Oral History Program Arlo Mueller Interviewed By Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Arlo Mueller Interviewed by Steven F. Crane 12 March 2013 Copyright © 2013 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 Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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: Mueller, Arlo, an oral history by Steven F. Crane, 12 March 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Arlo Mueller March 12, 2013 1 Abstract: Arlo Mueller participated in an oral history interview with Steve Crane of the Ogden Rotary Club on March 12, 2013 to share his experiences as a veteran of the Marine Corps. Arlo voluntarily enlisted in the Marines in 1942 and served in World War II with the Marine Air Squadron as a guard and an anti-aircraft machine gun operator. After separating from the military in 1945, Arlo became a member of the Ogden Fire Department from which he retired in 1968. He then worked as a fire inspector at Hill Field (Hill Air Force Base) and retired in 1975. SC: This is the fourth session of the 2013 Rotary Club and Weber State University Veteran’s History project held March 12, 2013 at the George E. Whalen Ogden Veteran’s Home. My name is Steve Crane, a member of the Ogden Rotary Club and I will be conducting this interview. Also present are Stacie Gallagher from Weber State University and my wife, Donna Crane. Our guest at this session is Arlo Mueller and we will be talking about Mr. Mueller’s experiences in the military. First, I would like to thank you very much for being here, we appreciate your time. I would like to ask a few questions to start. I understand you were in the Marines and your date of birth is May 4, 1922. You were in the Marines from 1942 to 1945 and your rank was Corporal. You say your position was to do anything you were told. AM: I was trained with a 50 caliber machine gun for anti-aircraft fire and trained in the aircraft identification. I was with the Marine Air Squadron. My job was guard duty and it took a five man crew to run the machine gun. I had done just about anything that needed done, but most of it was guard duty. SC: How did you come to be in the Marines? 2 AM: The day after Pearl Harbor, my buddy and I went down to enlist in the Navy and we got there and the line was about two blocks long and we had to get back to work. So at about 11:00, we went to work and I didn’t join until later on. SC: You said the Navy, but you ended up joining the Marines? AM: Yes. We were going to join the Navy, but it was such a long line and we got tired of waiting and went back to work and sometime later I joined the Marines. SC: Where did you receive your training? AM: San Diego. SC: When you went overseas, where did you go? What were some of the locations that you served? AM: When I left boot camp, I was in the hospital and the platoon was graduating and I was by myself. They sent me to North Lyre which was a Navy base and were starting a brand new squadron now, so we were a charter member of the checkerboard squadron. We left there and I went to school in Norman, Oklahoma and they went to Cherry Point, South Carolina, which was a Marine boot camp. We spent three months gathering other people to get the squadron formed. Then we went to Hawaii for three months of training in Hawaii. That’s where I got my experience with the 50 caliber machine gun. From San Diego, we were on a new aircraft carrier Hornet, the old one got sunk. There were 6,000 men and 300 airplanes on this one ship. We slept on the deck on a cot underneath the wing of the airplane. We had two meals a day. After we had our three months or so, we got on another aircraft carrier and went to Espirito Santos, it was a staging point 3 for all the battles in the war in the Pacific. There was a big base there. We had this crew of ground defense and these other guys to protect the pilots and I was on guard duty. They sent this crew of 25 of us to Ulithi. Rabal is a Japanese base comparable to the one that we left and they were given some trouble up around Ulithi. Our squadron was supposed to go up and eliminate this problem. We got there and the planes never showed up. They got sent to the Palawan Islands owned by the British, they had some problems there. So, we had to turn around and come back by an old merchant marine ship to go back to Espirito Santos. As we came out, they had that submarine hatch closed and they opened that up to let us and the merchant marine ship in front of us got torpedoed by a submarine and we had to go 1000 miles all by ourselves. No escort or anything and this old thing would only go ten miles an hour. It was going downhill and no light, no noise or anything. It was a long way back. SC: Which islands were you headed for? AM: We went to Ulithi to get the planes to bomb the Japs in Rabal, then we’d come back to Ulithi. Our planes never arrived, so we went back and regrouped. So, we got all regrouped and the 1st of March, they put us aboard an LST, do you know what that is? SC: A landing craft? AM: It’s a landing craft. We call it a “Long Slow Target.” It’s actually a landing ship for tanks and stuff like that. So we started to load this LST and we got everything all together and we just floated around out in the ocean waiting for the invasion of Okinawa to get all our things together. In the China seas, the ground swells are 4 about 35 to 40 feet. I was sitting on my bunk and there was not much room between the bunks, they were so crowded. All of a sudden, a guy came up and starting beating the heck out of me and pounding on me. All I could do was reach up and grab him around the waist. It’s a good thing I did that because his appendix had ruptured and if I would have hit him or anything it would have killed him. They took him to the galley, tied him down and took his appendix out when the whole ship was floating around there. The L-day was April 1, 1945 for Okinawa. SC: That was the invasion day? AM: Yes. It was a very easy landing. I thought, “Gee, this is a cakewalk.” They didn’t get into any trouble on the third day and the Japanese never put an opposition for landing, but they had ten years to build caves. I called them killing fields. They had everything zero-in on this little valley and let these guys walk into it. Our planes came in about April 6, 1945 and we didn’t know it, but up on the mountain across the way there was a 6-inch German Naval gun on railroad tracks that had everything zeroed-in for twenty miles around where we were at. He shelled us for about two months. We called him “Pistol Pete.” One day, he took a pot shot at a battleship in the bay and it blew him out of the hill with a 14-inch shell after about two months. SC: The battleship fired back at him and took him out? AM: Yes, he got too cocky I guess. We said, “They got “Pistol Pete” last night. SC: How long were you on Okinawa? 5 AM: Three months. We left just a few days before it was over and I had my 18 months in and I was on my way home. This army started shooting artillery and saying, “The war is over, the war over.” They jerked us off of the ship and took the occupation troops to Japan. We unloaded beer for about two weeks until we got a new ship. It was a converted luxury liner and there were thousands of people on that ship. I had the best duty of my whole career on that ship. They gave me a belt and I’d walk the nurse’s quarters and keep the officers off. SC: Keep the officers away from the nurses? AM: Yes. We’d keep the officers away from the nurses and walk the corridors where there were 45 of them. SC: Were you on any other islands other than Okinawa? AM: We had been through almost all the others on the ship, but we never actually had any battle or anything. SC: How close contact did you come with the enemy? AM: Well, I don’t want to talk too much about what actually happened. When I came in here I had a monkey on my back, and now I’ve got an angel on my shoulder. So, I’d rather not go into any details that happened. My wife is the only one that knew that I was this way until I told the doctor in here about what my problems were. SC: Were you ever wounded yourself? AM: No, thank God. I had a lot of fun. Well, it wasn’t fun either, but – SC: Did you make some close friends in the Marines? 6 AM: It’s funny, the guys from the East Coast were hard to get acquainted with. The Westerners were really easy to get acquainted with. If you’d make a friend with one of those guys you had a real friend. The guys from different parts of the country were different. SC: Have you remained close with any of your Marine friends? AM: No. There was one guy I kept for a while, but I haven’t contacted any of the others at all. Our Lieutenant disappeared when we went ashore. We didn’t know what happened to him. Two years after the war, I was just reading a magazine article that said, “True War Stories.” It told about this doctor from Oregon that had to put sandbags on the operating table with this guy that had a live 20mm round in his thigh because he didn’t want to explode. He had to put his arms in sandbags to operate on this Marine. I found out that it was our Lieutenant Stevens. It’s strange, you know. SC: What have you done since your service? AM: When I came home on my 30 day leave, my uncle worked in the fire department and I stopped by to talk to him. He said, “There’s going to be an opening here, what are you waiting for?” So, I put in my application. When I came back on the train the next day I took the test and about a year later I got hired. I retired from the Ogden Fire Department in 1968 and I went to Hill Field and retired from Hill Field in 1975 as a fire inspector. SC: So you’ve been a fireman and a fire inspector in your life? Do you have children? AM: I have one son. He’s 66 years old. 7 SC: Where is he living? AM: He lives in West Point. We’ve been going to the Golden Corral for breakfast every morning for about seven years. SC: Is that right? AM: Yes, and they know us. We go at 10:30 a.m. and have breakfast and stay for a couple hours and talk. SC: How many grandchildren? AM: My son has three children and the one son had two and the other one has four and had another one yesterday, so I’ve got seven. SC: Has your wife passed away or is she still with you? AM: She passed away with Alzheimer’s. I took care of her for about three years and I couldn’t go any further so we put her in a rest home and she died two weeks later. SC: Arlo, thank you for being with us. Is there anything else you would like to share with us that you think we ought to know about your life and your experiences? AM: I lived in South Ogden for forty years and for thirty years I’ve been to every council meeting in South Ogden. I videotape their meetings and all kinds of stuff. They didn’t like me too well, but I kept them on the straight and narrow. I took one mayor to the grand jury. SC: You did? AM: Yes, I was a nice fellow. 8 SC: Sometimes we need citizens to keep track of our elected officials, don’t we? AM: That’s true. I could say a lot of stuff, but we won’t go into it. SC: Well, thank you for being here. It’s been a wonderful experience getting to know you and I just want to thank you for your service. My generation is the next generation from yours. My dad served in the World War II and we really appreciate what you did for us. I think the world is a better place for what you did. DC: I hope when I’m 90 years old, I’m in as good a shape as you. SC: I hope she’s here when she’s ninety years old. AM: Yes. I never smoked and I never drank and I worked hard. That’s why I enjoy it here. This is all I own right here is that pair of pants and I’m just as happy. No pressure or anything. I’m enjoying it. SC: Sometimes, the simple life is the best. AM: I’ve never wanted to be the mayor or the president or anything. I just want to be left alone and be me. SC: Well, thank you for coming. We sure do appreciate you.