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BRIGHT RED
WAS THE NIGHT
It was just at dusk, those brief minutes
between the time the sun suddenly drops down behind the
horizon and the coming on of night, when the eyes have
not yet adjusted to the twilight, on the evening of
April 20, 1944, thirty miles off the coast of Algiers
(Cape Bengut), when 580 American merchant seamen, U.S.
Navy Armed Guard, and U.S. Air Force personnel aboard
the Liberty ship S.S. Paul Hamilton were
incinerated in an instant, now here and before the
second hand on the clock could sweep forward a few
marks, suddenly gone.
They were gone in a thunderous, roaring,
blistering red hot column of flame that rushed from the
surface of the Mediterranean sea skyward...a red flame
that shot hundreds of feet into the air, then
mushroomed out into a white cloud that roiled and
rapidly spread in all directions above our convoy,
and the merchant ship S.S. Paul Hamilton, with all the
men aboard her, simply vanished from the surface of the
sea, from the face of the earth.
The tremendous force of the explosion
caused a wall of air, with tornado-like force, to spread
out through the convoy, and our ship, another Liberty
ship as alike as peas in a pod, the S.S. U.S.O., heeled
over from the concussion that struck her as if she had
taken a torpedo amidships, but as we dashed for the
upper deck, to either life boats or battle stations,
the ship slowly righted
herself and plodded steadily on. By the time we exited
to the deck in the fading daylight, we knew that it
wasn't our ship that had been struck and the navy
gun crew and seamen were already at their battle
stations. |
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Liberty ship, North
Atlantic, 1944, outside column of convoy. Dull gray
day. Calm sea. 7,177
tons. |
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The Navy gun crew and merchant seamen
rushed to their battle stations as sirens wailed and
bells clanged on every ship in the convoy, manning guns,
throwing shells into the breeches of the 5"38's and
3"50's that most Liberty ships carried, and feeding
ammunition into her 20 mm guns, tracers cutting through
the air from our guns as well as the other ships moving
in the convoy with us. We were under attack, and all
hell was breaking loose around us as the U.S. Naval
gun crews went into action. This was what they
were trained for, why they were aboard all U.S. merchant
ships.
Just moments earlier, there were five of
us peacefully playing gin rummy in the Officer's Mess
when that thunderclap came and our ship was hit by that
overwhelming blast of air, the force of it literally
turning us on our side. We reacted instantly, racing
down the passageway and upward and out onto the deck to
reach our battle stations, almost running along the
walls of the passageways at first as the ship seemed to
lay for an eternity on its starboard side.
Grabbing the ship's First Aid kit and
life-preserver, the others their life preservers and
some personal gear, we got out on deck thinking we might
be heading for the life boats too, but then we quickly
realized that our ship had not been hit as
she slowly righted herself and began rolling
to the port side now. She was still moving forward in
her proper place in the convoy and the steady beat
of her engines sounded most comforting and normal. Every
gun in the convoy seemed to be firing, and tracers were
going in every direction, trying to fend off the 23
German Ju-88's that had sped in to attack us. And there,
off our port side was the most awesome sight, that huge
red column of flame that seemed to belch right out the
sea itself and extend into the skies far above us. It
was eerie, but every man in the convoy must have known
that the crew, and all others aboard the Liberty ship,
SS Paul Hamilton, were gone. There was an injured seaman
for me to attend to, while our Navy gunners and the
merchant seamen who assisted them were trying, vainly,
to find the enemy.
As quickly as it had begun, within the
space of a few minutes, the firing ceased and all was
quiet again as if nothing had happened, but behind us
was that onimous mushroom cloud, dark and angry looking
as it seemed to reform into successive clouds, the cloud
that had carried off what had been a ship and all its
crew. Along with the Paul Hamilton, a Navy destroyer had
been mortally struck, another ship sunk, and two more
damaged. With the 47 dead aboard the destroyer, 627 men
had died within the space of those few minutes, not
counting the crews of the German planes that had
attacked us (several of them had been shot down).
In our training we had been told again and again that
dusk was the most dangerous time of the day, and their
timing for the attack had been perfect, a successfully
planned and executed operation for the German
Luftwaffe. |
1) Attack on convoy and sinking
of the S.S. Paul Hamilton 2)
The Signifigance of the Atomic Bomb
3)Japanese Atrocities
in the Pacific Theatre, and Asia during WWII.
4)Were
Armed Merchant Vessels Auxillary Naval Ships?
5)
Letters and photos from Families regarding Convoy.
Revised: Mar. 15.16.17, 2003 Dec.
30, 2006
Liberty ships were usually
crewed by approximately 70 men, so the potential for a
disaster of the magnitude of the Paul Hamilton was relatively
limited. If she had the standard crew for a Liberty ship,
there would have been 42 merchant seamen and 29 sailors from
the Naval Armed Guard. However, unknown to us at that time,
this ship had been refitted to also carry troops, because she
had 504 U.S. Air Force personnel aboard, sitting on top of
holds filled with deadly explosives, a disastrous decision
that someone ashore made which proved to be a fatal
combination. Common sense alone should preclude taking
such risks.
It was the regular job, and
the assigned risk for Merchant Seamen to transport those
dangerous cargoes, so it was not unusual for our ships to
carry a load of munitions and high octane fuel, as we had also
at that time. It was highly unusual, though, for there to be a
combination of troops and this type of highly dangerous and
volatile cargo to be mixed together. That was an unacceptble
risk, a mistake that should not have been made.
Few members of the Navy gun
crews on watch saw the enemy until it was almost too late, the
German planes suddenly coming in at the convoy from the other
side of the mountains along the shore and flying very low over
the water in order to avoid the radar detection systems manned
by destroyer personnel. It gave them the clear advantage in a
surprise attack, and diving through the 20 mm anti-aircraft
fire from one ship, the Liberty ship, S.S. Paul Hamilton, as
well as a U.S. Navy destroyer, they hit hard and fast and were
gone almost before most of the convoy knew we were under
attack. One of them, perhaps following the Hamilton's tracers
in, we surmised, launched its' torpedoes directly at her. If
so, it's possible that the alertness of that one gunner may
have helped bring about the disaster that destroyed her.
Perhaps the plane and pilot were engulfed by the flames from
the blast too, but that we never knew.
The S.S. Paul Hamilton was
only one of the 2815 merchant ships sunk by the Germans during
WW II, but when she was lost, she had the singular distinction
of taking with her the greatest number of lives lost aboard a
Liberty ship during the war. In the space of a few minutes,
three ships were sunk, including the destroyer, U.S.S.
Lansdale, and two more ships were damaged.
Our convoy had formed at
Norfolk, Va., and from there had crossed the North Atlantic,
towards the coast of Africa. It was under persistent attack by
a "wolf-pack" (the name given to a group of submarines
operating in concert against a single convoy) for several days
as we moved in the direction of the Straits of Gibraltar. The
D.E.'s (destroyer-escorts) had dropped numerous depth charges,
racing up and down outside the convoy lanes as they attemped
to pin-point the location of the subs below to put them out of
action.
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See
letters from families of men in our Convoy at bottom of page.
Above: This shows the fury of the storm while
crossing the North Atlantic, here on the left, an empty
life-raft launcher, and besides it, bent like an arm at its
elbow, a large steel boom. It came loose and smashed against
the metal frame on which a stack of life-rafts were secured,
sending them flying into the ocean. Two courageous seamen,
brothers from Norway, went out into the stormy night and,
fighting the sea and the wind, climbed the mast and somehow
secured the boom, even though it was swinging wildy about and
endangering the lives of anyone venturing out to try to lash
it down. I took this picture from the Life Boat deck, not too
far from my cabin, in 1945. The picture of me was
taken on the following day, a bit calmer, but still a
howling storm, the bent mast is to the left behind
me.
Seamen everywhere share a
common bond, sort of us against the sea or those of us who
love the sea, but they were the enemy and the sledge
hammer-like pounding on the hulls of the ships from the
explosions of the ash cans being dropped often made us
wonder how those guys below were taking it. It seemed
frightening to be so completely enclosed, and to have water
pouring into a sub from the pressure of broken hull plates and
no chance to escape, but that was the deadly game we
played on both sides. It was no less horrible to be on the
deck of a burning tanker, or a ship loaded with ammo. We all
took our chances. In our ships, most made it. Some didn't. In
the German submarine service, some made it. Most didn't. (Two
out of three German submariners never returned home.) Bravery
wears a common uniform. Courage? No nation has a lock on
it.
 Before we arrived at the
Straits, we had lost one ship to a torpedo from a submarine.
It seemed as if they must have fired it at an escorting
destroyer, because it suddenly took evasive action. The
torpedo then hit a ship further off in the convoy. Liberty
ships were slow and ungainly, far less maneuverable than the
destroyers and D.E.'s and therefore not able to avoid a
torpedo as easily. In large convoys it is difficult to see
what is going on in all sectors, especially in heavy seas or
fog, so losses were not always known to the men on the other
ships accompanying them. Our convoy split up before Gibraltar,
with some heading towards England and other points, while we
went on through the Straits of Gilbraltar. We had a long way
to go after entering the Mediterranean through the Straits,
because we were on our way to Port Said, the entry-way to
the Suez Canal, then to Aden and from there to the
Persian Gulf. Passing through the narrow Straits of Gilbraltar
put convoys at a disadvantage because there was little room to
maneuver, but it was also dangerous for the subs, because they
didn't have open ocean in which to flee or use evasive action
if they were detected. Perhaps now that we had left the North
Atlantic and the threat of submarines mostly behind us, we
felt safer. The waters were calm; the offshore winds from
Africa warm and balmy.
We brought cots out on deck and took
sunbaths, the big baby-faced Chief Engineer, Jewel Strickland,
often in his birthday suit. The Germans, who had lost Africa
and were in retreat on all fronts, were no longer very active
in the Mediterranean. We were watchful, but not fearful of
seeing much action in the area. That's the time, of course,
when everything happens. And that's when it did happen, on
that April night.
We had lost the three ships in
the space of just a few minutes, of the two damaged, one, we
were later told, had been beached on the coast of Algiers. (It
was, unfortunately, the ship carrying the supply of beer
for the U.S. troops stationed in the scorching heat of
the Persian Gulf.) As darkness enclosed us, we moved on,
keeping a wary watch for another attack. Like the huge loss of
life on the troopship, Leopoldville, sunk in the English
Channel off the coast of France on Christmas eve of 1944,
there was no news given out of the loss of the SS Paul
Hamilton and the troops aboard her, nor has there really been
any mention of it since. Today there aren't many witnesses to
it still alive. Time, like the convoy she was in, simply moves
on and the 580 lives (627 that night when you include the men
lost on the destroyer) are now merely a long forgotten
statistic.
THE PURPLE HEARTS?
Almost 9,500 men of the Merchant
Marine gave their lives for their country during WWII. It is
estimated that 12,000 others were wounded or suffered from the
effects of long periods of deprivation after their ships were
torpedoed. Some drifted for days, even weeks and months,
before being rescued, others lost limbs from exposure in icy
waters of the North Atlantic or Artic ocean. many others were
captured and made prisoners-of-war, suffering for months or
years under horrific conditions imposed upon them by their
Japanese captors.
Since our men have achieved
Veteran status (by an Act of Congress in 1985), and now have
Coast Guard discharges for their service during WWII, I
believe that the families of those who were lost due to enemy
action should be awarded the Purple Heart, and those wounded
who survived the war to this day, should receive it as well.
It is only fitting that this be done.
A little known fact is that 77
U.S. merchant seamen lost their lives due to German/Japanese
action even before Pearl Harbor! The merchant marine was
already involved in the Battle of Britain, delivering food and
ammunition to the British Isles, rnning the blockade of German
submarines patrolling the waters surrounding that small
nation. No guns, no armor, and at speeds too slow to
outrun Nazi subs on the surface, they helped sustain the war
effort, to keep the British supplied so that they could
continue to fight.
See my page titled: Purple Heart
for Merchant Seamen!
S.S. U.S.O. STRUCK BY DUD TORPEDO IN INDIAN OCEAN. No
voyage is over until you're safely back home, and this one was
no exception. We spotted floating and magnetic mines in the
Mediterranean and mines in the Red Sea. One came so close that
we held our breaths until we were safely past it, and then a
Navy gunner blew it up with fire from his 20 mm gun. Pulling
into the harbor at Aden was like a page from National
Geographic, a beautiful harbor with the prettiest green clear
water you can imagine, two huge manta rays lazily floating on
the surface at the entrance to the harbor. They looked to be
twenty feet across the wings, and one playfully, at least it
seemed so, raised his and slapped the surface, resounding like
cannon shots in the still warm air. The Red Sea and the Indian
Ocean were considered fairly safe at this point in the war, so
we didn't travel in convoy, but ran alone and zig-zagged at
proscribed intervals. I still have my Expense Notebook from
the trip, a couple of dollars ashore for taxi fare and lunch,
almost ludicrous compared to today's world.
The U.S.O. departed Aden, swung out into the Indian Ocean
and headed for the Persian Gulf at somewhere around ten knots
an hour, close to her top speed. After lunch, most of the crew
that was off-duty were taking in the sun and lolling around
the deck aft, the Officers' Messboy leaning over the rail
looking at the sea, when there was a sudden loud noise, like a
sledge hammer slamming into the side of the ship, and water
splashed up and soaked the messman. Two men, the Bosun and the
Carpenter's Mate, one the survivor of five torpedo attacks and
the other three, flew from the hatch cover where they were
playing cards and were at their life-boat stations on the deck
above almost instanteously. But again, the ship pounded
steadly on, and the Captain and Chief Mate, alarmed at first,
decided that we must have struck a whale. Odd conclusion, but
there weren't supposed to be any subs in that area. It wasn't
until four hours later, when we received aa S.O.S. by radio
from the ship that had left Aden four hours behind us, that we
realized we had actually been struck by a torpedo, one that
didn't penetrate the hull but did leave a discernable dent in
the plates by the number #3 hatch.
The Signifigance of the S.S. Paul
Hamilton to the Atom BombThe lessons the
military learned from the loss of 763 men of the 66th Infantry
(Panther) Division when a sub torpedoed the S.S. Leopoldville
in the English Channel, and the later loss of S.S. Paul
Hamilton by German aircraft, with 580 lives, should be simple
enough for anyone to understand. Every single day that a war
of that magnitude continued, there was the risk of sudden
severe losses that could have brought about reversals that
potentially could have led to our defeat. A victorious Japan
would never have granted us the terms that the Allies gave
them.
After the defeat of Germany and Italy, we were faced with
the task of invading Japan and bringing that nation to the
point of complete and unconditional surrender. By that time
we, who were to be involved in that final episode of the war,
had read a great deal in the nation's newspapers of the
planned invasion, and the military analysts were estimating
that our casualties would run as high as half a million men in
the Allied forces alone, not counting the numbers of both
Japanese military and civilians who would fall to in these
actions, just in gaining a foothold on the Japanese homeland.
That, many analysts felt, was a conservative figure.
In facing the Japanese armies we knew from experience that
they had a much different philosophy than the Germans, and
that suicide attacks would be the norm. We expected that
thousands of Japanese soldiers and airmen would willingly make
a one-way trip, sacrificing their lives by charging directly
into our guns, or diving their aircraft right into the side of
one of our ships. That was the nature of the enemy... and for
their officers, to ignore casualties. They had a propensity
for Banzai attacks on the ground, two-man subs in suicidal
attacks in the sea, and Kamikazi planes in the air. It was not
going to be a picnic for any of us.
Disasters of this proportion brought the Allied command to
understand that the invasion was not going to be easy, and
that the loss of a single troopship might cost hundreds, if
not thousands of lives, in an instant. None of the men in
those days, the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines, or Merchant
Marine, would have refused to go and fight those final
battles, no matter what the risks. Many may not have wanted to
go, for all knew and fully understood the risks involved, but
Americans in those days were both patriotic and courageous,
and we did not have the political dissension that we have
suffered all too often in recent years.
It was the Atom Bomb at Hirishima that began the resolution
of our problems the instant it ignited, the same type of
instantaneous explosion that the S.S. Paul Hamilton
disintegrated and vanished! For each man lost aboard the
S.S. Paul Hamilton, the first Atomic Bomb wiped out a little
more than 100 lives at Hiroshima. It seemed to us a good ratio
and a fair payback, and in wartime, there is nothing wrong
with a payback of this type, or of this proportion.
The second bomb affirmed our ability to deliver and proved
that there was no alternative to those who may have opposed
absolute surrender. It was our job to make the enemy realize
the futility of any further struggles, to bring them to a
point where resistence is futile and surrender and peace
becomes the only alternative. That is what the Atomic Bombs
accomplished for us. The first got their attention; it took
the second to make them realize that immediate and total
surrender was imperative.
For those of us who saw the horrors that are a part of war,
the dropping of the Atom Bomb was not only justified, but
necessary. It was the one and only course to pursue. We had no
guilt to feel nor to share. It was the nation's duty to avenge
if necessary, but certainly to defeat the Axis powers. Our
troops, whether by land or by sea, did so. We owed no
apologies for our actions. And our Nation owes none
today.
The Japanese of that time in history were a militaristic
nation which was fully committed to warfare and conquest,
as they had been from the turn of the century. In their string
of victories, they had been notorious for their inhumane
treatment of prisoners of war, as well as the complete, brutal
and arrogant subjugation of the citizens of the occupied
nations. Their history is filled with a continuous string of
atrocities, some so barbarous that the Japanese nation
deserved neither mercy nor consideration.
IT WAS INCUMBENT UPON OUR LEADERS TO
END THE WAR QUICKLY: Any failure on our part
to do as much damage as we could in order to shock the
Japanese military into an immediate and unconditional
surrender, executed as quickly as possible, would have been
foolhardy. If it had come out later that we had had the bomb
and not used it, it would most certainly have been viewed as a
betrayal by the hundreds of thousands of men massing for the
final assault, as well as the tens of thousands of Allied
military men who had already sacrificed their lives since the
attack on Pearl Harbour. It would also have put us at risk of
the possibility of a sudden momentous and calamitous quirk of
fate, or unforseen successful development by Japanese
scientists, which could have quickly overturned all of our
victories and led to our defeat, instead of the unconditional
surrender by the Japanese military to Allied
Forces.
There are no absolutes in war, there are no
plans so certain that success is guaranteed, and there is no
end to the battles and the casualties until our enemies lay
down their weapons in final surrender...and the last gun falls
silent.
You have to think about the men who returned home
horribly wounded, who would spend the rest of their lives
paying the penalty of war. You have to think about the
families at home waiting and praying for their soldiers,
sailors, marines, and merchant seamen to come home to them.
You have to consider a nation at war, tired of war, wanting a
Victory and an end to it all. Something miraculous, something
decisive, somthing that would end it all quickly had to be
done at that point and there was no way out of it. We believed
we had found the answer, and: It was. Thank God it was!
People like Richard Gere (to me he is "an abysmal jerk" or
even "an abysmal Hollywood jerk") are sadly misdirecting their
energies, as well as betraying the sacrifices and memory of
their fellow countrymen, especially of those who served and
lost their lives in the Pacific war. While the main purpose
was to bring an end to the war, if it also served to avenge
the atrocities they committed against us and the rest of Asia,
I can live with that.
A study of the Japanese military machine is filled with
incidents of horrible atrocities, beginning with the attack
upon Pearl Harbour, and then the Bataan Death March. There
were thousands of such atrocities. You have to read and study
them. They'll make your stomach churn.
One repeatedly done, merchant seaman, adrift in lifeboats,
were often machine gunned by Japanese crewmen of the
submarines that sank their ships. In at least one instance,
captured seamen were brought aboard the submarine, tied
together, and there on the deck many of them were beheaded by
Japanese officers of the sub, before the others were cruelly
thrown into the sea...still tied together with the headless
corpses and dragged behind the submarine as it submerged. By
some miracle two seamen managed to free their hands and find a
life-raft, and were eventually rescued so that they could tell
their story. Imagine the horror of being forced to watch as
your friends and shipmates were beheaded one by one, a brutal
inconceivable act.
Again, let me stress that a careful study of the Japanese
military from early in the century, beginning with their
invasion of Manchuria and Korea, their invasion of China, and
up to their actions in World War II, will show a history of
such moral depravity and absolute senseless brutality,
mistreatment and slaughter of surrendered armies and citizens
of conquered nations that have long been completely ignored,
that it shocks the senses.
Instead of a revealing study of these atrocities, we have
nothing but continuous stories and references to the
Holocaust. The Germans are blamed over and over again. No such
blame is ever, ever assessed against the Japanese, either by
Hollywood's film industry or the national press. Japan has
never admitted to its war crimes and atrocities by offering an
official apology that I know of, and it is long overdue. A
fanciful and almost ludicrous movie, The Bridge on the
River Kwai, about British, Australian and American
prisoners of war who barely existed in a living hell for more
than two years, almost glorifies their Japanese captors.
Historically, this history is just as important to tell, and
the people who perished and those who lived through it deserve
to have their stories told, and their suffering, terror,
executions, and the unremitting brutality told in all the same
detail and extensive coverage as the horrors that went on in
Europe. Are the Philippine, Chinese, British, American, and
other victims of less importance than those in the European
theatre? Hollywood makes it appear so.
A FEW JAPANESE ATROCITIES TO RESEARCH IN
ORDER TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THEIR BRUTALITY, INHUMANITY AND
SAVAGERY.
History books today tell little of the barbaric atrocities
committed by the Japanese military during World War II. In
Japan they eliminate all reference to the horrendous deeds of
their fathers and grandfathers, as if it never happened.
Soldiers were hardened to such savagery by their officers,
training them by forcing them to bayonet live prisoners bound
to poles. They observed no conventions of warfare, condoned
the most brutal of acts, and used the same brutality on a
daily basis against the people of lands they seized as they
did in battle. To properly understand the reason for the use
of Atomic bombs against Japan, one has to first know what type
of enemy we were fighting, their ferocity, their cunning,
their willingness to die for their Emperor, and that the
Allies simply could not risk what might be a failure in an
invasion, or simply the vagaries of warfare, the suddeness
that the tide of battle might turn on a simple error, a change
in weather, or quite simply--chance.
Barbaric Occupation Forces in Korea, from the turn of the
Century until the end of the war in 1945.
Sex Slaves in Korea. Enslavement and mistreatment of
hundreds of Korean women.
1937-Rape of Nanking; After surrendering the city of
Nanking, over 300,000 Chinese were slaughtered in a ninety day
rape and killing orgy by victorious Japanese troops.
The Chinese army that surrendered to the Japanese at
Nanking in 1937 were all executed by firing squads, a total
of 100,000 soldiers and their officers.
Pearl Harbor, a traitorous act that lead to more than
2,000 dead.
Bataan Death March, killing and beheading Prisoners of
War.
Bridge on the River Kwai; where 130,000 Asians and 13,000
Allied soldiers (P.O.W.s) of slave laborers led animail-like
existences until they died of disease, overwork and
starvation, were beaten to death, or executed.[Hollywood's
version was all vicious lies, a white-wash of the Japanese
inhumanity and prison conditions.]
After the U.S. B-26's, under the command of Lt. Col.
Doolittle, bombed Tokyo, some of the planes landed in China
and the Chinese aided them in getting back home. The Japanese
punished the Chinese people by the brutal execution of 250,000
Chinese civilians fortheir support of the U.S. Airmen. They
also beheaded 3 of the 8 captured U.S. pilots.
Beheading of one pilot captured in Battle of Midway. They
also tied weights to ankles and dropped two captured American
pilots in sea off Midway Island, contrary to the Geneva
Conventions.
Merchant seamen were captured, taken aboard Japanese
submarines and beheaded.
Merchant seaman, survivors of torpedoed ships, were often
machine gunned, slaughtered while adrift in lifeboats.
Brutal treatment of Philippine prisoners of war.
Beatings, torture, starvation of prisoners in every
theatre of war they fought in, in violation of Geneva
Convention.
Even a casual study will show that there was absolutely no
atrocity too evil, or too indescribeably vicious and
unspeakably inhumane for the Japanese to commit during the war
years.
In Manila, 20,000 Japanese soldiers fought to the last
man, leading to the deaths of 8,000 American soldiers, of
100,000 Filipino citizens, and the total destruction of the
entire city.
Facing MacArthur's troops in the Philippines were yet
another 70,000 battle-hardened Japanese soldiers, who
surrendered immediately upon orders from the Emperor after the
second atomic bomb was dropped. This saved the lives of 70,000
Japanese soldiers and thousands more American and Philippine
lives.
There is hardly a day goes by that we are not reminded of
the atrocities of the Germans during World War II, mostly the
Holocaust. However, there is seldom anything said about the
horrible treatment and almost inhumane conduct of the Japanese
troops during the war.
While I harbor no ill-will towards
the Japanese people today, when it comes to any reference to
the use Atomic Bombs I believe that it is necessary to take
everything in historical context and for those who question
our use these weapons, for them to understand the very nature
of the war we were fighting at the time. They don't seem to do
so. They're always ready to condemn their own country first,
for some misguided reason or other.
The close to 150,000
helpless prisoners who died in Burma, building the Burma
railway, is about equal to the number of casualities in
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. So be it.
One has to examine the
Japanese attitudes and the actions of their military forces in
occupied territories. Prisoners and subjugated people were
often used as slave laborers, beaten, robbed, raped, starved,
beheaded, bayoneted as a part of military drills, subjected to
all manner of torture, summarily executed, a litany of horrors
so extensive that no history could ever cover them in an
adequate manner. The Japanese military, in almost all
instances, were inhumane in their treatment of conquered
nations. It's a historical fact, and we should not allow
apologists to rewrite or ignore it, and attempt to make us
feel guilty.
On the other hand, I believe that General Douglas
MacArthur's treatment of the defeated Japanese nation was the
correct course to follow, and that as a result of his policies
we now have an entirely different attitude on the part of the
Japanese people, and that today we are seeing them at their
very best. If it was not for our demanding an unconditional
surrender, and keeping an occupation force in Japan while they
set about making a democracy out of the country, they would
not be where they are today.
They are an interesting and dynamic people. Today's
generation of Americans owes no apologies for the actions that
we, as a nation, took in those days, nor does anyone who was
responsible for the development and use of Atomic weapons.
There is nothing for us to apologize for, nor to forgive; all
is in the past and should remain in the past. For those who
criticize our generation, let them examine the full story of
the Japanese army from the turn of the century up until their
surrender.
In the year 2001 our government stupidly spent $60 million
to raise a Japanese fishing boat, accidently struck and sunk
in Hawaiian waters by a U.S. submarine (right off Pearl
Harbor), in order to recover six bodies. Our cost was $10
million for each body! It was sheer lunacy. Those of us who
went to sea understood that death at sea meant that the sea
became your burial ground.
When did that change? It is
ludicrous that our government would waste millions to raise a
fishing boat in order to recover six bodies! That's beyond
comprehension, or understanding, and it has nothing to do with
race, or the fact that they were Japanese, because even to do
it for American bodies would be just as ridiculous. What a
precedent to set!]
Top Row, Left: Me, as Purser. July 194l
S.S.Amapala. Age 16. Center photo:Ens. Steve Carson, USN,
officer in charge of U.S.N. Gun Crew. Right photo:This is a
picture of GI's crowding decks of a troop ship, the S.S. Hood
Victory, carrying 1,800 soldiers and just entering the waters
leading to New York harbor. They wanted to see the Statue to
Liberty, and they crowded every vantage point on the deck in
order to catch their first sight of her as we headed for our
berth on the Hudson River. She symbolized everything they had
fought for, and meant "home-coming" to them. (**see more
below)
Large photo. Gun Crew, S.S. U.S.O. Ens. Steve
Carson, top row, left, commanding. Great group of guys. 1944
in the Mediterranean Sea.
Third row of pictures: "Hairless
Joe" Knaggs, Navy seaman, AG. Next, I think this is 'Tex' on a
20 mm gun. 3rd picture: Frank Belsky on the 20 mm. 4th
picture: our 4"50" cannon aft.
ATOMIC BOMB & THE TROOPS
** They had
fought their way across Africa and then through Europe, some
had been away from the U.S. for two or three years. Most of
them were heading home for a leave and then...a reassignment
to the Pacific Theatre of Operations to prepare for the
inevitable invasion of Japan. You know that every single
soldier here was joyous to hear that our Commander-in-Chief,
President Harry S. Truman, had had the courage to make that
decision and issue an order that called for the Atomic bomb
to be used to end the war!
It was the most important and most correct decision of
the entire conflict. The enemies' casualties were of little
consequence to us then; the single most important goal was
to save the lives of our men and to do so by ending the War.
And, the War did end, quickly and decisivly, because of that
decision. Veterans that I have discussed this with have all
been in agreement that President Harry S. Truman made the
right decision and that we too can live with it.
Historians can argue the issue; they weren't the ones
whose lives were at risk.
Historians can debate the
alternatives, but there were no certaintities in that war,
as there aren't in today's wars.
Historians can cry over
the thousands of innocent women and children incinerated
that day, but it was not any different than the 580 men
incinerated on that single Liberty ship carrying
ammunition.
Historians may ignore the atrocities of the
Japanese, and historians may not believe in vengeance, but
in wartime, those who fight often do. As a Nation, we
certanly seemed to believe in it, and it began with revenge
for the December 7th 1941 attack upon Pearl Harbor!
I heard no cry-babies at that time bemoaning the plight
of the poor Janapese. All I heard were cries of joy and
relief that the war was over. I heard cries of joy that so
many nations had finally been freed from the tyranny and
cruelty of the Japenese occuption. I read stories of
Chinese, Korean and Maylasians, as well as Allied troops,
freed from torturous living conditions as prisoners of war,
some so horribly abused that they died even as they were
finally being carried out from the prison camps to freedom.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki was a small price for the Japanese to
pay for their transgressions, really a very small price
considering all the atrocities they had committed as their
victorious troops swept across Asia and the Pacific in the
early part of the war. At that point we became the
victorious conquerors, but the United States was also the
most merciful of any nation over the centuries. The Japanese
were cruel to each other, even when they defeated other
Japanese warlords on their own islands. We can hold our
heads high in the centuries to come, that we have never
taken advantage of a defeated enemy.
ARMED U.S. MERCHANT SHIPS MIGHT CLASSIFY AS AUXILLARY
NAVAL SHIPS! Today, although given Veteran's status by
Congress in 1985, the VFW still stubbornly refuses to accept
merchant seamen as members, even though literally 100% of them
served overseas and they were in every theatre of war that any
of the Allied forces served in.
After some months of the
war, every ship went to sea with Navy guns and Naval Armed
Guard. Wouldn't that classify them as Auxillary Naval Ships?
They fought off both air and sea attacks, and merchant seamen
helped man the guns, trained by the U.S. Navy gunners.
This
would be no different than Congress arming merchant ships back
in the late 1700's and early 1800's, and authorizing them to
attack enemy vessels.
Most Merchant Marine seamen were
enlisted in and trained by the U.S. Maritime Service, paid by
the U.S. Government during training at the same pay scale as
members of the Armed Forces, until their training was
completed and they were released to sail as civilian seamen.
This would seemingly give legitimacy to the claim that if they
were trained by the U.S. Government, armed by the U.S. Navy,
and served as assistant gunners on board these vessels, that
the relationship should be recognized and the same area and
battle ribbons authorized to veterans of WWII who served in
the merchant marine.
QUESTION: WHAT
EFFECT DID ADMIRAL KING'S FAILURE TO FOLLOW THE
RECOMMENDATIONS SENT TO HIM BY THE BRITISH FOR PROTECTING THE
AMERICAN MERCHANT FLEET IN THE FIRST YEAR OF THE WAR HAVE ON
THE WAR EFFORT?
Admiral King was an known
Anglophile. The British Admiralty conveyed their experiences
and recommendations (convoys, etc.) for reducing losses to
German submarines, and it is reported that he deliberately
refused to make use of this advice in the early months after
America's entry into the war. It was a mistake in judgment,
and costly in ships, as well as in lives of the men of the
Merchant Marine.
The Germans were sinking ships
with impunity right outside of New York harbor, off the coast
near Coney Island, and within sight of tourists (from their
hotel windows) in Miami Beach.
If this statement is proven
incorrect, I will remove it from this
Website!
Ref: ** SS Paul Hamilton Personnel Lost at Sea - 20 Apr
1944 **. ... US Merchant Marines, Crew of SS Paul Hamilton -
47; US Navy Armed Guards - 29; US Army Air Corps - 504. ...
www.geocities.com/lks_friday/HAMILTON-001.htm - 10k - Cached -
Similar pages by Lynna Kay Shuffield A great WEBsite. Be Not Afraid
To contact me: Howard@syv.com
A SAILOR'S
PRAYER
by Howard E. Morseburg
Come death, and meet me in the night,
Softly...we’ll steal away.
Let us be gone ‘ere first pale light
At the break of day.
If you will guide me, take my hand
And lead me to the sea.
But first, to stroll the moonlit strand,
Then sail out silently.
In time we’ll reach that far off shore,
That’s been life’s destiny.
To join shipmates who have gone before,
There, spend Eternity.
copyright 1994 Howard E. Morseburg Solvang,
CA
copyright 1994 Howard E. Morseburg PO Box 320 Solvang,
CA
Write, if you like the article or poem.
Click
here to send this web site to a friend.
LETTERS FROM FAMILIESMr. Morseburg; What I
have is this: On 9 Oct 1943, my father, Robert John Blood,
became ship's Master of the USS Cornelius Gilliam. The
'Gilliam' received a battle star as a result of the events of
11 May 1944 while in convoy with UGS-40. He was 30 years old,
and his first 'ride' as Captain. He had recently been promoted
to the rank of Lt. Cdr. in the USN, if I am not mistaken. He
left the 'Gilliam' to be skipper of the USS Geronimo on 12 Dec
1944, the position he held 'til well after VJ and VE. I do
know he was personally acquainted with RJ Reynolds [of
aluminum and tabacco] while dad was on the Maritime Board in
DC, prior to Mr Reynolds taking command of a Destroyer Escort
in the Atlantic. He was also acquainted with Capt RJ Bunche,
who went on to help found the United Nations. If this little
quantity of info strikes a chord in anyone else's memory, I'd
appreciate hearing about it, as dad wouldn't talk about the
'War' at all. I've been trying to find stuff out since his
passing in February of 1986. Sincerely, Robt. M. "Mike" Blood
One of the men who was lost on the S.S. Paul Hamilton, is
pictured here, Staff Sergeant Frederick W. Sleyster, with the
32nd Photo Squadron, 5th Reconnaissance, US Air Force. Died
April 20, 1944. Some of the men aboard were said to have been
demolition specialists, headed for Anzio, perhaps to clear
mine fields and dispose of ordinance in the area.
From Dec. 2, 2002 to October 3, 2006: 14,825 visitors to
this page.
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USO, SS HOOD VICTORY, HOOD VICTORY, LIBERTY SHIP, VICTORY
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