7 ms·

World War II in the Pacific, narrated by my grandpa

74 points by jonmrodriguez 12y ago

ericcumbee 12y ago
Bookmarked to listen to later. listened to the first few minutes and it sounds great. I did my Eagle Scout Project to honor the Veterans at my church. It ended up being more or less a book with a 1 page general biography of each veteran (unit, rank, commendations, notable events etc). I really wanted to do some more in depth personal interviews and recorded narratives with each veteran but they did not really care to talk much about it. The ones that did, was off the record. I had quite a few wonderful conversations that I wish I could have captured doing it. The sad thing is most of those guys are not around any more.
- dba7dba 12y ago
  Glad to see someone who is interested in history and got to do meaningful project related to history. Another repository of oral history that may be worth checking out is http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/oral_histories_video.asp http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/oral_histories_vide... Unfortunately the videos are now offline but you can still access some if you contact them. There were some wonderful interviews years ago that I was able to view.
jonmrodriguez 12y ago
My grandpa, Richard Williams, lived next door to me when I was a kid, and he helped raise me like a parent. He taught me carpentry, plumbing, and electricity, and through countless days together in his workshop he was the one who got me excited about hardware engineering. I hope to live as he did: to travel every part of the world; to meet and befriend people of all cultures; to be easygoing, and full of childlike wonder; to be a friend even to former enemies; to be driven and hardworking to the point of exhaustion; to cheat death repeatedly; and to make the absolute most of our incredible time on this wonderful world. :)
- phil21 12y ago
  I love your hopes :) Your Grandpa sounds like a pretty awesome dude! Bookmarked for later listening, but heard he's a fellow Minneapolis native. Woo.
catmanjan 12y ago
Interesting to listen to, wish there was more. Is the hissing in the background an oxygen machine?
- jonmrodriguez 12y ago
  There is more! A full hour! :-D At some point I may post the rest, I just got the recordings back from a data recovery shop; they were on a hard drive that crashed 4 years ago with no backup... Talk about lucky The hissing is just the noise from a cassette tape recorder, I recorded this 7 years ago before I had a smartphone. My grandpa was healthy right up to the bitter end!
rdtsc 12y ago
My grandpa didn't talk much about the war. I'll never know what he went through. He went all the way to Berlin with the Soviet Army, that's the only thing I know. The other one was sent to China, Canton (not sure how accurate this is, as that is in the South, not North or West, as I would have imagined). It was to "help fight off the Japanese". He also never wanted to talk about the war.
- dba7dba 12y ago
  It seems many people who experienced the full brunt of war (like having killed people up close or witness close friends get knocked out again and again) don't even want to remember or talk about it because the it's just too painful.
  - jonmrodriguez 12y ago
    Most likely there was a huge difference in that regard in navy vs army...
    - jonmrodriguez 12y ago
      I'm guessing that the reason this was downvoted was that I communicated poorly. Here is a better wording of what I was trying to say: In the Navy you sink a ship from far away. It's more abstract; you don't see the enemy up close. In the Army you fight battles face to face with the enemy, and it must be correspondingly more horrible. So I would guess that Navy people (like my grandpa) had a generally more positive memory of the war than Army people.
      - arethuza 12y ago
        I don't know - naval warfare in WW2 could be pretty grim. I can recommend Nicholas Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" on his wartime naval experiences - I happened to buy this without knowing much about the book in Heathrow before a flight over the North Atlantic to the US. One of the relatively small number of books that has moved me to tears. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat He also wrote the novel "The Cruel Sea" which was made into one of the best naval war movies of WW2.
saryant 12y ago
I'm fortunate to have my grandfather's writings of his time in World War II: http://86thchemical.us/Site/Bills_Memories.html http://86thchemical.us/Site/Bills_Memories.html Back in college I spent a semester in France and during the weekends I tried to partially retrace his steps during the war. I went to Normandy and photographed the graves of the seven men from his unit buried there and I visited the bridge over the Rhine he helped capture—my family has the Nazi flag that flew over the Bridge at Remagen, which he removed and replaced with the American flag. He never talked much about his time in the war but he did write it down.
dba7dba 12y ago
Around late 1990s and early 2000s, right when the internet started getting into people's homes with Mozilla web browser and IE, I noticed many memoirs that were put up by the old veterans themselves. I spent much time reading through them. Sadly many of those memoirs are not around anymore as their accounts were shutdown or the web hosting company itself went out of business. I fear much history is being lost in the transition from pen/paper era to digital era.
- ekianjo 12y ago
  > Sadly many of those memoirs are not around anymore as their accounts were shutdown or the web hosting company itself went out of business. How about the wayback machine ? Did it save anything ?
- saryant 12y ago
  That's why I scraped my grandfather's unit's memoirs, just in case their account ever goes dead and someone else needs to host it.
dkroy 12y ago
I have always wanted to record an interview my grandpa on his military experience, and I did. I was not smart and didn't record the interview. I may interview him again, but just record the whole interview if he is willing to again... I am also a fellow Minnesotan, not sure why, but I felt a little pride there.
- jonmrodriguez 12y ago
  I would highly encourage you to record another interview!
- daeken 12y ago
  Do it. Just do it. If you don't, you'll regret it when you can't anymore. All of my grandparents have passed away, and I missed out on so many stories; one of my biggest regrets in life.
brudgers 12y ago
E. B. Sledge's autobiography, With the Old Breed describes his combat experiences as a Marine in the Pacific and is worth reading if your interested in that history. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891419195/ref=redir_mdp_mobile http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891419195/ref=redir_mdp_mobil... My grandfather served in the 504 PIR. He never talked with me about his experiences at great length, but the two vignettes he related that stick with are both about his being terrified, the one I remember from my teens was: They were holed up in a house in the Ardennes. It was night and he had to urinate so badly that he took the risk of stepping outside [historically. the 504th was trucked in from reserve to stop Panzer Group Piper and stem the rout]. As he relieved himself, he looked up and for a moment mistook the snow covered saplings for enemy soldiers. The second, is from my early twenties. Blunt and simple: being in a trench in Italy while the Germans dropped antipersonel bombs on him was more 'unpleasant" than I could imagine. That was true. He had a successful professional career after the war. but fought depression up until his death. I'm both sad that I miss him, and glad that I do.
GuiA 12y ago
How wonderful. Thanks for sharing this. My grandpa was in the French resistance. He left the family farm at 17 to join the maquis (French wilderness) where he lived for 2 years, trying to hamper the German forces (eg. blowing up trains). He then participated to the liberation of Royan, and received the croix de guerre. It blows my mind to think about what he must have felt like- when I was 17, I was reading computer magazines in my bedroom. My cousin and I wanted to record him talking about his life, and then he died unexpectedly. There's always a "next time" until there isn't.
davidw 12y ago
It'd be awesome if you could get a transcript done, although I realize they can be kind of expensive.
Swizec 12y ago
My great grandmother spent some time in a work camp. I don't know which one, I don't know how long, all I know is that she gave birth to one of my dad's aunts inside the camp. According to her it "wasn't that bad". Apparently the guards would even play and joke around with the baby. Her feelings about the war might be colored by having found the family farm burned down to the ground by the partisans (communist version) upon her return. Such a shame she died before I was old enough to truly appreciate having a sit down with her and listening to the experience she'd have to share. All I know are scattered bits and pieces, mostly from second-hand retellings. Unfortunately as a kid I never liked talking to her - her voice was feeble, she had a thick accent and local dialect, both of which made her very difficult to understand and kind of scary to talk to.
kayoone 12y ago
This makes me really sad as my grandpa passed away last year and i just realized i could have saved his life's story for everyone that cares. Good stuff, we should all do something like this, maybe even build a database to share these kind of live stories ?
tragomaskhalos 12y ago
The story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, mentioned in the narrative, is an extraordinary and tragic one; at that stage of the war the US Navy's Pacific operation was so vast that the ship's disappearance essentially fell through the cracks of the bureaucracy and was not noticed for several critical days. "In Harm's Way" gives a compelling account of the sinking and the subsequent ordeal of the survivors.
tragomaskhalos 12y ago
Reading the other comments reminds us that in general the men who fought in the war were reluctant to talk about it, which is why first-hand testimony like this is so valuable for future generations. Of course, many of them were horribly traumatised by their experiences, which goes a long way to explaining their reticence. My stepdad, for example, was in a position that was overrun by a German attack - he shot a fellow who fell dead on top of him with his hand over my stepdad's face. My stepdad then had to "play possum" until a counterattack in turn evicted the Germans. For the rest of his life he would wake up terrified and in a cold sweat from the recurring nightmare of that dead hand on his face.
bane 12y ago
WWII was unbelievably vast. If you look at the numbers, men, equipment, fronts, battles...all with logistics, supplies, planning and other administrivia handled by hand before computers and modern communication systems. It boggles the mind. I mean, they didn't even really have good photocopiers When I was in high school, I had the honor of being chosen as a "musical exchange student" along with a dozen other musicians from local schools to spend a summer in and around Yekaterinburg. While there, we formed a small chamber ensemble and played music for various local groups, including several WWII veteran retirement homes (Great Patriotic War Vets). After our performance, many of the very old vets came up and were beyond warm in thanking us for coming and playing for them. A few mentioned remembering the Soviet-American alliance and lamented our animosity since then, they hoped our countries could be friends and we'd have a long future together. Curious, we visited various GPW memorials and museums and such. It was a pretty intense education. It was the first time I had ever really heard a non-American perspective on the war and the scale of the Soviet involvement, something I had been completely ignorant of before that point, kind of blew my mind. It really set in my mind the importance of not accepting the education I was fed and to expand my horizons to try and look at things from different angles. It gave me the travel bug and I try and go out of the country at least once a year since then.
- chiph 12y ago
  As proud as I am of America's part in winning the war, and my father's contribution, it really pales in comparison with what the Soviets went through. They were under supplied, and their leadership was decimated and hampered by demands of political reliability. What they had going for them was huge numbers of artillery pieces, and the T-34 tank. Watch "Enemy at the Gates" sometime, especially the first part.
- hga 12y ago
  The USSR, at the official level, was never free of animosity towards us. Just a few things from what I'm studying right now, plus one big one: They didn't shut down the Comintern, their official organization for subverting and destroying us, until 2 years minus about 5 weeks after Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion), while we (the US) started supplying them with equipment on credit ~3 months after (for gold and minerals before, while the first arrangement was hammered out). They refused to supply us with meteorological info, which seriously hindered our campaign against Japan. They seized all the B-29s that were forced to land on their territory (was later copied as the Tupolev Tu-4); while this was consistent with their need to maintain their neutrality towards Japan after some engagements in Manchuria (where they owned the Japanese, but they really needed those troops; Georgy Zhukov earned his spurs and vital experience there), holding the crews was not, I think. They were "allowed to escape into American-occupied Iran" per Wikipedia and e.g. Tillman's Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (http://www.amazon.com/Whirlwind-The-Against-Japan-1942-1945/dp/1416584412/ http://www.amazon.com/Whirlwind-The-Against-Japan-1942-1945/...). This of course says absolutely nothing about how the two peoples felt about each other, and our mutual gratitude for what the other did in terminating Nazi Germany with extreme prejudice. Was your visit during the Cold War?

74 points by jonmrodriguez 12y ago

Bookmarked to listen to later. listened to the first few minutes and it sounds great. I did my Eagle Scout Project to honor the Veterans at my church. It ended up being more or less a book with a 1 page general biography of each veteran (unit, rank, commendations, notable events etc). I really wanted to do some more in depth personal interviews and recorded narratives with each veteran but they did not really care to talk much about it. The ones that did, was off the record. I had quite a few wonderful conversations that I wish I could have captured doing it. The sad thing is most of those guys are not around any more.

dba7dba 12y ago
Glad to see someone who is interested in history and got to do meaningful project related to history. Another repository of oral history that may be worth checking out is http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/oral_histories_video.asp http://www.goforbroke.org/oral_histories/oral_histories_vide... Unfortunately the videos are now offline but you can still access some if you contact them. There were some wonderful interviews years ago that I was able to view.

jonmrodriguez 12y ago

My grandpa, Richard Williams, lived next door to me when I was a kid, and he helped raise me like a parent. He taught me carpentry, plumbing, and electricity, and through countless days together in his workshop he was the one who got me excited about hardware engineering. I hope to live as he did: to travel every part of the world; to meet and befriend people of all cultures; to be easygoing, and full of childlike wonder; to be a friend even to former enemies; to be driven and hardworking to the point of exhaustion; to cheat death repeatedly; and to make the absolute most of our incredible time on this wonderful world. :)

phil21 12y ago
I love your hopes :) Your Grandpa sounds like a pretty awesome dude! Bookmarked for later listening, but heard he's a fellow Minneapolis native. Woo.

catmanjan 12y ago

Interesting to listen to, wish there was more. Is the hissing in the background an oxygen machine?

jonmrodriguez 12y ago
There is more! A full hour! :-D At some point I may post the rest, I just got the recordings back from a data recovery shop; they were on a hard drive that crashed 4 years ago with no backup... Talk about lucky The hissing is just the noise from a cassette tape recorder, I recorded this 7 years ago before I had a smartphone. My grandpa was healthy right up to the bitter end!

rdtsc 12y ago

My grandpa didn't talk much about the war. I'll never know what he went through. He went all the way to Berlin with the Soviet Army, that's the only thing I know. The other one was sent to China, Canton (not sure how accurate this is, as that is in the South, not North or West, as I would have imagined). It was to "help fight off the Japanese". He also never wanted to talk about the war.

dba7dba 12y ago
It seems many people who experienced the full brunt of war (like having killed people up close or witness close friends get knocked out again and again) don't even want to remember or talk about it because the it's just too painful.
- jonmrodriguez 12y ago
  Most likely there was a huge difference in that regard in navy vs army...
  - jonmrodriguez 12y ago
    I'm guessing that the reason this was downvoted was that I communicated poorly. Here is a better wording of what I was trying to say: In the Navy you sink a ship from far away. It's more abstract; you don't see the enemy up close. In the Army you fight battles face to face with the enemy, and it must be correspondingly more horrible. So I would guess that Navy people (like my grandpa) had a generally more positive memory of the war than Army people.
    - arethuza 12y ago
      I don't know - naval warfare in WW2 could be pretty grim. I can recommend Nicholas Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" on his wartime naval experiences - I happened to buy this without knowing much about the book in Heathrow before a flight over the North Atlantic to the US. One of the relatively small number of books that has moved me to tears. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Monsarrat He also wrote the novel "The Cruel Sea" which was made into one of the best naval war movies of WW2.

saryant 12y ago

I'm fortunate to have my grandfather's writings of his time in World War II: http://86thchemical.us/Site/Bills_Memories.html http://86thchemical.us/Site/Bills_Memories.html Back in college I spent a semester in France and during the weekends I tried to partially retrace his steps during the war. I went to Normandy and photographed the graves of the seven men from his unit buried there and I visited the bridge over the Rhine he helped capture—my family has the Nazi flag that flew over the Bridge at Remagen, which he removed and replaced with the American flag. He never talked much about his time in the war but he did write it down.

dba7dba 12y ago

Around late 1990s and early 2000s, right when the internet started getting into people's homes with Mozilla web browser and IE, I noticed many memoirs that were put up by the old veterans themselves. I spent much time reading through them. Sadly many of those memoirs are not around anymore as their accounts were shutdown or the web hosting company itself went out of business. I fear much history is being lost in the transition from pen/paper era to digital era.

ekianjo 12y ago
> Sadly many of those memoirs are not around anymore as their accounts were shutdown or the web hosting company itself went out of business. How about the wayback machine ? Did it save anything ?
saryant 12y ago
That's why I scraped my grandfather's unit's memoirs, just in case their account ever goes dead and someone else needs to host it.

dkroy 12y ago

I have always wanted to record an interview my grandpa on his military experience, and I did. I was not smart and didn't record the interview. I may interview him again, but just record the whole interview if he is willing to again... I am also a fellow Minnesotan, not sure why, but I felt a little pride there.

jonmrodriguez 12y ago
I would highly encourage you to record another interview!
daeken 12y ago
Do it. Just do it. If you don't, you'll regret it when you can't anymore. All of my grandparents have passed away, and I missed out on so many stories; one of my biggest regrets in life.

brudgers 12y ago

E. B. Sledge's autobiography, With the Old Breed describes his combat experiences as a Marine in the Pacific and is worth reading if your interested in that history. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891419195/ref=redir_mdp_mobile http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0891419195/ref=redir_mdp_mobil... My grandfather served in the 504 PIR. He never talked with me about his experiences at great length, but the two vignettes he related that stick with are both about his being terrified, the one I remember from my teens was: They were holed up in a house in the Ardennes. It was night and he had to urinate so badly that he took the risk of stepping outside [historically. the 504th was trucked in from reserve to stop Panzer Group Piper and stem the rout]. As he relieved himself, he looked up and for a moment mistook the snow covered saplings for enemy soldiers. The second, is from my early twenties. Blunt and simple: being in a trench in Italy while the Germans dropped antipersonel bombs on him was more 'unpleasant" than I could imagine. That was true. He had a successful professional career after the war. but fought depression up until his death. I'm both sad that I miss him, and glad that I do.

GuiA 12y ago

How wonderful. Thanks for sharing this. My grandpa was in the French resistance. He left the family farm at 17 to join the maquis (French wilderness) where he lived for 2 years, trying to hamper the German forces (eg. blowing up trains). He then participated to the liberation of Royan, and received the croix de guerre. It blows my mind to think about what he must have felt like- when I was 17, I was reading computer magazines in my bedroom. My cousin and I wanted to record him talking about his life, and then he died unexpectedly. There's always a "next time" until there isn't.

davidw 12y ago

It'd be awesome if you could get a transcript done, although I realize they can be kind of expensive.

Swizec 12y ago

My great grandmother spent some time in a work camp. I don't know which one, I don't know how long, all I know is that she gave birth to one of my dad's aunts inside the camp. According to her it "wasn't that bad". Apparently the guards would even play and joke around with the baby. Her feelings about the war might be colored by having found the family farm burned down to the ground by the partisans (communist version) upon her return. Such a shame she died before I was old enough to truly appreciate having a sit down with her and listening to the experience she'd have to share. All I know are scattered bits and pieces, mostly from second-hand retellings. Unfortunately as a kid I never liked talking to her - her voice was feeble, she had a thick accent and local dialect, both of which made her very difficult to understand and kind of scary to talk to.

kayoone 12y ago

This makes me really sad as my grandpa passed away last year and i just realized i could have saved his life's story for everyone that cares. Good stuff, we should all do something like this, maybe even build a database to share these kind of live stories ?

tragomaskhalos 12y ago

The story of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, mentioned in the narrative, is an extraordinary and tragic one; at that stage of the war the US Navy's Pacific operation was so vast that the ship's disappearance essentially fell through the cracks of the bureaucracy and was not noticed for several critical days. "In Harm's Way" gives a compelling account of the sinking and the subsequent ordeal of the survivors.

tragomaskhalos 12y ago

Reading the other comments reminds us that in general the men who fought in the war were reluctant to talk about it, which is why first-hand testimony like this is so valuable for future generations. Of course, many of them were horribly traumatised by their experiences, which goes a long way to explaining their reticence. My stepdad, for example, was in a position that was overrun by a German attack - he shot a fellow who fell dead on top of him with his hand over my stepdad's face. My stepdad then had to "play possum" until a counterattack in turn evicted the Germans. For the rest of his life he would wake up terrified and in a cold sweat from the recurring nightmare of that dead hand on his face.

bane 12y ago

WWII was unbelievably vast. If you look at the numbers, men, equipment, fronts, battles...all with logistics, supplies, planning and other administrivia handled by hand before computers and modern communication systems. It boggles the mind. I mean, they didn't even really have good photocopiers When I was in high school, I had the honor of being chosen as a "musical exchange student" along with a dozen other musicians from local schools to spend a summer in and around Yekaterinburg. While there, we formed a small chamber ensemble and played music for various local groups, including several WWII veteran retirement homes (Great Patriotic War Vets). After our performance, many of the very old vets came up and were beyond warm in thanking us for coming and playing for them. A few mentioned remembering the Soviet-American alliance and lamented our animosity since then, they hoped our countries could be friends and we'd have a long future together. Curious, we visited various GPW memorials and museums and such. It was a pretty intense education. It was the first time I had ever really heard a non-American perspective on the war and the scale of the Soviet involvement, something I had been completely ignorant of before that point, kind of blew my mind. It really set in my mind the importance of not accepting the education I was fed and to expand my horizons to try and look at things from different angles. It gave me the travel bug and I try and go out of the country at least once a year since then.

chiph 12y ago
As proud as I am of America's part in winning the war, and my father's contribution, it really pales in comparison with what the Soviets went through. They were under supplied, and their leadership was decimated and hampered by demands of political reliability. What they had going for them was huge numbers of artillery pieces, and the T-34 tank. Watch "Enemy at the Gates" sometime, especially the first part.
hga 12y ago
The USSR, at the official level, was never free of animosity towards us. Just a few things from what I'm studying right now, plus one big one: They didn't shut down the Comintern, their official organization for subverting and destroying us, until 2 years minus about 5 weeks after Operation Barbarossa (the Nazi invasion), while we (the US) started supplying them with equipment on credit ~3 months after (for gold and minerals before, while the first arrangement was hammered out). They refused to supply us with meteorological info, which seriously hindered our campaign against Japan. They seized all the B-29s that were forced to land on their territory (was later copied as the Tupolev Tu-4); while this was consistent with their need to maintain their neutrality towards Japan after some engagements in Manchuria (where they owned the Japanese, but they really needed those troops; Georgy Zhukov earned his spurs and vital experience there), holding the crews was not, I think. They were "allowed to escape into American-occupied Iran" per Wikipedia and e.g. Tillman's Whirlwind: The Air War Against Japan, 1942-1945 (http://www.amazon.com/Whirlwind-The-Against-Japan-1942-1945/dp/1416584412/ http://www.amazon.com/Whirlwind-The-Against-Japan-1942-1945/...). This of course says absolutely nothing about how the two peoples felt about each other, and our mutual gratitude for what the other did in terminating Nazi Germany with extreme prejudice. Was your visit during the Cold War?