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Transcribed May 16, 2010 by:
Melissa Strader, RMR, CRR
ROCHE: My name is Vince Roche. I'm trying
to speak so that we'll pick everything up on this microphone.
And we're doing a veteran's interview, video interview of
Mr. Donald G. Martin on February 23rd, 2006 here in Avon at my
office.
Mr. Martin is a veteran of both World War II
and Korea. And he's going to fill us in and tell us about his --
his experiences during those two particular periods in time when
this country was engaged in foreign wars.
Just by way of background, Mr. Martin, can
you tell us where you were born and your date of birth?
MARTIN: I was born in Pittsburgh,
Pennsylvania on 1926. And that date happened to be
my mother's birthday also.
Q All right. That's a happy coincidence.
A Yep.
Q Can you -- how long have you lived in Avon?
A I've lived in Avon probably at least 30 years.
Q Thirty years. And you're retired?
A Yes.
Q And what are you retired from?
A I'm retired as a senior sales engineer, First
Pierson Company, who is located in Bloomfield, Connecticut.
Q And what was their product or line?
A We sold pneumatic and hydraulic and electronic
equipment used in machinery and robotics and laboratory use and
production use quite widely throughout New England.
Q And how long did you work there?
A I worked there 35 years and another ten years at
home.
Q Okay. You have a family? Children?
A I have two children, but they don't live in
Connecticut. One lives in Swampscott, Massachusetts, and the
other one lives in Kennesaw, Georgia.
Q We're now going to go back and, just for the
record, start -- just so it's clear, start with your initial
induction or initial experience and what you were doing at the --
at that period during World War II when you were either drafted
or enlisted, or whatever, into -- well, I think you indicated the
Navy. Can you tell us about that? What you were doing, the
dates, the times and the places where you were?
A Well, I graduated from Clearfield High School in
1943 and almost immediately went to Penn State on the accelerated
program. I enrolled as an industrial engineering student and
took all the required engineering courses. Plus I also had a
course in ROTC.
Q Okay. You actually started the freshman year in
ROTC reserve officer?
A Yes.
Q Okay. You graduated from, you say, Clearfield
High School?
A Uh-huh.
Q Where is that located?
A In Clearfield, Pennsylvania.
Q Pennsylvania, okay.
A It's right on Route 80.
Q All right. Route 80. All right.
A You have to -- if you're going west on Route 80,
you go through Clearfield.
Q Okay. And how long were you at Penn State?
A I was -- well, at first, I was there 10 months
until I was 18 years old and was drafted.
Q Okay.
A And I was drafted into the Navy because that was
my choice. You didn't always get what you wanted, but I was
lucky.
Q Okay. Was your commitment there for two years or
more than two years?
A It was for as long as required by the war.
Q Okay. For the duration, as they say.
A Yes.
Q Okay. Drafted in -- now, where did you first get
inducted into the Navy?
A That was in State College, Pennsylvania.
Q Okay. So you were actually on the university
grounds was a --
A No. No. It was a town.
Q Okay. Well, state is where the college is. But
where was -- where did you first actually get sworn in into the
Navy? Was it there?
A No. It was at Bainbridge, Maryland.
Q Okay. So really your first duty station or your
first reporting station.
A Yes. That's where I went to boot camp.
Q Okay. At boot camp at Bainbridge, Maryland for
how long?
A Probably eight weeks.
Q Okay. Okay. And that was basic training?
A Yeah.
Q And then from there, where did you go?
A Then we -- I think we entered either 12 or 16 week
program to learn the requirements of being a Navy hospital
corpsman.
Q Okay. And that was your specialized training or
special MOS or whatever they called it?
A Specialized, yes.
Q As a Navy corpsman, meaning a medical specialist,
a medical aide person?
A Yes. Right. Not quite the same as a nurse, but
quite similar in many respects.
Q Okay. And did you actually have any hospital or
field training going on during that period of time or after that?
A Well, after that, I was assigned to the National
Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland. And I was a corpsman
in the venereal disease ward.
A All right. So you went to -- is that Bethesda
Naval Hospital?
A Yes.
Q Is that what they call that today? Okay, in
Bethesda, Maryland. And that was after your 12 or 16 weeks of
specialized training?
A Yes.
Q Okay. And how long were you at Bethesda?
A I'm guessing around eight weeks. Because I --
they said that you could apply for a school after you were there
four weeks. And before I was even able to apply, I was on an
overseas draft.
Q Okay. Overseas draft meaning what?
A Meaning that we were lined up to be sent overseas
for duty.
Q Okay. Okay. At this point when you -- let's see.
Going back, basic eight weeks, specialized training, say 16, and
then another eight weeks. So you were in the Navy for, say,
approximately 30 weeks at that point or --
A I would --
Q -- 36 weeks?
A -- I would guess that -- that's approximately
right.
Q Okay. So when did you first go in -- when did you
first get sworn into the Navy? That would be in '40 -- '44?
A Yeah. That would be probably May or June --
Q May or June of '44.
A -- 1944.
Q Okay. Okay. Okay. Now, getting back to your
overseas draft thing, did you have any leave time before you went
overseas?
A I think so. I think so. But I don't -- it's not
a sharp memory.
Q Yeah. And do you recall approximately when you
did actually ship out overseas and to what destination?
A We had a beautiful train trip across country and
ended up at San Bruno, California where we were assembled and
took a train up to Seattle where we took a ship, a merchant ship
converted into a transport ship. And we -- it was called the
Mormic Hawk. And we sailed, I believe, to Guam. And I'm not
sure whether we went all the way to Tinian or not. But it took
about 30 days. And our rations were rather sparse, but adequate.
And the trip was pretty uneventful, but very slow because it was
a -- it was a freighter and it wasn't a fast ship.
Q So you were 30 days at sea from Seattle to get to
Guam?
A Yeah, about that.
Q Well, did you make other stops along the way?
Hawaii or --
A No. Oh, let's see. We may have stopped in
Hawaii, but we didn't get off the ship, that was for sure.
Q You were basically 30 days on that ship?
A Yeah.
Q All right. What kind of a unit were you traveling
with then? Was it -- was it a --
A Mixed. It was mixed.
Q Okay. You weren't necessarily -- it wasn't your
entire unit traveling with you.
A No.
Q You were mixed in with --
A No.
Q -- all kinds of --
A We didn't know who we were with or where we were
going at that point.
Q Okay. Okay. Was -- were there Marine, Army and
Navy personnel on this ship being transported?
A As far as I know, there were.
Q Okay. Okay.
A I don't remember how the breakdown, but you know,
we were all passengers in the service.
Q Yeah. What were the accommodations like? Where
were you sleeping?
A We had the bunks.
Q Bunks. Six high?
A Yeah, pretty high.
Q Yeah. Okay. The --
A I thank God I didn't get seasick.
Q Of course, Navy people aren't supposed to, are
they?
A No.
Q But they do. At least I found that some do, but.
Okay. So eventually, you get to Guam. Do you get off at Guam at
all or --
A I'm not sure.
Q Okay.
A I'm not sure. But it -- but I -- somewhere along
the line, I recall being on the ground in Guam, but I don't know
when it was.
Q Okay. Okay. But that wasn't your final
destination.
A No.
Q And then from Guam or from wherever that was, you
eventually went to Tinian?
A Tinian. North of Tinian.
Q Tinian is, what, an island?
A It's a fairly large -- well, not -- it was large
enough to have B-29s on there. That's where the Enola Gay that
dropped the first atom bomb took off from.
Q That's right. That's right. That's --
A Was Tinian.
Q -- Tinian. I remember that name now.
A And that's one reason why the military conquered
the Tinian and Saipan and Guam, because they needed room for air
fields that could handle a lot of planes.
Q And that could handle the big bombers --
A Yes.
Q -- at the airport.
A Yes.
Q And it also had a harbor, obviously, supplied
harbor or something.
A Yes.
Q And you basically went into Tinian. And what were
you assigned to or what did you do once you got to Tinian?
A When we got to Tinian, we were assigned to the
United States Military Government Hospital Number 204. And our
job was to take care of approximately 12,000 Japanese and Korean
civilians that were living on the island as farmers or whatever.
Q You say Japanese and Korean?
A Yes.
Q Koreans were on this island?
A The Koreans were pretty much slaves on Tinian.
Q Now, this is after Tinian was taken, the Japanese
used the Koreans as slaves. Yeah. Seemed to be that way. Seems
to be some residual resentment over that on the part of the
Koreans today.
A Oh, yeah, there was.
Q So you say there were 12,000. Well, in effect,
these people were not prisoners of war then, but --
A They were. They lived in Camp Churo and they were
locked up every night.
Q Both Japanese and Koreans?
A Yes.
Q Not together, though?
A They were together. But I don't know how together
they were inside Camp Churo. I don't think I was ever in there.
Q That was run by the MPs, probably, or --
A That was run by the military government, the Navy
military government, I think.
Q Oh, really.
A Could have been various.
Q So what was this hospital like? I mean, were
there military personnel in there too?
A No.
Q You were just taking care of civilians?
A Right. When we got there, we found the hospital
consisted of a bunch of large squad tents. People were on cots
in various stages of illness. And eventually, the CBs came and
put up a hospital for us out of quonset huts. And we had quite a
few of them. But we had probably as good a hospital as you would
get in a city around here of 10 to 15,000.
Q Uh-huh.
A We had almost everything you could name.
Q Was there also a military hospital for military
personnel on Tinian?
A Yes, there was, but it wasn't near us.
Q Okay.
A And we didn't --
Q You weren't involved?
A We didn't have anything to do with that, no.
Q What sort of diseases or ailments or illnesses or
conditions were you dealing with as a corpsman?
A Well, there was a lot of cat fever, scabies,
tuberculous, some communicable diseases that aren't common in the
United States, and then various other typical illnesses of -- of
children and pregnant women and old men.
Q Do any surgery? Was there surgery --
A Yeah. We had a surgical unit, we had x-rays, we
had a pharmacy. I -- at one point, I was in charge of the
receiving ward. And I had, I think, three Japanese doctors and a
Japanese dentist that we worked with. And we also had some
Japanese nurses and nurses aides. And the nurses aides were in
training while they were there because they were basically young
girls between, I'll say, 15 and 20, for the most part.
Q And you worked with these people?
A Yes. They worked with us.
Q Did they speak English?
A They learned English.
A And the Korean boys were placed in various spots
in the -- in the hospital where they could be of help. I don't
know that they did much medical work, but they were helpful,
anyway.
Q Yeah. And there wasn't any -- any particular
problems dealing with the Japanese or the Koreans?
A We didn't see any. There may have been.
Q Yeah. Yeah. And then these -- there were
Japanese doctors there as opposed to Navy doctors?
A We had Navy doctors too.
Q Okay. All right.
A We had Navy doctors and surgeons and laboratory
specialists. And we had a doctor from Pittsburgh who was an
obstetrician and gynecologist.
Q Okay. What -- as far as your rank went, you went
from -- I'm not familiar with Navy ranks. So I mean, you went
from an E-1 to an E-2? I mean, what rank were you by the time
you got to Tinian?
A Oh, probably just hospital corpsman. But in those
days, they called them pharmacist mates.
Q Right.
A And that was a noncommissioned officer. So I went
from third class pharmacist mate to second class pharmacist mate
while I was there. Today they call them hospital corpsmen. I
think maybe they number them one, two or three or something like
that.
Q Yeah. You don't recall in the pay grades, though,
I mean, you -- well, still is, E-1 to E-9, you know.
A No, I don't recall that.
Q Okay.
A No.
Q As far as the officers that were in charge of this
particular hospital, I mean, were there -- was it all one officer
or 10 or how --
A Oh, we had about -- oh, gosh, I'd think maybe six
to eight medical officers. Some were warrant officers. They had
two warrant officers in the records office. And then we had
probably a half a dozen surgeons and -- and internists in the
other group. And we had a -- we had a Navy doctor who was a
dentist that took care of us.
Q Okay. Now, how long -- when you're on Tinian
-- first of all, how long were you on Tinian?
A I was on there from -- let's see -- probably
August to the following May in 1946.
Q Okay. Well, August of '44. You went in the
Navy --
A I went -- I went in -- I was there from August of
'44 to probably May of -- or May or maybe April of 1946, which
was after my --
Q Well, yeah.
A Well, I wasn't -- I didn't have to enlist, so they
had me as long as they wanted me.
Q Okay. But I mean, the war was over in August of
'45.
A That's right. But we had to --
Q You had to stay?
A -- clean up the -- the place and get all the
Japanese and Koreans repatriated to their homeland.
Q Okay.
A Because they weren't gonna stay there.
Q Yeah. Yeah.
A The island is now inhabited by Chamorro Indians,
or whatever they were. But they -- they were native to that
area. And they were also in Saipan.
Q Okay. I'm trying to place Tinian. Was Tinian
part of the tail of the Japanese islands or --
A No. It was part of the Mariana Islands.
Q Mariana Islands, okay. All right. That's the
-- the chain it was in, okay, the Mariana. So were you there a
good nine months after the war ended, it seems like?
A Yeah. Yeah. That's probably true.
Q Okay. May of '46. Did your duties change much
from being prewar or during the war to post-war or post-August
'45? I mean, did you have different types of duties or --
A I had a variety of duties. I was --
Q Describe what some of those were.
A Well, I started off as a ward corpsman. And
eventually, I worked for the commanding officer for a while. I
was his do-it-all guy, or something. And finally, as the older
guys with more seniority were repatriated, they put me in the
record office. I replaced, I think, three record office
technicians and two warrant officers.
Q Okay.
A And I couldn't even type, but I learned.
Q Okay.
A And
basically, then, as you approached, you knew
when you were going to -- well, in effect, they were shutting
down this hospital, and you knew you were going to be shipped
home eventually.
Q Yeah. You had some notice of that of when you
were going to --
A That's right.
Q -- disembark.
A Uh-huh.
Q Where did you go? From Tinian, what happened?
Where did you go from Tinian?
A From Tinian, we took a small boat to Saipan. And
then we were -- then we were put on a transport ship, a fairly
large ship. I think it was the -- I don't know the name of it
now. But it was a pretty large transport ship, a regular luxury
ship. I guess it had been, at least.
Q Uh-huh.
A And we sailed all the way through the Panama Canal
to New York City and got out there.
Q Oh, you went down through the canal, huh --
A Uh-huh.
Q -- to New York. And then in New York, you were
discharged?
A No.
Q Okay. What happened in New York?
A Well, we were sent home to our home. And -- and
from there, we -- and with papers of when to report for
discharge.
Q Okay.
A And my papers were -- involved the Philadelphia
Naval Hospital. That's where I was discharged.
Q Okay. So from New York, you went home and then
you had to report to the Philadelphia Naval?
A Yes, after a period of days. I don't know how
Q You got some leave at home and then --
A Yeah, right.
Q -- and then to the Philadelphia Naval Hospital
there. That's a big hospital there, isn't it?
A Uh-huh.
Q And then shortly after that, you were discharged?
A Yeah. I was discharged there.
Q And do you know your discharge date?
A No. But it's on my DD-214.
Q DD-214, yeah.
A I think it was like May 26th or something like
that.
Q Of '46, okay.
A Is the DD-214 going to be part of this research?
Q Yes.
A And I was going to bring a copy today, but I
forgot.
Q Actually, I do think they want you -- you know,
they want me to get a copy --
A All right. I'll get you a copy.
Q -- of your -- you know, at your convenience. I
just want to check here. Yeah. Things look good. I hope
everything is taking. Who knows.
A I had one -- one experience on Tinian you might be
interested in. I don't know whether you want me to go into any
detail.
Q Yes, I do. And as a matter of fact, that's a good
point. Before we jump now, go into the Korean theater, let's go
back and tell me about anything -- any experience, Tinian or
before Tinian, anything that you think is remarkable or
noteworthy.
A Yeah.
Q Go ahead, fill me in on that.
A Well, you know, in the hospital, we dealt with a
variety of people, mostly Japanese. And we got to know some of
them quite well. In fact, I met my best friend there. He was a
Nisei that was born in Hawaii. And he was our interpreter. And
his name was Clarence Suzuki. And I just saw him few weeks ago
out in Las Vegas.
Q Now, a Nisei is a Japanese-American.
A Yes.
Q Okay. Just so people know.
A He's quite proud of the Japanese-American's effort
in World War II.
Q Absolutely. It was a whole, I think -- I want to
say brigade, maybe even a division.
A Yeah, the 552. 552.
Q Was that the name of the -- they got fought mostly
in the Italy theater, mostly in the --
A Right.
Q You remember meeting some of them?
A One little experience we had, besides offering
guidance to the Japanese in the hospital, was one afternoon, two
of us decided we wanted to do a little exploring. You know how
19-year-old boys are.
Q Okay.
A So we saw this hill and we decided to walk up this
hill and get a better look of the island. And while I was
walking up the hill, I came upon a little dug out area. And on
this area, there was a Japanese soldier sleeping in uniform with
his gun and bayonet and hand grenades all handy. And he was
sleeping. And I was only about eight feet away from him. But I
figured, I wasn't armed. And all he had to do was turn around,
grab a hand grenade and throw it downhill. So we ran out of
there as fast as we could. But that was quite a surprise.
Q That would be. Now, Tinian, there was a taking
-- the taking of that island was by the Marines.
A Right.
Q And that was a pretty good fight --
A Oh, yeah.
Q -- as I recall.
A Not as good as in Saipan, but.
Q Oh, no.
A But it was a -- it was a few days.
Q When they did the sweep and the mop up, they
missed the -- they probably missed some of these guys that were
dug in.
A Oh, yeah. Well, it was a hilly area. There was,
you know --
Q Did they eventually go up and get this guy or --
A I don't know. We didn't -- I don't know if we
told anybody about him. I guess I figured that he'd survived
that far and hadn't caused any problems, I'd just leave him
alone.
Q Leave him alone, yeah. He may be still there.
A Oh, they found some of those prison -- some of
those Japanese soldiers years afterwards.
Q The Philippines, they were --
A Yeah. I think on Saipan and Guam too.
Q Yeah. Yeah. As far as recreation time, what
would you do with time off?
A Oh, we had -- we had a very good softball team for
a small outfit. I don't know if we had 100 guys or not, but we
had a couple guys that were really good pitchers. And some of
the kids had played semi-pro ball, you know. And we played a lot
of big outfits. And that was our big thrill of sports on Tinian.
We had volleyball, I think, and tennis. And we could go swimming
in the ocean. We had a -- we could go to the beach.
Q Nice beach? Good water?
A Oh, yeah. Nice, clean, coral reefs around. And
one day we went fishing with a Japanese fisherman on an LST --
LST, a smaller one. And we caught some wahoo. And that was
quite exciting. I had a line as big as a clothesline and got
-- hooked something that was so big, I couldn't pull it in. And
then the line broke.
Q Shark.
A Maybe. It was a big thing. It had -- because it
had to be. But the wahoo was a beautiful fish. And we got, oh,
probably a dozen of them.
Q Oh. Let me go back. Just so you fully identify
your unit, what was the formal designation of your unit there on
Tinian?
A The formal designation was United States Navy
Military Hospital Number 204.
Q 204, okay. All right. Did you ever serve in any
other military hospitals outside of Bethesda and that?
A Well, not until Korean War.
Q Okay. Then that changed, okay. We won't get into
that yet. But okay. Any other incidents that you want to kind
of bring to mind or that come to mind that you might want to talk
about during the World War II experience? I mean, anybody in --
anybody in your unit injured or casualty or hostile fire or any
other --
A No. No. We didn't have -- run into any hostile
fire. We had an occasional prisoner being brought in and -- and
he was checked out by the doctors. But they didn't pose any
problems for us.
Q Did Japanese prisoners understand and appreciate
what was being done for them? Or were they in any way hostile to
you, I mean?
A Well, at the beginning, the people were all farmer
types. They were not intelligent professionals, for the most
part. And they were told that we were gonna kill them. So a lot
of them were jumping off the cliffs into the ocean. And this
dentist, his name is -- his name is on the tip of my tongue. But
he -- he broadcast from ships going along shore, don't jump, we
won't hurt you, and that sort of thing. And probably saved a
couple hundred lives that way.
But you know, when you practically live with these
people and you see the little kids and you realize that there's a
lot of sentimental humanity that exists between Americans and
Japanese, or whatever. Because little kids were universally, I
think, adored and loved the same as they are anywhere else.
Q Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a good point. Before
we go into the Korean theater, you're wearing some of your medals
or medals that are, you know, part of these military experiences.
Can you just briefly summarize what those -- some of those medals
are? And do they all relate to World War II or do some relate to
the Korean theater?
A Well, I think -- well, I think this is good
conduct. This one is good conduct. And this is
European-American theater. This is Asiatic-Pacific theater. And
these are Korean medals, UN medals. And this one, I think, was
given by the President of Korea to the First Marine Division.
Q Okay. So the top ones are more Korean, and the
bottom ones, World War II.
A Yeah. That's pretty much it. They keep coming
out with commemorative medals.
Q Oh, yeah.
A But I think they're mostly for show and not
official military medals. These are all regular ones.
Q Now, the badge indicates on your hat that you're a
member the VFW. Tell us what post that is.
A I'm in Post 3272 in Avon and --
Q How long have you been a member there?
A About five years.
Q How big is that post?
A We have about 150 members right now. We're one of
the larger posts in Connecticut, larger and more active, I should
say. Because we get a pretty good turn out for our meetings.
Maybe because they're dinner meetings and the auxiliary women
prepare the meals.
Q Prepare the meals, that's great.
A Although one thing, we don't have any young women.
They're all over 70.
Q Yeah. Wives of veterans.
A Yeah. A lot of them are, yeah.
Q And you also have a book of pictures,
approximately about 20 of them. We'll get into those. All of
them relating -- well, no, they're not all. Do they all relate
to Korea or have you got some World War II?
A No. Those are all Korea.
Q Those are all Korea, yeah.
A I had a lot of -- a lot of photographs of Tinian,
but you know how they get after 50 years. They're like curled.
Q Yeah.
A But I've got a lot of pictures of Japanese girls
and so forth. I had one girl I liked a lot. But I don't -- her
father was a member of the Black Dragon Society. And she -- they
were not allowed to fraternize with us at all.
Q Really.
A There was nothing going on between any of us and
them. But if you worked with somebody a long time, anyway, you
build up a friendship.
Q Sure. Sure. She was from Japan? She wasn't a
native Tinian?
A She was actually from Okinawa.
Q Okinawa?
A Uh-huh.
Q Okay. Well, that's a Japanese island.
A Right. Yeah. Most of them were from Okinawa.
Q Yeah.
A They had a sugar cane industry there in --
Q In Okinawa?
A -- in Tinian.
Q Oh, in Tinian. How big was Tinian?
A I don't know, maybe 10, 12 miles long and three or
four miles wide.
Q Okay. Okay. Why don't we take a pause here for a
minute.
Back on the record now. We're just going to go back.
Mr. Martin is just going to tell us a little bit about his good
friend Clarence and how he knew him and how he's maintaining that
relationship. Can you just briefly -- briefly tell us something
about -- I kicked the camera. We're okay.
A (Laughing.)
Q Too many legs here. Yeah. Can you just fill us
in? He was a Japanese-American.
A Yeah. And he was in the Army. And after -- after
he left Tinian, he was assigned to -- to Japan where they were
trying to
investigate the communists in Japan. Because that --
they -- our government figured they were a threat to us. So he
spent some time there before he was discharged.
Q What did he do in the Army? What was his --
A He was an interpreter.
Q Interpreter, okay.
A But he wanted to be a doctor, so he fit in pretty
good. He was very interested in all things medical and so forth.
Q Did he become a doctor?
A No. He went into more chemistry, more --
Q But you kept contact with him over the years?
A Yep. Yep. I saw -- I saw him in Hawaii probably
two or three times. Yeah.
Q In the last ten years?
A More than that, yeah.
Q When was the last time you saw him?
A Oh, I just saw him a couple weeks ago out in Las
Vegas.
Q Oh, that's right. You mentioned that off the
record. But yeah. His name was Clarence. What was his last
A Suzuki.
Q Suzuki, okay. That's a pretty common Japanese
name, I guess.
A Yeah, it is. Yep.
Q He's related to the Suzuki motorcycle?
A Yep.
Q And then coming back through, when you were coming
back out of Tinian through the Panama Canal back to New York, you
ran into somebody you said you knew.
A Yeah. He was my first roommate in college. And
he was in the -- in the Army Medical Corp. And he was an
officer. And he was assigned to the Army hospital in, I think,
Cristobal, Panama. And he got in a jeep and came to our ship and
we visited for a while there.
Q That was a good reunion.
A And I used to see him at the Penn State reunions.
In fact, the last year, he was there.
Q That's great. Okay.
A We're all over 80 now. All the World War II guys
that I know are all over 80.
Q I don't know -- I can't think of any World War II
guy I know that's under 80.
A Well, there are --
Q Close to 80, 79.
A Well, I was just 80 in this January.
Q Yeah. Okay. At this point, we're gonna shift our
focus. World War II is over, you've been discharged from the
Navy. Fill us in briefly what you did from '46 to the Korean war
and then how you wound up in Korea and all that, where you went,
what you did when you were discharged.
A Oh, okay. Oh, okay. After I was discharged, I
went back to college and I had five semesters of industrial
engineering to complete. I worked two summers, one in Pittsburgh
as an industrial engineer trainee, and another time in Niagara
Falls as a factory worker. And that was to earn a little money
to supplement the government money that we got.
Q You got the VA -- VA benefits, educational GI
bill?
A Yeah. And that was a big thing.
Q Oh, yeah.
A A very big thing.
Q And you then graduated from Penn State.
A Yeah. I graduated in January of '49.
Q January of '49. And during that period, were you
in any reserve units or any affiliation?
A I was signed up in the reserves because I went to
that one meeting where we signed up. Because they were gonna
have an organized reserve unit at Penn State. And I thought,
well, that would be a good thing to do to make a little extra
money. But they never got it organized and --
Q So you were in the kind of, so to speak during
that latter '40 after the World War II, you were in kind of an
inactive reserve status?
A That's right, inactive. I was very inactive. It
was nothing.
Q And then at some point, '49, you graduated. You
started a job somewhere?
A And then -- then I tried to -- it was a very bad
time to graduate because there was hard to get a job. And I
finally got a job with Ingersoll Rand. Because a friend of mine
had graduated, he got a job with Ingersoll Rand and told me about
it. And it was just what I wanted.
Q It was a big company then.
A Yeah. And --
Q Compressors, anyway.
A Yeah. He was in air tools, and that's what I was
in. And but at that time, I was hired out in Detroit and I
replaced a high school graduate. And but I got good experience
at learning more about the in's and out's of office work in a
sales office. And eventually, I was about ready to get a
promotion to a sales engineer, and that's when I got called back
in the service.
Q Okay.
A You know, so kids these days, they ask, you know,
if you had any upsets in your life. But you had a lot of them,
but you just accepted it. But kids today, they don't have to
deal with that problem.
Q I know. I know.
A And anyway, I liked the work. And I was -- I
worked in New York City at 11 Broadway for them for a couple
months. And then they sent me up to Hartford, and I worked in
Connecticut as a sales engineer for Ingersoll Rand for a few
years.
Q Now we're talking -- now, this is now still before
Korea?
A Yep.
Q Okay.
A Yep.
Q You came back then.
A No, this isn't, no. I was in Hartford after
Korea.
Q After, okay.
A Yeah.
Q So you went to New York, though, for a brief
period with them before Korea. Or was that after too?
A That was after.
Q Okay. Let's stay with now your -- your -- you
have a job leading up to '49 into '50, Korean war breaks out.
When do you get called back in? When did this all happen?
A I was called back when I worked for Ingersoll Rand
in Detroit. And I was working in the office there and as a -- as
a clerk. And when I got called back, that was September of 1950.
Q September of '50, you get called back into an
active duty Navy unit?
A No. I was -- had to report to -- where was it? I
don't -- maybe -- somewhere. I think it may have been -- might
have been Philadelphia Naval Hospital. I'm not sure.
Q Okay.
A That's where I had to report, I think. And then
-- then that's when they put me in the Marine Corp.
Q Okay. Now, this sudden change just maybe requires
maybe a little explanation of you're reinducted, or so to speak,
recalled back into the Navy as an active corp -- as a corpsman
with the same rank?
A Yep.
Q Okay. So you're going in as probably an E-3 or
maybe an E-4.
A Well, I was like a staff sergeant.
Q Staff sergeant. Well, that would be E-5, E-6,
maybe.
A And the nice thing about the Marine Corp, because
when you're a staff sergeant, you're a staff NCO and you have a
lot of extra privileges.
Q Absolutely.
A And you don't in the Navy.
Q The Navy, no. You're not a chief until you're an
E-7 in the Navy.
A That's right.
Q You know, the petty officers are still, you know,
they're not chiefs.
A No. No. But I -- in the Marine Corp, a staff
sergeant is --
Q Absolutely.
A -- is pretty up there.
Q And that's the rank that you --
A That's what I went in with and that's what I come
out with, yeah.
Q Now, just so you -- you think you went into the
Navy or the Philadelphia Naval Hospital. At what point did you
realize or when were you told that you were going to not be in
the Navy, you were going to be in the Marine Corp?
A I don't remember that.
Q Okay.
A It might have been -- it must have been pretty
early on, because we didn't really have to go through any
indoctrination like boot camp or anything. We just were put in
field medical service school at Camp Lejeune.
Q Okay. So that's where you -- I mean, basically,
you were ordered to Lejeune, and there you were then, so to
speak, in the Marine Corp. I mean, Lejeune is Marine camp.
A Right. Right.
Q Okay. So that was -- I mean reactivated. That
happened shortly thereafter that you must have been sent to
Lejeune for further training.
A Right. Right.
Q Okay. Now, what -- how long were you at Lejeune?
A Oh, probably two or three months, I think.
Q And what was your training there?
A Oh, well, we learned about the problems in -- that
we would encounter being in the field medical service school and
being a corpsman with a Marine unit.
Q Yeah.
A You know, but --
Q Learning, so to speak, the Marine way, huh?
A Well, right. I know that we went to the firing
range. And I was a pretty good shot, so I got expert.
Q Oh, yeah.
A I got expert, and that was easy. And I didn't
even have to wear my glasses in those days, but.
Q You had rifle training then, huh? Well, all --
A Well -- well, we had -- we had a day at the
shooting range, that's all.
Q Yeah.
A And --
Q So you were a staff sergeant at that point with
some rank.
A Right.
Q Okay.
A Yeah. I went to the -- we used to go to the staff
NCO club which was, you know, like an officers' club.
Q Yeah.
A And they had a -- what was her name -- Eydie Gorme
was there one night. And I asked her to dance and I danced with
her.
Q Really? Danced with Eydie Gorme, huh?
A Yeah. Yeah. She was only about 18 or 19 at that
time. She was pretty young.
Q Not a bad looking woman, as I recall, though.
A No. She married that Lawrence -- you know, what
was his --
Q Yeah. Eydie Gorme, she sang with a guy. His name
had -- I know it was Lawrence or last name was Lawrence.
A Yeah.
Q They were a famous couple.
A And they got married. Yeah.
Q Well, then you were at Lejeune for, you say, what,
eight -- how many? Eight weeks?
A Yeah, I think eight weeks in the -- in the school.
And then I was assigned to the second tank battalion as a
corpsman.
Q That was at Lejeune?
A Yeah. And that's where I met two of my good
friends. They're both from Burlington, Vermont.
Q Really. Marines in the tank --
A Yeah, they were corpsmen.
Q They were corpsmen too? Okay.
A They were corpsmen. One was a third class and the
other one was a second class.
Q Well, they were in the Navy.
A They were in the Marines.
Q Oh, Marines, okay.
A And they got assigned with me to go overseas.
Q Okay. Now, after you finished your training at
Lejeune, how long were you at Lejeune after that? Did you stay
there long?
A No. No. Maybe, as I say, I think maybe three or
four months.
Q Three or four months. You went in September of
'50. So by December of '50, January '51, you were shipped out?
A No. I think -- I think we got in Korea in
December. That's what I think.
Q And you were -- okay. So you left Lejeune with
this -- did you leave with this tank battalion or whatever?
A No.
Q No. You just left this corpsmen, the three of you
were -- well, were you assigned to a particular unit at that
A No.
Q You were just given individual assignments?
A No. Right.
Q To report into some --
A I don't know whether they had it figured out
already, but I, you know.
Q Yeah.
A But I know when -- when I got to Korea, we
relieved corpsmen from Charlie Med that came down from the Chosin
Reservoir. And these were the remnants of what was --
Q Left of Chosin?
A -- that was left of that unit. And so Charlie Med
had to build up their strength before they were able to operate.
And a lot of the guys here that were -- were there, they escaped
frostbite and being wounded and all that stuff. So these were
the guys that were the luckier ones.
Q Yeah. The Chosin Reservoir was a brutal one.
A Oh, yeah. These guys went through a lot.
Q Well, let's go back now. Okay. So you're shipped
out of Lejeune. How do you wind up in Korea? What's your route?
A Well, we were -- oh, yeah, we -- we flew over.
Q Flew?
A Yeah. We flew from -- it was a Navy Air Base in
California.
Q Okay. To get from Lejeune to the Navy, how did
you get there? Train?
A We took a train across country.
Q Okay, train to wherever the place was.
A Yeah. That was a beautiful trip. I mean, the
accommodations weren't the greatest, but we saw a lot of
beautiful country.
Q Cross country, huh?
A Uh-huh.
Q You go through the Rockies, huh?
A Yeah.
Q Train to California. You don't know where in
California you disembarked from?
A Yeah. Well, I know we were assigned to stay at
San Bruno, California. They had a -- that -- it was a -- it was
a horse racing track and the Navy took it over. And a lot of the
guys slept in -- in stalls. But we happened to stay in a
barracks, fairly new temporary barracks.
Q That was in San Bruno?
A San Bruno, California, right.
Q Was that out on the water?
A No.
Q What was that near? What was San Bruno near?
A It was near Stanford, I know that.
Q Okay. So it's north of San Francisco or --
A No. No. It was south.
Q South of San Francisco, I guess.
A South. It was south.
Q Okay.
A And we used to spend vacations -- I mean liberties
in San Francisco. And one day in San Francisco, I was walking up
Market Street and I ran into my uncle. He was in the Navy and he
was out there, my uncle John.
Q Okay.
A Yeah. That was a really --
Q You didn't know he was out there?
A No. I don't think I did.
Q You saw him on the street or something?
A Yeah. We just walked into each other.
Q That's amazing.
A Yeah. So I had a reunion with him.
Q So at that time, you were wearing, though, a
Marine uniform, a Marine staff sergeant uniform. Okay.
A Yep.
Q Okay, so you get into this -- you're in San Bruno.
You're there for how long? Short period?
A Three weeks maybe.
Q Three weeks. And then you're preparing to ship
A Then we got on the Mariana Mars airplane, huge
flying boat, and we flew to Hawaii.
Q Mariana Mars, that was a large what? A large --
A Large flying boat, yeah.
Q Transport plane?
A Plane, yeah. Big one. It was probably the
largest one at the time.
Q Was that the Army airport?
A No, it was Naval. It was a Navy plane.
Q And you went from there, you went from your base
to --
A To Hawaii.
Q -- to Hawaii, okay.
A In fact, that's where I saw Clarence and Thelma
again. And they met me at the airport and she brought a flowered
lei for me to wear. And I think he had his car and we drove
around the island a little bit, you know.
Q They were living there then, huh?
A They were living there.
Q He wasn't reactivated, though?
A No. No.
Q He was out?
A He was out.
Q So you saw your Suzuki friend, Clarence Suzuki.
A Yep.
Q Okay. So were you in Hawaii for a little bit?
A Maybe a couple days.
Q Yeah.
A And then we -- we flew from there, I think, to --
well, from there, we flew to Korea.
Q Into southern Korea?
A Masan is where we landed. Masan is where we were
-- met up with our unit, or our unit to-be.
Q You weren't assigned to any unit at that point.
A I might have been, but I didn't realize it at the
time.
Q You were traveling with a group. You were
traveling kind of alone or --
A Yeah, I was with a bunch of guys. And one of the
guys that I met in Camp Lejeune was in my unit. And the other
guy was in another unit.
Q Yeah.
A The one from -- the two were both from Burlington.
The fact --
Q They were friends of yours.
A Yep.
Q And you kept contact with them still.
A Yeah, I did. I -- I was in contact with them. I
had a couple trips, business trips up to Burlington, and I saw
Miles McQuinn. And later on, I contacted Clint Hutchinson, who
was there. And I arranged for him to go to Montreal with me.
And we met Clarence and Thelma up there. And we had a nice visit
with them. And Clarence and Clint were both history buffs and
they had a lot in common. And Clint was a wonderful guy. Wish
he had -- he died shortly after that.
Q Oh, really.
A So he was a fellow that could do a lot of things.
He was a dowser. He was Reiki. He said, I can -- I can do Reiki
over the telephone to you.
Q He was into that that much?
A Oh, yeah. And he knew a lot of stuff I'd like to
have learned, but he died too soon.
Q Unfortunately, the good ones do.
A Yeah. He was -- he devoted his whole life to
doing good things.
Q He was involved in some --
A Oh, he was like a guidance counselor at a high
school. And he taught history. And he worked in prisons for
helping prisoners. And he -- his -- his father died and he
helped his mother run a boarding house in Burlington. And he was
a very benevolent type of guy.
Q Good person.
A Very unusual person.
Q Yeah.
A Very nice guy.
Q Yep.
A Never got married. I don't know.
Q You like to see people like that. Because I mean,
there's so few of them around.
A Well, yeah. I mean, even my wife Barbara, she
liked -- thought the world of him. And she wishes that we had
got to know him better. But you know, you do things as they come
to your mind, and sometimes you wish you had done it sooner, but
you couldn't do it.
Q Yep. Yep. Okay, let's get in -- so you're in
Korea in December of '50.
A Uh-huh.
Q And then what do you -- what unit are you assigned
to and what happened?
A This is -- we were assigned to a Charlie Med Field
Hospital.
Q Okay. Charlie Med, you mean Charlie C-Med?
A Like a mash unit.
Q Large -- large field house.
A Not large, no. Not large.
Q You just call it C-Med, Charlie Med?
A But we had a few -- we had a few doctors, American
Navy doctors.
Q And you had also air transport helicopter or
whatever?
A I don't never -- I don't think I was ever on a
helicopter there.
Q They had them available.
A Well, the helicopters used to bring the wounded in
to us. And but, you know, that -- we hadn't really set up yet,
though. Because we were just getting all of our gear together to
get a hospital going in Korea.
Q Yeah.
A And after we got all that, it was all put on
trucks and we drove north, I think, to Taegu. But I'm not sure.
Q Was that central? Central or --
A Yeah, that was more central.
Q Central south Korea?
A Yeah. And we set up a hospital there.
Q Okay. How many people would be on a hospital
unit? I mean, what are you talking the total staff? I mean, 50
or 100?
A Fifty. Fifty, maybe.
Q Fifty personnel.
A Yeah.
Q But there weren't specific helicopters assigned to
you, I mean, Marine helicopters or --
A They weren't assigned to us, no.
Q I mean, they were assigned to somebody.
A Yeah, they were --
Q Had to be working.
A They were part of -- you know, they had ambulances
and jeeps and everything that brought wounded to us.
Q But those hospitals, at least this one in Korea,
was a total Marine operation. It wasn't a joint operation with
Army, Navy, Army?
A No. It was totally Marine. And even the doctors
were in the Marine Corp under the auspices of the First Marine
Division. Actually, he was a Navy captain. But he was -- I
don't know what his rank was in the Marine Corp, but.
Q Yeah.
A But there was over a thousand corpsmen in a marine
division. It was a pretty --
Q That was all -- your title or the rank was First
Marine Division, then C-Med, or something in between? Was there
a brigade assignment? I mean, it was a division?
A Oh, no. We were -- we were served in the area.
And we weren't the only one. There must have been other -- other
medical battalions or units, I should say, not battalions.
Q Did you serve, though, and take care of only
Marine wounded?
A Yes. Yes.
Q Army had its own setup?
A Yeah.
Q Okay. Okay, so let's see. By January of '51,
this hospital unit had moved up to Taegu and operated.
A Well, I'd like to think that. But sometime like
January, yeah.
Q Early. Winter was setting in there. It was cold
there then.
A Oh, yeah, it was cold. We had all the winter gear
on. Yep.
Q Yeah. And --
A And we had big squad tents with an oil heater in
it.
Q Oh, is that how they kept -- you slept in big
tents?
A Yeah. And I worked nights so I could sleep during
the day when it was warmer.
Q Now, what was your job there?
A I was assigned as the -- I don't know if I was
really in charge, but I was one of the corpsmen in charge of the
receiving award. And that's where I got in trouble. Because one
day we had a lot of casualties. And there were bandages all over
the floor and everything, you know. And the chief says to me,
clean up these things. Why didn't you clean them up. I said,
chief, we were engulfed by patients. We didn't have time to
clean them up. He didn't like that answer. And --
Q He knew what was going on, or should have known,
right?
A He should have. But I don't know, maybe he
thought I was a smart *** or something. But about two or three
days later, I was in a line company.
Q Oh, really?
A Yeah.
Q That was sent up closer to the front, you mean?
A Yeah.
Q Where was the front at this point? Was it 38th
or --
A No. It was south of that then.
Q Oh, yeah.
A Because we hadn't gone up to 38th yet.
Q Okay, what I mean --
A Well, this was the second time around. You know,
when they went up to the Yellow River, that was the time the
Chinese came in and threw us all back. But that was before I got
there.
Q Okay. Okay. Had Henshaw Landing occurred?
A Yeah, it had occurred.
Q It had occurred. So it was in that Chinese
frontal wave down, push them back and now pushed back to the 38th
again, so.
A Right.
Q Second?
A Yeah. In fact, after we set up this hospital
there near Taegu, is what I say, apparently the Chinese broke
through our lines and we had to evacuate and go back down south
somewhere again.
Q Yeah.
A And we were there a while. And then we went back
up north again.
Q At that point, were you out of the hospital in
this line unit?
A No, not that -- not -- not then yet, no.
Q So what happened after you went to this line unit?
What was the line unit like? I mean, it was a regular combat
company?
A Oh, yeah, it was a -- yeah, third -- third
battalion. We were in -- well, I remember the first -- the first
day out, I was with a -- about three or four of us were marching
up to join our unit. And I know I was getting kind of tired
because I hadn't been walking much, you know.
Q Right. You weren't --
A And I know my head fell over to the side and my
helmet fell off. And it was so steep, it rolled completely out
of sight.
Q Oh, my God.
A So -- so I had to go without a helmet for a little
while. But then we joined, I think, the company which had a lot
of guys in it, and we were walking north. And a couple short
-- maybe four short rounds from our own artillery hit our line.
But the line was so long, they were way ahead of where I was.
You know, so I wasn't called into play then.
But then we made a -- we made the camp on the way
up. And a couple of north Korean mortar shells fell in our group
and wounded a couple guys. And I -- I helped that. I helped one
guy get settled. And then we just -- that's -- yeah, that was
-- that was when I was assigned to the line company. Yeah.
And --
Q That was a regular combat company?
A Right.
Q You were assigned to a company or a battalion.
Company, probably.
A Yeah. There were two companies. I know I was in
Georgia and Howell Company, I know that.
Q G and H, yeah.
A Yeah.
Q And they were basically facing north Korean and
Q How long were you assigned there?
A Well, don't forget, I was a second class. And
they didn't have those guys in line companies. So I was
probably, oh, maybe a month, month or so including up to the time
we went to the Punchbowl. But then they got a third class come
along, and he took my place and I was sent to the rear. That's a
big advantage there.
Q Oh, right. Right.
A And in fact, he -- they -- north Koreans
infiltrated one night, and he was shot up. And they shot up the
whole CP command, the platoon command post. And he was in the
hospital in Japan. But I was back on battalion aid then. I was
a battalion aid and a regimental aid. And then finally, we got
their numbers up from being in Korea and so forth, and I was
eligible to be repatriated, at least sent to the rear.
Q Yeah.
A Well, I went -- you know, you always got to try.
I went and talked to the division surgeon, who was the guy in
charge of all the corpsmen -- all the corpsmen. And I said,
well, if we can be sent to the rear, how about sending us to the
armored amphibious battalion in Japan. And by God, he did.
Q Because you were --
A No. I have a picture of the guys that went there.
Q Okay. Okay, just to digress for a minute. You
have this book of pictures, which are mostly the Korean
experience.
A Yeah.
Q Those are pictures of artillery and units. Are
these line units that you were assigned to in those pictures, for
the most part, I mean?
A Well --
Q Some are and some aren't.
A Yeah.
Q Okay. Well, we're going to go back later off the
record and get more definition and description of what those
pictures are about. But basically, most of them are Korean, your
Korean experience in that.
A Yeah. They all are.
Q All are, okay. We'll go back to those later.
Okay, so once you're -- you were with this line unit for like,
what, 30 days 60 days, if that?
A Maybe 30 -- maybe 30 days. And then I was sent to
the rear to battalion aid, or something like that, but never went
back to Charlie Med.
Q Okay. So you're back at the rear with -- at
battalion level, some sort of a --
A And I think I was at regimental aid too. But you
know, they were just a couple tents. They didn't handle a lot of
casualties or anything.
Q Yeah.
A But I'll tell you one bad experience I had. One
day -- and I don't remember this was battalion aids or regimental
aid. They brought a whole truckload of dead Marines in. And the
corpsmen or the officer in charge says, okay, you unload those
guys, lay them out. So I had to drag these kids that were just
killed and lay them up on the bank where the graves registration
could look at them, get their dog tags and all that kind of
stuff. And that was kind of sad because these were young -- I
mean, I was -- I was maybe 19 at the time. These guys looked
like 17, 18. They looked like babies.
Q Wait a minute now. You were older than 19 because
you had -- I mean, you got out of -- you were in World War II.
A That's right. That's right. Yeah. I was like
26.
Q You had to be like in your twenties.
A Yeah. I was like 25 or 26, yeah. 1950, yeah, I
was -- yeah, I was 24, 24. I turned 25 over there. Yeah, that's
right. I was 24, so.
Q You had seen a little. You were a little older
and had seen a little.
A Yeah. And you know, I could talk to the younger
Marines more as somebody that they would respect. You know, they
called me doc. In fact, over even in the VFW, they call them --
some of them call me doc, you know. The guys are more Marines,
they really love the corpsmen, you know.
Q Yeah, I'm sure.
A They were -- they were dependent on corpsmen. And
just the name was so good. But we'd tease back and forth with
the Marines, you know.
Q Yeah.
A But it was all in fun.
Q That was a bad episode. There were a number of
bodies you had to take off this truck.
A Yeah, about 12 or 13. They were just killed.
Q Yeah. You could tell, you see the wounds and --
A I didn't -- that I saw anything in particular that
was ghastly. But you know, there were just so fresh.
Q Yeah. No question they were dead, though.
A No. They were dead all right. Yeah. They were
dead. They were big guys, you know. You try to handle a guy
that weighs 180 pounds dead weight, that's something.
Q Well, you had help. Somebody else had --
A No, I didn't.
Q You had to do this all alone?
A Yeah. Yeah.
Q That all --
A I don't remember anybody helping me.
Q That was a big, bad officer, didn't have anybody
to help you.
A No. Yeah. But I got them all laid out. And but
I never forgot that because it brings to life --
Q Yeah.
A -- what happens. Although I was never in combat
where I saw people getting killed, getting shot, see.
Q Close enough, though.
A Yeah.
Q So then from there, I mean, you were in the rear.
And then you were in the rear with that sort of assignment for,
what, 30, 60 days or so.
A I don't know. That was -- that was probably maybe
30 days or some point.
Q And then from there you --
A Then -- then we got rotated to the rear in Japan.
Q Okay. Then you shipped to Japan. You went from
Korea to Japan.
A Yeah.
Q How did you get there? By ship?
A No. By plane.
Q Plane. They flew you in Japan. Where in Japan
did you go before you stayed in --
A I think it was called Otsu. It was near Yokosuka.
Q Yokosuka?
A Yokosuka was near -- outside of -- it was a little
south of Tokyo.
Q Oh, was it?
A Yeah.
Q Oh, I was thinking of something else.
A That was a Naval base there, Yokosuka.
Q Yeah. And what did you do there?
A Well, we were surplus. They had guys to work
there. So -- so all we had to do was meet muster in the morning
and we were free to go.
Q So you were going into town or go to Tokyo?
A Well, we could do anything we want.
Q Oh, I mean, how many were like in this status? I
mean, what was --
A Well, we had, you know, about I guess most of our
group was.
Q Oh, yeah.
A This -- this one boy in there, Bob Bailey, he was
my buddy, and he -- he was in the same line company I was. He
was the senior corpsman in that one. And we --
Q What have we got, about 10 guys in that picture
over there?
A Maybe eight or nine, yeah. They all went to that
-- all went there. And we had a good time, I'll tell you.
Q Sounds like it, yeah. Stay away from that
venereal disease, but.
A Oh, yeah. You've got to be careful. Although I
don't know that we were as careful as we could have been.
Q Yeah. You had some experience with that at
Bethesda, it sounded like.
A Oh, yeah. I used to have to -- you know, I had to
give the guys shots.
Q Penicillin.
A And the penicillin in those days was very thick.
So we had to use big needles with big holes in them. And I did
that, poom, and get that big needle in them. And the guys would
jump. But it didn't hurt me. But you had to do it. The nurses
didn't do it.
Q No.
A No. Corpsmen did the whole thing.
Q Oh.
A The nurses, you know, nurses who probably didn't
have any more education than we had --
Q Yeah.
A -- they were officers.
Q That's right, officer. That's right. RNs would
be, yeah.
A They were maybe a little older than we are, maybe
a year or two, but not a lot of years. But they were all
officers. But we had guys that were medical students and
registered pharmacists and laboratory technicians and --
Q Yeah.
A -- and x-ray technicians and all that, and they
weren't -- they didn't get a commission.
Q Yeah. Yeah, I know. But I know they made nurses
-- well, if you were an RN, you were an officer.
A That's right.
Q Maybe low, you know, ones that weren't RNs.
A And they were really -- they really kept the
officers happy.
Q Yeah.
A I don't know what happened between them, but I'm
sure that at least they had a chance to talk to them. You know,
they had their own medicine and everything.
Q Oh, yeah. Yeah.
A But --
Q Okay. So you're in outside of Tokyo just in this
Navy base.
A Navy base.
Q How long were you there?
A Well, you know, I'll say -- I'll say month.
Q One month, okay.
A Yeah. But you know, might not have -- might have
only been two weeks.
Q Okay. Then where did you go from there?
A Well, then -- then we got our orders to go home.
And finally, they arrived and we got on a plane and flew to -- or
no, that's when we got the ship. That's when we got the ship.
Q You were sent home by ship?
A Now, wait. I'm getting the two wars mixed up
here. It's easy to do.
Q I know.
A No. Because I got a picture of the ship going
under -- going under the Golden Gate Bridge. So we were on a
ship. And -- and we went to Treasure Island and San Francisco.
Q Okay, on a ship.
A Yeah. And we stayed there,
seemed like, a long
time. Because a lot of the guys that went -- landed with us and
went there, they got papers before we did, long before we did.
But we were having a good time, so it didn't matter too much.
But finally, you know, when we were in Korea, there was a Navy
admiral came and he talked to us. And he told us, he says, if
there's anything I can ever do for you, let us know, let me know.
So after we were there quite a while and it seemed like they had
screwed up with the paperwork, we sent him a wire. And by God,
we -- about a week, we got our papers.
Q Okay. Let me go back just get this in the right
time frame. You got into Korea in the winter, December of '50.
A Uh-huh.
Q When did you leave Korea? When did you actually
get shipped to Japan? Must have been -- it must have been in the
spring or summer of '51. You weren't in Korea, you weren't --
how long were you in Korea? I'm trying to --
A Oh, we must have been there pretty close to a
Q So you were there for a year. Oh, okay. Because
I'm trying to --
A Pretty close to a year, yeah.
Q It didn't seem like a year the way we were talking
about.
A No.
Q You were there from December to December, do you
think?
A Maybe through November.
Q November of '51.
A Uh-huh.
Q Okay. And then to Japan, there for maybe 30, 60
A No, not 60, but 30.
Q Thirty days.
A Yeah.
Q And then Japan to California.
A To Treasure Island.
Q Treasure Island. There for a short period.
A Maybe a few weeks.
Q Yeah.
A Yeah.
Q And then from there, what? Back to your home of
record or --
A Yeah, I'm back to -- back to the states. And --
Q Back in Philadelphia?
A Yeah. And then I was processed there.
Q You were discharged in Philadelphia --
A Discharged, yeah. Yeah.
Q -- Naval Hospital? Philadelphia discharge.
A Yes.
Q So you were out of the service by Christmas of
'51.
A No. No.
Q Oh.
A No.
Q Longer?
A It was because I -- I had Christmas with my
brother in St. Louis on the way home.
Q Okay. Okay. So you remember that, Christmas --
Christmas in St. Louis.
A Yeah. And I stopped in Chicago and made love to a
girl I had known. And she had never let me make love to her.
Q Good.
A That was New Years. That was New Years. I
remember. Because she had a date for New Years, but she let me
stay with her and let me screw her.
Q Oh, all right. Let's not get too much on that.
A And she was a pretty nice girl too.
Q New Years in Chicago. And then eventually, you
get to Philadelphia, right? So by '52, you're in --
A Yeah.
Q Okay.
A Yeah.
Q So you were probably discharged, what, January,
February?
A I think February. February.
Q February you were out, discharged.
A Yeah. Well, my -- the DD-214 will show that.
Q So show all that, okay. Okay. And then from
there, you're back -- where was your family then?
A In Clearfield, Pennsylvania.
Q Your parents were still alive?
A Yeah, they were alive.
Q Going back, I'd like to ask the question, what
kind of contacts did you have back with the states when you were
overseas? Even during World War II and in Korea, what kind of
contact did you have with your family? Did you maintain it?
A Letters.
Q Mainly letters?
A Letters, right. We didn't have any telephone.
You know, today they have -- go crazy on the telephone. But now,
we don't -- then we didn't have any privileges like that. I
don't know who did. Maybe some people did.
Q You had good contact with your folks?
A Yeah, my mother and -- my mother used to write.
And I had some college girlfriends that wrote. And I -- I had a
few letters.
Q How about did you have brothers and sisters that
were all --
A My brother was at this St. Louis chart plant then.
Q That was your --
A In the Air Force.
Q He was in the Air Force?
A Yeah. He was an officer in there.
Q You sound like he had a good job.
A Yeah, he did. He did.
Q Air Force. Now, that was your family brother and
sister? Or brother, just one brother?
A Yeah, just one brother.
Q No sisters?
A Yeah.
Q Okay. On the outside of that, why don't we go
back. One of those pictures in Korea, you got a picture of Jack
Benny.
A Yeah.
Q Maybe talk about that. What kind of
entertainment --
A Well, that -- that was, I think, the only
entertainment that amounted much that I was allowed to
participate in. And that, you know, he had a nice show and --
Q Yeah.
A -- told jokes and had girls -- girls singing and
dancing and that kind of stuff.
Q Never saw Bob Hope? You never saw him?
A Didn't see him.
Q What did they call that the --
A USO.
Q USO.
A Yeah. Yeah.
Q So he was on that. So basically, your Korean duty
was really, I'll say, a year. And then back, discharged in '52.
The Korean war ended when? Didn't end till '53, did it?
A That's right. The --
Q '53?
A Yeah. Was later.
Q Maybe talk a little bit because, once again,
getting back to the pictures. This area you referred to as the
Punchbowl, what was that exactly while you were --
A Punchbowl was a natural formation maybe of an
extinct volcano or something. And it was a big, beautiful area.
Well, you could see that picture there. It looks really nice.
Q What kind of fighting went on around there?
A Oh, infantry and artillery. And we had the Air
Force. God, I used to -- oh, I didn't tell you. We were at
Wonju too. Well, now, on the way north while I was still in the
-- in the Charlie Med, we took over a bunch of quonset huts in
Wonju -- in Wonju.
Q In Korea?
A Yeah. And we were there awhile, and we had
patients there. And we stayed there awhile. And we could see
the Army jets going over and dropping *** on these hills and
stuff, you know.
Q Yeah.
A They don't do so much of that anymore, ***.
Q No. But I mean, but the Punchbowl was a heavily
-- was, what, near the 38th parallel, you say?
A It was north of the 38th.
Q Mountains. So there was fighting in those
mountains --
A Oh, yeah.
Q -- and the Punchbowl itself. So you were camped
there by the Punchbowl or in the vicinity?
A We were like on top of it after we conquered that
mountain or that hill.
Q I mean, it was --
A We, our group, you know, we were last because the
company had been so shot up before. They take turns, you know.
Well, you get the point when it's your turn. And the ones that
were badly hurt that are sort of put to the rear until they can
get their strength back, and then they get moved up to where
-- the point where they have to take the point. And that was the
day that this company that I was working with had to -- had to
take the Punchbowl. And that was the day that -- that they --
that they didn't have any opposition. They were lucky. You
know, that's --
Q You didn't have too many wounded coming back to
you then?
A I don't think I had any.
Q Yeah. What was --
A Not from that group.
Q Outside of having to unload those -- the dead
Marines, what were -- what was one of the other situations in
which you were, you know, flooded with wounded or wounded or
dead?
A Oh, well -- well, you saw the helicopters then.
When I was with Charlie Med, they were bringing them in every
day.
Q Every day you had something coming in?
A Oh, yeah. Yeah. You know, we didn't -- or in my
position, I didn't have to exercise a lot of medical expertise.
You know, I basically had guys going here and here, and there
were people there to take care of them.
Q You were the receiving -- you were on the
receiving end instead of --
A Yeah. And --
Q You would be classifying how seriously injured?
A No. I didn't have to do that either. We had
doctors that checked them out.
Q Oh. The --
A You know, so but, you know, I -- I had to tell the
corpsmen what to do and this and that, but.
Q Yeah.
A But I didn't have to -- I don't -- I don't
remember changing many bandages or anything like that.
Q Yeah.
A But you know, some of the people that came in were
pretty badly hurt. Guys were blinded and so forth.
Q Yeah. Sure.
A You know.
Q Grenade wounds, artillery, and then small arms
fire.
A Yeah.
Q Yeah. Yeah. Anything else that we haven't
covered that you think we should touch on?
A Oh, significant thing that happened in Japan.
This friend of mine, Bob Bailey, and I went out on liberty. And
one night we were in this very nice restaurant in Kumacora (ph),
which was where the giant diabutsu is, you know, maybe 20 feet
high. And that's quite a sight. And the Kumacora (ph) is a
beautiful little town. And then this restaurant, we met some --
some older Japanese, maybe in their 50s. And they invited us to
their home. And we found out that this lady was Countess
Shebasowa (ph). And her father, I believe, is called or was
called the Father of Modern Japan. And there's a big place built
in his honor near Tokyo now. It's like a museum. And he was --
he was one of the big wheels in Japan.
Q Post-war Japan?
A But not -- he wasn't in the military or anything.
Q Yeah. He was part of the government setup or --
A Yeah. But he wasn't living then, but.
Q Oh.
A But this was his daughter and her husband who was
president of one of the universities. So they were very nice to
us. And they could speak English and, you know, like any
well-educated person could.
Q Yeah.
A And she invited us to a society dance. We had
Prince McCossa's (ph) tickets. So we went to this dance. But
here we were stuck in the Marine uniform, which you know they
didn't love that very much.
Q No.
A But we danced. And I -- I looked into the
Shebasowas (ph), and he was quite a guy. And his -- his daughter
-- I think she was his daughter, but she was a very nice lady.
Q Yeah.
A Real cultured. And she had a sister at this dance
and we danced with her, but.
Q Sounds like a nice experience.
A Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, we were just kids
without any social connections.
Q Right. Yeah. That's quite a step. Getting back
here now, just as a closing out, you've belonged to the local VFW
for the last five years. Do you belong to any other veterans
organizations?
A I belong to some legions, but I was never in that
area long enough to --
Q Yeah.
A -- really get acquainted. I belong -- I don't
know if I even belong to the one in Clearfield where my hometown
was.
Q Okay.
A But I can always go there.
Q Yeah. Sure.
A You know.
Q After you got out, now, final discharge from the
Marine Corp, what was your -- when did you get back to work or
what did you do there?
A Well, the fact that I had worked for Ingersoll
Rand before, I contacted them because I still wanted that job as
a sales -- air tool sales engineer. And they sent me to Athens,
Pennsylvania where they had a factory. And they had a training
program there. And they taught you all about the tools and how
they were made and so forth.
And I was there probably, oh, I don't know, maybe
a month. And then they assigned me to the New York office on 11
Broadway. And after I -- and then while I was there, one of the
clerks got sick and I had to take over his job. And eventually,
they sent me to Hartford.
Q Then you came up to Hartford?
A Yeah.
Q Ingersoll Rand hired you back then immediately.
A Yeah. Yeah, pretty much. Well, in those days, it
wasn't so easy to get what they wanted. And I had a lot of sort
of like familiarity with the company because I worked for them in
Detroit, see.
Q Yeah. So you went back in to them. And you
stayed with them for a while?
A For, I don't know, three or four years.
Q Three or four years. And then you went with
-- who was it?
A First Pierson Company, yeah.
Q And you were there for close to --
A First Pierson Company, both their officers are
owners, lived in Avon.
Q Oh, really?
A Yeah, Bob Pierson and --
Q Bob Pierson?
A And George Pierson. They lived up behind
-- what's that big politician's house?
Q Nelson?
A Yeah, behind Alsaps' house up on the hill.
Q On the hill, yeah.
A Where they have big million dollars homes up
there.
Q Big homes up there.
A Yeah, George Pierson had eight acres there behind
his house. And he had a nice house. He had a lot of colonial
features to his house. And he had like a moved room from an old
house somewhere into his house and had all the panelling and all
that nice stuff.
Q Yeah. I think I recall his name, yeah. What
happened to that company?
A Oh, it's still there.
Q Still there? Still operating?
A Still there, yeah. Grandson is still operating
it.
Q Still in the family?
A Yeah.
Q Oh, I thought it got --
A No. John Pierson lived up on Verville Road or --
Q Oh, yeah.
A Up on the hill. He lived up there. And -- and he
started a company, a software company in Farmington and had like
100 employees at one time and sold it. And now he has a house at
Farmington Woods and another house down in Florida.
Q I didn't know that. Pierson, though, I remember
that name. Anything else?
A You know, you probably know Charlie Kilgore.
Q Well, no.
A Yeah. Well, he built both houses.
Q Oh, did he. He was a builder, yeah.
A Yeah. Good builder.
Q Absolutely.
A He came to the meeting this morning.
Q Oh, did he? Good. What do you think would -- is
there any -- out of your military experience, anything negative
that you brought with you or you still feel negative about?
A Oh, the only thing negative about the service is
that you're often working for some guy that you don't feel is
very swift, you know, a dumb ***, in other words. Yeah. And you
know, you just sort of resent taking orders from somebody that --
Q Yeah.
A -- you know doesn't know beans.
Q Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's the --
A That's what you get, that's all.
Q That's all, yeah. Yeah.
A You know, not everybody can be in charge. And
those guys put their time in, so I suppose they got to. But
that's the only thing. I didn't know. Like I never wanted to
make a career of the military. Although if I had gone back to
college and continued ROTC, I could have become commissioned.
But then -- oh, I know. When I was in the service there, I
thought well, maybe I can get out of this and go into something.
And I could have gone into -- into Naval intelligence. But then
you've got to sign on for about six years. And I said, I don't
want to do that.
Q Yeah.
A Yeah.
Q They always hold that carrot out. You've
maintained relationships with some of the friends you've met, so
they're still around, some?
A Well, Clarence is still around. I've known him
since 1945.
Q Yeah.
A And Bruce Ross has died in Florida, I assume. And
the fellow in Burlington died. And the other guy in Burlington
died. So that's about how the story is, you know.
Q Yeah. Yep. Yep.
A You know. And a lot of the guys that used to send
me Christmas cards that died off.
Q Yeah. Yeah.
A You know, if you don't see them. But after the
war, I worked in Pittsburgh one summer for Carnegie-Illinois
Steel. And I had a chance to get acquainted with our former
commanding officer. And he took me out to dinner a couple of
times. And I went up to his house and Pittsburgh and so forth.
But a lot of my relatives are from Pittsburgh.
Q Pittsburgh, yeah.
A Yeah.
Q And you're active in the local VFW where -- is
there anybody in the local VFW that was in a similar or a unit
like yours?
A Well, now this Nick McKevich, I don't know if he's
been through this or not.
Q I believe -- Ilene, I think, did take his --
A Yeah. He was a Navy chief corpsman.
Q Yeah.
A And he was in three and a half years. But he was
our past commander.
Q He was a commander there, wasn't he?
A He was a commander, yeah. Nice -- nice guy. He
got hit on Bushy Hill Road by a car and he was hurt badly.
Q Recently?
A Within the last couple years. He was badly hurt.
But he's pretty much recovered now. He's got a lot of hardware
in his neck because his neck was broken, I think.
Q Right. Bad enough going through life without car
accidents.
A Yeah. Well, he was a corpsman. And I think and
there's another couple guys I don't know very well that were
corpsmen. And Bob Honda has become a pretty good friend. And
he's just six months older than I am, so we got along. I tease
him and he teases me back, you know, but.
Q You've got more rank than him, though.
A Yeah. In a way, I did. But and Bill Newman, do
you know him?
Q I only met him. I don't know him personally.
A Bill Newman, he's -- he's gonna be the next
commander, not --
Q Next commander, not the one new?
A But we just -- our commander *** Peterson --
Q Peterson, yeah.
A -- just moved down south. And he's really gonna
be missed because he was a wonderful guy.
Q Yeah. Yeah. I remember.
A Very nice guy.
Q Yeah. He was a Marine, wasn't he?
A Yeah. Well, he was -- yeah, in the recon group.
Q Yeah.
A Yeah. But you know, not many of these guys are in
World War II anymore, no. Just a few here and there.
Q Yeah.
A And there's Fred Seolfi, he was a -- he was in the
Vietnam -- no, not Vietnam. He was in Iwo Jima invasion as a
Marine. He was there this morning.
Q Nick Gricky was --
A Nick Gricky was.
Q -- Iwo Jima guy.
A He was Iwo Jima, but he was in the Coast Guard.
Q Was he in the Coast Guard?
A Yeah. He was -- I don't know, he might have been
there this morning too. Yeah. Because we get a pretty good
group of guys.
Q Yeah. That's great that the --
A Ray Zachary, you know Ray. Yeah. He lives right
up the street from me.
Q Oh, that's right. Yeah.
A Yeah.
Q The -- no, it's good that that VFW is that active.
A Well, we have a lot of activities. We sold like
4500 dollars worth of poppies last year. And all that money is
used for the benefit of veterans.
Q 4500 dollars, that's excellent.
A Yeah. Yeah. But you know, if you have guys at
Walmart almost all day long, you could sell poppies by the
jillion. The kids are walking out with dollar bills.
Q Yeah. Yeah. Yep. Well, good, Mr. Martin.
Appreciate your time and effort putting this together. Hopefully
everything came out on the tape okay.
A Yeah.
Q That's not really your problem. We don't want to
be doing this again. But the -- but any follow-up documents,
pictures or anything else you think you might like to contribute
into the archives will be appreciated.
A I think I covered most everything.
Q Yeah, I think we have. If there's anything you
want to add, certainly you can.
A Well, one of our projects, you know, by the
efforts of the VFW, together with the school board, why we've got
on memorial -- on Veterans Day --
A -- we got -- the kids have elected not to take the
day off. So they go to school and we talk to them at the school.
We talk to different classes and have programs.
Q I've heard about that, yeah.
A And it's one of the few schools that does that.
And that's -- that's a step in the right direction.
Q That's a nice thing.
A Because the kids really -- because most of their
parents weren't even in the war. They weren't even born then
yet.
Q A lot of parents, that's right.
A You know, their parents are like forties and
fifties.
Q Yeah.
A And they don't know anything about the war.
Q Nope.
A Unless their fathers or relatives were in it and
maybe they heard something from them.
Q Yeah.
A But it's -- it's kind of sad. Because now that
we're in this terrorist situation, which is a terrible situation,
you know, the kids aren't really equipped by experience to handle
that.
Q Absolutely. That's a real aspect of --
A You know, they think, oh, we can just walk out of
there and life will go on the same, but it won't.
Q No.
A Because those guys are pretty damn smart.
Q Yeah. We got a little taste of that on 9/11.
A That's right.
Q That was just a little taste.
A Yeah. And that was -- they could -- that last
plane could have hit the White House. And that would have really
been significant. Well, as it was, they hit the -- they hit the
defense department.
Q Yeah. Right into the Pentagon.
A The Pentagon, yeah.
Q But that was the wrong building they hit. It was
a little too well built.
A Yeah, but they still did a lot of damage.
Q The White House didn't take a blow.
A No.
Q All right. Good, Mr. Martin. Thank you for your
time.
A Oh, thank you.
Q Glad you were able to do it. And you know, we'll
be in touch on putting the wraps on, though.
A All right. I'll -- I'll -- I've got the paperwork
here for the pictures.
Q Yeah.
A And they tell you about how to mark them up and
all that stuff.
Q That will be great. Thank you, sir.
A Yeah.
Q Going to turn off the camera now.
A Okay.
(End of interview.)