WW 2 (PTW)
In
the Pacific Theatre, Marines were called upon to stem the tide of Japanese
aggression. They stormed the shores of
Diamond Head,
Honolulu,
(the
On the
C-Rations (Ernie Pyle died by sniper site of the bloodiest battle in the PTO
fire
on the island,
Early in the war, the Japanese
surprised the Americans at
Jeepney,
My dad, Charlie Fields, served in Central and South America, Canada, and States during the first part of the war. "We flew from Churchill on Hudson Bay to below Rio de Janeiro on the East Coast of South America to below Santiago, Chile, on the West Coast." This "pic is L to R Ralph Bauer, M/SGT crew chief of our aircraft, the Gopher, a B-34 Lockheed Vega Ventura, me S/Sgt aerial photographer, George Geary. S/sgt radio operater and 1Lt Don Cooper, the pilot. Our navigator 1Lt Ardis is not in the pic. Picture was made in Central America or South America.
During
the summer of 1944, Dad went to the South Pacific for one year. The aircraft they used in the Pacific
"was a B24 with a crew of 10.
The pilot, co-pilot and navigator were commissioned. The crew chief (engineer) was usually a
master sgt, assistant engineer, radio operator, two gunners, photographer and
assistant photographer. These were
all enlisted. I was the
photographer but all the enlisted crew could operate the guns having been to
gunnery school at Harlinger, Tx. I
remember one thing we had to do at school was take apart and put back together
a 50 cal machine gun while blindfolded.
For the aerial gunnery practice we did out over the Gulf of Mexico
shooting at a sleeve target being pulled by another aircraft. We used colored rounds so could tell how
many hits. En route to our destination of Hollandia, New Guinea, one
incident made an everlasting impression on me. We landed at Tarawa. It had earlier been
secured by the Marines. I visited the beach and looking out from the beach to
where the Marines had to wade in because of low tide and the Japanese mowing
them down with machine gun fire, it just made you want to cry." From
New Guinea and Australia, the crew began moving up the island chain secured by
the Marines and Army. They flew out of bases in the Philippines after the
islands were retaken from the Japanese. Finally, the crew ended up on
Okinawa. "I was in a phot outfit (4th Photo Mapping Sqd) and on the
occasion of Tokyo we were photographing the fire bomb damage. There were vast
areas of destruction in Tokyo.
There were just a few standing brick chimneys. The firebombs simply
destroyed Tokyo. The houses were so flimsily built they easily burned. The
destruction in Tokyo seemed much greater than in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but
not as far-reaching. In the case of
Hiroshima I am sure the damage was greater at ground zero but not as larger of
area as the fire bomb. The same
with Nagasaki. These three missions
were flown from Okinawa and dated from 25 Aug 45 to 8 Sep 45."
Today, the 4th Photo Mapping Squadron is known as the 4th Space Operations
Squadron, based at Falcon AFB, CO.
The Enola
Gay (Dulles, VA), the B-29 Superfortress which dropped the atomic bomb on
Hiroshima, 6 August 1945.
Truman ran
the numbers and determined that fewer would die from the atomic bomb than would
die in a protracted war.
Furthermore,
Truman wanted to use the technology first, before it was used against the U.S.
Note: While I make every effort to produce an error-free document, errors occasionally creep in. I would appreciate you bringing any to my attention so that I may make the necessary corrections.
Ancient World History
Renaissance/Reformation World History
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
WW2
Pacific Theater (YOU ARE HERE)