Mr. James Baize Interview
[b. 11/18/1927]
Ragdsdale: Today is November 18, 2005 and I am Andrew Ragsdale along side Tom Hardacker [and Mrs. Lerch] and we are interviewing Mr. James E. Baize at Park Tudor School. Mr. Baize is 78 years old and was born on November 18, 1927. Mr. Baize served in World War II. He was in the United States Navy and held the rank of boswain mate 2/c.
Hardacker: Were you drafted or did you enlist?
Mr. Baize: I enlisted.
Hardacker: Enlisted. Where were you living at the time you enlisted?
Mr. Baize: I was living with my grandparents in Indianapolis, Indiana.
Hardacker: What was the reason that you decided to join?
Mr. Baize: Well, I was raised by my grandparents. I have no brothers, no sisters and um, at that time, um, uh, school wasn’t of an interest to me. And, so I, decided that I would try some things on my own. And I left my grandparents home and I lived down on South Illinois Street in Breavehart Hotel, paid twenty-five cents per night, 10 cents a week for a foot locker, the lock for the foot locker. And I was working with the Western Union delivering telegrams. And I met a young fellow that was older than I was, but then he said, “hey, I can get us a better job than this.” So, we applied a job at Bridgeport Brass, the war defense plant. We got a job and we work there for oh, about a year and so Fred says, you know, he says, “I think I’m gonna go to the service.” I said, “okay, alright” Well, Fred was 17 and I was 15. So we went down to join the service, join the Navy. And they said, “well, you don’t have a birth certificate.” and I said, “no, I don’t have.” They said, “do you have one? I said, “not that I know of.” So at any rate, they said, “well, you gotta prove you’re old enough to get in the service.” Well, my buddy says, “well, we’ll come back.” Well, his mother was renting an apartment to a sergeant who was in the army at Stout Field, (now off on Holt Road) and so we talked to him and he said, “well, I’ll go down with you,” and so if you really want to go and I said,”okay.” So we went down and he told them that I was [his] son and I was seventeen years old. So they swore us in the Navy and we left Indianapolis, trained to Camp Perry in Great Lakes and that’s how we got into the Navy.
Hardacker: Is there a reason that you picked the Navy over any other branch of services?
Mr. Baize: Well, that’s where Fred was gonna go and so we swore to go together. So he had already pretty much made that decision, so I just went along with it.
Hardacker: Alright, so can tell me about your training camp or boot camp first experiences of that?
Mr. Baize: Now that was a boot camp at Great Lakes and so I was assigned to company 1556 and I had a Chief [inaudible] in there by the name of Mr. Brooks. And so we went in through training. We had eight weeks of training and that weeks of training was to learn how to march, to drill, to swim, to jump the height into the water if it was to be from a free board of a ship. We learned basics, just the basics. You know, discipline, a little bit of KP and some things that you needed to know to take care of yourself. And went through indoctrination, your shots and the different things like that. And, so that lasted for eight weeks at Great Lakes Training Station.
Male: Alright, obviously you served in World War II, but what specific (inaudible) are on.
Mr. Baize: I served in the South Pacific. I was hoping to get on an aircraft carrier, that was my desire. But, by the time I made that known, there was no positions available. So they said, “well, what would you want to do?” I said, “I don’t care really” It didn’t make any difference to me, I wasn’t, well, let’s put it this way, I wasn’t as informed well enough to know what there was to do in the Navy. I just wanted to be a sailor. That’s all, as far as I knew. So as a result, why I have no preference so I guess they said well here is a place to put this guy. So they shipped me to Camp Pendleton, California. Camp Pendleton is an amphibious marine training camp. So, the marines naturally in order to be able to get on an invasion bloomed shore, they have to have somebody take them. Well, that is an amphibious unit of the Navy and so therefore we had to be assigned to some duty in that performance. That performance was to me, I was assigned as a Coxswain—to drive the LCVP (Landing Craft Vehicle Personnel). And what that is, is a Higgins boat, made out of plywood and it has steel about a quarter inch steel plate along the side and then it has a steel ramp. Now, it would hold a jeep or a thirty-eight Marines. And so we were in training there to learn how to take a boat of that size and to be able to come in on a surf, be able to bring that thing up and onto the beach and hit the beach, unload and how to, as your wake comes in, to pick it up bring back, pick it up bring it back until you get out of there and so on. On that boat, and I say it’s a boat because it can be lifted aboard a ship and in that boat, there was two fifty-caliber machine guns. In those machine guns we had, of course, a gunner in each one of those turrets so there’s two of those and then I had a bowsain and then myself. I was perched higher because standing in there—to be able to see over the part of ramp. The ramp was high, and normally when you were heading into the beach why there was a little door in there that would be closed, so the bow on them would guide you one way or the other. So I went in training there and after training, I went aboard Freemont. USS Freemont [APA-]44 and we them loaded up and headed out on that APA. So we landed on Saipan. And I got hit on Saipan, but I got everybody in and made three trips in and out. [Excuse me.] Then got into the hospital, made it out of the hospital and then I was reassigned. I was reassigned then to the same ship, similar boat and went in on Guam. (Inaudible) Guam. Made it through Guam, didn’t get hit on Guam. Back into maneuvers again and then it was in November of 44 and then I was assigned to USS Highland APA-119. And on the Highlands we had 25 LCVP’s and three LCM’s. And on those LCM’s, of course, they were larger. There were only two of them, and they could carry a tank and a lot more mechanisms on them. So we were in maneuvers— did a lot of maneuvers. And then we headed towards Asia, which we got into an area of sea, we stopped after zig-zagging for about four days and joined quit a few ships. We had, I think there was probably, maybe eight hundred ships all around this area so at night we were called aboard, I mean to the deck, and said okay. We—tomorrow morning at 0900 that we were heading to little island called Iwo Jima.
Iwo Jima
Now, we were told that this was only a small island, it was only four miles long and two miles wide and that they had been bombing it for seventy-five days and nights and it would be easy to take. So it shouldn’t be too bad. So they told us to put our stuff in our ditty bag that we wanted to send home and write a few notes and (inaudible). So we did. So that next morning at 0600, we were called to the deck and then [told] to man our boats. So we did. I had a boat, LCVP number 13, not a very good number. So anyhow, we went over to the side— went over to the side and we unloaded the boat. We had thirty-eight Marines and I had my crew on there. We pulled away from the ship and we rendezvoused. [Tp] rendezvoused, you go into a circle until you form a wave and then the wave in is, shifts and then the boats come into the beach. I was in the second wave, and the second boat and second wave, February 19th in 1945. So we headed in and everything was moving pretty smooth. There was a lot of fire. The Navy was firing overhead and the beach was a mess. I mean, it was just devastating. So, I got within about twenty yards of the beach and took a direct hit and lost thirty-eight Marines and all four of my crewman. [The hit] throwed me out, the Marines pulled me out of the water, nothing but just blood and got me up onto the shore and then, all the corpsmen (I was beat up pretty bad) and so of course I couldn’t get back to the ship. I layed there and I didn’t know what to do. I mean, I belonged to a ship, I didn’t belong, you know, to anything else and had no training so at any rate. [pause] So anyway, the corpsman dropped me to a small little area there where they were able to work on me and my shoes were gone and I didn’t have a lifejacket. It was gone and my helmet was blowed off and I had scrapmetal through my back. It was all blowed apart and so, I layed there for about three hours, I guess. Then a Marine by the name of Jack came over and he said just stick with me, you know,. You’ll be alright and so we took some gear off a dead comrade and then, I got a Thompson Sub[machine gun], I got a M-1, I got a sea knife, got a canteen, got a helmet and a pair of shoes and then I fought with the Marine Corps—fought for another week and we had— the first airfield had to be taken and so the group that I was with was responsible for that group. It was the Fourth Marine Division, 27th Regiment. So Jack and I headed for that beach—I mean for the airfield and it was at night. We got onto the field, coming across the field and things were pretty quiet, so we thought, “well, we can get to the other side. we’ll have it made.” We got about half way across the field and Navy came through and dropped flares. They dropped those flares and it just light that thing up just like daylight. Well, on the island there was nothing left, there was no trees, there was not a blade of grass on that darn thing. And it was really a mess and so the Japs opened up again. I mean, they opened up with full arms. Well, I dove for another— to find a hole, a mortar hole. I dove in there and I got hit again and so with that. I don’t know when I came off the island. I don’t, when I came to— I was in Guam, in a hospital in Guam. So then, they sent me from there to Pearl Harbor, from Pearl Harbor back to Frisco, Frisco to Astro, Oregon. And I layed there in the hospital for ten months in that hospital.
G.I. Bill
The situation was—I went ahead and got my GED, while I was in the hospital and so when I got my GED, I came on home and went to school. I went to Northwestern. Got my degree in Mechanical Engineering, [and at] Purdue [I] got my degree in Nuclear Engineering and so from that stand point, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to me—not knowing it at the time. But that was the deal. And so I went for probably about 57 years—I never belonged to VFW, belonged to American Legion, but I couldn’t handle going to the place and talking about things. And so finally, one of counselors at the veterans’ administration—I go there once a week, every Wednesday—that’s a group of guys, there’s about twenty of us and there are some prisoners of war there. There are some guys of Pearl Harbor survivors and there’s guys that survived different areas of the war so we all sit there and talk and so forth. So finally the counselor said to me, he said, “why don’t you try to get in touch with somebody on your ship.” I said, “well, you know, I have no way of knowing,” and he said, “we’ll get on the internet.” So I got on the internet and typed in my ship and so it came up and they was having a reunion and so I called Henry Samply and Henry said, “I seen your boat go” and he says, “you ain't here man.” And I said, “well, I’m here.” So at any rate, I went to the reunion and meet the guys and with that hear I had been listed as killed in action with my other four men for fifty-seven years. So finally, why then, we got together and so forth. So then I got a hold of them. Of course, when I was in the hospital, [the war photographer] Rosenthal gave me some pictures that he had taken on Iwo and I got those and I got some Iwo sand that was in my shoes at the hospital and I got those pictures that he took and so I got—I decided to try to get as much information as I could as to where I had been and what I’d done. Then I got to the Navy and wrote to them about what was I entitled to medal wise, you know. So they sent me a letter so that was a list. I got twenty-four medals and that was it, but at any rate, there is not too many of the boys left from Iwo. I assume you probably know the figures as to how many were on the island and how many were killed in action there and how many that we killed of the enemy. I think there was 20,000 Japanese on the island—something like that. We killed 19,200 of them. There was only 800 left and that’s because they couldn’t commit suicide themselves. There was 1400 and I think forty pill boxes on that island and on the beach and all pointed down to the landing area and so it was nothing but a killing blast, that’s all it was. I figured that, [I was] very lucky to live through that situation and so, from that stand point, I assume that you know, you look at situations like we say war. It’s so easy to say, but it’s not easy to play and if they’ve never been there, never done that, they’ll never know what it means when that situation comes in. Only, in my opinion, for self-preservation, is the only need that I see where man should be expending others. So, with that, of course, I have learned a lot and I’ve studied a lot of history and I realized who and know that history does have a way of repeating itself. There’s a lot of things you can learn from it and even though I am a veteran now, even though I’ve been through the World War II, I think that there’s times that it’s not always necessary. And I know that I have some opinions now of what’s gonna on now, but I don’t [know if] that’s of interest to you or not, but at any rate, if it is I’ll explain it to you.
Male: Oh, ya, go ahead.
Philosophizing about history
Mr. Baize: Will ya? Well, I think that history, for an example, when you’re getting ready to invade, or when you are fighting a war, you have got to know your enemy. Now I am not talking about the individual soldier or sailor, but I am talking about the leaders. I am saying that the leaders should understand fully what they’re working with and who they are working with. Now, I take for example, the Iraq situation, the people themselves. What kind of people are they? What have they been doing for the last two thousand years. What’s their culture? And what is it that they can contribute? What have they contributed to? And is this culture flexible? Well, I look back here and I say, “well you know, back— why is it that Mohammad is this man? Why is he the guy that they are always praying to? So I say what about Mohammad? Mohammad was born in year 570, he roamed throughout the area through Mecca. He was a prophet, a selfmade prophet and felt that he was the one to be listened to and he formed an organization and gave, the elimination of tax to those who would join. So that way he built a quite [an] extensive organization and from that. Then he met a lady who was very wealthy and see needed somebody as a guardian for her wealth. He became that guardian and later became her husband and later had nine children. Now, he pointed out that he was the fifth prophet of God who said had the last word of what God said. He was the last person who heard what God said. Now that was in the year 580. He died in the year of 613. Now you take 613 and you subtract it from 2005 and you got about 1400 years. United States is 230 years old, roughly. Subtract it out and you got about 1160 years. Now for 1160 years there is a culture and that culture has not contributed one manufactured thing to this world. Today, it still does not manufacture anything, it doesn’t contribute anything. The United States has put a man on the moon, it’s only six percent of the world’s population, it’s the most powerful military organization in the world. It has invented, it has done and done and done. Economically it’s done everything it could possibly be. It’s a wealthy and most powerful nation that there has been. There is only six percent of the population. We have wormed the world and we have taken a Howard Hughes drill bit and we punched holes in these areas and we have made cripples out of them. Because they have sustained themselves on the wealth that comes out of the reserves in their oil. That in its self, instead of being able to utilize their knowledge, learn and develop and participate in a world market, contribute to a world market by manufacturing something and giving something, they sit. Now they pray five times a day to Mohammad. Now, I would think that after 1160 years that you pray five times a day to Mohammad and you are still riding donkeys and camels and haven’t contributed and still don’t have nothing then either He is not listening or you’re praying to the wrong guy. And if that be the case, after 1160 years, we are going to sit here and say we are gonna put a democracy in there in six months. Now, I just can’t conceive that and I can’t conceive us stomping in and saying, “well, we don’t need that,” they are gonna dance in the streets. And their—and we don’t need an exit strategy, we don’t need a safety belt. We don’t need nothing like that because they are gonna accept us and love us and just that’s the end of it. We own it and we are breaking ourselves financially to support it. And yet there are young guys over there, naturally, their commander-in-chief deserves respect and if you are going into the military, you gotta do that, that’s part of what you say you will do when you raise that hand up and yet at the same time, I mean, I don’t think that everything is known. And I don’t know if those boys, if they had their life to go over again, if they could bring them back, I don’t know as they would say, “hey, this is really worth it.” So from that history can tell you a lot and we have failed to recognize that, we have failed to use it. We haven’t utilized the power of the military. The military is the genius as these are the men of the West Point men and the Annapolis men that have spent their lives becoming professional military men. They study, they know—they know what to do and when you have a military planned war, you know professionally what you’re gonna get involved in, when you have a political…
[interruption over PA]
Mr. Baize: So if you have a politically planned war, you don’t have the experience and you’ve got danger. You know, that’s my point that I make and I am not out on a soapbox stating it. I am just stating it because that’s the way I see it and I don’t go to organizations and preach it either. But to me it makes sense.
Mrs. Lerch: When you go back to World War II, I think to everybody enlisted, there was, it was a different type of war…
Mr. Baize: That’s right.
Mrs. Lerch: And everybody found a certain duty, no matter how you did it, whether it was at the home front or elsewhere. And that’s probably the part, the thoughts you had by joining up with your friend…
Mr. Baize: That’s right.
Mrs. Lerch: . . .while you were as young as you were.
Mr. Baize: That’s right. We in this world, this country—we have learned well. We, first of all, went through a revolution and in that revolution we as Americans, felt that the British was not treating us fair. I mean, we didn’t want to be a colony. I mean, no, we don’t want to be colony. We want to be on our own, you know, be American and they didn’t want to do that. So we decided to fight that. So we fought a revolution and when fighting that revolution and the French came in and said, “hey, we’re gonna help ya” Now we in America became insurgents. Now insurgents is a word bad. It’s bad to be an insurgent. Well, it’s according to what you’re fighting for. So we fought the Revolution, so then we still had problems between the states and trying to figure this out so we fought a Civil War. Again, we fought for our own problems. We fought for our freedom. World War I, still problems. We still fought, we gave blood, died for our freedom. World War II, we were attacked, we fought and gave blood for our freedom. Now, if a country wants freedom (and I have no problems with that), but if they will sacrifice, have their own revolution, have their own civil war and rise up and fight for their own freedom, give their blood the way we did, they deserve it. But to export it for free, no, I don’t buy that. We have given too many lives for that kind of situation. And just to give it away, cheapens it. That’s they way I feel about that. I can���t feel any different. Now that’s my feeling as a veteran of World War II. So I don’t get gung-ho over what all is going on. I try to be independent thinking and that’s just, that’s the way it comes out for me. We’ve given a lot in this country and we deserve the freedom we have and if a country goes through a civil war and they’re fighting, they are doing everything they can, they’re gonna rise up, good, then that’s it, but you gotta realize that sixty percent of this world is supported by dictators and you gotta realize that in this world that man itself has maybe eight percent of leaders and the rest are followers and there are those that have never had the opportunity to have an education like you and me. They have never had the opportunity and they don’t know different and they need a keeper or they couldn’t survive. So it is not always that they are such a bad thing. We have bad things too in our freedom that we don’t like so, I mean, there are always things that’s not the best situation. So..
Male: Well it looks like you brought quit a bit of material with you so I ….
Mr. Baize: Ya, we can share it.
Male: I was wondering if you would like to share some of it with us.
Mr. Baize: Ya, I’ll show you some of this if you want. I don’t know how you want to do this. Um….
Mrs. Lerch: Did you go to the World War II Memorial…
Mr. Baize: Yes, I did.
Mrs. Lerch: that weekend? Wasn’t that the most incredible experience?
Mr. Baize: Oh, ya.
Mrs. Lerch: I was there doing interviews in the Library of Congress.
Mr. Baize: Sure. Well tonight there’s on the History Channel at nine o’clock— there is a Iwo Jima thing on. And the one before that is Pearl Harbor. It’s on the History Channel. And a friend of mine over in England is the one that put this thing together. This is an interview that was given, was done by me to Channel 8…
Mrs. Lerch: Oh, okay.
Mr. Baize: On Pearl Harbor Day last year and then of course that’s the sand from Iwo Jima. And here’s the little flags I sent home to my grandparents while I was in the service. That’s what the beach looked like. Here’s a Marine, I don’t know whether he is still living, as far as I know, that was on the USS Arizona and he’s here in Indianapolis. Have you met him?
Mrs.Lerch: No I don’t, I haven’t.
The Missing Link
Mr. Baize: Ok, and he was on the gang plant and he survived the USS Arizona. Ya, he was a Marine not in the Navy. You see Marine (inaudible) and that’s it. And this here was an article which was in the newspaper and this is some stuff here. Here was a piece that was in the Star News that was an article. I think that was one of me. Uh, ya, I think it was, ya. This had some articles in there, that was me here, it was quite an article in the paper.
Mrs. Lerch: (Inaudible.)
Mr. Baize: And then here’s one down in Florida that was an article when they stated the missing link. They said I was a missing link from the other four they knew was dead.
Mrs. Lerch: Ya.
Mr. Baize: So they assumed I was dead, too. So they said,”now, here is the missing link.”
Mrs. Lerch: I guess they are rewriting the history books now.
Mr. Baize: Huh?
Mrs. Lerch: They have to write—rewrite the history book now.
Mr. Baize: Ya, ya, that’s what they did and this is what that was and so today is 9/11. And this here was Phil Richards who was on the Star News. He wrote that article and then he sent me a nice letter. Here is a picture of the ship. The APA-119. And that’s the APA and then here’s a story that a was the USS Highland and in this they put in there, in the book itself, they had the names of t—everybody that was in there and they had the personnel and they had all four of us killed in action and it’s kind of funny. They’ve got my name in here and then my crew members and us all killed in action that was part of that. So, we got that corrected. Then, here’s the information about the ship and here is a story by Wayne—he was a friend of mine, he was a storekeeper on board ship and so he wrote a story about the ship. This here is the information of the ship and there is what a LCVP looks like.
Mrs. Lerch: What was life like aboard ship? How did you like…
Mr. Baize: Well we…
Mrs. Lerch: Where were you in all of those decks did you have to sleep?
Mr. Baize: Of course we were a boat crew aboard the ship. The ship had its function to transport Marines and the ships crew, the boat crew so to prepare for an invasion. And they, they maintained, of course, the discipline, they maintained the timing, they maintained the ammo, they also got the orders from the fleet command as to where they were going, when they were going, what time to be there. And so what we did, we were more less marking time until we got to the point of invasion. And we’d be cleaning, you know, the injectors that goes into the diesel engine or we’d be doing something, you know. Or they would call us over and say, “hey you know you don���t have nothing to do. Get up there and clean the wench or grease this or chip paint or do something,” see. So we did general sea duty type stuff while we were on the way. That’s basically what we did. We did some practicing and when its time, or like if there was—we were zig-zagging by then, once in a while they would have a plane come by and have a (inaudible) and we’d get on a block 40 and try to hit it—scare the pilot away and they would take off and wouldn’t come back. Get too close to them, you know.
Male: So that was one of the things you’d try to do like to entertain yourselves. Like when you didn’t have work to do and things like that on board the…
Mr. Baize: No, if it was entertainment—entertainment you mean. No entertainment would be shooting craps, you know, after you got posted on the board that you had some money left. But there wasn’t really any entertainment—we did have the night before the invasion of Iwo. We had a steak dinner and then that morning they gave us two shots of whiskey if we wanted to use it before we hit the beach. Try to get you kind of, you know…
Mrs. Lerch: Relaxed.
Mr. Baize: nerves calmed down. And um, so.
Mrs. Lerch: Did it help?
Mr. Baize: Didn’t bother me ‘cause she—that was my third [invasion]. I had already been on three and my crew had never been on an invasion, see. And so they were anxious to find out what it was like. And then one of the—well I’ll show you a letter— this here is story, someday you ought to read. I will leave this to you if you want to. But this, this is something. This is what would have happened at the invasion of Japan, this was the invasion of Japan and this is what would have happened if they hadn’t have dropped the atomic bomb. And, there were almost four million men ready to go in to Japan. They were dug in. Every man, woman and child was put into the military. There were tunnels all over Japan. And they caught that big wind in Japan, you know, that’s when they had the biggest cyclones and tornadoes and whiped out almost three hundred ships and that was the day that we were going to invade Japan. So it is something that might be interesting in reading. So this is some stories about Japan. This here is a thing from my son, on Veterans Day, sent me a card. This here is a museum down in Florida that I donated some of my stuff to them and this here is a friend of mine. He was in boat 14, right next to me, and he still lives in Houston. So he’s coming up here next October and I’m hosting the ship’s reunion.
Mrs. Lerch: Here, oh that’s exciting.
Mr. Baize: Ya, so we’ll have them in here. This here’s oh, membership from military sea services and this here is a thing from the Department of the Navy outlining the medals. Here’s a picture of them. And these here are some postcards I sent to a cousin of mine, some of the ships and this is a speech that I gave to the last ship’s reunion and this is in the Navy Memorial.
Mrs. Lerch: I’ve been there in Washington, yes.
Mr. Baize: So I am looking in there.
Mrs. Lerch: Your only 15. You are younger than these guys are now.
Male: It’s hard to believe.
Mr. Baize: Ya, I was fifteen. Well, look at that. And this here is appreciation [?] Pearl Harbor survivors and this here is the certificate of appreciation from the World War II Memorial. And here’s another picture, now thi—the medal of uncommon valor from the Iwo Jima survivors association. And then this is the ones that was killed in action, so I was listed there killed in action. And then, here’s some stuff from the Navy, discharge, accomplishment of (inaudible), here’s hospital records and at any rate, here’s disability and here’s some more pictures of stuff and then here is my captain, I mean boats and book. Brooks when I told you in boot camp and then this here was the ceremony of the ship when it was commissioned. And that was this ship when it was commissioned. And here are just some pictures of crazy guys. And then lets see, this is a little bit of story about some of the stuff, and this here is a copy out of the ….
Mrs. Lerch: The Indy Star, yes, uh huh.
Mr. Baize: The Star news there. Here is a picture of the Fremont that I was on. And there is some of the stuff on the island.
Mrs. Lerch: When you stopped on Tinian. You have Tinian, Saipan and Iwo Jima, did each of those early ones. Did it help in a way of kind of getting you used to this whole deal, or did it become run of the mill—or was each one different?
Mr. Baize: You get to a point sometimes you feel that you’re invincible and then you get to the point where you don’t care and you do what you think you ought to do to survive. Like on Iwo, I was not trained as an infantry man and yet at the same time I had no choice. I mean, you either live it or die and it’s just that simple so there is no choice. This here is some stuff I sent home to my grandparents. And there was a picture of my boot camp. Graduated from boot camp. Here’s all the guys I graduated with. And uh…
Mrs. Lerch: I wonder how many of them came back. There is probably no way of knowing.
Mr. Baize: I have no way of knowing.
Mr. Baize: But there is World War II guys are dying out at the rate of 1800 a day.
Mrs. Lerch: The rates go up.
Mr. Baize: And here’s World War II.
End of Tape Side One.
Mr. Baize: I was gonna show you something that you might find fairly interesting. It’s this—is Jimmy Harkwriter, and Jimmy Harkwriter was killed. He was on my crew. His Aunt wrote me this letter and she’d been to work for several years trying to find out something about Jimmy because she didn’t know anything about him. And so she wrote this letter to me after she had talked with Henry Samply and Henry found out I was living and I wasn’t dead, so he said, “well, you can read this if you want.” You read that part there and so then I had, I wrote back and told her what all I knew about Jimmy.
Mrs. Lerch: It’s not unusual, [for] another generation—they want to find out about a member of their family…
Mr. Baize: Ya.
Mrs. Lerch: Because there was somebody they served next to, and you were all in many ways almost like brothers uh so to be..
Mr. Baize: Ya, that’s right.
Mrs. Lerch: . . . able to do that.
Mr. Baize: So I wrote her back this information here about Jimmy and here’s some more stuff about it, here’s some pictures of Iwo.
Mrs. Lerch: Have you ever gone back to Iwo?
Mr. Baize: I’ve been back to Guam, but not Iwo.
Mrs. Lerch: Um huh.
Mr. Baize: I had an office in Guam, in my company I had an office in Guam. They had all of us in Manila, Philippines, Tokyo, and Hong Kong and Seoul, Korea and Honolulu. This is a postcard from the Commander of the USS Iwo Jima and he wanted me to come over, you know, for a party that they was having for some veterans and I couldn’t make it. So—but then here are some of the pictures of the USS Iwo Jima and there’s on the beach and this here is some of the men that was brought back, the dead or the wounded. This is Tom Batt’s pictures, Tom Batt’s pictures. And then here you can see there is some more combat pictures and uh, here’s what the beach looked like. So when you’re trying to come in to that, try to get in there, you don’t have no room. There ain’t no place to go. You know.
In the mean time, they are blasting at everything that comes in. So that’s what the beach looked like when I came to it. And here’s this hospital ship. And then, there is one of the—I think—one of guys was killed right on the gun mount. Ya, I think, ya, ya, he was blowed up right on the gun mount.
Mrs. Lerch: Do you recognize these flags? See what we have up there? We have a veteran. He was in the China/Burma/India [theater] and he got one of flags out of an aircraft field, the hanger. [points to photo of Japanese autographed flag]
Mr. Baize: The families sign those as a memory and a good luck thing for the airman and he wraps that up and puts it into his pocket. So he goes into combat why he feels that he is safe, you know.
Mrs. Lerch: This was like a rabbit’s foot.
Mr. Baize: He didn’t make it. These are more laedd out in the—that was wounded. Here’s some that [they] took out with a flame thrower—blasted them out, and burned them up. And here’s some more type, here’s someone looking for mines, land mines that they had. Looking upside-down. Here’s some boys here that are getting a little bit of a break. This here was a little post office put together and here was a place, you see that’s what it looked like, there wasn’t nothing standing, it was just devastated, just flat. No place to hide and here’s where I caught a few of them. Blowed their legs, cut their legs off. Pretty gruesome. You don’t get these pictures, you don’t see them in the publication.
Male: I’ve never seen anything like it.
Mrs. Lerch: They are not put in things for good reason, of course.
Mr. Baize: So, I don’t, I am sure that this type of thing they don’t have and see these are Japanese boys. Here’s killed here and some down in there and then um, um, …
Mrs.Lerch: The pictures I find particularly interesting are how people are coping when they are sitting with groups around, with others around them and eating chow or opening mail and how they can somehow make things do.
Male: Cope with all the stress and the environment.
Mrs.Lerch: Ya, in the situation.
Mr. Baize: Anything, anything is different. You know, anything is different.
Mrs.Lerch: How they can cope with that.
Mr. Baize: And then, you know, a lot of these things, you don’t you don’t feel until after it’s all over you know and then some of it is years later, like you say, you know, “thou shall not kill.” And then, you know, here you’ve killed 50-60 people, you know, and for your own self preservation and yet at the same time you look at the Bible and say, “wait a minute here!” God didn’t order this and yet here I am in this situation with what happens. So things pray on your mind and it causes problems. It’s called PTSD and even today I haven’t been able to get over it. I tried by keeping my mind busy, keeping it occupied and on and on and on, but there comes a time, I just can’t help it, you know. It’s there. So, at any rate, here is some more pictures of it and then here’s some of the legs blowed off, cuttin’ up with a Thomas Sub and here’s some more [inaudible].
Mrs. Lerch: Now, here’s something interesting, we’ve got dogs.
Mr. Baize: Ya, those are Dobermans and they’re smelling for mines. The Japanese—I’ll show you some pictures back here. They had 1440-some pillboxes. Inside the pillboxes they had signs in there that you cannot return to the homeland until you kill at least 10 of the enemy. So each one had 10 Americans to kill, see. And they were in their reinforced concrete with little slits in them and so they could see you..
Mr. Baize: So you’re sitting out [there]. They had seventeen miles of tunnel in Mount Suribachi and they were always inside that; they were all underground, had interconnecting tunnels going through the pillboxes and the only way to get them is to go in there and lob a grenade down into the slot to blow them out of there, you know?
Mrs. Lerch: Now did they, did you have to do that once you finally joined the Marines?
Mr. Baize: Oh, ya, you did everything, I killed, I don’t know how many. And then, you grab whatever, you do whatever you…
Mrs. Lerch: Certainly not a Navy job.
Mr. Baize: Not a Navy job, no. But, you just did, you had to do it to survive.
Female: Do what you have to do.
Mr. Baize: I would rather—I wanted to get back to ship and I layed there [in the hospital] and how do I get back? But my ship went on and it went on to Okinawa and to Japan and there is a picture of it showing it right there by the USS Missouri when it was signed, you know, the [surrender] of the war, (inaudible) was sitting right there, right next to it.
Mrs.Lerch: Now, did you, were you cognate enough at that time in your recovery process to know that there was your ship sitting there?
Mr. Baize: No, I didn’t know where it was at.
Mrs. Lerch: You didn’t know that they were there or what?
Mr. Baize: I had no idea where it was.
Mrs. Lerch: So you couldn’t vicariously think that this (inaudible)?
Mr. Baize: No, I was in Astro, Oregon laying in the hospital up there.
Mrs. Lerch: So you were still recuperating?
Mr. Baize: Ya, and I layed there and I was so—oh, I don’t know���just shot, I guess. The guy from the VFW came out and he said they tell me you’re not talking. What the hell is there to talk about? So he said, you’re gonna make this your life, and I said, “oh well.” He gave me something to think about and I think that is what turned my life around. If it hadn’t been for him coming out there, I don’t know which way it would have went because I really didn’t figure I had anything to come back here for. So anyhow, that’s more of that. Now here is picture of the original flag raising.
Mrs. Lerch: That it a amazing [?]
Mr. Baize: That’s the one that is the original one.
Mrs. Lerch: One [?] of the original and not the second one. It’s quit different than when you think of the memorial in Washington because they based it on that, you know, the second one obviously. You can see how volcanic the soil is.
Mr. Baize: You can see the crosses, see how many there is in this thing.
Mrs. Lerch: Row upon row upon row. Now many of the Iwo Jima, the fatalities that were buried there, the (inaudible) is the Japanese own the island and you can’t go back there except by special commission, so they then agreed to return them to the National Cemeteries.
Mr. Baize: And there is a picture of me in boot camp.
Mrs. Lerch: Oh my.
Mr. Baize: And that was (inaudible) in the back of my grandmothers when I was kid. But here was the invasion day on the ship and here was what happens, as each hour.
Mrs. Lerch: A mess, isn’t that interesting.
Mr. Baize: right up to the time that we left the ship, you see. And then, here’s a bulletin that the war ends, and tell all about the war ending. And then, lets see here….
Mrs. Lerch: Well, you heard about the war ending in Europe?
Mr. Baize: Ya.
Mrs. Lerch: What were your thoughts about that because you were still busy fighting in the Pacific?
Mr. Baize: That’s right, I mean, your communication was bad, you know you didn’t have much. (Inaudible) the meeting in the Sebring and then, here’s some pictures of us down in the reunion, not many left is there?
Mrs. Lerch: No.
Mr. Baize: And there was a doctor that was on board ship and there was—I was telling you about Tom, he was on boat number 14, so he was the boat right next to me.
Mrs. Lerch: So that was that young guy that we saw back there?
Mr. Baize: Ya.
Mrs. Lerch: Oh my goodness.
Mr. Baize: Then, this here is a proclamation of the ship (inaudible) and here is a list of some of them. And them, here's a letter that Henry sent to me after he found out I was living and then here, I think this is one, isn’t this the one where he said?
Mrs. Lerch: [reading] I received the following, I had him down in my file, his name is, he was in the boat, he lost his boat he was on the beach for four or five days, yep, (inaudible) huh.
Mr. Baize: And then, here, see here was the four of us.
Mrs. Lerch: Um huh.
Mr. Baize: These are the ones that are, that are, deceased. These are all, um, these are all deceased of our ship.
Mrs. Lerch: Uh huh, except for you, of course.
Mr. Baize: That I was on. And I was deceased, at that time. These are the dates that they died and see here was old, 245, 245, 245
Mrs. Lerch: Uh huh.
Mr. Baize: So then, uh, these are the ones that um uh were still, I think, these are the living ones. They said, these are all died (inaudible) out of (inaudible) and then these are all living, see well I’m not listed in the living, you see, I am still gone.
Mrs. Lerch: We know you’re quit well and living.
Mr. Baize: And so then, so then we check them off as they pass out. And these are just kind of letters from different ones. And these are them at the reunion and let me show you this one part, okay, here we go. This here is the pillboxes. Look at the pillboxes…
Mrs. Lerch: Oh, my goodness. And now there is the field that you had to go—where were you when you said they light up fire.[?]
Mr. Baize: Oh, okay. –were I came in was, let me see, okay, here is the airfield. We came in down here. This is the water down in here. And there is another airfield up here and now Mount Suribachi is right here and so we were coming in right in here and this is all water’s edge so you can see how that thing (inaudible) and,you know, to make it in there, you were lucky. This here is what was a historic (inaudible). And so he had written a little story about this whole thing and about the nightmares and all in written and quite a story. And shows the guys lying in the beach.
Mrs. Lerch: Now here are the boats.
Mr. Baize: Ya, there we are. Right here.
Mrs. Lerch: So you were the second boat, this one here?
Mr. Baize: Um huh, um huh.
Mrs. Lerch: Okay, in the second wave. What happen, the first wave boats are just ahead of you, they were all on the shore, they don’t back out. They can’t back out and leave.
Mr. Baize: They were all—most of them were all blowed out.
Mrs. Lerch: Ya, they were all being, ya, they would all be. Do you remember you mentioned, we talked about Glenn Snyder. He came in on the sixth wave …
Mr. Baize: Ya, right.
Mrs. Lerch: And he said everything was pretty quiet.
Mr. Baize: He was a corpsman.
Mrs. Lerch: He was a corpsman.
Mr. Baize: Ya, I met Glenn.
Mrs. Lerch: Ya, and he said, you know, by the time they got in, then they found they just tried to finish off the sixth wave. What can you do at that point?
Mr. Baize: Ya, that’s right, that’s right.
Mrs. Lerch: It’s very difficult.
Mr. Baize: Ya, that’s the way it was and they were all buried up in here and buried in here and they just kep—there was a ridge here, see a little bit of ridge, right in here, and as you come over the ridge. Why then, they would blowed you down. So that’s the story, what it is and this here was down in Beaumont, Texas, down there and they wrote us a story down there. And then this here was the magazine that my mother-in-law gave…
Mrs. Lerch: Oh my, she kept it from the—like Life Magazine…
Mr. Baize: It��s Life Magazine and it’s got the picture of Iwo Jima stuff in it in 1945.
Mrs. Lerch: Wow, isn’t that something.
Mr. Baize: You can take that on. I think its page 93.
Mrs. Lerch: The pages get fragile after a while. See, look at them now. Now you can see why putting the flag up there was such an inspiration to those who were down there. They stuck their faces in the sand. Four week of hell. Now this must be a—is this a hospital ship, I wonder? Well, there is no big Red Cross on it. So maybe…
Mr. Baize: No, I don’t know what it is, I don’t pay attention to it.
Mrs. Lerch: The view back out, what the view that they had, the Japanese, would have had looking out. Imagine, that they had to look at 800 ships coming in.
Mr. Baize: This was, this was actually Japanese territory. This was their homeland.
Mrs. Lerch: Sure, they’re gonna fight for it.
Mr. Baize: And this is the first invasion of Japan, of the Japanese. And they had, they did everything in the world, they said this is, this is it. In other words, they give everything they could possible could do. They throwed everything they had. And, we thought, I mean, we were told we could take it in a matter of a few days and we didn’t have hardly anybody left there. Well, here they were all dug in and they bomb and bombed and bombed, and it couldn’t get down in those there tunnels and back down in all those caves and everything. So..
Mrs. Lerch: And of course if you hadn’t done what you did on Iwo Jima there wouldn’t have been a place for those planes to land.
Mr. Baize: That’s right, that’s exactly right.
Mrs. Lerch: Um huh, it made—they made difference in the war effort.
Mr. Baize: Ya, ya.
Mrs. Lerch: Huge difference.
Mr. Baize: Ya, it was, was quit a battle.
Mrs. Lerch: Um huh, huh. Wow.
Mr. Baize: Ya. Well, they claim it was one of the worst battles that was ever fought by the Marine Corps.
Male: And there is no question there’s a great quote by Admiral Nimitz. He said that among the Americans who served on Iwo Island uncommon valor was a common virtue. I mean, that is just a great testament of that.
Mr. Baize: That’s right.
Male: (Inaudible) how hard all this was fought.
Mr. Baize: Everybody did, they did everything they could. They was just amazing how much the comrades were there. They just worked together and fought together and you died together and there was one area here I was gonna, if I can find it, this here was the missing link has been found.
Mrs. Lerch: Um, ok.
Mr. Baize: There was a story here about it. Um, let me see if I can find that one. I think it’s in here some place. Um, okay, let me see if I can find it. Okay. Here is what, I can read this in here.
Mrs. Lerch: “Courageous battlegrounds.” Um huh. “(Inaudible) shall dedicate ourselves and our entire strength to the defense of this island. (Inaudible) enemy destroy, infiltrate, (inaudible) duties to the others that kill the ten (inaudible).��� Um huh, and of course, they have what they call the code of Boshido.
Mr. Baize: Um huh.
Mrs. Lerch: And that it would be dishonorable to ever be taken prisoner and anybody who was taken prisoner, they were less than human.
Mr. Baize: Ya, do you want to read this, do you? Ya, it’s something else. It would be nice if they could get everybody’s story and put it together, which I am sure they will, in due time, they will get most of it. Everybody got a different story.
Mrs. Lerch: That’s right, well you have it from a different perspective, you know, certainly not the one you’d intended to have.
Mr. Baize: No, no, I mean I—
Mrs. Lerch: But what you did, you know, you changed and adapted to what you needed to do.
Mr. Baize: It’s kind of—
Mrs. Lerch: You didn’t have much choice.
Mr. Baize: Well, you know, it’s worked out real fine for me. Though, I’ve got 10 grandchildren and I got 11 great-grandkids.
Mrs. Lerch: That’s a ton.
Family in the military
Mr. Baize: And they are all doing good and they are fine. I got a grandson who’s in Special Forces and he speaks Arabic fluently. He was in Baghdad before the troops ever got there and then he was in Afghanistan, he was in Bosnia and so he’s got about four more years and he can’t jump anymore, though, because those ninety pound packs you know and his back is all messed up and so he can’t go. So, he’s got about five years and he’ll retire and then I got another grandson, he’s in the Army and he was up in Fort Wainwright in Alaska. And he’s been fortunate, he’s been up there for years and years and years so they’re gonna go back. He’s now down in Fort Benning for some training down there. But, he’s going back so, you know, it’s been a big run for me. I just can’t complain. If I had to, I’d do it over again. I would, I would do it again—maybe not knowing everything I know, but—
Mrs. Lerch: Either of you gentlemen have any other questions that you can think of that we haven’t covered?
Male: He pretty much covered everything. He was all over it.
Mr. Baize: I figured if, you know, if there is anything I can do to help, I certainly will ‘cause I think the archives are, you know, important and they need to have all the information they can get.
Mrs. Lerch: Absolutely. The fellow that you enlisted with Fred?
Mr. Baize: Ya.
Mrs. Lerch: What happened to him?
Mr. Baize: Fred came back and he didn’t go to school. He worked in the factory and he died before his thirtieth birthday and had peptic ulcers. I think he did worry himself to death.
Mrs. Lerch: Now, he didn’t follow you in the Navy though.
Mr. Baize: No, no, we went different directions after boot camp.
Mrs. Lerch : He didn’t obviously get assigned to the same.
Mr. Baize: Ya, and so—but most of my time was spent in the South Pacific. I figured after the first invasion when I got hit on Siapan, I figured, you know, well, I won’t have to go again, you know. But I mean, I was right back within three weeks. Boom! I was back in the action again.
Mrs. Lerch: Well, you were experienced.
Mr. Baize: Ya, I had experience, ya, that’s for sure. So with that I—
Mrs. Lerch: And you lived under adverse conditions with weather and the climate. What was that like?
Mr. Baize: Well, when we got on Iwo in February, it was a raining damp chilly day—that morning. And other than that, it was normally hot, humid and so with that we just had to—in fact, we were so young that, you know, it really didn’t bother me all that much. Really, weather was never a factor to me.
Mrs. Lerch: You didn’t have to deal with malaria? As many …
Mr. Baize: Uh, no, I didn’t have any malaria, I had of course my back, I have four vertebrae all blasted out and that’s a problem. And I had a slug went into my neck here and hit the base of the brain and they pulled that out, but that was during the week I was, you know, fighting, and so it didn’t have no—there ain’t no hospital there.
Mrs. Lerch: No.
Mr. Baize: —any out there.
Mrs. Lerch: And you had to run into Glenn at that point.
Mr. Baize: You—he should and you know, I had the slug that went in here and it crawled up in my jaw up there and pulled that out and then knocked my teeth out. I got some plates up in there. And so, but you’re young and you know tough and—but I was big for my age. I was a pretty good size for age and so, but it was kind of funny, most of the guys average age was 22.
Mr. Baize: So I figured if my health holds out then at the rate they are going by gosh by the time you know another six years most of them will be gone. If they hold out, I can be (inaudible) because I never really said anything to the service about what my real age is. So they still have me down see as born in 1925 see, see.
Male: Oh ya, they do.
Mrs. Lerch: That might have been an issue, though, when you wanted to retire and take social security, though, right? You would have to wait another two years.
Mr. Baize: No, I don’t, no I didn’t retire early, I didn’t social security. Didn’t amount to much anyway. But at any rate, the funny thing is I am seventy percent disabled and I don’t use that as an excuse, but I have to go out and get a physical every couple years, I mean every couple months, they get in there, actually semi-annual and so the doctor says, “boy you’re in good shape, you’re looking good for eighty years old”.
Mrs. Lerch: Well, I think on that cheerful note, I can say thank you very much.
Mr. Baize: Well okay, you are certainly welcome.
Mrs. Lerch: These are not easy stories to tell.
Mr. Baize: It’s still hard to talk about it.
Mrs. Lerch: I’m sure, I’m sure.
Mr. Baize: It��s still hard.
Mrs. Lerch: Even if we were to spend time just to delve into every minute of your coming in to Iwo [?] wave by wave, or Saipan, it doesn’t get any easier over time.
Mr. Baize: Well, there—Guam—my wife and I, of course when I opened an office in Guam and did work there at the Anderson Air force base and she decided, well, we will go to Guam—I’ll take her over with me and we was in the Guam Hilton. So it’s up on the second floor and we’re on the balcony and we were looking down there and I said, “Jo,” I said, “I think I came in right down here,” I said. “There is a pillbox laid down in the bottom of those row of trees.” There was a row of big gold trees right along the banks and she said, “auh, come on,” you know. Well, I don’t think I will forget that much, you know. So, we got out of there and we started to walk up and went down through there and darn there it was, a pill box laying right down on the bottom of the base of tree and I said, “there it is.” And she said, “well, it had to be”
Mrs. Lerch: Sharp memory. Sharp memory.
Mr. Baize: But everything was so mixed up. There were so many things that didn’t pan out the way that the military thought they would—we didn’t have enough men to fight and too many casualties too quick and the armor, we didn’t have any armor, we didn’t have any protective vests, we didn’t have nothing like that and the (inaudible) units that came off, you’d bring them in there and (inaudible) we could run, just this kind of stuff, you dig and then you fill in, that’s the only thing you can do, just lay flat, you know. And lay your head sideways and lay the helmet on there and hope the shell didn’t hit where you at, that was it. And of course, food. You know there was no mess halls, there was nothing there, you just ate what you had in your pocket, you know and if you can scrounge enough, you know, and still had somebody left, you’d pick it up off whoever had passed, dead or died you’d take off of them. And so, it was longer than what they thought it was gonna take, more lives lost than what they thought they would have and then so (inaudible) the other divisions was heading toward Okinawa and they had to turn around and come back and come in and help in there see, so. But that is the way it is. Well, I think I got time to get over to the Dodd’s Restaurant, my wife’s gonna have dinner for me tonight. So.
Male: Big birthday dinner?
Mr. Baize: Oh, just a dinner.
End of Tape Side Two.
