A Shanghai American: From an American Childhood in Shanghai to Marine Combat Interpreter on the Pacific Island Battlefields of WWII Dan Williams, son of Baptist missionary parents, grew up in Shanghai, China, in the 1920s and 1930s. His experiences there as a Shanghai American shaped the rest of his life. Dan returned to the States at age sixteen in 1936 after a memorable journey on the Trans-Siberian railway. With the start of WWII, Dan was recruited by the US Navy and sent to the University of Colorado for a one-year course at the Navy Japanese Language School. After graduation, he became a Marine officer with the Fourth Marine Division and participated in the harrowing island invasions of Kwajalein, Saipan, Tinian, and Iwo Jima. While under fire in intense combat, Dan’s job was to help his fellow Marines win battles by finding and translating Japanese documents and interrogating prisoners. This narrative memoir, told in Dan’s own words, vividly brings to life events that helped shape the history of the twentieth century.
In the gruesome battle for Guadalcanal, David Levy was skipper of PT 59, one of several Patrol/Torpedo boats that were among the first U.S. Navy vessels to engage Japanese warships at the beginning of World War II. Dave's wartime experiences in the South Pacific marked one of the most transformative periods in his life. In the Navy he quickly learned to assume a "deal-maker" persona that helped him get along with fellow PT boat skippers, many of whom, like future president John F. Kennedy, came from privileged East Coast families. He got to be known in the Navy by the nickname "Hogan," famous as "the guy to go to," who could get things done, organize parties well-stocked with liquor and women, obtain supplies when none seemed available, and, in those early, desperate days of the battle for Guadalcanal, also perform in the top ranks of competent PT boat skippers. The PT boats were small, maneuverable, and fast, and they were given the seemingly impossible mission of regularly engaging and sinking the much larger and more numerous destroyers, cruisers, and battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Dave's PT 59 was in the thick of all the action. These brave PT boat skippers, many of whom were graduates of Ivy League colleges or the U.S. Naval Academy, were a hard-partying group, and their "fast times" during World War II epitomized the intensity with which life was lived by those who, like Dave, were fully engaged in the deadly struggles of the Pacific War. Dave's wartime experiences shaped the rest of his life, a long journey that has included a successful law career, annual ski trips to his vacation home in Aspen since the early 1950s, and fishing all over the world.
One Marine’s War recounts the experiences of Robert Sheeks, a Marine combat interpreter, and how he underwent a remarkable transformation as a consequence of his encounters with the Imperial Japanese Army, Nisei Japanese-American language instructors, Japanese and Pacific Island native civilians, and American Marines. It is the first time the entire story of one Marine Corps combat interpreter has been told, and it provides a unique insight into an aspect of the Pacific war that is not only fascinating history, but also a compelling personal struggle to come to terms with a traumatic childhood and subsequent harrowing combat experiences. The son of an American corporate executive, Bob was born and raised in Shanghai until the family fled the impending Japanese occupation in the 1930s. He was emotionally scarred by grisly atrocities he personally witnessed as the Japanese military terrorized the Chinese population during the “Shanghai Incident” in 1932. However, his intense hatred for the Japanese military was gradually transformed into tolerance and then compassion. He was recruited out of Harvard after the Pearl Harbor attack to be a Japanese language interpreter in the Marine Corps. When he encountered kind and considerate Japanese-American Nisei instructors during the intensive course at the U.S. Navy Japanese Language School at the University of Colorado, he began to re-think his attitudes toward the Japanese. Ultimately, through an intriguing set of circumstances, he developed an empathy for the Japanese enemy he formerly despised. This began during the invasion of Tarawa where he was frustrated by the near impossibility of capturing Japanese combatants, partly because there was no way to communicate with them in their bunkers where they fought to the death. That led him to devise methods to use a combination of surrender leaflets and amplified voice appeals to convince the enemy to surrender. As a consequence, he personally ended up saving the lives of hundreds of Japanese civilians and military by being able to talk them out of caves during combat on Saipan and Tinian in 1944. He was able to find humanity in the midst of war. For his efforts he was awarded the Bronze Star with a unique commendation, certainly one of the few medals ever given to a Marine officer for saving the lives of the enemy.
This first-person account describes the vivid and compelling World War II experiences of Jack Goetz, who flew twenty-five missions with the 544th Squadron, 384th Bomb Group based at Grafton Underwood, England, in the early stages of the air war over Europe from mid-1943 to early 1944. During his combat tour, he flew on B-17 bombers over German-occupied Europe as a gunner. These were hazardous missions that resulted in high casualty rates among B-17 flight crews. Jack had his share of close calls, including a crash landing in a crippled bomber and a ditching in the English Channel, which resulted in the death of a close friend and crewmate. After completing his combat tour, he volunteered to be a member of the flight crew that took a group of combat correspondents to the Pacific to cover the end of the war in that theater. His B-17 was the second American aircraft to land in Japan just as the war ended, and he was among the first Americans to visit the atomic bomb-blasted city of Hiroshima.
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