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The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America - Hardcover

Campbell, James

 
9780307461216: The Color of War: How One Battle Broke Japan and Another Changed America
Hardcover
ISBN 10: 0307461211 ISBN 13: 9780307461216
Verlag: CROWN PUB INC, 2012

Inhaltsangabe

An account of two pivotal events from July 1944 explores the battle for Saipan as central to the defeat of Japan and traces the Port Chicago Naval Ammunition Depot explosion that killed numerous African-American soldiers, tracing the responses and heroism that led to the largest mutiny trial in U.S. naval history. By the author of The Ghost Mountain Boys. 30,000 first printing.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

JAMES CAMPBELL is the author of The Final Frontiersman and The Ghost Mountain Boys. He has written forOutside magazine and many other publications.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

9780307461216|excerpt

Campbell / THE COLOR OF WAR

chapter 1

“Another Sunday, Another Pearl Harbor Attack”

On May 20, 1944, Robert Graf’s landing ship, tank (LST) 43 arrived in Pearl Harbor. Although the LST was capable of twelve knots on the open water, the captain had powered down the big General Motors diesel engines. As it made its way past Battleship Row, young Robert Graf and his fellow Marines assembled at the ship’s rails. For many, it was the first time they would see the destruction caused by the December 7, 1941, Japanese military strike. Graf looked out and saw a battleship lying on her side like an injured fish gasping for air. Beside him, a sailor spoke: “The Arizona—­sunk.” The sailor paused long enough for the men to absorb the reality of the disaster: the hulking, 600-­foot ship and nearly 1,200 men aboard, lost. Then he continued: “The California—­sunk; the Maryland—­damaged; the Nevada—­beached; the Oklahoma—­sunk; the Pennsylvania—­damaged; the Tennessee—­damaged; the Utah—­sunk; the West Virginia—­sunk.” Graf felt his stomach knot up. Two and a half years had passed since he’d first heard the words he had vowed not to forget: “The Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor.” He clenched his fists as tears welled in his eyes. Then, lowering his head, he mumbled a prayer.

The convoy then separated and the various vessels went to anchorages throughout the harbor’s West Loch channel. One and a half miles from shore, LST 43 tied off to two other LSTs anchored in the middle of a group of eight. The Navy called this gathering of ships a “tare.” A sailor dropped the hook to prevent drifting. Graf looked around West Loch, the staging area for the first two waves of the upcoming invasion of Saipan. It was full of 330-­foot LSTs, all grouped in tares, and all packed with Marines, many of whom would be going into battle for their first time.

Originally designed to deliver troops during island assaults, LSTs had been replaced by 1944. Encouraged by huge shipbuilding budgets, American engineers experimented with designs ideally suited to the island campaign of the Central Pacific and developed smaller, more versatile amphibious vehicles. Amtracs capable of transporting a platoon of men through the surf and onto an invasion beach took the place of the durable LSTs, which, with their 2,100-­ton capacity, were increasingly used to transport troops, wounded soldiers, and cargo across the Pacific Ocean.

Although the Honolulu hotspots beckoned, the men from the 4th Marine Division had orders to stay aboard their LSTs. No liberty passes would be issued until the following day. Graf and his best buddy, Dick Crerar, stripped down to their skivvies and claimed two of the three dozen folding cots placed under an amtrac landing vehicle that had been fastened to the deck of the LST. Mounted over the length of the amtrac was a 130-­foot canvas cover. Graf and Crerar enjoyed the breeze that drifted through the harbor, but avoided the blazing sun.

Comfortable as he was, Graf was concerned about the drums of high-­octane gasoline lashed to the deck of the landing ship. Someone—­maybe Crerar—­said what everyone else was thinking: “This is one heck of a way to run a war. Suppose we get strafed or a shell from the shore hits us? We’d be on our way to hell in no time.”

The next day, May 21, broke blissfully, but neither Robert Graf nor any of the other men had time to enjoy it. The vessels had to be provisioned for the upcoming invasion. Because of a shortage of ammunition ships, a number of the LSTs would be used as float- ing ammo dumps—­“suicide ships,” the Marines called them. They would carry rifle ammunition, rockets, drums of diesel fuel, torpedoes, and TNT.

On two nearby landing ships, civilian Navy Yard workers were doing some last-­minute welding. Graf could hear the spitting of the gas flame. Two vessels down, one hundred black laborers from the U.S. Army’s 29th Chemical Decontamination Company were unloading mortars from LST 353. The 29th had arrived at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, in the summer of 1942.

Theoretically, a chemical decontamination company’s mission was to decontaminate men and equipment after an enemy chemical attack, but its soldiers also offered a ready source of manual labor. Because of a shortage of 4.2-­inch mortars, the batteries had been dropped from the upcoming invasion plans. The workers had backed a succession of heavy trucks onto LST 353, and raised them on an elevator to the main deck. Although handling ordnance was sensitive work, since early morning the untrained members of the 29th had been removing mortars and passing boxes of ammunition from one man to the next. At the end of the chain, a man would slide a box or a mortar down a chute to men below, who loaded them onto truck beds.

Aboard LST 43, after noon chow, some guys were playing cards, using a stack of ammunition as their table. Graf and Crerar, too, had retired to the deck. Although there would be no liberty, at least they had the afternoon off. Standing at the rail, Graf could see boats filled with Marines bound for shore, where they would rush off to Waikiki for one last night of carousing before sailing for Saipan. If Graf or Crerar envied them, neither showed it. They would spend their day napping, reading, and writing letters before the mail went ashore for the last time.

Although Carl Matthews and Wendell Nightingale had liberty passes, Nightingale did not drink. So instead of accompanying a group of friends who would be drowning in booze at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, Matthews joined Nightingale at a ball game. As a staging area for the war in the Pacific, Honolulu hosted two baseball leagues, the all-­service Pearl Harbor League and the Hawaii League. Both leagues played their games at the 25,000-­seat Honolulu Stadium. Servicemen knew they could see great baseball here. Catching a game with minor leaguers was guaranteed; seeing a major-­league player was also a good bet. For the heads of the armed services, the games were about bragging rights, and by 1944 they were transferring the best talent in the armed forces to Hawaii.

Just three weeks before going into battle, Matthews was watching the best baseball of his life. Nobody back home would have believed it. Nor could he tell them. If he even mentioned Pearl Harbor in a letter, the censors would cut it up like a kid snipping a paper snowflake.

At 3:08, Matthews, Nightingale, and everyone else at the ballpark heard an explosion. It sounded as if one of Oahu’s volcanoes had blown. The baseball game stopped in mid-­inning and the crowd rushed out of its seats.

Private Raymond Smith of the 29th Chemical Company saw balls of fire shoot from the deck of LST 353 as if propelled by a giant anti- aircraft gun, and boil through the sky. Realizing that soon the mortars and the drums of gasoline outside the elevator would blow, he ran to the rear of the ship and dove into the water. Tech 5 James Caldwell of the 29th crouched to pick up a box of mortars when he saw a “bright yellow flame” and heard “a deafening noise” coming from the elevator. Nearby, Private James Cleveland was carrying a box when he was hurled through the air. When he hit the deck of the vessel, his head spun and fire encircled him. I’m a dead man, he thought. He got to his knees, wobbled, and balanced himself. Then he dashed through the flames, struggling through thick black smoke to reach the back of the LST. Like Smith he jumped into the harbor just before the fuel drums and ammunition aboard the landing ship detonated...

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Verlag
CROWN PUB INC
Erscheinungsdatum
2012
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0307461211
ISBN 13 
9780307461216
Einband
Gebundene Ausgabe
Anzahl der Seiten
494
Kontakt zum Hersteller
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