Interview with Mr. Alex Rearick
[b. 1/4/1925]
Recorded on 10/16 /2006
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Miranda Voege: Today is October 16, 2006, and I am Miranda Voege and I am interviewing Alex Rearick at Park Tudor School, Indianapolis IN. Mr. Rearick is an acquaintance of mine. Mr. Rearick is eighty years old and was born January 4, 1925. Mr. Rearick served in World War II and held the following rank: Sergeant. [Mrs. Lerch is also at interview.]
MV: So, what branch of service were you involved with?
AR: Well this was called the Army Air Force at the time -Army Air Corps. They’ve separated since. Oh, my motivation for doing that was to - I was tired of the dictatorships trying to take over the world and so I wanted to do my share in stopping the, … them.
MV: So were you drafted or did you enlist?
AR: No, I knew I’d be drafted as soon as I graduated from high school so I left high school, (I had a half a year to go), I left high school and enlisted in the Air Corps because you had to exercise your options when you have the chance. Once you were drafted they just do whatever they want with ya.
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MV: Where were you living at the time of enlistment?
AR: I was living at Winamac, Indiana; it’s a little town about ninety miles north of here.
MV: What was your highest rank?
AR: I was 3 Star Staff Sergeant.
MV: Where did you serve for most of the war?
AR: Basically, we had about a year of training before we went over seas and once we got overseas I served on the island of Tinian.
MV: Did you enlist with anyone, friends, family etc.?
AR: No, no.
MV: Where were you trained and what kind of training did you receive?
AR: Went through basic training at Greensboro, North Carolina. Went to gunnery school at Laredo, Texas, and that’s where they broke my eardrum. So the doctor examined me and he was going to wash me out. Well I knew that that’d be the end of my career, so I had to plead and beg with him and he said, “Well it’ll probably heal, you’re young.” Well when the final physical came I just hid in the restroom and I’d peek out the door and finally all the doctors decided well this group has gone through we’ll go out and take a smoke. So I came out, made a check mark by my name and handed it to the clerk on the way out, and no one ever knew the difference.
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MV: Where was your first mission?
AR: We flew to, -where was it? Truk that was the Gibraltar of the Pacific for the Japanese.
MV: Can you describe this mission?
AR: Well, the first mission is they- they assign you an easy target to break you in. But everybody was nervous as a cat. And ah, well this is it you know, your life is on the line and then you’re freaking out, but you can’t let the rest of the crew know that. So you put on a big brave face, you know, and go through your activities.
MV: So how did you feel about this mission?
AR: Oh, I was nervous, but well I’d brought it on myself because I cheated at gunnery school to get over seas with the bomb group. So it was my own fault.
MV: So why did you decide to become a radar operator?
AR: Oh, the army just more or less assigned you to different duties, and I was trained to be an aerial gunner but they had too many and so they put about six or eight of us into radar.
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MV: Could you describe your job as a radar operator?
AR: Well, basically what the radar does, you can identify islands. And you can identify landmasses and you can identify cities and Japan was like England it was overcast a lot of times, well you can’t haul your bombs fifteen hundred miles and not drop ‘em. And radar enabled you to drop the bombs through the clouds. You didn’t even have to see the target except on the radar. And the navigator would look at the radar, his radar up front, and he’d tell the bombardier to put the coordinates in the bombsite, and the bombardier would put all the coordinates to the bombsite. You know we’re twenty miles away and were fifteen miles away, and we’re ten miles away, and so the bombardier they would kill the drift and everything and get everything set in the bombsite, and just drop the bomb through the clouds and then we’d haul off for Tinian again.
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MV: So, what was it like to be a radar operator?
AR: Oh, it was interesting; we didn’t get very good training. Uh, the training was really terrible and the set I had on my first plane wouldn’t work at all. It just absolutely wouldn’t work. Finally they got enough radar mechanics trained that they could go in and fix the sets. They never trained me to do any maintenance they just trained me to operate the thing, turn it on you know, and adjust it.
MV: So how often or long were you on duty as a radar operator?
AR: Well, these missions would last, let me see, sixteen, eighteen hours. It takes a long while to fly clear to Japan and back to Tinian again.
MV: Did you make any new friends of keep in touch with old ones?
AR: Oh, yeah, yeah my, the, the crew was really close and we were all real friendly with each other.
MV: How did you keep in touch with your family and friends?
AR: Oh, I wrote letters.
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MV: What was your most memorable experience?
AR: Well we almost got shot down over Kawasaki one night. That was pretty memorable. When you hear the stuff hitting the plane, it sounds like someone’s throwing bricks at you, but it’s big pieces of artillery shell is what’s hitting the plane. I think we ended up with fifty holes in the plane. And we brought it back and the chief mechanic told the pilot you know these planes cost six hundred thousand a piece, you oughta take better care of it.
MV: So when you were in camp, what was it like?
AR: In camp?
MV: Yes.
AR: Well, overseas there wasn’t too much to do really. There were no towns of any, they they, blew the town off the map when they took the island. And there were really no towns, and basically what you did, you went around exploring the island. And, a lot of times you’d come home from a mission in the early morning get about 4 hours of sleep and go down and swim. And, I think I bought a Japanese rifle over there and I was exploring around and found a half a case of ammunition so we had fun shooting the Japanese Rifle.
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MV: Can you describe your quarters?
AR: We started out with tents, one tent to the crew for the enlisted men. The officers had better quarters. And then later on they came by and dumped this big chunk of metal beside the street and handed us hammers and said “This is a quonset hut here’s the instructions build it.” So we built our steel quanson hut and that was a lot better than the tent and we slept on these folding cots, but later on they got some air mattresses and made the cot a lot more comfortable. But we took the air mattresses a lot of times; we’d take them down to the beach and use them for surfboards.
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MV: Did you have good food?
AR: It was just ?regular? routine army food. It wasn’t very good. One time the cooks poisoned the whole outfit ptomaine poisoning. I went to the mess hall that day and I didn’t like the looks of anything that was there, so I just had these big slices of bread that were very tasty and there was a canned cheese spread you put on the bread. So I had coffee, and cheese and bread and that was it. And it wasn’t an hour or so after that that they everybody started getting sick but me.
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MV: Do you have any humorous stories from camp?
AR: Oh, let me see, well, yeah I do. My cousin was an officer in the 77th division and he got shot up on Okinawa. I found out he was in a hospital on Taipan, which was about 3 miles away. So I went over there and found him, and we had a big old time family reunion. You know, lasted all afternoon and he even had some whiskey. You can’t trust the [Until the word vent, was accidentally erased from tape after transcription] enlisted men with whiskey but officers are gentlemen so any event, evening came along and he said “Well I suppose the officers are going to go out and eat and have something to drink.” I said, I can’t go in there I’m just a sergeant. He said “You can if you wear one of my shirts with the bars on the shoulder.” So that’s what I did. He never has forgotten that, and neither have I.
MV: So, were you awarded any medals or citations?
AR: Yes, I was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross a couple of times and the Air Medal about 4 times, and then we got oh, let me see, we got the Victory Medal for World War II. I got the Good Conduct Medal, nobody caught me in my naggling around. And what was, there was another medal, oh it’s the Asiatic Pacific Medal.
MV: Can you describe your specific unit, and its correlation to the bomber group?
AR: Now, what was that again?
MV: Can you describe your specific unit, and its relation to the bomber group?
AR: Well, we were in the ?B?-13th wing and it ended up there were five wings out in the Marianas islands. And I think we were the best group to tell you the truth. But, one, some of the missions we did were mining missions in the Inland seas to keep the Japanese ships out. We were very successful in that, in fact they signed us the whole task. And another thing, the 509th composite group that dropped the atomic bomb was attached to the B- 13th wing. And they were on the island of Tinian.
MV: So who was the commander of your ______?
AR: Oh, that was General Davies. He was the wing commander, and what was the other one? General LeMay was the over all commander.
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MV: What are your memories of any of your commanders?
AR: Uh, the last, the last day of the war, we flew General Davies in our plane and bombed the Marapoo marshaling yards. And the general said, “Is Hiroshima close by?” And they said yes General, and he said “I wanna see it.” So all the rest of em turned left and went back to Tinian and we turned right to see Hiroshima. Single B-29 flying over Japan, so there wasn’t much left of Hiroshima, we couldn’t tell that there was a city there, until we got directly over it and you could see the streets marked off on the ground. There was nothing left. And then after that the General “I wanna go to Okinawa, I want you to fake engine trouble,” cause you had to have an excuse you know. So we faked engine trouble and flew the general to Okinawa. And he saw his buddies at the officers club for three hours while we gassed the plane up, and then he came back and we took off to Tinian. And that particular mission lasted 24hours cause we had to ferry the general all over the Pacific. He was a great big son of a gun 6foot 3 you know and big guy.
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MV: So you mentioned your plane was damaged, what was your typical altitude on these missions?
AR: Uh, the B-29 was designed for high altitudes, however it wasn’t successful so they decided, General LaMais decided that they were not makin, well doing any damage to Japan at high altitudes we’ll go in at 6,000 feet. When they told us that in the briefing room we all went ahh (gasp) what do you mean 6,000 feet, that’s suicide, everybody in the room said, “Ahh that’s suicide, can’t do it,” but the general said do it so we did. And it turned out it worked cause after that we started burning up the cities one by one til there wasn’t anything left.
MV: So, who made the radar equipment and how complicated was it to use?
AR: I think General Electric made the radar equipment. And it was a pretty complicated piece of electronic machinery. I wish I’d gotten better trained but the instructors at our base they weren’t very well trained either.
MV: So what mission resulted in the Distinguished Flying Cross?
AR: Oh, that one to Kawasaki. I don’t know we went in real low and in any event you could see the city burning a hundred miles out to sea. So you knew where it was. And we went in real low, 6-7thousand feet as I recall. And unfortunately they caught us in the searchlights going in. And once they catch you in the search lights then every gun in the city turns on ya. And, it was pretty hairy. You see all these red explosions in the air you know and ya hear the stuff hitting the plane and I think that was the mission where the tail gunner got wounded. They told well we’re not gonna give ya much ammunition because Japanese don’t have any night fighters, well guess what the night fighters were out that night. We didn’t have enough ammunition and the tail gunner got wounded by a cannon shell. It came up through the floor, but his armored flack suit was laying on the floor and it took up most of it, except for one piece that hit him in the fleshy part of the leg. And, so we brought him up front to patch him up, and I get on the guns you know, and I know sure got to sit down and looking out into the darkness and here came big Jap two engine night fighter. So I got him in gun sight and pressed the trigger and there was nothing left of the _______. I thought oh my lord or something to that fact. That was scary, he almost took the tail off. He was that close. It looked like a locomotive coming at ya a half a block away.
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MV: So, mining missions in Marianna, how many drops did they do?
AR: How many..?
MV: Drops?
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AR: I think we were personally on six mining missions. I think you had, these mines were 2,000 pounds a piece and seems to me like we had, we were able to drop six of them in the Inland Sea at the time. And we had to fly in real low to the water so you wouldn’t damage the thing when you dropped it. And, what happened is, they sent us back to lead crew school in the United States, so we were gone from oh, I think it was something like the 10th of May until about the 10th of July. And then we came back from over, from the United States and flew seven more missions before the war was over.
MV: So, how many missions did you complete?
AR: Twenty six altogether.
MV: And how many bombing runs after Hiroshima? [Kathryn Lerch asked the question in addition to Miranda Voege]
AR: After Hiroshima? As I recall there was only about one or two. Maybe it was just one, yeah I’d have to take a look at my list.
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MV: So what would you consider to be the biggest mission you were involved with?
AR: Oh, the biggest mission was Kawasaki when we almost got shot down.
MV: What was the objective in this mission?
AR: The objective? Basically the Japanese used to have these little home workshops, and what they would do they’d feed the parts into the big factory and then they’d assemble all the stuff. In the fighter planes, and tanks and cars and basically what we did was to burn up the whole city as much as possible, in order to eliminate all these home workshops. Not only that but it dehoused the population, well you can’t operate if you don’t have any house. And, if you have to send your family out into the country somewhere, where would you sleep at night? So basically we put the hurt on them.
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MV: So, how many planes typically coast at long altitude runs?
AR: What they would do is we’d the low altitude runs were done at night. And what they would do they’d send the planes off one after the other and we’d just fly singly off to Japan. And drop our bombs and come back. So there were maybe a hundred or more planes going to Japan to burn out the city.
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MV: What would you consider to be the scariest mission you were involved with?
AR: That was definitely Kawasaki where we almost got shot down. Well the plane did get shot up.
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MV: So what were the missions usually like?
AR: You’d get up, you’d go to the mess hall, have something to eat and then they’d take you to the briefing room. In the briefing room they’d pull back the curtain and there was a big red thing on the map and it showed you where your target was. And then they’d explain the all target. Oh they have so many aircraft guns, and so many searchlights. And they’d explain our altitude to us, and when we’re supposed to take off. And they had the plane all loaded with bombs and gas, and what we’d do is go down and get ready to take off. One of the things you had to do on the B-29 was turn the props. And all us enlisted men got on the props and we’d turn the prop and that would lubricate the engine so it would start easier. So then you had to do that, then you had to get in the plane. Join the procession to the end of the runway, and when you got to the runway, why you’d rev up your engines and take off. And hope the engines were operating good. And then it was a long flight to Japan. Lets see you’re talking seven or eight hours to Japan where your target was, so once your plane got airborne and everything we knew we were going to continue, why we’d take it easy. And they’d smoke cigarettes and fool around and sleep and then about an hour, or forty five minutes or half an hour from Japan, why the pilot get on and say, get on your flacks and your parachute and your May West, and we had a, an inflatable raft and you’d
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connect it to your parachute harness and you’d sit on the thing. Then if you had to bail out over the ocean say, why you had something to keep you floating. And then once you got over the target if nothing happened on the way back, we’d take a nap and eat our, eat our ham sandwiches, ham and cheese sandwiches, and drink our coffee and by that time the coffee was kinda cold. My wife used to complain cause I liked cold coffee well I got used to it.
MV: Can you describe any weather related missions?
AR: Oh, It was terrible the weather was awful. Sometimes we’d have a head wind of over a hundred miles an hour and when the first mission we flew to Japan was the city of Kobe, and we went upwind against the, what do they call it the, any way it was a strong head wind. And we were doing 60 miles per hour ground speed over the target. I thought we’d never get over the dang target. And the Japanese fighters were coming in, you know one after the other and our gunners are shooting like crazy, and they were shooting like crazy and the air was filled with ?thresher? bullets. It was pretty scary.
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MV: So did you lose any crews that you knew?
AR: Did I what?
MV: Did you lose any crews that you knew?
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AR: Well we lost a tail gunner temporarily, he got this piece in his leg, and we told him it wasn’t worth a purple heart but they gave him one anyway. And one of our central fire control gunners on the first crew we’re washing down the plane one day and he fell off the plane. Well, it’s, it’s, this the tail of the plane sticks way the heck up in the air. And he fell about 20 feet to the ground and suffered a, a concussion, so they gave him ground duty after that, but he was, we lost him temporarily. The navigator was on another plane and it got shot down and he got killed. Our copilot, he was made aircraft commander right near the end of the war. And they were ferrying prisoners of war supplies to Japan. Dropped by parachute, and unfortunately his plane didn’t get airborne and crashed at the end of the runway and killed him. And I was, we were just totally shocked, he was very popular part of our crew, and we sure hated to see him get killed especially at the end of the war.
MV: Were there many casualties in this unit?
AR: Oh, yeah, lets see, on this, they had a disaster mission to Kobe, Japan. Everything that could go wrong went wrong. They were going in and I think it was Japanese fighters that came in head on and I think they killed the pilot, the pilots and the crew of the lead plane and they collided with another one and they both went down. And then the crew that was right next to us in the other tent, the Shrader crew, they got shot down. And three other of out planes had to ditch they rescued the crew, but we lost 6 B-29s just, just on that one mission. It never happened again but that was a real disaster, I’m glad we weren’t on that mission.
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MV: So, how did you cope with the casualties?
AR: Oh, it’s hard to do but you know when you’re going overseas and you’re going to fight combat, you know that somebody’s going to get killed. You know that going in, and there’s nothing you can do about it, it’s war. I don’t know it hardens you up I guess, to the point where you well it’s just too bad you know, but you just get on with it.
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MV: So, can you describe the new technology that was used during World War II?
AR: Oh yeah, the B-29 was the newest technology. It had bigger engines than any other plane, it could fly further than any other bomber in the world, it was pressurized which meant that you didn’t have to have the plane open, like a B-29 or B-17 or B-24. Where it was twenty below inside the plane, in the B-29 it was warm. And then they had these remotely controlled guns, say the central fire control gunner had controlled the two top turrets unless the bombardier needed them, and he could aim his gun site, these two top turrets there were, you’re talking 6, 50 caliber machine gun. And a 6 caliber machine gun is pretty good stuff. And, we shot down a lot of Japanese planes, but they wouldn’t let us take credit for them cause you’re in a formation of eleven or twelve planes we all shoot at the same Japanese plane, who knows who shot it down, you can’t tell.
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MV: So what was the size of the crew on a B-29?
AR: We had eleven.
MV: Were you able to keep a diary during the war?
AR: No, they told us we could not keep diaries, because we’re, somebody would take the diary on a mission get shot down, and the Japanese would get a hold of it.
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MV: Where was your favorite place to be stationed?
AR: Oh, Tinian was great. It was just like Florida, it was at warm temperature and you could go swimming. It was perfect, it was perfect, and for a nineteen to be out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, I got to see Hawaii, I got to see Guam, Saipan, Tinian, Iwo Jima, we landed on Iwo Jima one time. We were just about out of gas and you get out of the plane and you can’t breathe. The sulfur fumes are terrible. Oh that was awful, but any vent we got out of the plane while they were gassing it up and looked around and there was a Japanese foot sticking out of the ground. They hadn’t buried him deep enough. It was a real interesting place to be.
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MV: When you were on Tinian, did you see or meet crew of Tibbets __________?
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AR: No, when we were on Tinian this was a super secret outfit. And I’ve been to a couple of Tibbets talks since then, but It was so super secret that nobody could even go up there and see the people. They had MP’s all around to guard the place so nobody could get in. So I never knew Tibbets when I was over seas but I met him several times since then. He’s about as deaf as I am.
MV: So what were your feelings about the Japanese?
AR: Oh, I was, I was, I hated ‘em when I was in the service, but I don’t any more cause I realized its not the Japanese people that do this, it’s the leaders that get ya into these things. So, as a matter of fact, we have a little Japanese war bride that works where I work and we’re good friends.
MV: When on Iwo Jima did you see the flag on Mt. Suribachi?
AR: Yea, yea, um hmm yea.
MV: Have you gone back to visit any of the places where you fought?
AR: Oh, I’d love to but I haven’t won the lottery.
MV: Do you go to reunions for World War II veterans?
AR: Oh, yeah yeah I, my wife used to complain about it. But, yeah I go to every reunion and I love it. We used to have 500 people at these reunions and now we’re down to about fifty. But, that’s the way it goes you know.
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MV: Are you involved with any associations?
AR: Well, I’m involved with the Veterans of Foreign Wars and I’m involved with American Legion and I go to all my _____ 5th Bomb Group Reunions. Oh, let me see is there anything else? Oh I am a member of the Indianapolis Civil War Round Table, I’m a member of the World War II Round Table and I was president a couple of years ago.
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MV: When you got home from the War, what did you do next?
AR: After the war?
MV: Yes, when you got home.
AR: At that particular point in time I realized that all the officers went to college, and all the enlisted men were grade school or dropouts so I decided I think I better use my brain and go back and finish high school. Which I did, and a few years later I went to college, and met my wife, as a matter of fact it was Butler University.
MV: What did you do in your free time while on Tinian?
AR: On Tinian?
MV: Yes.
AR: Oh, we just explored the island we, swam, they had a nice beach there and we swam, wrote letters, and I fooled around with this Japanese rifle, it was kind of poor condition when I got it and I repaired it more or less and still got the thing as a matter of fact.
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MV: Did you take advantage of the GI Bill for education?
AR: Yes, yes definitely. I was smart enough by that time to know I should take advantage of it.
MV: So what difference did this make for you?
AR: Oh, I think it got me a good job with the insurance company and I worked with the insurance company for 36 years, wrote long winded reports and really enjoyed the job.
[ Kathryn Lerch asked the following questions]
KL: When you talked about the weather and the climate and what it was like, you said you had some strong, did you ever encounter any of those typhoons?
AR: Yea, as a matter of fact, we had a typhoon; oh the center of it came pretty close to the island, and for about three days, the rain just poured down in turrets. It didn’t blow any of the B-29’s away but it did some damage. Most of the buildings and things were, oh kind of typhoon, they, they didn’t get damaged too much.
KL: You also mentioned that you had the opportunity to fly over the ruins of Hiroshima, _____ while you were taking this tour with your officer. What were your impressions then, were there feelings of relief, or, or knowing that times of the war were about over? What were your thoughts?
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AR: We were very much relieved that the war was about over, and everybody was real happy they dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a matter of fact, one of those pieces of paper, I can show you where they loaded the atomic bomb. [ Shows location on a picture he brought] And, that’s a big Japanese sight seeing thing, they go to Tinian on spring vacation like we go to Florida. But they all have to go see where the atomic bomb was loaded. Yeah it was, okay. Yeah I can see where this thing is here.
[ The rest of the tape is referring to pictures brought to the interview by Mr. Rearick.]
Okay, see that “Y” shaped revetment there, well that’s where they loaded the bomb. And our
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plane was parked right in here. So we went down to see it one day, we could, we would drive on a truck up here and get on the air strip, and go around to where our plane was parked, so we went walking down there one day to see the bomb, it was a great big huge thing you know, right in the pit. And the MP’s got out their 45’s and pointed at our mid sections and said “This is a restricted area, we have orders of shoot to kill. So just turn around and go back to where you came from.” So we did, we thought that was pretty unfriendly. But, when they started digging these pits in the ?revetment? I thought what are they doing, digging a pit where this B-29 was parked. Well they put the atomic bomb in because the B-29 was too close to the ground to load the bomb. The bomb was so big that they had to dig a pit, put the bomb in the pit, then they could roll the B-29 over the bomb, and pull it up in the bomb bay. So, that’s the only way they could load the atomic
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bomb. Both of them. It was interesting, seeing those two bombs, yeah it’s not often you can see history in the making. You can see this, they had 4 runways, 85 hundred feet long, and we could take off four planes at a time. Can you count the number of planes we had on a field? There were hundreds, there were hundreds. This is where the 509th bomb group was stationed. And, it was fantastic, just fantastic. I wouldn’t have missed it for any amount of money. I don’t know, my pilot was kind of a war lover and I couldn’t understand that when we first, our bombing mission, but after a while I kind of got into it myself and, yea it’s kind of fun to be shot at and missed. So it was one of those things I’m glad I cheated at Gunnery School cause we had a real, part of bringing Japan to it’s knees.
KL: Would you perhaps show your other airplane that you had your radar section in the back on one of those sheets of paper?
AR: Well, let me see. There’s one with the radar on the plane, there we go. Yeah this is what the B-29 looked like and the radar, you can see it on this plane here, what they did, was you’d retract the radar after the bombing mission was over. Why you’d retract the radar and it’d disappear into the plane again. And, it was, it was pretty exciting. I told my grandsons that this was the enemy fighter aiming point and I sat right behind it, that’s not necessarily so, but they don’t know that. Yeah it was quite an experience. Anything else.
KL: Any other final thoughts? Would you do it again?
AR: Oh absolutely, absolutely, I got to travel all over the Pacific, when I was a kid I read National Geographic and I saw pictures of Hawaii and thought oh if I ever got to Hawaii that would be great and it was. I can still remember this day we flew around Diamond Head coming in to land at Hickam field and beautiful, the sea was blue, the sky was blue, white cloud floating around, and everything was green and beautiful. We flew into Hickam field, landed and parked the plane and went over to the hanger, and you could still see the bullet holes in the hanger from when the Japanese had strafed during the Pearl Harbor Attack. That was pretty interesting.
[End of Side A Beginning of Side B]
Later on we went into town and watched people swim in the surf you know. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven.
KL: How long did you stay in Hawaii?
AR: One day.
KL: Just one day.
AR: One day but
[ That is all that is on tape]
