>> And this is James Newberry with Robert Chester.
And we're going to try this again.
This is Tuesday, October 31st, 2017.
We're at the Sturgis Library
at Kennesaw State University.
And once again, Mr. Chester,
do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, sir, I do.
>> And thank you so much for sitting down with me.
>> You're welcome.
>> Could you tell me your full name?
>> Robert Eugene Chester.
>> And what's your birthday?
>> August 8th, 1927.
>> Excellent. And where were you born?
>> In Camden, New Jersey.
>> What were your parents' names?
>> Mary and Harry Chester.
>> And so what did they do for a living?
>> Well, mother was just a housewife,
and dad was a bus mechanic,
worked on the public buses
that would go up and down the roads,
he was a mechanic in a bus garage.
>> So you've been born in Camden.
>> Yes.
>> But your parents made
a decision to move [OVERLAPPING].
>> Yes. So I was probably a year old and they
moved out in the country away from the city.
>> And can you tell
me about that area that
you were living in in the country?
>> Well, it was farm country, James,
and a lot of tomato fields and sweet potato fields,
and that thing and the soil in Southern New Jersey
for tomatoes and especially sugar corn is terrific.
And the farmers would contract these
tomato fields out to the Campbell Soup Company,
which was headquartered in Camden.
And as I got old enough to maybe 12,
13, 14 years of age to pick tomato,
there was no mechanical pickers,
they were all hand-picked.
We'd go out and pick the tomatoes and so forth,
and they would be bused or trucked up to Camden
to the Campbell Soup Company to be
squished and boiled and so forth,
and it would smell great in Camden in July,
August, September, when the tomatoes were being picked.
But I would earn extra money to take my girlfriend out to
a motion picture show and buy her an ice cream Sunday,
that sort of thing in
the early '40s when I started high school.
>> Excellent. So you
were also close to Glassboro, New Jersey?
>> Yes.
>> How large was this town?
>> Glassboro at that time,
probably had a population maybe of 5,000,
I would say, but where we lived in
the country was about six miles
west of Glassboro in the farm country.
>> So you talked a
little bit about working for Campbell Soup,
but that didn't come along until high school?
>> Yeah. Well, I worked for the farmers,
but the tomatoes went to Campbell Soup,
so I can brag a little bit
that I picked tomatoes for Campbell Soup.
>> And let's talk about your schooling
starting with first grade.
>> It was rural. I was five in August,
so I was allowed to start school,
schools up there, and they still do,
start school after Labor Day.
And so I started in a one-room school,
kind of a ramshackle.
The windows were on the south side.
They let as much heat in as you could in the wintertime,
it had a wood stove at the north side of the building
and the fourth graders
would help the teacher with the stove.
Now, there were four rows of desk,
one teacher, a lady, Ms. Batten, and she
taught four grades all at the same time.
And if you passed one year,
you moved over to the next row of
[LAUGHTER]
desk for the following year.
And of course, there were outdoor bathroom,
if you want to call that,
and outdoor pump that
froze in the wintertime and so forth.
But that was the first four years of school and so forth.
And then the next four years,
fifth through eighth, I went to a larger school.
It was brick, had indoor bathrooms, indoor fountain.
Boy, we were really living large, you know.
But one thing I have to mention,
James, at the first eight years of school,
this was in Southern New Jersey
about 20 miles from Philadelphia,
we're segregated and the black youngsters, at that time,
their schooling and their buildings
were even worse than ours from that standpoint.
And my first integrated school
was the four years of high school at Glassboro.
>> So you had been going to school in more rural areas?
>> Oh, yes.
>> High school you went into town?
>> Yeah, I bused. And I bused all 12 years of schooling,
I bused to school even
starting at first grade, and so forth.
>> So in those earlier school years when you were
moving from desk to desk after passing a grade,
how did you feel about the education you
were getting or did you feel any way about it?
>> I was too young. But apparently,
I made out okay from that standpoint.
[LAUGHTER]
In later years, James, we had a party
or whatever for this teacher, she had retired.
And so some of the old students one and we
gave her her first television. It was black and white.
And what she remembered about me and she told,
my bride and I attended this commemoration of her,
if you want to call it that,
and she remembered from first grade that about 1:30,
2:00 in the afternoon,
I would put my head down on the desk and go to sleep
because I was only five and
my mother had been putting me into bed for naps.
[LAUGHTER]
So she remembered I put
my head down and would take a nap in first grade.
>> What you were used to.
>> But I used to.
But somehow or another,
I got through four grades, and so forth.
But my bride got a big kick out of that and so forth.
But we gave this teacher her first television,
which was black and white.
>> Well, one of the things
that we try to convey with students is
the difference in technology from today and the 1930s.
[LAUGHTER]
And so at that time, there were certainly
some big things going on in Europe?
>> Yes.
>> And politically and socially,
how did you learn about this?
Were you interested at all?
>> I was always interested in history and I'm still
interested in history and
the times that we're in even today,
James, and I try to keep up with it as best I can.
We had a radio at home.
Of course, there was no television in those days.
And you could change
something on the dial and get
some short wave in, which was a big thing.
You could listen from
short wave coming from different foreign countries.
And I was old enough reading magazines and newspapers to
realize that things in the mid-'30s were getting pretty
tense in Europe and so forth,
through Great Britain, Nazi Germany,
Italy, and so forth.
The Italians had gone into Ethiopia and
[inaudible] in the middle '30s and so forth.
So as an eight or
nine or 10 year old youngster in the mid-'30s,
I was aware that things were going on and so forth.
>> Did your family have a radio?
>> Yeah, we had a radio and so forth.
>> What were the times of day when you listened in?
>> Well, it would be in the evening,
majority of the time would be in the evening.
And it had a short wave situation on the radio,
I remember, I'm trying to remember,
this is going back a long way now and so forth.
But I remember hearing
the crackling of the stations coming
out of different countries overseas and so forth.
But I was always interested in history,
and still interested in the times and so forth,
I try to keep up with the times as they are today.
>> Well, let's talk about
a particular event when you were at the beach?
>> Yes.
>> When you saw something in the sky.
Tell us about that, start at the beginning,
and roll that out for us.
>> We lived about 50 miles west of
Atlantic City and to get down there on the beach,
and incidentally,
we South Jersey people call it going to the shore,
we don't go to the beach, we go to the shore.
Anyway, we went to the shore one day,
mother and dad, and I was playing on the beach.
And this was about the mid '30s, 1934, '35, '36,
I was eight or nine years old
and was playing on the beach and I just got it was
beautiful sunny day and all of a sudden, a cloud.
I looked up and here it was the Zeppelin Von Hindenburg.
And the German skipper had brought her
in bring her in from Germany
with wealthy German passengers aboard
and he was making a right turn to go up
the beach and to show these wealthy passengers
the boardwalk and the hotels at Atlantic City.
Of course, this was well before Casino time.
And I could read and the altitude,
maybe four or 500 feet, very, very low.
You could see the gondola and maybe you
could see the passengers,
looking out to windows.
I'm not too sure about that.
But I could read Von Hindenburg on the fuselage and
on the nose with the four fins with
the Nazi Swastkas I remember that very,
very vividly and so forth.
And he would take. Now, Lake Hurst was
maybe 40 50 miles up the beach,
Lake Hurst Naval Air Station where they
would more the Zeppelin,
that would be about the only place in
the United States where they could more this and let
the passengers off to probably
bust them into New York City or whatever.
But I remember that very vividly and
it's still etched in my mind.
>> Did you have any sense
of what happened later to the Von Hindenburg?
>> Well, yes, in '37,
she went down and with a severe fire,
and there were casualties.
I think there were about 40 some people killed.
And I think there may have been one US sailor kill.
Now, when she would more
at the Naval Air station, of course,
the sailors there would help
more along with some civilians,
that worked for the Zeppelin company or whatever.
But she went up and there was
lightning storms at that particular time and so forth.
And They had a big hearing,
of course, with our Navy department,
the German engineers came over
and they concluded that it was
a lightning strike that the hydrogen went off.
Now, you've got to remember that they
were fueling this Zeppelin with hydrogen.
Our government refused to
sell the German government helium.
We had the the dibs,
if you want to call it that on the helium,
worldwide, and we refused to sell the Germans helium.
So the only thing they could use was the hydrogen,
which is, of course, extremely flammable.
Do you mind if I expand a little
bit more on this, James at all.
Some years later, a NASA scientist.
This was probably in the '80s.
I saw this on a PBS station up home in
Southern New Jersey where
my bride night lived in Glassboro.
This was probably around 1990.
This young NASA scientist
he was fascinated by the Hindenburg situation.
He had a theory that
possibly that it was something else besides
the hydrogen that went up and he got
some material from the Navy Archives in
Washington and took it into
a laboratory and he did some experiments with it.
And he found out that the Zeppelin people had coded
the Hindenburg with this coating to try to keep
the temperatures down as much
as possible because of the hydrogen.
And they put this new coating on.
Well, the engineer, the German engineer
slipped up on one thing.
Part of the coding had
a element in there that had a low flashpoint.
And he proved in the laboratory that this element
in this coding went up prior to the hydrogen,
and he went over to the Zeppelin archives in
Germany and the Zeppelin people are still in
business today, and so forth.
And they allowed him to go through the archives.
And he established in
these archives that the German engineers,
when they went back to Germany after
the hearings here with our Navy department,
they went back and they did
their experiments and they discovered
the same thing in the late '30s around 1937,
'38, but Hitler refused to let that out at all.
And they kept that secret because of Hitler and so forth.
And of course, with the war,
these archives were beyond touching and so forth.
But this NASA scientist
around 1990 proved that there was something else
beyond the hydrogen that went up
and it was part of the coating
and I saw this on a PBS station around 1990 up home.
>> You mentioned Adolf Hitler,
is that a name that you
knew you were eight or nine years old?
>> Yes. It was it was coming through in
the papers, magazines, radio.
>> What did you associate the name with?
>> Well, the fact that he
was a very heavy-handed dictator at that time.
And of course, the
British and French didn't want another World War.
World War I had devastated
the population of those three countries Britain,
France, and Germany,
and they didn't want the war,
but Hitler changed a lot of minds.
>> So I'm going to advance a couple of years.
The war begins in 1939.
>> Yes.
>> And then we moved
to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.
So what are your memories of that event?
>> I was 14 at the time that the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor Sophomore at Glassboro High School.
Now, the attack was Sunday.
On Tuesday, we were called
down to the auditorium by our principal,
and you sat with your class,
and the juniors and seniors sat in the auditorium,
sat on the ground floor,
and we had a balcony and the sophomores and freshmen
sat up in the balcony and you sat with your class.
Our principal, Mr. Lutz,
had a sense of history.
And he had a radio
in the middle of the stage
of the front of the auditorium,
and he had a radio set up.
And we listened to President Roosevelt,
asked Congress to declare war on Japan.
Now, this was live coming on the radio from Washington.
It was a pretty dramatic moment.
And for those of us
who were in that auditorium at that time.
Now, this was December 9,
1941, something you would want to remember.
And for the male males in the auditorium,
you suspected that maybe down
the road that your life is going to
have a dramatic change and it did.
>> What was the I mean,
that feeling would have been on your mind?
Were there any other feelings going through your mind?
>> No. We were excused from
the auditorium and the principal spoke and he said,
"I would advise you to go home and talk to
your parents and maybe go to church".
And so forth, but that was about it.
And of course, the following day,
school went on and so forth, but of course,
the immediate mobilization almost
took place almost immediately.
>> How did that change your high school with
the boys being called up the first day?
>> The draft had started, James,
in 1940, as best I remember the draft and so forth.
And what they did.
If you were in high school,
they would let you finish high school,
and you would be drafted at 18.
But some fellows left high school early and enlisted,
as long as if they were 17,
you could enlist and so forth,
and they would come back to school in their uniform
after boot camp and so forth.
But that's how it would be,
and of course, the mobilization,
just like a big amoeba or a mushroom,
it just kept going on and on and on.
>> And you mentioned some of the upper classmen?
>> Yes.
>> Who went on to serve.
Do you know anyone who was injured or lost their life?
>> Yes. One of the fellows who was
two years ahead of me was on the carrier Franklin,
and she was Kamikaze in 1945,
off the coast of Japan and
they were almost 800 killed on that carrier.
And this fellow, James Redmon was one of them.
And I knew him.
He was a good football player.
>> It was affecting people there?
>> Yes. And he was killed on the on the Franklin.
And of course, there were several others killed from
the attended Glassboro High School,
mostly army, but I remember Jim and of course,
I was a Navy vet.
But I remember Jim was killed on
the Franklin off the coast of Japan.
>> So you were 14?
>> When it started.
>> In 1941?
>> Yes.
>> I assume that's three more years before you could.
>> Yes.
>> So tell me about those years
in Glassboro and also at home,
how the war was affecting you, your family.
In what ways did you contribute to the war effort?
>> Well, of course, there was
rationing with the sugar and
the butter and gasoline
and so forth that started pretty quickly.
I guess, the contribution before going into
service would be to buy defense stamps,
they would try to help
fund the war with defense bonds and defense stamps.
You could buy them for 25 cents
and we'd have a booklet and
we would contribute what we could from that standpoint.
But other than that, it was just to finish education.
Now, I graduated out of
high school at 16 because starting at five,
I just went through the years.
And so at 16 when I graduated,
our graduation in 1944 was on D-Day,
June 6th, 1944.
And so immediately afterward,
I was one of the youngest in the class,
and majority of the males
who started enlisting and so forth.
And I was 17 the following August of '44,
which I was able to enlist in the Navy,
and I went down to Atlantic City
and listed down in Atlantic City.
And so there were about five or six of
us up at Sampson New York Boot camp,
which is up in the Finger Lake section,
the wine section of New York State.
And there were about five or six
of us up there at the same time in
boot camp going through at that particular time.
>> So you definitely expected to serve?
>> Yes.
>> Were you eager?
>> Absolutely. It was the thing to do you
wanted to get out there and because of
the Japanese, German Nazi situation.
It was just the way it was and so forth.
But of course, prior to this time as a junior and senior,
I was dating the young lady who
eventually became my bride and so forth.
So let's pick tomatoes
money to take her to the movies and.
>> How did it feel about leaving her to
go and list and go boot camp?
>> Well, I was anxious to serve and so forth
and she said she would wait for me and she did.
So it was an adventure and so forth.
>> And you went down on your 17 birthday?
>> Yes.
>> Tell me about that day, I
know you didn't drive yourself?
>> No. At that particular time in New Jersey,
you had to be 17 to get your driver's permit.
So my mother drove me down to Atlantic City.
I enlisted down the Navy
enlisting station down there at Atlantic City,
and then we went from there to
the license agency and I got my permit so I could drive.
Now, you had to have your permit for 30 days,
and then you could take your driver's test.
During that 30 days if you drove,
you had to have a licensed driver with you and so forth.
And so between the time I
enlisted and I got my call up to go to boot camp,
I had time to get my driver's license
to drive a car and get my license.
I got my social security number at
that particular time and so
I didn't have enough money to buy a car or anything.
I borrowed my parents car very
reluctantly I might have had and so forth.
But shortly after I got my driver's license,
I went off to boot camp at Sampson, New York.
>> Well, tell me about boot camp.
What was that like?
>> It was not bad we were treated fine.
We had our chief who was in charge,
I believe was a gym teacher out of high school.
Of course, he had a college education
and he was made a chief.
And I guess there were probably
about 150-200 of us in
boot camp in our company and so forth,
but it wasn't bad.
And we were up in as I said,
the Finger Lake section on Lake Seneca in New York State.
We were just above
Cornell and Ithaca University in that area up there,
and so forth and we went through boot camp.
I didn't remember anything outstanding about it,
we would march and we would go to the pool and
swim and learn how to take our dungarees.
We call them jeans now,
but they were called dungarees
then to tie them up and we could jump off
a tower there to pool where
they would inflate so it would help us
float if our ship was
torpedoed or something where you could use
your clothes to help float in the water,
and so forth for a temporary period.
But you would learn how to do that.
And of course, you'd have to shave every day.
I was only 17,
but you had to shave every day and you make sure
your bunks had to be just right and so
forth and you learn how to roll your clothes.
Now, I don't know, James how familiar you are
with the Navy enlisted clothes,
but we turn them inside
out and roll them to put them in a sea bag,
and the seams are inverted on the outside.
Now, I have my dress blues at home in my apartment,
and they're still rolled the same way.
Now, I roll these dungarees I roll these right side.
I've got a little bit of a crease here.
But you live out of a sea bag,
and you had to roll those clothes
up to conserve as much space as
possible because you didn't have lockers or anything of
that nature, aboard ship.
But you learn how to do that,
and I still have my blues rolled at home and where
that flap is in the back that
you see on the Navy uniforms.
When I pull that jumper
out right side up that is pressed perfectly.
The seams are down the arms inverted,
down the legs are inverted and so
forth and you didn't need an iron.
That's how you took care of your clothes.
>> How is the food?
>> It was okay.
You were 17 at the time it was okay.
I didn't remember anything
extraordinary about it but we survived
and I weighed about 140- 145 pounds at the time.
>> How long were you there?
>> At Sampson it was about 12 weeks,
we go through boot camp.
I got out in early December.
You got a two week leave,
came home and spent about two weeks.
When we finished boot camp,
I had been assigned to Gunner's Mate School,
and the Gunner's Mate School was also at Sampson.
So I went back about
the middle of December and I missed cook for
a couple of weeks and then
about the second day of January of 1945,
I started Gunner's Mate School there.
>> So what was Gunner's Mate School?
>> Gunner's Mate, it's the ordinance gang
aboard ship where you take care of the weapons,
the guns aboard the ship,
and the ammunition and so
forth and you had to learn how to take care of this.
And also, during that time,
we had to learn how to identify aircraft,
the German aircraft and
the Japanese aircraft and so forth.
Now, you see today,
Mitsubishi automobiles running around
the streets and so forth.
Well, Mitsubishi was a bad name
in those days because they
made Japanese zero fighters
and bombers and so forth and so on.
But they would flash
these on the screen you had to identify these.
That was part of the training as
a Gunner's Mate because you would be manning
guns out at sea for any battle situation and so forth.
>> So you were operating the guns?
>> Well, we were training yes.
But we would aboard ship,
you would be operating when you would get out of school.
You had to go through training it was a stiff training,
and it lasted about 12 weeks or so.
>> So I guess I'm just clarifying,
you said you knew all about
the guns and you knew how to identify the planes,
and that was so that you could shoot?
>> Right.
>> Okay
>> You didn't want to shoot down
friendly aircraft, for sure.
>> You're talking a little bit about the training
and this is early 1945.
>> Yes.
>> So what was going on in the war
and what were your expectations for serving?
>> Well, of course,
the war was drawing to a close we knew it.
The D-Day landing had been made,
the battle of the bulge had passed on,
at this particular time
the battle of Iwo Jima had not occurred nor Okinawa,
which followed Iwo Jima.
But we expected to be
going aboard some type
of ship that we would have to serve.
And of course, as time went on and
the Iwo Jima invasion had
closed and the Okinawa invasion was coming up.
The thought then was that there was going to be
an invasion of Japan
scheduled for roughly October of 1945.
And this is what
the Navy and the Army and the Air Forces were gearing
up for because they knew they were going to be
pulling people back from the European theater,
and those people were going to be assigned to
the Asian theater for the invasion of Japan.
And this is what they were gearing up for,
and what the Navy was doing at that time was getting
as much anti aircraft protection
aboard ships as they could
because of the Kamikaze situation.
And this is what our schooling was being trained for
anti aircraft situation of
40 millimeter and 20 millimeter anti aircraft weapons.
>> I see.
So let's talk about you finishing up
this training and at
what point did you get orders to ship back?
>> I finished up the training
probably around April of 1945,
and I eventually got to New York City
and waiting for a ship and probably about four o'clock in
the morning I got orders
to report to the Brooklyn Navy yard
and I went aboard to destroy DD 438, the USS Ludlow.
And what had happened
she had gotten back from the Mediterranean.
The ship had spent
the entire war essentially in the Mediterranean,
and they had taken the torpedo tubes
off and replaced it with anti-aircraft mounts,
40 millimeter, and we're getting ready to go.
And I went aboard at about four o'clock in the morning
and this was probably late April,
May of '45 and a couple of hours later 0600,
we were underway down the Atlantic down to
Hudson past the statue of
Liberty out in the Atlantic and down to what we
call Gitmo Guantanamo Bay for firing exercises.
>> So I know it was you and a bunch of other newbies.
>> Yeah. There were a few newbies.
Were there other guys who were more seasoned?
>> Oh, yes. There were maybe,
I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 of us new boots,
recruits that went aboard,
and so forth but mostly
the crew had been with the ship for at least a while.
>> What was the relationship between
the older guys and the new ones?
>> Overall, pretty good.
You were aboard ship and
you were depending on one another.
You had to keep that.
That ship was your home.
That was between you and the sea.
And you wanted to survive so you got along.
You had to.
You were dependent on one another to do
your job and to keep that ship afloat because
destroyers were called tin cans and
because they don't have
any armament and you
had a thin hull between you and the sea and that was it.
It was not like a battleship or a heavy cruiser that
were built for heavy-duty, for heavy warfare.
Destroyers were in and out and they were
they were like maybe in the Indian days.
They were scouts on the outside of a task force and so
forth and up and down, rock and roll,
if you see a battleship at heavy weather,
they're just rolling along fine,
but the destroyers are up and down,
and it's it was rough sea duty.
>> What were your accommodations?
>> Oh, boy. Eventually when I got a rack.
Now, the racks would be about four or five high
and it would be springs,
it would have a real thin mattress on it
and on chains like that,
and you climb and you'd be assigned to a rack,
and that was it and of course,
you had your seabag close by.
And The ship came first and you had to
have fresh water for the boilers and so forth.
So it would have desalination accommodation
on air to take seawater and make
fresh water out for the boilers.
The ship came first,
then the officers, then the chiefs,
and then the enlisted people for fresh water for
showers and for eating and for
brushing your teeth and for shaving and so forth,
and so on and we would get maybe
15 or 20 minutes fresh water the morning and
about 15 or 20 minutes freshwater
in the evening for showering and so forth and so on.
You moved.
You had to keep moving.
But the ship came
first because that was between you and the sea.
That was your home.
You had to take care of it.
You didn't want to fire aboard and you
didn't want anything to upset that home.
That ship was your home.
You had to take care of it.
>> So you arrived in Gitmo and what did you find there?
>> Well, at that particular time, of course,
our relationships with Cuba were much
different than it has been over the past 50,
60 years and it was a very quiet naval base,
but we went down there for firing exercises,
and we would go out during the day to
train recruits like me and
also to update the rest
with firing exercises of our main weapons,
the 5' 38 and the 40 millimeter and
the 20 millimeter and we would come back in.
Now, at that particular time,
you could go off the ship
and go into ship store or whatever,
at the naval base but you could also go across
what border there was
and you could go into a little Cuban town.
I never did. Some of the fellows did,
but it was friendly
with the Cubans at that particular time.
>> So you didn't go?
>> But I didn't I didn't go off base.
I stayed pretty close to that ship.
>> And you slept on the ship?
>> Oh, yes. You slept on the ship,
and of course, there, incidentally no air conditioning.
So if you were in hot conditions,
the keel was laid in 39 and
she was commissioned in Bathmin and she
was commissioned in March of
41 which was about eight months prior to Pearl Harbor.
So this ship was out to sea in the Atlantic convoy duty,
anti-submarine prior to World War
with the Japanese attack,
but of course, the German and Brits were at it at
that particular time but the ship was commissioned in 41.
>> Was it a matter of days or
weeks that you were in Cuba?
>> We were only there about two weeks
and then we went through the canal
and into San Diego for
about four or five days before going out to Pearl.
But we were only in Gitmo about 10 days to two weeks.
That was it for firing exercises.
>> What was the need to stop at San Diego?
>> I guess for fuel and for provisions
and give us a chance to get off, get to liberty.
I remember going to Mission Bay in San Diego.
Mission Bay is one of
the nice beaches there at the San Diego area and
so forth but I stayed pretty
close to the ship and so forth.
>> How did you feel during that long journey?
You're starting in New York in
Brooklyn you got a long way to go.
>> I guess at that particular time,
I was 17, James.
It was still an adventure.
It was all new and I was trying
to get over being seasick and so forth
but it was it was
our way of life because I was now a sailor,
I was aboard ship and this was it.
>> Did you feel any homesickness?
>> I would suppose yes because
I missed the young lady that I had been dating.
And so I missed her not overall too much.
Every day was a new adventure and I was 17.
It was it was all a new experience.
>> Could you communicate with people back home?
>> Via letter. That was that was about the only way.
The only time you could maybe make a phone call,
if we were in San Diego,
I can make a long-distance call to home.
I don't recall doing that.
I probably didn't have the money to
pay for a long-distance call.
We weren't making much money in those days.
I think in Bootcamp
as parentic sea men I think we I think it was
$21 a month and I think
when I became a sea man first class and went to see,
I think it was maybe 30 bucks a month.
You're not making much money and so forth.
But money was scarce.
>> So you next arrived at Pearl Harbor
and I guess it was three years since the attack by then.
>> Yes. Well, let's see it was December of '41.
So we're talking.
>> Over three later.
>> Little let's see '42, yeah,
we were in say June or July of '45, yes.
>> What did you find there?
How busy was the Harbor?
>> Well, we tied up with
three or four other destroyers
and they were waiting for orders.
And occasionally, you would see
a ship coming in that had been out in combat,
had been battered up some,
they were back for repairs,
and so forth but pretty quickly
we were training with
a task force with aircraft carriers,
larger ships, and so forth to
train to work with a task force and also for
the invasion of Japan and this is what we were training
for prior to the dropping of the atomic bombs.
>> So when did you leave
Pearl and what did you expect going from there?
[OVERLAPPING]
>> I would say we left Pearl somewhere, again, James,
about the best I could say,
maybe July of '45 and so forth.
And I remember the atomic bombs being dropped.
And one way I could remember.
The first one was August 6th of 1945.
I was 17 years of age.
Now, three days later,
they dropped the second one on Nagasaki.
I had turned 18 between, on August the 8th.
So I remember turning 18 between the times of
the first atomic bomb and the second one. I turned 18.
>> How did you all get that news?
>> [NOISE] Well, I guess our radio people
aboard ship spread the news throughout,
but that was the only way that we would get
it of our radio people receiving
messages from Pearl or from wherever
they would be getting
their messages from the radio shack.
>> What was the reaction?
>> Well, everybody
was wondering what was going to happen
because a couple of weeks later,
the Japanese surrendered.
I think the reaction was that this is probably
going to end the war.
>> How did that change
your situation and what the future would be for you?
And I'm assuming you avoided taking part in any invasion.
>> Yes. I would say there was relaxation aboard the ship,
especially from the older sailors and
the officers who had been on the ship for a while,
that they realized what was going on.
And I think there was a relaxation to some extent,
aboard the ship in regard to
what everyday life was like aboard the ship,
that it looked like the war
was going to come to an end that
we weren't going to be taking part in an invasion,
but we didn't know that until the Japanese surrendered.
But until that time,
there was still a preparation
that possibly this could come off,
until they surrendered, we didn't know.
>> Do you remember V-J Day?
>> Yes, I guess, to some extent.
We were at sea.
I wouldn't say there was
a celebration such as there was back in
the States as we've seen on
the old newsreels and so forth and so on.
It was just another day at sea.
And so our orders were changed,
we were pretty much put on convoy duty then to get
occupation troops into Japan because
the formal surrender wasn't signed until September 1,
and of course, they wanted to make sure
the Japanese were going
to quiet down and wouldn't be a problem,
and they weren't.
[NOISE]
>> Well, tell me about your arrival in Japan.
Where did you land and what happened?
>> First, we had taken some occupation troops into
the Philippines and so forth.
And we were in the Philippines for a few days.
Our skipper got us to Manilla and
we were there at Manilla for about four or five days.
The city was in horrible condition.
The the combat there,
the Japanese had just made sure
that that city was just devastated.
I only remember going ashore once in Manilla,
and what little I saw was in pretty bad condition.
And one thing I remember that was pretty sad.
I remember a youngster coming up to me
and selling either his sister
or his mother for prostitution.
What they were looking for was money.
They were looking for cigarettes.
They were looking for food.
These people were devastated, the Filipino natives.
And I just turned away and went back to the ship.
But this is what these youngsters,
they were forced to do it because they were starving.
The situation was bad.
Well, we left Manilla, and it seemed like
whatever island we would go to in the Philippines,
it seemed like it was almost always a jungle situation.
It probably wasn't.
I remember the skipper stopped,
we anchored off a beach
one day and I don't know whether
we swam in or motored in.
It was a beautiful beach
and we were swimming, playing softball,
and there was a native village just with
a thatched homes, and roots and everything.
But it was just a beautiful tropical scene
that you would pay a lot of money to go
to today [LAUGHTER] for a vacation.
I remember that one, one thing.
But we got orders to pick up a convoy to go to Japan,
to convoy troops into Japan.
And so we had to fuel up and we had
to locate a navy fueling barge, and we located it
and it seemed like it was in the middle of the jungle.
it was a US Navy fueling barge,
and they could fuel ships on both sides,
port and starboard, and we pulled up to fuel
at this Navy barge and on the other side was a destroyer.
It was a Japanese destroyer,
and here they were getting her enough fuel to
get the ship and the crew back to Japan.
Now, [LAUGHTER] they were devastated.
The Japanese country had
been bombed pretty heavily by the
B-29s out of Saipan
and the Navy planes off of the carriers.
[NOISE]
And this Japanese destroyer,
compared to ours was a rust bucket.
They run out of paint,
they run out of everything,
but if it had been at sea,
it still would have been a problem and so forth.
But of course, the surrender had been signed
and they were getting enough fuel to get back to Japan.
When we pulled up,
there were about four or five
Japanese sailors out on deck.
Now, you've got to remember, James,
the Japanese military,
both Army and Navy,
the enlisted people were treated very harshly.
And I think it contributed,
and I think our psychiatrists and
our military historians have established
that they were treated so severely,
the enlisted Army and Navy,
that it made them even more savage
when they would treat prisoners of war,
which probably contributed to
the Baatan Death March and so forth, and so on.
Well, some of our sailors
tried to swap hats with these Japanese sailors,
and as soon as they started
that, these sailors disappeared.
They they didn't want to be confronted by
their Navy chiefs or
their first class petty officers or their Navy officers,
talking to us or anything else.
They got out of sight because
they didn't want to be disciplined.
So there were no hats exchanged.
But it was really something to see
this Japanese destroyer being
fueled there to get it back home.
But we picked up our ships,
we were the convoy into Japan and away we went.
[NOISE]
>> And what did you do in Japan?
>> We went to two different places.
We went to Wakayama and it dropped off a ship,
and then we went to the Kure Naval Base,
which had been bombed pretty heavily by
the US Navy aircraft
off the carriers and so forth, and so on.
And Kure Naval Base was
only maybe 10 miles or so from Hiroshima.
And I know today,
most people, I guess, say Hiroshima,
but President Truman called Hiroshima,
and that's good enough for me.
President Truman became quite a hero of mine,
but dropping those atomic bombs
because it saved us the invasion of Japan.
There were a lot of lives lost to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
but there are an awful lot of knives lost with
a fire bombing raids out of the B-29s under
General [inaudible] also in
Tokyo and all the cities in Japan.
But it would have even been worse
with an invasion with a Kamikaze situation.
But we were in Kure for a few days.
Maybe a couple of our officers were able
to get over to Hiroshima.
Probably they weren't supposed to
be there because of the radiation,
but they were able to take some pictures,
and I have in my ship's book,
a very small black and white picture of
Hiroshima a few weeks after the bombing,
and of course, it was level and so forth.
>> Did they tell you about
people they encountered or [OVERLAPPING]
>> No, I never had
any conversation with the officers
about that or anything.
No. And I remember that.
I remember also the skipper had
a barge or a small boat come out to our ship and they
dumped on our fantail a whole pile of
Japanese rifles and [inaudible] that
had been confiscated and they said, help yourself.
So you go in a pile and pick out
a Japanese rifle and [inaudible] and
[NOISE]
I brought the rifle home,
the [inaudible] disappeared somewhere,
and I brought the rifle home.
I never got ammunition for it or anything,
and I eventually gave it to my son.
It's in LA J Georgia right now
[LAUGHTER]
where my son lives, but they're Japanese rifle.
>> They were handing that off as
a [inaudible] thinking you can take this as a souvenir.
>> Souvenir, yes.
>> And you said you were in Corey?
>> Corey Naval Base. Yes.
>> Did you have a job to do there,
your ship or were you just docking?
>> Well, when we went in, of course,
the mine sweepers had gone in ahead to make
sure that there are no mines and so forth.
One of the things I remember,
as we were getting the troop ship close to where it could
move or anchor or wherever the ship was going to be.
We were probably on its port carrier,
and there were a lot of Japanese fishing boats running
around and a skipper or one of
the officers up on the bridge had
gotten a megaphone out and was trying
to get away mostly
for these Japanese fishing boats to get away.
Now they didn't want one of
these fishing boats to either go
up against this troop ship or our ship with a mine.
They didn't know. Well, eventually,
they broke out a rifle on our bridge,
fired a few shots and those fishing boats scattered.
And of course, this happened back around 1990,
'92 over in the Middle East,
where the destroyer had
a small motorboat go up with a mine,
and there were 17 American sailors killed.
This was about 1990, '92.
I forget the name of the destroyer,
but it blew a hole on the side,
and there were 17 American sailors killed.
This was, of course, 50 years before,
he didn't want something like that to happen to our ship,
the troop ship, or whatever.
>> Were you able to go on land?
>> Yes. I got off.
There were a few of us.
I guess we got in a motor boat or something.
There was an island out off the Corey Naval Base,
an island a little bit away, and not very far.
And we walked around
this island a little bit and I remember one thing.
Some Japanese farmers had planted sweet potatoes,
and we pulled up a few and
we chopped on a little bit raw sweet potatoes.
It's okay. But when we got back aboard ship,
our ship's doctor found out about it and he chewed
our butt and he explained he said,
"These people use human excrement."
"They're using human manure, he said,
and their stomachs are used to this."
He said, "Yours aren't."
He said, "You shouldn't have been eating
the sweet potatoes and don't do this again."
Of course, this was a commission officer,
a medical doctor, and so forth.
But don't eat the sweet potatoes.
I remember that.
I remember one other thing, James.
There was a huge log on the beach of this island and
the Japanese fishermen would tie
their fishing boats up to this huge log.
This log was long and huge and so forth.
And there was some sailors,
I think maybe from our ship,
maybe from another ship had started a small fire,
and these Japanese fishermen
weren't very happy about that fire
because it was near that log where
they tied their ships, but they didn't.
But it was damp there and there
was no danger of that log,
but they weren't very happy about
that little fire that the sailors had started.
But I remember that about Corey.
>> Was this a time when you were biding
your time because your role as a gunners mate was
not as stressful as fighting would cease.
>> No. Our navy chief,
the chief of the ordinance gang,
he was a little short stubby fellow from Baltimore.
Francis Fox, I remember his name well.
Tough. He was regular Navy.
I was Navy reserve.
He was regular Navy.
He was tough and everything, but he would make sure
that he kept us busy and so forth, and so on.
And we couldn't let things rust and
you just had to take care of your ship. It was home.
You had to take care of whatever was there.
And so it wasn't as intense, but you didn't loaf.
>> About how long were you?
>> I Corey or in Japan?
>> Yes.
>> I guess we were there.
I'm guestimating maybe a couple of weeks at most,
but we got orders to go up to the Aleutians and we
went with three other destroyers and
there were four destroyers and we were
all dispatched to the Aleutians.
And we had we had a typhoon,
not as too severe on the way out of Japan,
battered up the ship quite a bit.
We lost some life rafts and
the ship was battered up some.
And of course, when you got up to the North Pacific,
the water is rough and your ship is up and down.
And the ship I was on the Ludlow,
as I mentioned, was commissioned in March of '41.
It was one of the older destroyers.
There were plenty of older destroyers
used during World War 2,
even some of the old World War 1 four
pipers as they called them.
But we couldn't go for and aft.
We couldn't go from aft,
the after part of the ship to
fourth part of the ship undercover.
If you wanted to go from that spot to the other spot,
you had to go up on deck and use lifelines.
Well, if you're in heavy weather,
you're going to get washed overboard.
So if you're stuck in one part of the ship or the other,
you were stuck there until you got into
calmer weather, calmer water.
And when you got up in North Pacific,
it was a wild time.
If you remember the television shows in
recent times of the Alaskan crab fishermen going out.
Do you remember those shows and they would
show them how rough that water was?
Well, that's how rough that water was.
>> You mean when you can't go from four
to after, it's coming over?
>> You're getting,
the water is just coming over.
>> So you could be swept right off.
>> You would be swept off.
You couldn't survive.
So if you were stuck at one place or the other,
you were there until
the weather cleared enough
that you could get fore and aft.
>> Is there is there sickness?
>> You better believe there is sickness.
Even the old salt was sickness and so forth.
To give you a little bit of history
about the Ludlow, James.
About the time that the war started,
I don't know whether the name,
would your mother and dad would remember the name
Douglas Fairbanks Jr, an actor.
He was commissioned early in
the war and he made a trip on
the Ludlow from the East Coast
up to Iceland on
a convoy situation in the North Atlantic.
The North Atlantic is just as wild
on the water as the North Pacific is.
And when he got back his statement was,
he said, these destroyer sailors
need to get submarine pay.
He said, they're underwater all the time.
And when you're in heavy water, yes,
the ship is like this and like this,
compared to a battleship,
which is just riding along and so forth.
That's the way you went to sea.
I remember when we
left the Brooklyn Navy yard, went down to Hudson,
got past the Statue of Liberty
and got into the Atlantic,
I could start to feel it in my stomach that quick.
I had never been to sea before.
I'm wondering what I got myself into.
But when you got into heavy weather, people got seasick.
I don't care who they were.
They got seasick.
>> I want to touch on a story that you mentioned,
but you didn't go into detail on when we spoke before.
This was an incident with an underwater mine?
>> Oh, yes. We had been at the Ellucians and
we were headed to Kodiak, Alaska.
We went into Kodiak and then we went down to Seattle.
And this was our first time back to the states.
Remember at this particular time,
1945, there were only 48 states.
Alaska was still a territory, as was Hawaii.
And any military personnel
stationed in Alaska or Hawaii at that time,
they got overseas pay because it was not one of the 48.
So we went down to Seattle for 48 hours.
We got Port and Starboard Liberty,
24 hours for the port side of the ship,
which is left port and 24 hours for the starboard.
And we were headed back to Kodiak.
And fortunately, our lookouts,
daytime spotted a mine and it was a Japanese mine.
And I remember seeing that off in
a distance and it was pretty large.
We had to fire on it.
You couldn't leave that for
any shipping or military situation.
And we kept firing
on that until eventually we blew it up.
And I remember it was like you would see at the old
faithful out of state park out west.
Going up, the geyser goes up, what,
every hour, every 55 minutes, whatever it is.
When that thing went up,
we could feel that aboard.
If we had hit that mine,
I wouldn't be here today with you, James,
because our ship would have
been broken half and it would have gone down.
It was just would not have survived.
>> So tell me about your return home and what
you were feeling when you were returning.
You came back through the canal?
>> Yes.
>> And then I believe you went to Charleston.
>> Charleston, South Carolina.
>> Why Charleston?
>> For decommissioning.
They were decommissioning destroyers at
that time and making it
a reserve base and so forth.
And we came into Charleston,
unloaded our ammo,
and we started the decommissioning process
in January of '46.
And in February of '46,
I managed to get a three-day liberty and
went home and spoke to
my girlfriend's parents and asked if I could marry
their baby daughter and they said yes.
Crystal would appreciate this.
It was on February 14th
that I asked my bride to marry me.
Wasn't that romantic?
I was a romantic devil.
And she said yes.
And so I went back to Ludlow.
I had to go back after three days
and I was discharged a short time
later and we were married the following year in 1947.
We decommissioned there.
And I fell in love with the city of Charleston and we
honeymooned there in 1947 with
a 1935 Ford Coop that I bought off my dad
for 125 bucks when I got out of the Navy. I'm sorry.
>> Fine. So what
were your plans after the war beyond getting married?
Did you have a plan of what you were going to do?
>> Get a job. I was not a good student and I
didn't want to embarrass
myself with trying to go to college,
even with the GI bill.
Eventually, I spent
42 years in the explosives and chemical industry.
I had 23 years at
an explosive DuPont plant on the Delaware River.
This plant was started in 1912 prior to
World War I and survived all that time.
And I worked there 23 years as
a lab technician and
a lab supervisor and resigned in 1970,
business was getting pretty poor.
There was a brand new chemical plant with
a BF Goodrich Company up
the river a little ways on the Delaware River.
I put 19 years in
there as a lab technician and lab supervisor.
Total of 42 years
in the explosives and chemical industry.
>> And you had a daughter and son?
>> We had a daughter and a son.
[NOISE]
We were married in '47.
Our daughter was born in '52 in
a little town called Elmer, New Jersey.
It was a little farming town.
They had put a hospital in there and she was born there.
Doctor in Glassboro was
headquartered there, you might say,
with his office in Glassboro,
and our son was born there in '56 at Elmer, New Jersey.
And the hospital still there expanded
quite a bit and so forth.
But both the children were
born there in Elmer, New Jersey.
>> Well, what's interesting and this
will help us to understand
how you eventually came to Georgia later in life.
>> Yes.
>> Both of your children
attended the University of Georgia?
>> Yes.
>> And why did they make that decision?
>> Our daughter was the oldest.
She learned to play.
We had a lady, string teacher across the street
from us who taught Violin and Viola, and our daughter.
My bride was a musician, she played piano,
and we bought an old upright piano,
and she thought both our children in basic piano.
She taught them, and then she would
turn them over to a professional teacher.
[NOISE]
The string teacher across the street from us,
taught our daughter Violin and Viola,
[NOISE]
our daughter also became one of
the top Baton twirlers in the State of New Jersey
and we took her down to different universities,
South Carolina, Duke, Wake Forest,
North Carolina, and so forth.
But things just seemed to click in
Athens with the University of Georgia.
They needed string players for
their symphony orchestra and she
qualified with a twirling and she
became a head twirler with a Red Coat marching band,
and she played a viola in a symphony orchestra,
and she also became president of her sorority.
Our son, he liked the looks of the Georgia co-heads.
So he came down three years later
and played tennis for one year for Dan Magill,
who was a longtime tennis coach and
public information director at the University of Georgia
and he liked it down there pretty well.
He played one year, but his studies, so forth.
He had to concentrate on them, he graduated.
Our daughter, she graduated '75,
graduated in '76 with a
master's in speech pathology and audiology,
and our son graduated in '79 with a degree in,
I just forget the major at the moment.
And they both married Georgia graduates.
So our daughter-in-law and son-in-law are
also graduates out of Athens.
And that's how they came down here.
And when my wife's health deteriorated
in 2008 and up to 2012,
I decided that we had to get down here where
the children could spend her last years with them.
>> Was it hard to leave New Jersey?
>> Yes, it was. The home that we left was
the only home that Betty and I owned in our lifetime.
We were there 56 years
and we had fixed it the way we liked it.
We had spent a lot of money on it for
renovations and additions and so forth.
All our friends were there.
But it was more important to get her
down here close to the children.
Our daughter lives in Roswell, our son and LJ,
and they chose a lodge at Bridge Mill here in
Canton to live in.
They scouted it.
Betty and I didn't come down to scout it or anything,
and they felt we could handle the freight there.
And so that's where we've been
and where I've been ever since February of 2012.
We left Glassboro in February 20th of 2012.
We drove away and Betty died
February 20 of 2016,
exactly four years to the day we moved down.
>> Thank you for sharing. And I
want to ask you one other question.
>> Sure.
>> And this is about your service, your military.
>> Sure.
>> Can you tell me why you think it would
be important to share
this story to remember
it for young people to know about it?
>> Trying to relate it to today,
James, this is the first,
you might say it I've given some thought to it.
Our military today is strictly volunteer.
And quite a bit of our military
[NOISE] in those days was volunteer.
Now, there was a draft, yes,
but there was an awful lot of volunteer.
And I would think it would
show possibly the young people today.
Those especially getting out of
high school that the military can be a good career,
and there's a lot of good training to be
acquired in the military and so forth
in all disciplines that be computer
or aeronautics or whatever it might
be and there are some of
us that are not college material,
and they could be trained in
the military or if they don't want to do that,
they could go to say technical schools.
But the volunteerism I
think that occurred in World War II,
I think it would be important to show
to those youngsters today,
to the young people coming out of high school
that they don't have to be possibly burdened down,
with a college situation with
a loan situation that we're hearing so much
about that there is another way that they can
become very productive citizens.
And I remember there was a youngster
that grew up on our street,
who grew up with our children who went in the Navy in
1974 and was and
served on nuclear submarines for six years.
And he's now a Professor at
Westchester University in
Eastern Pennsylvania and so forth.
But he acquired a thirst,
you might say for knowledge with that Navy situation.
And so I think the young people today
that if they aren't ready for college,
they could go to a technical school to get into
different things where they could use
their hands or they could go to the military,
but a volunteer situation.
And I hope I haven't expanded too much on this.
>> Well, thank you very much. [OVERLAPPING]. Robert.
>> Yes.
>> I appreciate that.
>> I appreciate you and Crystal, putting up with me,
[LAUGHTER]
I hope the breaking down, I apologize for it.
>> We appreciate it and we can conclude there.