Interview with James Wilbur Lovell
Author: Ben Tamashiro, D Company
Title: A Bastard Outfit – What Else?
Publisher: Puka Puka Parade
Source: Puka Puka Parade, Mar-Apr 1980, Vol. 34 No. 2 (Part 2)
This is the second of two installments of an interview with Jim Lovell, HQ Chapter. Jim was the first Executive Officer of the 100th; later, at Cassino, its Commanding Officer (CO). In the first installment, Jim took us on a path from his boyhood in Hastings, Nebraska, to teaching positions in the big public schools in central Honolulu; then through the early days of the war, formation of the 100th, stateside training, and overseas to North Africa. Jim’s narration continues from that point.
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“To Colonel Turner, the men of the 100th were ‘his boys.’ He was local born (Hilo), and had fought hard to be given the right to organize and lead them when the concept of a separate battalion carne into being. Given his unreserved faith in the loyalty and quality of his boys, it was not surprising to me that he was embarked on a kind of personal crusade. That is, he took it upon himself to fend off and counter any and every kind of prejudice and disparagement directed against the boys; to speak out in their behalf to any and all who would listen; to ‘tell them off’ when need be. His personal mission often seemed to be of more consequence to him than his military mission.” Jim again talked about the two occasions most vivid in his mind which reflect Turner’s all-encompassing concern for his boys. He had touched upon in the first installment.
How To Put Down A Bigoted Chief Of Staff
The first was that day in early January, 1943, when the 100th had moved to Shelby, from McCoy. Turner’s first chore was to pay a courtesy calion General Haislip, the commander of the 85th Division at Shelby. There, Jim introduced Turner to Colonel “Bull” Kendall, the general’s Chief of Staff, who greeted him with an officious, “Well, Turner, have your Japs arrived?” Looking Kendall straight in the eye, Turner reeled him in: “The term Jap is an opprobrium which is reserved for the enemy.” It left the Chief of Staff bristling in his shoes.
Turner’s Rubicon
Then there was that earlier confrontation when the 2nd Division from Texas moved into McCoy. Almost immediately, and especially on weekends, the neighboring towns around McCoy, like Sparta, turned into arenas as the boys from Texas deliberately set out to intimidate the boys from Hawaii with taunts and asides that struck home like poisoned arrows. Accompanied by bare knuckles and belt buckles, such uncalled-for behavior was just too much. So the 100th struck back – fist for fist and buckle and buckle, plus jujitsu. As the fights increased in tempo, Turner was confronted one night by the division commander, General Robertson, who demanded to know of Turner what he was doing about it all.
It was the classic military one-dimensional confrontation. Directed from the general’s inviolate position of rank, the question was, simply, a fundamental exercise in the prerogative of the ranked. Circumspection, therefore, called for the fundamental response on the part of Turner, to be topped off by a brisk salute and a sharply ejaculated, “Yes, sir!”
Said Jim: “One of the greatest services that Colonel Turner did for the boys was not necessarily defending them but speaking for them. Regardless of whether it was a presentation to the staff officers of General Ben Lear’s Second Army or the members of the Chamber of Commerce of Sparta or the 5th Army officers at Mastagenem or at a meeting with General Ryder, or even in encounters with the likes of ‘Bull’ Kendall, he was always promoting his boys; telling the others what great fellows they were, of their trustworthiness and loyalty, and that they were brave and could do this and do that. That’s the way he felt about his boys. He’d go overboard for them. And I think that was the greatest value he did for them.
“Some of the fellows wondered why he wasn’t more active in training. But he had others to take care of that for him. That was their job; it was our job to take care of those things. So it was not necessarily what he did for them in things like that… but what he did with those around who had any influence over them, or those who gave the orders, or could dictate as to what happened to them. He dealt with those people.”
Turner was here, there, most everywhere, speaking out for his boys. “He was like a one-man PR office,” said Jim, “dealing with those people who were in the centers of influence.” But what about his relationship with the boys themselves?
Replied Jim: “I think the real great thing about him was the individual admiration he showed for everyone that he could. Take the baseball team, for instance. He followed it all over. It was the greatest baseball team in the world, to him. And he went with the basketball team, ice or snow. Whatever it was, anytime there was something like that going on, any chance he had to pat the boys on the back, he was there, taking care of the boys. And I think this feeling of his permeated throughout the outfit.”
At that moment of confrontation with General Robertson, Turner was still undergoing the trials and tribulations of organizing a bastard outfit and leading it through the early stages of its uncertain existence. From the very beginning, he had endured the “slings and arrows” of doubts and recriminations about the formation of an all-Nisei combat unit.
Basic to the military man’s understanding of his role in life is unquestioned obeisance to the voice of command and authority, of the consequences of inattention to orders. But Turner, at this moment when his convictions stood on the line, must have felt the greater consequences to himself … if he could not be the master of his soul … to let his beliefs give way to the pressure of the two-stars who confronted him.
He had nothing to back him up but his implicit faith in his boys. But that was all he needed … and he cast his die.
In quiet, assured tones, Turner replied to the general that the fights were not of the 100th’ s making. And the 100th could not, of course, take on the whole of the general’s division at one time. However, if it ever came down to that, the 100th would take on the 2nd, one battalion at a time!
“What Turner was really trying to do,” continued Jim, “was to get the 2nd Division to layoff. After all, they had from 15-to-20,000 men. They could wipe us out! But at the same time he wanted to let the general know that we weren’t afraid of him.”
Two thousand years ago, when Pompey had ordered Julius Caesar not to cross the boundary between Roman Italy and the Po valley, Caesar defied the order and crossed the Rubicon river, which formed one part of the boundary. “The die is cast!” he proclaimed, then marched onto Rome. Pompey fled, and Caesar became master of Italy.
For whatever the reason – the general could have been severely shocked, taken aback, by the boldness of Turner’s unexpected conduct; then again, he may have inwardly reveled in admiration of Turner’s stance; or, in that instant, he may have measured, in his mind, the reality of the gauntlet thrown down before him. Whatever, and it could have been for all these reasons … the attacks quickly tapered off that that. And Turner, with his boys, continued to march forward.
Salerno
The Allied 5th Army had made an amphibious landing at Salerno on the 19th of September (the year was 1943). At Oran, ten days later, the 100th boarded the S. S. Frederick Funston and left its North African staging area, headed for the beaches at Salerno. The 100th was part of the 133rd Regiment of the 34th Division.
“Early on the morning of the 22nd, we arrived at the beachhead at Salerno. And of course, all of this was a new experience for us; climbing down the ship’s rope ladders and jumping into the bobbing landing crafts waiting for us below. It seemed that we were circling around in the waters for a long time waiting for everyone to be assembled. Then the landing crafts headed for the beach and a s soon as they couldn’t go any more, the gates came down and the men rushed out, in two columns, on each side of the boats. But many of the crafts never quite reached the beach; they got hung up on the reefs and sand bars. For those that got stuck in the sand offshore, many of the men went into the water over their heads. I personally went in up to my shirt pockets, where I had moved my wallet and my tobacco, to keep them dry. Of course, I was much taller than a lot of the men; pocket-high for me was over-the-head for many of the boys.”
(The Navy man handling the landing craft in which Jim was riding made several attempts to hurdle the sand bar which impeded its way. He backed the craft off, then gunned it forward. After the third unsuccessful try, he lowered the gate and Jim was first off. The writer (Ben Tamashiro) happened to be following Jim. Weighted down by his full-field pack and other impedimenta, he immediately sank beneath the waters. But buoyed by his pack, he came floating to the surface, gasping for air. He then managed to paddle forward until his feet touched bottom.)
To continue with Jim’.s narration: “Even the Jeeps landed in water which covered over the body of the Jeeps. Shigetani was driving the colonel’s Jeep and as he sped out to the end of the landing craft, he took off like a launching pad and he landed in the water, almost completely out of sight! He had a snorkel on and was able to deep running until it hit the shoreline. It was quite an experience seeing those Jeeps catapulting off out of sight into the water. The colonel wasn’t in the Jeep. He had earlier waded ashore.
“After landing on shore, the men went up marked paths to higher ground, then once assembled there, moved out to our bivouac area which was some five or six miles away, and awaited instructions to move out. E and F companies were taken away, one to guard an airfield and the other to guard an ammunition or gasoline dump. There were lots of explosions all around but no unusual incidents.”
It’s For Real
“Then the next day the Allies started a big push to get out of the Salerno pocket. After the 5th Army had landed at Salerno, they were almost pushed back into the sea by the German counterattack. This happened just before we got there. So now we went through the town of Eboli and were put on and went cross-country and I remember distinctly going through a place called Battapaglia, which gave us a more realistic look at what war was all about. There, we saw many buildings with holes right through one wall and through another. They apparently had been hit by naval gunfire; hit by low trajectory shells.
“And on the side of the road were lots of horses, all swollen and bloated. They had died there. And you could smell the smell of burnt flesh coming from the tanks along the roadside. And I remember that night when we finally stopped, Colonel Turner asked me to talk to the officers. And I remember telling them that if there were any questions about where we were and what we were there for – that this was for real, just from the things that were visible that day. Turner wanted to be sure that the men understood how serious this thing was. I mean, they were all his people and he wanted to be sure they were taken care of.”
The First Casualties
“Then afterwards we stopped at a town called Montemarano, then to Avellino. And on the 26th, we went on trucks and moved 126 miles up to San Angelo. Next morning, Company B led off down the road to Chiusano.”
At this point, Jim turned to the book, “Ambassadors in Arms” to refresh his memory as to the events of that morning and began reading the account of how the first soldiers in the 100th were killed.
At about 10:00 A.M., as the 3rd Platoon turned a bend in the road, three German machine guns opened up , and mortar and artillery shells began to fall around the “zeroed in” road curve. Sergeant Shigeo (Joe) Takata said, “It’s the first time, so I’m going first.” Spotting one of the Jerry nests, he walked toward it, firing his automatic rifle. A piece of shrapnel caught him in the head. Dying, he managed to tell one of his men, who had crawled close, where the German gunners were. Before the enemy pocket was silenced, another soldier had died and seven more had been wounded.
Joe Takata played centerfield on the 100th baseball team. “His death, the first in the 100th, upset Colonel Turner very bad,” said Jim. “He and I were sitting on a log that night and I could see that this thing had gotten to him real bad. His men were starting to get shot at, and killed. So I said to him, tomorrow, why don’t you take the reserve company and let me take the front. And he said, ‘Would you mind doing that for me?’ And when we left that place above Chiusano, and the places that followed, he was visibly struck by all that was happening to his boys.”
The Dead Of Benevento
“From Chiusano the battalion moved on up to Montefalcione, Montemiletto, and on toward Benevento. We were to approach the outskirts of Benevento and move into a bivouac area. But as we were moving along the road, Major Dewey came to us and ordered us to keep moving and not to go into bivouac as the town of Benevento belonged to the Allies. The Germans were gone and we had taken the town. And our mission was to go into town, cross to the left and secure positions on the hill and be prepared to support a river crossing the next morning. Unfortunately, all our heavy weapons had gone by another road and had not reached the spot where they were to join us. Consequently, we were not equipped to support the river crossing. As a matter of fact, our battalion commander, the S-3, the S-l and the S-2 were all at regimental headquarters. And I was alone with the troops except for the company commanders and the junior officers.
“When we reached one of the main road junctions in Benevento, the street was covered with bodies, mostly K and L (of the 3rd Battalion, 133rd Regiment). We moved down the road into town which was a complete shambles. And there was no way we could cross the bridge to get on the other side of the hill we were supposed to occupy. We turned back toward the direction we had come, along a parallel road, and we put the entire battalion in a long alleyway, or lane, which was about 12 feet wide and possibly 10 or 12 feet high. After traveling a good many miles to see if we could find another way to cross the river, we found that that was impossible, except to wade across.
But We Were OK
“Rocco Marzano went with me for quite a while. We went up around a bend in the road and I thought there might be a bridge there but there wasn’t. And when I came back I went through the column and told everybody to get up. By this time we were concerned about daylight so we finally moved the troops into the water. I think Tad Ota was the first guy right along side of me when we went across. And we were being fired upon continually and it appeared that the Germans might be using armor-piercing shells. They were landing in the mud of the river and threw up mud and water on the men.
“We went across to the third hill rather than the first hill. Soon as we were across, we had reports from each company. We had not lost a man. So I got on the radio and got Colonel Turner at Colonel Fountain’s head- quarters and reported that we had not reached our objective, that we were 300 yards mauka of our objective. And he said, ‘How many men you got left?’ He said he had had reports all night to send ambulances but I said that they were for the men of Companies K and L. I reported that we hadn’t lost any- body. He said that he’d be right up. It was only a few minutes till I could see, down in the valley, that he and Dr. Kawasaki were coming across in a Jeep.”
A Collaborator; Official Notices From The Top Dogs
“A sidelight of that encounter in town was when a young Italian man who had been a graduate of City College of New York pointed out to the CIA another Italian who had been very active with the Germans. That Italian was now hanging around the 100th. So the CIA picked him up and got rid of him. Then we moved back to a place near St. Georgia and we stayed there about eight days. During that time, both General Eisenhower and General Clark had issued orders that the 100th Battalion had gone into action and had accredited itself very gallantly. And although it had suffered casualties, it continued to advance on schedule. That was all.” But the messages were indicators that the 100th had passed it baptism of fire, that initial contact so crucial to a unit’s subsequent conduct, a point so stressed by General Ryder when the 100th was first hooked on to the 34th Division while in North Africa.
Chop Suey Fixings; First War Correspondent
“After eight days there, we moved out south of the town of Caiazzo, up the side of a hill that was very steep. We had stopped at the bottom and I remember an Italian man had come up and wanted to know who were the officers in charge and he wanted them to pay for some turkeys which had disappeared during the night. I sent him to see somebody, I don’t know who, just to get rid of him. We moved out while he was gone, into a town called Montesarchio. And I remember this town particularly well. There was a monastery on top of the hill above the town. We camped near an apple orchard. We had been there only a little while and the men were coming in with their brass pots and they had eggs, green peppers, onions, and what not. It was a very agricultural community. The fellows really had a good hot meal of fresh vegetables and other things.
“Another interesting thing happened right there. Ring Lardner, that famous columnist, writing for Time magazine, interviewed us. I think he was the first one to interview us in combat.” Jim did get to read the article, but has no recall of its contents.
Hit The First Time
Jim then told of the 100th continuing on toward Alife. At Ciazzo, they had to cross a bridge. The opposite banks of the river were very steep. And because the Germans were shelling the area with intermittent fire, about every twenty minutes, the men had to time themselves getting across the bridge. Once across, they had to be pulled up by hand to get up the steep banks of the road on the other side in order to stay clear of the road. But everyone did get across safely.
“From Ciazzo we moved on to Alife. That’s when I was hit the first time. In my right leg. From a fragment of a ‘screaming-meemie.’ I started on my way out that night on the back end of a Jeep with nothing on but a raincoat, hardly. Finally got into an ambulance, to a hospital in Caserta. And after lying around in the hallway for some time, they put me between two saw horses, on a stretcher, and this fellow started probing for this piece of shell fragment in the leg. Finally he must have hit the thing and the blood hit the ceiling. They gave me sodium penathol, I counted to seven, and the next thing I knew, I found myself in bed. They woke me up every fifteen minutes 8 to take the pulse reading in my foot. I learned that they had tied off this main artery because they couldn’t tie the ends together and if the other blood paths didn’t build up pretty soon, I’d have gangrene. So they kept checking the pulse and they finally started getting a reading, showing that nature had rebuilt new blood paths.”
AWOL From Bizerte
Jim was subsequently evacuated to Bizerte, North Africa, for recuperation. “After I could get up and around, I asked them what I could do to get some exercise. So they allowed me to walk down the hill a bit but warned me not to walk too far because if I used up all my blood, paralysis could set in. The British had moved in right below the hospital and the first thing they had done was to build a soccer field. So I used to sit on the wall by the field and watch them play soccer, then walk back up the hill.
“I was finally moved to a tent area; I don’t recall the name of the town. Anyway, there was an airfield near there. I went there one day to see about some transportation. The officer said if I didn’t have orders, he couldn’t do anything for me. But as I started to walk away, a sergeant said, ‘You’re looking for a ride?’ And I said, ‘Yeah, I want to go back to Naples.’ So he told me to be back at 6:30 in the morning and he’d have room for me. And he said whether there was anyone else with me. I said no but maybe there were others who might want to go, too. He said to bring along anybody I wanted. So I went back to the tent city camp, asked around, and found all kinds of fellows who wanted to go.
“But now we had a problem; we had to get some transportation to get out of the camp by 5:30 in the morning. So I went down to the motor pool and got a guy who said he’d have a 2-1/2 ton truck at my tent at 5:30. So I told the other guys and, gee, we had a truckload!”
(Eugene Kawakami, A Chapter, had been wounded at Alife at about the same time as Jim. He, too, was hospitalized in Caserta first, then evacuated to Bizerte. He was in one tent area, Jim in another. With nothing to do, he also itched to get back to the 100th and when he learned that Jim was of the same mind asked to take him along. Of course, nothing could be pre- planned. No one had orders, they were still convalescents, and if anything happened, it would be chance. Then one morning when Eugene went to Jim’s tent, he was gone. No one knew where he had gone to or when he had left. The orderlies were concerned because Jim’s wound was still bleeding and he needed medical care. But since he was not present for bunk check, he was listed as AWOL.)
“So we went down to the airfield and had Red Cross coffee and donuts. Pretty soon, the sergeant said, ‘Major, here’s your plane!’ We all got on and were flown to Naples. There, we got into ambulances which took us to Duce Stadium, a stadium which had been built for the Olympic Games. And some fellows checked me in, and I had chow there. Then an orderly came up to me and said I was wanted in headquarters.”
Desire, And Sheer Resourcefulness
“I went down there and there were two lieutenant colonels and they wanted to know who were all the men I brought with me. I said, ‘I didn’t bring anyone with me!’ ‘But there was a whole planeload of guys and we understand that you brought all these fellows over here. Where are your orders?’ But again, I said I didn’t bring anybody along; I was only trying to get back to my outfit, that’s all. And my leg hadn’t healed yet.
So they said they’d talk to me again in the morning; this was about 8 at night. “So I went back down to the kitchen and found out that there was a truck leaving the next morning. So I got in this truck; didn’t even have time for a cup of coffee. And there were some other boys on this truck, too, going back; some of them the same guys who had come on the plane with me.”
Back To The Outfit
It was while waiting for the truck to take him back to the 100th that Jim learned that Jack Johnson had been’ killed a day or two before. “Soon as I got back, I relieved Major Clough because I was senior to him, and I became battalion commander then.”
When asked whether the hospital records ever caught up with him, after having walked out of the place, Jim replied, “I don’t know that they ever did!”
And Into The Fire Of Cassino
It was certainly the toughest of battles. The 5th Army had broken the Winter Line of the Germans but the Allies now faced the more formidable Gustav Line. If it had been hell getting down to the approaches of the Liri Valley, that was only the prelude to the long battle for Cassino which began in mid-January of 1944. And by the time the 100th was to be pulled out of area, two months later, the place was to be known as the “Purple Heart Valley.” “
It was about the third week of January when the 34th Division finally crossed the Rapido River north of the town of Cassino. The 100th was to go in above the city but below the monastery and make a turning movement to the left and come down into the city. The 168th Regiment was to go to Cassino along the mountain ridge to the monastery. And the 135th was to move into Cassino along the main road into town.”
“When we jumped off at 6 o’clock in the morning, we could hear the 168th miles back. We knew that they would never be near the monastery by the time we got to our position. And the units coming down the road were met by heavy fire from tanks and artillery pieces. Consequently, they could not get into town and we found ourselves in an almost untenable position above the town and below the monastery. They were firing down upon us from the monastery and even one tank came up, and Awakuni knocked it out.” (See October 1978 issue of Puka Puka Parade for Awakuni’s story.)
Hit A Second Time
“Finally, about 1:30, somebody up on the castle must have been able to see me behind a wall and got me in the back legs with a machine pistol. I had four or five holes in me but they didn’t seem to bother me as much as my right leg. About 4:30, I was able to crawl down from that position to another position and soon as it got dark I started to get out of there with the help of two of the men. And I kept saying how clumsy I was, walking; not realizing that I had been hit in the peroneal nerve and I had a foot drop. I couldn’t lift my foot and I kept tripping.”
Vive La Difference!
“It took a long time to get out of there that night, to the hospital. Fortunately, it was not a busy night for them. They asked me if I had any other holes besides those marked on the tag. I said I had a burn in my back so they took a picture and found a shell about an eighth of an inch from my spine.
“And the tag noted that I had one wound in my left cheek. doctor was pouring all over my face trying to find that wound. And I finally said to him that he got the wrong cheek!”
“I landed in the same hospital which I was in the first time, the 38th Field Hospital from Greenville, North Carolina. They moved me to Caserta, then to Bizerte again, from there on a hospital ship to Charleston, South Carolina. From there, to O’Reilly Hospital in Springfield, Missouri.”
The Same Old Bull-s***
Jim then recounted his experiences at O’Reilly, one of which included a Sunday radio program. Every Sunday, GI patients were invited to be guests on this radio program, an effort on the part of the city to extend the hospitality of the city to the patients. Jim was invited to be guest one Sunday but he suggested to the sergeant who ran the program that it would be better if he got the five other boys from the 100th who then at the hospital. The sergeant was delighted. But why not have all six of them? So the six went to the station on Saturday for a dry run for the next day’s program.
“That night the sergeant came to my home and let my family know that there wasn’t going to be any show tomorrow. (Jim was allowed to call his family from Hawaii to be with him during his recuperation.) My neighbor., Judge Allen, who was part owner of the radio station, said that he would find out what happened; that this had happened once before. So he found out that it wasn’t cancelled by the station but by the hospital. His suspicion was that the hospital had taken the action when it found out that Japanese boys were going to be on the program.”
The Monday following, Jim ran into this nurse who mockingly asserted that he had gotten the works, didn’t he? When he asked her what she knew about it, she said that she had had a date the night before with this lieutenant from the 19th Infantry. He had gone out with a gal from the hospital’s PR office Saturday night and the PR gal had told him of a call to her office earlier that day inquiring about Sunday’s program. The caller was General Foster, head of the hospital. When informed by the lieutenant that the program was to feature some men from the 100th Battalion, that all-Japanese outfit from Hawaii, the general exploded and ordered, “Cancel the program! I’m not giving those goddamned Japs any praise!” This was the story that Jim’s nurse friend repeated to him.
With this information, Jim then went to see the girl in the PR office. She condescendingly commiserated with him. “Wasn’t it a shame what the radio station did to us?” And Jim replied, “Yeah, it sure was. I understand this has happened before.” “Yes,” she said, “that’s the second time they’ve done it.”
Jim then vented his anger. “Look. You can cut out all your bull-s***. I’ve got the whole story. We don’t mind the cancelling of the program. We were invited to be on it. We did not ask for it. But I won’t accept the remarks the general made.”
“What did he say?” asked the nurse, still trying to play the game. “You’re the one who repeated it!” cried out Jim. “And the last thing we’re looking for is praise from the medical corps!”
“Well!” said the PR gal. “You can go see Colonel Himmelstein (the Chief of Staff) about this if you want to.” Jim had already written to Delegate Joe Farrington informing him of the circumstances. And when he went to Himmelstein, the Chief of Staff said, “You know how things like that happen. But you know what you can always do. You can write to higher headquarters.” Jim shot back: “It’s already been done. You don’t have to tell me what to do!” “Oh. Is that so?” “Yeah!”
The upshot of it all was that shortly, the Chief of Staff received a red-bordered packet containing letters from the Chief Surgeon of the Army and General McNair, Commander of the Sixth Army, wanting a full explanation. In desperation, Himmelstein turned to Jim for help.
Jim met with the five boys and they all agreed that they had no complaints about their medical treatments at the hospital, its food, leave policy or anything of that nature. Their only complaint was against the general’s remarks. Himmelstein said he couldn’t accept that. Jim said that that was it. (According to Jim, when Foster was the CG of TripIer before the war and Himmelstein was then the Sergeant Major, their relations with the locals was the cause of much pilikia. And when Foster came to O’Reilly and found out that two dairy farms run by Japanese were supplying most of the milk for the hospital, he cancelled their contracts.)
Jim concluded: “In the end, the generaI assumed all blame. And I was suddenly offered all kinds of privileges – weekend passes to St. Louis, passes to the ball games, leaves for fishing trips, etcetera.”
Final Days
“I was then asked whether I wanted to continue to stay at O’Reilly. I said I had to do something. So they sent me to Little Rock, to Joseph T. Robinson. I was the Executive Officer of a training battalion. And all 12 went well until one day, we were told to get our equipment because we were going to sleep in the woods. And I said, not me – I’m through with all that stuff.
“About an hour later, a guy hands me an order making me in charge of the officer’s club. There were about 3,000 officers there. I stayed there about six months. Then I had to report to the medical board at O’Reilly and finally got my retirement for physical disability. Then I came back to Hawaii.
“I did one other thing while at O’Reilly. I had learned that they had put out an order that all men on limited service could be returned to a base closest to their home state. I wrote to Joe Farrington and got the order revised to include territory. That’s how many of our boys were able to come home to Hawaii. There was a great bunch of them at Ft. Hood, Texas, and they were all able to come home.”
An After-word About The Old Man
Jim, hit on the 22nd of October, had been in the hospital at Caserta for several days when the Old Man came to visit him. It was more than the usual visit of a commander for his wounded chief executive. Turner had come to say goodbye! He was leaving the 100th!
In a organization, the boss, more often than not, is also the eldest in the governing group. In that particularity, the term “Old Man” becomes a fitting eponym for the individual concerned. So it was with Turner. However, the term as applied to him meant much more than just that. It was, in effect, a concealment of the great love and admiration that the boys had for the man himself. And for Turner, it was an accolade for the great love that he held for the boys. A projection of this mutual affection and devotion is evidenced in the portrait of Turner which hangs above the entrance to Turner Hall in our Club 100. In it, the smiling Turner is a personification of the father image.
With the Old Man sitting at his bedside, Jim’s thoughts harked back to the earlier days…
It was a time when the destiny of the Nisei boys was completely out of their hands. The outside island boys had been gathered together in the dead of one night and, theirs not to reason why, had been brought to Schofield to be merged with the Oahu boys; their organization into an all- Nisei unit had proceeded under a cloud of doubt and suspicion; in silence, the unit had left Honolulu Harbor for destination unknown; and an uncertain fate awaited them as they sped out of Oakland in trains with shades drawn. Under such circumstances, what was needed most was the steadying hand of sympathetic authority.
In Farrant Turner, the boys could see one who bore himself with aplomb as he moved about among them. In the tenseness of the times, he maintained an air of confidence and assurance. Much older than the others, he projected a sense of calm …
News of the Old Man’s leaving quickly spread through the front lines of the battalion. The first questions concerned his safety: Is he alright? Was he badly hurt? How did it happen? None of these were germane.
Here one day, gone the next. Why? How come? These were the pertinent questions. The Germans had been mauling the 34th Division around the S. Angelo-Dragoni-Alife areas. In one particular action, the 133rd Regiment counted 59 men killed and 148 wounded. And 21 members of the 100th were dead, 67 had been wounded, and 4 lieutenants and a major had been hospitalized.” (The numbers are from “Ambassadors In Arms.”)
But the fight had to go on. Now, the 135th Regiment prepared to go on the attack. It asked Turner for a reconnaissance report along the line of the planned offensive. Tucked within the narrative in “Ambassadors In Arms” about the preparations for the upcoming action is this matter-of-fact statement: “Turner sent out a patrol and the lieutenant in command returned with a report that there were no enemy troops.”
To Jim, this is the heart of the matter. “When the patrol had gone out on its mission, it could have been that the enemy was not around. Or the enemy could have pulled out, then later moved back in. Or the probings of the patrol did not go far enough. Any number of things could have been.
“But these are all conjectures. Only one fact remains. Based on the report of the patrol, Turner reported to his superiors that the enemy was not around. But when the 135th jumped off the following morning, it got clobbered.”
Jim added that “we later learned that Colonel Turner had been relieved.” Ambassadors In Arms records the following: “Turner was ordered to a hospital for rest. His superiors felt that an infantry battalion needed a younger, tougher officer who might be more ready to see his men shot up.”
“As a matter of fact,” recalled Jim, “the doctors and the commanding officer at McCoy tried to convince him that he shouldn’t go into combat. But he was adamant. He had come this far and he wanted to go all the way. He was overage in grade but he was generally in good health though in McCoy, there was some question about his blood pressure.”
Jim then told of the intense questionings he had to undergo by the FBI and other investigators when Turner was nominated to be Secretary of Hawaii. Why was he relieved, they kept wanting to know. If he had to give way under the pressures of combat, might he not likewise falter under the pressures inherent in the office of Secretary? Turner, however, survived the probings, as he had everything else that had stood in his way, and continued to serve Hawaii in an outstanding manner. And when he died in 1959 at age 63, he was felled by the one old adversary he could not quite overcome, heart trouble.
About Jack Johnson
At the time of Pearl Harbor, Jack Johnson was commanding officer of Company M of the 299th on Kauai. He was one of the greatest fullbacks ever to come out of the U. of Hawaii. He was also an incomparable punter. Through athletics, Jim and Jack Johnson got to be close friends, both great athletes. And in maneuvers, Jim was always available to lend Jack a hand. It was while recuperating from his first wound that Jim heard that Jack had been killed in Cassino. Now, all the more, Jim knew that he had to return to the 100th.
“The story of Jack is that his father came to see me about two or three times when I came back,” said Jim. “The story came out that Jack was lying in this mine field and the Germans had the place lined up so they had sweeping fire, about knee high, so anybody walking in there would get it. And when Major Dewey got hit, he was in the back of Jack. So they had to get him out first before they could reach Jack. Somehow, the story got back to Jack’s father that they took care of this other guy and had neglected his son. He was very bitter about it.”
One of the entrances to the main post of Ft. Shafter is the gate at the corner of Middle Street and the makai boundary of the post, just off the freeway. It used to be known as the Ordnance gate because part of the Ordnance depot was located at that corner. On November 23, 1962, the gate was renamed Johnson Gate, in honor of Jack Johnson. Jim was there at the dedication ceremony. In passing the gate today, you would never know that it bears a name because there is no engravement on the gate post, not even a plaque around, to indicate that it is dedicated to one of the toughest and finest officers of the 100th.
And Of Some Other Outstanding Members
“I think another person with great influence was Doc Kometani. Of course, we weren’t supposed to have a dentist in the first place. And if we hadn’t been the bastard outfit that we had talked about, we never would have had a dentist. And right at McCoy, he became our Special Services Officer. And he was our representative at a lot different functions. He was the one who got the uniforms for the baseball team, and all the trophies and cups and that sort of stuff. He did a good job at that. The team was one of his first loves. And then, in combat, he became a litter bearer. I guess carried as many guys out of the battlefield as any guy around. And he was a counselor, and father confessor, to many. He did a tremendous job.
“And Chaplain Yost. He was one of the high spots of our military service. Devoted, faithful, willing, friendly to all – he was an outstanding person, with a great philosophy.
“Doctors Kainuma and Kawasaki were tireless workers, both very capable persons; two very skilled doctors. Kainuma was very seriously hurt on the way into Benevento, when that convoy that had our heavy weapons with which we were going to support that river crossing went off the road, in the mud and rain. He was on one of those vehicles.
“The other thing I was very pleased with was to see so many of our boys, the original officers of Japanese extraction, move up. You see, we were pretty much saddled with … there was this idea that all these fellows from Schofield who had been enlisted men and got their commission when the war started (the so-called 90-day wonders) would fit into our outfit. I had a question in my mind whether this should have been a good choice or not. So it was good to see our boys moving up and getting to be company commanders.”
A Biographical Sketch of Jim
Jim has spent 50 of his 73 years in Hawaii. A chronicle of his progress over that long span of time – from his beginnings in Hastings, Nebraska, to his current involvement as one of five court-appointed trustees entrusted with the dissolution of LTH, Ltd. – would require a bit of space. But, to touch upon some of the major ones: Higher education – started out at Hastings College and ended up at the U. of Hawaii (AB in Education plus graduate work); Civic – Honolulu Chamber of Commerce, General Contractors Association, UH Alumni Association, DAV, Club 100; Athletics – coach/athletic director at Washington Intermediate, Roosevelt, McKinley, 298th, 1955 College All Stars Hula Bowl; Teaching – Washington, Roosevelt, McKinley; Military – six years in Nebraska National Guard and ten with Hawaii National Guard, US Army from Oct. 1940 to Nov. 1945; Awards and Decorations – Unit Citation, Purple Heart w/Cluster, Bronze Star w/Cluster, Silver Star, Theater Medals and Victory Medal; Political – served in many positions, from Republican Party County Committeeman to delegate to the 1960 Republican National Party Convention in Chicago, and he almost pulled an upset victory when he ran for the Senate in 1954; Business – Hawaiian Pineapple Company, Lewers & Cooke assistant manager and lumber department manager, 1945 to 1957, and vice president and division manager, 1957 to 1970, Alii Manufacturing, Home Industries, Honolulu Wood Treating, Honolulu Dry Kilns, Wood Products Association of Hawaii.
He has two children – son James, Jr. who lives in town, and daughter Maile Gene Sagen who lives in Iowa City. And there are three grandchildren, a boy and two girls. He and wife, Wilma, live in Salt Lake.
Jim is a devout and faithful Episcopalian. Over the years, he has held numerous posts in the Episcopalean diocese and is currently a member of the Real Estate Committee of the diocese in Honolulu. He is a member of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church in Aiea.
Jim weighed 185 while in combat, 193 today and he intends to bring it down to his former fighting weight. He maintains a keen interest in everything athletic but the one thing he doesn’t do is bowl because of a limp in his left leg, the result of years of favoring his right leg in order to give it a better chance to heal properly from that battle wound. But he intends to have the limp corrected through surgery.
So, other than being just a bit over his desired weight, that limp, and a slightly receding hair line, Jim, at 73, looks almost unchanged from his Executive Officer days in the 100th. And he says that he feels just as good. When he finishes up with his current job of winding up the affairs of LTH (Hawaii Thrift and Loan, backwards), that will be it. So he says. Meaning, presumably, that he will then have more time to spend on his garden and plants, music, card playing, outdoor cooking, golf, grandchildren – and whatever else may come along his way. And his pipe.
When Jim landed at Salerno, he made sure that his pipe and tobacco stayed dry. And in the months of combat that followed, it was not always easy to get tobacco so he’d stock up whenever he’d run into a Red Cross wagon. But getting his favorite brand, Edgeworth, was the greater problem. Often, he would be reduced to shredding tobacco leaves scrounged off the Italian landscape. But these burned his lips as well as his pipe.
Today, Jim has a collection of over 100 pipes. And his brand of tobacco is still Edgeworth. Some things never change.