THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, August 11, 1995 TAG: 9508090191
SECTION: PORTSMOUTH CURRENTS PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Cover Story
LENGTH: Long : 192 lines
We asked readers to tell us where they were or what they remember about V-J Day. Some who responded were in Portsmouth when the news of peace flashed across America. Many remember being young men on distant shores.
Through INFOLINE responses and phone interviews, here's what they shared with us.
BILL KNOWLES - I remember that morning with my mother listening to Don McNeil's Breakfast Club. I was eight years old, almost nine, and she listened to that every morning and they broke in and said that V-J Day had taken place, that World War II was over and the song ``Oh, What a Beautiful Day'' was playing. And I guess it was pretty emotional for my mother, she was emotional anyway, and then when it came back on Don McNeil said, ``Well, it is a beautiful morning . . .''
MARY FRANCIS CUROW - ``I remember I was 10 years old . . . and there was a friend who was a couple of years older visiting. We were out in the yard and I remember distinctly my mother and grandmother calling me into the house with great joy to tell me that it was V-J Day and that it wouldn't be long before my dad would be coming back.
``He was in the Coast Guard and he was on a supply ship carrying explosives and he was at Okinawa and all the major campaigns. So we were very glad to hear that it was over and we were very, very lucky to get him home in one piece after the war.''
JAMES TONKIN - ``I was in San Francisco. We had just loaded up ammunition to go back to the war. We had been in the Pacific for two years, 11 major battles . . .
``Thank God it ended when it did . . . I'm okay, but I never got over it .
Tonkin said he went as soon as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor because he loved ships, the Navy and, most importantly, America.
``My mother signed for me in tears,'' he said.
Tonkin remembers being on one of the destroyers that took marines to their landing at Iwo Jima.
``We bombed it so long with battleships and airplanes . . . I didn't think there would be anyone alive on that place,'' he said.
But, he said, ``when (the marines) hit the beach, they were slaughtered. We needed that island, so we took it. But, brother, we paid for that one.''
Memories like that make Tonkin sad to see young people take the country for granted.
``I just wish people would stop and think about people who died for them, so they could walk these streets.''
LOUISE RYAN was driving a bus for Portsmouth Transit Company.
``I was on High Street getting ready to turn on Mount Vernon Avenue when a bunch of little boys set a box on fire and were kicking it all over the street. I just heard them yelling `The war's over! The war's over!'
``I had an empty bus . . . going to the garage, which was in the 700 block of Mount Vernon . . .
``I was relieved. Of course, the war is what got me the job. In fact, I was the first woman bus driver.''
WALLACE LAYNE was on a 30-day leave at home in Goochland County, but was expecting to be with the rest of the 13th Army Division, ordered from Germany to Japan.
``My uncle, who was in World War I, came around and he was talking . . . telling me they dropped the atomic bomb. I didn't know what it was. I thought it was just a big bomb. I never dreamed it was that powerful.''
Layne later learned his division was the one that was supposed to land and spearhead the invasion of Japan.
``As it turned out, we didn't go anywhere,'' he said. ``If we had been in an invasion, the casualties were predicted to be so high, they had brought another armored division to be our replacement.''
Layne joins other members of his division each year at a reunion.
``We feel very lucky. We're here today because they dropped the atomic bomb and that was the feeling.''
JEAN BOSWELL was a nursing student in training at Maryview Hospital on V-J Day.
``As I walked into a patient's room I found him crying very loudly and holding a picture of his son. Fearing that he may have gotten bad news, I immediately went to him and asked him what was the matter.
``But they were tears of joy for his son who had gotten through the war without being injured or killed.
``This has stood out in my memory all these years.''
ROSA BENNETT REDMON heard the news while at work at the Naval Hospital commissary.
``They had blocked off from the ferry down to, I don't know if it was Court or Effingham Street. And we all went down there and we just hollered and danced and had a good time.
``It was a joyful crowd,'' she said. ``I just remember us dancing . . . and being happy.''
Redmon lost a brother to the war and her boyfriend was still at sea. They were married a few months after V-J Day.
JAMES W. FARMER was an 18-year-old Coast Guardsman on Okinawa, sleeping on deck when the other men woke him up talking about the ``apple bomb.''
Like others, Farmer didn't know much about the atom bomb or what it would mean.
A few days later, he and and others were cleaning chickens in the galley when the admiral's messenger told them the war was over. They didn't believe him and one of the cooks threw chicken parts at him, Farmer remembered.
``He said `if you don't believe me, come outside and look.' Every ship in the harbor opened up . . . Small ships were shooting up in the air . . . ''
Farmer remembers thinking, ``I lived through it, thank God.''
LEWIS THOMAS was a Navy lieutenant commander on the way home for rehabilitation leave on the light cruiser Phoenix.
``We got the word that the war had ended, the Japanese had surrendered. We celebrated by each person getting two cans of beer that day so we didn't have to off-load it when we got back.
``I went all through World War II, starting with Pearl Harbor and through to the end. I lost a ship in the Guadalcanal.''
Besides surviving the sinking of that ship during the war, Thomas said at various times the ship he was on was strafed, bombed, torpedoed, involved in a night surface engagement and attacked by a kamikaze pilot.
``I didn't get a scratch.''
But he didn't expect his luck to hold out forever.
Thomas said he would have been at Pearl Harbor but the flag ship he was on took part in a secret mission to deliver supplies to Wake Island. They heard what had happened while headed back toward Pearl Harbor.
He remembers he and others on the ship were not surprised that Japan had attacked, but were shocked by ``the magnitude of it.''
Coming back to Pearl Harbor after Japan's surrender was a much happier time.
``All kinds of people were cheering, bands were playing for us and everything else.
``I felt mighty happy because I knew my chances of survival on the Japanese mainland were nil and none. And I had been through so much of it already, I didn't want to go through anymore.
OWEN CARTY was in the Philippine Islands at the time.
``I was running an LCM landing craft and staging with a tank regiment division for making the landing in Japan . . . We spent quite a bit of time doing that and eventually, when the war ended on V-J Day, all the guns in the harbor fired, the whistles blew.
``It sounded like the Fourth of July. Our brigade had been in the Pacific the entire year of '44 up to '45 when this happened.
``We thought we would probably go home, but they did not want to send green troops into Japan. So I went into the first landings on the island.
``We didn't experience any problem there,'' he said.
Carty said he can remember not being able to tell from the expression on the faces of the Japanese what they were thinking.
``We know that they hated our guts under the situation, but they did not show it. They were polite and I would say, in most cases, courteous.''
One of their first duties, Carty said, was to haul barges out into the center of the port and supervise as the Japanese dropped home defense rifles, machine guns and other types of ammunition into the deep harbor.
``There were enough things there to give every man, woman and child able to pull a trigger. We did that for two or three weeks, dumping them in the harbor. They were very well-prepared for any attack that we made,'' he said.
MERIWETHER A. NOBLE was with other Marine Air Corps B-25 pilots on a flying mission.
They had just sunk a Japanese ship just off Korea on the morning of V-J Day and didn't know of the cease-fire because they had to observe radio silence for security reasons.
``When we landed, the air strip and everything was completely deserted. . . There was no sign of any life.
``We found a jeep and went back to the living area and everybody was pouring beer in everybody's hair. We sunk a ship right after the cease-fire and didn't know.''
Noble said most of the men knew some kind of ``new missile or something had been fired'' but did not know much about the atomic bomb.
``We were still halfway figuring we might have to do some invasion of Japan. We were some kind of glad when we found out everything was over.''
NEIL VAN PELT of Suffolk was anchored alongside the Missouri at the time the Japanese signed their surrender.
``I was on the USS Pasadena, a light cruiser . . . We had a good view of the signing.
``When you looked over there with binoculars it was almost like being on board ship. We were about a quarter mile from it - not very far on water.
``I thought it was quite interesting and I was certainly glad it was going on, I can tell you that.
Van Pelt had already been in the European theater and was involved in the Normandy Invasion.
He remembers just before the atomic bomb was dropped, the ship had to sail about 100 miles away from the coast.
``We didn't know what was going on, but we knew it was something big. ''
Van Pelt doesn't remember a lot about V-J Day other than ``everybody was happy about it . . . wondering how quick we'd get home.
``Of course being able to see (the signing) even at a distance away - I've always cherished that. With binoculars I could see the faces of MacArthur and everybody over there.''
KEYWORDS: WORLD WAR II
by CNB