The following reminiscences are dedicated to a small group of United States Marines who, in mid-January 1941, embarked from the North Island Naval Air Station, San Diego, California, on an expedition. They knew only that they were going to an island in the Pacific and that their mission upon arrival was to carve out a Marine air base from which their accompanying two squadrons of fighter aircraft could operate. At the time, this small unit was known only as Marine Air Group 21.
While this air group was essentially the nucleus of what was later to become the largest and most lethal combat air force the Marine Corps had ever known—or even dreamed of—its role and contribution to the eventual success of the war against the Japanese in the South Pacific have been, to my knowledge, all but ignored in our history books.
My remembrances begin on 19 January 1941. We were on the high seas on board the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise (CV-6). It was the second Sunday after Epiphany. The ship’s chaplain, Lieutenant John Hugues, was conducting general services on the hangar deck. We stood to pray; we sang a hymn. Chaplain Hugues enlightened us with a sermon: “Marriage: A Door to Happiness or Misery”—very appropriate, and just what that raggedy- assed bunch needed. After his sermon, we all stood and repeated the following prayer:
Not more of light, I ask O God,
But eyes to see what is;
Not sweeter songs, but power to hear
The present melodies.
Not greater strength, but how to use
The power that I possess;
Not more of love, but skill to turn
A frown to a caress.
Not more of joy, but to feel
Its kindling presence near;
To give to others all I have
Of courage and of cheer.
Give me all fears to dominate,
All holy joys to know;
To be the friend I wish to be,
To speak the truth I know.
It was not until many months later that we were to appreciate the profound depth and prophetic relevance of those words.
The “island”—the exact location of our final destination—was Oahu, the main island of the Territory of Hawaii. The particular area of the island that was our “home” for the following months consisted of a small clearing, bisected by a short strip of runway, surrounding the old “mooring mast” that had been constructed years before to accommodate the German Graf Zeppelin, which never arrived, and other dirigibles.
The area was covered with dense, tropical undergrowth, consisting of masses of saber-sharp sisal and thorny klu that somehow survived in hard, solid lava rock. Our initial task was to clear enough area to erect tents for sleeping and a mess tent, and to dig trenches for more personal needs—not necessarily in that order.
The first two months proved to be the most difficult. We worked from dawn to after dusk, officers and men alike, under the most adverse conditions imaginable. We sweated, choked on coral dust, and finally, exhausted, dirty and grime-streaked, fell into our field bunks, only to be attacked by the endless army of mosquitoes. We ate out of tin mess kits; what bathing we did was done with a bucket of cold water.
By March 1941, our living conditions had improved. We had built showers of a sort—still unheated—and had erected eight-man tents and covered the trenches for privacy. We had an “operative” kitchen and a mess tent. In fact, things were beginning to look so permanent that we raised a flagpole and hoisted the American flag. We became known officially as the Ewa Marine Air Base.
For the most part, officers and men assigned to Marine Air Group 21 were handpicked for this particular expedition. With the exception of a very few recruits like myself and a number of newly appointed second lieutenant pilots, the group consisted of seasoned veterans, both officers and men, selected for their professionalism and experience in earlier Marine Corps campaigns: China, Nicaragua. Haiti, and Santo Domingo. (With several others, I shared the distinction of being chosen because of my “expertise as a player on the San Diego Marine basketball team. The coach. Captain Marshall “Zack” Tyler, decided to take his “winning team” with him.)
Our commander, Lieutenant Colonel L. G. Merritt, was one of the most dedicated, disciplinarian Marine officers that I ever had the occasion to meet. Without his leadership we most probably would not have been as well prepared as we were on 7 December 1941. Colonel Merritt was not totally admired or beloved by many; he was secretly called “Eagle Beak” because of his rather obvious hooked nose which, no doubt, accounted for his keen sense of perception.
Many of the Marines had nicknames: Piss Willy, so named for urinating in his trousers after too many beers; Spic-itch Peter, named for a fungus-type infection, more of a rot, usually contracted through failure to bathe more than once per month. Like Piss Willy he had served in China and Nicaragua. We also had Sam Sad Moore, a captain and one of the greatest pilots and officers with whom I ever had the privilege of serving, and there were Bulldog Morrell and Hairoil Sawyer, to name a couple more. Oh, let’s not forget Henry “All-Rod” Elrod; no further explanation is needed!
In the early months we worked as many as 14 hours each day, but, without fail, when Saturdays arrived we stood a full, agonizing dress-parade inspection: uniforms Pressed to perfection and Springfield 03s, our main Weapon, always well oiled and spotlessly clean.
By early April we were pretty well established and began functioning as an operational unit. We had extended the runway so that our two squadrons, consisting of an (biplane fighter) squadron and an SBD dive-bomber squadron, could operate. We converted the unused mooring mast into a control tower, and, since we had no radio pound communications at the time, we used an Aldis lamp to signal the pilots: green for takeoff or landing France; red for “no-go.”
I was assigned to the operations and intelligence office, insisting of two tents side by side. One tent was the office of the operations officer. Major Stan Ridderhof, and is first sergeant, another seasoned Nicaragua veteran, Charles Barker. The second tent was occupied by Private Lemmity Pittkanen, a former college professor, and myself.
One of the duties assigned to Pitt and me was to man the control tower during flight operations. The tower was approximately 100 feet high, and the only access to the top was an outside steel ladder that we had to climb. By regulation, the tower also had to be manned by one commissioned officer. Pittkanen had very little fondness for commissioned officers. I recall one incident when, after having been trapped for perhaps eight hours in the small cockpit-like control tower, Pitt rather rudely, and in specific terms, requested that the tower duty officer at the time, Second Lieutenant Richard Fleming, “please” either descend the ladder immediately or be thrown down. Pittkanen, of course, was disciplined and sent to KP duty for one month. (Later, during the Battle of Midway, Lieutenant Fleming’s SB2U crashed on the Japanese cruiser Mikuma while delivering an attack. He received the Medal of Honor posthumously.)
The only “unusual” problem that I can remember in controlling the aircraft during operations at that time was an occasional wild cow wandering onto the runway. One evening when I had duty in the tower, however, a squadron of F3Fs was scheduled for night formation practice. A flight of three took off at about sunset and never returned. Since we did not have radio communications, the duty officer and I remained in the tower until after midnight. The next morning we learned that the formation of four, all young lieutenants, had flown into Haleakala, the highest mountain on Maui. From this sad accident was coined the macabre expression, “Here today, gone to Maui.”
The mooring mast tower was located approximately three miles from the administrative offices of the Ewa Sugar Plantation. The plantation had an unusually modem recreation center for employees, containing an outside theater—usually showing Japanese movies—and a small Japanese noodle house with a nickelodeon that played American records (I’ll never forget “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine”). The noodle house also served as the terminal for the bus ride to and from Honolulu.
The population of the plantation was predominantly a mixture of Chinese, Japanese, and Philippine. Perhaps four American management families lived in very pleasant flower-covered bungalows on the plantation. The Ewa Marines were frequent guests, and gradually we were accepted as family members, making a number of lasting friendships. Ewa plantation became our primary source for recreation and relaxation. Nothing happened on the base that the “family” at Ewa would not learn about within a few hours.
Ewa plantation management permitted us access to the recreation building. We put it to good use by forming a varsity basketball team that played other military teams: Hickam Field, Schofield Barracks, Ford Island, etc. Up until just before the war, Zack’s team was undefeated and, most likely, would have continued undefeated, since we had players like Lieutenant Bob Galer, former all-American from the University of Washington, and Lieutenant Danny Iverson, all-coast player from Florida. Bob Galer later received the Medal of Honor for his record of 19 kills at Guadalcanal. Danny Iverson survived the Battle of Midway, where his SBD took more than 250 hits. He was later killed in a midair training accident in Florida.
One rather unfortunate incident filtered through Ewa plantation’s grapevine and reached the Honolulu radio station. (By then the Ewa Marines were known in Honolulu.) Two men living in the tent next to the one I was occupying were caught performing “unnatural acts.” They were, of course, immediately dispatched back to the United States for dishonorable discharge, but, nevertheless, every morning for several weeks the radio station in Honolulu dedicated a song to the Ewa Marines, programmed at 0600: “I only want a buddy, not a sweetheart.” Looking back, I cannot understand where, when, or how this event could have happened, since we worked all day and were exhausted when we finally got to bed.
By November 1941, construction of the base had been all but completed, and personnel training and logistics appeared at about the same time as the increased Pacific war threat. We had received additional pilots and equipment from the States, and our overall operational capabilities had rapidly improved—just in time!
In early December, we received orders to deploy two squadrons of aircraft and men, one to Wake and another to Midway. The squadron going to Wake was to get a new fighter aircraft, the Grumman F4F Wildcat. However, there was a problem. The full complement of aircraft was not yet available, so the Navy gave us one plane to check out and train. The F4F had a severe tendency to ground loop, and because of accidents, our “one” aircraft had to be replaced on an almost daily basis. Finally, about a week later, the squadron destined for Wake sailed with a full complement of aircraft but practically no training in that particular plane. The rest is history.
In early September, when I had been working primarily in the intelligence area, the powers that be decided to send me on a leave of absence to attend classes in oriental philosophy at the University of Hawaii. On Friday, 5 December, I had just completed my first semester.
On Saturday, 6 December, together with several of my fellow Ewa Marines, including Pittkanen and George Temple (Shirley’s big brother), I went to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki to celebrate the successful conclusion of my semester’s work. We returned to the base very late and a little worse for wear, but in plenty of time for the fireworks that commenced early the next morning-
When the Japanese attackers hit the Ewa Air Base on 7 December, as we wrote in a message report:
“Material losses were considerable; personnel casualties were remarkably light, due to Japanese concentration of fire solely on aircraft during the first part of the first attack, permitting personnel to disperse and take cover. There were no large bombs dropped in the Ewa vicinity, but a few small demolition types observed. . . .
“Apparently, Ewa Field was the objective of two squadrons of fighters on the first attack. . . .The Japanese pressed home their attack with a reckless daring, maneuvering their planes with considerable skill. There is no doubt that the Japanese naval aviator is a foe worthy of great respect. It would be a bitter mistake to underestimate his capabilities. The second attack was made by dive bombers similar to our SBD types. The third and last attack again by fighters.”
In addition to the action described in the above dispatch, several other events that may be of interest—but which I doubt appear in any history book—occurred at Ewa on that unforgettable day.
It seemed only minutes after the initial wave of Japanese began their attack when we Marines, who were seldom parted from our rifles, were issued live ammunition, which we immediately put to good use. However, some of the uses were not covered in our manuals or in our training.
One instance which I will never forget involved the shooting of a fellow Marine. Shortly after the first attack, the duty officer gave orders to my tent mates and me to arrest one of our fellow tent mates who, we were told, was a German spy. Corporal Werner had lived and worked with us over the past 11 months. We had, therefore, grown very close. He resisted our effort to arrest him and opened on us; he was subsequently shot and killed. There were so many bullet holes in him that, thankfully, we never knew which one of us had fired the shot that killed him.
Another incident that happened during the initial attack involved Captain Tyler, our basketball coach. He had somewhere, somehow obtained a Thompson submachine gun—a fully automatic, lethal weapon, but not a very Active one against flying aircraft. He stood facing the doming Japanese planes, firing at them on full automatic. As the planes swept over us—so low that we could see the Japanese pilots laughing at us—Zack continued firing and ended up flat on his back, still shooting as the aircraft swept past us.
And on that day that I remember as though it were yesterday, Sergeant Fred Hauser, an old China hand, broke out of its crate, still packed in cosmoline, a .30-caliber machine gun. Between the two of us, we managed to set a machine gun emplacement in a selected lava hole near the perimeter of the base. The result of our efforts probably the first emplacement of its kind to be operated by members of a Marine aviation unit in war—but certainly not the last.
Late on the afternoon of 7 December, the Honolulu radio station announced that the Japanese were following their air attack with amphibious landings. Hauser and I remained in our gun emplacement for several days to come. All we ever shot was a cow that—unfortunately for the cow—wandered too close to our position in the hours of darkness.
These are some of my many memories of the Ewa Marines. Perhaps their story has been recorded in more detail by others who are better qualified as historians and writers. If not, maybe my recollections will help acquaint the readers with the type of men who were the Ewa Marines. These were men who—through their accomplishments, bravery, daring, and dedication—were the real base from which sprang the heroes of the memorable air battles: Wake, Midway, Guadalcanal, and more.
In addition to those already mentioned, many Ewa Marines became famous: John Smith, Joe Foss, Paul Putnam, Ira Kimes, Frank Tharin, Elmer Glidden, Bill Hamilton, John Kinney, Sheriff Larkin, Kirk Armistead, Joe Bauer, Bob Arthur, Des Canavan, A1 Munsch, Rube Iden (our only Jewish Marine aviator, who was later shot down and killed at Guadalcanal), and there were more—all heroes.
I would like to pay special tribute to two of these heroes, Major Harold “Indian Joe” Bauer and Major John Smith; both became legends.
On 16 October 1942, returning from an exhausting 600-mile flight from the island of Espiritu Santo to Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, and preparing to land his F4F, Bauer noticed Japanese aircraft attacking a nearby target. Displaying dauntless courage, he proceeded to engage the enemy, shooting down four Japanese planes. On 14 November, Bauer—a real giant of a man in every respect—Major John Smith, who lost at sea. The Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously to recognize his bravery.
Major John Smith, who later became a close personal friend a business associate of mine, was awarded the Medal of Honor for his record of shooting down 19 Japanese aircraft. Joh, who was part Indian, was unable to adjust to the frustrations of the corporate life-style and tragically took his own life in the early 1970s.
After briefly participating in the Battle of Midway, I returned to the United States for flight training. When next I saw Ewa Marine Air Base, it was a second lieutenant Marine pilot. It was not the same base that I left or that I remembered. No more tents but modern buildings; no more mooring mast but a control tower. The base had become a busy “war room,” serving as a jumping-off place for marines on their way south. Only my memories remained.