The ships taking us to Tokyo now had a new task. We were going home. Sounded simple, but nothing was. The soldiers were ready to board in the morning—the morning that did not come for weeks or even months for some of the men. The rumor floated around that we might end up doing occupational duty in Korea, but then a switch came through on that idea. The Deadeyes were going to be sent to Japan proper to take over the country and serve under the Sixth Army. Men who wanted to see Japan while waiting for discharge didn’t mind the endless delays.
Going to an occupied Japan sounded like one big vacation, and the men began tearing down tents as well as burning and destroying the wooden kitchens on Mindoro. The entire area was quickly checked out to make sure we left it in tiptop condition—for who? The monkeys and lizards? Seeing a conquered Japan certainly beat coming in as invaders. We were ready to roll—and then the new orders came through.
The trip was off.
The men were angry and disgusted. We were literally left with nothing to do, and emptiness weighed heavily. Twiddling their thumbs after fighting night and day made men agitated and bewildered. Waiting was not a science we were trained in.
To offset the chronic boredom, the army started offering courses in everything from algebra to zoology. Athletic programs and events popped up. The movies even got better, and the food improved. (Of course, when the movie projectors broke down, the men went bonkers.) Even bottles of beer came floating in from who knows where. The Red Cross erected what they called Fatigue Junction centers with everything from Ping-Pong to billiards along with bingo, Cokes, and cookies—with women running the place. Recordings of the Glenn Miller orchestra and the Andrews Sisters filled the air. Men could swim at the beaches, but how many days can you lie out in the sun when you actually want out of a place? For most of the men, Mindoro felt like a one-way ticket to the nuthouse.
Somewhere along the way in this mess of poor organization, someone got a bright idea. A newspaper called the Deadeye Dispatch was started to keep the men informed about what was going on in the outside world and gave a little touch of “this and that” to help them feel like a real world was still out there on the other side of the Pacific. Someone came up with the idea of nominating a pinup model for the “Occupation Girl” of the Deadeyes. The ravishing beauty would be our official symbol of victory. The contest got off to a roaring start as nominations poured in. If nothing else, the movies let us feast our eyes on the beauty queens of Hollywood. One of those beauties would work just fine.
The front-runners were movie stars like Olivia de Havilland, June Allyson, and Yvonne De Carlo. Then the contest took an unexpected turn. Somebody came up with an entry without even a touch of glamour and the sex appeal of a carrot. There were no pictures in a swimming suit of a voluptuous woman modeling expensive lingerie. The dark horse candidate was Marjorie Main.
She had been around Hollywood in raucous, two-fisted movies as a “just for laughs” type. In a movie with Wallace Beery entitled Jackass Mail, Marjorie Main had not been the Hollywood beauty queen. Later she became Ma Kettle in a hillbilly role. Ma and Pa Kettle became the laughs of the movie industry. Her supporters in the 361st Infantry argued that Marjorie Main was just what we needed to represent the rugged, knock’em-dead values that had led us through the toughest battles of the war. Along with my 361st Field Artillery group, we took on the challenge to elect none other than Marjorie Main as our model of the year.
Once the voting began, we dumped several hundred ballots into the box, supporting our dynamic candidate. We came up with slogans like “A Fighting Girl for a Fighting Division.” The joke caught on and the idea took hold. The men came to champion her cause. Musicians in the division band began writing songs to proclaim her as our ideal woman. Men started painting slogans on the trucks and tanks saying “As Main Goes, So Goes the Division.” Then there was “Remember the Main” and “Reminds Me of Mom.” Even colonels and generals got in on the act, and Marjorie Main led the pack of nominees.
By the time the voting was over, Marjorie Main had won by six thousand votes over all her bathing beauty competitors. When the division’s public relations office got the news, they had a field day publishing the results across America. Before long, the average man on the street knew more about the Deadeyes—not because of their extraordinary bravery so much as their eccentric taste in pinup girls.
The news left Marjorie Main speechless and overwhelmed. She quickly signed autographed pictures that were sent off to General Bradley and promised to meet the men when they came sailing into the harbor. As promised, when the first of the division sailed in, she was there waiting for them. Wearing a cowboy hat, leather gloves, and an ornate gun belt and holster, she swung an old-fashioned six-shooter in the air. The men hoisted her on their shoulders and carried her around the ship. Marjorie Main strolled around, shaking hands and talking with the soldiers. She even made a trip to Camp Anza near Los Angeles to be with “her boys.” Rather than just have lunch with the soldiers, she insisted on putting on a white chef’s cap and serving the men as they came by. The rumor was she had to be taken off the serving line because she was giving each man two steaks and they were running out.
* * *
The month dragged on without any clear instruction or direction as to when soldiers would be leaving for home. Getting back to the USA became an obsession. As the sounds of battled faded, the men became more and more homesick. Eventually, a point system was devised for determining the order in which soldiers would be shipped back to American shores. However, there had been so many disappointments that many soldiers didn’t take the promise seriously.
With disappointment and tension growing, the army needed some alternative to keep soldiers happy. Special service officer Captain Clarence Ashcraft came up with the idea of creating a Deadeye Bowl, an amphitheater with continual entertainment. Stage shows and swing bands popped up and the big show was on. The crowds grew to six thousand men and even movies were shipped in. The problem of getting home remained, but attitudes took a swing for the better.
Time continued to drag by, but by early December genuine directions for returning to the USA fell into place. The Deadeyes sent 6,599 men to Leyte on converted Liberty ships for the first leg of their trip back to the States. Not long after Christmas, the next 1,800 officers and men moved out. For those remaining, the Christmas season wasn’t easy, but there was a light on the horizon. The Red Cross tried to cheer everybody up with makeshift parties. For New Year’s Eve another celebration was planned. The report was that they cooked 4,500 hamburgers, 400 pounds of french fries, and passed out 14,400 bottles of beer. Now that’s a party!
And then the party was over.
The remaining soldiers boarded the General Langfitt, an army transport ship. Fifteen minutes after the last man stepped on board, they pulled up the anchor and the last soldiers were on their way home. Without a band playing, a crowd cheering, or speeches being made, the final wave of men silently and unceremoniously left behind the worst fighting of the Second World War.
The hard part was leaving behind the buddies and pals buried in the division’s cemetery on Okinawa. The fallen would forever remain as silent guardians of an island that was the final battlefield of the most savage war the world had ever known. Their silent witness still stands as a tribute to the valor of everyday American boys who laid down their lives for their family, friends, and country thousands of miles away.
As the last soldiers sailed away, a world so different from their own disappeared into the sunset. Every man had been severely tested by the constant threat of death. Bombs, artillery, machine-gun fire, and even, for some, hand-to-hand combat had faced them at every turn. The awful, grim Specter from the grave had lived among us day and night. The dead had not fallen to his blade without resolve and valor. We would never forget them.
Back home, we wouldn’t want to talk about what we had seen. Most of us wouldn’t speak of the war for decades. The horrendous memories remained more than could be digested, sometimes in a lifetime.
But for now, it was over. We were going home.
* * *
The ships began arriving, including the General Langfitt, an eighteen-thousand-ton army transport, that was the last vessel to leave for home. At 2:00 p.m., January 17, 1946, the transport pulled out of the harbor headed for San Francisco. We left behind the silence of buddies now gone who would never leave the island. The hush of windswept beaches we would forever remember. We believed we had achieved the hope of a better world for our children and families.
Being an officer, I found myself in what certainly seemed like luxurious accommodations after what I had lived with all those months on Okinawa. I felt like I had hit the jackpot. I didn’t realize that because of my rank I would get first-class treatment. Somewhere out there crossing the ocean, the captain announced there was a change of plans. We were going to Los Angeles. Whatever. I just wanted to get home.
When the ship pulled into the L.A. harbor, huge crowds were there waving and shouting. The newspaper called it the most tumultuous welcome ever given returning troops in the Los Angeles harbor. Who should pull alongside in the army greeter boat, the Snafu Maru, but Marjorie Main wearing a ten-gallon cowboy hat with revolvers hanging at her side. She was there to welcome “her boys” home. The Los Angeles Musicians’ Association Orchestra and an army band blared their patriotic marches as we came tramping down the ship’s ramp.
I immediately called my wife, Joan, and told her I would meet her in Kansas City as soon as I could board a train. I had no idea what time it would be other than “as soon as possible.” We had a child I had never seen. Did I ever want to hold her! The world of constant explosions and death was gone, and I was stepping into the normal world of what most Americans called “everyday life.” I couldn’t wait to take the plunge.
As the miles flew past, the clattering of the train wheels against the rails beat out a steady rhythm that sounded like a melody of promise. We roared out of California into Arizona and then on into New Mexico. Even a night in the sleeper car seemed heavenly after months in foxholes.
When our train came rolling into the Kansas City station, the passenger car came to an abrupt halt. For some reason, we were disconnected and left as a lone coach sitting on a side track. After months in the hot, tropical South Pacific, I thought we’d freeze to death. Finally, I climbed out and walked up the track to a small hut where a yardman appeared to be throwing switches.
“Sir, for the last several years, we’ve been fighting your country’s battles in the South Pacific. Now we come home and sit abandoned out here in your freight yard. Can you help us?”
The man blinked several times. “Soldier, you can damn sure bet I can. You go back to that passenger car and I’ll have a locomotive down here in minutes to pull you on in. Thank you for what you’ve done for America.”
I saluted and hurried back. True to his word, we were quickly pulled into the station. I rushed through the terminal and grabbed a cab, handing the driver a piece of paper.
“Can you get me to this hotel?”
The cabbie looked at the name. “Young man! We are on our way.” Off we blew through the streets like I was a celebrity going to the White House.
* * *
I had not seen my wife in two years. Of course, we had corresponded as much as possible and she had struggled through having a baby by herself. That day my little girl, Sharon, only knew me as a picture on the wall. I wondered what those many months had done to all of us. Two years. Think about it. Two years! What would it be like to return to my family?
The cab pulled up to the curb. “Well, sir, here we are. That’s your hotel.” He stopped by the revolving doors, which were swinging around as people came and went.
“Excellent.” I reached for my billfold.
“You don’t owe me nothin’,” the cabbie said. “It’s an honor to help a man who has served our country so well. No, sir, thank you for riding with me.”
I didn’t know what to say. I solemnly shook his hand and got out. “Thank you, kind sir. I appreciate that good word more than I can say.” The gracious cabbie drove away.
I quickly walked through the lobby up to the registration desk. “I need the room number for Joan Shaw.”
The clerk looked askance at my army uniform and frowned. “We don’t arbitrarily give out that information. I’ll call and see if that is agreeable to Mrs. Shaw.”
I shrugged and waited.
“She said to send you up,” he finally said, and smiled. “Room three twenty-eight.”
I got on the elevator and started up. A glance in the mirror said my tie was straight and I looked fairly decent for having traveled day and night across the United States in a train car. Months in the tropics had turned my skin so dark that I almost looked like an Indian. The elevator door opened. In front of me was another door with 328 on the front.
I knocked. Almost instantly the door opened.
Joan just looked at me.
I don’t know how long we stood there, saying nothing, looking, struggling for words, remembering who we had been, who we still were, husband and wife.
“Come in,” Joan finally said, and held the door open.
We sat down in two comfortable chairs across from each other and just gazed.
“It’s been a long, long time since we’ve seen each other,” I said.
“Certainly has,” Joan said.
We started talking, and talking, and talking. Time had no meaning. Somewhere in the wee hours of the night, we realized for the first time that we had talked for hours.
Finally, I said, “Joan, I’m back.”
She said, “I can’t possibly begin to tell you how glad I am.” She reached for my hand.