World War II, My Father and the 107th SeaBees

Things I like about the documentary: The music, the sounds of war, the realism, the refusal to romanticize. In the documentary we see footage that I’m sure was never shown publically at the time the war was going on, or for many years afterwards. We see gruesome photos and videos of bloody corpses. We see close-range killings. We hear stories of American soldiers shooting helplessly wounded Japanese and German soldiers and of looting their bodies. I read a lot of history and fiction about World War II when I was young. These accounts always told about atrocities committed by the enemy, but never about those committed by our troops.

One particularly memorable story was told by a soldier who observed one of his comrades looting the body of a Japanese soldier of several gold teeth--only in this instance the Japanese was not dead, but badly wounded. The American soldier was using his bayonet to extract the teeth, but the bayonet kept slipping and plunging into the mouth of the soldier, obviously causing intense pain beyond the pain of the existing wounds. Finally, feeling sympathy, another soldier shot the Japanese in the head to put him out of his misery. The first soldier continued digging out the gold teeth. This documentary is not anti-war, but anyone with eyes can see how dehumanizing war is.

I mentioned the sounds of war. We’re all used to watching newsreel footage of World War II with some sort of music score in the background. We usually don’t hear the guns because sounds generally weren’t captured in those days. But Burns and his technicians have put the noise back in war and we hear the boom of the big ship cannons and field artillery as well as the rat-a-tat-tat of the machine guns and the pings of the rifles. We hear the explosions of the bombs and the roar of airplane engines. We hear, as well as see, the thud of bullets striking human flesh.

Our television viewing area is equipped with surround sound and we feel like we’re in the middle of the combat. Well, at least we do so far as the sound is concerned. Of course, we don’t smell the smoke and seared flesh, or feel the rain or humidity, or experience the physical and emotional pain. We don’t freeze in the cold of a German winter or swelter in the heat of a North African desert. We can only begin to empathize with the miserable young men who were forced to experience these things.

The weakness of “The War” is that occasionally it doesn’t relate the history very clearly. While some general maps are used, I would like the use of more and better maps and charts. Give us a real history lesson—help us put things in their proper place and order. Also, it was frustrating in several instances to hear the documentary criticize unnamed generals and decisions that were made, but omit the background of the decision or identify by name the leader who was being criticized. Finally, the use of some of the people from that era as talking heads was good, but sometimes we got too much of the stories of just a few people. I wish they had been a little more selective as to what they used from any one person and broadened their search to the sorts of participants that haven’t been covered. So far we haven’t heard from women who actually served in the armed forces, for instance, as opposed to those who stayed home. And what about the millions of servicemen who did not see combat, but who were critical to the war effort? What about the SeaBees (Naval Construction Battalions), for instance, where thousands of men such as my father served, building airfields, harbors and other important military infrastructure? Finally, I would like to hear more from medical personnel--medics who served in the field and doctors and nurses who served in the hospitals. What stories they might have told!

The first three episodes of “The War” were shown on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday. When Wednesday came and no new episodes were on tap until the next Sunday, Dawn and I decided to rent the award-winning HBO series “Band of Brothers,” a drama produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks, based on Stephen Ambrose’s best-selling book of the same name. This great series makes up for the occasional lack of drama in the Burns documentary. It emphasizes the terrible cost of war in a way that only a fictional rendition can do. Of course, the series is based on fact, and the director uses talking heads as well to bring home the fact that it depicts real men and is based on real events.

Among the most striking images in both “The War” and “Band of Brothers” are the videos of the parachute drops. It is simply incredible to see the sky literally filled with old-style parachutes and to contemplate the dangers these men were facing. There was the terror of jumping into thin air, the worry about whether the chute would deploy, the danger of hitting another jumper, the danger of landing in a bad place (a tree, a lake, a rooftop, or in the face of enemy guns). And then there was the problem of finding your comrades after the jump and engaging an enemy who had the advantage of superior firepower and knowledge of the terrain.

We are reminded by these programs that World War II was different from the current war in one overarching aspect—it was a war we were forced to fight. America was attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor and there was really no alternative. We did not initiate the attack, as we have done in Iraq. Also, in World War II we had dictators who were bent on world conquest—who had already expanded their territory throughout much of Europe, Southeast Asia and the islands of the Pacific. In Iraq we had a man whose only excursion outside the boundaries of his own country was his ill-fated attack on Kuwait, which we had successfully squelched ten years earlier.

Dawn’s Father, Donald Glen Parrett

With our minds on World War II, we naturally began thinking of our own family’s participation in that war. Dawn’s father, Don Parrett, was young, unmarried, and an enlisted man in the Navy. He spent most of the war working in a torpedo-making factory in Hawaii. He was a wonderful baseball player who might have had a major league career if he hadn’t developed a heart problem. While in Hawaii he was the star shortstop and cleanup hitter for the Hawaii Islanders, a service baseball team that won a Hawaiian Islands championship while he was there. Dawn has a number of newspaper clippings extolling his abilities. It was good for the men to have diversions while engaged in the war support effort, and the baseball teams provided that for players and spectators alike.

My Father, Morris Alma Thurston

My father has written about his war experiences in his excellent autobiography, Long Trail Winding, and the following uses that book as a source. On December 11, 1941, the day the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, he was thirty years old. He managed to pay his way through college during the Depression years and had graduated from Utah State University with a civil engineering degree in June of that year. He had married my mother, Barbara Ashcroft, in July. He was not one of the young men for whom the war seemed to offer a glamorous opportunity. In December 1942, however, seeing that his experience could be useful to the war effort, he applied for a commission in the United States Navy’s Civil Engineer Corps. In February 1945, he was ordered to report to Camp Allen, just outside Norfolk, Virginia, for basic training, and then he was transferred to Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia. He was eventually assigned to the newly organized 107th Naval Construction Battalion (SeaBees) and became the battalion personnel officer.

My mother, who was pregnant with me, accompanied my father to Virginia. Some other time I want to write about her experiences in trying to find living accommodations in a town that was blue with Navy personnel. It deserves its own story. My mother left Virginia on May 4 to return to her family’s home in Hyde Park, Utah, and that’s where I was born on May 25.

Other Sea Bee battalions constructed harbors and air bases in the Caribbean, the Azores, North Africa, and Normandy, but my father’s battalion was to work on the most ambitious project of all—constructing airfields for the B-29 Superfortress bombers in the Mariana Islands of the Pacific.

A construction battalion normally consisted of about 1,000 enlisted men and thirty officers. Dad’s rank at the time was Ensign. The battalion departed from Virginia on September 4, 1943 and arrived at Camp Parks, near San Francisco, California six days later after a long and uncomfortable train ride. Being personnel officer, Dad was able to get his leave papers processed the day he arrived and by evening he was aboard the Southern Pacific Challenger bound for Utah to visit my mother and see his son for the first time. After ten days of visiting friends and family in Utah, he traveled back to California. In November 1943 the battalion transferred to Port Hueneme, near Ventura, California, and my mother and I followed. My father was able to visit his family almost every night.

Then on February 20, 1944, this good life ended when the battalion shipped out for Hawaii aboard the Sea Pike and my mother and I returned to Utah. The officers and men of the 107th expected they would stay for awhile in Hawaii, but my father and his friend, the battalion’s surgeon, Dr. Dee Robbins, took the precaution of doing some sightseeing around Honolulu, eating dinner at the Moana Hotel. They were glad they didn’t let grass grow under their feet, because the very next day the battalion got orders to load up and sail again. Their destination was Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

Kwajalein Atoll

The Marshalls are a cluster of thirty-one atolls and hundreds of reefs stretching across 400,000 square miles of ocean in the Western Pacific. Each atoll consists of a group of islands encircling a lagoon. Japan had been given control of the Marshalls by the League of Nations after World War I and had begun illegally fortifying the islands and building airfields on them in the 1930s. The Japanese used the islands as a base from which to launch attacks on Australian and Philippine sea lanes. In January 1944, the U.S. set in motion “Operation Flintlock,” which was designed to gain control of these strategically important islands. Planes repeatedly bombed the islands preparatory to the invasion. Kwajalein was the Japanese administrative and communications center for the Marshalls, and it was a primary target for our bombers. In early February 1944, after four days of fierce fighting, Kwajalein and the Marshalls fell into Allied hands. Then they sent for the SeaBees to clean up the mess and make the islands usable for our troops and planes.

It took Dad’s battalion a week to steam from Hawaii to Kwajalein. They crossed the International Date Line on Saturday night, March 4, which meant that the next day was Monday, March 6. When they arrived at Kwajalein on Wednesday, however, they learned that the Navy had not changed the date because the atoll was so close to the date line. Therefore their Wednesday, March 8, lasted forty-eight hours and the sun rose and set twice.

Kwajalein Atoll consisted of a circle of small islands enclosing a beautiful lagoon. Most of the islands had a lush growth of tropical trees and shrubs. Within the lagoon the water was quiet and peaceful most all the time. The SeaBees’ home was on Ebeye, an island one mile long and about one-quarter mile wide. It had been a seaplane base for the Japanese. After the Army had captured the main island, they had set up big guns there and shelled Ebeye, making it a mass of destruction. When the 107th SeaBees arrived, only one tree was still alive and the stench of death was sickening. After a few days, they had burned or buried most of the debris and had begun building living quarters. They were to spend the next six months rebuilding a seaplane ramp and developing a recreation facility for soldiers and sailors to rest and relax.

There were four enlisted men who were Mormons in the battalion, along with Dr. Robbins and Dad. They decided to hold their own church services and “elected” Dad to be their leader. As my Dad explained, “We had some good meetings each Sunday, and soon we had a few men coming to our meetings from ships anchored in the lagoon. Somehow the word spread and they found us. Men who had been inactive at home came to our meetings and enjoyed them. Our chaplain helped us by allowing us to use the chapel area and by advertising our meetings.”

On April 1, 1944, Dad was promoted from Ensign to Lieutenant, Junior-Grade (Lt. jg). His job was still mostly paper work—reporting on the activities, changes and promotions of about 960 men and thirty officers. He occasionally went out to the construction sites to observe the progress and always regretted that he couldn’t be involved professionally in the design and construction work.

The SeaBees’ work in the Kwajalein Atoll was designed to prepare them for their most important purpose, which was to build airfields on the island of Tinian in the Marianas Group. On September 1, 1944, they received word that their island was to be turned over to the Marines and that all the men and construction equipment were to be loaded L.S.T.’s and sail for Tinian.

The 107th SeaBees battalion was loaded on three different ships. When Sunday arrived they were still en route. The battalion had only one chaplain, and he had not been assigned to our ship. Commander Ritter, who knew Dad had been active in organizing the Mormon group on Kwajalein, gave him the assignment to conduct a general church service for all the men on my ship. This he did, appointing himself to be the main speaker.

Tinian Island

The Mariana Islands were located about 1,500 miles southeast of Japan. They became a key United States objective in 1944 because of their importance as potential staging sites for the conquest of Japan. Code named “Forager,” the operation to invade the Marianas began June 14, 1944, one week after the Normandy invasion. More than 800 ships were dispatched for the invasion.

The main islands of the Marianas were Saipan, Guam and Tinian. There was a month of heavy fighting before Saipan fell on July 9, 1944. Then attention was turned to Tinian. The Japanese organized fierce bonzai charges, but by August 12, the last pockets of Japanese had been eliminated and Tinian was secured. Nearly 5,000 Japanese soldiers lost their lives on Tinian.

The 107th SeaBees came ashore on Tinian a month after it fell and established their camp in a sugarcane field. The officers’ area was in a grove of papaya and banana trees. They soon began construction of seven airstrips capable of accommodating the B-29 bombers that were to be sent on missions to Japan. Each airstrip was nearly two miles long and as wide as a ten-lane freeway. Tinian was well suited for such construction. It was a reasonably flat island, with no mountains, but there were fifty-foot bluffs around most of the oceanfront.

The United States would eventually send as many as a thousand bombers over Japan each day, and six hundred of those flew from Tinian. The SeaBees had built the largest airport in the world at that time.

Despite the war effort all around them, Dad tried to keep in touch with the spiritual side of life. One Sunday shortly after their arrival, an LDS chaplain named Gerald Ericksen came over to Tinian from Saipan and held a meeting at the Island Command chapel for all the LDS servicemen. Dad was sustained as president of the Tinian branch of the Church at that meeting. As Dad says, “We got good participation from our LDS servicemen and our services were the best attended on the island. As a result, the Island Command officers gave us the preferred meeting time in the main chapel at 6:00 p.m. each Sunday. Our attendance usually ran from 80 to 110 men.”

While Dad was on Tinian, he often listened to “Tokyo Rose,” who broadcast American songs, including many by the most popular big bands and singers. There were actually a number of Tokyo Roses; most were United States citizens of Japanese descent who worked with the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation to broadcast music and commentary aimed at discouraging American servicemen. Tokyo Rose would give reports of Japanese victories, pass on bogus casualty figures for United States military units, and even tell tales of wives and sweethearts back home being unfaithful. But Dad said her music was the best available. He enjoyed listening to her programs and simply ignored the propaganda.

Dad wrote letters home almost every day and my mother wrote to him with the same frequency. He usually got two or three letters at a time, but always opened them in chronological order. The censor reviewed the letters he sent, so when Mom received them, they often had things cut out. He was not supposed to tell her where we were or what we were doing. Before Dad went overseas, however, they had worked out a code to enable Mom to know Dad’s location. Somewhere in the first paragraph he would write a sentence using words beginning with the letters of the place he was stationed. For example, he might write, “This is not intended as news,” from which Mom could glean that he was on Tinian.

There were two bombing raids on Tinian by the Japanese air force, but no one was seriously injured. The planes came in really low to avoid detection. One pilot flew right over the SeaBees camp, but he was so low that the bomb he dropped just skidded along the ground without detonating. That was their biggest scare. Japanese reconnaissance planes often flew over the island to take pictures, but they flew very high so the anti-aircraft guns could not reach them.

One of Dad’s most exciting forms of entertainment was to go down to North Field to watch the B-29 bombers return from their missions. It was a long flight to Japan for those days, and when bombers returned they would have used up nearly all their fuel. This meant they would come in “stacked up.” The SeaBees had built 7,000-foot runways—longer than the B-52s required. In order to save time, one plane would land on the end of the runway, at the same time another would land in the middle and a third would be taxiing off the other end. Also, on occasion, whole squadrons of fighter planes, such as P-38s and P-51s, would swoop in and land on the island. Dad said, “Watching these displays by our fighters and bombers was like attending a spectacular air show.”

The Wine Mess Officer

Before the battalion left the States, the officers had established a “wine mess” and set about purchasing wines and liquors to take overseas. In order to get a good supply of liquor, they needed to raise funds for the initial purchase. The non-Mormon officers asked the two Mormons officers if they would buy a “share” in the wine mess for fifty dollars each. Dad and Robbins agreed even though they didn’t drink, viewing it as an investment that should at least return their capital later as the beverages were sold.

The construction supplies included some pontoons that were to be assembled into barges. Each pontoon was a cube measuring about six feet on each side and made of 3/8-inch sheet steel. The SeaBees cut a door opening in one of the pontoons and packed it solid with cartons of whiskey and wine.

Then they welded the door back in place. When they arrived on Tinian, they cut the door open again, then fitted it with steel hinges, hasp and lock. This became the officers’ liquor supply store. A “Wine Mess Officer” was elected, and he would open up the mess once a week and sell the officers their weekly ration of liquor. Officers were permitted to use hard liquor and wine on a “ration” basis. Each officer was permitted to purchase a fifth of liquor and a quart of wine each week. Enlisted men were limited to beer, which was sold to them in the “canteens.” Dad became very popular, as many of his fellow officers sought to buy his ration. The wine mess turned out to be a good investment for him, as he eventually got $116 back on a $50 investment.

Dad explained how it was that he became the Wine Mess Officer: “The officers would meet once a month to review the wine mess status and decide on new purchases. I never attended these meetings—usually I would be out playing tennis. About a year after we arrived in Tinian, the Wine Mess Officer asked to be relieved of his assignment. One morning, when I returned from playing tennis with Dr. Hurlbut, I found out I had been elected in absentia to the office. When Island Command was notified of the change, the commander got a good laugh and said, ‘At least they didn’t elect a rat to guard the cheese.’”

The War Ends

In 1945 many events of international importance took place, and the war in Europe drew to a close. On April 12, 1945, President Franklin D. Roosevelt died. His vice president, Harry Truman, was inaugurated as the new president of the United States that same day. On April 28, Benito Mussolini, his mistress, and eleven compatriots, were executed after a short trial. Two days later Adolf Hitler committed suicide. On May 7, Germany surrendered unconditionally.

During this same time frame, the United States forces began to close in on Japan. The Army and the Marines hopped from island to island, gradually retaking territory that had been conquered by the Japanese. Dad heard about the bloody battle on Iwo Jima, and the United States forces’ move to Okinawa, just southwest of Japan, where the fighting was unusually fierce. On July 26, 1945, President Truman issued a proclamation at the Potsdam Conference calling for the “unconditional surrender” of Japan. The Japanese refused to do so.

By August 1945, the military brass was making plans to invade Japan, if necessary. The 107th Naval Construction Battalion was one of the units scheduled to go ashore early in the conquest. Thankfully, that never became necessary. A bomber squadron, whose members had received special training to prepare them for carrying and delivering atomic bombs, arrived on Tinian in the summer of 1945.

On August 6, 1945, at 2:00 a.m., a B-29 bomber named the Enola Gay took off from the Tinian air strip bound for Japan to deliver the first atomic bomb ever detonated in wartime. Later that day the mission was successfully accomplished when the bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. Dad knew the bomb had done lots of damage, but the war had been going on so long that he was not very optimistic that it would end the conflict. On August 10, he wrote to my mother:

“I suppose the prophecies concerning the end of the war are really running thick and fast at home now, what with the atomic bomb and Russia entering the war against Japan. I think they are all good signs and will definitely shorten the war, but I don’t look for any immediate surrender. I would like to be wrong in that guess.”

His prediction proved wrong. After a second bomb on was dropped on Nagasaki, Japan announced its unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945. The peace accord was formally signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2. Dad’s brother Bruce was aboard an aircraft carrier anchored in Tokyo Bay on that historic day.

My father had the same opinion about the atomic bomb that nearly every American had in those days. He understood that the use of the bomb was a horrible thing and that the decision to use it was not to be taken lightly. He understood that it resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians. But World War II was an incredibly devastating event that had been precipitated by the aggression of the German Reich and the Japanese Empire. Millions of soldiers and civilians had already died because of it. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked by any similar act of aggression on our part. Everyone knew the Japanese soldiers and sailors had been brainwashed by their leaders to such an extent that they were willing to commit suicide rather than surrender. Dad, like most people of his era, believed that an extended invasion of Japan, with fighting on the ground and conventional bombing, would have killed more people than the atomic bombs did. Many experts agree. Some revisionist historians now dispute that conclusion.

There seems to be no question that city to city, street to street, close combat fighting, coupled with traditional bombing, would have been bloody beyond comprehension. The ultimate outcome was not in doubt when the bomb was dropped. It is just a question of how much killing at close quarters would have to be done before Japan surrendered. In the Ken Burns documentary we see huge stacks of bodies rotting in the streets of Manila when the Japanese eventually abandoned that city. It was a sickening sight.

War is a hell best avoided.