Frank Austin

              Eric Walz History 300 Collection
Frank Austin - Life during WWII
By Frank Austin
February 21, 2004
Box 4 Folder 3
Oral Interview conducted by Shawn Austin
Transcript copied by Luke Kirkham January 2005
Brigham Young University - Idaho
SA: So Frank can you tell us where you were born and where?
FA: I was born in Rochester, NY April 8, 1923.
SA: How did you meet Aunt Phyllis?
FA: I met her in Hollywood at a roller skating rink. I decided I would go there to meet
some girls. So I decided to find the prettiest one and if she turns me down then I’ll ask
the next one. Well, she was the first one I asked and she said yeah. So I started skating
with her and she started leading… I should have realized that that is how it was going to
end up throughout our whole marriage!
Phyllis Austin: Which is just about to terminate.
FA: So then I asked her out on a date. She was 16 years old and we went out on dates
and when I went out over seas well we corresponded by mail.
SA: So you were enlisted when you met her?
FA: Yeah. I think it was my first liberty out of boot camp when I met her. So I
hitchhiked up to Los Angeles from Camp Pendleton.
PA: Tell him about the shoe strings.
FA: Oh yeah! I was at the Marine Corp recruit depot and I was going to go on liberty
[ this was before I went up to Hollywood to meet her] and the parade is a good mile and I
had to walk over to the guard gate and they inspect you. When he looked me all over he
said, “ Go back and iron your shoe strings. Your shoe strings are twisted up.” So they
made me go clear back and I had to iron my shoe strings because you had to be perfect
when you went out on liberty.
PA: Did you tell him about the cigarettes?
FA: Oh, I lit up a cigarette and I threw the butt on the ground. The drill instructor said,
“ Austin, go over and pick that cigarette up.” He says, “ You’re supposed to field strip a
cigarette.” It’s were you take ‘ em and you break ‘ em open and you scatter the ashes. He
said, “ How tall are you?” I said, “ Six foot one.” He says, “ Go get a needle and a piece
of thread six foot long.” So I got it and reported back to him and he says, “ I want you go
around this camp and I want you to fill that up with cigarette butts and I don’t wanna see
ya till its six foot tall.” Well, trying to find cigarette butts at a camp that is so immaculate
[ is hard]— so I kept smokin’ cigarettes and sticking ‘ em on there. So I finally filled it up
and it took me all night long until the morning and I had a flashlight and I went over near
the PX and I’d pick- up a few cigarettes and I’d bum a few cigarettes from guys and I’d
cut em up. It was a good lesson though. I never threw anything on the ground after that.
Then when we graduated we came up to Camp Pendleton. And they put us in this
amphibious tractor battalion and we did all of our training. And our job, the amphibious
tractor job, was to bring the infantry in from the sea and afford them fire- power when
they disembarked. And then start taking the wounded out to the ships. And… bring in
ammunition. Now just visualized this; they load you up with all kinds of high explosives,
and these amphibian tanks, they were such a big target that the Japanese artillery was
firing at you every chance they got, and with all this high explosives in this thing. And
you think wow it’ll all be over in a big hurry if I get hit. And we did get hit you know.
SA: What was the training like?
FA: The training was pretty hard. Every day we’d fall in before it was day break and
we’d work hard all day. They had a place called the Bulk Basin it’s now called Camp
Del Mar. And we lived in eight man tents. And we’d go in the ocean in February or
whenever it was and we’d be soaking wet most of the time, and practice taking landings.
So it was very intense training.
SA: When did you first put- out to sea?
FA: After about a year at Camp Pendleton. We loaded on these LST’s, Landing Ship
Tank, that has the bow doors that would open then the ramp would drop down and you
could drive off down into the ocean. And usually you’d be about four or five thousand
yards from the shore of the island you were gonna land on. And you’d drive off with
about 24 infantry guys. You’d circle around and circle around until everyone was
disembarked from the LST’s. And then they’d form these waves, these lines, and then
you’d head for the beach. In every operation I was in I was in the first assault wave and
sometime the firing didn’t start right away. They’d wait ‘ til two or three waves come in.
But what you have in the first wave is you don’t know where the gin emplacements are.
You don’t know where the mines are. They had corral mines that they’d set on the
corral. In fact, one of our amphibian tanks hit a ship mine. A ship mine was probably
eight feet in circumference… they never found a piece of it. I heard this tremendous
explosion and I saw this debris flying through the air.
SA: Why would they wait until the first wave got on the beach before the opened fire?
FA: Well so they could get the range and they knew the other waves were coming in an’
they just waited. Well, in some of the operations they hit ya pretty hard before ya even
hit the beach.
SA: So your first operation was in the Marshall Islands?
FA: The Marshall Islands. The Marshall Islands were a series of small islands. Like if
you took a strand of pearls and threw it out; that’s what it would look like. And the
reason they took it is because it was a safe harbor because these islands were in a circle
and in the center there was calm water for the ships to be able to anchor and unload all of
their equipment. The thing is in WWII they didn’t have any planes or anything that could
fly clear across to Japan itself. So they used these islands as stepping stones. Every time
they took an island they’d load it up and build airfields and then they step stoned all the
way over to Japan that way.
The first invasion I was in was a little island called Allan Island; it was the code
name. There were probably 8 Japanese on it and we pulled in there 200 strong. And I’m
blazing’ away with this 50 caliber machine gun shooting at this radio tower and just
shooting at the trees, really playing war but nobody was shooting back at us. So that just
took a matter of four or five hours to clear the island. So the next day we were going to
hit the main island. I was there, “ Come- on boys lets go! Let’s go get ‘ em!” Of course
nobody was shooting at me. So when we go into the main island where all the Japanese
troops are this one crewman was behind the 50 and I was behind the 30 and he took a hit
in his head and it just blew everything all over me. The other crewman got machinegun
bullets all over him. The Japanese had Saki bottles full of gasoline with a rag stuck in
them and they’d light them, throw it at the side of the tank, it didn’t really do much
damage.
So after the infantry got dispersed it took the dead crewman and the other
crewman and then we loaded some wounded in and we went out to this destroyer and
disembarked them. Then when I was coming in I was losing control of the tank because
it kept going in circles. Well, I didn’t realize the whole side was shot- up. The pontoons
were shot- up. I finally got into water about waist deep in water then it sunk. So that
ended that.
And the invasion took 72 hours… I think. And the casualties were fairly light.
We lost a lot of people… 800 of them got drowned in the surf because these amphibian
tanks, there was huge breakers. When we hit the corral with these things you had to shift
from third gear to second gear and you had to do it real smooth. If you didn’t the thing
would stall and the next wave would turn you sideways then the next wave would flip
you over and when you’ve got 25 men loaded down with ammunition and helmets and
back- packs and heavy boots on there’s no way you can survive. So that was probably
about the third or fourth day and there were about 800 marines there floating around all
over the bay.
So anyway that just about ended and I had a load of rations to take to one of the
main islands and a squall came up and I got lost. So I saw this little island by these
coconut palm trees there up in the air. So I said, “ Well I’ll head for that island” and I had
all these rations and water. I pulled- up to this island and there’s about 25 guys on this
island. They were a mortar platoon. The put ‘ em on this island and as soon as the
invasion started they were to shell the main island and they forgot about ‘ em. And they
were on this island for probably about a week or 10 days. And they had gone through all
their rations. And they were climbing these coconut trees eating green coconuts and they
all got dysentery. And I pull- up on this island and this guy said, “ Where the Hell have
you been!” I said, “ What do ya mean where have I been!? I’m not even supposed to be
here.” He said, “ What do ya got aboard there.” I said, “ I’ve got rations and water” He
said, “ Give it to us!” I said, “ No! I can’t give it to ya!” ‘ Cause I didn’t realize at the
time that they had been there without practically nothin’ to eat. So this Lieutenant pulls a
45 out and he points it [ not at me but up in the air- like] and he says, “ Give us the damn
rations!” Then he told us the story that they had landed them there and they’d forgotten
about ‘ em. There are so many little islands that you don’t even think about ‘ em. And the
radio man that they had with ‘ em fell in the surf and shorted his radio out so they had no
communications.
So anyway, I get back and said, “ Boy we’re going to go home now, big parade,
we’re gonna be heroes.” Then this colonel comes up, he was with the first raider
battalion and says, “ Well boys consider that a maneuver. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.” So
I thought, “ Oh boy!”
So we went back to Maui where we had our base camp and got replaced with
some new equipment and get some more training before we went to the next invasion
from there. So that was a pretty good way to get your feet wet.
SA: Did you make any good friends in your service?
FA: Yeah, ya… ya met a lot of good guys and they were your friends but it seems like
you didn’t want to got too close because it hurts when one of ‘ em gets killed or when you
get killed, ya know? Of course at that time I thought I was invincible. That nothing
could ever happen to me but then when I saw dead friends who thought the same way I
thought, you know this could happen to me too. So it changes your whole perspective.
PA: Tell him that story that the bus driver in Saipan told us about the suicide cliffs.
FA: Oh. Well the next invasion that we made after we got trained and everything was
Saipan. It was extremely bloody. It was a really tough thing. This is the first time that
the Marines encountered civilians because the island had a big civilian population on it.
Saipan belonged to the Germans, and after WWI they took it away from Germany and
they gave it Japan and they said, you can have this island but you can’t arm it or defend it
in anyway. Well they did anyway.
So we had to take this island. When we hit the beach there it started right off.
And they did a very dumb thing [ I always thought it was dumb]. They said, “ Okay the
first three waves are not going to stop at the beach like you normally do you’re going to
go inland for at least 2,000 yards at the base of this cliff and set- up a perimeter defense.
Then the 4th, 5th, and 6th waves will come up and meet you there. And we’ll take the
ground real fast. It was kind of like a blitzkrieg thing where you were just going to plow
in there.
Well, what they didn’t count on was there was a little town called Chalan and
Kanoa and they had a sugarcane factory there. And they had a wall about four foot high
and half the guys couldn’t get over this wall with these am- tracks. So we got up there
and only about 8 or 10 of us made it up to this cliff. Well, at the top of the cliff were
these Japanese. They were throwing hand grenades down on us; they were shootin’ at us
with mortars, machinegun fire. So we disembarked the infantry and the Lieutenant said,
“ You guys get the hell out of here you’re just drawing fire. Go on back to the beach.”
We’re also drawing fire from our own troops, friendly fire. It was a real dumb thing to
do. So we decided [ I guess there were eight of us], we decided well, we can make a run
for it through the rice paddies, the sugarcane fields or we could take a chance on the road,
and the road could be mined. And I said, “ You know I don’t think they had time to mine
the road, so let’s take the road.” Of course if you get out in the rice paddy you could get
stuck and if you get stuck you’re a dead bird. So we took the road and the artillery was
zeroing in on us. Getting real close, where the shell would hit and dirt will fly over in
onto us. And I’m screaming at him, “ Go on! Go on!!” I’m trying to get his attention so
I picked up a can [ we carried a few provisions with us] and I threw it at him. He thought
it was a hand grenade and threw it back out. Anyway, we finally got back to the beach
and I said, “ What the hell did you stop for!? I was a sittin duck out there” He said, “ Well
I couldn’t see there was too much dust.” I said, “ Well you could have gotten us all
killed.”
Well anyway we made it back and the next two days we took that… that same
thing. And then we got to the top of the cliff okay. And I kept bringing the wounded
back out and bringing explosives in. Then I had about 12 wounded guys; a couple
wounded in the leg, a couple wounded in the stomach, another guy got shot through the
neck. Another one hit this bone in his upper arm. And you could give morphine as long
as it wasn’t a head wound or a stomach wound. And I didn’t want to give morphine as
long as it wasn’t a head wound or a stomach wound. And I didn’t want to give this kid
with the shot in the neck morphine. So I start pulling up to these ships and I said we got
12 wounded. “ We can’t take anymore! Go over to that ship.” Now get this. I got these
guys, they’re wounded, they’ve got open wounds, and we’ve patched them up as best we
could. And the salt water’s coming all over them. So that made their life miserable. So
they said, “ We got so many wounded we can’t take any more, take ‘ em to that ship.” So
finally I pulled up to this destroyer and I says, “ You gotta take these guys.” And he says,
“ We can’t take anymore.” And I was so excited I pulled a 50 caliber around and pulled it
back and I armed it and swung it around and I said, “ You’re either gonna to take these
guys or I’m going to blow your damn ship out of the water!” They sounded general
quarters and before I knew there were 50 sailors with carbines pointed at me. You know
I was just so excited, these guys were dying. This one kid was shot through the neck, he
was going into shock so the officer of the deck says, “ Well, it looks like we got a
Mexican stand- off here.” I said, “ You gotta take the guys, they’re wounded. He said,
“ All right all right we’ll take them. I don’t know what we’ll do with ‘ em but well take
‘ em.” I said, “ They need medical help right now! You’ve got a doctor.”
So they took ‘ em all in. But I don’t know why I ever did anything like that. So
anyway we went back in. When the invasion was almost over you could see the island of
Tinian and we knew we had to take it. And this was very mental to me. Knowing that
we had to take that island and hit it and end up in the same situation again.
PA: The suicide cliffs?
FA: Oh yeah. The Japanese that had this island said that if the Marines attacked this
island— the US Marines were very cruel— if you were a Marine you had to kill your
mother or your father to become a Marine. And this is fact. So they told all these
civilians that what they would do is [ use] your little babies for bayonet practice, rape the
women, and torture the men. So the poor civilians, they didn’t know what to do, there
were pretty close to a thousand that jumped of this cliff and threw their children off the
cliff and killed themselves.
We were out scouting a certain area and I noticed a Japanese- American who was
an interpreter and he had American flags all over him ( laughing). Oh, his helmet he has
American flags ‘ cause he was Japanese. He said to us, “ What are you doing out here!?”
We said, “ We’re just patrolling this area.” He says, “ Well, get the hell out of here!
You’re scaring these civilians.” I said, “ So what?” He says, “ Yeah, well they’re trying
to throw themselves and their kids over this cliff and we’re trying to save them.” So we
backed off. Then he brought a family out of a cave. And then I didn’t see the cliff
because it was probably a quarter- mile away from where we were. When Phyllis and I
went back to Saipan we went back to that cliff and it was really sad. And a sad part of
what war was too was— there was a city called Garpan on the island of Saipan. And one
night we heard this sentry holler, “ Stop, stop!” and then all of a sudden machine gun fire.
The next morning, it was a whole family dead, three children, a mother, and a father.
They were so scared they were trying to sneak away at night. Of course we thought they
were the enemy. I wasn’t the one who fired on them. Somebody else did.
In between the 4th and 3rd division was a no- mans land. So I took my am- track
out there and they wanted us to lay telephone wires between the two battalions. So we’re
out there in the corral and every once in a while we tie a rock on it and throw it down in
the corral. And there was a sniper shooting at us, “ zing, zing.” We swung a 50 around
and started spraying in the trees and we hit him. Not that we know where he was it just
was a lucky shot. And that stopped that.
Then when we landed on Tinian there were all these mines to put- up with.
There’s all these Japanese soldiers that know they’re going to die. So they were pretty
mean.
SA: What did they tell you about the Japanese people?
FA: Well, I never believed what they said about them. They said they were not even
human, they were animals and it’s not true. I mean they were just like everybody else.
They were fighting us, but they were suicidal.
PA: Don’t you think they had a different philosophy about treating their prisoners, for
heavens sakes?
FA: Oh yeah, they treated the prisoners terrible. They slaughtered the Chinese. They
went through and killed a whole village. I think when Billy Mitchell bombed Tokyo and
some of the planes landed in China, the Japanese came in, because they were harboring
these airman that landed there, they killed the whole village. They killed every child,
every woman, every man in the whole village because of that. So they were pretty cruel.
SA: What did you feel towards them?
FA: I just felt that they were really really good soldiers and I had respect for ‘ em. One
thing you don’t ever wanna do is underestimate your enemy. Just like right now in Iraq.
Some Iraqi said that the American soldiers are cowards. Well, that’s the wrong thing to
think because they’re not. And all through all the fighting I was in I never saw anyone
that ever cowardized to ‘ em. Example is on Saipan, we were loaded down with high
explosives and machine gun bullets and the infantry was running low. And the Japanese
had us pushed back right into the water. In fact, some of the guys were there laying in
the water. And here I’m sittin’ out there in this safe zone and the other two crewmen and
myself said, “ We gotta get this stuff in there. How we gonna do it?” Your gonna run
over these guys when ya go cause it’s dark out, you can’t see and they’re just lined up all
along the beach there. I said, “ Well we’ll figure out some way.” We could have stayed
out there, in the middle of nowhere. Nobody would have ever known the difference. So
if they say we were cowards, I never saw it. We never even thought about our own life.
One hit and you’re gone, a hole as big as this house. At least it’s over in a hurry. They
always said when you’re laying in a hole and they’re shellin’ ya, “ Well the one that gets
ya, you’re never gonna hear it.” If you hear this, “ shshshshshsh and kpow!” You know it
missed you because the sound is after it’s done it damage.
So when we landed on Tinian we set- up a perimeter of defense. And that night
we knew the Japanese were going to try one of their banzai attacks. And we had a
machine gun crossfire set- up. So we went inland about 1000 yards then we pulled back,
then we set- up barbwire and machineguns. And the navy, when it got dark, was dropping
parachute flares. So it would light up the whole sky to land. And you’d see these
Japanese and you’d see them run behind a tree or a rock or something. And as soon as it
got dark they’d move forward. And the order up and down the line was, “ Don’t fire until
you get the word!” And you could hear them talking to each other, and breathing.
Finally ( I’m behind a thirty caliber machinegun) they said, “ Open fire!!” And I thought,
“ Don’t get too excited so your machinegun gets too hot and malfunctions because these
are air- cooled weapons. So I just, brrbrr, a little bit at a time. The next morning they
estimated they killed 500 hundred Japanese. Some of these Japanese had bayonets on the
ends of sticks. They didn’t even have a weapon. Most of them had weapons. But there
were a few of them that didn’t. And they’re crazy! They just run right into ya. We lost
five marines.
Then we took the rest of that island and we went back and got some replacements.
PA: How about the code talkers?
FA: Yeah, the code talkers were on Iwo Jima and they were Navaho from Arizona. And
the Japanese couldn’t understand them. Well nobody could understand them. So we
used those guys as code talkers. They were very, very valuable.
I can say this: the Navy Corpsman. If you were a Navy Corpsman and you started
messing- up they’d say, “ You straighten up or well send you to the Marine Corps.” And
they didn’t want that duty ‘ cause when you’re a Corpsman on a ship and you’ve got a
nice bed to sleep in. You’ve got good food.
You don’t mess with our Navy Corpsman. We had these guys on a pedestal like
you wouldn’t believe because they did so much good. You’d lay there all night and all
you’d hears is, “ Corpsman! Over here! Corpsman.” And where are these corpsman
gonna be? They’re gonna be were the shooting is because the guys are wounded. So we
respected these guys just one hundred percent. They were just the best guys in the world.
I remember this one kid was on this LST. He was a navy guy. And he says, “ You guys
get to see all the action and I wish I could go with ya.” I said, “ Don’t volunteer to do
anything” So he pulled a few strings and he came in on the short party and he was killed.
He didn’t have to be. He could have stayed out there.
So what’s next, the invasion of Iwo Jima? We did not know where we were
going. Finally, we got out there three days and they showed us maps, showed us all that
gun emplacements. Then they said, “ This operation is going to take five days.” They
figured there was about 800 Japanese on this 8 mile square island. “ You guys are going
to be there for three days, then from there your going to Okinawa. So there we are. We
take off. There we are [ the] first wave again, head towards the beach. We get about 500
yards from the beach and they opened up on us. I went along side of a LCI ( Landing
Craft Infantry), it’s a small ship. And I’m watching this guy on a 40 millimeter ( we
called them Palm Palms). They were actually anti- aircraft guns. And I’m watching him
shoot because they were a beautiful gun. And it took a direct hit and I’m looking right at
it, smoke and fire explosion. Then when the smoke went away there was just wreckage
there. So I thought, “ Yeah this is not going to be easy. From my experience this is going
to be pretty tough.” So they just slaughtered us. They killed 12 marines to every to every
Japanese defender for the first 2 weeks. But when we hit that beach and I lost that whole
infantry platoon… it just… it was just horrible! And it went on for 30 some days. There
wasn’t a day that you weren’t shot at, shelled, mortars, artillery fire. And you never got
any sleep. You’d find a small bomb crater and find a spot in it and one guy would stay
awake. All night long all ya heard was, “ Corpsman! Corpsman!”
There was one area where we had a minimum of a thousand dead marines—
couldn’t bury ‘ em because of the land mines. And sometimes I had to drive by there.
And you’d take the deepest breath you could and you’d just go like hell… because… four
of five days you know, pretty bad. And then you’d see truck loads of dead marines pilled
like card wood. Just throwing them on there and taking them over to this area where they
were going to have this grave sight… and just pick ‘ em up and throw ‘ em off the truck.
And pretty soon you get that “ bulkhead” stare and you’d lose all your feeling. You could
look at a dead marine that you even knew and you wouldn’t have any feeling ‘ cause there
was so much death around you all the time.
And another thing that not too many people know is when we hit the island of Iwo
Jima the Japanese had sent over about 100 to 125 Japanese school children on a botany
tour to tour the island; not knowing that is was going to be invaded. So they were all lost.
They were in these caves and naturally they were all killed. Had anybody known about it
they certainly they wouldn’t have killed them.
SA: Tell us a little about the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi.
FA: Okay. I was probably 500 to 1000 yards from it when they raised it. The reason it
was taken was because it was the high ground on the whole island. They had artillery
spotters up there. And they rained deadly accuracy down on ya. They had these guns
and they’d say drop a shell here. Now you gotta go 20 yards to the left. They were just
killing us left and right. So the 5th marine division clawed up there and took it. Then
they raised the flag up there to show that it was in American hands. That took a lot of
pressure of us.
In fact, there was a Japanese ship that was shot up, [ I landed right next to it] and
had run aground. And it had this smoke stack that stuck up. And there was Japanese
artillery spotter in that smoke stack. And he was right in the middle of us. And he was
raining down telling all these artillery guys where to shoot… I couldn’t believe how
accurate these guys were with their guns! So finally I came back to the beach with some
wounded guys and I see this guy with a machinegun [ it was 30 caliber] and he was
shooting up and down this smoke stack. They finally found this guy. So they just shot it.
There were some pretty interesting things that happened. On every invasion I
always ran into this Sherman Tank guy. We called him “ Chief,” he was an Indian from
Arizona. I saw him in the Marshall Islands. I saw him and said, “ Hi Chief. How ya
doin’?” Then I saw him on Saipan. And said, “ Hi Chief. How ya doin’.” “ Okay.” And
I’d only see him for a little bit. I didn’t even know what his name was. Then I saw him
on Tinian. And then I saw him on Iwo Jima. And he says, “ You know ever time I see
you I know I’m going to see you again so I guess I’m going to make it.” I said, “ You
know chief, that’s exactly the way I feel. So let’s keep in contact.” And I really felt that
way ( laughing). As long as I saw him I knew I was going to survive. He was really a
neat guy. He was a big strong husky guy. We didn’t see that much of each other because
he was in a different outfit. But I’ll tell ya his outfit saved out butts on Iwo Jima. They
brought in tank dozers. Because you’d knockout a machinegun nest, and then you’d go
to the next one, and then they would re- arm it. Because they weren’t just a hole in the
ground; they were tunnels. So these bulldozers would go up and cover up these things
and then they couldn’t come out. So they saved our butts a lot, always a good feeling to
have those Sherman Tanks around.
And that’s when my friend, my very best friend, took my place and he was
blown- up. He was the nicest guy. It’s always the nicest guys that get killed. There was
another guy and his name was Ruben Loza. And he was American and Mexican. He had
citizenship to both countries. He was living in Mexico permanently. He came up to the
United States for awhile and they drafted him ( laughing). So he got stuck. Because I
wasn’t drafted I enlisted.
Well, when that invasion was over and we headed back to Hawaii and I figured
that we were going to hit the mainland of Japan. And they estimated a million casualties.
And used to lay at night in the bunk thinking, “ I have been so lucky. My luck is going to
change up. I’m not going to get home.” I just really didn’t feel like I would make it
home. And of course when they dropped the atomic bomb then it was over. I guess it
was horrible thing to do but in the long run it probably saved more lives. It was horrible.
There was no doubt about that.
But we took the island of Tinian where the B29’ s were stationed that flew over.
They said they saved 5500 airmen by taking Iwo. Well the Japanese had an airfield there
and their fighter would come up and gauge these B29 bombers. They would shoot a lot
of them down.
When fighting was over there was this one area cornered off with that yellow tape
that they use because it was full of land mines. And here’s a bunch of navy brass and
they’re right in the middle of this mine field. And I said, “ Hey you dummies! What the
hell are you doing! You’re right in the middle of a mine field!” This Lieutenant
commander says, “ Sergeant, you know who you’re talking to.” And I says, “ Well I more
concerned of your safety.” He says, “ That’s Admiral Sprills, the commander and chief of
the 5th fleet ( laughing).” He came over and said, “ What’s the trouble Sergeant?” I said,
“ Well Sir, this is a mine field here.” “ Well what’s the best way out?” I didn’t wanna tell
him in case he stepped on a mine ( laughing). I says, “ Just walk out as gingerly as you
can.” So there weren’t too many people that called an admiral a “ dummy ( laughing).”
On the beach we had a sandbag protection place and on the top of it we put a steel
plate they use on air strips. And we sandbagged the whole top of it and when we went
back to the beach it was a place of sanctuary, and it faced the ocean. One of the sandbags
got a body part in it. And the stench inside of there was bad. So I was sitting right at the
opening facing the sea. And there were about eight other guys lined up inside there. And
this one guy that was with our outfit [ that was a really tough guy] he said, “ Austin, get
you ass over!” I said, “ Climb over me.” He said, “ Get over before I knock you over.”
So I moved over and he took my place. And some friendly fire came in [ 20 millimeter,
one of those explosive rounds] hit him right in the chest and blew him right out of the
hole. That would have been me if he hadn’t have told me to move over. So things like
that happened every day.
We went aboard this LST to load up this high octane gas to take up to the airport
that was secure now. There were B29’ s landing there that were shot up. So they loaded
me up with 55 gallon drums with high octane gas. And I noticed a galvanized drum and I
knew it had water in it. So I asked if I could have it and they said I wasn’t supposed to
have it. I said, “ I’ll trade you a Japanese souvenir for it.” “ What do you got?” I said, “ I
got a Japanese gas mask.” “ Okay.” So I gave him this Japanese gas mask and he puts
this 55 gallon drum on top of all this high octane gas. We pulled out of the ship and onto
shore there and it took a mortar round. And it landed in the galvanized drum and
exploded and didn’t explode the rest. Now if that hadn’t have been there it would have
hit gasoline.
PA: If he’d been a gambler he’d be a multi- millionaire ( laughing).
FA: I swear to God these things happened to ya everyday. One of the funniest stories
though was on Saipan, and here’s the main ships out there and they’ve got good food.
Well, we found a cash of Japanese wine and Saki. And I said, “ I’ll bet I can take this
stuff out to a ship and can trade it for food.” Because all we had to eat were sea rations.
So the other two crewmen… we loaded maybe 15 to 20 cases of Saki and wine. And I
pulled up to the USS Indianapolis. And I pulled up to its side and got the attention of one
of its sailors and said, “ Hey you want this?” and I threw him a bottle of Saki. And he
missed it. “ Don’t worry I got lots of it!” So I threw him another one and he caught it.
“ What is it?” And I said, “ It’s Japanese Saki.” Then I thought, “ Oh boy. I hope they
didn’t poison it” because they could have. Well, I didn’t tell him. So I said, “ Hey you
got a cook aboard there?” “ Yeah!” “ Go get him.” “ Yeah. Okay.” So this cook comes
out and he had on one of these white hats, you know? And he had tattoos all over him.
Evidently, he was a boozer. So he said, “ Wada ya got?” I said, “ We got wine and Saki.”
“ What do ya want for it?” I said, “ Food!” “ Well, don’t go away.” So they brought us
big salami, gallon cans of corn, tomatoes, fruit cocktail, bread, I mean they loaded us up
with stuff like you wouldn’t believe. Pretty soon the officer of the deck came and said,
“ You men get back to your posts and you… get out of here!” So we pulled out of there
and we came back to our platoon with all this salami, bone chicken in these 2 gallon cans.
Man, we ate like kings for about three or four days.
You asked, “ How did you feel about the Japanese?” This Japanese soldier
attacked us by himself and everybody opened up on him. I don’t know who hit him but
he laid there for two or three days. Well we took his wallet off him and we found a
picture of him and his wife and his children. So I said, “ Hey this guy is just like anybody
else here.”
SA: Did that change your feelings about the Japanese?
FA: Yeah it did. It really did. There were a few Japanese prisoners there on Saipan
smoking cigarettes. And I remember them dropping this one Japanese soldier down on a
stretcher and the hole from here to here [ pointing to the thigh of his leg] looked like it had
rice all over it. And it was maggots actually. And actually the maggots would eat the
dead flesh and it kept you from getting gangrene.
And I remember after the Marshall Islands they had some intelligence officers
come up and they said, “ Now look you guys. We’d like you to capture some Japanese
soldiers because we get a lot of valuable information from them. So if you can capture
any of ‘ em. Capture ‘ em and bring ‘ em back over to intelligence.” So after they left our
battalion commander, Major Krowzad said, “ Anybody that captures any Japanese will
share his rations with him and be completely responsible for him.” So that was the
handwriting on the wall.
Another interesting thing is we were back in Hawaii in Oahu in Pearl City. And
they had these three Japanese prisoners of war, and they had this Marine with a machine
gun guarding him. And they were loading trash on the truck. So two of these Japanese
prisoners would jump off the truck and hand his trash can to the prisoner of war in the
truck. In the meantime the Marine climbed down on the ground, and he’s standing there
with his Thompson sub- machinegun. Pretty soon they emptied all these cans ( I’m
watching all this ya know?) And this Japanese prisoner climbed back in the truck and the
Marine hands him his Thompson sub- machinegun so he can climb in the truck. And I’m
thinking, “ Gee what’s going on?” But then when I thought about it these guys got it
made. They’re a curiosity for one thing. They were being fed and they were probably
eating better than they had ever eaten in their life. And nobody hated them. They were
just prisoners of war. So I thought well it’s probably really safe. If they shot the guy
where would they go anyway? But to seem him hand him his Thompson sub- machine
gun… the guy grabbed it by the barrel and pulled him aboard. He climbs aboard then
hands it back to him. I’ll never forget that it was so funny.
SA: Well speaking of Maui, tell us about when you were picked up by those two guys in
the jeep.
FA: Oh yeah. We were hitch- hiking this other kid and I and we were going to go to
Lahaina from Wailuku. And I noticed that these guys were driving and they were driving
kind of erratic. And my friend said, “ He’s drunk.” And I said, “ Yeah.” So he says,
“ Hey you guys we’ll get off here.” “ Oh you said you were going to Lahaina. Just sit
tight.” So he takes off and I thought, “ We gotta get out of this jeep.” So there was this
little country store and I said, “ You guys pull- over, and I’ll get some beer.” “ Okay!” So
we pulled in there and we jumped out and I said, “ You guys are going to kill yourselves.”
And they did. They ran off this cliff. Are you familiar with that road? It goes along the
cliff there.
SA: What was the hardest battle to get through?
FA: I think Saipan was pretty tough. I was in the middle of a… I was telling ya how close
to death ya come. We’re in a jeep and were in the middle of a gas dump. And you’ve
got these 55 gallon drums full of high octane aircraft fuel. A Marine Corps Sare takes off
on a bombing run and I love those. That’s the plane that has the gull wing. And I’m
looking at this plan, and it’s such a beautiful plane, and you could still see the pilot cause
it had just taken off. And one of his wing bombs dropped off and this other kid and I in
the jeep dove underneath the jeep. It hit in the only row of empty gas drums. The rest of
them were full. And gas drums are flying through the air and big clods of dirt. You
know if you would get hit with a big clod of dirt it would kill ya. And it smashed the jeep
all up, busted the seat, busted the hood. And fortunately we were underneath it. But
things like that happened to ya everyday.
Another interesting thing is we say a lot of dog fights between the Navy Hellcats
and the Japanese Zeros. And there was a navy dive- bomber, and it will go straight down
like this ( motioning to the ground with his hands). And it will drop its bombs, and it has
these wing flaps that come down and it could come up like that. Well, this Japanese
Zeros on his tail. He can’t shake him ‘ cause it’s much more maneuverable than this big
old lumbering plane. So he takes off into a straight dive into the ocean and I think, “ Oh,
he’s gonna crash in the ocean!” Then all of a sudden he pulls up and the Zero goes
straight down in the water. ‘ Cause not realizing he’s concentrating and trying to shoot
this plane down, and not realizing that this plane could do that. So we saw a lot of dog
fight and lots of them we usually won.
And there were four Japanese Betty bombers that would come over and bomb us
every night. So what we did is just dive in a hole ‘ cause you couldn’t hit ‘ em. They’d
shoot at ‘ em but they were unsuccessful in shooting them down. So I was down at the
beach and they were bringing in some 90 millimeter anti- aircraft guns. The army had
‘ em. And I said, “ I’ve never seen these before. What are they?” And he said, “ 90
millimeters.” Yeah well maybe you can shoot those damn Betty Bombers that come
over. And he said, “ Yeah, don’t you worry and we’ll take care of those.” So that night
they fired one round. It exploded and nothing happened. They fired another round.
They hit one of the bombers. Fired another round, hit another bomber. Fired another
round, hit another bomber. Fired the last round, nothing happened. And I’m listening
and looking. And I see this bomber explode up in the air. They fired five round and they
shot four down. So that was a new weapon that they’d just come out with. It was pretty
good.
Now when we were stationed on Maui we were there, stationed, for over two
years. And we’d go out for six months and then come back. Go out and come back. Go
out and come back. But the military police on the island were kind of sadistic guys. And
some marine would be on liberty in the town of Wailuku there and he’d get a little drunk
or boisterous or something. And they’d take ‘ em and beat ‘ em up. Take Billy clubs and
smack ‘ em in the mouth and thrown ‘ em in jail. Did all kinds of cruel things to ‘ em.
And I understand that a position of authority a lot of people take advantage of that
because they can push their weight around, ya know? It happened to be Navy Day. And
a Naval destroyer came in, and they were letting people go aboard and take a look. And
some of the sailors went into town and they got beat up by the military police ‘ cause they
were drunk and they were young guys. So they got back to the ship and there’s these
guys all bloodied up with some of their teeth broken and some of their noses broken.
And the captain of the ship says, “ What happened?” They said, “ They just smacked us
around with these Billy clubs. And he says… and you know when your talking destroyer
you’re talking family ‘ cause there’s not very many guys on the destroyer. So the captain
of the ship said, “ I’m gonna give the whole ship open liberty and I don’t wanna see one
MP without blood on him. So they went in to town, and they cleaned their clocks. They
beat the hell out of ‘ em. And we’re sitting there cheering ‘ em. I happened to be on
liberty that day and I see all this scuffling going on then I realized what had happened.
And we’re not helping ‘ em because we didn’t like ‘ em any more than they did. So
suddenly these guys disappear and the ship was out to sea. And there was a big
investigation about it— and the cruelty of some of these guys. And that attracts those
types of people who got a cruel streak in ‘ em. And see we had a whole bunch of ‘ em. So
then if became more tolerable. They didn’t bother you so much. What are you gonna do
with some kid that’s sitting in a bar that’s drinking rum and coke and gets a little
boisterous you know? Just calm him down. Throw him in the brig, if you have to then
let him out. If any of our guys got thrown in the brig in our battalion like 30 days on
bread and water. They got a loaf of bread and a quart of water. They’d stuff salami and
stuff in the bread and camouflage it so they guy could eat. ‘ Cause they were just going
out raising a little hell but not doing anything bad, you know? So our commanding
officer knew what was going on so he didn’t care.
SA: What was running through your mind the first time you were in combat?
FA: Well I thought it was a piece of cake cause nobody was shooting back at us on that
first island, Allan Island. But then when we hit the main island I thought, “ This isn’t fun.
I don’t like this.” But you did your job that you were trained for and went along with it.
Lot of times when we were taking the infantry in they’d get seasick. And they were glad
to see land even if they were being shot at, you know? We weren’t [ seasick] ‘ cause we
were so used to it. We had a guy that always messed up. These am- tracks had a seven
cylinder radial engine in it. They were airplane engines, 250 horsepower. That’s what
we had for power in these things. So he took his in to maintenance in Maui to get all its
heads milled down to give it more compression, to make it faster. So he decided to take
it out on a test run. And he’s going in it and he forgot to pull the oil in it and he burnt the
engine out. So the commanding officer threw him in the brig and told him, “ You’re not
coming out until we go out on the next invasion. Then you’re gonna be in my lead tank
with me.” So were aboard this LST and we’re going out on maneuvers. And our
commanding officers tank had all the radios and all the high- tech equipment in it. And
he invited the captain of the ship and some of the high ranking officers to go out for a
ride in it. So this guy… I think they called him Penny… so he takes off and he goes down
this ramp and I’m sitting up on the bough watching him disembark. And I’m thinking,
“ He’s going way too fast.” And that thing went down and it sunk ‘ cause it was going so
fast. And here’s all this brass and the commanding officer of the battalion swimming
around out there ( laughing) you know? And they’re throwing ‘ em these life preservers.
And nobody got drowned or anything but they lost this tank with all this equipment on it.
“ So after the maneuvers we got back to Hawaii,” he said, “ You’re going back in the brig,
and you’re still going out.” So we were out and we were on Tinian and he and his two
crewman were bringing some crewman out to this merchant Marine ship and they
unloaded ‘ cause they have Dockers on these ships. And the guy said, “ You guys want
lunch?” “ Yeah!” So they tie the Amtrak up with a rope and they go aboard and have
their lunch. And there are some empty bunks and they lay down and they fall asleep. In
the meantime the ship has orders to move out to the Philippines ( laughing). So the ship
takes off and of course the line broke. And this Amtrak is out there going like this and
pretty soon it sunk. He lost three of ‘ em ( laughing). So the last time I saw him he was
still in the brig ( laughing). Yeah the poor guy really messed up. We didn’t see him for, I
don’t know, for months. He finally got back with our outfit, “ What the hell am I doing
out here?” So I don’t know how he got back to our camp, but I know that I saw him
every once in awhile in the brig. He was a nice guy and all he just screwed up all the
time.
SA: How were you received when you got home?
FA: Very well ya know? We came back on a battleship, the USS Colorado. We hit an
80 mile an hour gale and that ship… there were waves coming over the bough. What did
I do? Oh, we’re going down to our quarters to where our bunks were. And everybody
had thrown- up all over the place. And this Lieutenant said, “ Clean this mess up.” And I
said ( pointing to his arm), “ I’m a sergeant. Go get a private and let him clean it up.”
“ Sergeant I told you to clean it up.” I said, “ I’m not gonna clean it up.” He said, “ Well, I
can’t make you do it but I can make you wish you did it.” So he gave me a job in the
garbage grinding room where they haul all this garbage. And they had this big garbage
disposal, only bigger, and they would throw all this stuff in there and it would go down
into the ocean. So that was my job and I was dragging this slop to put it over in the
garbage grinder and it tipped over on me. It hit a steel rivet in the deck and it spilled all
over this guy’s leg. “ Hey you idiot what are you doing!?” And we got into a fist fight
and we couldn’t hurt each other ‘ cause of all this garbage we were slipping all over the
place. So he said, “ You’re a real trouble maker aren’t you? We’ll fix you up and give
you a worse job then grinding garbage. And I got the job of going down into the
refrigerator and hauling sack of potatoes up and all kinds of food. It was a hard job but
the cooks fixed me the best food in the world. “ Do ya wanna steak? I’ll throw one on
the grill for ya.” I didn’t have to wait in line for chow. It was a great job. I really liked it
( laughing).
And my bunk was all the top of the bunk- head. I had about this much room. I
couldn’t turn over once I got in the bunk. I couldn’t turn over ‘ cause my shoulders would
hit the top. But it was quite a trip back. Then when we pulled into San Diego I sent
Phyllis a telegram telling her I was back.
SA: Well Frank what was something, amidst all those feelings and emotions that helped
you get through it?
FA: Wondering… well getting letters and pictures from Phyllis and wondering what I was
going to do when I got out of the Marine Corps. ‘ Cause I didn’t even finish high school,
and I had to have a trade. And my dad was a watchmaker so he got me started so…
PA: Well you did come back and get your high school diploma.
FA: I went back and got my high school diploma. That’s as far as I got though. So I
think the comfort of knowing you were gonna go home or hoping you were gonna come
home. What are you gonna do to make a living? When are you gonna get married? So
that was pretty comfortable, especially hearing from her all the time. Then I heard from
my father and both my aunts. They always wrote me ya know? It was so good to get
letter. That’s why on Iwo Jima they dropped the mail by parachute ‘ cause they knew
how important family was. And I remember we’re sittin’ there and the war is over and
rotation’s starting and they’re starting to send people back. “ What are you going to do
for a living?” And this kid says, “ You know if somebody gives me a job for 50 bucks a
week I’d sign up for life.” And I say, “ Who the hell wouldn’t? Fifty bucks, are you
nuts?”
PA: You were getting how much a month?”
FA: Eighty dollars a month ( laughing) as a sergeant. So that was our expectations. I was
in town one time and I met this Chinese girl and I thought she was Japanese. And they
didn’t bother the Japanese in Hawaii because there were so many of them ya know? She
says to me, “ What do you think of the Japanese?” “ Ah…” I said, “ They’re like anybody
else. I like ‘ em.” She says, “ Well I don’t cause I’m Chinese.” And I thought, “ Well that
blew that.” Not that I was going to go out with her or anything ( laughing).
PA: He has that hoof and mouth disease a lot ( laughing).
FA: We had a good time. I used to hand around some of my buddies. Part of the time we
were in Oahu, Pearl City where we had a camps setup and then we went into Honolulu.
And I talked a lot of these guys out of getting tattoos. And I remember this one tattoo
parlor they had this Chinese couple. He smoked his cigarettes with the ashes and fire
inside of his mouth. And she’d come up and she’d say, “ Come on Marine, get tattoo.
Waz da matta you chicken shit?” “ Oh no. I’m not. Put one right there.”
PA: I’d a left you in a second if you’d a come home with a tattoo.
FA: That one scum bag that I knew in the Marine Corps. He had USMC emblem here
( pointing to thigh). And he had USMC here ( pointing to lower leg). And then
underneath his breasts he has [ a] sweet and sour tattooed. And he was a real low class
piece of garbage, you know? And he had a pair of channel locks pliers and he would pull
the teeth… and he had two bull durum sacks. I don’t know if you know what a bull
durum sacks are but it’s a little wool sack full of tobacco. In those days, people used to
roll their own cigarettes. He had two of those full with Japanese gold teeth. And
somehow he got big sores all over his body. So they took him out to a hospital ship and
they told us to get his gear and get it together. So I took his gear, put it in a pile, threw
gas on it, and burnt it.
We went over to this cave that we worked over with flame thrower [ I didn’t but
some of the guys did] there were about 25 Japanese soldiers in there and they wouldn’t
surrender so they hit it with a flame thrower. He brought out a Japanese head. And they
had been in there for 10 days. And this is in the jungle. And he started ripping his teeth
out. And I got away from that guy as fast as I could. He was…
PA: I wonder how he got into the Marine Corps?
FA: I don’t know. I only got into one fight in the Marine Corps. We had this other scum
bag from Texas. And he kicked one of the windows out of this hut we were in. He said,
“ Anybody who tells the drill instructor that I kicked that window out he’s gonna have to
answer to me.” I said, “ Well I’m tellin’ him. He’ll put the whole platoon on… we’ll be
up till two in the morning.” So we started a fist fight. And he was a short stocky guy.
And I fell down and when I fell I had my hands behind. And he put a knee on this side
and a knee on this side. And he’s just wailing on my face. And finally the guys there
pulled him of. And I was all beat up bad. So I thought there’s no way that guy could
whip me in a fair fight. It was just that we were inside and he was kind of a short bulky
guy. So the drill instructor looked at us and he had a few marks on him to. So he never
said anything about it. So one day we’re coming back from the PX and he said, “ Would
you like me to clean your clock again?” So I smacked him one and we started a fist fight.
And I beat the hell out of him. But I had some room. So that was the only time I got into
a fight. And he was in the brig most of the time. He was a filthy guy, just a low class
trash. But there was very low percentage of that type of guy. Most of them were pretty
neat guys.
We used to listen to Tokyo Rose. Ever hear of her? She was a Japanese who was
educated in the United States. She went back to see her relatives when the war started.
So because she could speak such fluent English they used her for propaganda. They said,
“ Hi Marines how are ya? I guess you know your girlfriends are sleeping with the sailors
right now at home.” And she’d bring in all these derogatory stuff and they thought it
would upset us. But it really didn’t. We kind of enjoyed listening to her. And she’d play
all these good songs. She’d play all the newest songs. So there were a lot of the newer
stuff that she didn’t have so one of the B- 29 Bombers was bombing Tokyo and that’s
where she was. And by parachute they dropped a whole bunch of new records for her.
Whether they got to her or not I don’t know. But I kind of felt sorry for her ‘ cause she
was in a bad situation. She got over there and if she didn’t do what they told her… so she
put on this act. And it didn’t faze us. We enjoyed listening to her. Yeah, Tokyo Rose,
I’ll never forget her. And she would interview prisoners of war. We’re sittin’ there
listening to her and this one kid [ I didn’t know him too well]. She said, “ Well here’s a
prisoner from such and such city.” And this kid says, “ That’s where I come from.” It
was his brother. He says, “ Hi Mom. Hi Dad. I’m fine the Japanese are treating me just
fine. Don’t worry about me.” They didn’t treat him nice at all.
Another thing where I could have been just killed was they wanted some
volunteers [ we were back in Hawaii] to go to this island, they wouldn’t tell us what island
it was, and our job was to take these Bangalore torpedoes in and bring ‘ em up and lay
‘ em in the corral and then blow holes in the corral so they could get small boats in
through there. Well that island was one of the most heavily fortified islands that there
was. And if we’d a landed on that island they’d annihilated us. They’d a killed us all.
There’s no way we could have done that. But they called the operation off. So I said,
“ Ya know I don’t think I’ll volunteer anymore.” But most of the guys volunteered for it.
Yeah, they did some crazy things. You saw some heroic things.