Interview with Mr. Robert Rost
[b. 04/26/1926]
Recorded on 10/21/2006
Audrey McGuire: Today is October 21, 2006. I am Audrey McGuire and I am interviewing Robert Rost at 7468A Lions Head Drive, Indianapolis, Indiana. Mr. Rost is my grandfather. Mr. Rost is 80 years old and was born on April 26, 1926. Mr. Rost served in World War II and was in the U.S. Navy and held the following rank: Aviation Ordinanceman 3rd class.
AM: Mr. Rost, were you drafted or did you enlist?
Robert Rost: I enlisted April 8th, 1944 and at the time I was living at my home at 123 Sixth Street in Ashland, Oregon.
AM: Why did you join?
RR: I basically joined because I had three older brothers and they were already all in the war in the US Navy and that’s why I happened to choose the US Navy.
[12]AM: Do you recall your first days in service?
RR Yes, the first days in service were pretty hectic. We went to Portland, Oregon and then we went to Lake Ponderay in Idaho, where we went to boot camp… It was in Idaho.
AM: What did it feel like?
RR: It was very, very exciting because I was with a bunch of other high school kids. Basically, they were all seventeen and eighteen year olds and we were all very excited. Of course, we were very ignorant. We didn’t know what was going on. Of course we were excited because we were in the Navy and because we were going to go in and fight the great fight and win the war.
AM: Can you tell me about your boot camp training experience?
[25]
RR: Yeah, I was in the boot camp at Camp Farragut in Idaho. It was a wonderful place. It was very, very much in the mountains and it was on the beautiful Lake Ponderay and we had a lot of work on the water in boats and life boats basically and that training was exciting even though the water was very, very cold.
AM: How did you get through it? Was it very difficult?
RR: It was tiring because we were up almost every day at about 4:30 or 5:00 in the morning and we had to get up and scrub down the barracks before we went to breakfast which was at six. Then as soon as we came back to the barracks after breakfast, we had to report down to the grinder for drill and calisthenics and drill and more drill until lunch time. Then we went back after lunch for a fifteen minute break and then we also had to go back for more drills all afternoon. And we usually ended up at the afternoon at 4:30 or 5 o’clock and we were very tired.
[44]
AM: And you served in World War II?
RR: Yea.
AM: Where exactly did you go?
RR: Well, I went to a lot of different places before I finally ended up in Okinawa. But to start with, in the Navy, you go individually more or less to one place to another. You get assignments. For instance, after I left Camp Farragut for my boot training, I came home for a ten-day leave and then I had to report back to Camp Farragut and they transferred me to Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma which was a naval training station, and that’s were I took my aviation ordinance training there. That lasted for about twelve weeks. And then we were ready to head out. We were supposed to head out to sea there or go to another station and at that time they extended the training for another three weeks. I stayed there through that training and then I was transferred to the Naval Air Station in Jacksonville, Florida, where I worked in an assembly and repair shop for a while. At Jacksonville, I also did some training with machine guns and did some repair and overhaul machine guns repair and some 2˚mm cannons which I also had to test fire. I worked in the test fire range for a while then I was transferred to a naval air station, a transfer point. I went from Jacksonville to Treasure Island, California outside of San Francisco. At Treasure Island, I went on a ship through the Philippine islands and up into Japan because this was just shortly after the war was over and I was transferred onto a ship in Tokyo Bay. I was transferred on the USS Tangier and at that point I went on to Tokyo and Sasebo, Japan and went on down to Hong Kong. The Tangier was a sea plane tender and we were repairing PBM flying boats that came in and landed on a squadron, which we housed all of the crew members [80] from the squadron and we also repaired their planes and serviced them and gave them new gasoline and supplies and ammunition and they were also mail planes. So we had to service the mail and they took care of our ships mail along with our fleet mail there. I stayed in Hong Kong for approximately two months from December to February when we went back to Tokyo and I was transferred on to the USS Pine Island, which was another sea plane tender and I stayed on that for a while and left Tokyo Bay, went to Okinawa. At that point the USS Pine Island was sent back to the US. Unfortunately I did not go with it, I was transferred to a naval air station at Yonabaru, Okinawa into a squadron – PPB 128 which I stayed in for a couple of months until they were disbanded and they were sent back to the states and again I didn’t go. I was transferred to VPB 108, which was a four engine bomber squadron patrol bomber and I stayed there for approximately eleven months until I was sent home for discharge [102]
AM: Do you remember arriving at each other these places and what was it like?
RR: Yea I remember particularly arriving on Okinawa because I was thinking about going home at the time I was on the ship and I knew the ship was being sent back to the United States and I very much planning on going back to the United States with the ship. Unfortunately the Navy had other plans for me at that point so I was a little unhappy about being transferred to Okinawa.
AM: What was your exact job assignment? [112]
RR: I was an aviation ordinanceman on the PB4Y2 which was a single tailed B-24 and I had to service all twelve of the 50-caliber machine guns that were on the plane and keep the ammunition boxes filled and along with that I also had top service all the bomb racks on the belly of the plane and help load bombs when we needed them.
AM: Did you see much combat?
RR: I saw no combat because the war was already over although there were still pockets of enemy resistance on Guam and also on Okinawa. After I was transferred there. I was at the naval air station. They did have several incidents with the Japanese soldiers that were still remaining on Okinawa that refused to give up. They used to come down occasionally and try to get food and basically steal stuff off of our airplanes.
AM: Because of these resisting Japanese forces were there many casualties?
RR: We had no one killed that I can remember although we had several that had flesh wounds or minor wounds from the Japanese. Basically they were not attempting to kill us at the point in time. Most of them were too busy trying to find something to eat because they were up in the hills and they were starving to death so the only time we saw them they were really hungry and they were trying to get something to eat.
AM: Could you tell me a couple of your most memorable experiences? [139]
RR: Well, we had one experience when I was on guard duty because we had to keep our planes secure and I was guard duty with out crew and we saw some movement out by the plane. So we went off in our jeep. And of course we were armed I had a 30 caliber carbine and we saw some movement and of course we were ordered not to shoot anyone, because there were a lot of Okinawa natives who were also hungry and looking for something to eat and they would go in try to rob us in the emergency stores we had on our plane so we were ordered not to shoot any one but any time we saw any movement on the planes we had to go and see it was all about and at that point in time we were not sure whether they were Japanese or Okinawans looking thru the planes so one time I saw movement and I saws people like two or three guys in our headlights from the jeep, at night it was about 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning and we knew for sure they weren’t supposed to be there so we went in slowly and fired a couple rounds in the air and they came out of the plane and ran as fast as they could and they didn’t have anything from the plane so we had to let them go but it was kind of scary for a few minutes.
[162]
OK, there was one other time when we were out on patrol and we flew certain sectors areas south of Japan and cover certain areas and we had to check out all the ships or anything in that area. And one point we ran onto a small fishing boat I think it was about 35 to 40 feet long and we dropped down and we were supposed to check it out and get the numbers off of it and the name of the boat. And we dropped down to about 1000 feet and flew over the boat. And as we did we noticed some people out of the deck that were kneeling down and we didn’t know what they were doing but at the time they were aiming at us and they were starting to shoot at us so we passed back over again and the second time they were still shooting at us and I suddenly looked over and saw a hole appear in one of the wings of the plane. The pilot said there was only one thing to do, they are not very friendly so we better sink them. So we preceded with all 12 machine guns firing and coming at them it didn’t very long but we did manage to sink them I didn’t know if any of them survived or not. I know I saw a couple of them jump in the water and I don’t know whether they survived safety or not because we couldn’t do anything to help them if they had we did call it in and hopefully one of out other rescue planes could come out and pick them up. But that was a little hairy for a few minutes
[189]
AM: Were you awarded any medals or citations?
RR: No the only ribbons I got were Asiatic Pacific combat ribbon, American theater combat ribbon, a good conduct medal and a victory medal. That’s all I received.
AM: How did you get them?
RR: Just by being there!
AM: How did you stay in touch with your family?
RR: Mostly by letter, in fact 100% by letter. The only time I talked to them on the phone with my folks was when I got back to the states, when I was ready to be discharged otherwise I wrote to my parents and to my brothers on a regular basis usually once a week for two or three years that I was in.
AM: What was the food like?
RR: Mostly the food was terrible, however I think they did the best they could under the situation when we were over seas particularly I spent 11 months on Okinawa and during the entire time I was there we received no fresh milk or vegetables or eggs everything was eggs or powdered eggs and they were no vegetables and we had powdered milk.
AM: Did you feel like you were malnourished?
RR: No, no we got plenty to eat it wasn’t the fact that we were short of food, it was just that the food was kind of lousy.
[226]
AM: Did you have plenty of supplies while you were there?
RR: O yea we were of course that was a lot when I was in Okinawa we were doing supply runs not only for our squadrons but other squadrons in that area. So we had plenty of food and plenty of supplies.
AM: Did you feel pressure and stress?
RR: Well, yea you feel stressed and lonesome. Sometimes you get stressed because you to do too much. We were on a pretty heavy schedule for sometime right after I got to Okinawa because we had to do a lot of work flying patrol flights and also flying flights to carry guardmail or VIPs from one place to another. So you feel the stress after awhile but we had some longs days some of the time we were flying twelve hours a day and that might be for ten or twelve days in a row consecutively. So you got tired and worn out and of course you were always not sure that your planes were not going to make it back or because there were still some enemy on some of the other islands around where we flew over. And you did get shot at occasionally even though it was never, ever reported and I don’t know that anybody paid much attention to it. We didn’t.
AM: How did people entertain themselves?
RR: Well, most of the time we sat around at night particularly after we got back from a mission and we’d sit around and tell stories or play cards. And of course, we would drink a little beer now and then just to kill time.
AM: Were there ever any entertainers?
RR: Yes, we did. We had the USO came to Okinawa once while I was there and had the honor of escorting Patti Page to our tent to entertain us. I was guard; I was one of the guards for her.
AM: What was the USO and why did they include Patti Page
RR: The USO is a service organization, they are called the United Service Organization and Bob Hope used to spend every year, Bob Hope made a big tour, a Christmas Show with the USO all over the world. He went to every base and every place in the world where we had any United States troops. But there were other groups also. The USO also sponsored other groups other than Bob Hope.
AM: What did you do when you were on leave?
RR: Well, I was only on leave twice. Once, for ten days when I was … no, I was on leave three times actually. Once when I got out of boot camp after the first three months I was in the service which I didn’t do much except I came home and showed off my uniform to all my friends in high school and kind of bragged that I was now in the great US Navy. And the second time was about a year and a half later when I, well two years later actually, when my brother came home from Europe and we both came home together to my home in Ashland [Oregon]. And I spent most of the time, on that one I had ten days leave again, and we spent most of that time visiting with friends and relatives and by that time, most of our relatives were coming home from the service so it was a very enjoyable time just getting to know them again after having been away for so long. And they had been in all different parts of the world much as we had so it was interesting just to get home and talk with your old friends and family.
AM: Where did you travel while you were in the service?
RR: Woo, well, most of the time I traveled over the United States. Like I said, I was in Jacksonville, Florida, I spent about eleven months there. I was in San Francisco, just passing through Treasure Island, right off San Francisco. I was in Tokyo, Japan. I was in Sasebo, Japan, I was in Hong Kong, I was in Tsingtao, China, Shanghai, China, Peking, China, Bejing, which was Peking, also I flew over the Great Wall of China a couple of times. Back to Tokyo and then came back home, I went through Honolulu. I was on Guam, of course Okinawa, Kwajalein. Johnson Island. Basically, then Honolulu and then back to San Francisco and then I was out of the Navy.
AM: Do you recall any particularly humorous or unusual events?
RR: Well, there were a couple of unusual events. We were coming back to Honolulu, Hawaii and we got some new planes and we were flying the planes back to Okinawa and right after we left Guam, shortly about thirty minutes out of Guam, two of our engines stopped suddenly. So we had to turn back around and go back to Guam and we had to fly very carefully because we were afraid we might lose the third engine which would have been deadly. We may not have been able to survive that. However, we did survive it alright but it was very interesting for another hour or two.
AM: That must have been very scary for you.
RR: It was.
AM: What were some of the pranks that you or others would pull?
RR: Well, I guess one of my favorite pranks was where we used to get people that would hitchhike rides with us to Japan or to China when we went up carrying mail and one of the fun things to do was wait until we could get them on the plane and get in the air about four, five thousand feet in the air, maybe eight thousand, whatever. And we would go from the back part of the plane to the front part of the plane, in between where the bomb bay doors were. So we would open the bomb bay doors when they were in the middle of the area and they were on a little platform which was about ten inches wide walking from one end of the other and eight thousand feet with the bomb bay doors open that was pretty scary.
AM: What did you think of other officers or fellow solders?
RR: Well, we had to get along with everyone of course. But mainly, particularly in the last year, the little more than I was in, I was in a bomber crew and there were only nine of us in the crew, so we had six enlisted men and three officers. We had our pilot and co-pilot and navigator, and they were all three officers and we respected them very much. We also had two mechanics, two radiomen and two ordinancemen. So, we were a pretty close-knit bunch and we all worked together on the plane and as soon as the plane hit the ground, while we helped the mechanics and they helped us. And if we had done any firing of our machine guns, I had to clean those and rearm them and get them ready for the next flight. But that only took maybe a half hour and I always had all kinds of help from the other crew members, so we were a very close-knit bunch.
AM: Did you ever keep a personal diary?
RR: No.
AM: Do you recall the day your service ended?
RR: Yeah, I was in Treasure Island, in San Francisco and we came in and they let us go ashore for a couple of nights and we could pretty much do anything we wanted to do because they knew we were heading home and probably we were scared to death to go to town. I know I was. I was afraid of what might happen to me alone in San Francisco, which I was. But I did go ashore and I went to a few bars and looked around San Francisco and noticed the changes from when I had left, which had been a year and half before that.
AM: What did you do in the first days and weeks afterwards?
RR: After I got out? Well, first of all, when I got out, the Navy at that time required that if you had any leave, accumulated leave coming, you had to take the leave, you couldn’t get paid for it, they made you take it. So, I was given sixty days leave and at that point in time, I was like three hundred miles from home so I went home to see my folks and my brothers and all my friends again, at that time.
AM: Did you work or go back to school?
RR: At the time that I got discharged, I was prepared to go to work, however, there were not very many jobs available because there were like five million servicemen coming home from service and most of them didn’t have jobs, so we had to go what we called the 52/20 club. And that was the law at that time for service people that if you got home and you didn’t have a job, you could apply for unemployment insurance and you were eligible for 52 weeks of unemployment insurance. So I came home and I signed up for that right away and I think I collected maybe three or four weeks before I got a part-time job in the pear orchards around Medford, Oregon where I worked for three or four months until school started. And then I enrolled at Southern Oregon College of Education, at that time was the name of it, SOCE, and started in to get my stuff for teaching.
AM: Was your education supported by the GI Bill?
RR: Yes, yes I was eligible for four years of education from the GI Bill and fortunately, I used it all. I got my Bachelor’s degree and my Master’s degree on the GI Bill.
AM: Can you explain to me what the GI Bill was?
RR: The GI Bill was passed by the United States government, the Congress, back in the 1940’s, the early ‘40’s I think. And it covered a lot of things. It covered the unemployment insurance for 52 weeks which we could take. It made your eligible for a GI loan that you could get a loan to go to school or for whatever. It was also good for if you wanted to buy a house, you could buy a house and the GI loan would cover the house. And also it covered your education, depending on how many, how long you were in service, you were eligible for a certainly amount of months of education requiring of course... We were all very happy about that.
AM: Did you make any close friendships while in the service?
RR: Well, I made several very close friendships although in the Navy you are pretty much on your own. We were transferred on your own. It wasn’t like in the Army where if you were going somewhere, a whole company of men went with you. Or the Marine Corp where a whole company of marines were transferred to one place to another. In the Navy, it was very much individual. If you got transferred by yourself if you were going somewhere, so it was very difficult for one thing, to find friends and then to maintain your friendship because you never knew from one day to the next when you were going to be transferred again. So it was hard to keep tabs, although I did have some very good friends but I lost track of them so often and I was transferred to every base I went on to or when I went from one ship to another. I was only on the other ship for three or four months and then I got transferred to another ship and then I got transferred to a squadron and then I got transferred to another squadron and that all happened very shortly so I really didn’t have that many close friends and I haven’t maintained any of those relationships since.
AM: Did you join any veterans organization?
RR: Yes, I was very active in veterans organizations when I first came home. My father and my three brothers and all my close high school friends were all in the Veterans of Foreign Wars which is a service organization so I also joined. I was in that for four or five years with all my friends while I was going to college and then when I went back to the University of Iowa, of course, I didn’t maintain that. I also belonged to the American Legion and that was because I had many close friends in the American Legion. So I maintained, and I still do, I maintained membership in both the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars.
AM: What did you go on to do as a career after the war?
RR: Well, I went to college as I said. I went two years to Southern Oregon College and then I transferred to the University of Iowa in Iowa City. At Iowa, I got a Bachelor degree in Commerce and then I went on and got my MBA but I didn’t ever use either one of those, other than to say that I was a college graduate because I went into teaching. As a teacher, I had to go back to college and get some more college credits before I was eligible to teach which I did and I taught for forty years or more. And then I went on to work with the mentally handicapped for the State of Indiana before I retired at the age of seventy.
AM: Did your military experience influence your thinking about war or the military in general?
RR: Oh, I don’t really know the answer to that. I don’t like war, I don’t think anybody does and I know that none of us like to think about combat. That is something that is absolutely despicable and unbelievably mean and hurtful to people. There is no good way to have a war. I was probably fortunate that I never got into combat, but if I had got into combat, I would have had an easier time of it than most other people because I was flying and I was in a heavy bomber. We got up in the morning and load the bombs on the plane and get in the plane and fly and go over and drop the bombs and return to our base and more or less the same routine, and go to bed in a nice clean bed every night instead of being like the Marines or the Army that had to slog through the mud and be careful and have to look out over your shoulder twenty-four hours a day in case the enemy were around. So I had it very luck even though as I say I never had any combat.
AM: How did your service and experience affect your life?
RR: Well, that’s kind of hard to say because as when I joined, or enlisted in the service, of course, WWII was going on and everybody who was anywhere was in the service. We had over 16 million in the service, so we didn’t have much of an outlook for the future because no one knew what was going to happen tomorrow. You never knew if your friends or your family or your cousin or uncles or brothers or any of them were going to come back alive. And that was kind of scary at that time and very unsettling. However, as I say, I was very eager to get in there and to win the war. However, somewhere along the line, after I got in, that idea changed a lot so that I was looking very much forward to getting out and to try to settle down and start a new life which I did. When I actually got out. Before I went in, there wasn’t much of a future for me because my family was not very wealthy, in fact they were quite poor. So we hadn’t got much a future to look forward to. Following the war, we were very fortunate to receive the fortunes of war which allowed us to go to college and the government would pay for it. And that I was very happy and I took advantage of that and it changed my whole life because from there on, I became a teacher and I think I was very successful at what I did and I had a very happy and still am enjoying a good life.
AM: So, are you very happy that you joined the US Navy?
RR: I was very, very happy that I had the opportunity to be in the service and that I was qualified to be in the service and that I was healthy and physically able to be in and serve my country but also to avail myself to all the opportunities that the GI Bill offered me after my years in service.
AM: Is there anything you would like to add that we have not covered in this interview?
RR: There was one time that I was probably had an opportunity to, more or less, be a hero. All I got out of it was a lecture of what I should be doing, however at the time, I thought I was very lucky. We were flying at about 25,000 feet and we dropped our load of bombs on our target and everything seemed to be fine except the pilot called back and said “Hey, Rost, one of your bombs is still in the bomb bay and it’s banging into the side of the plane”. So, I climbed out of my turret, and went into the bomb bays and sure enough, there it was, hanging on the bomb rack and banging into the bomb bay doors. There was only one thing to do, I tried to release it. The bombardier who was up forward and knows the plane, tried to release the bomb and it wouldn’t release. So we came back and between the other ordinanceman and myself and the two mechanics and one of the radioman, had to make sure the bomb would release. And to make things worse, the army wire on the bomb had dislodged from the choose on the bomb. So that made it possible that the bomb was armed and too much of a jolt could have set it off. A five-hundred pound bomb can do a tremendous amount of damage to a small airplane. In fact, it would make it disappear. So, we had to, we couldn’t land with the bomb. We had to get rid of it and it wouldn’t release. So the only alternative was to dislodge the bomb by dislodging the bomb rack it was attached to and let it drop out of the bomb bays. However, we were on this little ledge about a foot wide or less and we had to lift the bomb up, five hundred pounds of it, and get the bomb rack released from the shackles on the side of the plane and let it drop out of the plane without one of us or more going with it. Which after a lot of hard work and grunting and everything, we managed to lift it up enough to clear the bomb rack and release the bomb out of the plane. Once it was gone we could go home and land safely. After it hit, left the plane, we did find out that it hit and went off, it exploded, so it was armed which would have made it impossible for us land with the bomb in the bomb bays. We were very successful and I was very proud of myself. When we got back down on the airstrip and I was about ready to tell everybody what a hero I was, and the pilot came up and laced me up one side and down the other for not loading the bomb properly so that was the end of my hero days.
AM: You must have been very scared while the bomb was still on the plane.
RR: Damn right I was.
