Blair, Richard oral history

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“Today is September 24, 2011. I am Clare Sweeney and I am interviewing Richard Blair at 1224 W. Carson Street, Muncie, IN. [via phone] Mr. Blair has no relation to me. Mr. Blair is 85 years old and was born on December 1, 1925. Mr. Blair served in WWII. Mr. Blair. was in the Merchant Marines.
[00:01:41]
Clare Sweeney: Were you drafted or enlisted in the war?
Richard Blair: I was a volunteer, I enlisted.
CS: Where were you living at the time?
RB: Veedersburg, Indiana.
CS: Why did you join the service?
RB: Well, it was war time. I had already lost [unintelligible]. Two of my senior class had been drafted, one left at Christmas time and one left the last day after school was out. And right when I graduated, I was seventeen and a half, and I knew eventually I would probably be drafted. A friend of mines brother was on leave from the Merchant Marines and he seemed to like it, but he said it was very dangerous. At that period in your life, you think you’re indestructible. And I really would have liked to join the Air Force and be a pilot. I thought coming from a small school I might not have enough of something to become a pilot and my friends’ brother told me well, if you don’t like the Merchant Marines, you can get out of it and join the other branches of service. And if you are drafted into the Army or the Navy or something like that you are there for the duration. So, I took the Merchant Marines.
CS: Excellent. Do you recall your first days in the service?
RB: Well yeah. They told us not to wear a lot of clothes because they were going to ship them back. So my high school buddy that enlisted with me, we got on the train in Indianapolis and we got to New York City, well Brooklyn. I believe that it was on the twenty-seventh or the twenty-eighth day of December, and they didn’t have any barracks ready for us. So they put us over in kind of a chilly building. And like I say, we didn’t have gloves or heavy coats on or anything, so it was kind of a miserable night. The next morning they woke us up at six o’clock for breakfast. And after breakfast, they put us out shoveling about three to four inches of slushy snow and we had oxfords on, no gloves, and thin jackets. So that wasn’t a real good way to start. We got a good taste of the military right then.
[00:04:48]
CS: I’d say so! Did you go through any boot camp or training experience?
RB: Yes ma’am. I was in the Maritime base in Brooklyn, New York. I think I was there four months and nine days. The reason I wasn’t there that long was I got scarlet fever in the middle of my training. So that knocked me out for about a month. The need for the merchant seamen was so great then, that even though like me, I took the engine room training, my buddy took the deck training, and maybe somebody else would have taken the mess training or cook and baker. Well even though you had this three weeks training or a month’s training, it was so critical to get men out, they might ship you out just to get you on a ship, and get that ship on its way. But luckily when I went, our training was to get us out of the bay.
We had to pass strict coast guard exams. So after I passed my exam, they sent us up to a holding center at Hotel[ Chelfa?] in New York City. And that was the hotel that in the seventies and eighties was an area where the hippies and the artists all gathered. Anyway, there was a call for eight guys to be shipped out to the Pacific Ocean. And I thought, well, I’ll probably never get to the Pacific Ocean any other way, so I volunteered, and that’s how I shipped out from New York City to the West Coast.
CS: Okay. What was the hardest part of the training?
RB: I didn’t really have any hard part. I had in my mind that whatever came my way, I would handle it. Some people had problems, but they made their own problems when they didn’t try to get along. But I was brought up in the way that if a problem came your way, you just solved it and went on. So I had a good mentality I’d say. I didn’t have many problems. I’ve been a person who enjoyed learning whatever I could learn.
CS: That’s wonderful. Alright, when you were in the marines, where exactly did you serve your time?
RB: Well, I wasn’t in the Marines, I was in the Merchant Marines. Do you know the difference?
CS: No I don’t.
RB: Well that’s alright, you weren’t taught, they didn’t put it in the school books for you. Okay, the Marines, you probably really know what the Marines are.
CS: Yeah.
RB: Okay, the Merchant Marine was a man that manned the ships. In fact, we took ninety-seven percent of all men, all materials, to every battle front, the entire war. And once we made one trip, then we would come back to the states or back to refinement and make another trip to somewhere else. So basically, we were in harm’s way 24/7.
[00:09:03]
CS: Oh my goodness.
RB: That’s right, and our losses were more. We had a higher percent of losses than any of the other branches. And the reason why a lot of this information wasn’t made public was we did not dare let the people back home know how many ships and men they were losing, and the damages that were around. They did not let the Germans know how bad they were hitting us or they would have stepped up their sub fleet. So all during the war, was a very very, well, we were just not supposed to tell where we were going or what we were carrying or anything about it. That was four years of everything pretty quiet, and then the Americans and their people as a whole are inclined to forget a lot of things.
You know, tomorrows a happy day and they go about their business. So, we did not have a combat photographer on the ship like they would have in the Marines or in the Army. We did not have a medic to drag us to safety and patch us up. When we talked to our head and got into the water, our odds were pretty slim. But if you were in, oh I’ll give you another example. They say that the combat Army and the Marines, actually there’s only about fifteen to seventeen percent that are on the front line in harm’s way. When they get banged up, they drag them to a hospital and patch them up. And they’re out there for a given period of time, then they’re drawn back for, what do they call it? R and R. Rest and something.
CS: Relaxation.
RB: Yeah. And we were not allowed to have a camera, we were not allowed to keep a diary, and everything was just hush hush constantly. There was no photographic record of what was happening to us. There was some I’d say, if you were in a convoy you would have had some Navy ships escort you. And I would say probably some of the Navy ships would have photography that would record a ship blowing up and stuff like that. But as far as us in our ship, we were not allowed to have anything.
[00:11:56]
CS: Wow that sounds like one of the scariest parts. No medics?
RB: No. We were just out there and it was like we were a duck on the pond, ready for somebody to shoot at us.
CS: Yeah. Always there for somebody else. Getting them ready and prepared.
RB: I was lucky. There were two instances where the armed guards were the ones who manned the guns and we were their auxiliary. We were ammunition passers and if one of them got knocked off we were trained to step in. They stood watch, same as our able bodied men. They were the depth men and they would watch out for subs, ships on the horizon, all that good stuff. Twice in my shipping, they thought they saw the wake of a torpedo. But it didn’t hit us. Okay. But one day, I would say probably between eight a.m. in the morning and noon because that was my watch, eight to twelve. I was on watch and I heard ‘boom’, ‘boom’, boom’, you know. The engineer sent me up to see what was going on and it was shooting at something, they thought it was a mine, and they put the telescope on it and they decided it was a floating buoy that has broken loose. And I don’t know, I was still on watch maybe an hour later and we heard the ‘boom’ boom’ again! Then the engineer sent me up top side to see what was going on and we had gotten into some mines. So they saw three mines and one was at a distance far enough, they were shooting at it, and they got one of them. But the third one, I was on a sea-going tug and we were on a tow so we weren’t very maneuverable. This third mine came so close to our ship that when the guys on the bridge looked over, they lost sight of it. So that was my, I’d say that was a time the Lord was watching over me. Because if we had hit that mine, I wouldn’t be here.
[00:14:43]
CS: Oh my goodness. Alright. What exactly was your assignment on the ship?
RB: I worked in the engine room and both of my ships were diesels. So we had a regular routine. We checked the oil and the temperature and we were to check the bearings on the shaft that goes from the engines down the shaft alley to the screws, you know the propulsion. So we did that and we regularly pumped the bilges, that was water that might get inside the ship for whatever reason, and we pumped them out and it was just a regular maintenance to make sure those engines kept going because you just did not want to be out there with a dead engine. And we had auxiliary engines that produced our electricity. We had two auxiliary engines, so we would run one maybe for a week and start the other one and shut the first one down. And I would say just regular maintenance to make sure everything continued to go.
CS: Okay. Do you say if you had your pick now, you would still hold that position?
[00:16:16]
RB: I’d go back in a heartbeat. I’d rather go back than to see my son and my grandson or the young man next door to me.
CS: We’re there many casualties in your unit?
RB: None. We never were hit with anything. And I say that luckily because we were on a small ship, one hundred and ninety five feet long, eleven hundred tons, and that would probably be as fourth as big as a liberty ship. Our duty was to tow floating machine shop or dry-dock back to be repaired or to pull a ship that had been beached and pull things off like that.
CS: Okay. What would you say are a few of your most memorable experiences?
RB: Well, I was in the engine room, and that was not a good place to be if your ship gets hit because usually, particularly with torpedoes, the sub tries to put the torpedo in the engine room. That kills the ship, and then you’re a sitting duck. So probably, the day we were in the mines, although I was on watch, and I got to thinking about that was probably the most, makes me think the most. I’ll put it that way.
One time we were in a bad storm, and of course I learned to sleep on my stomach because our ship rolled most of the time. And I knew I would only have seconds to get off my ship, and my pillow was my life jacket. So this one storm was pretty bad. Our ship was built to roll, I mean tip sideways. Our ship was built to take, I believe, a forty-three degree roll. Now that’s almost out of a forty-five degree angle. And that one night, we rolled to forty five twice. We had a pretty rough night and they said the next day they calculate the ship, I don’t know I never did understand how they could use a sexton and shoot the stars and find out where we were. Anyway, in twenty four hours they said we lost forty miles. It brought us back and we were not going full speed ahead. We were just going fast enough to keep from piling into high waves and just kind of riding the storm out. And we did have a tow behind us too so we were probably going at half speed all night long but we lost forty miles in twenty-four hours. In other words we went backwards forty miles, let’s put it that way.
[00:19:48]
CS: Does that affect a schedule you were on?
RB: No, none.
CS: Okay. Were you ever a prisoner of war?
RB: No ma’am.
CS: That’s good!
RB: Yeah, really.
CS: Were you ever awarded any medals or citations?
RB: No, no citations. I have I think, I’m entitled to wear three ribbons. The Pacific Asiatic area, the Freedom Bar, and there’s one other I’m not sure. I don’t have it but I think I could. And of course after the war they gave us a bad deal from the word ‘go’. And I think I have a pin, a pin and a piece of paper that they gave me. And like one guy said, you can take that and a five dollar bill and buy you a sandwich.
CS: Was there any way to stay in touch with your family at that time?
RB: No ma’am. Well, when you came back to the United States you could, but when we shipped out, we were not to tell anybody where we were going or what our cargo was.
CS: How often did you get to come home?
RB: Well we were entitled to stay one week on shore for every day at sea, I believe. But that could not exceed thirty days. And we did not get any travel time in that either, see. The Merchant Marines paid social security, income tax, and if you had to send money home, and there was no allotment, we had to send money out of our own pay, we bought all of our own clothes and we had to pay full fare when we traveled on the train home. So the Navy or the Army boys, of course they didn’t have to pay any of those things, had their own clothing allotment and had a discounted rate to go home on a train. In fact, we were called civilians. And that was kind of a trumped up charge between the unions, the lawyers, and U.S. government. And finally in 1988, we got three guys who were torpedo seamen, sued the government and wanted some help on wartime injuries. And a couple seamen’s unions jumped in to help and that was about the same time that Senator Goldwater got veteran status for the WAAF’s. Do you know who they were?
[00:23:05]
CS: No I don’t.
RB: They were the women’s ferry pilots.
CS: Okay.
RB: They flew a lot of the bombers and maybe some –I don’t know whether they did any fighter planes. See, we transported a lot of airplanes. In lock down it would be plied to the decks, in knock-down conditions and covered with Cosmoline and all that. So the majority of the airplanes that got over there, we took. But the Women’s Air Force, they flew planes from Kansas City and they flew some from Boeing and they would say to the New York area then refuel, then to the Iceland and Greenland area. And then from there they would hop on over to London. And it was not a real safe deal and they should have had veteran status. So I have nothing against them for that but the government should have never treated us the way they did then and the way they continue to do.
CS: Yeah doesn’t sound like a very good deal. Okay, what about your food and living spaces?
RB: Well both if my ships were pretty clean. Some ships were kind of dirty, but both of my ships had good crews and good the crews before us took pretty good care. The food was always pretty good until, like I say, we were on a small ship both times, and you didn’t have a lot of fresh water capacity. So from time to time we would get our water rationed and we would take salt water baths and shave in salt water and wash your clothes in salt water. Maybe you got a bucket of fresh water a day to rinse all that junk off of you. But for the most part, I would have to say our food was pretty good. We didn’t have to eat K-rations and all that.
CS: Alright.
RB: I will say this. We had one steward who had been a chef for PK Wrigley, the chewing gum magnet. And he had a residence on Catalina Island. So he was really a good cook. And he mixed us up some pretty good meals when we had been out to sea for three or four months, I don’t know where he got the meat and stuff to do it but he did. And on the next ship we had a little Danish man that was a good baker. And he kept us eating donuts and Danish rolls and all that good stuff cause you couldn’t go down to the corner store and get it. Most part though, we were in New Hollandia, Caledonia, tied up to the dock and we were taking supplies on and there were some sea carcasses laying there on the dock, of course they were frozen. A couple guys happen to walk by and there was a big purple stamp on it, ‘reject U.S. Army’. Well that was lamb that came aboard our ship. We ate it, but it was rejected by the Army. Other than that, I have no complaints on what I had to eat.
CS: Yeah sounded pretty good. Alright, were there every serious incidents when you ran out of supplies or goods or people?
RB: Well, like I say, sometimes we would be short on fresh water. We had what they call a swamp chest. Now that’s where we brought our cigarettes and our candy bars and a new pair of pants or shoes if you needed them. And after about three, four, five, six months, you began to get short on popular brand cigarettes. You’d get short on popular candy bars. And in some cases, you’d get wormy candy bars. We tried to treat salt potatoes one time. We traded some salt potatoes one time, they weren’t rotten they were just getting spungy. Or I don’t know how many cans of beer, but several cans of beer! And they got all the beer they wanted, so we didn’t get any. Anyway, we’d get it sometimes and I didn’t drink at the time so I gave my beer to a couple of the other guys. And then one other time we were somewhere, and traded some candy bars that began to get wormy for something, I don’t remember what it was now, but the guys there, I don’t remember whether it was on a ship or on an island, I just don’t remember, we’ll just got more for our money along with the chocolate. There were no tiny things like weevils that get in oats and stuff like that, nothing like eating worms. It might not sound too appetizing to women I don’t know, but in wartime, things are different.
[00:29:24]
CS: Yeah. When would you say either one specific time or a period of a couple days was the time you felt the most stress?
RB: The most stress?
CS: Or Pressure?
RB: Well, I think the most stress I had really was when I lost one of my classmates in Sea Side Bay. I got Scarlett fever and the male nurse told me that I would have to go to the Public Health Hospital so they sent me back to my barracks and packed all my clothes in a sea bag and I had to march probably a good half a mile to the Public Health Hospital and I was pretty sick. And I don’t know what my temperature was but it was probably pretty high and I was red as a strawberry. And I wasn’t a happy camper right there cause I had lost all my friends and all my classmates. I was going to be in isolation for at least three weeks so that was kind of depressing.
CS: Yeah that was your biggest down fall of the time.
RB: Well I was seventeen and a half years old and I was in a strange town and already with a bunch of strange people so you kind of had to buck up and face the music.
CS: Yeah. Would you say there was anything you ever did for good luck?
RB: For good luck?
CS: Yes.
RB: No, not really. I’m not a real religious guy but I suppose I said my prayers from time to time.
CS: Alright. On your down time, how did you entertain yourselves?
RB: Well, I used to walk a lot in the deck. Of course you couldn’t walk very far, you were almost walking in circles. But some of the guys played poker, some rolled dice, some just stood their watches, laid around, slept, whatever. If the weather was nice, you know, like I say, we were on a sea-going tug and when you were on the after-deck, it depends on how much fuel we had, you were only from eighteen to twelve feet above the water. So you could see the tuna or the porpoise swimming along with us you know or if the seagulls were close by you could throw them crackers and stuff. And that was a live animal, like at home. So, I played poker once for about three days. And one time I think about a hundred and, nope, about two hundred dollars ahead playing ‘pay day’ poker.
CS: Wow that’s pretty good.
RB: Yeah. But on about the third day I was on a run of bad luck and I was in the hole I think a hundred and forty dollars. Right, so I thought this isn’t for me, and I never played poker again. But we played rummy and pinochle stuff like that I had a few books with me to study about engines and stuff. One time, I would try to get to sea to get my third engineers license, but I married my high school sweet heart and it wasn’t long before we had a baby on the way and I think she was about nine months old before I ever got to see her. But anyway, that synched to see that I wasn’t going to go back to sea after the war.
[00: 34:15]
CS: Yeah. Where were all of the places that you traveled or did your service to?
RB: Boy, a bunch of them. I was in Hawaii probably three times, maybe four. I was on Midway Island once. I was in Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands probably three times. I was in Leyte or Samar three times. I was on Guam, so we weren’t on Guam we just went in there with a floating shop. It was real hot right there. They sent a little harbor tug out, grabbed our town, and told us to get the heck out of there. And the smoke and the stink from shell explosions were pretty bad. And at that trip they sent us to Hollandia, New Guinea. They said you go between the Blue Island Majuro and Yap. And both Japanese held, but they had no air craft --- to stay in the middle of them and you will be all right. And we went down there about 140 degrees I think. But anyway, we went to Hollandia, New Guinea, I think from there we probably went to Nouméa, Caledonia. I was at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. I was a, well we were anchored once in Ulithi, I think that’s in the Caroline Islands. Oh I don’t know, I was in San Francisco and San Pedro along the West Coast. And one time we went from San Francisco up along the coast to the Columbia River and up the Columbia River to a little town called Kalama. Now right close to there, it’s called Emmet Falls, and also Mount Saint Helens that blew up. But of course we were there long before that. I do remember that. When we went up the Columbia River we saw, I believe it was Mount Hood, and that was a pretty sight. And the sun was shining in it and of course if you’ve never seen a mountain somewhere along the way there, there’s clouds at the top of the mountain, and it was a pretty sight, I have never seen one like that before. But that was in Seattle. Probably missed a couple places, had a lot of them.
CS: Yeah, that is a lot. Okay, what did you think of fellow officers and soldiers that you were with?
RB: Well, we were not with any soldiers. If you were on a troop ship you would have been around some soldiers and Marines, but on our ship, it was a small ship, we had an armed guard crew, probably from seven to ten. And our merchant crew would run from between thirty-five and maybe forty at the most. So there were never over fifty, fifty-five people in our ship I don’t think. There was a rule, I always got along with everybody. But I think there were a few guys who were sent out on the after-deck to settle their differences.
CS: Okay. Would you mind telling me about, I’m sorry if I mispronounce this, Tarwawa? Tarawa?
RB: Wait a minute, say that all slow.
CS: T-A-R-A-W-A.
RB: T.A.R., oh, Tarawa?
CS: Tarawa, yes.
RB: Yeah, what do you want to know about it?
CS: I don’t really know. My teacher informed me about it and it seemed like something important to ask about.
RB: Oh it was a very important battle to get us control of the Pacific Ocean. I had a couple pictures in Mrs. Lerch’s stuff that she copied and when I talk about that, I almost get emotional. When those Marines hit that island --- see the Japanese for years would not let anybody on any of those islands out there. So we had to idea of the depth of the water, the coral reef surrounding these places and the Army men and the British, we just didn’t know much about that. So in some instances around the island they would put out maybe concrete barriers out there with steel on them or something to slow landing craft. And the Americans did not know how deep the water was around Tarawa. So they got as close as they could but they began to hit these barriers. Well when you’re on a landing craft you have to get off of there because you’re a sitting duck. So these daring men jumped off of their into the landing water and many of them were jumping into the water which was anywhere from ten to twenty feet deep with a full pack. They drowned or maybe one out of ten manage to get to the beach.
That island was so heavily fortified that the Japanese had coconut bunkers right down on the water front. They were made out of coconut logs maybe sixteen-eighteen inches in diameter. The whole bunker was not over maybe three feet high with a little slit there for the machine guns. And the Japanese of course were little men but I imagine they were sitting there in water. Well these poor marines had to face that to get on that island. Now that island had been under heavy, heavy bombardment by our battle ships and air craft and everything. It was, have you ever seen a flood zone?
[00:41:55]
CS: No.
RB: Well, it’s just under devastation. If you can imagine a woods that you know, a dense woods, any that you’ve been around, if you can just suddenly imagine all of those trees being shattered, and they’d be blown off with hardly anything but stumps left, no leaves no twigs or nothing, that’s what an island looks like after a bombardment. Well I got ashore there about three or four months after they took that island. And you were really cautious, so you don’t really talk to any of these guys on that island. If they want to talk to you, okay, but don’t strike up a conversation. They’re ready to knock the head off of most of you. And Mac and I got a bucket somewhere, a bucket full of machine gun shells and we took it back to, well, before we took it back were walking along the beach and there were bones laying around there, a lot of places there wasn’t a very good smell, and the water still had a lot of impurities where dead bodies had been pushed out into the ocean. And I guess we walked about three quarters of a mile and there was a little, not too little, concrete block house about the size of a two bedroom house. And I don’t know how we found it out, but that was a command headquarters where the Japanese, I think it was the Vice Admiral, who controlled that island and had control of the defenses. He and his two or three men hold up in there and those passage ways were so narrow that only a thin man, like a little Japanese guy, could pass each other stomach to stomach.
Well they wouldn’t surrender so the Marines burned out of there with flame throwers and it was a smelly mess even after three or four months. But I just think about those men how terrible it was to even get on shore on that island and what they went through to accomplish the mission. And one of those that was especially successful in leading his men was Colonel Shoop from Covington, Indiana. I believe his name was Charles or George Shoop. And they were having trouble with the communication between, I think it was The Maryland, the battle ship. That’s where the, maybe the Marine General was, and Colonel Shoop really didn’t know whether he had any reinforcements coming in or he didn’t know, he was just hightailing his men on instinct. But he got on shore there to have a little bamboo pear and got a toehold on that island and he held it through the night and then I guess some reinforcements came but he didn’t even know they were coming. But anyway, Colonel Shoop from Covington, Indiana had a major part in conquering the island. And I think the island was Betio. But the island was Tarawa and it was in the Gilberts. It wasn’t a very big island wither but it was heavily fortified and it had air field on there and it was pretty important that the Americans take control of it.
[00:46:10]
CS: Yeah, that sounds very important.
RB: It was. I have a book on it and if any of you kids would like to read it I would be happy to loan it to you.
CS: Oh great! Thank you. Okay, is there anything else you want to tell me about while you were in the service? Anything that I might have missed?
RB: Well, yeah. When we enlisted, they were coming around to the schools and telling us that the Merchant Marine needed men and it would be a good life. You’d be on a ship and good food and you’d get to see the different places and everything. But they didn’t tell us how many ships they were sinking. And like I say, two of my senior classmates had been drafted. So my buddy had just finished his junior year in high school, and Kappy [?] and I had gone down to Indianapolis to volunteer I think in July or August. And we don’t know why but they didn’t call us up until November and put us off again. But it turns out they were trying to get barracks built in Sea Side Bay to have a place to put new trainees. So we didn’t have to go until I think the day or the second day after Christmas. But we thought all the time, and we were lead to believe that we would be becoming a part of the United States Armed Forces.
Well, I had taken subjects in school, I hoped they had prepared me for, I either wanted to go to Rose Holman College in Terra Haute, or Purdue. So going through training, like I say, our training was based off of Navy and Coast Guard. We had uniforms that you couldn’t have told us from either one, and we had to pass strict Coast Guard tests to get out and we sailed. We signed articles. That’s a contract you sign when you go aboard a ship. You sign articles that you agree to stay aboard that ship until the ship comes back around to another continental port. And then articles were broken that the minute that engine stops, your pay stops, but we didn’t know all that. Okay? We still followed all along that we would be treated like the other guys. And we found out along I think 1944-1945, that President Roosevelt had pushed for the G.I. Bill for returning service men. We still thought we were going to be treated like them. Now get this, we were subject to court martial. But still we were regarded as civilians because of the way they wrote the law. I don’t know when, somewhere between 1936 and 1939, that the labor unions, the attorneys, and the government attorneys, they made us as contract workers. Okay, so basically they were saying that we were contract workers before we were civilians. Although all during the war we were under naval orders. Also, we could have been a court martial, a court martial civilian. But anyways, we were subject and some guys didn’t get court martial.
Okay, when we got home, well before we got home, there were rumors out that they wanted us men to stay aboard ships so the government could still get to stay because we needed people to get returning service men and all the Army surplus and stuff. And then as soon as we got back, they wanted us to start loading our ship with Marshall Plan taking stuff back to reconstruct Germany and all the other countries that we tore up during the war. So in about probably the early part on 1944, many men had been in the Army since 1941. Maybe they were already in there the day the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.
[00:51:01]
CS: Okay.
RB: Okay. From 1941 to 1943, at least two and a half years, they may have accumulated enough points that they could get out and go home. Okay? They were already home. And in 1944-1945, the war was still going on in Japan so they were still wanting some of us to stay to, like I say, bring back the soldiers and the surplus and everything. And I didn’t get home until, I believe, April or May of 1946. So when I got home, like I say I was married and had a little girl, I told my wife, I said, well, probably I’ll just benefits from the G.I. Bill and I’ll go to college. And I got home and I discovered there was no education money for any Merchant Marine, we were still classified as civilians, not veterans.
Okay, there were no houses or apartments to rent in the little town I lived in. I couldn’t get a low cost loan to build a little home with a little two car garage like the other guys were doing because I was not a veteran. So we had to move in with my mother and my little sister. We stayed there two years and I couldn’t find a job. I had to become a laborer for a carpenter with a little four-man carpenter crew and my buddy ended up with a laborers job in a Harrison’s Steel Castings in Attica which was a dirty place to work and not very employee friendly. So, that went two years. We were just scraping whatever we could do to get by.
All the Army, Navy, Air Force, all that ended up going to college, they were buying new boats and buying motor homes and so forth and so on, maybe buying a little business and starting up. And there we were getting nothing and in 1988, I told you, three guys sued the government and we finally got veteran status and the only thing we get to this day is help on our medicine and we can go to a veterans’ hospital, well you know, you have to wait your turn but its available. Well we have a compensation bill --- well, back up here. They say that for every person that took advantage of the G.I. Bill, whether it was to build a low cost home or go to school or buy a little business or whatever, they also got twenty dollars a week for a year. Well not twenty bucks back then is pretty good money. We got nothing, we even paid our own way home.
Anyway, then --- my train of thought just went out the door. Anyway, my schooling was out. I couldn’t go to school because my family didn’t have any money. And I went over to the bank, I saved a little money and bought a lock and had a little blueprint drawn up with a two car garage and I went to the local bank and he said, Richard, were just a little bank and we don’t have any extra money to loan but you can go over to Covington. It’s a bigger back and they could probably loan you money. So I knew Mr. White knew my family, so I went over. He looked at my little blue print and said well how much money you got? And I said I’ve got about fifteen hundred dollars. He said “Okay” and “Use your money as far as it’ll go and when you need enough money to finish up come back and we’ll help you out.” I did that. And when I needed money to pay off about eight hundred dollars in my lumber yard bill and to buy a new furnace, I went to Covington Bank. I got about half way through my application and he said, “Whoa wait a minute mister.” I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “You’re not a veteran.” I said, “Well I spent two and a half years with the Merchant Marines on the high seas.” He said, “Yes, but the government does not recognize you as a veteran and I cannot loan you money through the G.I. Bill.” He said, “Is there anybody who can co-sign for you?” And I said, “The only one I know of would be my mother, she has a home.” He said, “You talk to her and if she’ll co-sign for you, I can help you out that way.” So my mother put her home up for sale, or for security, for me to get, I don’t know, about $1,800 or $2,000.
So I went to work finally again in a lumber yard. And I thought, well, I’m not going to get anywhere here. I had worked four months in Lafayette at Alcoa and had a good work record. So I told my wife, I said let’s, I’ll just go back to Lafayette and see if I can get my old job back and I can take my classes at Purdue. So I went up to Purdue, or I went up to Alcoa in Lafayette and I got an application and about half way through it they stopped me just like the banker did. Now I said, well what’s the matter? They said you’re not a veteran. I told them the same thing. He said I know, I agree with you. But he says the government says you’re not a veteran, and they mandate the only job, the only people I can hire now are returning service men. So I had to go back to my little town and go back to work as a laborer for a carpenter crew.
And that’s the way we’ve been treated all these years. That the VFW and the American Legion wouldn’t let us in. We were a bunch of teenage boys. There was only, at the very most in the war, there was only about 215,000. When we got home, you might say in a little town, well even Muncie. I found out now that there are five of us. But we didn’t, we couldn’t belong to the American Legion, we were teenage boys, we had no representation, and we didn’t know about just the other side of town. So we were just, we just had to do what we had to do. And we’ve been treated very, very shabbily. Now our average age is eighty-six years old and we’re trying to get a compensation built through. This past readily and the past recongretional sessions in the house. It first started at a thousand dollars a month for the balance of our life with the surviving spouse. In the 2009 Congress, it passes handily and heavily in the house again. We’ve got sixty-one co-sponsors [unintelligible]. That year they struck out the surviving spouse. In the 2010 Congress, they put a five year cap on it. Okay, now our average age at that time was eighty-five and a half, today it’s eighty-six. Not many of us are going to be alive five years from now to get that $2,000 a month. And that’s the treatment we’ve about had ever since the war ended, and it’s not a very pretty picture.
[00:58:58]
CS: No, that’s not very fair at all.
RB: Well see, two years ago they awarded the Filipino Scouts a bonus, I think from 9,000- 15,000 dollars. Now some of those guys were fighting for their own country. They were civilians, some of them were men who went into the bush to save the ax. But they didn’t channel or single them out, they just took them all. They did that so they could erase a very black spot on the American government. Well, that black spot, the way they treated us is worse than that. And all these other countries around the world have honored their Merchant Seamen with bonuses and people on Vladivostok and Murmansk still treat our people as heroes. And our own government still classes us as civilians and refuses to give us any type of compensation. Now that’s my sermon. It’s not very nice.
CS: No, but insightful, oh my goodness!
RB: I’m going to talk to Mrs. Lerch and see if I can get you kids to do a class project to call the Congressmen and, our bills on the house now and we have sixty co-sponsors and we need probably about a hundred to get it out of committee and get it passed before the Senate. They have to get it passes before they send it to the senate but we do have a new chairman on the Veteran Committee in the senate. It’s Patty Murray from Washington --- from the state of Washington and she has been a long time supporter of the Merchant Marines. So we do have that going for us but we got to get it out of the house before we get it to the Senate. And of course we lost some backers in this last election so we don’t really know how we’re going to come out but we just have to keep fighting. So if we can get you kids to write a letter or make a call to a congressman and ask them to co-sponsor HR 23 The Belated Thank You To The Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II and to vote yes, when it gets to the poll we’ll vote.
CS: Yeah I am going to talk to my teacher and see what we can do.
RB: Well, we just had a lot of trouble in our family in the last three or four months and I didn’t get to take near the stuff that I wanted to, to Mrs. Lerch. And some of the stuff, I’m sure, she couldn’t connect the dots, which is understandable. But I want to go back down and talk to her again and take some more stuff. And I have a couple of little forms, and she probably knows just as well as I do how to write to a congressman or your senator and you know, in a correct way. So, but, we really appreciate all you kids!
CS: Yeah of course!
RB: You kids learn more from us in these last couple of weeks than probably your parents do. And it’s not fair because it has not been put in the history book. And what Mrs. Lerch is doing, she’s trying to get all this information to the Library of Congress. And we need to get our own bill passed so it will be correctly recorded in the Congressional Record what the Merchant Marine did in WWII. We have 9,500 guys at the bottom of the ocean and some of their families never knew what happened to them, they just never came back. They are M.I.A.’s and we can never let them be forgotten. So I tell the people, by the grace of God I’m still alive and we’ve only got about 7,500 of us left now. So kind of a bitter pill.
CS: Yeah. Are you in touch with anyone that you knew from your time serving or you’ve met along the years? Are you still in touch with anyone?
RB: Only one. I found one in Carson City, Nevada. And I call him and write to him, oh a couple of times a year. And he did belong to a Merchant Marine club out there, I think they were called a High, a High something rollers, you know, tied in with the gambling out there. He says I was so far away and I was a little short on money and he said it was kind of a chore and an expense to go to the meetings so I just dropped out. But from time to time I send him information I pick up and he appreciates that. And I found the wife of one of my other shipmates in Fresno, California, and I’ve sent her information from time to time and some stuff that I thought, maybe her kids might be happy to get and I sent you know a couple of things that might help her as a widow. Whether it did I don’t know but that’s the only two people I’ve ever been able to locate.
[01:04:53]
CS: Okay. That’s about all the questions I have. Is there anything else?
RB: Well, one of the reasons why it’s hard for us to fins another person, like I say, there weren’t very many of us in the first place. And we didn���t, we couldn’t belong to the VFW or the American Legion and the VFW they just fire tooth and toenail. The American Legion, they are a little bit better now. They, we can join the American Legion and they kind of remain mutual when the stuff comes up in a Senate hearing but they could do more for us if they would. But, our part in WWII was kept so secret and the companies weren’t really, they weren’t really watched or something, I don’t know, or ordered to keep to, I want to say finer records. And it’s just been a very hard thing to locate anybody because there were no records kept of our part in the war. Not like the Army or Navy men where the government kept track of everything.
CS: There were no records at all?
RB: Pardon?
CS: There were no records at all?
RB: Well there’s some. But it’s like that book Mrs. Lerch was so happy to see. The name of it was A Careless Word, a Needless Sinking. It was written by Captain Arthur Moore. He spent forty years looking all the world, reading all through submarine records and port records and company records, what had been kept. And see, at the beginning, I may lose you, are you still there?
CS: I’m still here.
RB: At the beginning of the war, the American people, or the American government seized whatever ships they could get. So some of these foreign ships had American crews on there, and consequently, their information was all lost because our government wasn’t keeping record of it.
CS: Okay.
RB: I think I’m going to lose my telephone.
CS: Okay well if there’s anything else I think of, can I call you back sometime this week?
RB: You can call me anytime, I’m always up until eleven thirty or twelve.
CS: Okay excellent. Thank you so, so much Mr. Blair. This was amazing.
RB: Well I really appreciate all you kids doing what you’re doing and it’s very important to us. Like I say, there’s not very many of us left and we need to get our information correctly recorded and in the school books.
CS: Yeah certainly.
RB: And in Japan, they’re still putting it in the school books that we were the ones who started the war! We were not the aggressors. Japan was the aggressor and they tried to stab us in the back.
CS: Yeah, I know that.
RB: Well, you call me anytime you want.
CS: Alright! Well thank you again so much for your time and I will get all this information together and if there’s anything else I’ll be sure to call you.
RB: Well if you need some more printed material let me know and I’ll see if I can send you some more information.
CS: Okay great!
RB: I appreciate what you’re doing.
CS: Thank you so much I appreciate you giving me your time.
RB: Thank you.
CS: Thank you, have a good night.
RB: Goodnight.
[01:08:44]

Description

Title	Blair, Richard oral history
Subject	World War, 1939-1945 -- Transportation World War, 1939-1945 -- Campaigns -- Kiribati -- Tarawa Merchant marine -- United States -- History -- 20th century World War, 1939-1945 -- South Pacific Ocean -- Amphibious operations World War, 1939-1945 -- Japan -- Amphibious operations
Description	Audio recording of oral history interview with World War II veteran, Richard Blair.
Interviewee(s)	Blair, Richard, b. 1925-12-01
Interviewer(s)	Sweeney, Clare
Date Interviewed	2011-09-24
Item Type	sound
Item ID	Blair_Richard.mp3
Transcript	“Today is September 24, 2011. I am Clare Sweeney and I am interviewing Richard Blair at 1224 W. Carson Street, Muncie, IN. [via phone] Mr. Blair has no relation to me. Mr. Blair is 85 years old and was born on December 1, 1925. Mr. Blair served in WWII. Mr. Blair. was in the Merchant Marines. [00:01:41] Clare Sweeney: Were you drafted or enlisted in the war? Richard Blair: I was a volunteer, I enlisted. CS: Where were you living at the time? RB: Veedersburg, Indiana. CS: Why did you join the service? RB: Well, it was war time. I had already lost [unintelligible]. Two of my senior class had been drafted, one left at Christmas time and one left the last day after school was out. And right when I graduated, I was seventeen and a half, and I knew eventually I would probably be drafted. A friend of mines brother was on leave from the Merchant Marines and he seemed to like it, but he said it was very dangerous. At that period in your life, you think you’re indestructible. And I really would have liked to join the Air Force and be a pilot. I thought coming from a small school I might not have enough of something to become a pilot and my friends’ brother told me well, if you don’t like the Merchant Marines, you can get out of it and join the other branches of service. And if you are drafted into the Army or the Navy or something like that you are there for the duration. So, I took the Merchant Marines. CS: Excellent. Do you recall your first days in the service? RB: Well yeah. They told us not to wear a lot of clothes because they were going to ship them back. So my high school buddy that enlisted with me, we got on the train in Indianapolis and we got to New York City, well Brooklyn. I believe that it was on the twenty-seventh or the twenty-eighth day of December, and they didn’t have any barracks ready for us. So they put us over in kind of a chilly building. And like I say, we didn’t have gloves or heavy coats on or anything, so it was kind of a miserable night. The next morning they woke us up at six o’clock for breakfast. And after breakfast, they put us out shoveling about three to four inches of slushy snow and we had oxfords on, no gloves, and thin jackets. So that wasn’t a real good way to start. We got a good taste of the military right then. [00:04:48] CS: I’d say so! Did you go through any boot camp or training experience? RB: Yes ma’am. I was in the Maritime base in Brooklyn, New York. I think I was there four months and nine days. The reason I wasn’t there that long was I got scarlet fever in the middle of my training. So that knocked me out for about a month. The need for the merchant seamen was so great then, that even though like me, I took the engine room training, my buddy took the deck training, and maybe somebody else would have taken the mess training or cook and baker. Well even though you had this three weeks training or a month’s training, it was so critical to get men out, they might ship you out just to get you on a ship, and get that ship on its way. But luckily when I went, our training was to get us out of the bay. We had to pass strict coast guard exams. So after I passed my exam, they sent us up to a holding center at Hotel[ Chelfa?] in New York City. And that was the hotel that in the seventies and eighties was an area where the hippies and the artists all gathered. Anyway, there was a call for eight guys to be shipped out to the Pacific Ocean. And I thought, well, I’ll probably never get to the Pacific Ocean any other way, so I volunteered, and that’s how I shipped out from New York City to the West Coast. CS: Okay. What was the hardest part of the training? RB: I didn’t really have any hard part. I had in my mind that whatever came my way, I would handle it. Some people had problems, but they made their own problems when they didn’t try to get along. But I was brought up in the way that if a problem came your way, you just solved it and went on. So I had a good mentality I’d say. I didn’t have many problems. I’ve been a person who enjoyed learning whatever I could learn. CS: That’s wonderful. Alright, when you were in the marines, where exactly did you serve your time? RB: Well, I wasn’t in the Marines, I was in the Merchant Marines. Do you know the difference? CS: No I don’t. RB: Well that’s alright, you weren’t taught, they didn’t put it in the school books for you. Okay, the Marines, you probably really know what the Marines are. CS: Yeah. RB: Okay, the Merchant Marine was a man that manned the ships. In fact, we took ninety-seven percent of all men, all materials, to every battle front, the entire war. And once we made one trip, then we would come back to the states or back to refinement and make another trip to somewhere else. So basically, we were in harm’s way 24/7. [00:09:03] CS: Oh my goodness. RB: That’s right, and our losses were more. We had a higher percent of losses than any of the other branches. And the reason why a lot of this information wasn’t made public was we did not dare let the people back home know how many ships and men they were losing, and the damages that were around. They did not let the Germans know how bad they were hitting us or they would have stepped up their sub fleet. So all during the war, was a very very, well, we were just not supposed to tell where we were going or what we were carrying or anything about it. That was four years of everything pretty quiet, and then the Americans and their people as a whole are inclined to forget a lot of things. You know, tomorrows a happy day and they go about their business. So, we did not have a combat photographer on the ship like they would have in the Marines or in the Army. We did not have a medic to drag us to safety and patch us up. When we talked to our head and got into the water, our odds were pretty slim. But if you were in, oh I’ll give you another example. They say that the combat Army and the Marines, actually there’s only about fifteen to seventeen percent that are on the front line in harm’s way. When they get banged up, they drag them to a hospital and patch them up. And they’re out there for a given period of time, then they’re drawn back for, what do they call it? R and R. Rest and something. CS: Relaxation. RB: Yeah. And we were not allowed to have a camera, we were not allowed to keep a diary, and everything was just hush hush constantly. There was no photographic record of what was happening to us. There was some I’d say, if you were in a convoy you would have had some Navy ships escort you. And I would say probably some of the Navy ships would have photography that would record a ship blowing up and stuff like that. But as far as us in our ship, we were not allowed to have anything. [00:11:56] CS: Wow that sounds like one of the scariest parts. No medics? RB: No. We were just out there and it was like we were a duck on the pond, ready for somebody to shoot at us. CS: Yeah. Always there for somebody else. Getting them ready and prepared. RB: I was lucky. There were two instances where the armed guards were the ones who manned the guns and we were their auxiliary. We were ammunition passers and if one of them got knocked off we were trained to step in. They stood watch, same as our able bodied men. They were the depth men and they would watch out for subs, ships on the horizon, all that good stuff. Twice in my shipping, they thought they saw the wake of a torpedo. But it didn’t hit us. Okay. But one day, I would say probably between eight a.m. in the morning and noon because that was my watch, eight to twelve. I was on watch and I heard ‘boom’, ‘boom’, boom’, you know. The engineer sent me up to see what was going on and it was shooting at something, they thought it was a mine, and they put the telescope on it and they decided it was a floating buoy that has broken loose. And I don’t know, I was still on watch maybe an hour later and we heard the ‘boom’ boom’ again! Then the engineer sent me up top side to see what was going on and we had gotten into some mines. So they saw three mines and one was at a distance far enough, they were shooting at it, and they got one of them. But the third one, I was on a sea-going tug and we were on a tow so we weren’t very maneuverable. This third mine came so close to our ship that when the guys on the bridge looked over, they lost sight of it. So that was my, I’d say that was a time the Lord was watching over me. Because if we had hit that mine, I wouldn’t be here. [00:14:43] CS: Oh my goodness. Alright. What exactly was your assignment on the ship? RB: I worked in the engine room and both of my ships were diesels. So we had a regular routine. We checked the oil and the temperature and we were to check the bearings on the shaft that goes from the engines down the shaft alley to the screws, you know the propulsion. So we did that and we regularly pumped the bilges, that was water that might get inside the ship for whatever reason, and we pumped them out and it was just a regular maintenance to make sure those engines kept going because you just did not want to be out there with a dead engine. And we had auxiliary engines that produced our electricity. We had two auxiliary engines, so we would run one maybe for a week and start the other one and shut the first one down. And I would say just regular maintenance to make sure everything continued to go. CS: Okay. Do you say if you had your pick now, you would still hold that position? [00:16:16] RB: I’d go back in a heartbeat. I’d rather go back than to see my son and my grandson or the young man next door to me. CS: We’re there many casualties in your unit? RB: None. We never were hit with anything. And I say that luckily because we were on a small ship, one hundred and ninety five feet long, eleven hundred tons, and that would probably be as fourth as big as a liberty ship. Our duty was to tow floating machine shop or dry-dock back to be repaired or to pull a ship that had been beached and pull things off like that. CS: Okay. What would you say are a few of your most memorable experiences? RB: Well, I was in the engine room, and that was not a good place to be if your ship gets hit because usually, particularly with torpedoes, the sub tries to put the torpedo in the engine room. That kills the ship, and then you’re a sitting duck. So probably, the day we were in the mines, although I was on watch, and I got to thinking about that was probably the most, makes me think the most. I’ll put it that way. One time we were in a bad storm, and of course I learned to sleep on my stomach because our ship rolled most of the time. And I knew I would only have seconds to get off my ship, and my pillow was my life jacket. So this one storm was pretty bad. Our ship was built to roll, I mean tip sideways. Our ship was built to take, I believe, a forty-three degree roll. Now that’s almost out of a forty-five degree angle. And that one night, we rolled to forty five twice. We had a pretty rough night and they said the next day they calculate the ship, I don’t know I never did understand how they could use a sexton and shoot the stars and find out where we were. Anyway, in twenty four hours they said we lost forty miles. It brought us back and we were not going full speed ahead. We were just going fast enough to keep from piling into high waves and just kind of riding the storm out. And we did have a tow behind us too so we were probably going at half speed all night long but we lost forty miles in twenty-four hours. In other words we went backwards forty miles, let’s put it that way. [00:19:48] CS: Does that affect a schedule you were on? RB: No, none. CS: Okay. Were you ever a prisoner of war? RB: No ma’am. CS: That’s good! RB: Yeah, really. CS: Were you ever awarded any medals or citations? RB: No, no citations. I have I think, I’m entitled to wear three ribbons. The Pacific Asiatic area, the Freedom Bar, and there’s one other I’m not sure. I don’t have it but I think I could. And of course after the war they gave us a bad deal from the word ‘go’. And I think I have a pin, a pin and a piece of paper that they gave me. And like one guy said, you can take that and a five dollar bill and buy you a sandwich. CS: Was there any way to stay in touch with your family at that time? RB: No ma’am. Well, when you came back to the United States you could, but when we shipped out, we were not to tell anybody where we were going or what our cargo was. CS: How often did you get to come home? RB: Well we were entitled to stay one week on shore for every day at sea, I believe. But that could not exceed thirty days. And we did not get any travel time in that either, see. The Merchant Marines paid social security, income tax, and if you had to send money home, and there was no allotment, we had to send money out of our own pay, we bought all of our own clothes and we had to pay full fare when we traveled on the train home. So the Navy or the Army boys, of course they didn’t have to pay any of those things, had their own clothing allotment and had a discounted rate to go home on a train. In fact, we were called civilians. And that was kind of a trumped up charge between the unions, the lawyers, and U.S. government. And finally in 1988, we got three guys who were torpedo seamen, sued the government and wanted some help on wartime injuries. And a couple seamen’s unions jumped in to help and that was about the same time that Senator Goldwater got veteran status for the WAAF’s. Do you know who they were? [00:23:05] CS: No I don’t. RB: They were the women’s ferry pilots. CS: Okay. RB: They flew a lot of the bombers and maybe some –I don’t know whether they did any fighter planes. See, we transported a lot of airplanes. In lock down it would be plied to the decks, in knock-down conditions and covered with Cosmoline and all that. So the majority of the airplanes that got over there, we took. But the Women’s Air Force, they flew planes from Kansas City and they flew some from Boeing and they would say to the New York area then refuel, then to the Iceland and Greenland area. And then from there they would hop on over to London. And it was not a real safe deal and they should have had veteran status. So I have nothing against them for that but the government should have never treated us the way they did then and the way they continue to do. CS: Yeah doesn’t sound like a very good deal. Okay, what about your food and living spaces? RB: Well both if my ships were pretty clean. Some ships were kind of dirty, but both of my ships had good crews and good the crews before us took pretty good care. The food was always pretty good until, like I say, we were on a small ship both times, and you didn’t have a lot of fresh water capacity. So from time to time we would get our water rationed and we would take salt water baths and shave in salt water and wash your clothes in salt water. Maybe you got a bucket of fresh water a day to rinse all that junk off of you. But for the most part, I would have to say our food was pretty good. We didn’t have to eat K-rations and all that. CS: Alright. RB: I will say this. We had one steward who had been a chef for PK Wrigley, the chewing gum magnet. And he had a residence on Catalina Island. So he was really a good cook. And he mixed us up some pretty good meals when we had been out to sea for three or four months, I don’t know where he got the meat and stuff to do it but he did. And on the next ship we had a little Danish man that was a good baker. And he kept us eating donuts and Danish rolls and all that good stuff cause you couldn’t go down to the corner store and get it. Most part though, we were in New Hollandia, Caledonia, tied up to the dock and we were taking supplies on and there were some sea carcasses laying there on the dock, of course they were frozen. A couple guys happen to walk by and there was a big purple stamp on it, ‘reject U.S. Army’. Well that was lamb that came aboard our ship. We ate it, but it was rejected by the Army. Other than that, I have no complaints on what I had to eat. CS: Yeah sounded pretty good. Alright, were there every serious incidents when you ran out of supplies or goods or people? RB: Well, like I say, sometimes we would be short on fresh water. We had what they call a swamp chest. Now that’s where we brought our cigarettes and our candy bars and a new pair of pants or shoes if you needed them. And after about three, four, five, six months, you began to get short on popular brand cigarettes. You’d get short on popular candy bars. And in some cases, you’d get wormy candy bars. We tried to treat salt potatoes one time. We traded some salt potatoes one time, they weren’t rotten they were just getting spungy. Or I don’t know how many cans of beer, but several cans of beer! And they got all the beer they wanted, so we didn’t get any. Anyway, we’d get it sometimes and I didn’t drink at the time so I gave my beer to a couple of the other guys. And then one other time we were somewhere, and traded some candy bars that began to get wormy for something, I don’t remember what it was now, but the guys there, I don’t remember whether it was on a ship or on an island, I just don’t remember, we’ll just got more for our money along with the chocolate. There were no tiny things like weevils that get in oats and stuff like that, nothing like eating worms. It might not sound too appetizing to women I don’t know, but in wartime, things are different. [00:29:24] CS: Yeah. When would you say either one specific time or a period of a couple days was the time you felt the most stress? RB: The most stress? CS: Or Pressure? RB: Well, I think the most stress I had really was when I lost one of my classmates in Sea Side Bay. I got Scarlett fever and the male nurse told me that I would have to go to the Public Health Hospital so they sent me back to my barracks and packed all my clothes in a sea bag and I had to march probably a good half a mile to the Public Health Hospital and I was pretty sick. And I don’t know what my temperature was but it was probably pretty high and I was red as a strawberry. And I wasn’t a happy camper right there cause I had lost all my friends and all my classmates. I was going to be in isolation for at least three weeks so that was kind of depressing. CS: Yeah that was your biggest down fall of the time. RB: Well I was seventeen and a half years old and I was in a strange town and already with a bunch of strange people so you kind of had to buck up and face the music. CS: Yeah. Would you say there was anything you ever did for good luck? RB: For good luck? CS: Yes. RB: No, not really. I’m not a real religious guy but I suppose I said my prayers from time to time. CS: Alright. On your down time, how did you entertain yourselves? RB: Well, I used to walk a lot in the deck. Of course you couldn’t walk very far, you were almost walking in circles. But some of the guys played poker, some rolled dice, some just stood their watches, laid around, slept, whatever. If the weather was nice, you know, like I say, we were on a sea-going tug and when you were on the after-deck, it depends on how much fuel we had, you were only from eighteen to twelve feet above the water. So you could see the tuna or the porpoise swimming along with us you know or if the seagulls were close by you could throw them crackers and stuff. And that was a live animal, like at home. So, I played poker once for about three days. And one time I think about a hundred and, nope, about two hundred dollars ahead playing ‘pay day’ poker. CS: Wow that’s pretty good. RB: Yeah. But on about the third day I was on a run of bad luck and I was in the hole I think a hundred and forty dollars. Right, so I thought this isn’t for me, and I never played poker again. But we played rummy and pinochle stuff like that I had a few books with me to study about engines and stuff. One time, I would try to get to sea to get my third engineers license, but I married my high school sweet heart and it wasn’t long before we had a baby on the way and I think she was about nine months old before I ever got to see her. But anyway, that synched to see that I wasn’t going to go back to sea after the war. [00: 34:15] CS: Yeah. Where were all of the places that you traveled or did your service to? RB: Boy, a bunch of them. I was in Hawaii probably three times, maybe four. I was on Midway Island once. I was in Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands probably three times. I was in Leyte or Samar three times. I was on Guam, so we weren’t on Guam we just went in there with a floating shop. It was real hot right there. They sent a little harbor tug out, grabbed our town, and told us to get the heck out of there. And the smoke and the stink from shell explosions were pretty bad. And at that trip they sent us to Hollandia, New Guinea. They said you go between the Blue Island Majuro and Yap. And both Japanese held, but they had no air craft --- to stay in the middle of them and you will be all right. And we went down there about 140 degrees I think. But anyway, we went to Hollandia, New Guinea, I think from there we probably went to Nouméa, Caledonia. I was at Tarawa in the Gilbert Islands. I was a, well we were anchored once in Ulithi, I think that’s in the Caroline Islands. Oh I don’t know, I was in San Francisco and San Pedro along the West Coast. And one time we went from San Francisco up along the coast to the Columbia River and up the Columbia River to a little town called Kalama. Now right close to there, it’s called Emmet Falls, and also Mount Saint Helens that blew up. But of course we were there long before that. I do remember that. When we went up the Columbia River we saw, I believe it was Mount Hood, and that was a pretty sight. And the sun was shining in it and of course if you’ve never seen a mountain somewhere along the way there, there’s clouds at the top of the mountain, and it was a pretty sight, I have never seen one like that before. But that was in Seattle. Probably missed a couple places, had a lot of them. CS: Yeah, that is a lot. Okay, what did you think of fellow officers and soldiers that you were with? RB: Well, we were not with any soldiers. If you were on a troop ship you would have been around some soldiers and Marines, but on our ship, it was a small ship, we had an armed guard crew, probably from seven to ten. And our merchant crew would run from between thirty-five and maybe forty at the most. So there were never over fifty, fifty-five people in our ship I don’t think. There was a rule, I always got along with everybody. But I think there were a few guys who were sent out on the after-deck to settle their differences. CS: Okay. Would you mind telling me about, I’m sorry if I mispronounce this, Tarwawa? Tarawa? RB: Wait a minute, say that all slow. CS: T-A-R-A-W-A. RB: T.A.R., oh, Tarawa? CS: Tarawa, yes. RB: Yeah, what do you want to know about it? CS: I don’t really know. My teacher informed me about it and it seemed like something important to ask about. RB: Oh it was a very important battle to get us control of the Pacific Ocean. I had a couple pictures in Mrs. Lerch’s stuff that she copied and when I talk about that, I almost get emotional. When those Marines hit that island --- see the Japanese for years would not let anybody on any of those islands out there. So we had to idea of the depth of the water, the coral reef surrounding these places and the Army men and the British, we just didn’t know much about that. So in some instances around the island they would put out maybe concrete barriers out there with steel on them or something to slow landing craft. And the Americans did not know how deep the water was around Tarawa. So they got as close as they could but they began to hit these barriers. Well when you’re on a landing craft you have to get off of there because you’re a sitting duck. So these daring men jumped off of their into the landing water and many of them were jumping into the water which was anywhere from ten to twenty feet deep with a full pack. They drowned or maybe one out of ten manage to get to the beach. That island was so heavily fortified that the Japanese had coconut bunkers right down on the water front. They were made out of coconut logs maybe sixteen-eighteen inches in diameter. The whole bunker was not over maybe three feet high with a little slit there for the machine guns. And the Japanese of course were little men but I imagine they were sitting there in water. Well these poor marines had to face that to get on that island. Now that island had been under heavy, heavy bombardment by our battle ships and air craft and everything. It was, have you ever seen a flood zone? [00:41:55] CS: No. RB: Well, it’s just under devastation. If you can imagine a woods that you know, a dense woods, any that you’ve been around, if you can just suddenly imagine all of those trees being shattered, and they’d be blown off with hardly anything but stumps left, no leaves no twigs or nothing, that’s what an island looks like after a bombardment. Well I got ashore there about three or four months after they took that island. And you were really cautious, so you don’t really talk to any of these guys on that island. If they want to talk to you, okay, but don’t strike up a conversation. They’re ready to knock the head off of most of you. And Mac and I got a bucket somewhere, a bucket full of machine gun shells and we took it back to, well, before we took it back were walking along the beach and there were bones laying around there, a lot of places there wasn’t a very good smell, and the water still had a lot of impurities where dead bodies had been pushed out into the ocean. And I guess we walked about three quarters of a mile and there was a little, not too little, concrete block house about the size of a two bedroom house. And I don’t know how we found it out, but that was a command headquarters where the Japanese, I think it was the Vice Admiral, who controlled that island and had control of the defenses. He and his two or three men hold up in there and those passage ways were so narrow that only a thin man, like a little Japanese guy, could pass each other stomach to stomach. Well they wouldn’t surrender so the Marines burned out of there with flame throwers and it was a smelly mess even after three or four months. But I just think about those men how terrible it was to even get on shore on that island and what they went through to accomplish the mission. And one of those that was especially successful in leading his men was Colonel Shoop from Covington, Indiana. I believe his name was Charles or George Shoop. And they were having trouble with the communication between, I think it was The Maryland, the battle ship. That’s where the, maybe the Marine General was, and Colonel Shoop really didn’t know whether he had any reinforcements coming in or he didn’t know, he was just hightailing his men on instinct. But he got on shore there to have a little bamboo pear and got a toehold on that island and he held it through the night and then I guess some reinforcements came but he didn’t even know they were coming. But anyway, Colonel Shoop from Covington, Indiana had a major part in conquering the island. And I think the island was Betio. But the island was Tarawa and it was in the Gilberts. It wasn’t a very big island wither but it was heavily fortified and it had air field on there and it was pretty important that the Americans take control of it. [00:46:10] CS: Yeah, that sounds very important. RB: It was. I have a book on it and if any of you kids would like to read it I would be happy to loan it to you. CS: Oh great! Thank you. Okay, is there anything else you want to tell me about while you were in the service? Anything that I might have missed? RB: Well, yeah. When we enlisted, they were coming around to the schools and telling us that the Merchant Marine needed men and it would be a good life. You’d be on a ship and good food and you’d get to see the different places and everything. But they didn’t tell us how many ships they were sinking. And like I say, two of my senior classmates had been drafted. So my buddy had just finished his junior year in high school, and Kappy [?] and I had gone down to Indianapolis to volunteer I think in July or August. And we don’t know why but they didn’t call us up until November and put us off again. But it turns out they were trying to get barracks built in Sea Side Bay to have a place to put new trainees. So we didn’t have to go until I think the day or the second day after Christmas. But we thought all the time, and we were lead to believe that we would be becoming a part of the United States Armed Forces. Well, I had taken subjects in school, I hoped they had prepared me for, I either wanted to go to Rose Holman College in Terra Haute, or Purdue. So going through training, like I say, our training was based off of Navy and Coast Guard. We had uniforms that you couldn’t have told us from either one, and we had to pass strict Coast Guard tests to get out and we sailed. We signed articles. That’s a contract you sign when you go aboard a ship. You sign articles that you agree to stay aboard that ship until the ship comes back around to another continental port. And then articles were broken that the minute that engine stops, your pay stops, but we didn’t know all that. Okay? We still followed all along that we would be treated like the other guys. And we found out along I think 1944-1945, that President Roosevelt had pushed for the G.I. Bill for returning service men. We still thought we were going to be treated like them. Now get this, we were subject to court martial. But still we were regarded as civilians because of the way they wrote the law. I don’t know when, somewhere between 1936 and 1939, that the labor unions, the attorneys, and the government attorneys, they made us as contract workers. Okay, so basically they were saying that we were contract workers before we were civilians. Although all during the war we were under naval orders. Also, we could have been a court martial, a court martial civilian. But anyways, we were subject and some guys didn’t get court martial. Okay, when we got home, well before we got home, there were rumors out that they wanted us men to stay aboard ships so the government could still get to stay because we needed people to get returning service men and all the Army surplus and stuff. And then as soon as we got back, they wanted us to start loading our ship with Marshall Plan taking stuff back to reconstruct Germany and all the other countries that we tore up during the war. So in about probably the early part on 1944, many men had been in the Army since 1941. Maybe they were already in there the day the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor. [00:51:01] CS: Okay. RB: Okay. From 1941 to 1943, at least two and a half years, they may have accumulated enough points that they could get out and go home. Okay? They were already home. And in 1944-1945, the war was still going on in Japan so they were still wanting some of us to stay to, like I say, bring back the soldiers and the surplus and everything. And I didn’t get home until, I believe, April or May of 1946. So when I got home, like I say I was married and had a little girl, I told my wife, I said, well, probably I’ll just benefits from the G.I. Bill and I’ll go to college. And I got home and I discovered there was no education money for any Merchant Marine, we were still classified as civilians, not veterans. Okay, there were no houses or apartments to rent in the little town I lived in. I couldn’t get a low cost loan to build a little home with a little two car garage like the other guys were doing because I was not a veteran. So we had to move in with my mother and my little sister. We stayed there two years and I couldn’t find a job. I had to become a laborer for a carpenter with a little four-man carpenter crew and my buddy ended up with a laborers job in a Harrison’s Steel Castings in Attica which was a dirty place to work and not very employee friendly. So, that went two years. We were just scraping whatever we could do to get by. All the Army, Navy, Air Force, all that ended up going to college, they were buying new boats and buying motor homes and so forth and so on, maybe buying a little business and starting up. And there we were getting nothing and in 1988, I told you, three guys sued the government and we finally got veteran status and the only thing we get to this day is help on our medicine and we can go to a veterans’ hospital, well you know, you have to wait your turn but its available. Well we have a compensation bill --- well, back up here. They say that for every person that took advantage of the G.I. Bill, whether it was to build a low cost home or go to school or buy a little business or whatever, they also got twenty dollars a week for a year. Well not twenty bucks back then is pretty good money. We got nothing, we even paid our own way home. Anyway, then --- my train of thought just went out the door. Anyway, my schooling was out. I couldn’t go to school because my family didn’t have any money. And I went over to the bank, I saved a little money and bought a lock and had a little blueprint drawn up with a two car garage and I went to the local bank and he said, Richard, were just a little bank and we don’t have any extra money to loan but you can go over to Covington. It’s a bigger back and they could probably loan you money. So I knew Mr. White knew my family, so I went over. He looked at my little blue print and said well how much money you got? And I said I’ve got about fifteen hundred dollars. He said “Okay” and “Use your money as far as it’ll go and when you need enough money to finish up come back and we’ll help you out.” I did that. And when I needed money to pay off about eight hundred dollars in my lumber yard bill and to buy a new furnace, I went to Covington Bank. I got about half way through my application and he said, “Whoa wait a minute mister.” I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “You’re not a veteran.” I said, “Well I spent two and a half years with the Merchant Marines on the high seas.” He said, “Yes, but the government does not recognize you as a veteran and I cannot loan you money through the G.I. Bill.” He said, “Is there anybody who can co-sign for you?” And I said, “The only one I know of would be my mother, she has a home.” He said, “You talk to her and if she’ll co-sign for you, I can help you out that way.” So my mother put her home up for sale, or for security, for me to get, I don’t know, about $1,800 or $2,000. So I went to work finally again in a lumber yard. And I thought, well, I’m not going to get anywhere here. I had worked four months in Lafayette at Alcoa and had a good work record. So I told my wife, I said let’s, I’ll just go back to Lafayette and see if I can get my old job back and I can take my classes at Purdue. So I went up to Purdue, or I went up to Alcoa in Lafayette and I got an application and about half way through it they stopped me just like the banker did. Now I said, well what’s the matter? They said you’re not a veteran. I told them the same thing. He said I know, I agree with you. But he says the government says you’re not a veteran, and they mandate the only job, the only people I can hire now are returning service men. So I had to go back to my little town and go back to work as a laborer for a carpenter crew. And that’s the way we’ve been treated all these years. That the VFW and the American Legion wouldn’t let us in. We were a bunch of teenage boys. There was only, at the very most in the war, there was only about 215,000. When we got home, you might say in a little town, well even Muncie. I found out now that there are five of us. But we didn’t, we couldn’t belong to the American Legion, we were teenage boys, we had no representation, and we didn’t know about just the other side of town. So we were just, we just had to do what we had to do. And we’ve been treated very, very shabbily. Now our average age is eighty-six years old and we’re trying to get a compensation built through. This past readily and the past recongretional sessions in the house. It first started at a thousand dollars a month for the balance of our life with the surviving spouse. In the 2009 Congress, it passes handily and heavily in the house again. We’ve got sixty-one co-sponsors [unintelligible]. That year they struck out the surviving spouse. In the 2010 Congress, they put a five year cap on it. Okay, now our average age at that time was eighty-five and a half, today it’s eighty-six. Not many of us are going to be alive five years from now to get that $2,000 a month. And that’s the treatment we’ve about had ever since the war ended, and it’s not a very pretty picture. [00:58:58] CS: No, that’s not very fair at all. RB: Well see, two years ago they awarded the Filipino Scouts a bonus, I think from 9,000- 15,000 dollars. Now some of those guys were fighting for their own country. They were civilians, some of them were men who went into the bush to save the ax. But they didn’t channel or single them out, they just took them all. They did that so they could erase a very black spot on the American government. Well, that black spot, the way they treated us is worse than that. And all these other countries around the world have honored their Merchant Seamen with bonuses and people on Vladivostok and Murmansk still treat our people as heroes. And our own government still classes us as civilians and refuses to give us any type of compensation. Now that’s my sermon. It’s not very nice. CS: No, but insightful, oh my goodness! RB: I’m going to talk to Mrs. Lerch and see if I can get you kids to do a class project to call the Congressmen and, our bills on the house now and we have sixty co-sponsors and we need probably about a hundred to get it out of committee and get it passed before the Senate. They have to get it passes before they send it to the senate but we do have a new chairman on the Veteran Committee in the senate. It’s Patty Murray from Washington --- from the state of Washington and she has been a long time supporter of the Merchant Marines. So we do have that going for us but we got to get it out of the house before we get it to the Senate. And of course we lost some backers in this last election so we don’t really know how we’re going to come out but we just have to keep fighting. So if we can get you kids to write a letter or make a call to a congressman and ask them to co-sponsor HR 23 The Belated Thank You To The Merchant Marine Veterans of World War II and to vote yes, when it gets to the poll we’ll vote. CS: Yeah I am going to talk to my teacher and see what we can do. RB: Well, we just had a lot of trouble in our family in the last three or four months and I didn’t get to take near the stuff that I wanted to, to Mrs. Lerch. And some of the stuff, I’m sure, she couldn’t connect the dots, which is understandable. But I want to go back down and talk to her again and take some more stuff. And I have a couple of little forms, and she probably knows just as well as I do how to write to a congressman or your senator and you know, in a correct way. So, but, we really appreciate all you kids! CS: Yeah of course! RB: You kids learn more from us in these last couple of weeks than probably your parents do. And it’s not fair because it has not been put in the history book. And what Mrs. Lerch is doing, she’s trying to get all this information to the Library of Congress. And we need to get our own bill passed so it will be correctly recorded in the Congressional Record what the Merchant Marine did in WWII. We have 9,500 guys at the bottom of the ocean and some of their families never knew what happened to them, they just never came back. They are M.I.A.’s and we can never let them be forgotten. So I tell the people, by the grace of God I’m still alive and we’ve only got about 7,500 of us left now. So kind of a bitter pill. CS: Yeah. Are you in touch with anyone that you knew from your time serving or you’ve met along the years? Are you still in touch with anyone? RB: Only one. I found one in Carson City, Nevada. And I call him and write to him, oh a couple of times a year. And he did belong to a Merchant Marine club out there, I think they were called a High, a High something rollers, you know, tied in with the gambling out there. He says I was so far away and I was a little short on money and he said it was kind of a chore and an expense to go to the meetings so I just dropped out. But from time to time I send him information I pick up and he appreciates that. And I found the wife of one of my other shipmates in Fresno, California, and I’ve sent her information from time to time and some stuff that I thought, maybe her kids might be happy to get and I sent you know a couple of things that might help her as a widow. Whether it did I don’t know but that’s the only two people I’ve ever been able to locate. [01:04:53] CS: Okay. That’s about all the questions I have. Is there anything else? RB: Well, one of the reasons why it’s hard for us to fins another person, like I say, there weren’t very many of us in the first place. And we didn��t, we couldn’t belong to the VFW or the American Legion and the VFW they just fire tooth and toenail. The American Legion, they are a little bit better now. They, we can join the American Legion and they kind of remain mutual when the stuff comes up in a Senate hearing but they could do more for us if they would. But, our part in WWII was kept so secret and the companies weren’t really, they weren’t really watched or something, I don’t know, or ordered to keep to, I want to say finer records. And it’s just been a very hard thing to locate anybody because there were no records kept of our part in the war. Not like the Army or Navy men where the government kept track of everything. CS: There were no records at all? RB: Pardon? CS: There were no records at all? RB: Well there’s some. But it’s like that book Mrs. Lerch was so happy to see. The name of it was A Careless Word, a Needless Sinking. It was written by Captain Arthur Moore. He spent forty years looking all the world, reading all through submarine records and port records and company records, what had been kept. And see, at the beginning, I may lose you, are you still there? CS: I’m still here. RB: At the beginning of the war, the American people, or the American government seized whatever ships they could get. So some of these foreign ships had American crews on there, and consequently, their information was all lost because our government wasn’t keeping record of it. CS: Okay. RB: I think I’m going to lose my telephone. CS: Okay well if there’s anything else I think of, can I call you back sometime this week? RB: You can call me anytime, I’m always up until eleven thirty or twelve. CS: Okay excellent. Thank you so, so much Mr. Blair. This was amazing. RB: Well I really appreciate all you kids doing what you’re doing and it’s very important to us. Like I say, there’s not very many of us left and we need to get our information correctly recorded and in the school books. CS: Yeah certainly. RB: And in Japan, they’re still putting it in the school books that we were the ones who started the war! We were not the aggressors. Japan was the aggressor and they tried to stab us in the back. CS: Yeah, I know that. RB: Well, you call me anytime you want. CS: Alright! Well thank you again so much for your time and I will get all this information together and if there’s anything else I’ll be sure to call you. RB: Well if you need some more printed material let me know and I’ll see if I can send you some more information. CS: Okay great! RB: I appreciate what you’re doing. CS: Thank you so much I appreciate you giving me your time. RB: Thank you. CS: Thank you, have a good night. RB: Goodnight. [01:08:44]
Owning Institution	Park Tudor School
Usage Rights	http://www.ulib.iupui.edu/copyright
Have Questions?	Contact Kathryn Lerch, klerch@parktudor.org
Digital Publisher	IUPUI University Library
Digital Collection	Park Tudor School Words of War Oral History Collection
Digital Date	2012-07-20
Digital Specifications	MP3 audio file

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