From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered—
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
—William Shakespeare
Combat binds you to your brothers-in-arms in a way nothing else can. That is the closeness I felt with the shipmates I lost. And it’s also how I felt about the shipmates who were still alive, taking the fight to the Japanese. They were in the South Pacific, and I was in Red Cloud. It didn’t feel right. As I said, I wanted to go back. Needed to go back.
After over a year at home, I began talking with my parents about reenlisting. They felt that if it was what I wanted to do, they were behind my decision. And so, on February 26, 1944, I went to the draft board in Omaha. I got some resistance at first. They looked at me with suspicion, first eyeing my scars, then examining my discharge papers. And when they heard my story about narrowly escaping death on the Arizona, well, they couldn’t make head nor tails of why I was back in front of them seeking to reenlist. I had dodged a pretty big bullet, after all. I had been darn fortunate. So why in the world would I want to press my luck?
Added to those legitimate concerns, they weren’t sure I could handle going back to sea with all its rigors, let alone putting me right in the middle of some of the most heated battles of the war.
I’m not sure what swayed them. Maybe I just wore them down. But they relented. Given all the physical issues I had, though, they wanted to make sure I could handle the work on board ship, and so they said I would have to go through basic training again, just to make sure. I can’t say I blamed them. The burns on my body had not completely healed, and my muscles were tight, sometimes restricting my movement. To be honest, I wasn’t sure myself if I had the strength to do all the lifting, pulling, and carrying that the job required.
By this time a lot of older men were enlisting, some not in as good shape as I was. In March I was sent to a Navy training camp in Farragut, Idaho. Having gone through this training before, I breezed through some of it. The difficult parts stretched me physically, which is exactly what my body needed. Eventually, I turned in respectable scores. I lagged behind in the long runs at first. But I kept at it. I held pace with the older guys, and, little by little, I started gaining on the younger ones.
Because of my experience at sea and in battle, I rose through the ranks quickly and soon was put in charge of a company. They even gave me my own office. I drilled the men and led them on grinders, the long runs we were required to take each day. The men were curious about my scars. They could see them when I wore short-sleeved shirts and shorts, or when we took showers. They were interested to hear about the attack, partly because it was what got us into the war in the first place. But also, I think, because they wanted to know what they were getting into, what it would be like if their ship were attacked.
I got along well with my superiors. They respected me for what I had been through, and even more, I think, because I was signing up for the possibility of facing it all again. They wanted me to stay and “push boots” through the camp, as they put it, but I was determined to return to the Pacific Theater and get back into the action. As I’ve said, I’m not too proud to admit that part of my motivation was personal revenge. I wasn’t going to let the enemy get away with what they had done. Mostly, though, I was doing it for my shipmates, to avenge their deaths. If the roles were reversed, I know that they would do the same for me.
In the summer of 1944 I was sent to Treasure Island, a Navy base between Oakland and San Francisco, where I was assigned to serve on a destroyer named the USS Stack. Commissioned in November 1939, the Stack had four 38mm guns, two dual 40mm guns, six 20mm guns, six torpedo tubes, and two sets of Y guns, for firing depth charges at submarines, along with two sets of heavy-duty depth charges on the stern of the ship. Destroyers were faster than battleships like the Arizona, and their speed was their unique contribution to the fleet. The Stack could go 49 knots (about 45 mph), while the Arizona could only manage 21 knots, max.
I was elated to be back in the Navy and to be among shipmates again. It felt especially great being back in action, I have to say. I was given the job of gunner’s mate responsible for four guns. The job included keeping the guns operational, maintaining them, cleaning them, and positioning the ammunition.
BEFORE WE HEADED out to battle in the Pacific Theater, we sailed to Pearl Harbor, stopping to refuel and resupply. As you can imagine, I had mixed feelings about returning there, unsure how it would hit me. Most on the ship knew I had served on the Arizona. They had seen my scars, asked about my experiences.
As we slowly made our way into the harbor, we passed the Arizona. I had not seen it since the morning of the attack. I couldn’t believe my eyes. All the superstructure had been cut away—for scrap, no doubt. Where once a great ship was moored, there remained only its ghostly visage, hovering eerily just beneath the water’s surface.
Every emotion within me started rising, quietly pooling in my eyes.
Then something happened I wasn’t expecting, and I certainly wasn’t prepared for. A call came over the public address system, mustering all hands on the fantail. When everyone was there, the captain called out: “Is Stratton here?”
I raised my hand. “Here, sir.”
He waved me over. Then, without fanfare of any kind, he presented me with a medal. The Purple Heart. The entire crew applauded. The captain didn’t give a speech, and he didn’t ask me to give one. He just handed me the medal, and that was it—a simple gesture of respect and recognition.
I was relieved I hadn’t been asked to speak—if I had opened my mouth, I doubt I would have been able to control the emotions. Even so, it was an extremely difficult moment for me. It would take me years to find my voice where the Arizona was concerned, but that display of unity and honor shown by my shipmates on the Stack as we glided past the remains of the Arizona was a moment of healing, as much as any hospital treatment had been. Though I may have left Pearl Harbor on a stretcher, I had returned on a destroyer. I had recovered my strength, as had my country. I was ready to meet what was coming—and I was bringing a boatload of reinforcements with me.
AFTER A SHORT stay in Hawaii, we shoved off for the South Pacific under the authority of Admiral William Halsey of the Third Fleet.
We saw action pretty quickly, and a lot of it. We saw action in the Japanese-held territory of New Guinea, just north of Australia, then in Leyte Gulf off the Philippines, and finally, we led the invasion of Okinawa, which is 350 miles south of Japan. Our main task during an invasion was to lead the ships that were transporting men to shore. Then we would set a perimeter, always in sight of shore, and make sure those transports were protected from enemy ships, submarines, and aircraft.
I had an interesting experience the night after we left Guadalcanal. We were part of a convoy, transporting soldiers in the South China Sea, which was a treacherous area because of submarines. In the middle of the night during our crossing, two of us were on watch, our headphones tethering us to the ship with long extension cords. After our nightly ritual of stopping by the bakery and getting a fresh loaf of bread and some butter, my partner and I got a call from a nearby transport ship that a man had fallen overboard. Our ship turned off all its lights so we could see better, and we circled the area, looking for him. Our orders: “If you hear him or see him, we’ll pick him up. If not, we have to move on.”
Fortunately, my partner and I heard the man calling for help. We signaled the bridge, and the ship turned around, scouring the waters with its searchlight. I spotted him, bobbing on the dark water. When we picked him up, he was stark naked, exhausted, and shivering. Turns out he had gotten seasick and was heaving over the rail of the transport ship so hard that he fell overboard.
Later we learned that our sonar had picked up a lone enemy sub in the area. Being so decisively outnumbered, though, the sub decided not to engage.
The battle of Leyte Gulf was short, lasting only from October 23–26, 1944. But don’t let the duration fool you. The Philippine Sea, around the chain of islands where the battle was fought, was a roiling cauldron for those four days. On the morning of the 23rd, that sea held the largest assemblage of ships, in terms of tonnage, the world had ever seen. By the evening of the 26th, Leyte Gulf had taken more tonnage to its murky depths than in any other naval battle in history. The Japanese lost four aircraft carriers, three battleships, six heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, 12 destroyers, one destroyer escort, over 600 planes, and 10,500 sailors and pilots. The Allied forces, on the other hand, lost one light carrier, two escort carriers, two destroyers, one destroyer escort, around 200 planes, and a little more than a thousand men. As a result of this devastating blow, Japan never again launched a major naval offensive.
During this decisive battle, however, the Japanese unveiled a terrifying new tactic, called kamikaze. Bill Sloan, in his book, The Ultimate Battle, explains its origin:
Before late 1944, few Westerners had ever heard the word “kamikaze,” and fewer still knew its original meaning. Translated literally from the Japanese, the term means “Divine Wind,” and it owns its revered place in Japanese history and spiritual folklore. Its origin can be traced back to 1281, when Chinese emperor Kublai Khan, son of Mongol conqueror Genghis Khan, dispatched a mighty naval armada to invade and seize Japan’s home islands.
No man-made force available to Nippon at the time could possibly have thwarted Khan, whose victory seemed assured until a monstrous typhoon off the Japanese coast destroyed many of his ships and scattered the rest. The people of Japan interpreted the great storm as evidence of heavenly protection and credited their salvation to this Divine Wind.
Six and a half centuries later, in the closing days of World War II, with total defeat closing in around the Japanese military, some of its leaders clung to the belief that history could repeat itself. In a desperate to halt another foreign invasion, they devised a modern version of the Divine Wind—powered not by the gods of nature by thousands of young Japanese zealots eager to sacrifice themselves for the emperor.
The first successful kamikaze attack happened on October 25, 1944, at the battle of Leyte Gulf. Japanese pilots had crashed their planes into our ships before, but it was usually a measure of last resort. If the pilot’s craft had been hit and was going down, it made perfect sense to try to do the most damage before crashing.
But what we experienced at Leyte was different. The psychological effect that the tactic had on those of us who had a bull’s eye on our backs 24-hours a day was unnerving, to say the least. At other times, it was downright demoralizing. You never knew when they were going to strike. At first light. Or last light. Or in the middle of the night. More and more they struck under the cover of darkness. Even though our radar could see them, our gunners could not.
One night during that battle, a kamikaze fell from the darkness, hitting one of our ships. The explosion lit up the sky. Then, like moths to a flame, several others appeared from nowhere and crashed their planes into the fire.
The Stack was part of the task force that invaded Okinawa on April 1, 1945. Our job, at least initially, was to do mine sweeps of the waters around the island, which took three days. We did this with wooden-hulled planes that went over the water and would drag the mines to the surface, where we would explode them. If we found a mine at night, we would circle it with the ship until morning, when we would blow it to smithereens with a 20mm gun. It was such a treacherous area that we shot at anything floating in the harbor. We did this because sometimes there were Japanese soldiers hiding among the debris, explosive devices strapped to their backs, like suicide bombers, waiting to get close enough to blow a hole in our side.
The invasion of Okinawa was the largest amphibious landing in the Pacific theater. Okinawa was considered strategic real estate due to the five airfields the Japanese had built there. By capturing those fields, the U. S. could launch a relentless assault against mainland Japan. Leading the campaign was a massive Navy flotilla of 1,213 ships, along with 104 ships that played a supportive role. And the joint forces of the Navy, Marines, and the Army participated with a total of 451,866 service men involved in the campaign.
To protect our carriers, other high-value ships, and our fighting forces on the island, the Navy set up a perimeter around the Okinawa archipelago. Along this perimeter were stationed destroyers with state-of-the-art radar and sonar to detect any incoming ships or planes. It was called “picket patrol.” Along the perimeter were radar picket stations in the ships, spaced a measured distance from each other, that formed a theoretically impenetrable shield around the island. The USS Stack was one of the destroyers assigned to that patrol. In all, 206 ships formed the first line of defense along the picket.
The kamikaze dispelled the myth of impenetrability.
The first kamikaze pilots flew Zeroes and also Vals, which were high-altitude bombers. By 1945, though, the Japanese realized the strategic necessity of these planes in defending the homeland. Their engineers went to work and came up with a design that fit the mission of the kamikaze perfectly. The plane was called an Ōka.
The Ōka was a small, single-seat monoplane that weighed less than 1,000 pounds. It was made mostly of wood, along with some steel. Its light weight allowed it to carry 4,000 pounds of fuel and explosives, 2,500 of which were located in the nose section. It was the first “smart” bomb. But it wasn’t guided by computers and GPS co-ordinates. It was flown by a pilot whose mission was to crash it into an Allied ship, inflicting as much damage as possible. Although the Ōka had three, solid-fuel, rocket engines, it was not meant to be flown long distances. Its engines were designed merely to allow its pilot to make any adjustments along its descent. The Ōka was transported underneath a larger bomber. When the bomber came within 25 miles of the target, it would release the craft, and then the pilot would glide the bomb to its target.
Between October 25, 1944 and the end of the war in August of 1945, nearly 4,000 suicide missions had been launched against Allied forces. It became the most feared weapon in the Japanese arsenal. One in seven kamikazes were successful in sinking or severely damaging our ships, which was a much better success rate than their other planes had achieved.
Okinawa was 82 days of hell. The strategy of the Japanese was to make the battles in the South Pacific so costly for the Allied Forces that we would give up of the idea of invading their homeland.
The waters off Okinawa were a firestorm of an engagement, with around one hundred of our ships sunk or damaged. I vividly remember one of those engagements. We were on picket patrol, forming a protective fence, so to speak, along a perimeter north of Okinawa, when I first encountered a kamikaze attack. A kamikaze pilot’s sole mission was to crash his plane into one of our ships. If we didn’t blow them out of the sky with our antiaircraft guns, they were going to knock us out of the water like toy ducks at a carnival arcade.
It was a desperate strategy by an increasingly desperate enemy. Of course, that’s not what comes to mind when the kamikaze is in its death dive, its wings whistling toward you. One night, in which the darkess overhead seemed to bristle with suicide bombers, a kamikaze bore down straight at us. Straight at me, actually. If he had hit us, I would have died in the explosion. Fortunately, he missed, flying just over us and crashing into the water on the other side of the ship. Some of the picket ships, however, weren’t so fortunate. We lost five that night.
Besides sweeping the perimeter waters for mines, the Stack pounded the beach with its big guns, softening the area so our soldiers would have a fighting chance. We also would help calm the water for seaplanes to land in. We did this by circling an area, then the seaplanes touched down the calm was created by our wake. After landing, the plane came to the side of our ship, where our crane hooked it and lifted it on board. Okinawa was tough. The enemy had dug in and was determined to fight to the death. Our Marines lost a lot of men on that island. They fought gallantly, all of them—for eighty-two straight days.
Okinawa was the last major battle of the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. (It has been pointed out to me that, by virtue of fighting in both the Pearl Harbor attack and the Okinawa invasion, I can claim a small footnote in history for having served at the opening shots and the final battle of America’s Second World War.) The campaign claimed the lives of more than a quarter million people. Of those who died, close to 140,000 were civilians living on the island; 107,539 were Japanese servicemen; and 12,274 were U. S. servicemen. The battle pitted the greatest U. S. naval flotilla ever assembled against the most tenacious of enemies, both in the air and on the ground. In the sky, kamikaze pilots flew to their deaths as they ravaged the U. S. fleet. On the land, Japanese soldiers fought to the death rather than surrender.
The radar picket ships took the biggest beating of the U. S. naval ships engaged at Okinawa, all the while protecting the rest of our ships from 1,900 kamikaze attacks. Fifteen of the picket ships were sunk; 45 were damaged. Causalties of those serving on those ships were 1,348 dead and 1,586 wounded.
Vice Admiral Richmond K. Turner gave this commendation to those who served on that hazardous perimeter:
The gallant ships in these stations were at all times, and in a very literal sense, in the first line of defense at OKINAWA. Their expert raid reporting and efficient fighter direction made possible the timely interception of enemy aircraft which would otherwise have been able successfully to attack our transport and supply ships in force. The enemy pressed his attacks with fanatical determination and still failed to disrupt our progress, largely because the Radar Pickets were an obstacle he could not overcome. By their steadfast courage and magnificent performance of duty in a nerve wracking job under morale shattering conditions, the crews of the ships and craft of the Radar Picket stations have emblazoned a glorious new chapter in the naval tradition.
IT WAS DURING Okinawa that I heard the news: President Roosevelt was dead.
It was hard for me, hearing that. He had been such a part of my life, serving his fourth term when he died. He seemed to always have a steady hand on the wheel, guiding us through the Depression and through most of the war. It’s a shame he didn’t live long enough to see a weary world turning its swords into plowshares.
The war had taken its toll on the president, and those closest to him were concerned. His health had deteriorated, I later learned, and his face was ashen. He retreated for a couple of weeks to his home in Warm Springs, Georgia, which had a natural hot springs health spa on the property. He loved going. He had dedicated the property to treat children and families who had suffered from polio, as he did, and other paralyzing diseases. He felt at home there. He didn’t have to hide his disability; and it was there—surrounded by playful children in the pool and by grateful families on the picnic grounds—that something of his own childhood came back to him. Happier times of his younger days. There was no returning to those times in the White House, no escape from the news, which for four long terms had been mostly bad, and often heartbreaking.
On the afternoon of April 12, 1945, President Roosevelt was inside, sitting to have his portrait painted. At one o’clock he grew tired and told the artist, “We have only fifteen minutes.” Then he said, “I have a terrific headache,” and fainted. A doctor on the property was called, and he rushed over to give the president a shot of adrenaline, hoping to revive him. It didn’t. Within minutes Roosevelt was dead.
His wife, Eleanor, was there, along with his personal secretary, Grace Tully. Funeral cars later pulled into the compound to take away the body. In the past when he left Warm Springs, patients at the spa, many of whom were children, had lined the street that led to his cottage, all of them waving goodbye. Now the street was lined with Marines. Channeling the grief of the nation, Chief Petty Officer Graham W. Jackson, an African-American man who played an accordion many times for the president, was photographed by Ed Clark with tears running down his face as he stood in front of the group that was taking the body away. He played “Going Home,” one of Roosevelt’s favorites.
As the procession left, the man changed the tune to “Nearer, My God, to Thee.”
FDR’s vice president, Harry Truman, became our new commander in chief. But how do you fill shoes like those?
The nation mourned. The funeral gave us pause.
But not the war.
The war stopped for no one.
IN JULY 1945, I was given leave from combat to return stateside in San Diego so I could attend Electrical Hydraulics School. The school educated you in all the electronics necessary to fire the guns on board the Stack. Those skills were necessary so I could take on greater responsibilities with the guns themselves.
While I was in San Diego, news began leaking out about some of the atrocities the Japanese had committed—the Rape of Nanking and the Bataan Death March among them. The way they treated our prisoners was worse than even the Nazis. We didn’t know the full extent of those atrocities until the war was over, but what we heard was beyond what you thought human beings were capable of doing to one another. The war in Europe had ended in May. The country breathed a sigh of relief. But only a sigh. The war in the Pacific was some of the most intense fighting of the entire war, and who knew how many more young men would be lost before the world’s great sadness was over?