My name is Richard Meisheimer. Today is
February 4, 2013. I'm interviewing Mr. Eugene N. Fithian,
F-I-T-H-I-A-N, by telephone. His phone number
is 812-925-3788. His address is 6900 Rolling
Lane, Newburgh, N-E-W-B-U-R-G-H, Indiana, 47630.
This interview is to support the National
of the Pacific War.
The name is Education Research Center
for the presentation of historical information
related to World War II.
Now, Jane, I want to thank you for doing this
interview today,
taking the time for that.
And I want to thank you for your service to our country
during World War II.
Now, you received a copy of the agreement,
so you know what the agreement with the museum is.
Now, the next thing I'd like to do
is get an alternative contact.
We find out that sometimes several years down
the road,
got to get back in contact with a veteran who's
moved or something.
So how about one of your sons?
Could we get in contact with one of those?
I will do that.
And before this interview is over with,
I will give you his phone number.
I don't have it in front of me.
But I will see that you get him.
And he knows that this exercise has taken place.
OK, good.
Now, what is your birth date?
My birth date is October 30, 1925.
And where were you born?
In Cuba, Illinois, C-U-B-X. OK.
Now, did you have brothers and sisters?
I had three brothers and three sisters.
Were any of your brothers in World War II?
All four.
All four of us were in World War II. OK.
Are any of your brothers still living?
Nobody's living but me.
Oh, OK.
Were your sisters involved in any kind of war work?
No, they were in high school. OK.
My mother was.
Now, you grew up during the Depression.
I'm sorry, go ahead.
Go ahead.
She was a nurse in a local hospital.
Oh, OK.
Now, you grew up during the Depression.
How did the Depression affect you and your family?
Well, the Depression, my father lost his
automobile agency
after he came home and started his family.
And he served in World War I, left high school,
went to France, came back, finished school.
And his mother had passed away
and his father was drinking up a farm.
And he asked a neighbor friend
what was the best thing for him to do.
He said, give us the biggest company in the world,
which at that time was Ford Motor Company.
And went to Dearborn, Michigan
and studied how to fix Model Ts and Model As.
Came back and got into a dealership
in 1931. And we had to move and we moved back
to a little town close to where I was born,
in Fulton County, Illinois.
Well, you eventually got a work in the coal mines.
So how did you make it through the Depression?
Pretty good, or how?
Well, it was fifteen acres and a lot of spading
forks and hoes and coal buckets and ash buckets
and cottage cheese bags and churns, and Berry picking.
Oh yeah, and a truck patch.
Yes, that was in Lewistown, Illinois. L-E-W-I-S-T-O-W-N.
I had all my school there.
1943, May.
On December 7, 1941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
Do you recall hearing about that? Yes.
And where were you when you heard?
I was in a drugstore, and I was tending a soda
fountain, when somebody came in and said
the Japs just bombed Pearl Harbor, he said, 15
years ain't long, you'll be gone.
And he was single, worked for International
Harvester, and I said, Larry, you go before
I will, and I never saw him again.
Let me tell you a story about my brother that night.
He got married on Saturday night, Pearl Harbor
was on Sunday, Monday he joined the Marine Corps.
And two weeks later he was on his way to the Pacific.
Stayed there until my mother passed away and he
came back for the funeral.
And I didn't know anything about it, and then
he went back to San Diego and served out the duration.
He was the oldest brother.
How long was he there?
Well, he never got any further than the Ostrich
Club at Pearl Harbor.
He was a bartender.
He told me somebody had to do it.
I didn't know. I knew that I would not sign up
for the draft, but I would choose my-be
my choice of service, I would choose it. And
shortly thereafter, I got a job still in school
in a restaurant fry-cooking and packing dinner
buckets because they were building a prisoner
of war camp in our area. And a lot of the
carpenters came down from northern Illinois
And I nested there in that county and ate
breakfast in our restaurant and I packed dinner
buckets starting at 5:00 in the morning and had
extra evening meals and that's how
it affected me.
And, of course, I had a brother that couldn't
get in the service because he was working
for the Corps of Engineers helping build this
prisoner of war camp.
And the name of that camp was Camp Ellis, E-L-L-I-S.
Well, then when I graduated, I spent the last
year of my senior year, my folks had moved
to southern Illinois to do coins, that was
promoted, and I stayed with the people I worked with.
And then when I graduated, I went to Bucoin and
worked about three weeks on prospect drills
drilling for coal
I said it's time to go and I went to Marion,
Illinois and signed up. Okay. Now, what when
did you finish high school?
In May of 43. Okay, then when did you join the service?
In July of 43. Okay, and you went into the Navy?
Yes, and how did you choose the Navy?
Why did I choose the Navy? Yes, Sir. I thought
that would be the best place for a cook.
There'd be more
Equipment and I talked to some guys that were
already in the Navy and
Got their feelings and I wanted to cook and I
liked it. My father cooked in France in World
War one
Okay, and that was just what I like to do. Okay.
Now you've been cooking. Is that right? Yes. Do
you all had a restaurant?
Well, I worked for a family there in Lewistown
that had a restaurant. OK.
And what day in July did you go in?
Do you recall?
I believe it was, uh, I got it right here, 7th. 7th.
I'm wrong on the July.
It was August. August.
I saw my discharge papers say.
OK, August 7th. Yes.
Then you were how old when you went in, Seventeen?
Seventeen, yes.
Did you sign up for the minority crews or what?
I signed up for minority crews and with
documentation that I would be discharged on my twenty-first
birthday if the war was over.
Otherwise, Iíd stay until it was over.
Oh, okay.
Then where did you go for your boot camp?
I stopped on the way up to Great Lakes at
Springfield and was sworn in from Southern
Illinois and a little humor here, they said
bring your birth certificate with you.
Well, when I did, I found out my name was wrong.
On the papers I signed that I went to
Washington, my name was not Gene Norman
Fithian, it was
Norman Eugene.
So whenever I signed for Pompeii, Borgship, or
anywhere else, I had to sign as Norman
Eugene, but I went with the name of Gene. Then
I went from there from Springfield on a train to
Great Lakes, got in there about 1:00 in the
morning. Okay, but you go by Eugene Inn now,
right? No, I go by Gene. Gene, yeah, but I mean
you put the Inn in the middle. Yes, yes. Okay,
all right. What all did you do there in boot
camp? Well, I started running the place,
first thing, because I'd been kind of a manager
of the restaurant and always had my own problems
and always had a dollar in my pocket from
signing sheets or carrying papers.
And when I walked in to take my first shower, I
made the comment that this was a crummy place.
It was about 3:00 in the morning and the chief
that was there said,
okay, here's a brush, start scrubbing.
And that stopped me right off the bat, keep
your mouth shut and do as you're told.
Of course we were issued our clothes that night
and it was late when we got to bed.
Well we were assigned to a company and I think
there was a little over a hundred of us and
we were assigned to a barracks.
I can't remember the number of that, but we
trained for six weeks.
I didn't get any-then we were interviewed for
school, to go to school out of boot camp.
And they asked me what I wanted to do, and I
told them I wanted to cook.
They said, you had any experience?
And I told them, yeah, I'd been a fry cook in a
local restaurant, and they said, we don't
fry things in the Navy.
I said okay, so I went off and left boot camp
for ten days, boot leave, and when I came
back they shipped us out of Chicago at
midnight, all blinds down on the train and said
we was
going to the East Coast. And when we woke up
the next morning and looked out the window
we was in Kansas. They said this ain't the way
to the East Coast. So we wound up in Camps
Parks, California. That's about 50 miles or so
west of Oakland.
How was that train trip out there?
Well, the train trip was interesting. We got
acquainted with one another temporarily and
we did have a little excitement as we got into
the Valley of California. We had a semi-load
tomatoes. The Mexican boys were sick. We ruined
that load of fresh tomatoes and then didn't
do any damage to the train and then we moved on
to Oakland and wound up at Fraser Island.
Had you been that far from home before? No.
Back in those days people didn't travel very
Just as far as I could hitchhike.
Right, okay.
So then what happened?
Well, I was assigned from
Treasure Island to an overflow
station over in
San Francisco
on Market Street, the main
street in Frisco. It's called Navy
overflow from
It was an annex, and the building was three
stories and the second block on market, and
it was the old Japanese longshoreman building.
And it was very convenient for downtown San Francisco.
We were about two blocks from the railroad road
that took you to Oakland or anywhere else.
And then, once I got processed there, they put
me in-by this time it's getting towards
the holidays-they put me in a group that was
going to go over to the Fleet Post Office
there in Frisco that shipped all packages to
the South Pacific for the Coast Guard,
the Navy, the Marine Corps, and I shorted mail
12 hours a day for about two months.
And then they came to me one day, I had made
third-class mail, which is a rate that a regular
Navy man cannot hold.
They came to me and told me, we're going to
have to take that chevron off your arm.
what do you want to do and I said well I'll
tell you for the third time I want
to cook so I went back to my Barry and they
they serviced about four or five
hundred there in this annex and they were
people in like my status going and
coming people coming back from the Pacific and
going to school to be
elevated and then going back. I struck for cook
there and made great third
class in May. Okay. Then I got a letter saying
my mother was ill with cancer. I
went to the chief who was a World War one cook
and I asked him what I can do
and he said go to the Red Cross and see if
they'll buy you a ticket so you pay
it back monthly. I did. They refused me. Went
back and told him. He said go to the
Salvation Army. I did. They said they'll take
care of me and they got me a ticket
so I could go to St. Louis to see my mother in
the hospital. Oh, okay. And I
I stood up all the way for three days from
Oakland to St. Louis.
I was gone for a week, and I was with my father
and left St. Louis, and my mother the last
time I saw her, and went to the rail station
early to make sure I had a seat.
I did not get a seat because the ushers, the
brothers' boys, they were making money taking
people through another gate and filling that
train up.
I was going to take that building up, and when
I got out there, I had to go to another car.
When we got to Ogden, Utah to train lines,
change lines,
the conductor says, all civilians stand back
and let these servicemen aboard.
So out of the entire trip, I rode from Ogden to Oakland.
OK, all right.
Then what?
Well, the system at the place where
I was living and cooking, they put out the
transfer slips
for people to be assigned on the tables for breakfast
every morning.
So it was a joke around the galley
that somebody had already seen that list of names,
and mine was on it, to be assigned to the USS Barenholtz.
No, to go to Treasure Island for assignment.
So they loaded me up and took me to Treasure Island.
I was there two days, and they assigned me to
the Barenholtz.
It was over on the Frisco side of the bay.
So what date did you join the Ferret Holt?
I joined the Ferret Holt on June the 15th, I believe.
I'm positive that was it, because we pulled out
on the 16th. Yeah.
I asked, I took my sea bag and everything aboard,
and I went down to see the chief that I cooked for,
broke in on me.
And I had asked him before leaving,
what kind of a ship should I fight for?
And he said, get on a carrier.
He said, you'll find it easier to cook on a carrier.
There's more altimeters, better freezers and everything.
But that didn't work out that way.
I got aboard the destroyer that was still under repair,
And, uh, next morning we sailed.
Now, a funny thing happens right here as we're
sailing out of Frisco.
I had been told they didn't fry cook. Yeah.
I was frying fish all the way underneath the
Golden Gate Bridge.
And I was a deathly seasick within two hours.
And an old salt was on the ship and he said to
me, he said,
He said, laddy, are you sick?
I said, I am terribly sick.
He said, I'll tell you what to do.
He said, go down to the galley and get you
a piece of raw bacon, fry it for about a
minute, and chew it.
Come back here and lay down on the deck, on the fantail,
and watch the clouds.
Now, that'll clean you out.
I mean, I vomited, so.
He had his fun.
He fixed you up, huh? Yeah.
And then we had the Honolulu experience with
the shore patrol and that was that first five
days at sea.
Now, you had the experience with the shore
patrol before you got on the Fahrenheit, right?
No, I had that after we got to Honolulu.
Oh, I see. Okay. Yeah.
At the time, because you were telling me about
the Cathouse's term, which I had in the post
office, and striking for cooks and going home
to see my mother, who I saw for the last time,
not knowing it.
She was working in the hospital at home and
taking care of a man he raised up and hit
her in the breast and cancer formed and that
was it.
I got the letter to send me and that's the way
we was out at sea about two months later.
Oh, okay.
Okay, then you went to Honolulu. How was that
trip over there?
It was a good experience to be on the water and
see the ocean and not be able to see land.
It was quite an experience for an 18-year-old
boy and not knowing too many people,
but I made friends easy. And, of course, when
you're a cook you don't have any enemies.
And, uh, it was-it was an experience.
Good, good, good. Uh, then what happened?
Well, we were there for a few days and then we
were, uh, assigned to a task force. And,
And I, not knowing it, we moved out of Pearl
and formed this task force of transports and
some other warships and headed toward Enemy Talk.
Not knowing it, but that's where it was.
And then we was there in July for about ten
days, bombarding and then screening for the
landing and quaduling.
And that was the first action I saw.
My battle station, I was assigned to the loader
on a 20mm anti-aircraft gun during general quarters.
20mm this time.
I was later on assigned to a loader on a 40mm.
So that was in July and then along toward the
latter part of July, the same task force
hooked up to go in and take Guam back. That
took place on the 21st and we were there for
for a little over a week through the invasion.
Right, right. OK.
Our itinerary, I used them.
I know it was, because it's the first place we
hit after we left Pearl Harbor. OK.
And probably, if you would like to have it,
I've got several of them, is our entire itinerary
of the entire history from the commissioning
to the decommissioning of the Farenthold
and where it was week by week.
Sure, if you don't mind, I'd like to have that.
We'll put that in with the letter.
Good, we'll put that in the files and
everything, right.
Yeah, and you'll have it to refer to.
Right, good, good.
I went over those and made sure I was right
before I fed them to you.
And then we went from that operation to the
Guam operation, the 21st of July until the
29th of August we were involved in the Guam operation.
And what all did you do there?
Same thing, landing troops and taking the
island back, supporting the landing.
And your battle station was on the 20
millimeter at that point then? Yes.
And that's an anti-aircraft gun? Yes.
Did you have any planes to shoot at? Yes.
Tell me about that.
Very few, but I didn't know it at the time, but
later on in the Pacific experience there
were more planes.
Yeah, okay.
You well know.
Yeah, sure. Right.
Then what happened?
Well, then we formed another task force, they
did, and we were assigned to it.
Now you want to keep in mind this destroyer was
a high-speed destroyer, it was a 1650,
the Benson class, and we could travel faster
than some of the other destroyers, the 2100,
and they put us with the carrier fleet.
And we screened for this carrier fleet in the
Philippine Island area.
That started in September, and our legal paper,
Navy paper says that that operation started
on the 6th of September through the 26th.
And then it was the same thing, enemy planes
screening, picking up pilots that were losing
their planes as they come back, couldn't land
on deck, and they put down on the water.
I think at this time I need to let you know
that the Farenthold was a squadron leader
for Squadron 12.
There were eight destroyers and we carried the
flag, which was a full captain.
And then they needed another island, and that's
not knowing this, of course, they were building
up to make an invasion. We went to an island
called Manus, M-A-N-U-S, on the 28th of
September until the 13th of October. We were in that
area. And then I was moved up to the 40mm. We
had two 40mm nests and I was a loader on
end, right in front of number three 5-inch .38
anti-aircraft guns. aircraft.
Pretty close. And then we were there and then
it was back to the Philippines and then this
is when things began to get hot.
Atencio Okay. And the landing on Leyte was October?
Yes, and I'm coming back to that.
Back to the Philippines on 10-16, and we
stayed, at this time, we stayed only for about nine
or ten days, and while we were there, we were
assigned, not the squadron but the ship, assigned
to go down to the bottom island of the
Philippines, Mindanao.
Yeah, OK.
And they had anti-aircraft guns, the Japanese
did, on a hill there.
And they were picking off our carrier planes
that were flying to Manila.
And we had to knock out that gun nest that they had.
So we went down there, and we had a submarine
to screen for us.
and we spent a couple of days down there.
How many ships went down there?
There were two of us.
Two, okay.
And did you succeed in knocking the guns out?
Yes, we did. Good.
Go ahead.
We bombard in the daylight and then retreat to
the deeper water
further out during the day.
I mean night.
Yeah, okay.
And then we went to an island or an anchorage
called Ulysses, heard of it, right?
We got there on the 27th of October and stayed
just briefly and it was for refueling, more
ammo and more food.
That was not a-that was more of an anchorage,
shallow water out there.
And then it was back to screening for the
carriers again when they decided to take Peleliu.
You're familiar with that name?
Yes, Sir.
Go ahead.
And we were there from November the 11th in
that area until about a week.
And then it was back up to Ulysses.
Now what happened for us to go back to Ulysses
was we lost a boiler on the ship.
And we went in to the Admiralty Island for
repairs, temporary repairs, and then we went
back to Ulysses in February of 45.
And we became SOPA there, are you familiar with
that term?
Yeah, but go ahead and tell me what it is.
Well, we had the, we were running the anchorage.
We had the Senior Officer of Presence of Folk
at SOPA.
And he run the in and outs.
And we did have two-man submarines in the
anchorage and we had that to shoot at at a
time, as well as some slalom handles.
And we stayed there for about three months and
in early May we were called to go to the
Okinawa area and that full steam. And we went
up there full steam. And when we got there
we never even got into the harbor of Buckner
Bay. We were assigned by signal to take a
station on the picket line. OK.
You're familiar with that.
Yes, but go ahead and tell me about it. Yeah.
And we no more got out there, and a ship
that was on the picket line with us, a
destroyer escort,
was hit right close to us.
And we got the planes that attacked it,
And then we took care of the recovery of the men
and escorted that ship into a place
that a lot of people haven't heard of
and don't know where it is but have been in
that area.
And this place is called Karama Reto.
It's off of the southwest coast of Okinawa,
and it's in Little Nest of Islands.
And that's where they repaired an awful lot of ships
that were attacked by suicide planes,
whether they were destroyers or cruisers or whatever.
And it was full of ships all the time.
And then we went ahead and screened the beach
there at Okinawa.
And then we went down and helped them finish up
the Philippine invasion.
And we were delayed and rejoined Task Force 36
just in time
to participate in the landing on Leyte. OK.
And to escort torpedo crippled Houston and the Canterbury.
You ever heard of those cruisers? Sure.
We escorted them back up to Ulysses
so they could have protection for repairs. OK.
And we were there for a while, and then back up
to Okinawa.
And we changed captains, changed commodores,
and were split with a group of small carriers
that were striking in the southern end of Kaiyushu
the B-29s were working over the major cities in
Japan, but they were leaving from Saipan.
And there was an awful lot of suicide planes at
that time.
But being assigned to carriers, you felt like
you had protection and it was kind of a field
They came to an end, and it was just continuous
aircraft work every day, and sometimes into
the night, picking up pilots and screening for
those carriers.
And then we run into the big typhoons, and they
cleaned out Buckner Bay, which was the
the main harbor for Okinawa and some other operations.
And I think we were settled there in Buckner Bay.
And then the night came off of ticket duty, we
came in.
And this is getting into August now, 45.
And there were rumors of peace, at first,
at least from the Japanese.
But a little side note here, before there
was any peace talks, there was a group
of Chinese or Japanese generals and hotshots, midshots,
headed for Manila.
This time, the lady was secure, and they were
flying down
Manila to have a conference with Douglas
MacArthur on how the surrender terms would be worded.
They stopped at Okinawa and fueled there at
Naha Airfield, and I had the privilege of
going off duty in the galley and I had the
privilege of going on a show with the mailman
to get a lot of mail, and while we were over
there, we were at the airport
and we got a chance to get pictures of those
Japanese generals, one thing or another.
Then they flew on down to Manila and got things
lined up to go to Tokyo Bay and get on the
Missouri and do the Japan pencil.
That was all a little bit premature, I think.
There were scattered air raids during those few days.
I can remember the USS Pennsylvania in the harbor
got torpedoed by a Japanese Betty that didn't know
that there was any word of peace.
And that was long before it over since the
15th, I think. Mm-Hmm.
And it was then that we were chosen by MacArthur.
He had a meeting on our ship, it seemed like.
And he brought a general out of Burma.
And he sat and put on our ship.
And that's when they sent the Svernholt and an LST
to the island of Sakashima.
And by this time, we had knowledge that that's
where we knew it for a while,
that that's where the Japanese had the five
airfields that housed the,
was the home for the suicide planes.
And so we went down there, and I remember
giving my bunk to a sergeant
It was on the staff of this general.
And I took my hammock and slept topside.
And then they started asking some of us rated men
to go over on the island and be honor guards
for the surrender
out in the woods.
Not knowing at the time that what we saw and
experienced there on Sakushima would later
on be put in book form and it's on the market now.
And we're in it.
Shows the ship, shows us out in the field,
standing yard in our whites.
And we were there for about a week.
And I said to this sergeant that I gave my bunk
to, I said, you know, I've been out
here for about a year, I said, I don't have any
souvenirs to take home.
He brought me back a bottle of sake.
I took it down and put it in the cooler.
And then, uh, the crew of the LST hauled all
their weapons that were stacked in there and
then porched and took them out to sea and
dumped them.
And I saw some graves with fresh American flags
on them and they sat near the weather
station and got an experience of how those
people lived and organized themselves.
And so when we were through with that, they
brought it in, the LSU crew, not the ship,
the crew brought out a bunch of rifles and
swords, fire swords, and pistols aboard our
ship and they started giving them out to the
officers and the men.
The officers got the swords with the family
history of them and then that's rated men
and I was a first-class cook by then.
I got a pistol, a Luger, never been fired,
and the Seaman got rifles.
I got pictures of all that, of course.
And then we went back to Okinawa and fueled,
and then we escorted a transport load of Navy men
up to the inland part of the Japanese island
to an area called Sassamo on the west side
of the main Japanese island.
And then we went into an anchorage there,
escorted this transport into an anchorage.
And my memory assures me I saw a lot of sunken
Japanese ships.
It was kind of a Japanese Pearl Harbor.
Our planes had worked it over pretty good.
We navigated into it and anchored and was there
for a day.
And we got liberty.
So we transferred our money into Japanese money
and went ashore.
I didn't stay.
I got the first motorway remote back.
I couldn't stand to think.
You go by a grocery store, a meat market,
and chickens would be hanging outside.
people that bought that stuff that just maybe
buy one quarter of a chicken
and the rest of it and hang it.
I'd been around food all my life, smoked all my life.
I couldn't handle that.
So I went back.
And then we went back to Buckner Bay.
And yes, the war was over.
and the hullabaloo over, are you eligible for discharge?
You know, get out.
Everybody started with their own formula and figures
and one thing or another.
But we had a captain on this ship at this time.
I want you to follow this line now closely,
because he was a academy man.
His name was Briar McLaughlin.
And he did not want any mail going off the ship
because he was not releasing any mail for discharge.
Every ship coming back brought somebody.
You may have room for 25.
If you were a carrier, you had room for several hundred.
And we brought back a bunch of CVs.
I think there was 20 or 25.
That's all we could handle.
But he restricted mail from leaving the ship.
Well, later on in the saga of our ship,
that order didn't stand.
Somewhere or other, somebody got some mail off
of the ship.
So then we started back.
Started back on my birthday, October 30, 1945.
And we put in at Saipan for fuel, of course.
And we put in at Pearl.
And then we headed from Pearl to San Diego.
And we got into San Diego on the, I think it
was the 13th of,
or in, yeah, about the 21st of November in San Diego.
And I was in charge of the commissary at that time.
We did not have a chief commissary steward.
So we had radioed in orders for what we wanted
or in the way of food.
And when we got there, it was delivered to the pier.
And we all put it away.
And then we had liberty.
And some didn't come back.
Hadn't been home for a long time.
And then it was liberty and trips to Tijuana.
Then, we was only there three days, maybe four
or five days, and then we were supposed
to go to Philadelphia Navy Yards for
decommissioning, but that didn't happen.
We got orders changed once we left San Diego
and headed for the canal, but Philadelphia
was filled up we'd have to go to Charleston. So
then we put in at Charleston and got in
there, spent two days in the canal and then was
about four days on up to Charleston and
we put in there for decommissioning and of
course more discharges. But now let's go back
When we came into San Diego there was a group
of government officials waiting to have conversation
with the captain.
A lot of the sailors aboard the Baron Hope made
up their own mind that those were congressmen
that they had written and they were meeting the
captain to see why he did not release
them when they were barely due to get discharged.
And that became kind of a conversation piece on
the ship.
And then when we got around to Charleston,
there was another group waiting for the same gentleman.
You've got to follow the story now, because it
gets worse.
Sure, go ahead.
And I was one of the guys that got first lead.
The captain was very partial to regular Navy
men, and I was regular Navy.
We got the first lead.
I hadn't been home since 1944 to see my mother,
and I went home, and he also would give us
travel time, where with the reserves they got
27 days and no travel time.
knowing at that time, but I think he was
building the case against himself. But anyway,
I even
wired for an extension of leave and got it. And
when I got back, why, uh, he called me
up to the C cabin. Of course, being a head of
commissary, the question he had to ask
me was fair. He said, Gene, he said, how much
sugar do we have aboard? I thought that was
quite odd. And I said, I don't know, I've been
gone, but I'll see. So I went back down
and checked the drive-thrus and told, went back
up and told him, I said, could you pack
me up about £5? And I thought, my God almighty,
here's a full commander wanting
£5 of sugar.
This is side two of Cape Hornet with Jane Fithian.
Okay, so he told you to pack up £5 of sugar,
and then what?
I took it up to him up to his tea cabin
and uh... he uh...
informed me that he was going to go on leave
himself and go to Minnesota and see his mother.
And I thought, well, that's nice. So that was
the end of the conversation. I didn't see him anymore.
But, uh, he, uh, the next thing I know about
this is, uh, about 10 days later
I'm in the galley, oh, I'd say three-thirty in
the morning, getting coffee and breakfast
started and ready, and we're tied up to this
pier, everybody's working in their stations,
getting ready for decommissioning, and the
quarterdeck watch comes in the galley.
And he didn't look well.
And he said, I think the captain just shot himself.
I said, he's on leave.
He said, no, he logged into the quarterdeck
about 2, 2.30.
So I said, well, I don't want to hear it.
I'm busy.
So being there were so many people being discharged,
The South African boys, the black boys that
took care of the officers, a lot of them had
been discharged.
And the officers were eating general mess.
They were eating out of our galley.
And about the time for me to shut the rangers
down and start getting lunch, I told the one
black boy that was left, Dixon, to come in the galley.
I said you better go up and see if the old man
wants any breakfast because I understand he
come aboard about 2:00
I mean we're up there and come back and he said
he ain't up there
And then I started thinking a little more
deeply and I thought what the heck's going on
So then they hold 8:00 they hold muster
Now there was fog in the harbor
The tide had come and gone
And the engineering officer, Mr. Swanson, out
of Lincoln, Nebraska, come walking back
past the galley hatchway and he was carrying
the old man's cap. And I knew it was his because
it had a scrambled egg on it and it had a hole
in it. I thought, oh, my God.
He shot himself off the end of the pier.
So then his mother comes down to the ship a
couple, three days later.
And she comes into the galley to thank me for
that sugar.
And I said to her, I said, what happened?
She said, well, she said his name was Briar,
Briar McLaughlin.
Said when he left home, he was very, very distraught
that he had to go by Washington, D.C. for a
very, very important meeting
before he came back to the ship.
And then he came back to the ship, logged in,
found out later that he wrote a letter,
and called the quarterdeck
to see where the cruise mailbox was.
Well, the cruise mailbox was in the mess hall.
That's where the guys wrote letters at night.
And, uh, we didn't know for a long, long time
who he wrote it to.
Maybe we still don't know.
But we never did know what happened to him.
And he was single, had a brother in the Air
Corps, South Pacific.
Young man, good looking, and, uh, very, very,
uh, navy.
And the tide had taken his body up underneath
the pier,
and he was probably six foot four.
He was wrapped around in the piling.
So the divers said,
but we still didn't know, or they didn't,
until they went down and found his personal 45
in the sand at the end of the pier and the silt.
So that's that.
But if there were reunions we had, every year
after we started having reunions in 1982 or 81,
there was always a question that came up. What
happened to the captain? Why?
And I think back at the time that there were
guys that evidently got letters off the ship
in Okinawa and didn't get discharged. They
wrote their folks or they wrote their
congressmen or
I don't know, but I don't know whether you want
to put all that on tape or not.
It's a true story.
Yeah, that's history.
Well, I got transferred out of the ship to
speak to Mason.
We got a new Commodore boat ship by the name of Graff.
And he came and inspected, and I can remember
him reaching back underneath the ovens in
the galley. I was responsible for the
decommissioning of the galley. And he pulled
something out
from underneath there that looked like a dried
up prune, but it was a potato. I can remember
And of course, the beer that they had for us
for our ball parties on the beach whenever
we got a place where we could anchor and have a
little recreation, we kept in the galley
down in the coolers, and about every Saturday
morning our recreation, the guy that was assigned
to recreation and one thing or another, he'd
come by the galley and say, ìWe better go
check the coolers to see if anybodyís stolen
any of our beer.î Well, weíd go down there
and sure enough everything was okay, but when I
got ready to decommission them coolers,
I cleaned out behind those cooling coils down
there and I found hundreds of empty beer cans.
Somebody before me had been, and probably even
during the time I was there, was having
beer and throwing their cans behind the sewers.
There was an incident, I guess if you want a
little humor, when we were in Lady Gulf
and anchored, the fellows would come to me and
they said, ìJesse, give me some sugar.
I'd give them some sugar, or give me some
coffee, I'd give them some coffee.
But anyway, when we got anchors, they had been
saving life jackets
that we would get from pilots that we picked up
at sea off of carriers.
And they decided they would do that and
lubricate their bodies with grease
and, uh, load them life rafts up with, uh,
sugar and coffee and, uh, sheets and pillowcases.
They decided they was going to swim ashore and
have a party. And they did. Well, anyway,
on this particular ship, the galley was the
place to be from about, oh, 8:00 on,
because that's when the bakers were baking
bread, and you could get yourself a half a loaf
of warm
bread or whatever amount you wanted. And then
there may just be somebody mixing a little bit
of Fifth Bay alcohol or some grapefruit juice.
And, uh, these guys came back from the island
about, oh, I don't know, full midnight. But,
uh, they had been to the houses of prostitution
and sold their wares and their coffee. That was
a humorous part of it, I guess.
But anyway, they all wound up going up to
Captain's Mass the next morning and getting busted.
That was one of the experiences of the Lady
Golfton trip.
There was a lot of instances where we fought
the Civil War again in the galley at night
The black boys would be in there, and there
would be some boys from Louisiana,
the southern boys.
We had one guy I know who was a gunner's mate, Chapman.
He used to come down to some place in lower Texas.
I forget now, but he got into it with the chief
steward one night
out of Macon, Georgia, about the blacks and the whites.
You could see a storm brewing in there, and
this steward was leaned up against a meat block.
And I was over by the sink, and I started arguing.
I seen this steward reach for a knife that was
hanging behind the meat block, and I thought,
oh, there's going to be trouble here.
And we got that broke up.
What more did we have to do?
You know.
Play cards.
But we had our duties to do, we done, we had a
good crew, we still stay in touch.
In the late 70s we started organizing a
Clarence Holt Association and we formed a group of
orchestras and we drew up a set of bylaws.
One thing or another, we started having reunions.
I was one of them.
We decided we'd have it on the West Coast one year,
and the next year we'd have it in the Midwest
and the East
Coast, and then back to the West Coast.
That went on up to a couple of years ago.
Most of us are gone, or it's not easy to
travel, and expensive.
So the next generation wanted it, and they took
it over.
They had it for a couple, three years,
and we met in Santa Clara.
But I guess when we came to San Antonio,
the previous reunion was up in Albany, New York.
And they couldn't find anybody to be the president.
I said I would, but we were going
to go to San Antonio, the home of Admiral Nimitz.
And Admiral Farenthold was coming
from the San Antonio area.
And it was a good reunion town.
So I made a trip on my own and went down there
and set a deal with the Menger Hotel across
from Palomo,
got a room rate,
went up to Fredericksburg and met with those
people up there.
I said, well, here's where our history belongs.
So I went back and we had a meeting.
guy out of Tulsa and one out of Mountain Home,
Arkansas. There's about six of us.
And we decided that's where we'd put it. And we
did. And then we bought a stone.
Mrs. Catterley called me and wanted to know if
she could send me the information
on a perpetual memorial there every Memorial Day.
Our stone is there.
Yeah, okay.
And it was enjoyable seeing the Japanese Peace Garden.
I took as many of my family down as I could.
I happened to be president that year, as I told you.
It was educational for them.
And, uh, that was about the story of that.
But then, you know, when you go back and look
at our history,
took place before I was aboard the ship.
MacArthur and Kennedy both had recommended this ship
for a citation, and we never did get it.
And it came up at one of our reunions.
And I thought, well, let's do something about it.
So I started out with, I chose a man from about
eight or nine
states to contact their U.S. senators.
I wrote to Secretary Lazy and the office that
gives the awards and citations, and sent him
our history, and sent him a clip out of our
book about Nimitz and-Halsey and Nimitz
and MacArthur's recommendations, and it was funny.
One not knowing what the other wrote, the words
were almost identical, and the words
were, thanks for serving your country and if
there's anything I can do to help you,
let me know.
Oh, we got her, you know.
Nothing ever took place until a local boy here,
there had been an engineering officer
on a tugboat on the Ohio River, and I, who
served on the boat ship,
decided we'd go down and talk to our U.S. House
of Representatives candidates,
and a gentleman by the name of Brad Ellsworth,
he's not in there now,
and he listened to us for a couple hours, and
we had all the documents,
and he said, I'll see what I can do. So he went
back, and he stayed in real
close touch with us, but he was never able to
crack the ice
that MacArthur and Nimitz wanted tracked.
So he took it to the floor of the house.
And he got our recognition for us, I think, in 2006.
And we were getting ready for a reunion out in
Santa Clara.
And I was staying in touch with our secretary
up in California,
and she knew what was going on,
And I was doing the communicating with the
congressman's office.
And he let me know a day prior to him taking it
to the floor
and said, let your people know this will be on
the news.
And he got it to the floor.
He got recognition for what we'd done.
Oh, OK. Yeah.
It wasn't doing it for ourselves.
were doing it for the widows and those that had
already passed on.
So I never told a shipmate about it except the
secretary, and he brought himself from
Washington back to his home town of Evansville
a document for each one of our men.
He was about ten copies short, and I went to a
friend of mine that owns a printing office
here in Evansville, and he printed the rest of
them for me at no charge.
I packed those and took them to Santa Clara
with him, unbeknownst to any of the other men.
And then after dinner, I broke the news to
them, and I had a widow there that had lost
her husband, and passed them out to them.
But I was never turned down whenever I asked
for an assistance on something like that from
a civilian or some widow or another shipmate,
and several others still stay in touch.
Back home I was with this guy that went to the
consul's office with me at the VA home
here sometime this month.
That's kind of the way it's been.
And, you know, I've got to say that all of us
boys enlisted.
I had one brother enlisted in the Army and he
was with Patton all the way across North Africa.
You got to get off the coast of it, that's what
it is.
My other brother worked for the Corps of Engineers,
I told you, and helped build the prisoner of
war camp,
and then I went in the Navy.
My mother served in the World War Hospital.
I think we got a lot of our inspiration from
our father,
who was a strong veteran. Good.
Now, earlier you told me about an experience
you had
with the shore patrol.
Tell me about that.
Well, he just stopped me and asked me what Navy
I was in.
I was in my cook's wife's, the same thing I
cooked it in.
Sort of white Jumper on, but it didn't have any
seaman stripes on the sleeves.
I was out of uniform, is what it was.
So what did he do?
He wrote me up a ticket,
like a police officer would. He said, here,
give this to the captain.
Well, I didn't give it to the captain.
I said, why bring on trouble if I don't have to?
So anyway, the captain had a copy of it
that the shore patrol was sending through the mail.
And we was out at sea and he called me up to
the captain
and I threw it out on the desk there and he said,
you ever seen anything like that?
I read it and I said, yes sir, I sure did.
And he gave me a little dressing down
and then he said, you're quarantined to the ship.
We're two days out at sea.
When did that happen?
Well that would have happened probably as we
were leaving Pearl to go to Kowagulina
and Anahuita.
Oh okay, when you first went over there.
In late 1944 there? Yeah.
Well yeah.
Well, yeah. I went aboard ship in June. It
would have been in July, yeah.
Right, okay. Now, what would you consider your
most frightening time?
I think when the kamikazes attacked the fleets
in strong force and hit a USS Terrier Randolph.
right off of Port Bowe, and I think that, and I
have to say, I just have to say looking
back as far as personal danger, taking what
little food I could from my galley to the
sleeping quarters during a typhoon, the only
thing I had was a lifeline to hold on carrying
a pot of coffee, and a bag of oranges, that was
all, and water washing across the deck
side to side, and seeing the waves break over
the bridge, plowing into them, that bothered
me probably more than anything.
Okay. Now what typhoon was that?
Well that's the one, the big one, where the
ocean got brown, the National Artifacts Library.
I don't know whether that was ever named or not.
Okay, now was that the one that Halsey took
them into and they lost three destroyers?
That's the one.
all the other ships out of Buckner Bay there in
Okinawa and got some bad, he said, got
some bad communications on it, etc., etc.
That's the one. It was east of Japan.
Atencio Right. I lost three destroyers, I
think, in that. That was December 17th.
Schwerin Well, whenever.
Atencio Yeah, of 44 that I have. December 17 of 44.
of 44 that I have. December 17 of 44. Okay? Yeah.
This was our itinerary to you.
When I mailed that... Agreement?
Did you ever see many Kamikazes hit ships?
Well, let's see, the Randolph and the Ordinar
was a DE.
Yeah, I saw dozens or so of them, yeah.
And then I seen some that tried and missed.
And as you know the strategy, the strategy was,
we're going to bomb Japan onto their
knees, but we're not going to be able to do it
if we don't get rid of them kamikazes and
they were attacking our carriers and we
destroyers were trying to keep the torpedoes
from going
into the carriers so that's the reason we were
also on picket duty. I've seen as high
as fifteen, twenty destroyers surround a
carrier group that you couldn't see from one side
to the other except just ship, ship, ship.
Now taking fuel off of an aircraft carrier,
you're getting black oil with a hose and what
you think is calm water can be done
successfully, but if a ship passes in front of
you, which
happened to us once, the USS Houston, going the
opposite direction, send a wake down between
between us and the carrier, and it pushed us
apart, and the fueling hose was like a
rubber band.
It just stretched and broke.
And those are not healthy incidents.
How was the morale on your ship?
I think when I hear stories after it was all
over with, and you know you hear these stories
about these Vietnam, poor Vietnam veterans that
are having all these mental problems.
Our morale was good except for, I had a case
of, one boy came to me one time, one-on-one,
his name was Kennedy, I think he was out of
Tennessee, he had tears in his eyes, and he
And I talked to him, and I said, sure.
He says, I've got to get out of this Navy.
I said, well, what are you going to base your
argument on?
He said, I'm only 16.
I said, how did you get in?
He said, well, I told him I was 16.
I said, well, you don't have to get out the
same way you got in.
You lied.
So he did get out.
I said it can be done, nobody's ever done it.
My dad went to France when he was 16,
came back and finished his high school.
Successful man.
I think our morale was generally good.
We had a basketball team.
Whenever we got close to the territory,
we'd always engage a game of basketball.
I've played some games on LST.
Shoot them a little low, but it can be done.
Did you ever hear Tokyo Rose on the radio?
Oh yes, yeah, we heard her. Yep.
What did you think of her?
Well, we knew what she was, and I had the
benefit of serving with some guys that had
started out the war down in the Solomons.
And they had a pretty good callous to that, and
they informed us younger ones, you know,
Don't get alarmed about her, so.
Did you ever cross the-
She was popular.
Go ahead.
She was popular. Yeah.
I hear she played good music. Yeah.
Well, she knew more about our Navy than a lot
of other people did. Yeah.
She thought.
Did you ever cross the-
I think the suicide planes and the
typhoons-whenever you see water destroy or bend steel-
and expand the decks of a ship, you know you
got expansion plates in them, and not being
able to go out on deck at night and have a
cigarette because your cigarette light would
warn the enemy pilot if he saw it. I forget how
far they could see light like that, but
when you draw on a cigarette it'll get a
pilot's attention, they said, too many feet.
And we
We got our share of floating mines around the
island, and that was part of our duty.
We were proud of our ship, and it's got a lot
of good history.
Did you ever cross the equator?
Oh yes, yes I did.
What kind of ceremony did you have?
I guess maybe if I was ever disappointed in anything,
and it was some of my friends that were making
a book on me.
They'd come to the galley and ask for food
and I'd give it to them.
Well, those charges came up against me
at the hearing when we crossed the equator.
They read those charges off against me.
Or serving them a late supper, you know.
And we had a great big fat Mexican boy there
that had the pleasure of rubbing my nose in his belly.
I was wondering why they were collecting
garbage from the galley.
Well, it's an event and I have a great honor
for every man I served with.
When you got out, did you have any trouble
adjusting to civilian life?
No, there were problems at home, my mother had
passed away, my father had remarried and
I had two girls and sisters in high school.
I was busy.
One of the things I couldn't understand, I
don't know whether anybody's ever told you
or not, they had a 52-20 club where you got $20
a month for a year if you couldn't find work.
$20 a week, right.
$20 a week, well that was just beer money.
Well, I come home, I had a job when I left, of course.
I went down to Poole Hall where I thought I'd
see my friends.
That's a town of about 7,500. Yeah.
Down in Southern Illinois, and I went in there,
and the place was full.
I said, what in the world's going on? How come
you guys aren't working?
Well, you can't find work.
Ain't no jobs.
Well, I went out the next day and got me a job, and
and I let it go and got me another one the next
day, and
And finally, I moved away about 200 miles and
went to work where they built the surface mine.
Worked my way up.
I never got a college education.
I told them I wanted to go to school on the GI Bill.
They said, what do you want to do?
I said, I want to study hotel and restaurant management.
I still had commissary on my mind.
They said, well, we don't have any schools on
the list like that.
So I didn't go to school.
I couldn't afford it myself.
I said, ìWhat do you want to do?î He said, ìI
want to study hotel and restaurant Management.î
I still had commissary on my mind and he said,
ìWell, we donít have any schools on the list
like That.î So I didnít go to school, I
couldnít afford it myself, my folks, my dad
couldnít afford it.
So I just struck out and got with a company
that was milling some new coal mines and worked
my way all the way up to general manager over
in Kentucky, Illinois and Indiana.
I checked out at the age of 55 in 1980 and
started a consulting firm and worked the southwest
and the west in Gillette, Wyoming, and the
East, and then I got some jobs in Suriname,
South America for alcohol, and then I got an
assignment to South Africa for a British
coal firm and was putting in drag lines and
strip mines and when I started drawing my
Social Security I retired to help my grandson
through school down at San Marcos.
Now what ribbons and medals did you get?
Well, the ship was awarded thirteen stars, I
said for thirteen different engagements.
They say it's the most highly decorated
destroyer in the South Pacific.
I got a note here on the notebook, that's one
of the questions you asked on your- Right.
Victory Medal.
Good conduct. Mm-Hmm.
American area.
Asiatic Pacific with 13 engagement stars.
Philippine Liberation with one star.
Anything else you thought of from your time in
World War II?
Oh, not really. I wished I could have done more
earlier, but age didn't allow that.
You know, it was an education in itself.
Yeah, right.
And one of the things, I wonder why more boys
don't enlist today instead of going to college.
I guess, you know, I just come from a different generation.
Yeah, right.
But my father had a fishing camp down in
Mountain Home, Arkansas, on Bull Shoals Lake.
And we'd go down there when miner's vacation
was coming.
All of us boys were in the mines.
And we had children.
We'd take our children with us.
We'd fish for a week or ten days.
He had a flag up down at the end of his lane
that led off the highway back to his resort.
He made sure that on the 4th of July, he took
those kids down there and they said pledged
allegiance to his wife when they were 5, 6, 7,
8, 9 years old, his grandchildren.
And I thought to myself, what a great way to
teach, you know.
And us boys all gathered there at the same time
every year.
family done yeah have we covered everything you
had on your notes well
yeah plus I don't know I'll make sure that this
itinerary is in there okay
good yes and if you want a copy I have it out
of the history of that ship that
goes that might help you it's the history of
the Fahrenholder starts back
back in the day it was, uh, Mephis. And our
history was that, uh, we picked up 143 survivors
from the carrier USS Watt. And, uh, we was, uh,
got special, uh, commendation or, uh,
notice from MacArthur and then for the, uh,
activity at Rabaul and Cavienne. And that's
sold in here, and I will stick that in an
envelope, and here's the full story. We were
there, and there's pictures of it and stories
on it. I'm at home one night, and my wife's
at choir, and the phone rings about 8:00, and
this guy says, is this Gene Fission? And
This guy said, is this Gene Sissian?
And I thought, oh, let's be calm.
I said, yes.
I said, was you ever on the island of Sakushima?
And I said, yes.
And he said, do you remember the weather
station there?
And I thought, I got a picture of that.
I got it.
I found out who this is.
yeah, do you remember that 39 Ford sitting down
there at the base of it?" He said,
yeah, you are Gene Fithian, aren't you? So then
he identified himself. Now his name
is Fredonia, F-R-E-D-O-N-I-A, Fredonia Samples,
S-A-M-P-L-E-S. He's the author of this book,
Wings Over Sakushima. And he is a retired vice
president of Boeing Aircraft.
Now, in the early fifties, he was stationed on
Sacajima as a radio man, and he has now
written this book, Wings Over Sacajima, and
told the story, and it's a very, very interesting
In fact, if you're interested, I will send you
a, I have several of them, I'm helping
him a little bit, I'll send you an order blank
and you can do with it what you wish. Sure.
It's got a lot of history in it.
I get passed them out on airplanes when I fly
down to Dallas.
Sometimes different people.
And it's from Sedna before I got on it.
And they had a lot of history then.
For Sedna you say, okay. Yeah.
And then they called them back early from
Liberty down there.
So I'll put a copy of that in there.
And I want to thank you for, uh, what sparked
you to, to, uh,
I forgot the foreign host. You did what now?
I'm sorry.
I went on another, uh, destroyer, put it out of
commission down in Charleston.
USS Caperton.
And then I got transferred up to the Amphib
base in Little Creek, Virginia.
And then I went in the Navy hospital in Norfolk
to take care of the, uh, jungle rocks.
and I got discharged out of the receiving
station in Brooklyn.
And what date were you discharged?
Well, they had got it in here 26,
but the discharge date was supposed to have
been the 30th of October,
and that is the date I came home.
But they paid me till the November 20-something
because I had leave coming.
What year? Forty...
Forty-six, okay. Yeah.
And then I received another medal in 1947.
Oh, okay.
And that was the American Defense Medal.
That they came out with.
Yeah, okay.
I think everybody got there, and I'll take care
of it.
But I'll package that up for you, and probably
copy off, if you want, a copy of my discharge.
Now, April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt died.
Did you all hear about that?
Yes. Yes, we did.
And what was the reaction? People heard that.
It took him down a little.
A lot of us were too young, we never had voted.
Yeah, right, right.
It wasn't associated with politicians.
Right, okay.
He was the only president most of you had known. Pardon?
Exactly right.
Yeah, okay.
Now when Japan surrendered on August 15th,
did you have any kind of a celebration then?
Yes, yes.
When we first heard of it, we was anchored in
Buckner Bay there at Okinawa
and I can remember it's the same guy that got
in the Civil War argument with
the guy out of Macon, Georgia. Pulled his .45
out, he was on duty, he was a gunner's mate,
and emptied the chamber into the air. And the
old man called him up to the big cabin,
and I think he got a reprimand or something
like that, nothing, nothing that wasn't worth.
What was it like to go through the Panama Canal?
Well, it was very, very interesting.
We of course, we had to sit in the freshwater
lake to knock the barnacles off, and I got
a chance to go ashore, and I was cooked, of
course, and I bought a bunch of bananas, a whole-
A stalk of them?
Yeah, a whole stalk of bananas that were green.
I went back and I put a wire up between the two
smokestacks and hung that stalk of bananas
up there.
And I said, ìNow them ripen while weíll have
them for breakfast or weíll make something.î
I never saw one get ripe.
Somebody ate them all, huh?
They had them as they ripened, they had them marked.
Ready to go.
I guess, in order to take care of my son, I'll
have to make another book.
One for me, and then I've got to have one for
each one of them and a few more.
Very good. And I'll continue to follow up on it.
Have a good one. Goodbye.