Ila Cole, Navy WAVE, San Francisco
I was a Specialist V, 2nd Class, Transport Airman, stationed in San Francisco in 1945. Essentially, I was an airline stewardess. We flew C-54 Skymasters (except in the Navy, we called them R-5Ds) between Moffett Field, California and Honolulu. Sometimes, we flew the Martin Mars aircraft, which was a flying boat. There were only four of them in existence. They would take off from the water and land in the water.
It was great duty. We flew cargo and people. Sometimes, it was a hospital flight with patients on litters. Occasionally, we cooked meals for the crew in a little galley.
On August 14, 1945, I was in San Francisco. It was wild. Everybody was hugging and kissing each other in celebration, but then it got too rough, and we hid out in a theater to escape what became a riot.
Looking back, I’m so proud of my service and the small part I played. I’ve always felt attached to others who have served.
Editor’s note: The “Peace Riot” on V-J Day in San Francisco was the largest eruption of violence in the city’s history. 13 people were killed and over 1,000 injured in the mayhem.
George Priatko, Army,25th Infantry Division, Philippines
Hostilities officially ended the third week of August 1945 but where I was on Luzon, the fighting continued until the first week of November. Believe it or not. There were hundreds of Japanese soldiers still out in the hills and out of radio contact. They never got the message of the surrender, or if they did, they didn’t believe it.
So, we kept fighting up on the mountains near Baguio on Luzon. I didn’t come out of combat until two-and-a-half months after V-J Day. And I came down with frozen feet. Frostbite in the Philippines? Yes, that happened in the cold thin air of Baguio. Few know about that.
Al Armendariz, Army, Burma
I was a medic on the Burma Road, which ran from India through Burma into China, and was used to supply Chinese Nationalists fighting the Japanese. I took care of people who got hurt on the road. There were always wrecks, as it was a dangerous road.
On August 14, 1945, I was in our little tent by the road with two other guys. We lived in the mountain jungle in China. Very remote. I heard close gunfire: POP! POP! POP!
The Chinese camp a half-mile away was celebrating the end of the war and firing in our direction! They were shooting at us. So, we got our rifles and shot back, not to hurt them but to let them know we were here. I ran back to a command post to report the incident, and that’s when they told me the war was over. That’s one hell of a way to celebrate.
Not long after, stuff started to go missing, mostly food, but sometimes clothing. It was the Chinese. They were starving. They would come out at night, one or two of them, and take whatever they could.
One night, I was awakened by a noise and saw a knife cutting through my tent. The perpetrator must have heard me stir because he left. But the next morning, I saw the hole where someone had tried to cut their way in.
China had just abandoned these soldiers in the mountains. There was no re-supply for them. I don’t know how or if they ever got home.
George Kolsun, Army, 20th Armored Division, Radio Operator, Germany
On May 5, 1945, we were in southern Germany, and I was on the radio duty at 2 o’clock in the morning down in Bavaria near Berchtesgaden.
I received an urgent high-priority message. They repeated each word twice. The message said: “As of May 6th, 1945, all further action against German Army Group H will cease.”
The war was over. I gave our runner the message, and he ran it back to the command post. You could see all the lights go on and all the beer and liquor they had squirreled away brought out. Loud celebrations erupted all around. That was the end of World War in Europe.
A month later, they shipped us to Camp Lucky Strike in France. And then they sent us back to Camp Cook, California, to train for the invasion of Japan. I was apprehensive.
On August 6, Colonel Paul Tibbets dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, and that ended the war for good. There was a big celebration.
Years later, my son-in-law took me to a dinner at the New England Air Museum where Tibbetts was speaking. I got to meet him. I said, “General, I’m pleased to meet you. I want to thank you for saving my life because I was fortunate enough to make it through Europe, but I would have never made it through the invasion of Japan.”
“Young man,” he said (he wasn’t that much older than me), “many men who were training on the coast of California for the invasion have said the same thing to me over the years.”
Frank Steinle, Army, 726th Amphibian Tractor Battalion, Okinawa
On V-J Day, I was on Okinawa, the far northern tip of the island chain on Ie Shima, only 150 miles from Japan’s home islands. I had just been through the Battle of Okinawa, from the landing to the bitter end. Before that, it was Peleliu. On Ie Shima, we got all new equipment. New amtracs, new armament, new weapons, everything. It was all new for the final invasion of Japan.
Being on the northern tip of the island so close to Japan, we had the experience every night of Navy fighters buzzing over us through the slot, as we called it, returning from missions. And the B-29s would do the same thing, those bastards. They’d purposely swoop down real low over our bivouac area about chow time. Food, sandwiches, trays would go flying, along with the beach sand.
Every night, we had a blackout so the Japanese couldn’t spot us from the air. The night we heard the Japanese had surrendered, we turned on all the lights and had a big party. Such jubilation! We were going to live. We’d been spared the final invasion.
We were all having a good time, and some people fired weapons in the air. Then we heard planes coming down the slot. We figured that they were our Navy friends paying us a visit.
Instead, they were kamikazes, three of them. One crashed in the ocean. Another went down away from us. But the third dove into our mess hall, and killed five guys.
One of those killed was a friend of mine. Andy Barstow from Cleveland, Ohio. Killed the last day of the war. Could he have been the last American killed in World War II?
I can tell you, we didn’t want to go home after that happened. We wanted to invade Japan and exact revenge. “Let’s go get ‘em,” we all said.
It took a while for our euphoria to return. Even the officers weren’t immune. We had a hell of a nice First Lieutenant, David M. George from North Carolina. Wonderful guy. Crazier than hell, but wonderful. Somebody found a whole case of sake in one of the Okinawa caves, and he gave every tractor crew a bottle. We all enjoyed ourselves with the sake. The next morning, we were ordered to move out, but we were too wrecked. Lt. George got chewed out for that.
I recall leaving Okinawa for home on a damn old bucket of bolts. Oh, Christ, what a trip that was. We went straight from Okinawa to Seattle.
I recall the morning that we first saw the good old USA on the horizon. I can’t put into words what that was like. There were people on shore waving and yelling. We were cheering, some crying.
No one was supposed to know when we were arriving, but somehow all of Seattle had figured it out and were there to greet us. Preparations were being made to disembark in an orderly fashion, and guys were jumping over the sides and scrambling on to the dock. It was out of control.
In the early evening, we were assembled in a big amphitheater. A general strode on stage, and he was resoundingly booed. “All right, all right, settle down, boys,” he said, “I just want to welcome you home.” Then, he awarded us all with passes for town that night.
What a night that was.
I called my folks in Meadville, Pennsylvania, and told them I’d be home soon.
I took a train to Camp Atterbury, Indiana, where I was discharged, and then boarded a train heading east. I made up my mind that I was going to behave myself. I wanted to return home sober, and we’d been warned that we were under Army jurisdiction for 48 hours after discharge.
Everything was going fine. I sat across the aisle from a couple of Navy nurses.
Then, here comes this old wizened sergeant up the aisle with a fifth of whiskey in his hand. He’s sort of wobbling along, and he stops and looks at me.
“Hey, Sergeant,” he says, “how about you and I finishing Goldilocks here?”
“Look, Sarge,” I said, “I’m going home sober. It’s been too long.”
“Just one drink,” he pleaded. “For the good old days.”
By the time we got to Cleveland, I could barely walk. Someone helped me off the train and put me on another to Erie. I have very little memory of it.
By the time I got to Erie at 1 o’clock in the morning on February 1–my birthday– I was sober enough to enter the station on my own. Outside was a howling snowstorm. The only thing in sight was a single taxi.
I approached it with my duffel slung over my shoulder.
“How about taking me 40 miles to Meadville?” I asked.
“Sorry, soldier, I can’t. I’ve got strict orders not to leave town.”
“I’ll tell you what,” I said, “I’ll give you everything I’ve got in my pocket.” I handed him $20. That’s about $350 in today’s money.
“Ah, hell, come on, get in.”
We drove through the snowstorm all the way to my front door, where I grew up and my parents lived.
Then, the taxi driver asked, “Do you mind if I sit here for a few minutes? I’ve never watched a serviceman coming home.”
I rang the doorbell, and my mother opened it with a face full of joy.
There were tears and hugs. My dad and I sat down at the kitchen table and had a drink. He was so happy. The last time I’d seen him was two years earlier. I said goodbye to him then at the bus station on my way to Fort Ord and overseas.
It was the one and only time I ever saw him cry.
Roland Glenn, Army, 7th Infantry Division, Okinawa
Okinawa was a bloodbath, as ugly as I thought war could ever get. I was an infantry Company Commander in the 7th Infantry Division. When the battle for Okinawa ended, our unit was moved to a rear area to prepare for the invasion of Japan.
I got briefed on the invasion plans. The 7th Division was to be in the first wave of attack on the Tokyo Plain. Luck and good training had saved us so far. But we all knew it probably wouldn’t see us through what was to come next. We wrote home with the sense the letters might be our last.
The Army put us on a strenuous training regimen, perhaps to keep our worried minds occupied and send us to sleep exhausted each night.
In the evenings, I sat around with a buddy drinking some Japanese beer someone had found in a cave. One night in August, guns began going off and flares firing. I grabbed my helmet and rifle and ran into the night, which was lit up like high noon. I thought maybe the Japanese had attacked with a parachute battalion.
Then, an announcement came on a loudspeaker. One big bomb had killed most of the city of Hiroshima. We had no idea where Hiroshima was or what the announcement meant. Our colonel then took the microphone and explained that this would most likely mean the end of the war.
Cheers went up in every quarter, and the drinking lasted until dawn. Several GIs were killed and wounded in the celebration, struck by stray bullets. It got so bad that I took refuge in a foxhole and slept it off there.
Our orders changed. We were now preparing to leave Okinawa to accept the Japanese surrender in Korea.
Before we left, I stopped by the cemetery containing the bodies of some of my men, some of them friends. I said a final goodbye amidst what seemed like a sea of grave markers.
On the ship to Korea, my company was happy, except for the six new replacements, kids who had just shipped overseas and were angry they’d missed out on combat.
“I want to get me a Jap whenever I get where we’re going,” one said. “What do you think I came all this distance for?”
“Soldier,” I told him sternly, “the war is over.”
The words seemed impossible to believe.
