Disillusionment in the Army and in America’s Literary Scene

[The following excerpt is sure to offend some, given my father’s caustic characterization of the typical men in America’s army. Even he recognizes his “sullenly superior attitude,” which would quickly earn him an “elitist” denunciation from many in today’s America. He uses “the discrepancy between human nature in the barracks and in the political science textbooks” as a springboard into a rumination about the state of American literature, and his own desire to ultimately write novels that do more than cater to the popular taste.

I like this excerpt because it illustrates my father’s ambitions and idealism as a young man, but also his realism and self-doubts. Tangentially, and sadly, one comment also references two marginalized professions of post-war America: fundamentalist ministers and book critics.  One of those groups went on to thrive in the subsequent years, but not the one that my father would have hoped.]

May 6, 1946 (Fort Lawton, WA)

The first summer that I was in the Army I wrote a letter to President Hutchins of the University of Chicago suggesting, among other things, that the Army qualified as a mass school of democracy. When he answered, he said that the only thing he remembered learning in the Army was how to avoid details. He suggested politely that I was wrong as hell.

Three years later I know that he was right. Very few men, I believe, have been improved by their contact with the Army, democratically or otherwise, and a great many men have been worsened, at least temporarily.  I myself have retained only tattered shreds of my respect for “the common  man of democracy” whom I fancied I would meet in mass in the Army. Actually, of course, I was looking for one of those idealistic myths which sensitive undergraduates construct during their days on campus and in the classroom

This is no “common man of democracy” in actual fact, and the Army is an institution which will soon make the most starry-eyed dreamer aware of actual facts. Most of the men of the American Army are poorly-educated, loudmouthed, undisciplined, and excessively vulgar individuals. Many of the officers, I suspect, are fundamentally members of this same class, though social pressure and fear of punishment forces them to exhibit the mechanics, if not the spirit, of civilized behavior in public.

In one sense I have gained from the Army an important lesson in American democracy. The fact that it hasn’t been the type of lesson I expected to receive has not lessened its value. The danger for me, and fellows like me, is that the discrepancy between human nature in the barracks and in the political science textbooks will persuade us that somehow America has cheated us, and our former zeal for social service will turn into a disillusioned resentment. The way of the expatriate is extremely seductive to those who pass through this disillusionment to the conviction that it is impossible in America to win mass appreciation for any serious artistic work. But one may pertinently question whether a work of art, particularly in literature, can be serious when it is deliberately divorced from its national and social origins. Those who write purely to entertain, which is apparently a not unworthy motive in a world of entertainment-hungry people, may write about a 17th century English prostitute or a 20th century American race horse or a fairy princess. So far as I can remember, the so-called “literature of escape” has never been unpopular, and today there is a phenomenal demand for it. A number of young ladies, in particular, has discovered that there is great profit and fame to be gained in the writing of sexy tales of romance. Their books seem to impress favorably almost everyone except the book critics. This situation suggests that book critics are members of an obsolete profession still blindly faithful to the literary standards of a forgotten age. They stand in a class with fundamentalist ministers and a few other stubborn individualists as forlorn standard-bearers for a culture which was imported in chunks from Europe, never properly assimilated by the masses, and almost completely ignored by the population at large in the years since the first World War.

The traditions of literature as an art based on the study of contemporary conditions and characters in society has not entirely died out. Occasionally a young writer still comes to maturity with an inescapable urge to give his own honest reaction to and interpretation of the life he has observed in his society. For every ten “Forever Ambers,” perhaps, there is one “Winesburg, Ohio.” For every simple magazine of honest opinion there are perhaps twenty to thirty movie, detective, confession, and comic magazines. These proportions are not statistically accurate, of course, but they indicate closely enough the state of literature in America today.

There’s plenty to be said for following the popular taste. Even a moderately skillful writer can make a fortune if he lets his work be dictated by the demands of vulgarity and sensationalism, and hires a smart press agent. He will find Hollywood eating out of his hand. The polite disdain of a few unimportant critics is a small price to pay for such rewards. He has even satisfied the predominant American moral code which classifies right action in terms of profit and success.

The fact that I have not yet been won over to this theory of literature probably proves that I’m not capable of applying it successfully anyway. My sullenly superior attitude is no doubt a shield of vanity with which I contrive usually to hide my own incompetence and laziness even from myself. Without denying either of these charges, however, I maintain that if I do eventually write novels and stories they will be in the tradition of Wolfe, Dos Passos, and Lewis. If I do have a literary bent that’s the direction in which it turns.

To get back to the Army, which was mysteriously lost somewhere near the beginning of this discussion, I have found it disillusioning in terms of certain of my college concepts, but enormously revelatory of the type of society which produces the men who actually make up the Army. I don’t flatter myself that I have made any original discoveries. The originality in my work will have to come in my application of recognized generalities to specific characters. One thing in particular which I hope to learn quickly is how to prevent myself from spending an evening in dressing up banalities for no one’s edification.

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Army Pay Rises to $100 per Month, Warranted or Not

[This entry notes the “political extravagance” of a House bill authorizing a “substantial” pay raise for officers and enlisted men — from $78 to $100 per month in my father’s case. In his tongue-in-check reporting of this “economic blasphemy,” my father allows that he’ll happily accept the government’s largess, warranted or not. He also worriedly contemplates a potential return to Okinawa (an assignment that never materialized).]

April 18, 1946 (Fort Devens, MA)

It is very easy to declaim in an rage against political extravagances wherein public money is appropriated for the undeserved benefit of a special group, – easy, that is, until you find yourself a member of just such a group. A bill just passed by the House authorizes substantial pay raises for all officers and enlisted men in the armed forces. Speaking as one detached from the issue, I will say that ninety-nine percent of all officers and enlisted men are already getting paid more than they are worth. But it happens that I am not really detached. I’m in the Army, with a rating of technician, fourth-grade, and am slated by this bill for a raise in pay from 78 to 100 dollars a month. As a man of principle, I would protest against this economic blasphemy. I would point out that it would take a generous imagination to demonstrate that I have done a month’s productive labor during my last twelve in the service. My own candid conclusion is that my value to the people of the United States, whom I have supposedly been serving during that period, has been practically nil. Yet now the Congress is on the point of giving me a 25% raise, along with all the other jokers still in uniform. I pointed out that as a man of principle I would protest this infamy. As a GI, however, I will gladly accept the extra lettuce.

Of course, a man can claim that he deserves some compensation for mental anguish, even though his anguish may be of no particular benefit to anyone else. I am at present suffering an anguish which would probably bring a rather fancy price in the open market, in the sense that most people would be willing to pay good money to avoid having this particular anguish for themselves. I refer to the fact that I am apparently on the point of shipping back to Okinawa. Come on folks! Step right up! Who’d like to have a nine-month vacation with pay on Okinawa, with transportation both ways paid for by the government? Well, look at the people running. But they’re running with their backs to me, which I take as an indication that no one wants to go to Okinawa, not even those many poor souls who have never had the privilege of visiting that island before. And it’s only because I’ve been there before that I’m willing to offer my opportunity to some less fortunate sucker.

True, my orders don’t say that I’m going to Okinawa, – not yet. They just carry me as far as Fort Lawton in Seattle, and also provide for a seven-day pre-embarkation furlough. I’m not always as stupid as I am sometimes. The boys who stayed behind laughed when I left Okinawa last December. “You’ll be right back here next spring about the time we’re leaving for good,” they said. I laughed back and told them there wasn’t a chance of it. Now I expect to feel slightly embarrassed when I meet a bunch of the old SIAM boys embarking from Machinato Point, just as I am landing there.

Of course, I may ship to Japan.

And the Phillies may win the National League pennant.

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At Ft. Devens Awaiting New Orders

[Following a three-month furlough he received for reenlisting, my father had reported to Fort Devens, Mass. where he awaited his new assignment orders. He had spent his furlough with his family in North Troy, Vermont, while making several trips to visit with friends at Middlebury College and in New York and Rhode Island. This entry paints the scene at Fort Devens, as new recruits mixed with returning veterans, and as my father contemplated his choice to reenlist.]

April 6, 1946 (Fort Devens, MA)

At Fort Devens on these April days a hard wind blows from the West, and it isn’t an exuberant breath of Spring, but a saucy reminder that Winter is not dead, but is simply in retirement for a few months, and not yet too far away to send back a sharp reminder of his recent reign. This is the first day of the baseball season, too, but if the teams insist on playing in Boston, they will do plenty of shivering. Here at the Fort the ground in most places around the barracks is bare gravel. The wind scoops up clouds of gritty dust and sprays the soldiers who are standing in formation or walking up and down along the streets. These soldiers are a restless bunch for most of them are here only for the week or so of processing preliminary to their assignment overseas or to some other camp in the country.

There are always several hundred eighteen year old kids drafted into the Army for the first time. For a few hours they walk about in their civilian clothes. Then they go through the clothing mill, and emerge from its stacks of clothes and equipment dressed in wrinkled green fatigues, GI shoes, with duffel bags full of their new possessions rolling on their shoulders,. Now they are soldiers, and can write their names on painted walls: “Joseph Blow was here.” They take their tests, are classified, and wonder where they’re going. In their spare time of waiting around, they begin to learn how to dodge details. One morning after they have been here about a week they’re called out into the wind-swept area in front of the orderly room to hear their names called off on the shipping list. By nightfall the barracks they have just emptied are filled again by other kids dressed in civilian clothes struggling to make up their first GI bunks.

These days, too, there are many older men who have reenlisted, and are returning to camp from their furloughs. Some have been out of the Army as long as half a year and are back now because civilian life didn’t meet their expectations. One fellow explains that he tried three or four civilian jobs, and none of them suited him. A few are former reserve officers who are taking advantage of the provision which allows them to reenlist as master sergeants. They mix in readily enough with the other men, or it might be more accurate to say that the other men gravitate to them as to symbols of splendor suddenly brought within their reach. The majority of these older men have seen more than three years service, and their overseas time ranges up to forty-two months. Most of them have signed up for the three-year hitch and probably intend to make an Army career. The rest, for various reasons, have chosen to sweat out the GI life for one more year before calling it quits.

I have several times during the past week taken a dim view of my remaining ten and a half months of service, have cursed myself for making a foolish choice. Had I waited on Okinawa, I’d be getting my final discharge at just about this time. But my most foolish mistake now would be to maintain this attitude of regret. I must remember that I didn’t find the past three months at home too exhilarating. The externals of life, after all, are largely incidental. If I have something to do in the way of writing, I can work at it as well in the Army as out, and perhaps better. If the Army has accentuated certain personal problems, I can at least hope to make some progress towards solving them while I’m still in the Army. In some salubrious hours I’ve looked forward to this year as a great opportunity. Though I’m not as trigger-happy with my high resolves as I was a few years ago, I still know that I can make just about as much of my time as I choose. My main change from my college days is perhaps a lessening of my confidence in my ability or willingness to choose wisely.

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Reflections on Post-War Seattle, New Year’s 1946

[One more vignette of post-war Seattle, written on New Year’s 1946. As a 20-year resident of the city’s suburbs, I find many of my father’s observations of mid-1940s Seattle quite interesting (the aversion to umbrellas remains strong, but is no longer universal). It seems that the good citizens of Seattle were more than happy to make a profit off the returning troops, who for all their drinking and partying couldn’t — to my father’s mind — conquer the “loneliness of spirit” that they shared with most other Americans.]

January 1, 1946 (Seattle, WA)

Seattle is one of the northernmost of US cities, but, being within breezing distance of the Japanese current, its winters are not as severe as they are exasperating. It’s an unusual day when a little rain falls. On a usual day a lot of rain falls. No one really worries about getting wet, but accepts his daily soaking as a matter of course. I haven’t noticed an umbrella during ten days in Seattle.

Seattle, like most other American cities, is much less impressive as an old acquaintance than as a bustling stranger. As a port city, it sees more than its share of soldiers and sailors, and sees them only as short-time transients bent on having a good time. Entertainment is a booming business for Seattle people, and the boys in the service are never in any doubt that it is a business. They pay top prices for anything that’s offered to them, and most of what they get is second-rate, or worse. But the simple pressure of their numbers makes them powerless to protest, and most of them have enough money to give them a “what-the-hell” attitude. But among themselves they curse the city volubly.

No doubt the good people of Seattle do a little private cursing of the troops. The boys go into town to get drunk and look for girls. These are the things they’ve been dreaming about most avidly during the months overseas, and as they come plowing deep into Puget Sound on the ships, they begin to build Seattle up into the Mecca of their longings. The people of Seattle apparently don’t make much objection to the damage done their city’s morals by the uniformed pilgrims, but they probably grow quite weary of their streets reeling with drunken, brawling, flirting kids.

On First Avenue are the military trinket stores and the penny arcades. Most of the boys make a bee-line from the ships to the trinket stores to stock up on the stripes, patches, medals, buttons, theater ribbons, overseas “hershey bars,” caps, and hash marks which become the visible marks of glory. Then, after everything is sewed and pinned in place (often at the USO on Second Avenue), they launch off into the city to consume and conquer. Several hours and a good many dollars later they drift back to their ships and barracks to boast or bitch, according to their respective fortunes.

The only regular stage performance in Seattle is a dingy burlesque show at the Rivoli on First Avenue. (Sin, by the way, is arranged symbolically in Seattle. It parades in its rawest forms along First Avenue, which is the waterfront, becomes more refined on each succeeding avenue up the hill, and is sophisticated practically beyond recognition by the time one reaches Sixth Avenue.) The movie theatres, which carry such piquant names as the Blue Mouse and the Music Box, are mostly all owned by a Mr. John Hamrick. Mr. Hamrick had a very mediocre offering for the Christmas season. “The Stork Club,” featuring Betty Hutton and Barry Fitzgerald, was as good as anything going, and it was not good at all. But the theatres stay open all night, and draw the bulk of their late-evening patronage from boys on pass who have no other place to go.

There’s one thing about Seattle, and about any other American city, that most fellows can’t understand, because they’re products of the city way of life. They’ve learned to depend on the mechanical, commercialized dispensers of “pleasure,” which never really please. The human spirit has probably never before been more completely neglected than it is in America today. Even lovemaking has no significance beyond its physical thrills, and the most intimate moments are shared by fellows and girls after an evening’s, or even an hour’s, acquaintance. There is in almost every American a tremendous loneliness of spirit coupled with an ignorance of the means of spiritual fulfillment. Spending money is the most obvious opiate for his vast restlessness, and just now he has plenty of money. Probably during this New Year of 1946 Americans will spend more money to satisfy personal wants than ever before, and then come to the end of the year as dismally dissatisfied as ever.

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Service Member “Waywardness” in Post-War Seattle

[My father returned from Okinawa to the States in mid-December 1945 on the troop transport U.S.S. Mellette, arriving in Seattle just prior to Christmas. In this journal entry, he captures the post-war scene in Seattle, as idle servicemen kill time in the way that idle servicemen will do. My father’s discussion of this “waywardness” and his analysis of its roots includes one of my favorite lines from his journals to date: “The American is no more inherently immoral than the men of any other race or nation, but more than all others in this unbalanced world he suffers from an excess of civilization and a paucity of culture.” I think that description sums up the current American scene quite nicely as well!

Anyone reading only this journal excerpt might infer from the mention of “spiritual destruction” that my father’s bleak view of affairs was driven by a Biblically based puritanism. As earlier posts have illustrated, however, my father was more interested in establishing a personal spirituality and faith model than in adopting any formal religion. The excerpt’s final paragraph, in which he speaks of men losing the capacity for an “inner life” expresses the true source of his dismay.]

December 27, 1945 (Seattle, WA)

The streets of Seattle in the winter are cold and wet, rain is almost always in the air, and soldiers and sailors are always in the streets. Most of them have no place to go, and nothing to do. They just walk up and down the streets in pairs or small groups, always chattering, never pausing to think, because what is there to think about? The war is over, and now, just like after a big game, they want to get home. But the stadium covers the world, and not everyone can leave at the same time. Those who have to wait are impatient, lonely, and rebellious. The days drag slowly at best, and liquor, girls, and gambling are the surest ways to kill time. The arm of military authority relaxes, the excitement and danger of battle are gone, and the GIs drift into a frenzy of dissipation which shocks the world. They rage and riot in Paris, they sow a bumper crop of babies in the arms of the late enemy in Germany, they supply and patronize the black market in Rome, they drink themselves to death in Japan. And beneath these various spectacular outbursts there is the steady tempo of gambling, drinking, and whoring which daily involves millions of America’s fine young men in uniform. There are exceptions, of course, but they are too few to alter the scene appreciably, and their number, I suspect, loses more to the great temptations than it gains in new recruits.

The American is no more inherently immoral than the men of any other race or nation, but more than all others in this unbalanced world he suffers from an excess of civilization and a paucity of culture. His amiable lack of principle and value is camouflaged behind such vague phrases as “traditional American idealism” and “the democratic spirit.” His ingenuity is genuine and sterile, for by it he only adds to the dazzle and comfort of a civilization which has already reduced him far down the road towards his spiritual destruction. He’s a barbarian who worships daily at the shrines of Flesh and Money and Self, and tolerates just as much religion of the true God as will salve his vestigial conscience and do no harm to his worldly pursuits.

If the boys in khaki and blue ever stop to question the wisdom of their waywardness, they content themselves with the explanation that they act as they do because they’re not at home. In other words, the determinants of their morality are external, – geographical limits and family relationships. I’ve found that most fellows are filled with stories of their families and work at home, but in ordinary conversation with their fellows, their proudest achievement is to outdo each other in stories of drunken binges and seductions. They live so much on the surface that they themselves lose sight of their capacity for an inner life, and from long neglect, no doubt, they gradually lose much of their original capacity.

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A Soldiers’ Bull Session: Capitalism versus Communism

[In this entry, my father recounts a late-night debate about politics and economics among the soldiers in his tent. Many of the comments reported touch on issues that remain hot-button topics today. They include the lamentation that “politics always seems to boil the scum to the top” and the fair observation that a Constitution “written over a hundred and fifty years ago for a little colony of thirteen states” might need some tweaking to remain relevant in the current America. If only the conservative “originalists” on the U.S. Supreme court could exhibit such common sense!)

September 29, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

I come back to the tent about eleven-thirty after an evening of bridge. The only light is at Fisher’s improvised work bench, where he sits with black-bearded head bent forward, puzzling over some piece of electrical equipment. But there are voices in the dark. Old Buck and Stan Graham are deep in a discussion of economics and politics. Right in this one tent we have concentrated the best bull-shooters in the whole platoon. Last night it was Army organization, and war responsibility. Tonight it’s communism versus capitalism. These guys are so serious that they can complete one of these discussions without once bringing in women or sex. Of course, they’re never completed in the sense that unanimous conclusions are arrived at. They die out either from the exhaustion of the participants, which is rare, or from the intercession of perverted individuals like Tom Pearson, who believes in going to sleep early because he can’t help waking up early in the morning.

The discussion tonight is even more hopelessly abstract than usual. “I’ve read, or, er, I’ve heard it said,” Buck says, “that capitalism is just the thing for a young country – “

“That’s right,” Stan breaks in, “it’s OK as long as she’s expanding, as long as there’s a frontier. But now the frontier is gone.”

“Yes. Yes.” Buck says. “That’s just what I mean. So now I think that this country is ready – er, really needs some kind of economic regulation.”

“Yeah,” Stan says, “and then we come to a situation where we’re advocating just the things we’ve been fighting this war to prevent.”

“Well,” Buck says, “I think we ought to have a group of economic experts study the situation, and then make an honest report to the people on just what has to be done to stop depressions.”

At this point I enter the discussion and explain that a large number of such studies have already been made, and the reports are available to the public for whatever they’re worth. But Buck says he’s never heard of them. Then I try to explain the dilemma that arises when anyone attempts to press economic sanity through the maze of American politics.

“Well,” says Buck, “it seems to me that if we could educate the people on those things…”

Here again I’m skeptical. I point out that good education demands exceptional teachers, and there aren’t enough exceptional teachers to go around.

“Yep,” Stan agrees, “you can’t get a good man to work for nothing, and that teaching’s one of the lowest-paid professions.”

Then Buck starts working around towards communism again. Joe Graham comes in and says that communism, without the dictatorship part, is the only solution.

“Sure,” I say, “but just take away Joe Stalin and the club over a man’s head, and see what happens to your communistic system.”

Buck has an idea of more “personal” government at the township level. “The township is a closeknit unit, and, with the right kind of supervision, there hadn’t ought to be a single person in it on direct relief.”

I don’t seem to agree with anything that Buck has put forward. “What about the huge cities?” I ask. “That’s where most of your unemployment is. And besides, local economic problems are only tiny segments of disorders that have to be considered on an international scope.”

Stan tries a new tack. “I don’t know why it is,” he says, “but politics always seems to boil the scum to the top. Now if we could have some kind of group down in Washington, and salaries high enough to attract good men, and let this group hold a whip hand over all the sonsabitching senators and representatives, maybe we’d get something done. If they didn’t do a good job, they’d just get their asses booted out of there…”

“And we get some guys just as bad in their places,” I say.

“And how would you know when they’re doing a good job?” Fisher asks.

“Well, you’ve got something there,” Stan admits. “Look, fellows, I’ll tell you what. Don’t you just think that a Constitution that was written over a hundred and fifty years ago for a little colony of thirteen states might be a little obsolete today?”

“You’re absolutely right!” Buck agrees. “Now if we could just make the right changes…”

“Listen,” T. J. Pearson breaks in with a weary voice, “there’s a bunch of guys in this tent you have to shake their asses to get them out of bed at seven in the morning for breakfast, and that starts talking politics at eleven-thirty at night. That’s the one thing that’s wrong with the American way of life.”

 

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Snapshots of Post-war Okinawa

[In this entry, my father captures scenes — on the road, at the beach and in camp —  of life on Okinawa in the days soon after the war’s end.]

September 23, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

Snapshots along the road to the beach:

A two-and-a-half ton truck jammed with Jap prisoners of war, many of them giving us toothy grins, roars past us. – Our three-quarter-ton stops short , and a six-by behind us swings out, barely missing the rear corner where I’m sitting. One of the boys leaps out and retrieves a brand new pith helmet from the side of the road. – A native donkey cart going up the hill, holding up traffic. The little old duffer leading it flashes us a grin as we go by. – Two nurses riding with two officers in the jeep just ahead of us. The one in the rear seat has on a white kerchief, and the guy’s arm is around her. A GI driver, coming past them, leans halfway out of his cab, eyes wide open, and lets out a Yeeow! – We pass a truck of bouncing , laughing Okinawan girls, who wave at us and throw things. A big green lime hits Budwick smack in the eye. – Giant bulldozers and scrapers and crushers pushing forward the coral rock and read earth for a new stretch of road. – A long stretch of lush green valley, a muddy stream running along its bottom, green terraced hills, rising on the other side, rolling cumulus clouds, standing above them. – The tumbled remains of thatched-roof native huts, surrounded with dense shrubbery, their massive foundation beams and wooden frames splattered with dried yellow mud. – A tall thin MP directing traffic where route 16 crosses route 13. The spot is as busy as a Manhattan intersection, but the vehicles are all GI, muddy and battered, but plenty of life in them. The nearest thing to a battleship coming down the road is a bulky “duck,” one of the amphibious trucks.

Snapshots at the beach:

A bunch of Negro fellows running a broad jump contest beside a rusted steel dock which has been beached just above the high water mark. – The rank brown seaweed piled in great windrows along the beach after the typhoon. – The broken bodies of five Navy PBM’s [the Martin PBM Mariner, a patrol bomber] and PBY’s [the Consolidated PBY Catalina, a “flying boat”] rammed up against the coral ledges south of the beach. They were looted first, and now are being torn apart by Navy salvage crews. – The desecrated tombs, with burial urns smashed, and disinterred bones lying around the entrance. Near one of them is a frail wooden box containing a body not completely decomposed. The story is that these bodies are treated and cared for during a 33-year process of burial. – Four Navy fighter planes and one Lightning dogfighting many thousands of feet above the bay, looking like small black crosses against the gray cloud cover. – Two GI’s paddling out to sea in a gaudy yellow and black-striped life raft. – the endless line of fellows going through the Red Cross canteen for coffee. – Sign on bulletin board in canteen: “Sgt. Anders: You are flying home at 1300 today. Leave from in front of Building A-2. Report immediately. M. Johnson, 1st Sergeant.” – A long line of native women, about fifty in all, walking in single file along the edge of the sea cliff. They’re carrying large bundles of salvage lumber on their heads, and have made pads of long grass to protect the tops of their heads. At the rear of the procession is a young native man riding a pony. – Old native men, brown and grizzled, carrying tokes across their shoulders, from both ends of which are suspended heavy bundles of wood and field produce. The men are barefoot, and paddle along with a short, mincing gait.

Snapshots around the camp area:

Three fellows struggling down the road with a small home-made trailer which is loaded precariously with 9 five-gallon water cans. – A couple hundred fellows sitting around on piles of unpacked crates, eating chow. – Improvised clothes lines sagging with the daily washing. – The SIAM theater with an overflow crowd to see the evening movie. The benches are packed, guys are ranged solid along the bunks on either side, and standing on the trucks which are parked in the rear. The fellows had got hold of a couple of 16 mm. reels showing girls taking off their clothes. They show them before the regular feature. “Fellows, these films were made for art instruction. How many artists in the audience?” Howls and shrieks and groans greet the disrobing girls.

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Air Show Over Okinawa

[Upon arriving on Okinawa, post V-J Day, my father — a member of a Signal Information and Monitoring Company — found that his skills as a high-speed Morse code operator weren’t much needed. He worked for a short time as a switchboard operator on the island, but, upon reenlisting for another year of Army service, was relieved of that duty and found himself waiting several weeks with the other reenlisting men for a priority return to the States. While on Okinawa, he spent a fair amount of time exploring the island and learning its history, and even gave thought to creating a guidebook for soldiers. This short entry gives some sense of the military presence on Okinawa — in this case, the warplanes.]

September 20, 1945 (Okinawa, Japan)

… Every day we look at one of the biggest air shows in the world. We see every type of modern American warplane, from the tremendous B-29’s and B-32’s down to the saucy little Cub liaisons. A single B-29 came overhead out of the east late yesterday afternoon. Directly overheat, it flashed a brilliant silver against the deep blue sky. As it swept on relentlessly into the sun, it became a black pencil-line silhouette. Another 29 circled low to the south of us with a B-26 on its tail. The Marauder isn’t a small plane. But it looked like a midget beside the mighty Superfort.

A formation of 15 P-38 Lightnings glides through the clouds several thousand feet overhead, like silver fish in a stream. The A-26 medium bombers, along with their close cousins the Mitchells and Marauders, are the most businesslike plane in the air. They usually slug straight ahead at top speed, making a terrific racket. The fat C-47 and C-54 transports are the most graceful, sweeping across the sky like handsome atrons. The Navy Hellcats rocket along like carefree young scamps.

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Deployment to Okinawa after Japan’s Surrender

[In late August, 1945, my father left Seattle on the troopship U.S.S. Haskell, headed for Okinawa, Japan. The timing of this deployment was anticlimactic. The U.S. had won control Okinawa that spring after an 82-day battle that cost the Allied troops more than 50,000 killed and wounded, and resulted in more than 100,000 Japanese soldiers killed or captured. Tens of thousands of Okinawan civilians were also killed, wounded or committed suicide during the battle.

Less than two months after the Battle of Okinawa concluded, the U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima (August 6, 1945) and Nagasaki (August 9, 1945). Japan announced its surrender eight days later, on August 15, 1945. The timing of this surrender wasn’t soon enough to alter the Army’s existing plans to transport and base thousands of soldiers on Okinawa, which had initially been captured as a staging point for attacks on the main Japanese islands about 350 miles to the north.

My father was based on Okinawa for only about three months before being shipped back to the States. Almost all of his journal entries during this period are descriptive of life aboard the troopships to and from the island, and on Okinawa itself. Although these entries don’t generally include the type of social and political commentary that I’m highlighting on this blog, I’m posting several of these Okinawan entries because they provide an interesting window into life on the island in the immediate aftermath of the Pacific war.]

September 12, 1945 (Aboard troopship U.S.S. Haskell)

“There it is, almost dead ahead,” we said as we leaned out over the rail on the weather deck and pointed out beyond the bow to the horizon. “That’s land!” There were some skeptics – and Tom Pearson was one of them – who wouldn’t believe it. We were in morning chow line on the port side, and the sun, less than two hours over the horizon, was already hot. Its blazing light cut a swatch clean out of the horizon, the meeting line of sea and sky completely lost in the blinding golden glare. But it was almost in the opposite direction, westward, that we claimed to see our speck of land, a low gray-blue promontory just a shade darker than the sky. “That’s it, for sure,” we said with the proper sagacity of old salts. But Tom, unconverted landlubber, refused to be convinced. “Naw,” he said in a flat New England disavowal. “That’s not land. It’s too soon.”

But when we came up from chow, there was no doubt about it. It was land, a long low stretch of it now, with a white fringe of surf, and furthermore, it was quite plain that we were not the first to set eyes on it. In fact, it soon appeared that we were latecomers to this strand. Suddenly we saw three, four, five, six ships standing off that strand. After near two weeks of isolation on the eternally rolling Pacific, during which we’d seen only three or four other ships, and all save one of them mere specks trailing smoke along the horizon, we began to feel rather crowded.

It was near 0830 now, and a great puffy cloud had dropped a shadow over our section of the ocean. Just now our ship’s bow swung to the north, and brought to view quick as a curtain dropped before our eyes a long stretch of beach no more than a mile distant. Our cloud’s shadow reached only about the half-way mark to shore, and left a margin of pale blue-green water capped by brilliant white sand. A long tall ship stood in close to shore – a tanker, we surmised, tied to a pier still hidden from our eyes. For many feet above the water line it was painted an angry copper red – strange color, we thought. Every few minutes a long roller would slap it broadsides, and send a spume of
white spray curling lazily above the deck.

It was only when we came close astern of the old ship that we saw its true fate. It had been beached there at the eastern tip of the atoll to serve out its lonely old age as a breakwater. The copper read was simply raw rusted metal. Perhaps it was an old Jap tanker, dealt a mortal blow while the atoll was still in the hands of the enemy. There was no way we could tell now; no name or sign remained on her dead sides. But, whatever her nationality, there was something lonely and pitiful about her now, melancholy even in the bright sunlight. For the rightful grave of old ships is deep beneath ocean which is their natural home, while this unfortunate derelict was consigned to rust away naked on the beach.

Just a passing sigh for her, though. Things are happening too fast now. A signal light flashes at us from atop a black spider of a tower on this tip of land. A trim little harbor boat which has been coming at us slantways from the inside of the lagoon makes a graceful turn, for all its bouncing on the choppy water, pulls up alongside, and a tanned sailor in blue pants and white cap tosses a message roll up to our bridge. As the boat pulls away, a little brown mongrel dog bounces up from its interior and barks a greeting to us.

Now, at last, we’re inside Eniwetok lagoon. Most of us are jampacked on our narrow section of deck to see something new in our world. Hundreds of us are standing shoulder to shoulder there, drinking it all in. The sailors, who have jobs to do, have a tough time bullying a passage through our ranks. No one talks much – just a light buzz of conversation: “Look at those Navy planes” – “Isn’t that a carrier way off over there?” – “Goddam, there’s an awful lot of ships in here.” But mostly we don’t talk – just stand and watch as our ship glides slowly and deeply into the great lagoon. What do we think of? Lots of things, no doubt. A few, perhaps, remember the American fellows who not so many months ago swarmed ashore here through the enemy’s lead and fire. Lashed on our ship are the same assault boats they used. But, because they came first, and did a good job, we’ll never have to use them ourselves. Not the way they did, anyway. A couple thousand miles further on across the ocean, in Tokyo Bay, the Jap bigwigs this same day are signing the harsh terms of their unconditional surrender.

A whole fleet of fat Navy seaplanes, 50 or more by rough count, are nuzzling in to the calm water out there in front of us. Beyond them, the land, a little patch of green here and there, but mostly what appears from here a tenuously slender barrier against the pounding sea on the other side. Except for a few Quonset huts, the buildings are squat, rectangular, and camouflaged.

Our anchorage is at the far end of the other side of the lagoon, and it takes us half an hour at our slackened speed to get there. We’re getting pretty close to that carrier now, and we can see that it’s a baby flat-top, with its planes lined up on the flight deck, looking disproportionately large. All of the other ships – and we see that there are more than imagined, more than 50, for sure – are merchant ships, tankers or troopships like our own. All but two or three are riding at anchor. And soon our own ship faces around into the wind and stops stock still. Underfoot we feel and hear the rattle of the anchor chain paying out, a stretch at a time. We see the oil slick on the water lapping at our side, we catch the harbor smell in our nostrils. Home we are, in a sense, after our long voyage, even if it is just a first step in an immense trip which most of us hope will bring us round about, before too many months, to that real home, now six, eight, and nine thousand miles away.

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Lines To The Raw Recruits – A Poem

[Another poem written by my father. As with most of the other poems he wrote during this period, this one conveys a somewhat dark and fatalistic perspective on the war, and of the soldier’s prospects in it.]

June 18, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

Sitting in the “Ship Ahoy” Sunday noon, eating a chicken dinner, and a line came into my head: “Boys, put down your shining toys –“ It was one of those lines that stays around to tempt your imagination, and it was still buzzing my brain when I walked off over to the Presbyterian church. Had the first stanza all done by then, and finished the second by sort of talking it out with Fran. Then I did the last two in a few minutes at code school this morning. It might be called “Lines To The Raw Recruits,” but no one will agree just how much I believe what I’ve written, and least of all, I myself.

Come laughing boys,

Put down your toys,

The time has ceased for play;

Your country’s need,

Yourselves to bleed,

And throw your lives away.

 

Now don’t look sad,

It’s not so bad, –

A year or so to fight,

And then one day

You’ll go the way

Where bullets never bite.

 

Don’t stop to ask, –

The bloody task

Won’t wait upon your fears;

Ten million more

Have gone before,

And no one scorns your tears.

 

Come, laughing boys,

Put down your toys,

And kiss your girls goodbye;

Dead years to wait

Their heavy fate,

While yours’ is but to die.

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