From Tarawa to Hawaii

I. Back from Tarawa

a.Getting aboard ship for the return
We were pretty tired and beat up after our short stay on that little place. We gathered up our equipment which consisted of our top packs, cartridge belts, canteens, our mess gear which consisted of a spoon and a canteen cup. Our top packs contained a pair or two of green “skivvies” (T shirt and shorts),some extra socks and some scavenged “C” rations.
Beside this we had to carry our communication gear. The telephone section had to carry their “BD71” ? switch board. They also carried several EE8A field telephones and a few sound powered phones. Besides this, they had to carry a considerable amount of the thin, light field wire and some drums of heavier wire.
The Radio Section, which I was in charge of, had a Hallicrafters TBX, which was a long range tranceiver which communicated our battalion with our regimental headquarters, other units and which was capable of receiving transmissions from San Francisco. When we had pretty well secured Tarawa, we were set up to be in communication with our military units, but I came by and heard in code the call signs of the big News station in S.F. The big news was of the terrible battle in the Pacific that cost the lives of so many gallant Marines. We liked to hear this because we were heroes and we knew our folks and friends in the U.S. would be hearing it.
Lieutenant Brown who was one of our officers, and who could read code, also dropped by. I didn’t see him right away. He listened for a while and then had to act displeased and told me to get the TBX back on the regimental net.
The TBX came in three sections, the tranceiver, the hand cranked generator and the antenna. Each of these sections, along with a radioman’s regular pack and carbine mad a pretty good load.
The Radio section also carried about 8 TBY’s. these were portable units which a radioman carried and were dispatched to each company commander and to the Colonel W.K Jones, the battalion commander. These were pretty sorry. Getting wet coming in about ruined them. For them we had rechargeable batteries which were almost as heavy as a present day car battery. We wished we could dump them but we would have been sent to Leavenworth if we had.
The Message Center section carried its own supplies, which included encoding equipment, and helped with the Radio and Wire Section’s gear. On December 4,1943 we got ready to leave.

b. Aboard the USS President Harrison
We were picked up by ship’s boats and taken to our transport, The USS President Harrison. We were delighted to get away from Tarawa and back aboard a US Navy ship. The first thing we wanted was a cup of that good Navy coffee. The sailors, who had, of course, stayed aboard while we were fighting, were very, very nice to us. We had Ice Cream and we had a belated Marine Corps Birthday celebration with plum pudding and Turkey.

There were so many of us that it was just too crowded below decks, so most of us stayed topside. As we were right on the equator, the temperature was over 100 degrees in the daytime and we were on steel decks. We just hunted for shade and loved it.(for a while).
An interesting hobby developed on this trip. Some of the men who had a little talent had picked up aluminum from Jap Zeroes and probably from some of our own P-47’s. They fashioned bracelets, watch bands and other neat things from the metal. David R. Baker, who later was to be best man at my wedding was very good at this. Baker and I were very close friends and I was the recipient of at least one of whatever he made. I’m sorry to say that I never wound up with a single item. The iron deck was hard and hot, but at this time I could sleep anywhere.
Comparatively speaking, the journey to Hawaii was pretty bad. Most of us had lost all of our gear. There were a lot of wounded aboard. They kept the sick bay busy. Most of the time you could smell antiseptics. There were funerals every day and of course the burials at sea. But none of these wounded and dead were close to me.

As I had the Radio section and all of our men could read Morse code, we were lumped in with the ship’s signalmen and stood watches along with them in the “Radio Shack”. This was good duty. The radio shack was high up on the ship and it was cool and comfortable there. Also we could keep up on the world news. We, along with the Navy, published a daily one-page newspaper. One thing we always kept up with was the major league baseball scores. I guess, since this was November or later, we didn’t have any baseball scores. We also could get priority into the mess lines and could loaf around on the upper decks which were not so crowded and where we could find shade easier.

c. The Typhoon

As always, I enjoyed watching the flying fish along the side of the boat. They would come out of the water at the stern and fly all the way to the front of the boat. Sometimes we would see dolphins and always, there were sharks back of the fantail looking for garbage. Sometimes we would see birds hundreds of miles away from shore!
About the third day on the way to Hawaii, the clouds began to darken and the winds picked up. We were notified over the ship’s speaker system that we were in for a bad storm. Most everyone went below. I took my gear down and went up to the radio shack to see what would happen next.
What happened next was one of the worst typhoons in the history of the Pacific. The waves became 100 feet high. You could look out and see one towering over you away up there. The next thing it engulfed the ship with thousands (maybe millions) of gallons of water. It seemed as if it would just pound the ship into the sea and sink it. Then the wave would be past, the ship would drain off all the water and straighten out on its course. Only then another wave even larger would pound it. This was a very frightening experience for an Oklahoma boy and certainly one he never forgot. The ship must have been built very well and the ship’s Captain and other officers and men very capable. We rode it out. During this storm, many of the Navy’s ships sustained damage. The heavy Cruiser Omaha was broken in half. One part, which contained the electrical generators, was towed into Hilo, Hawaii. The power source of this town of several thousand had been destroyed. The Omaha furnished power for Hilo for several years.

d.Hawaii

We came into Pearl Harbor. I had seen beautiful water, but the water in Pearl Harbor was as beautiful as any I have ever seen. We saw the hulks of ships that had gone down two years before. Our shipping in this area was colossal. There were scores of tugs, battleships, aircraft carriers, destroyers, submarines, destroyer escorts, supply ships, huge wharves and scores of the tall cranes,
The docks were deluged with equipment and supplies. There were hundreds of jeeps, 2½ton trucks, and tanks. Never in the war had I doubted that we would emerge victorious, but seeing Pearl Harbor at this time I was made even more confident. I had been in two tough battles by then and thought I might be lucky enough to get a furlough and go home. I felt that, much as I would like to be home for a little while, it would be alright with me to stay and get it over with. I did begin to get serious about saving my money to begin farming when I got back. At this time I guess I was 22.

There were trucks waiting for us and we were taken to Fleet Marine Force, Pacific Headquarters. I saw two Oahu landmarks, Diamondhead and the Dole Pineapple water tower. Here we checked into wonderful clean barracks, barracks beds, white sheets, new green Marine blankets. We received Red Cross packets with razor, tooth brush, toothpaste, Ivory soap.
We went to chow where we ate on china plates with cloth napkins. The food was wonderful!
The next day we got a tour of Oahu. The big hotels had barbed wire on their beaches. Every one was in uniform. We toured the Dole plant. We got all the pineapple we wanted. But we knew the next day we would be going out to our camp. I didn’t know where it would be. I can’t remember how we got across from Oahu to Hawaii but it must have been on a boat. Maybe we hadn’t ever disembarked from the Harrison.

e.Hilo

We got off the boat and into trucks.
We disembarked in a nice little town and got into trucks with just our personal gear consisting of what we could get into the two sections of our packs and a bedroll.
We drove along the beach for several miles and saw the amazing sluices which carried water and sugar cane from the fields to the factories. Then we turned up toward the big mountains, Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. We drove sixty miles from Hilo, into a small village called Kona and then Kaumea. We went on up the mountain where it was deliciously cool. We came to a place that was obviously going to be a military camp. The only thing was there were hundreds of squad tents but only a few were set up. We saw Lister bags for water and cold showers. We found we had to set up our own tents. They were delivered down company streets. We took them off the trucks and began setting them up. We were pretty much experts in this The tents were the same 6-man tents we had in New Zealand. There were floors that we set about a foot above ground.
By this time I was a Sergeant and had roommates in Loren Berger, Bormann, Art Kirchhoefer, -----.
There was a big tent for a kitchen and we used our mess gear that first night. Then we heard there was to be a movie at second division headquarters that was about ¾ mile away. It was a Gene Autry movie and I enjoyed it very much. Though it was pretty cool, I do not remember any stoves at this camp that was called Camp Tarawa.

f. Camp Tarawa

First, for some of the amusings;
Berger, who became one of my greatest friends, had been promoted to sergeant. He and someone had gone on liberty to Kamuela and had been caught in a store getting into a Coke cooler. They said they were absolutely innocent. Berger lost his stripes and had to stay in the brig for a day. I was elected to go get him out. I was ordered to bring my rifle and escort him “under arms” to our tent where he would be under house arrest for four days. He had to be escorted to chow and training “under arms” during that time. I had a delightful time marching him around and treating him like a criminal. Berger was a fantastic Marine in combat, and was promoted after every battle. But when he got back in peaceful areas he always lost the stripes. We didn’t have velcro in those days. It would have been handy for “Ham”.
On the poignant side, Platoon Sergeant Robert Dyer had lived in a Staff NCO tent in New Zealand with 5 other staff NCO’s. Each had different specialties and were separated on Tarawa. He expected them to be with him again in this camp. When he got to his tent,he found that He was the only one who had survived Tarawa. With help, he got the tent set up. He spent the first night in it alone. There would be other staff NCO’s to be in the tent with him eventually. He took a camp chair, sat it in the middle of the tent, set the tent afire and went back and sat down.
Of course he was rescued. The First Sergeant wanted to court-martial him and make him pay for the tent. Nothing happened. When the new NCO’s came, Dyer was gracious to them. There was a lot of talk about him being crazy. On the first day of training, Dyer took his platoon to the firing range and was his old self from then on. Dyer had been in the Raider Battalion on Guadalcanal. After Guadalcanal the Raider Battalion and the Parachute Battalions were disbanded and their personnel incorporated into regular units. We were lucky to get Dyer. He was the top enlisted man in the 81 Millimeter Mortar Platoon. Dyer stayed in the Corps for many years and retired as a Captain.
We had a newspaper published by Division headquarters. It was “Ta Ra Wa Boom De A”. It was put up on the bulletin boards. I wonder if there is a copy in existence. The only thing the editors got away with was they could ridicule “Dugout Doug”.
Berger and I had established a tradition.
Before we went into a battle, we would give up our seabags and only go aboard ship with packs. We would put a bottle of Budweiser in our seabag and if one of us didn’t make it through the battle, the other would get his Bud and drink to his memory. We got our seabags and each drank our own Bud.
It was always a big disappointment after each battle to find that Ham had made it through! We got two bottles of beer issued to us every day, I think. I didn’t really like it that much so I would just put it under my bunk and it would accumulate. Berger and Kirchoeffer could drink a dozen bottles during a card game. My hoard became very popular. I don’t think I ever charged them but I did trade for some favors.

g. We receive replacements

Personnel changes and promotions happened fast. Berger made corporal (he was made sergeant after Saipan). I made Staff Sergeant and was put in charge of the platoon. This job rated a Tech Sergeant but the Marine Corps always ran a bit behind on rates. Lieutenant Stegemerten, an Annapolis man whom I had worked for almost two years made Captain and became regimental communications Officer. Lt. B.B.Brown became our Battalion Communication Officer and was my immediate boss. He was okay, but I never really liked him. He was around at the required times but I was left with the responsibility of getting the platoon ready for our next action.
Now we received the greatest group of replacements the world has ever seen. These became my guys. They were smart, dedicated, disciplined. They responded to my leadership. There was Coudayre, Kearns, Poland, Corpier, Corona, Grieco, Hansen, and a host of others. (if I ever edit this, I’ll put in more names)
After two campaigns, I knew I had to get these men really ready or we would wind up getting killed or failing to do our job in combat. I had plenty of help from Col. Jones from the physical and combat side. We fired several different weapons, the Colt 45, the 30 caliber carbine, the Thompson submachine gun, the Garand M1, the 30 caliber and 50 caliber machine guns, and several Japanese guns. We were up at 5:00 for calisthenics. We had field problems with maps and compasses. We had ground to air communication exercises. We hiked miles almost every day. We used up enormous amounts of live ammunition. I trained my guys in a school tent on Code. I trained them in Semaphore, in blinker lights. We had two Navajo talkers, Pete and Price that we used with the rifle companies day after day.

h. The big Rodeo

We had organized athletics in the afternoons twice a week. Kirchoeffer and I played on the division baseball team. We got to go all over the islands and play other military teams.
We were located on the huge Parker Ranch. The Ranch people organized a big rodeo and barbecue. Lots of our Marines were involved. I figured I probably could have done a lot better than a most of them but I had enough sense to just be a spectator in this event. But it was great fun.

We Get Ready

We were issued new 782 gear, new shoes, new gas masks (and got chemical warfare training), a certain amount of ammunition. I had a 30 caliber carbine, but resolved to get something else if I really got into battle.
We began hearing about the Marianas, Truk, Bougainville and the possibility of making a demonstration landing on a secluded coast of Japan itself. Tokyo Rose said the Second Marine Division would hit Saipan.