[Editor's note: This is the first of a planned series...Articles published here will be expanded in book form for more detail...]
The number of words, pages, articles, chapters and books which have been written concerning the war effort put forth by the United States leading up to, and spurred suddenly by the Japanese attack on US assets is incalculable...No few of those words, and a considerable amount of time has been expended here in this blog, and now transferred to the printed page...For my part, a mention in a discussion board by another member of a WWII logistics support unit named Service Squadron Ten, led to my research coinciding with the whereabouts of my uncle's service in the Pacific Theater...
Those who have read my previous articles on the subject of Ulithi Atoll, and its Japanese counterpart, will be familiar with some of the conclusions to which I have arrived...Deducing from the scant memories my cousins and I have of our uncle's brief mentions of his Pacific service, and from a saved envelope from a letter addressed to my Mom, we can now be certain that he served on a small coastal transport, designated as APc-48, of which very little information is recorded as to its assignments...A recollection that he spoke of being near Guam as part of a large operation, and the time-frame he was known to be in the Pacific Theater, leads me to think he was part of the enormous undertaking performed by Servron 10 at the time of its anchorage at Ulithi Atoll...
As a Navy Reservist who entered active service in the fall of 1943, near his 19th birthday, he would have completed basic training, followed by selected advanced training based on his aptitude and the needs of the Navy at that time...Being naturally gifted at understanding, repairing and rebuilding anything mechanical, he received first a rating as a Machinist Mate, later specializing as a Motor Machinist Mate 2C (a rate used in WWII, but discontinued for modern Navy use)...
I have spoken of my Mom in other articles, sometimes prodding
her in the ribs for having thrown out nothing in the past century, with the
exception of my baseball cards, which I'm sure caused her to grow tired of
picking up from the floor and returning to the shoebox in which I stored
them...It's my guess they went into the trash can one day with the potato
peelings and newspapers after she carefully clipped any useful coupons...But only
recently was a stash of wartime letters found by her in some forgotten boxes,
including letters sent from her brother in the Pacific...I first discovered and
examined one empty envelope upon which the return address indicated he had been
promoted to Fireman 1st Class...
For those readers unfamiliar with naval nomenclature, the
term "fireman" is not one who rushes into burning buildings to save
innocent trapped lives, but rather a Navy crewmen assigned as part of the
Engine Room Force aboard warships...The term originated in the days of coal
burning steam ships whose fires had to be kept burning by shoveling coal by
hand into the furnaces below the boilers...At the time of my uncle's service,
coal burners were a part of naval history, replaced with steam turbines in the
larger ships, and diesel engines as in the case of the small coastal
transports...The fireman's job on these ships was maintaining the temperature
level and fuel delivery on the oil-burning steam turbines, or maintaining the
fuel pumps and fuel delivery system on the diesel powered vessels...
This author was the first family member in over 70 years to realize his possible promotion, as he was reluctant to speak at all of his Navy service, and he never spoke of the new rate after returning home...It should also be noted that his gravemarker identifies him as MoMM2c (Motor Machinist Mate 2nd Class), leaving unexplained how, when or if his promotion to F1/C took place, and whether the rate change became permanent...
Like many veterans of that, and other wars before and since, he preferred to put memories of war behind him, and concentrate on either the future, or present day occurrences, or even more pleasant memories from pre-war days...It is my guess that the promotion meant little to him, as he was a Reservist with no intention of making the Navy his career following his release from wartime service...The uprate would have meant a very few dollars extra for a single sailor with no place to spend it on the wide, blue sea...In addition, he knew that, for him, it was only a temporary rate hike, and the joy of having so far survived a harrowing experience in unfriendly seas probably pushed it to the rear of his priorities...
Only the envelope remains from this letter, but much can be learned even from it...Postal markings from this or any other era are collectible to some, and are valued for their uniqueness, as well as their place in history...The franking on this particular cover is marked not with a glued-on stamp, but embossed on the envelope as "US Postage Via Air Mail," and features a depiction of the type of single-engine high-wing aircraft such as that flown by Charles Lindbergh and other airmail pioneers...It's marked at 6¢ which was the US Postal airmail concession rate for servicepersons during WWII, and available for purchase as stationery in military post offices, or post and base exchanges...
Even the addition of the words "Air Mail" have significance in history as the term was approved by the Universal Postal Union Congress, an international group sanctioned by the members' own nations..."Air Mail" was approved as the wording to differentiate it from surface-bound (and slower) mail service in the English speaking countries of the world...At this time, the whining French, desirous of any look-at-me attention, insisted on the words "Par Avion" on any air-delivered mail...This was a time between world conflicts, and since no other nation was currently engaged in saving France from another beatdown by a bullying nation, it was decided to allow this concession for international air mail, hence the reason "Par Avion" is found on many older envelopes...
The cancellation is marked with the generic US Navy postal stamping without reference to FPO number, and dated June 4, 1945, which would be toward the end of the Pacific War, but still in the time period of some of the heaviest fighting, as the Japanese had been forced back to their home islands, and knew invasion by the Allied forces was imminent...On that date, the US Marines 6th Division occupied Oroku Peninsula on the Japanese island of Okinawa, near the end of what was referred to afterward by the surviving Japanese population as the "violent rain of steel"...This 82 day battle lasted from April 1, 1945 to June 22, 1945, during some of the heaviest and most desperate defensive action seen yet by the Japanese...
If APc-48 was active in those waters it could have had a support mission in Operation Ten-Go, in which the JIN finally committed its largest and most feared weapon, the huge battleship Yamato, to combat, resulting in its sinking before it ever got near Okinawa...The Japanese fuel reserves being nearly exhausted, the plan was to have the Yamato beach itself on the Okinawa coast, and provide support fire with its huge 18" rifles for the Japanese Army's infantry...
The JIN Command committed the Yamato, the cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers, almost the entire remaining surface strength of the Combined Fleet, together with Kamikaze units to battle to the death the invading Allied forces...Against them Admiral Spruance assigned six US Navy battleships, seven cruisers, and 21 destroyers as a contingency force to intercept the JIN battle group after learning of the impending mission from decoding of Japanese messages...The battle never occurred as American dive bombers and torpedo planes from Admiral Mark Mitscher's Fast Carrier Attack Fleet found and engaged the Japanese fleet, sending the Yamato to the bottom of the sea, at the cost of ten American aircraft and 12 lives...The JIN, in addition to the Yamato itself, lost all of 2,488 experienced combat crewmen and officers, not even counting the other ships and crews sunk...Less than 300 Japanese sailors survived the Yamato's destruction...
APc-48 would have been far too small to engage any of these warships, and its only role, if any, would have been rescue of downed flyers, quick repair at sea for a crippled warship, or relay of signals from ship to ship...If present for support duty, it would have stood by with a flotilla of gunboats, other transports and a destroyer escort for fast dispatch for repair or rescue, all at a distance from which the battle might have been heard, but not seen...
The mailing address and return address on the envelope are of particular interest, and revealing in themselves...Neither is handwritten, but rather typed...At this late date, the recipient cannot remember whether the originally enclosed letter was handwritten or typed, and it is now lost to time...It would have been composed and written before the postmarked date, as military mail was passed and handed off more than once before it reached a Fleet Post Office (FPO) located on one of the larger ships where it would have been stamped...
This is significant in that during this time in American history, many young men growing up in the rural areas in the Depression era were limited in the skills they could pick up in the formal education opportunities of the time...Many, such as my uncle, and his siblings, often worked the fields when the public schools were open, and may have missed many opportunities to improve their handwriting, as well as their grammar and composition...However, having parents who were very well aware of the importance of education in their future lives, he and his siblings had no problem with either reading or writing in the English language, as evidenced by the many letters written back and forth, found stashed away by my mother...
In his heavily researched and annotated historical account of a particular sortie by a small Navy gunboat, "The Heart of Hell," author Mitch Weiss went into considerable detail concerning letter writing and mail delivery between Navy personnel and those at home...He explained that equipment space was very limited on any naval vessel, and especially so on the smaller Landing Craft.Infantry (LCI) ships that he wrote of, and even more so on the smaller APc's...
The LCI's were slightly larger, and minimally more spacious that the APc's, but the accommodations would have been similar in each...Any equipment taken on board only adds to the ship's deadweight, and decreases the availability for additional needed rations, clothing, medical supplies, spare parts, fuel or ammunition...Therefore, the only typewriter on board these craft would have been assigned to the care of the ship's Signalman, who was responsible for decoding and typing all incoming signal and radio messages for action by the ship's officers...The Signalman was one of the busiest of all crewmen as he was required to decipher and interpret all incoming messages, whether by radio, Morse or semaphore flags, transferring them to paper and routing them to the proper officer...These duties were expected to be performed regardless of time of day, sea conditions, weather considerations or in combat or not...But during lulls in action, they often sought extra activity, if for no other reason than to pass time during lulls in action...
The Signalman also was able to garner favor, and sometimes a little pocket change, from the enlisted personnel aboard who had limited handwriting ability, and needed their outgoing mail typed for easier reading by the recipients...During idle time, the Signalman was usually kept busy transferring thought to paper for many of the crewmembers, and thus was generally thought highly of by the crew...Following the completion of any letters, they were placed in the addressed envelopes, and handed off unsealed to the shipboard military censor...This duty was almost always assigned to a junior officer who was tasked with reading all outgoing mail, and razoring out any mention of combat activity, new assignments or any identifying wordage concerning missions which might have been of value to the enemy...
The often quoted war adage, "loose lips sink ships" was not only catchy, but a deadly reminder that the enemy could be found on the home front as well as across battle lines on the war front...Many eyes and ears were open for the slightest hint of where or when a single soldier or sailor had been, or was expected to be shortly...These were not necessarily dedicated enemy agents, but at times paid informants, reimbursed in money or goods for the transference of military intelligence gathered from well-meaning, but clueless braggarts...
Other gatherers may have had family members in these foreign
enemy countries, whose safety may have depended on the passing of any gathered
information...Even others may have only wanted to brag of what they know,
looking for recognition in their otherwise dull existences...Regardless of the
circumstances of how the information was passed, it was vital to the nation's
interest to use every means by which to prevent tipping off the enemy...Thus
was the reason for assigning a censor to outgoing mail...
Following this often unpleasant, but necessary part of his
duty, the censor then placed the letter in the pre-addressed envelope, sealed it, and
added it to the outgoing mail...To indicate to other FPO handlers that
procedure had been followed according to regulation, he then stamped the
envelope with his censor stamp...In the case of this particular envelope the stamp
read "Passed By Naval Censor"...The stamp also contained the initials
of the responsible officer, in this instance unintelligible, but resembling
"RH"...It was important from that point that the addresses be legible
for proper delivery, this being another desired result from the typing...On
this particular envelope, numerous typographical errors and overstrikes are
evident, including the misspelling of the terminal city as "Huston,"
instead of Houston, but nothing that would have delayed delivery...Several
other handwritten letters have now become known also with the same misspelling of Houston
This single piece of mail, together with fading memories from
family letters and conversations lead to the conclusion that the wartime
service of Naval Reservist, William V. Johnson was mostly centered on the Small
Coastal Transport, APc-48...One of the smallest of the Navy's ocean-going
vessels, it was still charged with the same overall mission as every other US
Navy craft afloat, to seek out and destroy a deadly, and merciless enemy bent
on subjugating as much of the world's population as possible, including the
United States...
Not wishing to present the officers and men of APc-48 as having
participated in any combat action without having documented evidence, my conclusions
are merely conjecture, and not solicitation for unearned battle citation...It
is to be remembered by the reader that, until documentation can be produced
which can pinpoint the service areas and duties assigned to APc-48, this
author's guesswork is merely that, guesswork...But it was indeed a warship,
sent with its crew in harm's way to the Pacific Theater to right an egregious
wrong during World War Two...
More articles concerning Warriors and Militaria...
I am glad that you led me here. Things like this is fascinating. Thanks
ReplyDeleteAlways a pleasure, Bob...Bookmark the site, and drop in often...
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