Oral history interview of Denver D. Gray

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of Denver D. Gray
Creator:: Westbrook, Frances H.
Gray, Denver David, 1917-2013
Date of Original:: 2003-08-20
Subject:: Basketball
B-17 bomber
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Attack on, 1941
Rosenzweig, Unknown, Sr.
Biggs, Loren
Bishop, Gordon R.
Boyd, William
Shea, Augustine Francis, 1898-1971
Shea, Nancy, -1989
Smart, Donovan D.
Melnyk, William, 1922-2014
Cooper, Howard F.
Brumwell, Malcolm J., 1911-1941
Traveler's Insurance Companies
University of Nebraska at Omaha. College of Agriculture
Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress (bomber)
Location:: United States, California, City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco, 37.77493, -122.41942
United States, California, San Francisco County, Fort Mason Military Reservation (historical), 37.80556, -122.42861
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Hawaii, Honolulu County, Hickam Air Force Base, 21.3254, -157.93662
United States, Nebraska, Douglas County, Omaha, 41.25626, -95.94043
United States, Nebraska, Palmyra, 40.7033771, -96.3900046
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, Denver Gray recalls his experiences in the Army Air Forces during World War II. After his graduation from college, he worked in the business world, but recognized war was coming and enlisted. He recalls his early days in the service, his experiences traveling and his impressions on arriving in the Pacific islands. He recounts how Air Force officers would all buy convertibles because they could be shipped to their destinations. He describes in detail the beauty of Honolulu. Because of his background in agriculture and his experience playing basketball, his commanders put him in charge of the plant nursery at Hickam Field and made him the basketball coach. Gray explains that because the troops had so much time on their hands, it was important to have organized sports to keep them busy. He discusses the uniform requirements for officers and says that his dress uniform arrived on 6 December, 1941, and that they went to a dance that night. Upon hearing sounds of explosions early the next morning, they supposed it was the Navy practicing. A friend parked his treasured car near a bomb crater on the theory that a bomb would not hit the same spot twice. He recalled a B-24 in flames; it had been destined for a secret photo-reconnaissance mission over Guam. He headed to the supply room to help; it was also one of the best-built buildings on base. He handed out WWI-era helmets, gas masks and 45 caliber pistols. He tells of the casualties he encountered, and gives detailed descriptions of the capabilities of the Japanese bombers.
Denver Gray was in the Army Air Forces in the Pacific during World War II.
DENVER GRAY VETERANS HISTORY INTERVIEW August 20, 2003 Transcriber: Stephanie McKinnell Frances Westbrook: Today is Wednesday, August 20, 2003. This is Frances Westbrook at the Atlanta History Center, our veteran is Denver Gray. Mr. Gray, please tell us your name, spell your name, give us your birthday, place of birth, and your current address. Denver Gray: My name is Denver Gray, D-e-n-v-e-r G-r-a-y. I was born in Palmira, Nebraska. I presently live in Atlanta, Georgia at 3389 Pine Meadow Road. FW: Thank you. Now Mr. Gray, when did you enter in the service? DG: I entered the service in August 5, 1941, at Fort Omaha, NB. FW: And please just begin today by telling us about your military service, begin where you would like to begin. DG: When I graduated from the University of Nebraska, I went to work with the Traveler's Insurance Company in Omaha, NB. Traveler's had a large office with many desks of agents that worked out of the office. One of the agents was Johnny Rosenswag. Rosenswag's father had been a very successful agent so he inherited, he didn't have to work too hard. His main interest was military. We had the 7th Corps area in Omaha that covered from the Dakotas down to Oklahoma. He was called to active duty, and on, he called me out in July to the Embassy Lounge. We sat down, ordered a drink, and he said, Gray, you're going to be called. Well that didn't surprise me because Hitler was running in Europe, and the class of 1941 ROTC immediately went into service. I was in the '40 class, was called two weeks later, so it was obvious we were going to be called. But the next question he asked said, Gray, where do you want to go? Well that completely threw me because I never in the last, farther dream thought anybody would ever ask me where I wanted to go. My orbit at that time was I'd been to Chicago, I'd been to Denver, I'd been to Minneapolis, and I'd been to Oklahoma City. That was the orbit that I had… and I thought well supposedly we were going to be called for one year, and I thought for one year I'd like to see the ocean and see something overseas. So I said how ‘bout the Philippines. Oh he said, _____ no, you don't want to go to the Philippines, that's 20 days on a boat. Well I though 20 days, gosh that is a long time. I said well how ‘bout Alaska. He said oh no, you don't want to go to Alaska, you'll freeze you know what up there. So I thought a little more and said how ‘bout Hawaii. He said that's it, the weather's good. Its five days on the boat, the next thing that comes in I'll put you on. It wasn't two weeks until I get orders from the war department with the letter calling me to active duty to report to Fort Omaha for duty in the Hawaiian department. I report to Fort Omaha, we take our physicals, and there must have been almost a city block of us in our birthday suits waiting for shots, and the guy ____ said he's going to Fort Hood, another one was going to Fort Leonard Wood, and all places that didn't sound too exciting. I didn't say anything. Finally somebody said well Gray, where in the blank are you going. I said well I'm going to Hawaii. Well I got a lot of un… surly remarks from that. And I said well I am worried about getting sunburned. I reported to Fort Mason and my best friend in college, Lorin Biggs had been, went through midshipman's school in Chicago and he was stationed at Treasure Island. I called Lorin and I told him I was there, and he said well I'll come right over. I was at the Canterbury Hotel. And Lorin, when he got there, said would you like to… Before Lorin got there, I got a call and they said Lt. Gray, and I said yes, they said you're assigned to leave the next day and gave me the name of the ship. Well I was surprised because I thought I'd be on a layover in San Francisco for several days. I called Lorin and I told him that I was going to be leaving. He said well I'll be right over. He came over, and he said would you like to see the ship you're going to go on. I said yes I would, so we got a taxi and went down to Fort Mason. When a ship is tied up at a pier, the MPs are in charge of the pier and then there's an officer _____ which is in charge of the ship. And you have to get approval of both before you can board a ship. The MP, we looked up and Biggs recognized Anson Bishop. Bishop had been with him, and Bishop was from Seattle. Bishop called down and said to Biggs, you want to show Gray the ship he's going out on, and Biggs said yes. Well the navy, the army said I couldn't go up because they were in the pier. Back and forth and finally I got aboard. He showed me around and Biggs said we're going to do the town tonight would you like to join us. And Bishop said yes. Well we did and I got know Bishop. So the next day I report to the ship with all my gear and I'm assigned a place back over the rudder down in a hole where there was four of us. And we had bunks that you folded up during the day and then put down at night, and you had to get in one at a time because you couldn't all get in there at once and get in the… so it was a mess, and one of the four of us was a football player from Texas A&M. We were trying to figure out how in the deuce we'll all four going to get in there and get to sleep when a soldier came up and said Lt. Gray, said get your gear and come with me. I did. Well I end up in a state room, the top, the best facility they had in the ship. There was a major in there, he'd never been on a ship before and he didn't know why a 2nd Lt was joining him to sleep but he never asked me and I never asked him. As a result, Bishop was on 8 hours and off 8 hours, for five days. I followed his schedule. When he was on duty, I was with him and then when he wasn't would try to sleep. Well Bishop had a very fine voice. He sang in the opera in Seattle and he told me about all of his romances. Well in five days, 8 on and 8 off, you got to hear a lot of romances which I did, but I didn't have anything else to… I walked down the gangplank in Aloha Tower, Honolulu, on October 17, five days, October 20th something. And when I went down the gangplank it was in Honolulu at Aloha Tower and the first thing that struck me was the high humidity. I broke out in perspiring, in fact I wet the back of my shirt, which is the high humidity which is noticeable. And the greenery, everything was so green. Go down the gangplank and get down and gosh, there's a pretty little girl there, Hawaiian girl, she gave me a little smudge and put a flower lei around my neck, and the air force before the war, the pilots that graduated from the field in Texas that trained all the pilots, they got their wings and they immediately walked across the street if they were assigned overseas and signed up for a convertible. Because the service would ship their car overseas. It was worth more overseas than it was here in the states. They got life insurance on the pilot so if he didn't live, so it was a win win win for the auto dealers. So every air force pilot had a convertible. Well we were anxious to get more people, they were short of people. So they had a line up of convertibles and each one of us was put in a convertible in the back seat and we rode in a file, must have been a quarter of a mile of us, out to Hickham field. And Hickam field was about 10-15 miles from west of Honolulu. We enter Hickham field and the main street in Hickham field is Signal boulevard, and it is a beautiful place. Signal boulevard was, the islands in the street were all with ______ and hibiscus and green and well manicured. The buildings were all yellow stucco with red ____ tile roofs. It was beautiful. We went down and they took us to the officer's club which is at the end of Signal Blvd, and it overlooks the entrance to Pearl Harbor. We went out on the patio, and you could see ships just a block away going in and out, and they gave us a form to fill out, them trying to figure out how they would assign us. I put down I'd graduated from University of Nebraska, college of agriculture. Well I went before Colonel Boyd and Colonel Shea. They were either Lt. Colonels or full colonels at that time. Shea later distinguished himself, he was an excellent athlete at West Point, and he was in the state golf champion at Iowa, a great athlete, and his wife was quite famous. She wrote Army Wife and Navy Wife, Nancy Shea, and I'm sure its in all of the libraries. Well I went before Shea and Boyd, and when they said that I was graduated from the agriculture they were trying to think and they said well Hickham Field, there is _____ field and Wheeler Field and _____ and then there was fields on the other islands of Kawai and Maui and the big island of Hawaii, and Shea said well Hickham field is the only field that has a nursery. And since you've got agriculture, we'll assign you to Hickham. Well later when they had us all out, they started to name the places and one of my buddies went to Wheeler, another to _____, and got to my name and it was Hickham. And they looked at me and said what'd you do, how'd you get to Hickham. I said I don't know. So I end up at Hickham and Boyd and Shea when they were interviewing me, they said well Gray, what did you do in sports. I was no star athlete. I said well I lettered in basketball in high school and I played intramural basketball at college. They said great, we're going to assign you to the headquarters squadron of 17th air base group and you're going to the group basketball coach. Well before the war, Hawaii is beautiful place but it has the same temperature year round, and it gets very monotonous and there was I think 4,000 men for every girl on the island, so the social life and morale was a very big problem. So the services had unlimited money for sports. And as basketball coach I could get people our of the guard house, I could get anybody I wanted off duty to play basketball. Well we'd had, they just finished a tournament of squadrons and we were then picking a group basketball team that would play for the island championship. I had the pick of four or five teams, so I picked a tall team of 6'2” and over, and that's tall. At that time 6'2” was very tall. And I picked a short team. The short team we played man-to-man and went all out as fast as we could. We, when they came off the field, the other team was really blowing air. Then I put in the tall team which would go slow on a zone defense and work in. We played, we played the champion team off the Indianapolis cruiser that had been champion basketball team of the Philippines. We played them and won. We went up to Schofield and played a regimental team and won. We flew to Hilo and played the Hawaiian national guard team and won. The war came, my star forward, Williams, lost his right wrist, another one got shrapnel in his lungs, another was hit in his leg, so we played no more basketball after December 7. I… the big thing in peace time is social and athletics and the military makes a big thing of social life because they have so much time on their hands. Hickham field was a beautiful club, it was all Philippine mahogany, outdoor patio with terrazzo floor, and the dance band would be up, and we'd dance out under the stars. You couldn't go to the officer's club after 7:00 without dress whites. White military or white tuxedo coat. None of us that had gotten off the boat had either. And you had to order them from the mainland. So we immediately, Lt. Smart, who was in our squadron, he was from North Dakota, he was North Dakota All American fullback, and he was a heavy weight boxing champion for North Dakota. He was in our squadron and we lived next to each other in the BOQ, bachelor's officer's quarters. We ordered our coats and on December 6, we got notice from the hub that our coats were in. We went down and got our coats, rented a car, got dates, and went to the dance at Hickham officer's club, December 6, 1941. Time we got, took the girls home and took the car and got home, I went to bed about, oh 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning. I sleep pretty sound, but I don't know whether it was the explosion, the concussion, or the rattling, we had screen on our barracks. My room was just barely big enough for a cot, and I had one screened window with no glass, but the dust blew in my bed so I'd gone to Sears and got a wicker roll down to keep the dust off of my bed. Well it was down halfway or so, but it, I think flew out over my bed, and I got up, looked out, and the top of the Hawaiian depot was going up in the air and a plane was going skyward with a big red circle on it. So I knew immediately we were under attack. The officers on the other side of the barracks couldn't see and they though the navy was, the navy was always practicing on Sundays and all, and we blamed everything on the navy and they blamed everything on us. But they said, no that was the navy, and I said no we're under attack. Most of our people in the barracks were pilots. Pilots don't have a desk. Smart and I had desks, he was the base photo officer, and I was supply officer for the headquarter's squadron, but my main duty was that basketball coach, but Smart and I said we've got to get with out units. So we dressed and took off. Pilots mulled around. One of my friends had a new Studebaker and he didn't have any desk or anywhere to go, so he got in his car, and he remembered that a bomb never hits the same place. So he found the biggest bomb crater and parked his car next to it to try to save his car. Another two friends from Texas, they were navigators, and they were cadets. They sent cadets over in their uniforms and they had advanced training on the job and then they got their commissions. They had a blue uniform and different hat and a different wings on their hat. Well halfway, they both came later, and they were out on the baseball field coming across, they looked up, and bombs were coming straight for them. They dropped down, the explosion went up over them and around the bomb crater, there's an area where there's no debris, it goes up over. They were in that area. One of them got some, some coral on his shoulder and had his arm in a sling for a week or two. The other one lost his hat, and he couldn't find the hat, and he'd promised the wings on his hat for his girlfriend, and he never did find it. Smart, when we said we had to get to unit, we dressed. We took off, we had about a block and half to go down to Hangar Blvd, which ran parallel to the hangars and the planes. As we turned the corner on Hangar Blvd, there's a B-24 on, burning. Everything was secret. Nobody told anything of where planes where they were going or anything. And this B-24 was burning, and out of the burning came a human skull. It was the first casualty I found out later that plane was a B-24 and it was destined to go to Guam and photograph the islands to see what the Japanese had, which we didn't know what, and of course the crew was all killed and never got out. As Smart and I walked down Hangar Blvd, some of the dive bombers bombs missed and hit the street. I think if you hit a, bomb hit the street outside of this building, it'd probably hit a water main, and hit water main and water was just gushing up out of this hole in the street. We went on down and to the right was underground aviation tanks for all of the aviation fuel, and they had gizmos where they loaded into the tank and sort of something on the cover. But those ____ were burning. Well we knew, we commented that this damn thing might blow up. Well I found out later that it wouldn't, it worked as a wick, but we had millions of gallons of high octane gas under that. We went on down, Smart got off at the photo lab where he was a photo officer. I went on to the barracks wing C where headquarters squadron and our orderly room, three stories high, and it was well built, reinforced concrete. The ceiling on the third floor and each floor was reinforced concrete. It turned out it was probably one of the safest places we could be except the planes came from the southwest going northwest and they came at an angle and some of bombs hit the side of building and blew so it wasn't entirely safe being under, in the building. I got, reported to the order room and I had in the supply, four or five or six soldiers, and one of them was Melnick, William Melnick. The soldiers, we had a lot of people from Pennsylvania and Arkansas come from very poor families. Melnick was Polish and there were four or five of his friends, all Polish, that grew up on the same street in Pennsylvania, enlisted the same time, and they're all in my unit. I had Melnick, very bright and I'm very proud of him. He later went on and got his doctor's degree and he kind of motors and he designed the copper, radiator, aluminum radiator and done very well so I was very proud of Melnick. We issued in the supply room, we had some World War I helmets, we had some gas masks, we had some .45 pistols. We issued anything we had, anybody wanted, we issued. My squadron commander was Howard Cooper, he was a 1st Lt, and he was a University of _____ graduate. He was a CO, I didn't know it at the time because the orderly room was next to the supply, and I didn't stop in the orderly room, and learned out later Cooper got hit with shrapnel and never made it to the office. He was on crutches but he came back. The second in command was Malcolm Brumlow. Brumlow was a University of Kansas graduate and a professor in biology. He was from North Dakota. He too had seen the water main craters in the _____, and he was concerned about us having water to drink. So he came in the orderly room with two airmen and wanted a container to go get water. We issued him a big aluminum container, and they left. It was only a short time that the two carried him back. He'd been mortally wounded with shrapnel. We tried to _____ along the counter and everything went black. You couldn't see a thing, it wasn't really black, it was sort of a mouse color and it was dense, and it seemed like eternity before it slowly came down like fog in a valley. And it got to the floor, we had dead and wounded everywhere. What happened, we had, I think its 18 tons of bombs. It was, the Japanese had 27 planes, 9 from three carriers, 27 planes with 500 bombs in the center and three 250 on the wings, flew in very tight formation and dumped all of those on our building. Their objective was to knock out the battleships, knock out the B-17s that might come out and hit the convoy and then knock out the personnel, so we were caught on the last raid on the personnel. I spent the day in the barracks, it seemed like civilians from Honolulu came out and, the roof was on fire, there was smoke billowing down in the building and I thought if the roof is on fire, the whole damn building is going to burn. The civilians wanted to know what could they do. All I thought we've got to save out blankets so we'll have something to sleep. So because of it, the civilians evacuated all of the sheets and the mattresses and dumped them out towards, on the entrance. It turns out because of this concrete, they would not have, it would not have burned but I didn't know that. And, so I spent the whole day there in the building. I was told that our unit was rendezvousing, Hickham was on the COUNTER 430 TAPE 1 SIDE B COUNTER 000 …and the water tower, we're down by the water town on the channel of Pearl Harbor. We were rendezvousing our unit there, and I think there was supposed to be some food being cooked somewhere but I never did find it. But I went down there and that was the first we knew of who had lived and who hadn't. We tried to sleep but there was planes coming in from the Enterprise and there were shot ____. The Japanese were landing, it came in with the lights on and we shot down some of our own people. There were people jumping up at night grabbing a gun, I don't know, every gun on the island was loaded. I don't know how many dogs might have gotten shot that night, but anything moving got shot if they were on the island and ______ that night. I didn't sleep that night. I don't remember having anything to eat that day. But that's my story of Pearl Harbor. FW: That's amazing. Can you please tell me a little about the flag that you have the photograph of? DG: Yes, I was in the barracks. I didn't see it, but our flag was strafed and there was a bomb blast at the bottom, and it was riddled with holes. It was, someone during the attack took it down and gave it to a commanding general, and he personally took it back and gave it to General Arnold. It flew over the peace conference at Pottsdam where Truman, and then it flew at the founding of the United Nations in San Francisco. It flew on the Missouri at the signing of the peace treaty with MacArthur and Nimitz, and it now resides in the museum at Hickham field. It's getting very fragile, but its there, and you can see the holes in it, and if you ever visit Hickham field go see it. FW: Could you tell me again what _____ your highest rank and the exact name of your service. DG: My service was from the 5th of August in '41, and I got out in '45, and I can't come up with that date, but I was separated from service from Langley Field, Virginia, where I was serving at the time. I just can pin the date when I got out, but I got my rank, at that time was Major, and I later was promoted to Lt. Colonel. FW: Could you tell me please about the Arizona, about the ship? DG: I, Hickham was adjacent to Pearl Harbor, and as Smart and I were going down, walking down during the attack, we could look over, and we saw the black smoke billowing from ships. We of course did not know what ships they were, and it burned for I don't know how many days afterwards. I, uh, we of course went over there and watched it from across, but we could see it from where we were when we went down. The navy, as we walked down, I think I mentioned we saw the high level bombers circling that were going, that, they hit torpedoes the battleships first and then they dropped bombs over it, piercing bombs, because the torpedoes could get the outside battleship but they couldn't hit the inside, so they dropped armor piercing bombs to try to hit the battleships on the inside. We, there was, four, let's see, 4,000, I believe 4,003 lived lost. The army lost roughly 1,000, and most of those were at Hickham field. The battleship lost something over 1,000, and then the Utah lost several hundred. We, there was, a friend of mine, we were, when they torpedoed the battleships, they came over and strafed Hickham so we were pretty well being strafed all the time. The people in the barracks again the non-coms of the army air corps were mostly World War I veterans that had served in the, in Europe. And in the army if you're under attack, the battle cry is to scatter so you won't be as big a target. We had sergeants running through the barracks said scatter, get out, get out. Only we're in the safest place they could be so many did run out and ran out on the parade ground. When they came strafing, they set most of the cars on fire. They were burning. But a friend of mine got under a wrecked car to try to get away from strafing. It fell on him and he couldn't get out. Ann Bishop, one of our five nurses at Hickham field, we had a 50 bed hospital, was late coming to work, and as she walked out, she saw Bishop trapped under the car. She took her scissors and cut her petticoat and made a tourniquet on his leg. She took off her panties and stuffed it into a wound and saved his life. She went to her death not getting any recognition because she was embarrassed, she didn't want the world to know that she had taken off her panties. FW: Would you like to talk about what you did after Pearl Harbor? DG: Uh, I know people who have studied the attack were well aware that Col. Langdon, he later became a three-star general and head of the air force, but he lead B-17s that were destined for the Philippines, and they had been flying all night and they came into nothing but a black of flack of anti-aircraft, so in the confusion of the Japanese Zero's, we had 17's coming in. Our 17's that we had coming in were “C's” and they were not camouflaged, and a “C” doesn't have a tail gunner. The planes the Langdon brought in were, had tail guns and they were camouflaged, so they looked all together different, and we shot and killed some of our own airmen coming in after flying all night and then coming in right in the midst of the battle. FW: Its unbelievable, it really is. DG: One of the 17's coming in, the anti-aircraft ground fire ignited the flares. Planes before the war had flares with the thought if you had wounded aboard and your communications were out, you could fly a flare and the operations could see it and give you leeway to come in to land ahead of everybody else. Well this anti-aircraft fire hit the flare and started and that's phosphorous and you can't put it out. They did land, it did kill one of our, the flight surgeon aboard, but it landed, the plane burned in two. I was with Brumlow when he was mortally wounded and I visited him in his hospital, he died on the 14th. Years later, maybe 10 years ago or 50 years after, I wondered about Brumlow, I had been with him when he was killed. I ______, and I called, I knew he graduated the University of Kansas. I called the registrar at the University of Kansas and I told her it was a peculiar request but I had served with a gentleman and he was a student, and I'd like to get in touch with the family. They gave me his hometown, it was Leeds, I think, North Dakota. I merely ran over to the library and I got the book, map, of North Dakota, and I couldn't find it, and I went to the librarian and he took me to a bigger map, and we found it. It was a little town right at the border, Canadian-North Dakota border. I wrote a letter to the mayor of that town, and I told him that I wanted to get in touch with his kin folks. I immediately, it wasn't maybe five days, that I had a letter from his sister, and she was in 0'Neal, Nebraska, and how elated she was, they had never heard a word from anyone as to, and how pleased they were to learn that someone was with him. She lived in O'Neal, Nebraska, and she was visiting when the mayor came out and how grateful they were that I, Melnick was also with me, and he also wrote to them and related Melnick was, took him out to the car when they took him to the hospital, so they also was in touch with Melnick. FW: That's wonderful you did this. DG: I don't know, there was 175,000 or so of us on the island at the time, and I don't know, we're down to very few, our numbers are pretty small today. At one time, we were losing in the thousands a day. That's probably been accelerated. FW: What did you do after Pearl Harbor, just briefly? DG: After Pearl Harbor, I became adjutant of the group. I no longer was in supply. And then I became adjutant of the base at Pearl Harbor. And an adjutant is a very, you're very well exposed and you wield some influence and power because you get all of the correspondence and you handle everything before the commanding officer gets it. I thought I was in a pretty safe spot. We furnished all of the cadres for all of the islands in the central pacific, _____, _____, Saipan, all of the air fields. The people who manned the towers and the supplies, fuel, and everything were cadres from Hickham field, out unit. I felt pretty secure since I was in a position, picking people going _____, but then out base commander… Every colonel wants to be a general, and he was no exception, and he was wining and dining and courting Nimitz and everybody. He wanted to be a general, and he found out two years before that the island of Tinean was going to, the island commander would require a brigadier general. Saipan would be a army colonel. Tinnean, because it was our airfield would be an air force general, and Guam would be a rear admiral for the island command. So he worked his way around where he was head of the task force for Tinnean. And he said I want you to be my adjutant. So when I'm going to Tinnean, and I never heard of Tinnean. I saw on the map when he told me the code name was Iron, and so it was very secretive, nobody said what name it was, he just told me Iron, and he showed me, and it was shaped like a wing, if you've seen a letter for track men in college, it has a wing on it. And that island was shaped like that wing. I went home, and I had a map of the pacific in my home and I looked up and boy it just stood out, that wing with Tinnean Island, so I knew where I was heading. I got, well then I was adjutant. All the correspondence came across and it came across that we could assign two to go to an inspection school in Fort Logan, Colorado, in 1943. Well I'd been over there since '41, and thought well that's a chance I can get home. So I put in for one of the two to go to inspection school. I did, I came back, and Col. Farnham made me base inspector. Then when he got head the task for Tinnean, I was made inspector general for the island of Tinnean. And as a result, every unit that went to Tinnean had to display all of their equipment whether it was artillery or trucks, whatever the unit was, had to display everything they had, all of their equipment out, and I with two air… two soldiers had to walk and inspect everything. If there's anything didn't look right, we just had to point at it and they'd throw it out and get replaced with new. So I had to look at everything that went to Tinnean. As a result, the unit went on a ship that I with the two airmen stayed back to inspect the units that came later. They went out and stood on a ship at ______ for some 30 days because the marines were held up and the army taking Saipan, so there was a 30 day delay, so they cooled their heels out at _____ waiting to go in to Tinnean. But the two airmen and I, we flew out right after Christmas in '45. I know we crossed the international dateline and we almost missed Christmas, but we ended up in Tinnean on Christmas. It was either the day after I think we arrived, and for Christmas, they'd been on powdered milk and powdered eggs and powdered potatoes for all of the time. We'd had no refrigeration. Well I wasn't, they were not too friendly to me because I'd been sleeping under sheets and they'd been sleeping on the ground in tents and it was raining and this powdered food. Well I, for Christmas, we flew in steak. I had my mess kit and I stood in line to get my steak. It was raining so we stood there in the rain with the steak, and the damn steak was so tough I couldn't cut it with my knife, but we had it, we did chew on it. FW: We've got about 5 minutes. DG: Five minutes… Tinnean, again I mentioned, we watched movies on sandbags and we'd get the latest movie, I think I saw Over the Rainbow, what's that girl's name? FW: Judy Garland? DG: Judy Garland. I watched Judy Garland, Over the Rainbow, found out the next day Japanese were living in the sugarcane and they were _____ we were watching our movie right next to us. And what they were not, they were trying to get food and clothes. They would steal our clothes off the line at night, and they were not going to hurt anybody, they were just surviving. We had one, there was I think eight or nine thousand Japanese killed on the island of Tinnean, and they were all pushed up in one big pile. And as being the inspector general, I had, ____ Colonel said for gosh sake, you've got to enclose that and bulldoze that more because we're international, the world will be against us if we… The island of Tinnean was farmers and they had a lot of hogs, and they had hogs running wild. And so we had to put fence around this pile of Japanese. I stayed at Tinnean and came back in '44. I just lacked, oh I think from March to August of spending the whole war in the pacific. I did go, I went to New Caledonia, Canton, ______, Anawetuk, Saipan, Guam, Tinnean. FW: Is there anything you would like to add in our last two or three minutes about your perspective on present times or words to the younger generation? DG: At Pearl Harbor, the few survivors of the Arizona bivouacked a block and half from the officer's club, and they'd come over the evening and talk. There's one I remember, he was vivid. He said he went to the University of Southern California. He took naval ROTC, which there were very few units at that time. Battleships before World War II was the thing to be in. He got assigned to the battleship West Virginia, and he thought he had it made. But he said it started off, his wife would come to Hawaii and the West Virginia would be in San Diego. She'd go to San Diego and he'd be out in Honolulu. He said I thought I had it made, but he said, I was a victim of the war and I can't come up with the word he said he was, but he was vivid about his destiny and what had been his lot. I was, my group, some say we were unfortunate. I'm inclined to think we're fortunate. We saw the war in World War II, went through the depression, the economy and all picked up after the war, and I consider myself fortunate and very lucky. FW: Thank you. DG: I'm honored to be asked. FW: Thank you so much, we're honored you were here. Thank you Mr. Gray, that was very heartwarming, excellent. DG: Do you have any questions? FW: I don't think so, I think we've covered everything that we needed. We'll put your photographs and maps with these records so that we'll have it all together. DG: All right, anything you want here. 2,228 acres, it was the largest, newest airfield in the world at the time of December 7. The entrance was up here and you came down Signal Blvd, which was a boulevard with hibiscus and flowers and you came to the officer's club which is down at the end at the entrance of Pearl Harbor. I, my quarters were the bachelor officer's quarters here when the war started. The first building hit was the hangar here, and I could see it from my little… Smart and I got up and walked down and the B-24 that was burning and the skull was here and it went down here, and I was in the ____ wing of the consolidated barracks here and the Hangar Blvd, the hangars are along here. And the bomb crater that we saw _____ was in Hangar Blvd here. It was a beautiful place, the tile orange roof, ____ landscaped and manicured and this strip here, every bomber that bombed in the pacific at one time landed here coming in from San Francisco to go on to Australia and the various other places. FW: Excellent. Thank you so much. DG: I enjoyed it, and I'm flattered to be asked. COUNTER 405
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Extent:: 1:00:46
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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