not really on our minds;
we just wanted to experience being back in America.
The food was FANTASTIC; all the fresh eggs you
wanted, however you wanted them, real
milk, bacon or sausage or both for breakfast; fresh vegetables, lettuce and
tomatoes and chicken or beef (not canned) for lunch and dinner. We were allowed unlimited access to the long
distance Telephone System. Lines were
long and waits sometimes even longer, but I eventually
actually talked to Pat in
Baytown, Texas where she had gone to work for the Humble Oil and Refining
Company as a chemist after (almost) graduating from Texas State College for
Women.
Whiteside also talked to his
wife in Corsicana.
After a few days we were put on another and last troop
train to San Antonio, Texas to be "mustered out". It took about three days but seemed forever
before we arrived in Camp Brooks. At every
stop, and they were frequent, along the way, guys would jump off the train to
buy beer, whiskey and the junk food we hadn't tasted for years.
Soon after arriving at Camp Brooks we were given passes; Whiteside
and I took a taxi to the St. Francis, the best hotel in town, where our wives
by prior arrangement had checked in and
were awaiting us. Our entrance into the hotel was less than auspicious,
ludicrous would probably be more descriptive.
We had never seen plate glass doors and the electric eye door opener had
also been invented while we were overseas.
The doors magically opened before our outthrust hands contacted them and
we almost fell on our faces in the lobby.
Quickly recovering, we sauntered up to the registration desk and asked
for the keys to our rooms.
Our wives had somehow made contact and had obtained adjoining rooms. We didn't see much of
one another, though; there was a lot of catching up to do. I do remember Whiteside knocking on the door
between our rooms and entering wearing his wife's nightgown. I'm sure that was the first experience in a
first class hotel for any of us.
Back at the base we were quickly processed: given our
meager terminal leave pay, our honorable discharges, signed up for the $10,000
GI Insurance, and had our mandatory meeting with the officer or noncom who
tried to sign us up in the Army Reserves.
That was HILARIOUS; they had the odious job of trying to sell enlisted
men with years of being screwed by the Army on the advantages of joining the
reserves. A few guys may have signed up,
but they sure didn't admit it. There was
no way I was going to stay in the Army Reserves; I had been down that
road. I politely declined, took my back
pay and the precious discharge and, accompanied by Pat, caught a bus to Wichita
Falls to see my Momma.
My brother, Bill, was also there. He was a REAL war hero; as a member of our
local National Guard unit, the 131st Field Artillery, he was between Hawaii and
the Philippines on Pearl Harbor Day.
Their transport was diverted to Australia, but they were soon sent to
Borneo reinforce the Dutch. The
survivors were soon captured by the the Japanese and became the true "Lost
Battalion", everyone in the 131st Field Artillery Battalion was either
killed or captured. They were all
officially "Missing in Action" for between eighteen months and two
years before the Japanese got around to notifying our mother that he was alive
and a Prisoner of War.
They were transported, under much worse conditions than
our troop transports, to Siam (now Thailand) to work on the China-Burma
Railroad (made famous by the movie THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER KWAI). He somehow convinced the Japanese to transfer
him to northern Hokkaido to work in
the iron mines when it became apparent that all the POWs in Thailand were dying
of malnutrition, tropical diseases and mistreatment. Conditions were much improved in the Japanese
homeland; they were hungry, but so were their captors and the local population,
and they were seldom subjected to physical abuse. I had haunted the airfields in Okinawa when the liberated
POWs started coming through on their way home, but he was sent via the Philippines.
It was a happy homecoming; our mother, who had had many
of her major internal parts surgically removed over the years and suffered from
serious heart problems and high blood pressure, had made good her vow to live
until both her boys got home. She spent
most of her time in the kitchen, trying to fatten us up and we loved it. We only had about a week before Pat had to
report back to work at the Humble Company in Baytown.
One day my father proudly escorted me, in uniform because
I hadn't worn civilian clothes since graduating from high school five years
before, to the Hub Clothiers, the best men's store in
town (at least we thought it
was). My father had bought his rarely
purchased suit there as soon as he could afford one and encouraged me to shop
there; we were such good customers we had a
charge account. Sol Lasky, the manager, met us at the door; "Albert",
he said, "I have something I put away for you in the vault when you went
off to war". I'll be damned if he
didn't bring out a lovely, brown, all wool Hart, Schaffner and Marx suit that
fit perfectly, and I wore for years.
I was deeply appreciative, whether he had saved the suit
for three years just for me or not didn't really matter; the thought was what
was important. For the first time I
realized that little bald headed, friendly man was Jewish, Solomon Lasky. In north Texas, we grew up with our own set
of racial hangups; Yankees were the worst, Indians, especially Comanches, were
the next worst (that created a
problem if you were one--you didn't have to tell everyone), negros (pronounced
nigras if you were being polite) were OK as long as they "kept their
place", and Mexicans were even welcome in
the "white" school system.
We hadn't been taught to discriminate against Jews; antisemitism
just never came up. I knew Moses Rabinowich
was Jewish because his father was a Rabbi, but it never occurred to me that Helen Septowich, my
friend Ben Scheinburg and the gorgeous Esther Rose Persky were somehow
different. It took World War II, the
monstrous atrocities we gradually learned about and the antisemitism of fellow
GIs from the North, especially New York, to learn about that mental
poison.
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