This is William G. Cox.
The date is February the 28th, the year is 2002.
I'm doing an oral history today for Mr. Eugene
C. Crispy, who served on board the USS Houston.
The purpose of the oral history is to record Mr.
Crispy's experiences for the National
Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas.
How are you this afternoon? Just fine, thank
you. Good. Would you tell us a little bit
about your family background? I was born in
June 28th of 1920. My mother was, name
was Natalie Nina Bastiani Crispy. My father's
name was Aristide Crispy.
We-I was raised on a fruit farm or a fruit
ranch as we called them in California in the
San Joaquin Valley near the town of Hanford, California.
I attended elementary school in the suburb of
Hanford called Grangeville, and from there
I went on to high school in Hanford,
California, and graduated in 1939.
After graduation, I looked for work and found
that not much work was available for a youngster
my age.
And I had heard that the government had planned
on instituting the draft system, and therefore
With that information, I decided that I would
rather go into the service of my choice rather
than being drafted and put somewhere else, so I
decided to join the Navy.
I joined the Navy in San Francisco on February
the 28th of 1940, received my basic training
in the San Diego Naval Training Station and
graduated from there in April of 1940.
From there I was taken aboard the transport
ship Shawmont, USS Shawmont, to the port of
Long Beach, California, whereupon I was
transferred to the Colorado and was due to be shipped
from Long Beach via the Colorado to Pearl
Harbor, where I was to go aboard the Houston.
back up a little bit, my choice when I
graduated from boot camp was I asked to
be sent to the San Francisco, and you know how
the Navy works, they decided I
needed to go to the Houston. So anyhow, the
Colorado for some reason was
called back and we were transferred to the West
Virginia. Another battleship.
Another battleship and we sailed across. I got
my first experience with a
hammock aboard the West Virginia. Talk about
sore back. We arrived in Pearl
Harbor, I guess about, oh let's see, I said it
should have been about about the
middle of April, I guess, of 1940. Went aboard
the Houston, and when I went
aboard the Houston, I really admired that ship.
She was a beautiful ship. She was
tied up alongside of four other, three other
cruisers in a pod. You could
walk from on a gangplank from one to the other.
They're tied one alongside the
other. And those ships were the USS Chester,
the USS Northampton,
and the USS Indianapolis. And we went, while we
was in Pearl Harbor, we went out
on maneuvers, gunnery practice. We weren't
allowed to shoot live ammunition, so...
What did you use? You used your imagination.
Okay. Back in those days, the
armed services weren't getting much money. I
understand. Okay, and they were
just beginning to try to build up the armed
services. They could see what was
going on in Europe. So we must have stayed in
Pearl Harbor till September of
1940 and then we got orders to come back to the
United States to Murr Island
a naval station in California where we got the
bottom scraped and some engineering work
done and some new bunks put in, anticipating
building the crew up to full wartime complement.
From there, we sailed, we were there
approximately, oh, maybe a month, say
September, maybe a
month and a half.
We left Mara Island en route to the Philippines
and went directly, we did stop at Pearl Harbor
for a short stay and then directly over to the
Philippines and landed in Manila in October
of 1940.
The ship that was the flagship then was the USS
Northampton, which we were sent out to relieve.
done a four-year stint of duty out there and we
relieved her. We then became the
flagship. The Navy out there consisted of, in
large ships, ourselves, the heavy
Cruiser Houston. We had a light cruiser named
the USS Marblehead, and then there
was, there must have been, I think something
like 16 World War One
destroyers, the old four stacker destroyers. We
had some submarines and some
patrol vessels, minesweepers and such. It
wasn't a large fleet and our job was
to protect the Philippines. Do you remember who
commanded that fleet at that time?
Yes, Sir. The commander of the fleet was an
admiral by the name of Tommy Hart, an
ex-submariner. Was he a good commander? Very
good. Everybody really
respected him. He was real stern, sharp, but
everybody really, really had a great
respect for him. Our commander on the ship at
the time that we went out there,
our captain of the ship, was named J.B.
Oldendorf. He later, by the way, took part
in the invasion of Leyte. He was a battleship
admiral in charge of the
battleships at Leyte. He was relieved after
we'd been there, I can't recall
exactly how much time it was, he was relieved
by a man by the name of Rooks, I
believe his first name was Arthur Rooks, I
might be mistaken, he was our captain
And so, this through 1940, we basically,
basically made the rounds of the entire
Philippines. We'd go from port to port, I guess
scouting the area, you know,
checking the charts to make sure that we
weren't going to hit rocks and
stuff like that, and we would come back to
Manila. Then in 1941,
Well, let's go back. While we was in Manila in
the Philippines, we used to go
ashore. They had an Army-Navy Club there in
Manila, and we were young kids. We had
Manila was a good liberty port for us. We had a
lot of fun
there and the whole Philippines was a good
Liberty Port. Was it a lot of
nightlife going on? Oh yes, lots of nightlife,
lots of places you could get in
trouble. But nobody ever did. No, but anyhow in
1941 after we'd been there
well, October through 1941, things were fairly
peaceable. We didn't expect
much trouble, you know, in regards to the
Japanese. We had heard the Japanese had
given us our boats that were up in the Shanghai
area a problem from time to
time, but that kind of settled down and then
into 1941, about the middle of 1941, I guess
when Roosevelt was dickering with the Japanese
about pulling out of China or Manchuria, the
newspapers or the news started getting a little
tacky and we began to anticipate
that there might be something going on. And the
ship at that time, we would go
we would go into Manila normally and stay, you
know, for a week or so. If that
changed after Roosevelt cut off the steel and
the oil. That changed
dramatically. They shut it off from Japan.
Right. So instead of staying in Manila
Harbor we used to go down in the southern
Philippines to a place called
Holo, an island off the coast of Borneo, a
short distance from the coast of
Borneo, and just lie at anchor there. And we
knew what, we were just laying there
waiting for the war to happen. We had a very
good idea that something was going,
And so when the war hit, we had gone from, when
war started,
rather, we had gone from the island of Holo to
a port on
the island of Panay, called Iloilo.
of Panay called Ilo Ilo, and there we took on
some supplies and we were there
the day they hit Pearl Harbor.
okay just go ahead I'm just orienting myself
yeah and the first thing that we
we did was they sent they sent what ships they
could muster out of out of
Manila Bay, like we had a tanker called the
Pecos, a supply ship for Guam called the Gold
Star, and I think we had the destroyer tender
called the Black Hawk, which we convoyed south,
started heading south, down the coast of Java,
I mean, not Java,
Borneo rather, to a port called Balakpapan.
Let's see, it was Salabee Sea.
It's on the east coast of California.
We stopped there and refueled and sent the
ships on down to the port of Surabaya in Java.
Okay, the eastern end of Java, here, right
there, Surabaya, okay, then Surabaya
then became our base of operations.
We never did get back up to the Philippines
from that time. We operated
And from there, different times, we attempted
to go up here at this point, up towards Macassar
at one time to see if we could find a landing party.
We were bombed by 48 bombers.
Would this be a Japanese landing party you were
searching for? Yes.
There was our ship.
There was our ship in this party, the Marblehead.
There was four American destroyers.
And I think a Dutch light cruiser with us went
up there.
And then we were hit by these bombers.
I think there were something like 48 of them.
One of the bombs hit us, and the after turret,
exploded the after turret.
The marble head was struck several times.
And she was struck so badly that her rudder
was jammed over to, in one direction and she
could not steer by rudder and she was going
around in big circles.
So we got as close to her as we could and used
our anti-aircraft gun to protect them
somewhat as much as we could.
We finally left and finished the runs and we
went back to port, which is back to
Surabaya. By the way, during that air raid we
had 48 men
killed in the number three turret, and some, I
forget how many wounded, but
several wounded. The Marblehead had 20 people
killed and I think 13 wounded. So
what we did is from that point we sailed back
down through the Bali Straits along
the south coast of Java to a place called
Shilajit. Okay. And we pulled
into that port and both ships, the Marblehead
and ourselves, and they were
able to get some lumber and we built coffins
for the 48 people that were on our
ship and the people off the Marblehead, and
they had a funeral procession and
buried them in a local graveyard there. So then
from there, let's see, from there
this was in January, February the 3rd of 1942
is when we were bombed.
So we would have buried these people around the
4th or 5th of February of
42. So from that point they sent us south to do
convoy duty. We went south and
picked up convoys and convoyed them from
Australia, you know, and back up to
Java bringing up supplies, and then let's see,
February, January, February, okay, then
about February, the middle of February, the
15th, we were sent down to Port Darwin in
Australia and picked up a convoy of four ships,
four transport ships.
They were supposed to go up and rescue 40 P-40
pilots on the island of Timor, a place
called Dilley in Timor.
En route to Timor, we were first attacked by a
single Japanese flying boat.
We were able to fend him off, but not before he
got word to the Japanese Air Force, and
then they came down with fifty-four bombers and
bombed the convoy and us as well.
Fortunately, we were able to keep them from
doing any damage.
One man was killed on one of the transports.
How many ships was in that convoy?
There was four.
There was the-I can name a couple of them.
There was an Army transport called the MEGS, M-E-I-G-S.
was a civilian transport called the Mauna Loa,
an old-timer. She used to run from
San Francisco to Honolulu back in the old days.
Vacation-type crew? Yeah, right, and
And it was along Willis, we had the two
Australian Corvettes
for submarine patrol.
One was the HMAS Orango, and the HMAS Swan.
And the Orango, how do you spell it?
Do you know how to spell that? W-A-R-E-N-G-O.
Okay, I thought it would have something other
than just that.
Thank you. Yeah.
So what we did then, we got word apparently
from headquarters
that we were to turn around
because the Japanese apparently had landed
already on the island.
Now, we were to turn around and take the convoy
back to where we picked them up.
So we brought them into Darwin Harbor, left
them there.
We took on some supplies there and immediately
knew we didn't stay there any longer than
it took us to supply up.
And we left and headed right back up to Java.
While we were en route to Java, the Japanese
came down with something like, I forget the
number of planes they came down with, but they
completely demolished Port Darwin, all
the facilities there and they sank practically
every ship in the bay.
So then we went back up to Surabaya again.
Now this was, let's see, February, this had to
be right around the 22nd or 23rd of
February of 1942, and we stayed in Surabaya
where we were bombed occasionally, and then
we took off from there in 1922, 1923, 1924.
Then, by the way, the admiral that I was
telling you about that was in charge of our
fleet was relieved, Admiral Hart was relieved,
and we were then put under the
command of a Dutch admiral by the name of
Halfric. He was the overall commander
of Allied force, naval forces. Under him was a
fleet commander, admiral by the
name of, oh, boy, I know his name just as well
as I don't mind.
You'll think of it in a minute. Huh?
You'll think of it in a minute. Yeah.
How many ships were in there? Dorman.
That right.
Was he also Dutch?
Dutch, yeah.
And this, well this was, this was about the
time they were beginning to, the
Japanese were beginning to make stabs at Amwana.
Where is, where is Amwana?
Amwana, A-M-W-A-N-A.
Well, they were making stabs at that, landing
there. They were getting closer.
And they were bombing from here, from the
Casser or Kandari, there's a place called
Kandari, here's a place, yeah, they had an
airbase there, and that's where most of the
bombing took place.
So that's part of the Celebes? Right.
You know, they had-by this time, they had all
this under their control, all of this stuff.
They were even beginning to land on New Guinea.
And so about the 24th or the 25th, Dorman was
told to organize the fleet, as I understand
it, and go out and stop a landing on Bali and eastern
Java, in this, he was going to land either on
Bali or
the, or.
Around Serembalje or some place in there, Cragen.
So, we had, in this fleet, we had two Dutch,
Dutch light
cruisers, the Java and the De Ruyter, and by
the way their designation is Royal
Netherlands Ship, or they call it Skip. Java
and De Ruyter, our ship the Houston,
um, ship, the Exeter, which took part in, uh,
in a, um,
in sinking the battle, German battleship, Graf Spee.
She was with us, and then we had an Australian light
cruiser, the Perth, H-M-A-S, H-M-A-S, Perth.
Perth. Was that an Australian ship? That's an
Australian ship and so there
was five cruisers and we had an assortment of,
I think we had four
American destroyers, we had three British
destroyers, and I know of one Dutch
destroyer, whether they had more than one there
or not. I don't believe so, I think
it was just one. So we went looking for the,
for the convoy and we sighted, this
was on the 26th of February, we sighted the
cruisers. Let's see, where are we
here. We sighted the cruisers roughly in this
area. Okay, that'd be about
halfway between Borneo and Java off to the east.
Yeah, they were coming down
from the Macassar Straits with the convoy. They
were bringing a convoy of
40 ships, as I understand, to make the landing
on these two islands, or at
these two ends of the islands. So they would be
transport ships as well? Right,
troopships, troopships. So we sighted, we
sighted the two lead Japanese
cruisers, two heavy cruisers, and I was in the
foretop with the, with the gunnery
officer was a telephone talker to the plotting
room and we opened fire at
about, oh gosh, I think it was 28,000 yards
something like that, which is
roughly 14 miles. Did you have any of your
scout aircraft?
We hadn't, we made, they made the mistake.
Okay, now you can start. Yeah.
For some reason they didn't have the scout plane.
We had lost, we had lost two planes previously
with bad weather, trying to land in bad weather.
You know, they were seaplanes when they landed
on the water.
And those are hit and miss during wartime, you
know, so we'd lost two of them.
We had another one, a third one, I think it was
sent to Broome, Australia for something,
which is over on the west, way over here on the
West coast of Australia, for some reason
was sent down there.
So we didn't have a plane on board.
13 miles, roughly, you didn't have that good of
an eyesight line on it, did you?
Horizons hit about 15 miles.
So you were just limiting just about everything.
We were looking at their masts.
You had pretty high binoculars up there, high powerful?
Yeah, well, we had regular Bosch and Lomb binoculars,
fairly powerful, yes.
So you were able to really kind of identify cruisers.
You can tell by the outline. Mm-Hmm.
Do you want some water?
Yeah, please.
We're going to pause for a drink of water.
We'll continue at this point.
In addition to the two Japanese heavy cruisers,
Now we will continue again.
In addition to those two heavy cruisers, there
was a light cruiser
with twelve destroyers in a pack coming in our direction.
And we scored a hit on the last cruiser, the
cruiser that was in the rear, there
was two of them, and the reason we know that it
was our gun that hit it is we
used a red dye in the powder. When it went off,
it would, you'd see this red dye
flame come up. Instead of being black or white?
Right. Okay. And the other ships
weren't using that. And she started smoking
heavily and withdrew. And then
pretty soon, it must have been 15-20 minutes,
concentrating then on the lead
destroyer, lead cruiser. In about 15 or 20
minutes apparently put the fire out and
they got back in the column and started
exchanging gunfire. They did score a hit
on the on the Exeter in the in the main engine
room apparently main steam line
and cut their speed down to 15 knots so she had
to drop out of the of the battle
line and go back to port and one of our
destroyers the Pope was escorted her
back to Surabaya, so that left four of us, four
cruisers instead of five, and in
the meantime the Japanese light cruiser and
destroyers made a torpedo attack and
And they hit a Dutch destroyer, which
was patrolling alongside of us.
She must have been maybe 500 yards out from us
on a parallel course with us.
Hit her with one of those torpedoes,
and she just broke in half.
And the two ends came up, and she
went completely out of sight.
Let me ask a question.
Were you traveling more or less at a 90 degree
to the Japanese? Parallel.
Parallel, OK.
So you'd get quite a bit closer than you were
at 13 miles, OK.
So with the Exeter out, of course,
one of the British destroyers torpedoed a
submarine shortly after that. That Dutch destroyer
was destroyed. I was watching down alongside of
our ship and this British destroyer came
charging up on our starboard side, wheeled around,
launched two torpedoes, and hit just whatever
was in the water.
And you could see pipes and smoke and junk
flying in the air.
It probably was another Japanese submarine or something.
It was a submarine.
That's what we think it was.
And anyhow, then the admiral ordered our destroyers
to make an attack.
And they came off badly.
The two of the British destroyers were sunk outright.
The third one hit a mine.
And so then we were down to just the plain cruisers.
How many cruisers did you have at that point?
We had the four cruisers left.
We started out with five, and we only had four
at that point.
And so the Admiral turned the ships around
after this.
It was a standoff.
They couldn't gain any advantage on us.
They did hit us once.
They hit us in the forward part of the ship.
I don't know whether it was from the heavy
cruisers or from the light cruisers or what
it was, but it was a shell that went right
through the bow of the ship, the
front part of the ship, in one side and out the
other side, and didn't explode. So
that was the only damage that we had. It's the
only good luck you had all day, wasn't it?
Yeah. I might point out also, we were at a
disadvantage in that we had our ship
normally, I told you previously, that we had
had a turret that was bombed out.
Back on the fantail. On the fantail. We
normally carried nine rifles, two
sets of threes in the front and a third one in
the rear. Well, we didn't have that
third one, all we had was the six guns up
forward. So and then the getting back to
that one the before the Exeter was hit, she for
some reason had four
mounts of two guns in each Mount, and she could
not, her rear, she was in such a
position at the rear of the column that she
could not bring her after guns to
bear, so all she could shoot was the, was the
two forward mounts, you know, you
fellow, and the Japs had 10 rifles each, so
they had 20 of them, 20 heavies
shooting at roughly 10, so they outnumbered us
in rifles. So, anyhow, the
Japs retreated. The Admiral was apparently
ordered back to port. He started back to
port, got back into port, was ordered to go
back out again and hunt down the
convoy. By this time it's getting dark. Now it
was it was the Allied that had
gone in but was ordered out? Yeah, we returned
to port and was on our way to
return to port. Got orders from the Supreme
Commander to go back and track
down the convoy. So Supreme Commander in this
case would be Perl? No, no, no, Admiral
Halfridge, the Dutch Admiral. But this time, I
say it was dark, so we're out
there in the dark, hunting for one another.
They knew we were there,
and we knew they were there, but we couldn't
find each other. And you didn't
have radar, you didn't have any of those
newfangled gadgets. No, so we never did
find them, however, they found us, and the
reason they found us was they had a scout
plane. The scout plane apparently could track
us from above by watching the
phosphorus, you know, you leave a trail of
phosphorus when you go through those
waters in the tropics. What type of night
conditions did you have? It was dark, I mean
real dark. Did you have a moon? Obviously not.
I don't recall. But they picked up the
stern churning the water, which was causing a
fluorescence. And then they would drop
these flares, they would drop the flares and
there was something like, I don't
know if you've ever seen these flare pots that
they put out on highway
construction? Yes. That gives off a yellow
flame? Yes. This thing would hit the
water and it would flare. You'd have this
yellow flame coming up. Every turn we
made, drop a flare. So they were tracking this.
Marking your track. Yeah, they were
plotting each one of those flare pods. This
went on for some time, then all of a
sudden, like I said, my station was in the
foretop. I'm looking out, and the
lead ship, which was the derailleur, that ship,
Derailleur, explodes, literally
explodes, flames going, looked like 200 feet in
the air. And wasn't 30 seconds
later minute at the most, the second ship, the
Java, gets hit and she explodes. So
that leaves our ship and the Australian ship as
the only ship. In the meantime
we're seeing torpedoes coming at us. That's
probably what got the Dutch ship torpedoes?
Uh-huh. Okay. The destroyers apparently got in
close, their destroyers got in close, we surmise
anyhow, their destroyers got in close and
launched torpedoes. They knew they had a pretty
good idea.
And they have long-range, the Japanese had
long-range torpedoes, much better torpedo than
we had.
Now, the two Dutch ships, were they fire, flame?
So that kind of silhouetted you a little bit, maybe?
Well, we were behind, and when we saw, when the
torpedoes started coming, you could see
them coming, we made a right-hand turn, you
know, into the direction that the torpedoes
were coming from.
and they wouldn't, four of them went right
alongside the ship. You could watch
them going by and they missed us and they
missed the Australian as well. You
were still up in the crow's nest. So with that
the Australian was a senior, was a
As a senior captain, he ordered-actually, the
Dutchman ordered-I'll take it back.
The Dutchman ordered us and the Australian to
leave, to get out and fend for ourselves.
So after the torpedo attack, we took out of
there and headed for the other end of the
island, which was called Batavia at that time,
is now called Jakarta.
Did you make it into that?
We made it, yeah.
We started off there with a little bit of humor.
The Australian captain signaled our ship and
said, we'll proceed at twenty-four knots.
Our captain signaled back to him and said, I
suggest twenty-seven knots.
Did you pick up supplies there?
We tried, yeah, we went there, there was
nobody, the place was deserted.
The troops, anybody that, even the natives were
gone, there was nobody there to man anything.
They had tipped over the cranes that hauled the
big walking cranes, you've seen them,
they're on rails.
They had dumped them over into the water.
So they were demolition because they thought
the Japanese were going to take over.
So we pulled in there and we needed fuel and
there was nobody there to pump it and we finally
ended up pumping it ourselves, pumping the fuel
out, our engineering crew did.
But they hadn't destroyed the fuel. No.
We were able to get some fuel.
So we were there during the-stayed there during
the day and about, oh another-I told
you we left one of our planes back here.
At Bali?
At Surabaya. Surabaya.
That's why we didn't-
That was earlier-
Yeah, we had left one of our planes back there.
So we were expecting him to join us here over
in Batavia.
So we were sitting there alongside the dock and
we're looking up in the sky or watching
for planes and here comes our plane.
They were easily recognizable, you know, they
were twin engine with a pontoon and they go
about, you know, maybe 120 knots, which isn't
very fast, and so he's coming in, but he's
coming right over us, and about the time he
gets over us, he drops two bombs, whoopee,
one on one side of us and one on the other side
of us, and we look up and this, our plane
has a big red fried egg on the wing, and it's a
Japanese scout plane just like ours. years.
They were good at copying.
And so, it wasn't fifteen or twenty minutes
later, here he comes again and he's going
to try to make another run for it, I guess.
So everybody in the port, the Australian ship
and our ship opened up on him and he turned
around, went out as far as he could in the
harbor and landed, and started
signaling U.S. Navy, U.S. Navy. It was our guy.
Had you damaged him? No. He was okay.
He just said don't do it anymore.
Then that night, that night we left. We were
headed for somewhere in Australia, I
assume, and here was where we were. We were at
Batavia. Yeah, okay, we're from Batavia.
So you were inside north side of Java Sea.
Yeah, right, and there's a
straight here between Java and Sumatra.
Pretty narrow straight, though, isn't it? Yeah.
Like a MRAK, M-E-R-A-K, Java? Yeah.
And so about the time we get at this point, we're
challenged by that Japanese destroyer called
the Fubuki,
or the Fubuku.
So you traveled west looking for that strait?
Well, yeah, we knew where the straits were.
What we were going to do was go west and then go
right through the strait out into the Indian Ocean.
And then had
either to
Australia or to Colombo in India.
And did the Japanese destroyer travel to the
strait or was he...
He was on...
They had beat us there.
The Dutch had told us what information we could get.
They had told us that the straits were clear.
There was nobody there.
Were the Japanese picked up?
Yeah, they were there already.
They had their troop ships anchored along the coastline.
So they had plenty of time to be there.
And what we ran into was several heavy
cruisers, an aircraft carrier, a myriad of destroyers
and torpedo boats.
And it took about-well, the Australian went
down in about forty-five minutes or less than
that actually.
And we went down-about 1245 we went down.
We had entered the straits just a little before
12, and we went down shortly after she did.
So that would be on March 1 when you went down?
March the 1st.
So when I abandoned ship, come off the ship and
that strait there, and through these straits
is a terrible current, the current goes through
there about eight knots, comes right out into
the Indian Ocean.
comes out of that wide South China Sea and
keeps narrowing down.
Okay, and so I come off on the starboard side
of the ship. She was
lifting so badly that the place where it went
off is normally 10-12 feet above
of the water to listen so badly that I clung on
to the degaussing cable.
I don't know if you're familiar
with what a degaussing cable is.
It's a cable about this big around
that they go completely in circle with ship
and there's three of them and they demagnetize
the ship
so that you don't.
radios work correctly?
Well, no, for magnetic mines, you know.
So this cable is probably about three and a
half, four inches in diameter?
Yeah, it's about that big.
I hung on to it.
My feet were touching the water, and I dropped
in the water, had a life jacket on, and got
as far away from the ship as I could. She was
still moving a little slightly and
got out into the middle of the channel there
and turned
around and looked and there she was, she was
going down. She went up, stern up in the
air and then straight down, nose first, and was
heeling over at the time. Went down
pretty rapidly. Yeah. And so I went from there,
I was by myself, couldn't find
anybody. I started swimming. I took off my
shoes first until I took my trousers off.
I had a, my uniform on and had a turtleneck
sweater. It was cold at night,
It was cold that night I recall, so I had a
turtleneck sweater on, so all I had
underneath me, I left my shoes and my trousers
go. I figured they were a
hindrance. So I swam the best I could and
finally I saw something, a hulk out in
the middle of the water. First I thought it
might be a submarine just lying there,
And the closer I got to it, it turned out to be
one of the motor whale boats on the
ship that had apparently turned over, was
laying upside down in the water, and the hull
was exposed.
And there was another fellow on it.
It's wood, isn't it?
Yeah, wood boat.
Another fellow on it.
And he and I sat there on this thing, got up on
this thing, and started looking around
and we were trying to figure out which
direction we wanted to go.
We figured if we went to Sumatra, we'd be done
for because Sumatra is nothing but wild.
So we figured we ought to go to Java if we
could determine which way it was.
So we finally figured out that Sumatra was, I
mean, from looking at the stars, we could
see the Southern Cross, we figured which way
was east.
So I says, we discussed it, and I says, we
weren't too far out, I says, when we see
breakers hitting on the beach. We waited until,
gosh, it must have been three or 4:00
in the morning. It was beginning to lighten up
a little bit, and we finally saw the breakers
And I says, let's head for it.
So we decided to make a run for the beach.
And I lost him somewhere along the line and got
him by myself.
Did you get off and were going to swim in?
Or were you trying to yank the boat?
Swim in.
No, the boat wasn't.
You'd have to turn the boat over to make it usable.
And it was so heavy.
there are, they weigh a ton. So I get as close
to the, I figured I'd get as
close to the beach as I could and all of a
sudden here I am drifting along a row
of troop transports and from seeing four of
them go by one, there's four of them
And they're down in the water, you know,
they're sunk.
Either we sunk them or the Japanese sunk them
themselves, we're never sure, but we think
we sunk them.
Anyhow, I go past them and I run into-I see a
motor launch coming with a Japanese
guy in it, and he comes over, looks over the
side at me, takes a boat hook, and hooks me
behind my life jacket, pulls me over the boat,
helps me in the boat, and he says, take off
your life jacket.
In motion, he said, take off your life jacket,
so I take my life jacket and throw it over
the side and I'm watching it and it's sinking
rapidly. I mean it really sank like a log and he
took me into shore and when I arrived on shore
there were the gunnery officer, our
the immediate boss, and there must have been no
15-20 other people there.
And they had had them, they had gotten to be a
sheriff before me, they had had them
moving supplies, carrying rice sacks and
everything else, loading them on these
little carts that they had. They had little
carts that looked like, oh, maybe
four foot by four foot square with bicycle
wheels on them. And the idea was
you they they used manpower to pull them. And
how many days was this after
you the ship sank. This was the same same day.
So they must have been on rafts to
get there faster? You think the Japanese picked
up these other POWs?
A lot of the guys made it on their own. Moved
down there pretty fast? Yeah. The
Japanese didn't take much time putting them to
work? No, no they put them to work.
Speaking of work, what they did with us then is
they loaded up these wagons and
we were, the outfit that that were our captors
were apparently a, was a
a cavalry outfit. They're mounted on small
horses which had long, real,
I can recall, they had real long hair, so we
assumed that they must have been out
of Mongolia or somewhere. Yeah, that would be
my thinking too. And real shaggy horses and
they weren't huge like our horses are, you
know, like our riding horse. They were
quite a bit smaller. A lot of stamina though.
Yeah, so anyhow, they started us
down this road. They had two of us on each one
of these carts that I was
telling you about, pulling one of these carts
loaded with their
supplies. And what they would do, they
apparently were fearful of the allies
attacking them. What they would do, they would
send us down the road a hundred
yards and they'd wave to us to stop. We'd stop
and then this cavalry outfit with
nice ponies that come charging past us. They'd
go a hundred yards, so we paid
leapfrog with them. Could they be looking for
planted mines in the road?
Perhaps. I don't know if they were using us for
bait in case somebody was
going to shoot at them, I'm sure. Mines didn't
even enter my, I didn't
know what a mine was. I don't know what they
had them back then either. Well they
had mines I'm sure. I bet they did. Now was
this a dirt road or a blacktop? It's a blacktop road.
Okay now we can begin. So we were marching down
this road by this time
it's the middle of the day and we're barefoot.
They take, they force whoever
came ashore with shoes to discard them, you
know, because if you if you got off
the road you got into jungle and you got into
coral, you know, there's coral on both
sides of the road, so that way they knew where
you were going to be. So everybody
was breaking out with huge water blisters on
their feet and tearing off
their clothes and tying stuff around their feet
to protect their feet as best
they could. They marched us like that for all
that day. We must have
gone something like, oh they call it in meters,
in kilometers, something like 20
kilometers. You were still dragging the carts?
We were still dragging the carts and so
they, by this time it's dark, so they herd us
into a group and we lie down alongside
the road and sleep. Next morning they wake us
up and we're back on those
skirts again, we go into a place called Sarang,
a village called Sarang.
And in this village is a movie theater and a prison.
Probably not on there.
I don't believe it's on here.
It's west of Java.
Oh, you're right.
It's up near Merak.
Was Merak on Merak?
Merak is on here, yes.
Is that on Sumatra or is it on Java?
It's still on Java.
The town across the strait, you're right up on
the strait there between Java and Sumatra.
So it's probably a small village in there.
It's not on this map.
So we arrive at this town and the group I'm
with, they turned-the Japanese had turned
the native prisoners loose, let them go, and in
their place they put us.
There was, in the group of survivors that were
off of our ship, there was something
like I think 356 of us survived off this, got
ashore, and the Australians had
almost a like amount, so there was close to 700
people. They're in that prison
camp. Okay, part of them were in the prison
camp. The prison camp was filled
up and the prison camp, the cells were maybe,
this room is about what, 20 feet?
I'd say 20 feet. Well, I would say about 24
feet long and roughly this wide.
Well, that's probably about 12. Okay, and they
had a concrete slab on this side and one on
that side with an aisle down the center that
was raised and it was sloped and
that's what you slept on. Sloped to the center.
Okay and you slept on that and
they put 80 of us in this in this unit and it
was almost impossible to turn
over. You had to almost take turns. Exactly,
and the facilities that they gave us, there
was a well out in the courtyard where they had
one of those buckets that they
dropped down and and cranked up like they do
back in the hills to
get water. And the facilities they had in
inside the cell was they had two what
appeared to be whiskey barrels that were sawed
in half. One of them had a board
across it served as a latrine. The other one
was filled with water. You drank
water and they sat one alongside of one another.
Everybody immediately
developed dysentery. We were fed once a day. We
got a bowl about this big of rice.
Not much bigger than a teacup. Okay. Of rice
and dried corn that was boiled.
Dried corn doesn't boil soft. No. And at first
we could see the weevils,
so you could tell the difference between the
weevils and the rice because the
weevils had a black end on it. You'd flip those
out, you wouldn't eat them.
You didn't want that protein? No, pretty soon
we ate everything,
weevils and everything. The remainder of the
prisoners, I would say there was
about half of the prisoners were in this in
this prison the other half were put
up in in the movie theater and they had a
terrible time there I understand I I
didn't see the theater but it was the
conditions there were much worse and so
So we stayed there for six weeks, all through
the month of March and half of April.
Then they loaded us in trucks and brought us to
Batavia, or Jakarta as it's probably
known as today.
were put in a Dutch military compound there
that consisted of regular barracks
that were more or less open-air type barracks.
Being in the tropics, they're
not enclosed completely. They were nice roof on
them, nice tile floors and
everything, and so I spent most of the war
there in that camp except for a
couple of sojourns up to the coast to be
transported off the
island by ship, and for some reason they
decided not to. This was late in the war.
They decided that, I suppose the Americans were
sinking so many ships, they
decided not to, and they in turn then took us
up to the center of the island,
and up into a place called Bandung.
It's not on here either, but you'd be moving
from Batavia,
someplace between Batavia and Sarabaya?
No, no, up this, right up in the center of the
island, right up in here.
Okay, so between-
Very high mountains.
Between Batavia and Jilatakchap?
Yeah, Jilatchap.
Yeah, so someplace right in there.
Yeah, they had very high mountains.
I can recall taking the train, they had
these-you ever hear of
story about the the French called their trains,
or the guys called their
trains, the 40 in 8. Oh yes, during World War I.
Well the trains were about that
size, their train car, boxcars, and they
crammed us into these things, and I
recall going up this mountain and winding
around and around and around
around this mountain, pretty steep apparently,
to get to the top. Once we got
up there, we nearly froze to death. In fact,
there was a couple of times of snow on
those pretty high peaks. Thirteen, fourteen
thousand foot peaks above you.
So we stayed there for a short while, then they
decided the Americans weren't
coming after all, took us right back down to
the to the original camp in Batavia
and we just stayed there. Did they have work
for you to do? Oh yeah, okay, I had
several jobs. The best job I had was working in
a bakery. I was able to... I had
some friends, some Australian friends from
Tasmania. We called them the
Tasmanian Devils. Okay, yeah. And a buddy of
mine was a good friend of theirs and
they worked in the bakery, and the bakery
wasn't for the prisoners, it was for the
women, civilian prisoners, but they baked the
bread for them, and if you worked in
there you were able to eat some of the bread,
you know, so that was a good job.
So the combination of those things and about
how many months were you as a
prisoner? Forty, forty-two months. How many
months was I prisoner? Forty-two
months three and a half years
Okay, we're up to the point now that you had
been a prisoner for essentially all during
the war.
And how did you find out that the war was over?
There were radios in camp, secret radios.
We had-and also the Japanese provided us with
newspapers, and we could tell just from
their newspapers without having a radio if, for
instance, they were fighting in New Guinea,
I mean in one of the-Guadalcanal, for
instance-all of a sudden they're not fighting
in Guadalcanal,
they're fighting on an island further north and
another island further north
where something has happened, they were going
the wrong way, you know. And then
of course, as I said, we had, we did have
radios in the camp, secret radios, and we
were kept apprised of that by the officers that
were there. And when the
bomb was dropped or shortly before the bomb was
dropped, things got so bad for
them. You could see the handwriting on the wall.
They were more or less isolated
themselves. You could see the handwriting on
the wall and when the bomb was
dropped, we know right away what everything
changed. Apparently a part of
the surrender agreement involved feeding us, we
got Red Cross packages
started coming in that we hadn't seen. We got
one Red Cross package all the time
we were there, and they started bringing in Red
Cross packages, potatoes
and vegetables and meat, which we'd never seen
before. Our diet was
practically strictly rice, rice and a green
vegetable called, like spinach
called King Kong. So you were probably having a
little difficulty eating that
additional food, weren't you? We didn't have
any problem. Okay, you already had
dysentery anyway, so how did it come about that
you got rescued? Okay, as I
said that when the war finished, on this
particular island that we were at, there
was something like 50 Americans left out of the
1,000 that
originally started. There was a Texas National
Guard outfit, the 131st, which
you've probably heard of. Of course, the 36th
Division. Okay, and they were
were in prison with us, were thrown in
together, and some 350 men off of our ship,
plus a few
people off of the merchant ship that was sunk,
so roughly a thousand prisoners.
Of that thousand, there was fifty of us left in
the camp.
And what happened was apparently a major-I
don't know whether-I guess it must have
been an airborne-parachuted into the air base
or the airfield near the port, got transportation,
walking through the front gate and says, gather
up all Americans, we're going home.
We get on it, the Japs furnished him a truck,
and they hauled us out to the
airport, and here was this big old four-engine,
was it C-54? Yeah, C-54.
Sitting there with, had white linen on the
seats, you know, in the back of the
seats. They probably took that from some
admiral. They hauled us from there to,
which first stop was Singapore, I guess they
gassed up in Singapore, then we
went to Maumee, Burma, then across to Calcutta.
In Calcutta they put us in a
Army or Air Corps Hospital, or Army-Air Corps,
they called it
back then, didn't they?
CORMICKE, Jr. Correct.
CORMICKE, Jr.
And put us in one of those.
And they examined us and fed us.
We were there approximately six weeks.
And then they flew us all the way across India.
India. Now we can start again. We flew all the
way across from Calcutta all the way
across India, North Africa to Casablanca. We
stayed overnight in Casablanca. Stopped
in Karachi. We stayed overnight there too. We
were flying, by this time we were
flying DC-3s. Back smaller a little bit. Yeah.
Rattletraps with the seats on the side.
And we get to Casablanca and then they put us
on a C-54 again and fly, flew up
to Newfoundland and back down to St. Albans,
New York at a Naval Hospital and
I had to go through the same thing. I went
through the hospital in Calcutta again.
They prodded, they questioned, and fed us again.
I stayed there about six weeks.
Looking for all your vital secrets. Yes, and
then from there I was put on leave,
went back to California. My parents were
waiting for me, or my mother, my dad, and
and died in the meantime while I was overseas.
And we had a big reunion at the hometown. Great.
And that's about it.
And you've had a happy life ever since.
Oh, yes.
Met my wife at a reunion party.
She was with my cousin.
And I guess I impressed her a little more than
my cousin did.
Was it the uniform?
Did you still have the uniform on?
I believe so, yes.
But then you were discharged along in there.
Actually, I wasn't discharged when
they had the reunion party.
I had to go back to report back to Treasure Island.
And by this time, my enlistment was up.
And they couldn't find my papers.
couldn't find my records. So from Treasure
Island they sent me back to
to Camp Stoneman, no not Camp Stoneman, Camp
Parks in Livermore. I don't know if
you're familiar with that part of the country.
Livermore, but not Parks. Okay, there's a
naval base there. They didn't want me, so they
sent me to the Oakland Naval
hospital to wait and find my papers again. They
couldn't find this, but this
time I couldn't be discharged from the hospital.
I had to be on a naval base to
be discharged, so they sent me to Treasure
Island and I was discharged
from there. Okay, and you went back to your
home town? Yeah. You lived there all
the time until you moved to Reno? Right, well I
didn't. We moved to the Bay Area
from my hometown and I went to work there in
the floor covering business.
But you had a happy life afterwards? We had
four kids, four good kids. We've had a
real good life. I'm glad and since the ladies
are patiently waiting, he may not
be married here in a few hours, but I do want
to thank you on behalf of the
museum and I especially want to thank you on
behalf of a 17 year old, it was at
Texas A&M when they dropped the bomb. Oh really?
It probably would have been in the
Japanese invasion, so I salute you, Sir, for
everything that you did, all your
sacrifices. They told us that if the Japanese,
we got to talk to some, you
guys, we had this Korean that was our guard in
this place, one place that I
worked. He says, if the Americans invade Japan,
he says, you're gonna be... Oh,
It's a terrible situation, yeah.