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About Street roots. (Portland, OR) 1998-current | View Entire Issue (Nov. 10, 2017)
News Street Roots • Nov. 10-16, 2017 Age: 87. Service: United States Navy. Lieutenant, junior grade. Served on a destroyer in the Pacific Ocean near Korea Did you see any combat at any of the places you went? What was that like? Islands, for a thing called Operation Castle. You know about Bikini and all the atomic bomb tests? We were in Operation Castle, which was the 1954 hydrogen bomb. The hydrogen bomb in ’54 was four or five times bigger than the engineering people, the scientists, had thought it would be. We were about 20 miles away from the bomb site - Blast Bravo. Blast Bravo was about a thousand times bigger than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki. What happened, unfortunately, was the weather: Wind was blowing from one space which was safe on the lower stratosphere, and the upper stratosphere was going the opposite direction, and the atomic debris fell onto all of us and the Marshall Islands. The islands had to be evacuated. Our ship was the most heavily radiated ship ever in the history of the Navy. Some of our crew were burned. I wasn’t affected, but I’ll tell you, the bomb blast was ... spectacular. What was it like? Frightening. It turned night into day. One of the nicest experiences in life is Everything was illuminated. We weren’t to be shot at and missed. supposed to look, to turn away and (use) goggles, but you had to look at some Do you remember what some of the most point. You would just difficult parts of the war think, “Anybody who were? would propose nuclear The environment was warfare would be totally W ii would fust difficult at times, demented.” tb ia k, "fe ijb e d y especially during the Where were you? I ’m winter. Being off the coast wb® w o « li propose »«clear warfare assuming you were inside, of Korea in the winter was because you didn’t get like being in Nome, would be to ta lly Alaska, or something. The burned. wind came out of Siberia. I was on the bridge. I We had salt water freezing did not get burned, but on the topside of our ship, some of my crew mates and it was really did, who were exposed. We had wash miserable. I took my hat off to those down systems, kind of like sprinkler carrier pilots that were flying during systems, to pump salt water on the ship World War II in those carriers, which were not really designed for jets yet. exterior to wash away anything, and we Occasionally we’d have some experience used that. The Navy wasn’t very good where there would be a loss of life: Not about that, about (the) aspects of atomic on our ship, but a pilot shot down, or radiation exposure, for a long time. maybe one of the mine sweepers had hit People were suffering, and not just in a mine. There were some difficult times. (the) Marshall Islands and so forth, but military people down in the desert that Do you have any specific memories that were exposed to some of those atomic stand out to you? tests were also suffering. It took a long I remember the excitement and time for the Veterans Administration to challenges of meeting your duties, recognize that illness that some had had whatever it was with (carrier fleets) Task It was kind of like the handling of Agent Force 77 and 95. Another interesting Orange in Vietnam. They denied that thing that happened to us was after we Agent Orange was a problem, and then got back from our second cruise back to they finally admitted it was terrible Pearl Harbor, we were almost problem. immediately sent down to the Marshall Page 9 They had no record of whether they were in prison, or whether they were dead. That really hit me. Of the original planes that took off, only 50 percent of them ever came back - the bombers. We lost a lot of young boys flying those airplanes. Every morning I’d see the planes take off, and go over to bomb the oil fields. At night, we’d see the planes come back. We never counted them, but we (know) their casualties were huge. Do you think there is anything the general public should know about war? I think the general public should know that it’s people like you and I that are killing each other, and it’s the big manufacturers that started the war. (They’re) the ones that are profiting from it. Just think of all the airplanes that Boeing sells. Just think of all the rifles that Winchester sells. Those companies cause war. You and I don’t cause wars. I’ve met German people over there that supported their soldiers, just like we supported ours. The fact that we’re killing each other, that’s Age: 97 the biggest crime there is. Service: Maritime Service as a radio I feel people all over the world are the operator, Army, trained as mountain ski same. All they want is security for their troops. Europe families, they want a home to protect their What were some of the most difficult families, they want a job so they can moments during service? support their families. It’s the same all over the world. Why are we allowing the When you’re face-to-face with Germans, politicians to put us in war? I look right now and they’re shooting at you, and you have to at our president. He is not doing anything shoot back. It’s either they’re going to kill to prevent a war. He’s just showing off and you, or you’re going to kill them. I have an doing what he wants, not what he feels the aversion to killing people. I tried to wound nation should want. We don’t want war. them, but sometimes you can’t. They’re We’ve spent money we should’ve spent on shooting right at you, right at your face, education on buying fifty-million-dollar war (and) you have to shoot back, and you don’t weapons. One of our fighter planes costs $4 know whether you’re going to kill them or million to $5 million a piece. Just think not. That is the most horrible thing to me. I what we could do for our education, for our have a conscience, and I still have kids in school, if we’d spent that money on nightmares about that. education. I am very, very angry at all of our politicians. Big money buys them off, When did you learn about German prison and they vote for things that they want. camps like Auschwitz? That’s what’s so bad. I grew up a We knew what was going on while we Republican but I am not OK with what the were there. After the war was over, I was Republicans are doing now. I think it’s all still in the hospital. They brought in a lot of wrong. the American boys that had been in prison in Germany. They were starved almost to death. They brought them into the hospital I was in, and some of them were so thin they couldn’t lay them on a bed. They used straps and suspended them from the ceiling. One of the nurses that was supposed to take care of these boys fainted when she saw them, and then she refused to go in that room again. I would walk by and I should’ve gone in and talked to them. All they could do was - their eyes would follow you. They were so far gone; they were merely skeletons. It was horrible looking, the look in all of those American prisoners they brought into the hospital after the war. I knew what was going on. I went to the graveyard where all of our boys were, the 50 that got killed the first day. G.M.D on the cover of And there was something like 500 airmen Camp Hale magazine. that had gone out and never came back. G.M.D.
