- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of Carroll Calkins Grinnell, Jr.
- Creator:
- Lacy, Margaret
Grinnell, Carroll Calkins, Jr., 1921-2008 - Date of Original:
- 2004-02-25
- Subject:
- Boeing 314 (Seaplane)
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Grinnell, Patricia Voohis, 1924-1991
Grinnell, Carroll Calkins, Sr., 1898-1945
General Electric Company
University of Minnesota
United States. Army. Officer Candidate School
Amherst College
Santo Tomas Internment Camp (Manila, Philippines)
Manila American Cemetery and Memorial (Manila, Philippines) - Location:
- Japan, 35.68536, 139.75309
Philippines, Manila, 14.5906216, 120.9799696
United States, California, Monterey County, Fort Ord Military Reservation (historical), 36.65278, -121.80056
United States, California, San Francisco County, Treasure Island, 37.82465, -122.37108
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Minnesota, Scott County, Savage, Camp Savage, 44.7809358, -93.3575869188219
United States, New York, Schenectady, 42.8142432, -73.9395687
United States, Texas, Camp Barkeley, 32.3510804, -99.8514412934425 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- Moving Image
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, Carroll Grinnell recounts his history in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during WWII. Although born in the United States, he spent most of his youth in Japan because his father was an engineer. Because he knew some Japanese, he was sent to a military intelligence school when the war broke out. He wasn't able to continue the program because he had bad vision; he became a dental supply officer. His father had been in Manila at the outbreak of war; he was trying to get out on the Pan American Clipper, but it was machine gunned and his father was captured. He was interned in Manila and became the civilian commandant. He was getting money from his company and using it to purchase food and drugs for the approximately four to six thousand internees. The Japanese found out about it and executued him. He was posthumously awarded the Medal of Freedom by General Courtney Hodges. Grinnell describes returning to Japan and gives a detailed account of their culture and history.
Carroll Calkins Grinnell, Jr., was in the U.S. Army in the Pacific during World War II.
MARGARET LACY (INTERVIEWER): This is the oral history summary that's part of the veterans recorded history program. Today is February the 25th, and I'm speaking with Carroll Grinnell. We're glad to have you here. C. C. GRINNELL: My name is Caroll Calkins Grinnell, C-A-R-R-O-L-L, Calkins is C-A-L-K-I-N-S, Grinnell, G-R-I-N-N-E-L-L. I was born in Schenectady, New York on July 21st, 1921. I grew up in Japan as a child because my father went out to Japan as an electrical engineer for the General Electric Company. I was two when we went out there in 1923. I spent my childhood there until 1933, going to school, and then my father was transferred to Manila Philippine Islands and I was there briefly and then went home to the United States in 1934 to actually go to school at a Country Day in Albany, New York. It was the Albany Academy. I went from there to Amherst College and graduated on a speed-up course on January 31, 1943, and two weeks later was inducted into the Army as an enlisted man. And because of my residence in Japan and some knowledge of the language, was picked by the Army to go into the Military Intelligence Training Service at the University of Michigan. And at the University of Michigan went through that, actually starting in several places, Camp Savage, Minnesota, and the East quadrangle at University of Minnesota. And then halfway through the course it was discovered that I was limited service, and in those days to lead a team of [unintelligible] Japanese Americans – second generation Americans to the Far East you had to be full service and full service meant no glasses. I wore glasses, so I did not qualify to be commissioned. However, the commandant of the intelligence school transferred me to the Medical Administration Corps and their OCS at Camp Barkley, Texas. And at Camp Barkley, Texas, I graduated as a “90 day wonder” and was transferred out to the Regional Station Hospital Fort Ord, California. This institution has been dismantled and no longer exists, but I was out there until I was discharged. Actually, I entered service on February 14th, 1943, and was discharged in June of 1946. I do not know the exact date. But during that time that I was in the Army I spent most of the time out in the Regional Station Hospital, first as a Dental Supply Officer and then ultimately as a Personnel Officer at the hospital. At the time I was married to my first wife who was a Gunnery Instructor, a WAVE in the Navy, and her experience there was quite interesting at Treasure Island and San Francisco Bay because at that time the people she was training for the Navy were stationed on freighters with anti-aircraft guns as protection, and many of those ships were sunk, and the same people that she had trained once came back. It was a very depressing time. The most interesting thing, I think, about my history has to do with my father, because at the outbreak of the war on December 7th for the Japanese he was in the Philippines and the records show that Manila was captured on December 9th, just two days later. He was scheduled to come home to the United States, but the Pan American Clipper Ship that he was scheduled to go on was sunk by the Japanese in Hong Kong Harbor. So he was interned at Santo Tomas University in Manila, and he was in there for three and a half years, and his position there was Civilian Commandant of the camp which had anywhere from four to six thousand people in it. And he was also surreptitiously getting company money, which he had hidden away at the time of his internment. He was using this to buy food, drugs for the internees, and as the war wore on he was not able to keep from the Japanese the fact that he was supplying this, so the Japanese executed him in January of 1945 just prior to MacArthur recapturing Manila, which was a very tragic thing. He received the Medal of Freedom posthumously, which was given to my mother by General Hodges. And we have a bit of history that my brother keeps as a record of his experiences. INTERVIEWER: He saved a lot of lives, didn't he? C. C. GRINNELL: He saved probably – I don't know how many lives, but he certainly made it as comfortable as possible for the people that were in the camp. The camp itself was a very difficult place because there was not room in the University quarters for any privacy at all. And in the yard is what they did, they had their little hooches, which were cases where people could do their own thing, where they could cook or do whatever, with food, and have some small degree of privacy. But this is the sad state of affairs that went on for three and a half years. And there have been many books written about this. I'm sure that the Library of Congress has these copies. I have some myself. INTERVIEWER: When you were growing up did you speak Japanese? C. C. GRINNELL: As a child it's very easy to learn the language, and even without language children learn to play together, but I spoke some Japanese and I recently went back to Japan in May of 2003 to see it for the first time in 70 years since I'd left. It was very interesting, very enlightening, because as a child I would never have seen the places that we went on this tour because my father had business and he would never take his son on trips like that. So that was very interesting. And yes, I still speak some Japanese. INTERVIEWER: I was wondering if that was utilized when you were in the service. C. C. GRINNELL: No, because what I did in the University of Michigan was to study military aspects of Japanese, which had to do with the weapons that they used, nomenclature for weapons and ranks of the military Japanese. It's called Heigo. Heigo is military Japanese. And so you learned that. I think at one time I knew 600 Kanji, which are the characters of that – Japanese and Chinese characters are quite almost similar, but they're pronounced differently by the Chinese and the Japanese. INTERVIEWER: I don't think anything has been recorded about the Japanese weaponry. C. C. GRINNELL: I never got into the field so that I recall anything specific about it, but they taught you a great deal about the mentality of the Japanese, as well as the mechanical aspects of the weaponry and so forth. INTERVIEWER: And I've always wondered just on my own this big country so far away and the size it is here, what was the mentality – I know it had to do [unintelligible] C. C. GRINNELL: Well, the Japanese had a Code of Honor, which was called Bushido. Bushido is a Code of Honor, which if respected properly would not only have great honor and respect for women and particularly children, Japanese are very fond of children, but the Japanese at the time of the war had been perverted by the militant people like Tojo and so forth – General Tojo, and they had perverted this to make the Japanese soldiers much more, if you will, aggressive, fearsome, and so forth. And they taught that it would be a dishonor to the family and to the country to be captured alive, which accounts for so many of the big battles where thousands were killed in the Far East because the Japanese were not able to surrender under the code they had been taught. That particular time and place was a total perversion of the Bushido Code of Honor, which was of course done way back when the Japanese were in charge of their island. Of course Japan change with the Meiji regime was put in after Perry opened up the Japanese country in 1858, when Perry and his ships came to Japan. INTERVIEWER: Perry? C. C. GRINNELL: Uh-huh, in 1858. Uh-huh, that's when the major regime started and when the enlightenment of the Japanese to the western world started. INTERVIEWER: It would have been a big change [unintelligible]. C. C. GRINNELL: Yes, a big change. First the Japanese had started, I guess, with the first visits of the Portuguese back in 1543 when the Portuguese were ship wrecked in Japan not too far Nagasaki -- INTERVIEWER: I didn't know that. C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah. Well, there's a lot of history behind that, and the Japanese were – they always had their emperors because the emperors in there were like a god. But politically speaking, there was a lot of you might say politicians who are the – I'm trying to think of the other lords – well, the Samurai were of course attached to these various lords. I wish I could remember the name of that, but I'll think of it. So there were Japanese bands or clans you might say which rule in different parts in Japan, the Samurai were the arms and legs of the local rulers to keep control. And in those feudal days the main currency was rice, because rice was – if you could have more rice fields, which is why the territorial battle started to gain control of the land, which produced rice and the more rice you produced the more you were respected and your power is greater. This is what happened in the feudal days. INTERVIEWER: They didn't carry money, they carried rice? C. C. GRINNELL: Well, they had forms of money but rice was really the underlying currency. It's like gold for the Japanese, and that's why to this day we have never really been able to export our rice which is much – we have a larger harvest and the price of our rice is far less than the Japanese because of the efficiency and the fact that we can produce it. But Japan is a little country. It's very mountainous, very small in comparison to the productive fields that we have. INTERVIEWER: I saw an [unintelligible] article where it said the Japanese will reject ours as not being quality but mainly sort of protectionist. C. C. GRINNELL: It's a protectionist thing, because if we would flood the country with our rice we'd have a lot of people put out of work. They wouldn't have anything to produce. Of course, the country has been totally changed into a commercialized operation now with all its manufacturing and so forth. INTERVIEWER: What did you think of present day Japan? C. C. GRINNELL: Well, going back after all this time has been a revelation in a lot of ways, but on the other hand you recall things and you respect what you see as part of history. We went to a gold mine, the island of Sado, which is where the prisoners that were exiled had to work in very hot and sweaty gold mines digging up gold. I saw a lot of things that I would never, obviously, have seen as a child. INTERVIEWER: I'm sure. Let's see. Fort Ord, stationed in the hospital and you were there during your service years? C. C. GRINNELL: Yes. Actually, after I was commissioned at Camp Barkley, Texas, we went to Fort Douglas for assignment and from there went out to Fort Ord. And Fort Ord was a huge armored camp. This was essentially for field artillery and armory, tanks. And it, as I say, is no longer in existence. INTERVIEWER: Could you tell us about a couple of your own memorable experiences. You did not have to go overseas. You were – C. C. GRINNELL: I was not – yeah, because I could not be a part of the military intelligence. The concept of military intelligence in the Far East was that you would be attached to a regiment or a division or an army, whatever, to do interrogation of Japanese prisoners, and then ultimately if Japan were to be occupied it could be a part of AMG, American Military Government. Of course, none of this happened, but that was the concept. They commissioned quite a few people in this service. A lot of them were Harvard graduates and people who would study Japanese or had been in Japan. And I met up with a couple of my classmates at different times in the same thing. INTERVIEWER: It must have been interesting, too. I don't want to leave out any of the important things. How did you stay in touch with your family? C. C. GRINNELL: Well, as far as my father was concerned, he sent us several heavily censored postal cards. That was about the limitation. Of course, not going abroad letters or phone calls were the way to go for contact. INTERVIEWER: Do you recall the day your service ended? C. C. GRINNELL: It ended actually in Fort Dix, New Jersey. I had hoped at that time to be discharged in California because it would have been at that time an excellent place to go, but could not get any particular employment out there. I think I did get an offer to be a small newspaper correspondent. I think the pay at that point – offering was $35 a week, but I couldn't figure how to do that because we had a baby on the way, my wife and I, so went back to Fort Dix and then I went into the business world and went with, as a trainee, with Colgate Palmolive Company. I worked there for 10 years and then pursued a series of other assignments in advertising agencies and other marketing areas. But I ended my career with 15 years at Kraft Foods and that was in the Chicago area. And from that time after retirement went out to California again. [LAUGHTER] I went to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara is a wonderful city because it's got all the cultural advantages of Atlanta but the size is much smaller and the weather is very stable. The weather is always between 70 and 80 and very dry, and you've got the sea and the mountains right there. INTERVIEWER: You like California. So you went right back to work; you didn't put the GI Bill to use. C. C. GRINNELL: I had completed my college training. INTERVIEWER: Already? C. C. GRINNELL: Yes. What I did was to take a speed up course in the summer of 1942 and then graduated on January 31st, 1943 and two weeks later was in the Army. So a deferment is what I got at that point. INTERVIEWER: You didn't lose any time. How did the military experience influence your thinking about the war or about the military in general? C. C. GRINNELL: I don't think it had any great impact on my thinking simply because I was doing essentially a paper job, a desk job, and to me that was not too different except in the venue of being part of the Army as opposed to being in business. INTERVIEWER: Have you had a chance to keep up with any of the veterans organizations, or do you attend – C. C. GRINNELL: I don't attend any veterans' organizations. I try to keep up with people that I had known in Japan. It's of interest that one of my classmates when I was in Japan in fifth and sixth grades I saw him again in college. He had never been in the United States because he'd always lived there. But he's Caucasian, an American, and he is now married to a Paraguayan lady and lives in Quito Ecuador and someone pointed his recent history became the Honorary Japanese Consul for Ecuador because he spoke Japanese and Spanish and English fluently. INTERVIEWER: Gracious. C. C. GRINNELL: [LAUGHTER] Just an example of some of my people. INTERVIEWER: I think you've already answered this. How did your service and experiences affect your life? C. C. GRINNELL: I guess I could say that I met my first wife because she was a co-ed at the University of Michigan, because of the group of men she eventually decided before – I guess through her sophomore year that she would go into the Navy, and became a WAVE and, as I say, became a gunnery instructor for the Navy at Fort Ord – not at Fort Ord, at the Treasure Island. So, at Treasure Island we were married in 1945, just toward the end of the war. INTERVIEWER: And then you had a child. C. C. GRINNELL: And then we had a child who was born in '46. I have three children. INTERVIEWER: Three? C. C. GRINNELL: All in their 50s. [LAUGHTER] INTERVIEWER: You don't have to – one man said he didn't get a good night's sleep until his children were grown up. C. C. GRINNELL: You still don't get a good night sleep because you're worried about some of the stupid things that they're doing. [LAUGTHER] INTERVIEWER: I don't want to miss any high points now, so we still got some time. C. C. GRINNELL: Well, the high point of my life was that after my first wife died her younger sister, who is a long time resident in Atlanta, called up and said, “Would you like to come to a party?” I said, “Certainly.” So I came to a party at the Driving Club and met a fine bunch of ladies and so forth, couples as well as singles. There were about six or seven singles and I had my choice. And so, we got married. INTERVIEWER: And that's why you're in Atlanta, Georgia? C. C. GRINNELL: Uh-huh, and been married 11 years. INTERVIEWER: There was something I was going to ask you about Japan. I was so impressed that you communicated in both languages. C. C. GRINNELL: Well, I only – I speak enough so that I can get around. It would not be very difficult. INTERVIEWER: Yeah. C. C. GRINNELL: But your lack of vocabulary really comes from disuse. I think I remember enough just to be able to -- if I were on my own to go around Japan would not be difficult. And of course when you travel around as we do, we go on a lot of trips during the year, you meet Japanese tour groups, and I sidle up to somebody in the tour group that looks like he'd like to talk and I start using my Japanese, and immediately starts using his English because he wants to practice and I want to practice and we kept doing the other thing. [LAUGHTER] INTERVIEWER: You know what I used to wonder when I read the terrible things that happened during the war, what do the Japanese people – how do they look on [unintelligible] nowadays and how did they look on [unintelligible] back then? C. C. GRINNELL: The populous, not talking about the Army, I think have had basically a favorable opinion, and of course because we treated them well after MacArthur signed the Peace Treaty, they were treated benevolently, and so I think that carries over into – throughout the relationship today. INTERVIEWER: Let me see. Did you do any further training while you were in the service? C. C. GRINNELL: No. Except, you know, the usual transportation wherever they send you, but no, there was no extracurricular travel at that point. INTERVIEWER: What else do you want to add that we have not covered already? C. C. GRINNELL: I can't think of anything significant here. INTERVIEWER: Military service didn't particularly affect your career? C. C. GRINNELL: No, no. As I say, at three and a half years there's not – there's no impact on civilian life, you might say, as a result of what I served as. If I had gone overseas I'm sure the reaction might have been more dramatic. INTERVIEWER: I didn't know they made such import – or how can I say it? I was surprised about the glasses – C. C. GRINNELL: Well, times changed. Today, I don't think those regulations are in effect. I think if you are healthy and pass their physical, glasses are not a problem. In those days, of course, you know, you didn't have shatter proof glasses. INTERVIEWER: That's a good point. I remember that when my kid was on his bicycle. C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Yes. Did you have any choice about your job assignments? C. C. GRINNELL: Well, I had hoped, as I mentioned, to get into the Military Intelligence, and I would have look forward because I had this Japanese experiences as a child that I would have looked forward to being in the military government. I have seen the Hiroshima thing. They have a wonderful museum in Hiroshima – I guess should pronounce it Hiroshima – but it shows you the impact on the city. The devastation was really created because the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima had a parachute and it was set to explode at 2,000 feet, and because of that it did not hit the ground per se, it exploded in the impact, wiped out miles and miles. The photographs in the museum there just show total devastation, total devastation for miles. INTERVIEWER: That was what it was supposed to do. Is that correct? C. C. GRINNELL: That's what it was supposed to do. It was supposed to be a killer and it was. Today the – INTERVIEWER: It shortened the war so much. C. C. GRINNELL: Well, it did. It did. So you would say for all the lives lost at the bomb, probably millions more were saved. Today there is a skeleton of one building that seems to have survived and you've seen it probably. It's a skeletal iron which is there and they've kept it as a memorial even though the city has been totally rebuilt. INTERVIEWER: The Germans had a big old building which they had framed those sections so that they showed the wall damage but they built the rest all back. C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah. Yeah. INTERVIEWER: They ended up doing that to show what had happened. I guess they all have war memories. C. C. GRINNELL: Well, yeah. I've been to Europe and the Far East and seen Dachau and Auschwitz and places like that. The Japanese prisoner war camps were not less than that at all. I mean, we all know the River Cry [unintelligible] march from Luzon after [unintelligible] fell. INTERVIEWER: [unintelligible] C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah, well I went – when I was in the Philippines in 1995 we were taken out to the military cemetery there where my dad is buried, and I think there are some 36,000 or so graves there, half of which are unidentified. But I was on the tour and made contact with the person in charge of the camp and so was met with a golf cart when our bus got there and taken right to where he was buried, which was 50 years after he died. INTERVIEWER: So he had a marker? C. C. GRINNELL: Oh, yeah, just like the other soldiers there. There were three other men – two other men that were killed with my father because they had been also instrumental in managing, you know, as best they could. INTERVIEWER: They were executed? C. C. GRINNELL: Uh-huh. INTERVIEWER: It must have been a very powerful moment of fear. C. C. GRINNELL: It was. INTERVIEWER: I don't want to miss anything. C. C. GRINNELL: I don't have anything here that is in my short write up. INTERVIEWER: [unintelligible] C. C. GRINNELL: If you wish to, that's fine. INTERVIEWER: I don't think she had time to decide – C. C. GRINNELL: Well, that's okay. I mean, I can read this if you can use it, and I'll just pick it up at some point when you're through. INTERVIEWER: Well, thank you so much – C. C. GRINNELL: Well, thank you. INTERVIEWER: -- for everything you've told us. I've always been curious about Japan and the people [RECORDING CUTS OUT] C. C. GRINNELL: I suggest you go. INTERVIEWER: Well, I heard that the streets do not have the same numbering that we have [unintelligible] and I'll get lost. C. C. GRINNELL: I can't tell you about that, but there must be something magic about the way their post office people know how to find something. INTERVIEWER: [unintelligible] she said she went over there to study art; she went for the travel experience. She said you write down their address and somebody will help you find your way home, but she never went out except on the weekends because there was such a crowd, such a population. C. C. GRINNELL: The last part of my – yeah, well the nice part of my tour was that because you not only hit big cities but you hit small towns and so forth, we actually circumnavigated the four island, the four major islands in Japan, which Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido. INTERVIEWER: That was quite a tour. C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah, that was the tour with the Tauck Tours. INTERVIEWER: What was the most impressive thing about that tour that you picked up that was surprising? C. C. GRINNELL: I guess seeing the effect of the bomb, because that – you know Nagasaki was also bombed, a second bomb, and it turned out that Nagasaki was not at all destroyed because the bomb was – it did not fall where it was supposed to. It actually fell on the other side of a mountain which protected the city and destroyed a Catholic church, but it did not really have the devastation on people and homes the way the one in Hiroshima did. INTERVIEWER: Yeah, it is smaller. C. C. GRINNELL: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: Any particular explanation about how that happened? C. C. GRINNELL: I never found out any explanation. INTERVIEWER: But it was a deciding factor wasn't it? C. C. GRINNELL: I think the fact that we did it twice reinforced the seriousness of the – Japan itself. INTERVIEWER: Well, I want to thank you again. I get so involved with this. It's such interesting – C. C. GRINNELL: How many have you done? INTERVIEWER: [unintelligible] one little look see here. C. C. GRINNELL: Your light is still blinking. INTERVIEWER: I know. C. C. GRINNELL: There's a red button – [END INTERVIEW] [KS] - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/186
- Additional Rights Information:
- This material is protected by copyright law. (Title 17, U.S. Code) Permission for use must be cleared through the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center. Licensing agreement may be required.
- Extent:
- 35:26
- 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
- Rights:
-
