Interview With John A. Rich

Posted on 07/15/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with John Rich of Camino, CA conducted by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on June 28, 2005 by John Croghan. Mr. Rich served in the 356th EBSR at Fort Worden during the Korean War era. Here he discusses his experiences in Korea:

“They sent me down to Pittsburgh, which is in the Bay Area, and got on the General Black, 7,500 of us. It took about a week and a half to get to Yokohama. We had some very, very bad weather on the way over. I was in a compartment about three decks down way up near the bow. That was a terrible place to be. The swells were running about 60 feet and the bow would raise way up in the air and then come crashing back down. After about a day of that, the whole deck in our compartment was about three inches deep in vomit. As the ship would roll, the vomit would roll across the deck like a tidal wave and then crash over to the other side. I still can hardly believe it, I never got sick. For the last year (at Fort Worden) I’d been riding around on mike boats and doing a lot of bouncing around, so I guess my body was conditioned to it.

From Yokohama we got on LSTs and went over to Inchon, all the way around the Korean Peninsula. I then took on of the most frightening rides of my life. After a couple of days in Inchon, they loaded me on a little Korean putt-putt train. I rode this train all the way from Inchon down the Korean Peninsula to Pusan. We got stopped about 15 or 20 times. There was firing and shooting all the way along. I thought, oh God, if this train doesn’t get blown up and run off the track someplace, go off a bridge or something, it would be amazing. That was a very hairy ride, because at the time, early in ’52 there were still a lot of Chinese and North Koreans and whatever all over the Peninsula. They see a train going by with Americans on it, they’re going to shoot at it.

I got assigned to an outfit called the 501st Harbor Craft. The first tug I got was a 75 footer with about 12 crew. Then I got promoted so I went up to a 98 footer. About a week later, they called me into the office and gave me a chart and said down at the dock is your boat, you’ll have a couple crew, get on it and go to Koje-do.

During the Korean War, the US military captured a hell of a lot of prisoners: North Korean, Chinese, Mongolian,even Russians, men and women. They sent them all down to this island group on the southwest off the tip of the Korean Peninsula in the South China Sea. It is a string of about 25 volcanic islands. Koje-do was the biggest, about 14 miles long and six or seven miles wide, and they had the most prisoners there.

There were about 350,000 there and on six other islands. They had them segregated either by sex or nationality or whatever and there was one island just for troublemakers. My job was in essence to run a ferry boat.

It was about 25 miles from one island down to the end of the string. Every day I’d run one day and stay overnight down at that island and then run back, just back and forth and back and forth. … Eventually they got about a million prisoners all together, and there was finally too much stuff to haul back and forth and the mike boats got too small. So they had me go back to Pusan and turn my mike boat in, park it there, and they gave me an LCU, a landing craft utility. They’re 114 feet, 56 feet wide and weigh about 100 tons. They’ve got three main engines and two Diesel generators. They’re a much, much bigger boat.

The war ended in June of ’54. In the meantime, we had Operation Little Switch and Operation Big Switch. The first one, Little Switch, we traded 150,000 North Korean and Chinese prisoners for 15,000 American GIs. I never got to see the GIs but I had to go to the various islands and pick up 300,400,500, 600 of these prisoners and bring them back and then take them out to the ships. They took them up north somewhere, I don’t know where. About three or four months later, they had Operation Big Switch, where they traded about 400,000 Chinese, North Koreans and what have you for American GI prisoners. The ratio I think was about 25 to one.”

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Interview With Walter M. Myren

Posted on 07/15/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Walter Myren of Miltona, MN conducted by phone by Henry West from the Fort Worden History Center on July 6, 2004. Mr. Myren served in Company D of the Shore Batallion, 369th EASR from 1951 to 1953, most of the time at Fort Flagler. Here he relates his experience at Camp Desert Rock, NV during the atomic bomb teats:

“We built all the buildings there. There weren’t any buildings when we got there. I ran a rock crusher, and we crushed rock right out of the side hills or next to the mountains. We made an airport, landing strip. We put up a few officers’ permanent tents, not with a floor in. They were dirtier than those that didn’t have any floor because the wood dried out and then the wind would come along and all the dust and dirt would go up inside the tents.

We had many thousand people down there. …We put up tents for the 101st Airborne. They landed right at one of the blasts–they landed right with us or even in front of us. We were forced to go up to practically dead center. …We were there to witness four different tests. There were two drops from airplanes up about ten thousand feet, then they set it off about 1,000 feet off the ground and then we had a couple tower shots. The predawn blast, that was something to see. Every color of the rainbow was in that 4:00 o’clock in the morning. We were as close as anybody–within four miles. All the big brass, and I remember Senator Hubert Humphrey from Minnesota being there, were in what was called a knob about ten miles from ground zero. They didn’t have any protection at all where we were in foxholes.

We had no eye protection. We were instructed just before anything happened that we could look about so many seconds after it went off, we could look and watch. When the wind went out from there they had that timed perfectly. Then we had to get down in the foxholes. Then we could raise up again after it passed over us. Then you had to wait so many seconds and that wind rushes back to the center of the blast just as fast as it went out. …It was dust and wind and fire. It was so hot that the mesquite brush in front of our foxholes, they were all set on fire.

We had Geiger counters in camp and then if you got contaminated then you had to go to the decontamination shower and get different clothes. We had to get scrubbed down with soap and water, then they’d take the Geiger counter and take a reading on you. When it got down to practically zero, you’d put your clothes on and get out of there.

I was in the squad that had to pick up all the stuff that was experimental except the sheep. They were taken away with a helicopter to the center of atomic research outfit there. They had mortars and machine guns. They had M1s, carbines, they had bazookas lying or sitting up every quarter of a mile for at least two miles out, and that stuff was hot. We had to lift and carry, load all that all up and take it to a pit on the other side of our camp about five miles. There they had a big pit and we dumped it there. Even brand new Jeeps, and there were a few guys in our outfit who came back from Korea. They were really mad because they said that in Korea they had older equipment that was probably worthless, here they were using brand new stuff to experiment with.”

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Interview With Floyd Michelson

Posted on 07/10/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Floyd Michelson of Seabeck, WA conducted at the Fort Worden History Center by Nancy Vleck on June 8, 2004. Mr. Michelson served in the Boat Battalion, 369th EASR from 1951 to 1952. Here he talks about his experience when sent to France:

It was February 7, 1952, my birthday, that we shipped out for France. We left Fort Worden, got to Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, then by ship to Bremerhaven, Germany and then to Rochefort, France. We were stationed right in the middle of Rochefort, a big town. …In France there wasn’t a heck of a lot of entertainment, not in the compund we were in. We’d just go to town and walk around and try out the French wine. We’d go to La Palmyre, which was on the coast–it was a bigger town. We went swimming on the beach. There were bicycles and did a lot of bicycle riding. I didn’t get to see much of the countryside. They had different trips that you could take if you had the money. Like you could go to Paris, or here and there if you had the money. I was married and I was getting about 90 dollars a month until I got married, then it got divided down to 60 dollars a month. That just kept me in cigarettes and stuff.

Other experiences:

Most of my service wasn’t really in Port Townsend. We went to Greenland. We went down to Fort Mac Arthur in San Pedro, California. From there, we took some landing barge training there and we had a good company captain. We bivouacked out in Santa Catalina with our boats and landed on the beach and set up our tents and stuff. Then we went by train across the United States, to Camp Kilmer, got on a ship and went up to Greenland. Our ship was the USS Deuel, it was a Victory ship and it wasn’t armored, we were going through ice. So we switched off of that onto the M.L. Hersey. Then we lived on that and commuted back and forth between the ship and shore. We got put in longshoring, because the Navy got involved and they didn’t think a soldier should be running those boats. So, the Navy ran the boats and we unloaded the barge stuff ashore.”

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Interview With Richard Konig

Posted on 07/09/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Richar Konig of Woodside, NY conducted by John Clise by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on April 6, 2004. Mr. Konig served in the Shore Battalion, 369th EASR from 1951 to 1953. Here he describes how he reached Fort Worden as a new draftee:

“I was drafted on the first of February, and we left the induction station, 39 Whitehall Street in New York, by bus in the afternoon. We proceeded up to Fort Devens, MA, which was our first destination. We got involved in a storm and it got down to a crawl to the point where we arrived up there quite late, much to the ire of the barracks Sergeant who was charged with teaching us how to make hospital corners in beds. My first day in the Army was spent at KP. The first meal that was served was the famous SOS. I spent from 6:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night on KP, which put me a day behind all of my other friends.

From Fort Devens we entrained and took a long five or six days out to Seattle. We were shuntted to the side for everything else on the way out. Got to Union Station in the late afternoon and we were all marched out. There were three Pullman carloads of us. I thought it was wonderful with Pullman service all the way out. In Seattle we all marched out through Union Station to the street, and lo and behold, there was a fleet of taxi cabs. It amazed me, I thought of the taxi cab army in France for some reason.

We got into the taxis, not knowing exactly where we were going, we just let the cabs take us. Being from new York City, I knew what the waterfront smells like. All of a sudden we were on a pier at the waterfront. I thoght that they couldn’t be taking us to Korea right away. I looked out and, sure enough, there was a big loading port and a ship named Chinook.

The Sergeant told us, ‘Look, we’re going to our Fort Worden.’ That passed right over my head, I didn’t know where Fort Worden was. I had no idea where Port Townsend was. Washington State was something so alien to a New Yorker that you never even thought about it. You thought about six feet of snow. But we got on and he said, ‘They have a bar and I’ll allow you one drink and that’s all. Anybody gets drunk and they’ll have to answer to me.’ So, we had one drink and we sat up until the vessel eventually pulled into the Port Townsend ferry pier.

We unloaded and they had trucks to take us to Fort Worden. By this time it was late at night and here was another irate barracks Sergeant who was teaching us to make hospital corners Fort Worden style. I was fiited out with some parts and pieces of uniform that they had forgotten at Fort Devens. They taught us how to march on the parade field and several other things. Ten days later the Shore Battalion was shipped to Fort Flagler across the bay.”

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Interview With Earl Hettick

Posted on 06/26/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Earl B. Hettick of Roscoe, ND conducted by Nancy Vleck by phone on March 15, 2005 from the Fort Worden History Center. Mr. Hettick served from 1951 to 1953 in the Shore Battalion, 369th EASR at Fort Flagler and Camp Desert Rock. Here he talks about his time at Camp Desert Rock:

“In January of 1952, we transferred a bunch of stuff to Camp Desert Rock. That’s where they tested those atomic bombs. I was there until July.

To start out with it was just nothing but a flat desert. We set up a bunch of tents just out on the ground, there were hundreds of them. We weren’t the only ones that came there, there were a lot from other forts, and then a bunch of Marines came. After we were pretty well established, we moved up north about 40 or 60 miles from our camp. There we dug a bunch of trenches for the people to sit in when they dropped the bombs. I saw seven of them.

They tested seven of them. They dropped it down right in the middle of us Three were let down by air. The plane went up 30 to 40,000 feet and dropped it down right in the middle of us. Then we had four what they call tower shots. These bombs were up on the tower about 300 feet high and they detonated them there. We had a machine that dug the trenches that the troops were in when the bombs went off. The trenches were about five or six feet deep. There were 35-40 trenches, about 50 yards apart. Each trench was about a quarter mile long, the closest ones were about seven miles from the blast. Actually, the troops squatted down in the trenches. They were told not to watch the bomb when it went off, but just as soon as it went off, they stuck their heads up and then the concussion moved along the ground. It knocked them down against the back of the trench.

While we were there, we built a water tank for a water supply. The water was piped down to where the tents were. My job was to haul water into that tank from Nellis Air Base, which was about 20 miles from there four or five nights a week. I hauled it at night because at the air base they were pretty skimpy on water during the day.

I also had to run the water truck. It had a big water tank on the back with a sprayer. Just before they set the bomb off, I had to spread water in front of the troops so the dust wouldn’t blow into their eyes from the impact. Then I had to stay in the truck. I drove away about 12 miles from there to a spot where they told me to park. When the bomb went off, you could see the concussion coming. The ground just moved in front of you. It moved that way all the way up to where I was, I could see the ground move in front of me and when it got to me, it was a pretty good shock. When the wave hit me, that’s when I heard the boom. I didn’t have any face or ear protection.”

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Interview With Herbert Herro

Posted on 06/24/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Herbert Herro of Fond Du Lac, WI conducted by Clare Ledden by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on May 12, 2005. Mr. Herro served at Fort Worden in Company B of the Boat Battalion, 369th EASR from 1951 to 1953. Here he recounts how football came to the base:

“In the summer of ’52, I was umpiring a baseball game. Fort Worden was playing some Air Force base in Washington. While I was umpiring the game, there was a General from 5th Army headquarters at the Presidio in California at the game. After the game, he was so impressed with my umpiring he came to talk to me about it. We had quite a conversation, and he asked if we had a basketball or a football team at Fort Worden. I said they had a basketball team but didn’t have a football team. He asked how come no football team. I said I didn’t know, we didn’t have any equipment or anything. He said,’If you got the equipment, would you have a team?’

I said, ‘I would hope so.’ I enjoyed playing football quite a bit. I told him about my background in football. So, lo and behold, a couple of weeks later I got a call from the Special Services Officer. He called me over to his office and said, ‘Sergeant Herro, I heard you had a talk with the General from the Presidio. He was very disappointed we didn’t have a football team here. He’s allotting getting us some money for some equipment. So, we’ve got to have a football team this fall, and it is up to you to get the guys trying to play football. I’ll find the coaches someplace.

He did find the coaches–one from Port Townsend, one from Point Hudson, and two from Fort Flagler. We got 60 guys to sign up to play football. We only had equipment for about 35, so after the first week they had to cut some of the players. We started our team at Fort Flagler. The first couple of games we weren’t very good because the team hadn’t been playing together that long. By the end of the season we won our last four games, so we ended up with a four and four record.”

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Interview With William H. Hambrock

Posted on 06/19/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with William H. Hambrock of Bluffton, IN conducted by Wendy Los by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on March 22, 2005. Mr. Hambrock served in Company E, Shore Battalion, 369th EASR at Fort Flagler from 1951 to 1953. He also spent several months at Camp Desert Rock, NV during the atomic bomb tests. Here he recounts a memorable experience while at Flagler:

“In ’51 before we were shipped out to Nevada, we had an inter-company golf tournament. I played in it. I didn’t have any clubs so I had to borrow a set of golf clubs, I am left handed, from a fellow there. It ended up that I played the fellow who loaned the clubs, he was left handed. I played him in the play-offs. We were sharing the same clubs.

It ended up that I had a big lead, but I got a little over anxious and I let him catch up with me. He won the tournament and I came in second. They called all the companies out on the parade ground at Flagler to present me with my runner-up trophy. I thought at the time it was wild to have all the companies lined up out there on the parade ground. I’ll always remember that.”

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Interview With Larry Frankini

Posted on 06/19/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Larry Frankini of Flushing, NY conducted by phone by Henry West from the Fort Worden History Center on March 2, 2005. Mr. Frankini served in Company B of the Boat Battalion, 369th EASR fom 1951 to 1953. Here he describes his work:

“I was on a salvage boat. It was an LCM, we had rigs and it was set up for a salvage boat. If any of the boats got broke–in combat, sometimes they would broach on shore and we would pull them off with a tow line. The boats would get turned sidewys by the waves, they would broach and we’d get them and do minor repairs.”

How he felt about Army life:

“I enjoyed the Army and I liked Washington State. I liked Port Townsend very much when I was there in ’51, it was a great place. Worden was a good camp, it was a good town, people were great and the people in town were very good to soldiers. A lot of times when you get in these Army camps, they resent that you’re even there. But those people were very, very good.”

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Interview With Warren Dickman

Posted on 06/17/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Warren Dickman of Tieton, WA conducted by Teddy Clark by phone on February 2, 2005 from the Fort Worden History Center. Mr. Dickman served in the Boat Battalion of the 369th EASR at Fort Worden in 1951-52. Here he tells why he enlisted in the Army:

“We knew we were going to be drafted and it was in the wintertime. We figured we’d just as well get it off and going. I figured I could swim further than I could fly, so the Air Force was out; and I could walk further than I could swim, so the Navy was out. That was my 19 year-old logic at that time. …I did end up in the Army’s Navy. When they asked me at Fort Lewis, they said they had two slots–infantry and combat engineer, which do you want? I took combat engineer, and actually ended up an amphibious engineer.”

Talking about his fellow soldiers:

“We had some real characters in our outfit, some real happy-go-lucky comedian types and some very serious, somber–just a cross section. We were made up of guys from Minnesota, North and South Dakota, quite a few from Wyoming and the rest from Oregon and Washington. As time went on, we had people come in from New York and about everywhere and some returning from Korea.

The New Yorkers were kind of a gang. One of the guys, I think his name was M—- was starting to take charge; and BP, a big part Indian fellow from Southern Oregon who was a timber feller, very quiet and easy-going, was not about to be stepped on. He and another big Indian guy from the Umatilla Reservation took care of about four of them. They were pretty docile after that. It was right back to as usual again.”

Describing training experiences on the almost vertical face of the bluff above the beach:

“We’d put on a full field pack and go up to those bunkers (on Artillery Hill), then go down that bank. That’s a long way down, and the rocks were flying, dinging off your helmet. The lieutenant would be in the lead and he’d take us out about a platoon at a time, we’d just follow single file. He probably had scouted it out and had picked a way you could get down. It was pretty brushy, which was a good thing ‘cause if you lost your footing you could grab a sapling or something and wouldn’t go off that vertical face up there.”

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Interview With Thomas Crowe

Posted on 06/12/2014 by fwohp4481

From the interview with Thomas Crowe of Logansport, IN conducted by John Clise by phone from the Fort Worden History Center on March 1, 2005. Mr. Crowe served in Company E of the Shore Battalion, 369th EASR at Fort Flagler during the Korean War era. For six months of his service, he was stationed at Camp Desert Rock, NV. Here he tells of that experience:

“We went down by train to Las Vegas in December of 1951,and then we were stationed in Camp Desert Rock, until June 1952. It was nothing when we got there, just desert and a couple of tents. But we built the camp, put in all the light poles, built the water towers, the whole works, and the tents, and then later the permanent buildings for an entire series of atomic tests. We were sent to also operate the camp during that period of tests. I had worked in the PX up at Flagler for a while. Since I had, I was given the job of running the PX and beer hall at Camp Desert Rock, and that’s fantastic duty.

I was one of the most popular people there. It was a branch of the Nellis Air Force Base PX. We weren’t allowed to make a profit, but we couldn’t help but make some kind of a profit. We had two tents originally, one for the beer hall which we decorated with pin up girls and candles and beer bottles, the other one was the PX. I was able to select my own crew, so I was able to select those guys that I knew would do a good job for me. We had a very efficient, very good operation. That beat building, digging ditches up where they were setting the tests off.

We were not (involved in) preparing for the tests, but we were up at the test site. I was only there once, but most of our people were there more than once for a test, which is a fantastic experience. One of the other companies from Fort Flagler built, set up all the buildings and got in the livestock and everything for those tests. They then came in and cleaned it out afterwards without any real protective gear, cause the government didn’t know what they were doing anymore than we did. They claim to have lost the badges that we were supposed to have on that showed what our radiation was. They don’t even act as if we were ever out there. Some of our people feel that all the illnesses they ever had were from that, but I’ve never had any problem with it whatsoever. But I wasn’t that close to it either.

That was a great experience and Vegas was a great experience in those days. There wasn’t a building in town more than two stories high. Military people were few. When you went to Seattle, you would wear civilian clothes. But when you went to Vegas, you wore your uniform. You were treated like a king because there were so few military people there.”

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