Currently viewing the tag: "Pearl Harbor"

Rocky Ridge Woman Becomes POW

by James Rada, Jr.

Edna E. Miller of Rocky Ridge was a young, idealistic teacher in 1940. The graduate of Western Maryland College (McDaniel College) had taught at schools in Rocky Ridge and Thurmont, but her life changed when she joined the faculty of a school outside of Washington, D.C. and was sent to teach at the Brent School in Baguio in the Philippines. Charles Henry Brent founded the boarding school in 1909 for the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States.

The Japanese invaded the Philippines the day after they attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and Edna’s family and friends lost contact with Edna. The Japanese, meanwhile, installed a Council of State to direct civil affairs in the Philippines. They abused the civilians, forcing many young women to act as “comfort women” for the Japanese soldiers.

Edna escaped this fate, but the Japanese imprisoned her. The Brent School closed during the war. It became a Japanese hospital and officers’ residential area. The Japanese Army sent the Brent School faculty and staff to a concentration camp called Camp Holmes in La Trinidad, according to the Brent International School website.

Back in the United States, “An attempt was made to learn of her whereabouts through the International Red Cross, but without success. She had been in the Philippines about three and a half years,” the Frederick Post reported in 1945.

Edna later told the press, “In all that time I received one 25-word message from my family and one package from the Red Cross.”

That 47-pound package came near Christmas 1943. “You should have seen the children scamper out on the green in broad daylight dressed in pajamas and shoes, the first they had had for many a long shoeless month. And Bagnio (sic) is not a place to be without warm clothing with its 200-inch rainfall and its coolness-70 degrees or less,” Edna said.

More importantly, the packages contained food and medicine that helped keep the prisoners alive in 1944, when their daily food allotment from the Japanese was 800 grams of moldy rice or corn.

“Conditions were so bad in camp with no medicine to stem the diarrhea, dysentery, anemia and malnutrition that even the doctors and nurses were sick. What those vitamins and sulfa drugs did for us, only the thousands of suffering internees could tell you,” Edna said.

The prisoners used the food and medicine they had received in their Red Cross packages sparingly since no one knew if they would receive another package.

Edna said the women shed tears over receiving bobby pins and powder, things they considered luxuries at the time. They were having to hammer out homemade pins from old iron on a forge or use bamboo pins.

Although the Millers hadn’t heard from their daughter in years, they prayed she was still alive.

The tide of the war began turning. American forces began retaking the Philippines in late 1944. Most of the Japanese in the Philippines surrendered on February 23, 1945. However, Gen. Douglas MacArthur continued routing the Japanese from other parts of the country until it was declared free of the Japanese on July 4, 1945.

In the meantime, the War Department announced on February 21, 1945, that Edna was one of the American prisoners freed as the American forces took Luzon. The Frederick Post encouraged friends and family to write to her, care of the Red Cross, but they cautioned people to mail more than one letter because getting mail to and from the islands still took weeks and could be unreliable.         

“The night that we were liberated we had to leave our Bilibid prison to escape the fire surrounding it, and we were asked to leave all, save a handbag and we would come back for our other things,” Edna said.

It was during this time the Red Cross impressed Edna. The volunteers stepped in to help take care of the freed prisoners. They had even arranged for them to cable their families and let them know they were safe.

Edna was so impressed that she didn’t return immediately to the United States. She stayed to volunteer with the Red Cross and help others.

According to information the United States released years after the war, U.S. casualties in the Philippines were 10,380 dead and 36,550 wounded; Japanese dead were 255,795. Filipino deaths during the occupation was estimated to be 527,000 (27,000 military dead, 141,000 massacred, 22,500 forced labor deaths and 336,500 deaths due to war-related famine).

Prisoners liberated from a prison camp in Manila, Luzon, Philippine Islands, line up for their first square meal in over three years of Japanese imprisonment.

Courtesy Photos

by Priscilla Rall

The mission of the “Silent Service” is to “Seek, Find, and Destroy.” 

Raymond Lloyd, from near Ladiesburg, lived that mission during WWII. He started in humble beginnings, born in Hanover, Pennsylvania, to Raymond and Mary Catherine Neller Lloyd in 1921. He was the oldest of three children. His father was a machinist, but during the Great Depression, he found little work. Mary Catherine slaved at a clothing manufacturing plant, sometimes returning home in tears as the work was so hard. The family ate a lot of hominy and mush. Raymond was often sent to the store with an empty jar to get filled with dark molasses for five cents rather than the six-cents lighter variety. Sometimes, the family lacked the money to pay the electric bill and their power was cut off. They made money nipping green beans for the canning factory. They would get several large bags of beans and sit in the yard, nipping off the ends. Mary Catherine bought lots of oatmeal, as the boxes had dishes in the bottom and she prized those. In those days, Hanover had no sewage system and everyone had outhouses! There were no buses to take students to school. So, when the snow was deep, Raymond’s mother wrapped newspaper around his legs and tied them in place with twine. To help his family, young Raymond helped deliver milk, getting up at 2:30 a.m. to put the milk jars on porches and collect the empties. He also had a newspaper route in the afternoon, riding his bicycle around town. Raymond graduated from high school in 1939 and first started working with his father in a machine shop. Then, Raymond went to York, Pennsylvania, to a munitions plant, making 20-mm guns, working 7 days a week, 10 to 12 hours a day.

On December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor immediately changed the United States. Raymond was upset about it, as were all Americans. He decided to join the U.S. Navy, although his parents were not too happy about his decision. He went to Baltimore and enlisted for six years. After six weeks of basic training, Raymond volunteered for the submarine service. His first test was to hold his breath for two minutes. After passing that test, he was sent to New London, Connecticut, where a psychiatrist examined him. After that, Raymond was tested to see if he could endure 52 pounds of pressure. Then it was off to a huge water tank, 100-feet deep. To pass, one had to be able to go up 100 feet without going too fast and getting the bends. Passing that difficult test, he was off to sub-school and became Seaman 2nd Class. After a number of boring assignments, he finally was assigned to a submarine, the USS Gunnel, which was just back from North Africa and led by Captain McCain, the father of the late Senator John McCain. It held 72 enlisted men and 7 officers. Lloyd’s job was to man the periscope shears and look out for anything in the air or sea and report immediately to the captain. After three days, the Gunnel left for war patrol. His parents knew nothing about his assignment or even the name of the submarine.

The Gunnel left New London and went south through the Panama Canal, then on to Pearl Harbor, and finally to Midway Island. Lloyd’s position had him high in the air, and if the captain ordered the boat to dive, he had 15 seconds to get down the hatch before it was closed. The Gunnel was sent to the Yellow Sea and Tokyo Bay. Their mission: to seek, find, and destroy any and all enemy shipping. Once Raymond sighted a camouflaged Japanese plane flying low, and he gave the warning. Raymond got through the hatch in time and the boat dove. Then, they heard a number of depth charges go off. The sub escaped unharmed. Another time, the boat’s sonar picked up a signal, and Lloyd saw a light on the horizon. He reported this to the captain, who fired three torpedoes. One hit and exploded, but the other two didn’t explode. The Navy was plagued with defective Mark 14 torpedoes, which they blamed on the captains’ errors. At least two subs were destroyed by their own torpedoes, which made a U-turn and sunk the American subs. Captain McCain then fired two more torpedoes, but only one exploded. The Japanese freighter started sinking as its crew began firing at the Gunnel.

Later, the Gunnel picked up two heavily loaded ships on radar, riding low in the water, plus three destroyer escorts. From the surface, the Gunnel fired four torpedoes, running according to the captain, “hot, straight, and normal.” Then, someone yelled, “Oh my God, they are leaving a smokescreen.” The Gunnel started to dive as the torpedo hit the freighter, and it exploded. The enemy destroyers started dropping depth charges, and the diving officer told the captain, “We’re in trouble.” The sub submerged to 300 feet, as depth charges exploded on both sides of the boat. They knocked out the lighting system, and the Gunnel starting springing leaks. Lloyd said that they stayed submerged for “hours and hours,” as the captain ordered “silent running.” They had almost used up their battery power and oxygen when the captain ordered her to surface. Lloyd immediately climbed the periscope shears and sighted two enemy ships, and he fired two torpedoes “shot right down the throat.” One ship exploded into pieces as the Gunnel submerged. This turned into a harrowing time for the Gunnel’s crew as they could hear what sounded like grappling hooks sliding over the Gunnel, trying to grab her and bring her to the surface. They stayed submerged for two days. The temperature in the boat was 120 degrees, the emergency oxygen was about empty, and they had just enough battery power to get to the surface. Cpt. McCain called a meeting of all the crew. “We have two choices: we can surface, then flood the ship and take our chances that we’ll be rescued, or we can surface with our battle crew ready and all guns on deck.” With one voice the crew answered, “We’ll fight it out!” So, they surfaced, ready to do battle…but the seas were empty! A heavy fog concealed their position, and they slowly crept away back to Midway.

After a 30-day pass home, Raymond returned to the Gunnel, and they left port, going south of Tokyo Bay. One night, they picked up a target and moved in. Firing torpedoes, they hit and sunk the enemy ship, but suddenly there was a destroyer heading straight for the Gunnel. Diving quickly, they counted 30-depth charges as they took to “silent running.” After things got quiet, they went to the surface and found another target, a high-masted trawler; it could be a trap. As Lloyd was on the periscope shear, he saw strange bubbles coming straight towards the Gunnel. “My God, it’s a torpedo… My God it’s another!” McCain immediately shouted, “All ahead flank rudder.” The crew watched as the torpedoes went past them, only feet away from the sub. Much later, Lloyd was given credit for saving the crew and the sub with his sharp eyes.

Lloyd was now Yeoman 1st Class, and he spent five months on Midway, keeping track of crew members and doing office work. What he remembers most is the gooney birds, or albatrosses, on the island. His next assignment was in San Francisco, censoring letters. He was then sent to Philadelphia for sub maintenance on the USS Moray, which was getting ready to be commissioned. When she was ready, Raymond sailed on her, again through the Panama Canal and on to Saipan, where they were put on lifeguard duty, picking up any airplane crew that had gone down. But, then they located a target, fired two torpedoes, and hit dead on. The freighter exploded in a ball of fire!

Then, it was back to Midway to keep a lane clear for the scheduled invasion of Japan. The atom bombs made that unnecessary, and Raymond was finally cleared to go home, except for a pesky x-ray that revealed that he had T.B. He then spent 11 months in a Navy hospital before it cleared up. His son, Jim, was born while he was in the hospital. Tragically, his first wife developed multiple sclerosis and soon passed away.

Back home, Raymond decided he wanted to go to college. First, he went to Gettysburg College and then to Johns Hopkins. Eventually, he began work as the assistant commissioner, Division of Labor and Industry, retiring after 16 years. He married Evelyn in 1953, and they moved into a home they built near Ladiesburg.

Raymond certainly followed the mission of the submarine corps to seek, find, and destroy. Few Americans know how much the submarines did to win the war in the Pacific. Fifty-two submarines were lost and 3,600 sailors did not survive. Out of four submariners, only three returned home. Remember the Silent Service when you celebrate our victory in WWII. They certainly deserve our praise.

Courtesy Photos

Raymond Lloyd

The USS Gunnel

Insignia for the USS Moray

by Priscilla Rall

Raymond Lloyd

Raymond Lloyd was born in 1921 in Hanover, Pennsylvania, and graduated from high school in 1939. He is a small, unassuming gentleman, who lives near Ladiesburg with his wife. He worked at the Naval Ordnance Plant in York, Pennsylvania, but left to join the Navy in May 1942. After completing basic training, he volunteered for the submarine service and received his training at the submarine base in New London, Connecticut. This included practice in the escape tank and pressure tank as well as extensive psychological screening.  Raymond then had further training at their sound school learning construction and the use of sound gear.

He was finally assigned to his first submarine, the USS Gunnel that left the United States, going through the Panama Canal on his way to Pearl Harbor and then onto Midway Island. The submarine’s captain was John S. McCain, Jr. (the father of the late Sen. John McCain). The Gunnel’s first war patrol was in the area west of Kyushu, the southernmost island of Japan. Raymond described just one of the ship’s battles with the enemy when the crew sighted two freighters escorted by three destroyers.

“All aboard immediately went to their battle stations, although only three of their four engines were operating,” he said. “After closing to about 2,500 yards, the captain ordered the firing of three torpedoes at the closest freighter and three at the second one.”                 Unfortunately, the torpedoes left a blue smoke screen which gave away the sub’s position. The first torpedo hit home and within minutes the first freighter went down. Seconds later the second enemy vessel was hit as well. The Japanese destroyers lost no time in closing on the Gunnel’s position, and the Gunnel went into a step dive as the captain ordered to “rig for depth charges.” The Japanese dropped seven depth charges on the Gunnel at 150 feet, and according to Raymond, “they almost deafened us.”

A few exploded underneath the Gunnel, knocking out the lighting circuit and the bow and stern planes which caused the bow to rise toward the surface. Capt. McCain quickly ordered the safety chamber to be flooded in order to submerge the Gunnel. Raymond vividly remembers that “another attack of depth charges came down on us really tearing up the boat and the captain ordered ‘silent running’ while the crew stripped off all their shoes, keyrings, etc. … and secured all operating machinery” to prevent any noise that the enemy might hear. The crew operated the bow and stern planes manually.

While still at a depth of 150 feet, a grappling hook or chain rattled slowly down the ship’s port side. This was a method to try to hook a sub and then force it to the surface. The captain ordered the Gunnel to 300 feet and to run as close to the bottom of the sea as possible. After staying submerged for more than 30 hours, the sailors could no longer hear any enemy ships and using their last power, they slowly rose to the surface and immediately began to recharge their batteries and pump out the flooded bilges.

Lloyd continues, “Just 15 minutes later, a destroyer was sighted at about 5,800 yards. We went to battle stations and got two after-tubes armed with torpedoes. From a distance of about 1,500 yards, the Japanese destroyer began shelling the Gunnel with projectiles on both sides of us. We then sighted two other destroyers and all three began firing at us.”

With this, the captain ordered the two torpedoes on the stern tubes to be fired “down the throat” meaning that rather than aiming at the side of a vessel which is a large target, you aim for the narrow front, a dangerous and risky move. He then immediately ordered a deep dive as a torpedo hit the first destroyer which sunk. “But while we were only at 35 feet, five depth charges went off at our stern,” recalls Lloyd. The Gunnel soon leveled off at 200 feet as more charges exploded around her.

The captain called a meeting in the ward room to review the condition of the boat and crew. He explained that they had only 30 to 50 minutes of battery power left for propulsion, the crew was exhausted, foul air was making breathing difficult, carbon dioxide absorbents were used up, temperatures in the boat were reaching 120 degrees, and the humidity was 100 percent. McCain then told the crew his intentions; if they did not surface soon, they would never be able to. He wanted to ease the Gunnel to the surface with the 5-inch guns, 20mm, and machine guns manned in order to “shoot it out with the enemy.”

The other option (which he was dead set against) was to destroy all the classified material and equipment and bring the Gunnel to the surface and scuttle her. Then all hands would jump into the sea with the hope that they would be rescued and not shot. The captain wanted the decision to be a unanimous one by all hands. There was no discussion as all hands shouted “Let’s get going skipper and shoot it out!” As they surfaced, all hands swept the horizon but the enemy destroyers were nowhere in sight! The severely injured Gunnel was ordered to Mare Island, California for repairs.

When the Gunnel was ship-shape again, she was ordered to proceed to the approaches to Tokyo Bay and attack any Japanese warships, oil tankers, or cargo ships she might encounter. On this war patrol, they sighted a large passenger freighter heavily laden and running low in the water. At a range of 1,000 yards, the captain fired four torpedoes and all four hit home. The crew could hear many explosions as the freighter broke up and quickly went down. The enemy’s destroyer escort promptly attacked the Gunnel with at least 36 depth charges. The Gunnel suffered only slight damage, but the crew’s eardrums felt the effects.

Raymond was then transferred to a new submarine, the USS Moray, captained by Frank Barrows. It patrolled the seas around Japan in “lifeguard” duty, picking up crews of downed U.S. planes. When President George H. W. Bush was a young Navy aviator during WWII, he was shot down near Iwo Jima, and it was a submarine that rescued him before the enemy could get to him. LadyX.ch

The Moray’s torpedoes did hit an enemy tanker that erupted into flames and sunk during their 52 day war patrol.

Raymond Lloyd, First Class Petty Officer, was discharged due to medical reasons after spending 11 months in a Navy hospital. He later attended Gettysburg College and Johns Hopkins University. Raymond was the assistant Commissioner, Division of Labor and Industry for the State of Maryland and retired in 1986.

Lloyd was just one of the almost 16,000 sailors in the Silent Service, 3,506 who never returned. Their casualty rate of 22 percent was the highest of any branch in the military. It took a certain kind of American to brave the depths in the close confines of a boat deep under the sea for months at a time. America owes these brave submariners a great debt of gratitude.

Raymond Lloyd

Drawing is the mascot of the USS Gunnel.

James Rada, Jr.

Jim Wisotzskey considers himself the luckiest guy in the world. He is ninety-three years old and is still going strong. He has lived in Thurmont all of his life, except for a few years in the 1940s during World War II. He survived the war, barely missing several times when he could have easily been among the casualties—this is why he considers himself so lucky.

After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, Jim, like many Americans, rushed off to join one of the Armed Forces. The problem was that he was seventeen years old at the time, and he couldn’t enlist without his parents’ signature.

Grinning, Jim recalled, “I know they wanted to get rid of me, but they wouldn’t sign.”

When he turned eighteen, he enlisted in the Marines and was shipped off to Parris Island. Apparently, it wasn’t as grueling a time for Jim as it was for other Marines. He actually said that he liked his drill instructor.

At the end of his basic training, all of the enlistees were taken into a hall and given a test. This was the first time where Jim’s luck helped him out.

“I was raised by a storekeeper, and the test was all about storekeeping things,” he said.

He figures he must have aced the test, because of the ninety-four Marines in his group, he was the only one sent to Quartermaster School in San Diego. The rest were sent off to fight. Once Jim learned how to be a quartermaster, he was shipped off to Hawaii.

Three days after arriving, he and the other Marines were told to line up to get their orders to ship out to an island where they needed to build an airstrip. The problem was that the Japanese were on the island and intended to remain there.

While he was in line waiting to board the plane, a bicycle messenger pedaled up with a message for the officer in charge. The officer read the piece of paper, looked at the line of waiting Marines, and cut it off at a point ahead of Jim. He and the other Marines behind the cut-off were told to return to their barracks.

Jim thought that he would just be taking another plane out the next day, but Hawaii became his duty station.

“Of that first batch of Marines that went out, only seven came back,” Jim said. “It was my name that saved me. We were alphabetical, and I’m always near the end of the line.”

Jim’s job in Hawaii was to gather orders. Each morning, he was given a list of supplies and parts that he needed to collect. Usually, he would go out to Barber’s Point to meet the incoming supply ships and see if they had what he needed. If they didn’t, he still needed to find the items. He would scrounge through junkyards, and also admitted to “borrowing” them from Navy planes without asking the permission of the Navy.

Another instance of his luck saving him was during the West Loch Disaster. On May 21, 1944, a mortar round on a landing ship exploded, which set off a chain of explosions and fires at the Pearl Harbor Naval Base. Over the next day, 6 landing ships sank, 163 people were killed, and 396 people were injured.

“We had fallout raining down on our camp for seven days,” Jim said.

The incident was kept classified until 1960, and so it is not a well-known incident from WWII. Jim could have easily been one of the casualties that day, but he was working elsewhere.

“Friends told me they saw Marines holding onto railings with their heads missing, but they were still standing,” remembered Jim.

One time where his luck failed him was when it came time to return to the states. As he was waiting to board the ship that would take him home, he got horrible stomach pains and doubled over. He was taken to sick back with an acute appendicitis, so severe that a doctor had to be brought in to operate immediately on Jim.

Meanwhile, the ship sailed without him, and it had all his papers. He was forced to spend the next three months recovering in a tent area on Hawaii until his papers made their way back to him and he could leave for California.

As the war wound down, Jim got two weeks leave, which he spent in Thurmont, getting married. He and Lilalee Caton had known each other before the war started; although, she had been fourteen and he seventeen when they met. She wrote to him while he was in Hawaii and sent him care packages. Now they were both adults and decided to marry on July 4, 1945.

The war was already won in Europe, and the focus was on ending the war in the Pacific. After his leave, Jim had to return to California for six more months. He was discharged as a sergeant at the end of the war and returned home to his wife.

He became a carpenter, and he and Lilalee raised three children. Lilalee passed away last year, but she did not leave Jim alone. Besides their three children, they have seven grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, and one great-great-grandchild.

Jim Wisotzkey is shown in front of a display of the many puzzles he has put together and mounted as an art display at Moser Manor.

by Jim Houck, Jr.

1ST LIEUTENANT GEORGE WARREN BAKER, U.S. ARMY AIR CORPS

George and mother and wife - VETERANS COLUMNBorn on April 5, 1921, just north of Thurmont at Franklinville, to Roy and Blanche Baker, was a boy they named George. George had three brothers and two sisters: Raymond, Donald, and Leroy, and Ruth and Helen (nicknamed Tootie). In 1940, at the age of nineteen, George decided he wanted to join the military. His brother, Raymond (nicknamed Hun), had already been in the military several months, and was somewhere around Washington, D.C.

George enlisted in the Army Air Corps at Baltimore, Maryland, in November of 1940, and asked to be sent to Hawaii. He was sent to Fort Slocum, New York, for basic training, where it was bitter cold, which made his training very difficult. He volunteered for a “honey dipping” job because he heard he could keep warm. He found out the job was dipping solids out of the sewage; he said it did keep him warm, but he didn’t smell very good at the end of the day.

When it was time to go home on leave for Christmas, George caught the flu; if you had a temperature over 100 degrees, you couldn’t leave. George knew his was high, so he keep ice in his mouth until his temperature was taken; he passed and was allowed to go home. Christmas of 1940 was the last time he was home until January 1943. He stayed at Fort Slocum until the end of January 1941, when he was loaded on a ship; the U.S.A.T. Republic headed for Hawaii.

George arrived in Honolulu in early March and was put in a truck and taken to a small train that took him to Wheeler Field in central Oahu. Some of his friends, “Pipe” Fuss, Jim Adelsberger, and Jack Stoner, were already in Hawaii and wanted to see him, but because they were sick, they were quarantined and did not get to see him until later. When they finally saw each other, they had quite a chat about Emmitsburg and Hawaii. George was allowed to have a pass to go anywhere on the island; while at Waikiki Beach, he got a bad sunburn. He didn’t want to report to the hospital, because it was a court-martial offense to get sunburned. He was digging a ditch from Wheeler to Schofield Barracks, and it would have been bad for his sunburn. Luckily his sergeant allowed him to take it easy until his sunburn healed.

They were forming new fighter groups, and they had P-36s and the newer P-40s arriving frequently. George was assigned to the 72nd fighter squadron, and in September 1941, he was sent to Hickam Field to attend Aircraft and Engine School. It was a three-month course and was going along nicely. At the end of November, he was taken out of school and put on ground defense. George was issued a rifle and pistol and was on guard at different places around the base and then, they were moved from the new barracks to a tent area across from the Post Exchange. On the night of December 6, 1941, George was on guard duty at the water tower of Hickam from midnight until 6:00 a.m., the morning of December 7. While he was walking in from the tower he saw a float plane fly across very high. George just thought it was one of our navy planes and forgot about it, but it could have been a Japanese observation plane.

George decided to go to the barracks and eat breakfast and take a shower. He was getting dressed when there were several explosions. He thought it was the Navy dive-bombing off Pearl Harbor. He raised a window blind and saw a plane drop a bomb into the Hawaiian Air Force Depot Hanger and knew it wasn’t the Navy doing the bombing.

George finished dressing and was going to try to get back to the tent area. When going down the steps a sergeant yelled, “everybody out on the parade ground.” George looked at the parade ground which had quite a lot of soldiers on it.  As a Japanese plane came across strafing, he decided that was not the place to be, so he stayed close to the buildings and worked his way to the Post Exchange. By that time, the Jap planes were bombing Pearl Harbor and then flying across Hickam Field strafing. Soon after, they bombed Hickam Field, and from what George understood, several different places in Hawaii.

At the Post Exchange they stood behind concrete pillars and watched the planes fly over. George could see the big red ball painted on their planes, but no one knew what nation they came from. They started to strafe the area that George was in so he ran over to the tent area and got his guns.

There was a rumor going around that the Japanese were landing on the beach across from Hickam, so they loaded George on a truck with some machine guns and took him over to the beach-side of Hickam. They set up machine guns where they could cover the beach and left George there with very little ammunition. From his vantage point, George could see the bombing and burning of Pearl Harbor and Hickam Field. Some planes tried to take off (B-18s and B-12s) and were shot down by our own people. Everything was very confusing and some B-17s coming in from the states tried to land and some made it and some didn’t.

The Japanese hit very hard for a couple of hours. Around noon, the officers asked George and the other soldiers to go over to where the buildings and planes were and see if they could help. They were to see if they could find anyone injured and take them to the hospital. The hospital was already filled and some were waiting outside. George helped several to the hospital and he found a leg and part of an arm and saw some things he couldn’t identify.

George said his hatred for Japanese started at that time and kept up to the very day he wrote about it. He said he would never forgive them and had they declared war first he may have looked at it differently.

George said that that evening they returned to the beach where they had set up. During the night, they were awakened several times and asked their name, rank and serial number. They got very little sleep that night.

They spent a couple of days on the beach “digging in” and reinforcing their positions. On the 10th of December, they were told to go to a place to be paid. When George’s turn came, he was told they couldn’t pay him, as he was listed as dead. A couple of soldiers he knew told them he was George Baker, so they paid him.

George’s parents were notified on the 10th of December that he had been killed. They were not notified until December 24th that he was alive, even though George was told to write a letter home soon after the attack. Due to priorities, mail was very slow leaving Hawaii. All the plaques and monuments listing George’s name as being dead weren’t cleared until 1996.

Several days after the bombing at Pearl Harbor, George was transferred back to Wheeler Field. He was in the 72nd fighter squadron where he went to Hickam to school. The planes were in short supply because of the bombings. They had little use for crew chiefs, so he was assigned as crew chief on the Group Commander Colonel Steele’s P-36. Colonel Steele was a West Point officer and very strict.

George didn’t like Headquarters Group and wanted to get back to the 72nd Squadron, but Colonel Steele wouldn’t transfer him. They hadn’t received many planes. One time, Colonel Steele came down to fly his plane and it wouldn’t start, so George asked him to get out. George tried and it started right up. It was right after a rain and Wheeler Field was a grass strip at that time. When the Colonel landed, George could tell he was mad. He told George he rolled the plane over several times and a piece of dirt hit him in the face, and if that was combat, he could have been killed. George said, “Colonel look at your boots, they have mud on them from the rain.” The colonel said, “Baker how long have you been in the Army? You never have an excuse.”

George decided then he wanted to return to the 72nd Squadron. The next morning George was in his office asking for a transfer. He was told no, so George did that for about a week and the answer was always no.

Finally, he told George that the only way he would transfer him was to be busted. George was Staff Sergeant and hated to lose it but, he said, “bust me!” Colonel Steele did. The next day George was transferred as a private. George was glad to get back to the 72nd and was made crew chief on a P-40. He was allowed one promotion a month, so in several months he was back to Staff Sergeant.

From Wheeler Field, George was moved to Barbers Point on the coast for several months. While he was there, he tried to burn some gas-soaked rags and got badly burned. He was in the hospital a couple of weeks.

From Barbers Point he was transferred to the golf course at Schofield Barracks. While there, George happened to run into Colonel Steele. Colonel Steele told George that since the war started, the requirements for aviation cadets had been lowered from two years at college to a high school diploma. George told him he had lied, and only had two years of high school. Colonel Steele told George if he lied once, he may as well do it again and put in for it. He got George some math books to brush up on. George had no trouble passing the exam.

George returned to the states as a cadet in January 1943 and was stationed at Santa Anna, California, where he was allowed to go home for a few days before pre-flight began. The academics and physical training were tough, but George managed to make it. They wanted to make him a bomber pilot or a navigator or a bombardier, but George said he wanted to be a fighter pilot or be sent back to his old squadron.

They finally gave in. After pre-flight, he was sent to Santa Maria for primary flight training.  George said he soloed in a PT-17 and it was one of the greatest thrills he had ever had, being up there by himself. The courses were exciting, as they did a lot of acrobatics, and he was finally flying solo, something George never expected to do. It took 7.46 minutes for him to solo, which was about normal for all cadets. May, June and July he spent in primary flight school; August and September he was in basic training in a BT-13 at Lancaster, California; October and November, he  was in Advance Flying School at Chandler, Arizona, where he was flying an AT-9, a twin engine training plane; he also flew an AT-6 and checked out a P-38.  He said it was a thrill because the P-38 had 2300 horsepower. George graduated in the class of 43K, December 5, 1943.

continued in next month’s issue.

 

Note: A special thanks to George’s daughter, Connie Baker Fisher, for providing all the information and photos about George and granting me permission to write his story.