Replies

My dad was there that day too. He was in the Signal Corps attached to the 5th Air Force, previously in New Guinea. He was the top sergeant on a big radar outfit. My uncle said that dad was already on the island when the shelling started early that morning. He never talked about it much.

My dad was a heavy equipment operator and mechanic. He would rebuild the runways after we had bombed them. He was discharged as a staff sergeant. He was shot in the lower abdomen in the Philippines. It became septic. He spent six weeks in bed and returned on a hospital ship.

He told me stories about Wee Wac on the north shore of New Guinea. When they came in their was a Japanese destroyer that had hit the reef, running from our navy, and was sticking straight up in the air. He also told me about finding a Japanese battleship way inland up a river where the Japs ran it aground and were using it as base. If it had stayed out in the Pacific it would have been sunk.

Another story involved MacArthur. He and another guy found a partially sunk Chris Craft cabin cruiser. They patched in up and got it running again. They had it for exactly two days before Doug Out Doug saw them and took it for his own use.

He talked about head hunters on New Guinea. They would post sentries just because guys were afraid to sleep at night more from the HH’s than the Japs. He also told me how they made “Jungle Juice” by distilling fruits and condensing it by running copper pipe through a stream.