Oral History Program George Horton Interviewed by Sara Kamppi and Alyssa Chaffee 9 November 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah George Horton Interviewed by Sara Kamppi and Alyssa Chaffee 9 November 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Horton, George, an oral history by Sara Kamppi and Alyssa Chaffee, 9 November 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. George Horton in the U.S. Navy, WWII circa 1940s George H. Horton LST 970, Leyte PI circa 1940s George Horton circa 1940s George H. Horton circa 1940s George H. Horton Bombing and Fighting Squadron 74. VBF-74 and Fighting Squadron Two Baker, VF2B USS MIDWAY CVB-41 circa 1940s Male Intermural Softball League Champs George is second from the right on the middle row. 1958 George Horton on right 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with George Horton, conducted on November 8, 2017 by Sara Kamppi and Alyssa Chaffee. Horton discusses his life, his experiences serving in the United States Navy, and other experiences and memories regarding World War II. SK: Today is November 9, 2017 and we are here with Mr. George Horton. My name is Sara Kamppi and I’m here with Alyssa Chaffee, and we’re going to listen to Mr. Horton’s World War II experiences. So, Mr. George first I want to ask: when and where were you born? GH: I was born in Saginaw, Michigan, 24 November 1924. SK: So you have a birthday coming up soon? GH: Yep, I’ll be ninety-three years old. SK: Wow. AC: Happy Birthday. [laughs] SK: Did you have any brothers or sisters growing up? GH: My mother had twenty-one children. SK: Wow, and where did you fall? GH: I’m the fourth one. They’re all gone. I’m the only one left. SK: Okay, what was your mother’s name? GH: Edith. SK: And your father? GH: John Henry. He was a coal miner. SK: So do you have any stories about your father’s work as a coal miner? 2 GH: First, he came over from England to Canada, Nova Scotia. He went to work in the coal mines there. He was fifteen or sixteen. The mining was three miles under the ocean. I remember he’d go down for three days at a time because they didn’t have electrical. They just had a donkey drawing a string taking the elevator. So, they’d go down for three days at a time. Then he went to Prince Edwards Island to do the same thing. Then he snuck into this country from Detroit, Michigan. He bought a brand new car for $300 with no license, no nothing, because they didn’t need anything in those days. What else did you want to know? SK: Did your mother work at all or did she stay at home? GH: With twenty-one kids she worked at home, she was the boss. I said I was born in Saginaw, Michigan, but when I was one year old, we moved to Boston. My dad got blinded in a coal mine when a blast went off, and he went to Boston for a specialist because they are good doctors there. We stayed there and we never left. I stayed there until I was seventeen, and I went into the Navy. AC: Did your father ever get his sight back? GH: Yeah, oh yeah. AC: That’s good. I know that coal mining often is like a family thing—it’s passed down from father to son. Do you know why your father decided to be a coal miner? GH: His father was a coal miner in England. He’s a very religious man. Never went in the mine without his bible. I don’t remember too much of my grandpa. My grandma, I remember her, she was quite a strict old girl. 3 AC: What are your memories of your father as a coal miner? Did he come home dirty often? GH: In Boston, he used to go to the colored bar and they didn’t know he wasn’t black. They called him ‘Smokey,’ and what was the other one? ‘Black Jack.’ His name was John, but he’d be the only white guy in there and it was just so funny. AC: Did he want you to be a coal miner as well? GH: Oh no, that’s a tough life. When he died he had black lung disease. He had all kinds of illnesses when he died. I don’t know what my mother had. I got all of their records, I did genealogy for forty years, and I’m doing genealogy on foreigners here. I went back to Michigan to see where I was born. I went to the graveyard and my brother who died when he was four or five years old, I forget his name but he’s very dear to us. There was just a little cement marker, they didn’t have money in them days. You never went to a funeral parlor they always had the funeral in their home. They’d put a sign on your street saying, “Quiet. Funeral.” You had to wear a black arm band for six months, couldn’t play the piano; they had all kinds of crazy things then. AC: They still had those mourning rituals in the 1970s too? GH: Oh yeah. We had one Irish family. They had their father in the bed and he suddenly stood up. I found out later that it was a nerve reaction, but he sat right up. AC: Oh my goodness. GH: His wife was in the other room dancing. They celebrated differently than we do. Give me a question. 4 SK: Do you have any memories of the Great Depression? GH: The Depression? Oh boy, that was a bad one. We were so poor my mother went down to get welfare and they wouldn’t give us welfare because my father had a car. It had no wheels on it, no engine and no top, but we owned property and they wouldn’t give you any money. You had to sell it. So my mother decided to break the law. She’d get a five galloon can of alcohol, put in the bathtub, put a five galloon can of water, stir it and we’d go find whiskey bottles in the alley ways and stuff. My mother rinsed them and cleaned them up and we’d make pints and half pints. She’d sell it for fifty cents. She got caught doing that. The best part is that dad said for her to go down to the state house in Boston and see if they could help her. She went down there and she met a young councilman named President Kennedy when he was young. He just took my mother into a room and said to her, “Lady, get her some money.” It wasn’t much, but she got ten dollars a week for all them kids. But everybody was like that. Nobody had any money. My best friend was a black man, I forget his name now, but he was sneaking my dad money and he’d invite us over for food. His son, Billy Wilson, when he’d come to school with me he’d bring a lunch and I never had a lunch and he’d split a sandwich with me. He was quite a guy. SK: So you lived in Boston as a kid growing up? GH: Yeah, I worked for Western Union Telegram. I worked for car dealers for a dollar a day, and I worked at a gas station. I used to go through the neighborhood picking up wire and stuff, burning the insulation off and sell the copper. Then we lived in the black neighborhood, Strommer Avenue they called it. I went to an all- 5 black school. I think there was four white boys in there, but the rent was cheap in that area. My dad had come home from work and he’d saw timbers, put it in a basket and I’d go through the black neighborhood selling that for ten cents a basket. I’d get a loaf of bread with ten cents. My job was to keep the house warm. I had to go pick at the brewery where they had soft coal, when they’d run it as coke collector. I’d go to the coke piles and pick coke. I’d get twenty-five pounds of it, bring it home and use it. We moved about every three months because we couldn’t pay the rent. I can’t remember too much. I know that in the summer time we belonged to the Salvation Army. My dad would let me go to the camp for one week, boating and going through the forest. Then the rest of the time my transportation was to hop on the back of street cars or on the back of trucks. That’s the only way I’d get around. Even though it was only a nickel or a dime you could go all day for that on the trains. AC: Did your father continue to work as a coal miner after his accident? GH: Not a coal miner but in the coal yards. He delivered coal to the houses. He was a good worker. There was a policeman who got shot. He had about nine kids and in them days if you got shot you didn’t get no pay. It wasn’t like today where they keep paying. So my dad stole a ton of coal. They were putting coal into a big hotel and they never missed one load. Of course he got caught, and when he went to court, the judge asked him if he got paid for that. He said, “Yes.” The judge said, “What did you get paid for that?” He said, “A bottle of beer.” So, the judge fined him twenty-five cents a pay day. He wasn’t working, but he was such a good worker his boss took him back. He didn’t steal from his boss, he stole 6 from hotels. The policeman had no coal, no heat because he was wounded. The policemen were very nice to us. Most of our policeman were on foot. They didn’t ride around. So, you got to know them better. My dad was in a saloon and he just got off work and he was dirty. He wanted a beer and they wouldn’t give him one. They said he was too dirty. So he refused to leave and they took him into a police station. The captain come out and says, “Jack, what are you doing here?” He told him. The captain said to the cop, “You go get Mrs. Horton a box of chocolates, and you take Mr. Horton home and don’t you ever hurt them again,” because he was such a hard worker. I didn’t have much play time because I had to work. I worked for food stands and the main job I had was selling a basket of wood, because that was cash, ten or fifteen cents. I think my dad got thirty dollars a week. That’s for six days from seven to ten p.m. The first call he got was for work. Then when he got injured they made him stop delivering that much coal. They told him that they’d cut his load. He was making about nine loads a day, and they cut him down to four loads a day. He loved sports, he loved Ted Williams. If you said something about Ted Williams he’d punch you in the nose. Let’s see, the Boston Bruins Hockey. My dad had season tickets when he started working, so when I was five years old I went to the Hockey games. I saw a lot of the great Jackie Robinson. When I was a young boy we had two teams in Boston. The Boston Braves and the Boston Red Sox. The Braves moved out, they went to Kansas or somewhere because there was nobody going to the games. The Red Sox was always 7 packed. It always has been. I think a ticket was a dollar. Now, it’s a couple of hundred dollars. AC: Can you tell us a little more about your mother? GH: What would you like to know? AC: Was she from England as well? GH: You want the dirty part or the clean part? AC: We’ll take whatever you want to give us. GH: Well there’s some of it that’s not nice. My mother married a guy from Canada on the dock. He was getting ready to go overseas, so they got married and he left that same day on the ship. The Chaplain married them on the dock. While he was gone she met my father and she never divorced this guy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Her mother died with a baby in her arms. They buried her that way in a pauper’s grave. I tried to get a picture of the grave. They said that they reuse them after twenty years. So a whole bunch of them were shipped to Canada. Her sister and her brother and my mother worked for an officer as a governess. Then my sister was born but I don’t know who the father was because he was gone over a year and she didn’t have it till, well I think she got pregnant from my dad. Then they had three, they had Allen, Gordon, Laura, and then me. My grandmother was a Quaker and she wouldn’t tolerate that, she wouldn’t help my mother or nothing. My mother and father finally got married and my grandmother delivered me. Three years later, at Hill Field, I was having trouble with my naval. It was getting irritated so they brought me and put me in a maternity ward, painted me up with Iodine and pulled out the cord. It was too long 8 so they cut it down and put it back in. That day, the colonel was inspecting the base, a medical doctor, and I was laying there with my belly exposed and all of that Iodine on it. The colonel looked at me and said, “What in the hell did you have?” Let’s see, there’s something I wanted to tell you about my mother. I can’t remember, it’s ninety something years ago. One of her brothers went to Canada and stayed there. She worked as a governess before the cape man hired her, then a family adopted her when she fifteen and of course she met this guy from Copenhagen or Sweden. SK: You said you went to an all-black high school. What high school was that? GH: I don’t remember the name of it. It was an area that was just outside of Rock Spring, Massachusetts where most of the black people lived. We moved to a place called Madison Street, that’s why I had to go school there. Then we moved again. We were always moving. I remember my father was coming home from work. He had to walk, he didn’t have money for the street car, and he had to go through this little park. There was a garbage can and I don’t know if he was drinking or smoking or what, but he pulled the lid to throw something away and there was a dead body. My mother said, “What did you do?” and he said, “I put it back. I put the lid back on and got the hell out of there.” Let’s see, I was the fourth born, but my mother was married, they got married on Christmas day. Then my grandmother cut the cord for me. She was a lovely lady, a very strong lady. When she said move, you moved. But Grandpa was a quiet guy. He read his bible and smoked his pipe. AC: When was your youngest sibling born? The twenty-first child? 9 GH: 1939. I think it was my brother Jerry. He just died last year. He’s the last of them. There’s no more. He was an officer in the Navy, he was a Navy Seal. He was a good boy. What else do you want to know? SK: First, I want to ask, how did you get involved with the Military? Were you drafted or did you go voluntarily? GH: I used to watch the sailors walking down to Boston with a girl on each arm, and they looked so clean. My boss gave me permission to go to lunch. I was working at a place that sold oil, coal, and wood. Instead of going to lunch, I went down to Boston because I wanted to join the navy. They said I was too dirty and three or four pounds underweight and so they wouldn’t take me. This was winter time, and no underwear, and I had only shoes on with no socks and a light jacket. So I went down to the pier and I ate some bananas, because the ripe ones they store because you can’t ship ripe bananas, they’ll go bad. I took a whole bunch of bananas, then I found a public bathhouse. It was a nickel to take a bath. So I crawled under the door and there was little chips of soap and I took a bath. I dried off with paper, got back to the recruiting station and it was almost five o’clock when they closed. They took me. I gained my weight and I wasn’t dirty, but my clothes were still raunchy but I joined the Navy. I don’t think you’d remember the ship, but there was a German ship that was blown up and everything. They went into a country in South America, they couldn’t get out so they scuttled it. That’s a good story. That kind of helped. The funny thing about it is when I started doing genealogy forty years ago, my grandfather was in the royal navy, my father’s father was in the navy, so we got 10 something going on there. I went in the Navy and I went to World War II. My ship, San Diego, was the second highest decorated ship in the navy. I got a picture of it going in Tokyo bay. That’s it, that’s Tokyo. They had just surrendered. All the admirals came aboard our ship. They were going to sign a peace treaty on there, but President Truman was on the Missouri, so they had to wait three days for the Missouri to get there. When I got out of the Navy, I went back in the Navy for two more years. Then I joined the National Guard in Boston, and then I left the National Guard and I went into the Army Air Corps. In the Army Air Corps people would ask me why I didn’t go in the Navy. Then I got to Hill Field, they changed it from Army Air Corps to U.S. Air Force. Then I was a merchant marine. I sailed on coal ships and oil ships. Let’s see, Army, Navy, Merchant Marine, everything but the Marine Corps, but I took Marines’ on the beach in my boat when they were making landings. I was in Okinawa, we cleaned that place out of the Japanese. An officer asked me if I would take a dead body out to the hospital ship. I told him, “Sure.” So we put the dead body in the boat and went out to the ship. They put the crane down and we let them take the body. They said, “Would you like something to eat?” We said, “Yeah,” it was lunch time. There wasn’t a dining hall on this ship, it was very small, not as big as a swimming pool. They said, “Go down on the tank deck.” We went down to the tank deck on the front of the ship, the bow of the ship, there was big doors that would open. There was about fifty bodies all naked with tags on their toes. We got the hell out of there. We didn’t feel like eating. 11 Okinawa, I’m trying to think what did I do on Okinawa? I’ve been to Okinawa twice with the Air Force and Navy. I got a list of everywhere I’ve been somewhere, I want to try to find it. SK: Is it in here? AC: We can scan it and give it back to you too. GH: I’ve got it on the Internet. AC: Okay, thank you. Wow, that’s a list. SK: So many places. GH: I’ll read them off to you. AC: Okay. GH: There’s Hawaii, Panama Canal, New Zealand, Kwajalein, Tarawa, Tulagi, Okinawa, Philippines, San Diego, Eniwetok, Bougainville, Palau, Iwo Jima, Saipan, Japan, and Guam. I wear that when I go shopping and stuff so if a guy see’s me been in that place we can converse. Or if he was on that ship. A lot of times I meet a lady come up and says, “Was you on the Midway?” I say, “Yeah.” She said, “My husband was on there.” So we got to talking and I sent her stuff about the Midway. SK: So, on your list it says you were on Pearl Harbor. When were you on Pearl Harbor? GH: We left Boston and went to Panama to San Diego. When we left Boston, about two days out we picked up a Japanese submarine, but our orders were to get to San Diego as quick as we could, so we by passed the submarine. We got to San Diego and they sent us on to Pearl Harbor, and then they gave us a couple of oil 12 tankers to fuel the fleet. The battle of Midway had just got over that day, and we chased the Japanese out to the Lucian Islands but it go so foggy and the weather was so bad we broke that off. We got to Pearl Harbor six months after they had been blown up. I got a picture as we came into Pearl Harbor. All of the guys on my ship are on one side and the ship had been tipped because we had been looking over this Arizona over there. Everybody wanted to see. There was still oil all over the place. I met a Hawaiian family, they were Chinese Hawaiian. A lot of mixed breeds there. They used to let me stay at their house on weekends. They slept on the floor. There’s no windows because there’s no need for windows. It’s never cold. There’s something about Pearl Harbor. We were anchored at Pearl Harbor and I wanted to get ashore, I’m just a seventeen year old kid. There’s a little tavern in Pearl City just right off the water. So, I climbed down the anchor chain and I went to Pearl City Tavern and had a couple of beers. When I came back there was an officer waiting for me. He said, “If you got guts enough to go, I’ve got guts enough to let you, forget about it.” AC: Where were you the day that Pearl Harbor was attacked? GH: I was in Newport, Rhode Island. There’s a causeway on Warden Bridge that goes into the base. They had me take a water cooled machine gun on wheels to the causeway, and that’s where I was when Pearl Harbor was. We went immediately into war. AC: Were you already in the military at that time? GH: Oh ya, I was regular navy. 13 AC: How long after you joined, did Pearl Harbor happened? Was that pretty soon after you joined up with the Navy? GH: It happened while I was in training, out in Newport. I went in November 24, my birthday. I learned how to fire a gun and everything. I had a bad moment, my mother and father come to see me when they heard about the war. Boston and Newport is not too far. They come down, but I wanted to be with the guys. I felt so bad after I left them. They brought the brand new baby down. This one was born in wedlock. AC: What was your position on board the ship when you were in the Navy? GH: I was a deck mate. They kept me on the deck. I was in the third division. I was in the lower handling room where the shells are. Down there mostly were black guys. The black people on the ship couldn’t sleep with us they couldn’t eat with us. There was one guy, I’ve been trying to find him since I left the service; his name is in my books somewhere. He was such a character. They made them go into battle stations. They put these shells in a hoist and they’d go up. My sister ship got hit and only ten men survived out of 600. We were supposed to be where they were but we had engine trouble. The Juneau, which if you’ve ever seen the movie The Sullivan’s, the five Sullivan brothers died on that ship, it’s a story about them. Mr. Sullivan was eating breakfast and he seen a car coming up the long road to his house. He knew something was wrong. They pulled up and a lieutenant commander from the navy and a seaman came in and they said, “Mr. Sullivan, we’ve got some bad news for you.” He says, “I was expecting it when I saw your car. Which one was it? Which one of my five sons is it?” They said, “It’s 14 all of them. They all went down.” The officer said it was the hardest job he ever had in his life was to tell that man he lost those boys. Mr. Sullivan worked on the train engines. He knew he had a load of material to get to California and he went to work that day. The navy, any service, don’t like to put twins or brothers on the same ship or the same outfit. But the Sullivan brothers said they wouldn’t go unless they all went in the same ship. AC: Which ship was this again? GH: Juneau. CL-52. CL means Light Cruiser, license number 52. Every ship’s got a number. My ship is 53, my sister ship, San Juan, was 54. One night we lost five ships. I can’t remember all of them, Quincy, Astoria, Vincent. My skipper was on the ship that was sunk there and an enlisted man saved his life. He was such a good officer. When they heard the Kamikaze’s, or the planes coming over, I was stationed at Okinawa. They got a word from the radar that Japanese planes were coming. They put me in my boat with smoke pots. They’re five gallon cans, you pull the lever and smoke. I had to go in front of this ship, make smoke so they couldn’t see it. Nobody protected me. Hell, if you follow that smoke they could blow the hell out of me. I’ll say this about Okinawa, there was a little island called Koromaru To, ships that were damaged or blown up went in there for repairs because it was in between two mountains and it’s hard for the Japanese planes to get them. On one side of the island was a bunch of caves, and in there, Japanese had little narrow gauged railroad tracks with a boat on it where the bow of it was full of explosives. At night they’d push that down into the water and they’d come up 15 right behind ya. So when we blew them up then they started swimming out and putting stuff down in the screws in the water, so we couldn’t move. One of the worst thing I ever saw, the St. Iden, I was standing sentry duty with a rifle. I could see over in the base kids playing picking up wood. It looked like kids, they had on uniforms like the parochial school. Somebody gave the word, “Open fire,” blew the hell out of them. They didn’t know they were shooting at kids. I have so many stories. SK: So, what was basic training like for you since Pearl Harbor had been attacked? GH: It didn’t bother me. Of course it was sad, because my shipmates had all been killed. But it didn’t bother me, that’s what you joined the military for. When I commissioned to San Diego from Boston, when you was commissioned you had to grab all the sailors on deck and you said, “We know that some of you are not going to come back.” The funny thing is every one of us came back. One night, the loud speaker said, “Do a division top side.” We had a four bladed screw and they were going to put on a three bladed screw, it would make the ship go faster and cut the vibration out, but they couldn’t put it on, so they bolted it to the deck. We were headed for San Vallejo, California. About three days out of Pearl Harbor the water was rough and terrible. No lights, you can’t have lights, no radio, and they said, “Do a division top side and secure that screw.” There was two of them breaking loose. As I opened the hatch door, a wave caught me. Took me down the deck and bumped me off a gun hub and I went over the side. Every bit of my body was over the side except my hands and 16 my head as I hung onto that wire. Then another wave came and washed me back, it just lifted me back in. The other thing, I lost my hearing. We were fighting for about five hours, shooting at planes and stuff. There was a lull in the battle so they said, “Send one man from the gun turret to bring up some sandwiches.” They elected me to go get the sandwiches. I come back with sandwiches and I got between turrets seven and eight, I’m in eight. I got between these two and their guns are pointed this way and I’m in here, and they opened fire. My hat flew off, the sandwiches went to hell, my shirt ripped, so they get me a new shirt three days later. I didn’t claim any money or anything from my hearing because the hearing aids in them days wasn’t a machine. The guy would stand in the corner and yell, “One,” and you say, “One.” “Two.” “Two,” that’s how they would say if you was deaf or not. I told you I was the deck mate. I served in the mess court. I served the meals for three months, and you get five bucks a month more. During that period of time my gun turret wanted to get the ‘E’ for efficiency and for gunnery. For one year you wear it here and for one month you got five dollars extra for pay. My pay was twenty-one dollars a month, less than a dollar a day. From mess cook I went to chief squatters, then I was boat operator, man overboard station, funeral tubes, and depth charges, 300 pounders and 600 pounders. I made smoke, if we wanted to hide the ships I could make smoke. I was in thirty-eight port gun and I was a gun captain. I went from that lower ammo room to the upper ammo room, from the upper I went to the turret and I got shell loader. I put the shell in the gun, put a can of powder, put a shell, and ram it. Then I got to be captain of that gun, 17 and all I did was hit the trigger and let it go. During peace time, President Truman come aboard the carrier. It would have to be the Midway, but he come out to give us a certificate for flying safety, no accidents. To show our appreciation we launched an aircraft. When they come back, one of them crashed into five other planes. Now, the Roosevelt, we went to New York City to do something, and we had the admiral, who was Mark A. Mitchell. We got to New York and I was ordered to walk the admiral out to the Astoria hotel. I wasn’t he driver, I was the side boy, salute and open the door. So we got to the hotel, the admiral went into the hotel with his aid. His aid said, “We won’t need the car for the rest of the night.” Well, that was the wrong thing. We had a motorcycle escort. We went all through New York in that car. Finally, we decided we better get back to the ship. It was an honor for me to take the admiral aboard and Mark A. Mitchell. AC: Backing up a little bit, after you got out of basic training, was that when you were assigned to Pearl Harbor? Or was there a different place you went first? GH: I was assigned to San Diego—La Cruz. It was built in Boston. I went right from New Port to Boston on a bus and went aboard ship. The next day they commissioned the ship. AC: You went from Boston to Pearl Harbor? GH: Boston, Panama, San Diego, Pearl Harbor. A place called Les Viejos Santos, let’s see, New Zealand was so good. The people there are only allowed five gallons of gas a month. The people would drive me around and show me and waste their gas. They couldn’t buy tires, there was no rubber. I met a girl there 18 named Nora Kelly that I got the tattoo, she was learning to be nurse in a school called Teranaki. There’s a guy in New Zealand named Harry Hutton. He was born in Scotland and was in the English Navy. He moved to New Zealand and he went aboard the New Zealand Leander. When we were with him it was torpedoed, so we escorted him back to Tolagi. Then they sent him to Boston to be repaired because it needed to be repaired. We were friends for sixty years. He just died, so I did a funeral for him here. I’ve done seventeen years of V.A. free work. I’ve done 3,000 military funerals here and all over. I would’ve kept doing them but I couldn’t walk anymore. They used to tie me to the post. I didn’t want to quit. My captain visits me here, he’s ninety-three and he’s still doing the funerals. Once in a while they’ll call me if it’s a Navy guy and ask me to come participate. I said, “I need two guys to hold me up.” I tell them that they’ll earn their pay. AC: You said you were on the “man over-board station” that sounds like an interesting story right there. GH: I got news for you dears, if I would have gone in the water, that’s where I would have stayed. You don’t put lights on, you don’t stop, you just keep going. The thing that I most remember was how cold the water was and how dark. There was no lights on the ship. The force of that wave just picked me up and took me down the deck, banged me off the gun turret. My feet went over, my hips went over, and then there’s a foot rope, guide line, and a life line. I went between the foot rope and the guideline. AC: How long were you in the Navy before you switched? 19 GH: Six, one year in the National Guard. Army Airforce about a year. In the Army Airforce we still wore army clothes till I got to Hill Field. These pictures, the second one is of Pearl Harbor from Vietnam. That’s Lee Sanchez. That’s me. Benny Shurez, he’s dead. He’s dying. He’s alive. He’s dead. The general is still alive and the senator is still alive. AC: So were you on the San Diego for the whole of World War II? GH: No, I was on the San Diego and for about eight months. I was on LST 970, that’s one that goes up on the beach, opens the big doors, and the guys or the tank comes out. There’s a picture of that in here. There’s that seventeen year old virgin. Walt Disney drew that for my fighting squadron. SK: That’s awesome. AC: I noticed you got the key to the city of Boston for your work on the San Diego. Tell me why exactly did you get that? GH: Well, it started with two people, me and one other guy, and they ended up with 500 men. We went to the Universities. Had the police go to people’s doors and knock on them. That’s my LST. This guy is Joe Gambria and he was involved in a killing in Chicago. I don’t know if he shot the guy, but he was part of a group that did it. The judge said, “Either go in the Navy or go to jail.” That is me right there. They asked me to do an honorary for their firemen that got killed in New York. This is me, that’s my military police. When we got through with this, we went and of course had some drinks and stuff with the firemen. Afterwards I called the base and there was no vehicle there come get us, so they put us on a 20 hook and ladder. So that was going through New York. Bells going, I’ll give you the pictures. AC: Thank you. That will be fantastic. GH: That was while I was in New York, military softball champs. This is my honor guard. We all did military funerals. This is a Japanese guy from 442nd combat regiment, the gopher brokey. He was such a nice guy. I think he’s still alive. His name was Akagi. There was a Japanese aircraft carrier named Akagi and we blew the hell out of it. I tell Akagi, “I blew your ship.” I might give you the whole book. AC: We would love to at least borrow it so we can scan some pictures and then we will get it back to you. GH: My kids don’t want them, just take it. AC: Thank you. AC: So, what made you decide to switch branches of the military? GH: I told you, one, I wasn’t working, and then when they gave us a choice of the Airforce or the Army I just took the Airforce. That happened right her at Hill Field. There’s something else, there was an outfit that was going to go over to Korea from here, a whole outfit they were going to train on base. They had the first sergeant. They didn’t like him. So they went to the base commander and asked them if they could have me. Well, I didn’t particularly want to go, I had enough, but I couldn’t turn it down. So I went with them. I was named “Airman of the Month.” SK: What was it like in Sai Pan? 21 GH: Sai Pan. Now, you’ve got to realize, I don’t see much of the action because I’m in a gun turret, and it’s sealed in case they use gas and stuff. All I know is, we knocked down three hundred and some planes that day. When I left Guadalcanal, we ran away from there. The Japs were sinking us left and right and most of our ships were old ships, World War I and just a little later. We ran the hell out of there and left the marines and the soldiers. I mean all the ships, because we lose five in one night. We came back. I woke up one morning about a year later and I went up on the topside and as far as I could see, ships. Seven or eight aircraft carriers, five or six battle ships and destroyers. Just about everything. It took them all day to clear the harbor when we went out. It took them all day to get us in, but then I knew we were going back. I got to tell you this story about how terrible war is. I think it was Tarawa, the second marine division went in there. They were getting the hell knocked out of them. You could see the shells. They misinterpreted the tide and the boats could only go so far and they had to walk through water. More shells, machine guns, the Marines said, “Forward,” they get up and go and the bullets, how the hell did they do it? When we took the two hundred marines back to Pearl Harbor for rest and relaxation, they were selling Japanese gold teeth, flags, and I bought a cigarette case. I thought they killed this guy and they robbed him. It’s very thin, the metal is like a pop can—very easy to tear up. There was a piece of cardboard in there. I pulled the cardboard up and underneath that was a picture of lady holding two children—his wife. So, I got rid of it. I gave it to somebody. But it was a big thing to get souvenirs. I’d get them off of some ships we sunk because you 22 could go board them. A little bit of the ship would be above water and they had brass tags above the doors and you’d knock the brass tags off. AC: Did you ever get to go ashore when you went to these different countries? GH: Oh sure. AC: How long would you be at each country? GH: I was in New Zealand a month. I was in Drida. I was on a different ship in the Philippines, I was on the LST and I brought 10th army troops. They were cooks and bakers. They were an all-black unit. They were going into Leyte. We had them aboard ship. Nice guys and a lot of entertainment. AC: What did you do when you were on board the LST? GH: I ran a raft to the beach with troops in it, and I was on a 40 millimeter gun. That’s what we used to shoot at them kids on the beach. Let’s see, I’d steer the ship, maintenance, painting, and cleaning. What else did I do? Oh, you know Harry Dean Stanton, the movie star? He was on my ship. He was cook by the way. When the war got over, he went to Idaho to be a pilot. Of course, the war got over and they discharged him, but he always said he was going to be a movie star. He’s very popular. AC: Did you ever get leave, during all of those war years? GH: I come back from repairs to Valero, California. I got fifteen or twenty days going across the country, rode the train for four days. I got to tell you a story. We knew we were going to stop at that place in Nebraska, everybody wanted a drink. The trains were packed. You couldn’t get on it unless you were going with your husband. They wouldn’t let a single girl on because there wasn’t enough room, 23 so we all pitched together that we were going to buy a bottle. So we got to, and I wish I could tell you the name. It was a nice little stop because they took your mail and give you a coffee. Anyway, I was elected to go get a bottle. I go to this hotel and I said to a man there, “Hey Joe, where can I get a bottle?” “Oh, I can get you a bottle.” I says, “How much do you want?” He says, “Forty dollars.” I says, “Okay, we’re going to be leaving soon, I need it right away.” He says, “Okay.” So he goes into the hotel comes out with a bag. “Just put it under your coat. Don’t let them see it.” I gave him the money and got aboard the train. We opened it up, grape Juice. I got taken that time. In Chicago they wouldn’t take street car fare if you were in uniform. They had a USO. Mayor Kelly’s wife was on there and they had a book with the girls’ names in it. If you wanted to go to the movies or you wanted to go to a dance, they’d set you up with a date. Nothing hanky panky, just nice people. Then when you left in the morning they’d press your clothes because you stayed overnight for the train. I had so many experiences I can’t tell you because they aren’t too nice. My daughter’s don’t even know. Nothing like we’d get in trouble with the law or anything, just some experiences. AC: Did you write home to your family a lot? GH: Ya. I wrote, “Just a few lines to let you know,” that was in every letter. Then my sister died. She was twenty-one. They didn’t tell me until three months after Christmas. So I went over to a Catholic church the day that I got the word, I think it was a Catholic Church, and there were some pictures on the bulletin board. I 24 took them, and about ten years ago, I sent them back. I did a newspaper article on it. I remember this girl’s father was the governor of New Caledonian, a French island. I learned a few words from the French guy on my ship because he could speak good French. “Give me a kiss,” was one of them that was a good one, but what I said was very, very bad, but he let me take her to a movie. That movie house was just a dirt floor with wooden chairs, and the first picture that comes up was a French movie. That’s another place were the drink was fruit juice, ten dollar fruit juice. But when we hit port, we had a lot of money. We could only draw ten dollars so that you wouldn’t gamble. You’d fill out your slip and you’d put your thumb print on it. “Request to be paid” How much do you get? “Ten dollars sir.” That’s it. If you wanted to send more home, you could do it, but some guys would send it home and then have it sent back. You always had a group of men that were gambling. I like playing cards but my job was just to walk the ship. We had a library that wasn’t as big the bathroom. Food was good except when we were out too long. We were out forty days, everything was dehydrated. The milk runs out after seven days, frozen milk, but we ate good. Our baker was excellent, and we kept coffee on all day and bean soup, bean soup was good. AC: I was wanting to know more about how often you would get letters from your family. How long did it take to send and receive letters? GH: My grandmother was, she sent me Boston cream pie. It was kind of bad, but it got there, we could eat it. The one that sent me the most was my aunt, my 25 mother’s sister. She never had any children and I was named after her husband who was a Navy man in World War I. She was more like a mother to me. When you got that many kids, like at Christmas, I very seldom got anything. But my mother knew I could handle it. On Easter, she’d get the girl’s all new clothes, don’t ask where she got the money. We used to pay twenty-five cents a month for clothes. When we missed a month, the salesman would knock on the door and say, “Edith, I know you’re in there.” She wouldn’t answer the door. My father only wanted to read the paper, he’d plug it in the street lamp because there was no electricity. We had gas meters, you had to put money in them to get gas. My mother would take a can of vegetable soup, put six cans of water with it and that would be supper. You could have a piece of bread, but you could only butter half the bread and fold it over. You were only allowed one piece at a time. We got welfare for apple skins or something, and welfare pants. If you went to school with these pants, they knew your mother was on welfare, and they would make fun of you. I had to wear welfare pants. My poor dad had to go to work with a cup of tea in the morning, maybe two cups, work all day walk home. Later on my mother started giving him a dime and he’d buy a glass of beer with it. AC: Did your father or grandfather serve in World War I? GH: Well, my dad was too young. My grandfather, I don’t know how they worked it. I have an uncle that was killed at Cape Helles, in the Dardanelles. Not the Russians, but the Turks killed him. A Turkish Sniper gunman. His name was Merilyn. In the Dardanelles Strait there’s a statue and his name is on it. They 26 don’t know where he’s buried, but that’s why I like the Navy so much. Questions? What do you want to know? AC: What would you do for fun while you were out at sea? GH: We had smokers is what they call it. Happy hours, a box of matches, entertainment. It’s in the tape that I’m going to give you of the whole history of my ship. I just got to find it. We had happy hours, Thanksgiving special dinners, special dinner when President Roosevelt died we had special services for him. It was a sad day for us. Let’s see, movies, but you could only get four at a time. If you was out thirty days you’d keep showing the same four. You can’t show them on deck because you’d get torpedoed. So we used to have them in the foreign mess hall. Ice cream was free, laundry was free, and haircuts was free. I had a little locker, see where that hook is? From there up that’s where everything I owned was in, no deeper than that. Everything I owned was in there, you had to pack it good. I’m trying to think of something in the Airforce. I was going from Chincoteague, Virginia to Norfolk to be discharged and I was in a twin engine plane with some other guys. We got over Chesapeake Bay which was right where Norfolk is and we lost one engine. We landed and the nose wheel broke down, the left side tire blew out and finally come to a stop. I jumped out of the gun turret and when I hit the concrete I couldn’t stand up. My legs were too weak. So the Navy chief came out in a jeep and he took me to the officers club and bought me a couple of drinks of whiskey. Then I was in one that was hit by 27 lightning and I was in one that caught on fire. That was over in Idaho, the one that caught on fire. There was another accident on the same base that the PPY crashed. That’s a patrol bomber that lands on the water or land. It crashed and I’m still sitting there waiting to be discharged, so they give us a basket and we had to go out to the plane to pick up parts of bodies because the investigator team wanted to get the media team out of there. That’s a nice getting out of the service, but we cleaned it up for them. AC: You said you helped put smoke in cans as part of your duties. Is that right? GH: If you are in a harbor and you’re at anchor you can’t get out if the planes are already over you. Most of the ships have a machine that shoots smoke out, but my ship was a smaller ship and then we didn’t have a doctor. You take this five gallon can and that boat on the back of it you put one on each side and pull the tab and smoke comes out. Then you go about a hundred yards and point it at the ship and it will cover the whole ship so they can’t see it. So, I’m sitting out there wide open because the smoke couldn’t hit me it was going to cover them. They’d use a lot of smoke in World War II. AC: I’ve never heard of that before that’s interesting. Were you married during this time? GH: No. It would be hard to do. I never got ashore. AC: So where were you the day that you heard that the war had ended? GH: We got a message, we were getting ready to invade Japan. That was the German war. When I was in the admirals army, when I went up to take the 28 message to him, he says, “What do you think about that?” Of course I gave some stupid answer, but I was glad the war was over. I liked the excitement because you see, in the Navy, you can be sunken anytime, right outside of Boston Harbor or out in the Philippines. We were never in fear, you do your job and that’s it. Now the guys that left my ship, one of them left our ship because our sister ships got sunk and he wanted to go to a bigger ship. He went to an aircraft carrier and it got bombed and then he got killed. Then another bunch that left my ship was on the Rueben James. It’s a destroyer off of New Finland. The German’s had sunken the destroyer Rueben James. I got twelve of them guys on my ship after they had some kind of leave. They give you thirty days when your ship is sunk. SK: I was interested in this drawing that you said that Walt Disney did. Let’s see if I can find it. This one. GH: That’s VF. That’s the Fighter Bomber Squadron 74. Not a bomber squadron, it’s a fighter squadron. Walt Disney drew that for me, and after the way I wanted make some copies and Disney says, “No, you can’t do that.” They didn’t want you to make money off of it, so I did it anyway. AC: I have one question, how many aircrafts would they have on the aircraft carrier during World War II? GH: About sixty-five. AC: Okay. GH: But, now there’s what’s called the sling shot. There the one’s that can’t take off, they have to be catapulted. Them are called baby flat tops. There’s more than 29 one kind of plane on an aircraft carrier, you got transports, and you got radar planes. We just started getting radar. I didn’t tell you this one. This is the most important one. This here is the aircraft carrier “Haunted CV8”. That’s carrier version 8. These are Japanese planes. This is my ship, right here. Looks like it’s on fire but it’s shooting so many shells. She sunk that night, and I took 200 survivors on my ship. I’m glad to give you these. This is my history. It’s got it all in there, what I did at every job because you asked me what I did, it’s in there. SK: Thank you Mister George for you time and willingness to talk to us.