World war II stories.

[bigshot99]

my dad was in World war II and these stories are hard to come by.there are just a few because dad told me does not like to talk about that time in his life.the reason is because dad lost a lot of friends right in front of him.
I will put together some of his stories a little at a time but for now i will tell you what he did .
my dad was on the USS COLORADO BB45, he manned a 20 mm anti aircraft gun when he was not going inland on a mission.
He was also a  UDT that would go inland to take out gun displacement and clear parts of a beach head for the marines.
Dad told me that the first jap that he killed made him sick because the man he killed was just following orders as he was.
this jap was just a kid,as my dad was at that time.dad was 17 years old when he was on his first mission and made his first kill.
it made him sick,this jap was just a kid about the same age that had just bayoneted my dads partner when they were making there way out to the raft that was hidden and so dad had to used his bayonet to kill this jape because the mission inland was complete.it was then that he knew that you have to do what you must to complete inland missions,it was harder than he thought for your first kill.

[Sluff]

I'm looking forward to reading more stories. thanks for sharing Bigshot.

[George Jung]

I'm sorry but when I read this post the only thing I could pay attention to was the reference to a Japanese soldier as a "jap".  I don't know.....I just have a problem with that!  To me it is disrespectful and ignorant to refer to a Japanese soldier or any other Japanese person in such a manner.

On another note, I am interested to hear some stories.

[BigSky]

Hmm what was said when a similar thing was said to this person  about use of the word.



Don't be stupid. You are not Japanese. You are American. So don't lecture me about what it means to be Japanese and how I should react to the word 'Jap'. Modern Japanese don't care about WWII and do not associate the word with racism and war attrocities (sic) such as the Nanking Massacre, which makes your little historical anecdote about American internment camps sound like a Sunday picnic.

"For we Japanese, it's just a short form of 'Japan' and 'Japanese' equivalent to 'Brit'. If that's a problem for you, if you want to live in the past, if you want to cultivate some kind of a victim complex, if you want to get overly excited about a mere word, regardless of how it's actually used in 2004, we Japanese don't care. The war has been over for 60 years and we Japanese have moved on. "

After giving some examples of other Asian and Filipino Web sites that also us "Jap" in headlines, Suzuki finished up sarcastically:

"For my part, the discussion is closed. I've got better things to do than entertain a dumb retro-Yank on a bad Jap trip.

"Peace and love from a modern Jap journalist in modern Japan."
--Satoru  Suzuki

[bigshot99]

I just want to make note that i use the word jap in that one story .
dad told me that the first jap he killed made him sick, he did not say Japanese but in other stories he has said Japanese.
in my next story i will use the word Japanese only because that is the way the story is told to me by my dad.
when ever i do use the word jap it is in no way meant to racism to japan or Japanese people.
I want to make one thing verry CLEAR,
MY dad always told me he never took pride when he did have to kill,
but it was something he had to do

[Sluff]

Tell the story the way it is. Keep it real. i personally can't wait to hear more.

[kitkatz]

My Godmother was on the last ship out of Japan just as WWII started with the united States. She was on a tour of the Orient and they got out of there quickly.

[bigshot99]

There is a part of this story that is hard to tell,i dint know if this will time out on me in telling this story because i want to be carefull in this one.
here we go.
I asked my dad if he had a partner when he would go on a mission.
dad said ,HELL YES  you always had another man with you .
we would start out in a rubber raft about 3-to 4 miles from the island and we always knew what our mission was and what we had to do.
confirm predesignated targets,they were block houses and in water blocks crossings to stop the landing boats.
you had to get in fast and get out fast or you were a dead man.
we set explosives on some of the water crossings and some of the smaller block houses ,son they were pill boxes but i always called them block houses,there the same.
after our mission was complete we had to be on time at our pick up point if you were not then you were consider K.I.A.
and there would be no second attempt.
we were making our way out and a  JAPANESE IMPERIAL MARINE grabbed the raft and was climbing inside right behind me.
|when i turned around he was in my face,this guy was a big man and i drew my side arm  and put my 45 against his face and blew the back of hie head off..
my dad stopped talking  and then his eyes were watered up,
then he  gave me a look and said,,son can we talk about something else, you know that i dint like to talk about stuff.
i said I'm sorry daddy, do you want to play a game of chess,and my dad said, no son not right now.
i Had to leave because i was fighting my tears at that point .
i know he has been Thur hell and back, because on one mission the Japs got him,
my dad was a  ,POW.

[Sluff]

Thanks for sharing your Fathers memoirs with us.

[Joe Paul]

My F.I.L. was a driver for a Col. in the 187th field artillery. He told me of a time when he had just set up a "hutch", stolen from the Germans (8 x 8 plywood shack, with 4 bunks), his unit fired a phosphorus round which hit the top of a pine tree & bounced back off the tree, coming straight down in front of him and his Col's hutch. My F.I.L. was bending down to wash his face from his helmet when the shrapnel exploded all around him, going through his shirt and pants (not hurting him) and into the hutch. He suffered burns & temporary loss of hearing, but the Col. lost an arm.
Another story was that while driving through hedgerows in Germany, a German aircraft came down the road, strafing his unit. The F.I.L. managed to stop his staff car & he and the Col. managed to get out & under the car as the plane made its pass. He told me it was something to see that German looking down at him as he flew on by as an American plane gave chase and shooting the German plane down.
Still another time, he & the Col. were outside of France as a young German girl approached his car & blew herself up, again he wasn't hurt but he said while there you didn't know who was who. The Germans even went so far as to booby trap their dead soldiers & load them down with "trinkets" so that when our troops would try and take the treasures, they'd be blown up.

My F.I.L. is still with us, he is 88 going on 89. One of these times I will have to get more stories, there are loads of them.

[Sluff]

Great addition to WWII Stories. Thanks JP

[goofynina]

God Bless all those, living and deceased who had to be apart of this and any other war as far as that goes. If it werent for them, Lord only knows where we will be right now. 

[Rerun]

WWII is fascinating to me.  The fact that the Holocaust happened is astonishing...shocking.  My Uncle (Dad's Brother) was a Colonel in WWII.  I have a few letters from my Dad to my Mom telling her things he said.  Uncle Frank is still alive but I'm not close enough to him to ask questions. 

When I watch WWII movies the Japanese were portrayed as such ruthless bastareds that I have to remind myself that it happened 60 years ago.

Keep the stories coming, and use the language as it was told to you.

[bigshot99]

Rerun ,in WWII they were, when i was a kid my dad would wake up screaming.
when he was sleeping he would talk in his sleep about targets and japs.
One day he had thrown some medals in the trash and i said,,are you crazy what are you doing, I WANT THEM.
dad said why son they don't mean a thing to me,, i said dad you earned them.
dad told me i just did what i was sapposed to do son.
I told my dad,but you were captured.dad said son i was lucky.
I ask him ,OK dad how were you lucky ,i was upset that he trashed his metals,,just tell me how.
dad said OK son i will tell you how and don't ask me again.
three of us went in to clear the water crossings and some blockhouses so the landing boats could get in.
we set the explosives to the water crossing and were going to the pill boxes and we set the explosives  to them ,and there was jap,i took the my knife off my side and plunged it down between his collarbone straight down to his heart and eased him to the ground. we got back to the Beach and our raft had been cut.
so we started swimming out to get away and the japs opened up with mortars on us and when they did that and your in the water
you cant get away so they got us.
the japs cut off the head on one of us and it took and the other man that was with us i never saw him again.
3 days had gone by and they ask me when the boats were comming in.
I gave them my ,N.R.S only ,one mans life is not worth the life's it could cost us.
they put some small bamboo chutes under my finger nails then set them on fire.
by then the place was being over run with us marines ,they found me in a cage and got me out, NOW is that what you want to hear,,,,men got killed,,,its not fun,,,DON'T ASK ME AGAIN,,, OK SON,,,
theses are just metals,,and i don't want them,I LOST A LOT OF MY FRIENDS,,
Now i like talking with you but its time to move on so lets change the subject.
I will never ask my dad about being captured.

[Sluff]

I have heard stories of how they tortured the soldiers. I t was a living hell but no matter how many times you hear these stories I just can not totally understand. You have been blessed to have first hand proof of these stories. I know hard it has to be for your Father to remember and talk about these despicable acts but please know that they help people like me, respect our Veterans for the path they were forced to walk. I am a Veteran also but during peacetime, sometimes when I hear the stories I feel guilty because I was not there to do my part.

[bigshot99]

Dad had took the family out to eat one time when i was 9 years old and we were at our table when this man walked to us.
He looked at my dad and said this is indeed a small world. dad said how in the hell are you,thought i would never see you again but i sure was glade as hell the first time i did. this man said you look better now than when we met and he laughed,,,,.
mom asked this guy, you know my husband and he said  miss i am the pilot of a P B Y that picked your husband up, he was in the ocean waters . dad was 17 years old ,the first ship he served on was the destroyer USS Norman young,that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, she sunk . the men  that were in the water after a day there life jackets became water logged and not able to keep them afloat went under.there was a big ring float that was in the water that would not got water logged but only so many men could hold on to it,some just let go and went under after a day or 2 in the ocean waiting,some men were attacked by sharks and dragged under.dad spent 3 days in the water before getting rescued . he  turned 18 in the ocean waters waiting for a rescue. and the man was the owner of the resteraunt, the pilot of the P B Y plane that had rescued dad.  these men would never forget.

[charee]

Its ANZAC day here today 92 years today when Australia landed at Gallipolli in Turkey and got our arse whipped, its a big day for all war veterans and for people to remember what our soldiers did and are doing for us, and to show them we appreciate what they had to do.

[Sluff]

Dad had took the family out to eat one time when i was 9 years old and we were at our table when this man walked to us.
He looked at my dad and said this is indeed a small world. dad said how in the hell are you,thought i would never see you again but i sure was glade as hell the first time i did. this man said you look better now than when we met and he laughed,,,,.
mom asked this guy, you know my husband and he said  miss i am the pilot of a P B Y that picked your husband up, he was in the ocean waters . dad was 17 years old ,the first ship he served on was the destroyer USS Norman young,that was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine, she sunk . the men  that were in the water after a day there life jackets became water logged and not able to keep them afloat went under.there was a big ring float that was in the water that would not got water logged but only so many men could hold on to it,some just let go and went under after a day or 2 in the ocean waiting,some men were attacked by sharks and dragged under.dad spent 3 days in the water before getting rescued . he  turned 18 in the ocean waters waiting for a rescue. and the man was the owner of the resteraunt, the pilot of the P B Y plane that had rescued dad.  these men would never forget.

What a joyous reunion that must have been.