Oral history interview of James Leland Jackson

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of James Leland Jackson
Creator:: Pace, Hayden
Jackson, James Leland, 1913-
Date of Original:: 2002-01-14
Subject:: Leyte Gulf, Battle of, Philippines, 1944
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Japan--Okinawa Island
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Long, David D., 1915-2007
Griffin, George C., 1897-1990
Allen, Carl W, 1925-
Georgia Institute of Technology
United States. Naval Reserve Officers Training Corps
Naval Weapons Station (Yorktown, Va.)
United States. Navy. Naval District, 7th
Revenge (Minesweeper : AM-110)
United States. Navy. Fleet, 3rd
Surface Navy Association (U.S.)
United States. Navy. Fleet, 5th
Anderson (Destroyer : DD-411)
Location:: Aruba, 12.5, -69.96667
East China Sea, 29.0, 125.0
Guam, 13.47861, 144.81834
Japan, Honshu, 36.0, 138.0
Japan, Kerama Islands, 26.230173, 127.370405359281
Japan, Nakagusuku Bay, 26.265087, 127.785374
Japan, Okinawa, 26.53806, 127.96778
Japan, Tokyo, 35.709026, 139.731992
Japan, Tokyo Bay, 35.6828387, 139.7594549
Marshall Islands, Kwajalein Atoll, 9.1257934, 167.5740472
Micronesia, Ulithi, 9.9613889, 139.6036111
Philippines, San Bernardino Strait, 7.0444094, 125.5394352
Philippines, Surigao Strait, 9.8153114, 125.4545447
United States, California, City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco, 37.77493, -122.41942
United States, Florida, Duval County, Jacksonville, 30.33218, -81.65565
United States, Florida, Duval County, Saint Johns River, 30.40053, -81.40045
United States, Florida, Miami-Dade County, Miami, 25.77427, -80.19366
United States, Florida, Monroe County, Key West, 24.55524, -81.78163
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Hawaii, Honolulu County, Pearl Harbor, 21.34475, -157.97739
United States, Maine, Knox County, Rockland, 44.10369, -69.10893
United States, Oregon, Portland, 45.5202471, -122.6741949
United States, South Carolina, Charleston County, Charleston, 32.77657, -79.93092
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, James Leland Jackson describes his career in the U.S. Navy during World War II. He recalls his time at Georgia Tech, where ROTC was required; he chose the Navy because they furnished uniforms. He remembers his early days in the Naval Reserves before the war broke out and how it came about that he went to the Pacific. He describes his days at the Naval Mine Warfare School, where they were taught by a professor from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served on an Auxiliary Minesweeper (YMS) in the Atlantic and Caribbean; part of their mission was to escort oil tankers to protect them from German submarines. He describes the various mines used by the U.S., the Japanese, and the Germans, and tells the story of the sinking of a South American iron ore ship. He describes in detail methods of sweeping and detonating mines. He recalls his change-of-command ceremony and what his ship was like, as well as detailing life aboard a minesweeper. He describes in detail his part in the Battle of Leyte Gulf, having six battleships looking after him, and describing a destroyer which was damaged in the battle. He recalls hearing about the dropping of the atomic bomb and the reaction of the sailors to V-J Day. He reports feeling a sense of foreboding about the future of war with a weapon such as the atomic bomb. His next orders were to sweep Tokyo Bay; they had a Japanese naval officer aboard to assist. The officer had attended Yale and spoke perfect English. He recalls seeing a sign on a warehouse that read "Welcome U.S. Navy come and get us" that had been posted by American POWs. He describes Tokyo and the sights he saw there; he found the Japanese to be deferential but recalls he had been instructed not to bow to Japanese even if bowed to. He relates his feelings the day he was relieved of command as well as his trip home aboard a transport ship and later the Great Northern Railroad. He describes an award he received and reads a quote from Admiral Nimitz about the value of minesweepers. He recalls Christmas of 1944 when his ship held a service; a sailor named Cassels, who was a baker, suggested a Christmas service. Captain Jackson played Christmas songs on his accordion. He recalls the degree of patriotism in the nation during World War II. He tells of a reunion he attended with his wife.
James Leland Jackson was a Naval officer during World War II.
JAMES LELAND JACKSON WWII Oral Histories January 14, 2004 Atlanta History Center Interviewer: Hayden Pace Transcriber: Joyce Dumas [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: This will be the recorded interview of James Leland Jackson taken on January fourteen, two thousand and four at the Atlanta History Center, the Library of Congress Veterans Project. Mr. Jackson, why don't you give us your date of birth. Jackson: Date of birth? September twenty-third, nineteen thirteen. Interviewer: Where were you born? Jackson: Atlanta, Georgia. Interviewer: And where do you currently reside? Jackson: I live in Macon, Georgia, and Atlanta. Interviewer: Have you lived in Macon and Atlanta your whole life? Jackson: Moved to Macon in nineteen fifty-five. Went in business down there in nineteen fifty-five. Interviewer: What kind of business? Jackson: Automobile business. Automobile retail. Interviewer: And I know you're currently married cause your wife is sitting next to me. What is her name? Jackson: Her name is Alice and her friends call her Boo. I call her Alice and when I refer to her with her friends, I call her Boo. Interviewer: And do you have any children? Jackson: I have two, son and a daughter. Interviewer: And what are their names? Jackson: My son's name is James Leland Jackson Junior and my daughter's name is Alice. Interviewer: Mr. Jackson, where did you go to high school? Jackson: Tech High School. Interviewer: Is that located here in Atlanta? Jackson: Oh, yes sir. It was here a long time and it was…Tech High School and Boys' High were put together as Roosevelt High School. I think that's what it is now. That was forty-seven. Interviewer: So you graduated in forty-seven? Jackson: High school? I graduated from high school in…no. Interviewer: When did you graduate high school? Jackson: Nineteen thirty-one. Interviewer: Okay. And what did you do after high school? Jackson: I went to college. Georgia Tech. Interviewer: Were you in the ROTC program then? Jackson: Naval ROTC. Interviewer: What was that like? Jackson: Well, I…when you went to Tech, you had to take two years of military service, either Army or the Air Force or the Navy. The Navy seemed to be the most desirable. First thing…first, your uniforms. The Army did not. They had to buy the uniforms. That made a big difference to me at the time. And they paid you a little bit, too, which is [inaudible]. But it was a preferred service and we…I was there in the program for four years. And when I graduated, I was commissioned as a ensign in the United States Navy in the reserves. Interviewer: What year did you graduate? Jackson: Nineteen thirty-five. Interviewer: And you said the Navy was the more desirable of the branches of the military to be involved with. Did that mean that availability was… Jackson: Availability was…they couldn't accept everybody that applied. I was surprised that I was able to get in. Interviewer: Do you remember how they determined who got in? Jackson: I don't know. Interviewer: Okay. Jackson: I didn't investigate, I just applied and I was surprised when I was accepted. Interviewer: Did you have other friends who were commissioned… Jackson: Oh yes. Yes. Yes. Yes, indeed. One of the…he was commissioned two years…he graduated two years after I did at Georgia Tech. A fella named Dave Long. He's an Atlanta boy and he was out in the Pacific with me. And we're good friends. And he lives in Atlanta now. Interviewer: What is your first memory of the war? Jackson: First memory of the war? Now, do you want to start out before we got in or… Interviewer: Sure. Yeah. Jackson: I can start back when I went on active duty. Do you want me to start there? Interviewer: Sure. Jackson: I was single at the time and in the fall of nineteen forty, George Griffin called me on the telephone. If you'd ever gone to Tech, you'd know George Griffin. He knew everybody. He was the dean of men and track coach and everybody loved George and George knew everybody and did not forget a single name. He was a wonderful fella. And they have a bronze cast of him now sitting on a bench at Georgia Tech campus. But George called me up and said, “Leland, how would you like”…well, the first thing he said was, “Do you have mobilization orders?” And I said, “Yes. I'm supposed to go old World War One Fort [inaudible] Panama.” And I said, “That's not a good duty.” And he said, “I know.” He said, “How would you like to spend the entire war cruising up and down the east coast of Florida in a converted yacht?” I said, “George, you've got to be kidding. I know you.” He said, “No.” He said, “They do need some men down there at the Naval Reserve at Jacksonville. They've got a unit on active duty down there and they need training.” And he said, “They need another officer down there and so I thought of you. Thought you might like to do that.” Well, I said, “George, let me call you back in a few minutes,” which I did. Didn't take long cause I was single. I didn't have to ask anybody's permission. Now I said, “You know, sounds pretty good. I think I will.” So I went down there. And that's how I happened to get into so-called active duty. That was about the year before Pearl Harbor. And all we did was cruise around in a motor whale boat up and down the St. John's River cause they didn't have any ships. And there they were very short of ships. And that's the reason they were converting pleasure yachts to do duty off the coast, look for submarines, anything else when we got to war. But they were converting these ships. But that was about it in Jacksonville. And then in August of nineteen forty-one…oh, this was…oh, nineteen forty. August, nineteen…no, it's August, nineteen forty-one. I was called to Rockland, Maine, to help put a ship in commission that was being built up there. And that's how I happened to get my first sea duty. And stayed on that ship until…now Pearl Harbor. You asked me about that when I…where was I? I was lying up in the bunk on Sunday morning, reading a newspaper with the radio on in Jacksonville, tied up to the dock. And that's when I heard it on the radio, that the Japs had bombed Pearl Harbor. It's quite interesting though. When I went…when I was in the Naval ROTC back there from nineteen thirty-one to thirty-five, the officers there were sure we were gonna get in a war with Japan. When they talked about their naval vessels and all that and they…their attitude was that the Japanese Navy was inferior to ours. It didn't turn out that way. But they were sure they could lick them. But they figured that we would have to go to war with them sooner or later. Interviewer: So when you were sitting in your bunk and heard about Pearl Harbor, was that the first thing that popped into your mind, was the… Jackson: Well, a lot of things popped into my mind. I said, “We're in it now.” And I figured it was gonna take three or four years before the thing was over. Of course, everybody got all excited and we went out to patrol the entrance to the St. John's River. Everybody…we had what you call “hot bunks”, meaning that you'd sleep for a while and be on watch for a while, sleep for a while, be on watch for a while. They had too many men on board, so we'd have to use somebody else's bunk. But the next thing that happened was we went to Charleston to put more heavy armor on the ship and while I was there all I got all orders to Mine Warfare School. This was in the same month, December, nineteen forty-one. And I went to Naval Mine Warfare School for three months in Yorktown, Virginia. Interviewer: Okay, what was that like? Jackson: That was a training school for officers for mine warfare. There were four or five Georgia Tech boys up there. And we had a…we enjoyed it thoroughly. It was very simple. They had an MIT professor, who was the smartest guy I ever saw, teaching us electricity and magnetism and stuff like that. ‘Course, we knew everything he was talking about cause most fellas, all this was new to them. But you know, going to Georgia Tech you'd studied all that stuff. But anyway, we had a good time up there. When I left they sent me to Jacksonville to take command of a YMS. That's a little minesweeper about a hundred and twenty-feet long. A wooden mine sweeper. And it was being built there. And so I took command of it and we finally wound up in the Caribbean escorting all small oil tankers from Columbia to the island of Aruba where they had refineries. And at that particular time, the German submarines were real active on the East Coast. You know, they would lay off of there and all these tankers would be running in the channel and they'd just spot them real easy and they sunk a lot of tankers along there. Interviewer: How long was the mine warfare school? Jackson: It lasted three months. Interviewer: Was it very intense? I mean from morning to [inaudible]. Jackson: Well, it was in a way, but I don't look at it as that way. They demonstrated on the York River how to do it and all that sort of stuff. It didn't seem to be too intense to us. We just…I just remember as having a good time. We'd go up to Williamsburg every weekend, you know, and just enjoyed life. Interviewer: What was morale like among the other students there? Jackson: Fine. As I recall it was very fine. When you're young like that you don't…it's just that everything's an adventure. Everybody was conscious of that we were in war [sic]. And we had a good cause. The atmosphere of the country then was just all for service. We had to beat the Japs and the Germans. Interviewer: You said you were commanding a twenty-foot [sic] long wooden mine sweeper. Jackson: A hundred and twenty foot. Interviewer: Hundred. Jackson: [laughs] Interviewer: Thank you. Jackson: [laughing] Big difference. Interviewer: What was that like? Jackson: What was it like? Well, we never saw anything that was dangerous or anything else. We had, of course, we had all the minesweeping gear on board. But we were supposed to do escort duty, meaning that we had depth charges which you use against submarines and sound gear to pick up the submarine. Interviewer: How many people were on board? Jackson: There were about…I'd say there were about three or four officers and about, I'd say, about…I can't recall exactly. About thirty-five enlisted men. Interviewer: You said you never came across any German subs? Jackson: Oh no. Uh-uh. But they were there. Matter of fact, I didn't stay down there too long. I was called in the fall of nineteen…this was nineteen forty-two to go to Miami to be minesweeping officer for the Seventh Naval District, which was all the coast of Florida. And I would be stationed at Miami. And I was stationed there for one year. It was my responsibility to oversee all the exploratory minesweeping in the particular harbors. All the big harbors had a couple of YMSs. Supposed to, you know, be checking to be sure the German submarines hadn't laid any mines. Interviewer: Was there any…did it turn out that any mines had been laid in any of these harbors? Jackson: No. The only mines that were laid were laid by us at Key West. And they were supposed to be protective mines, defensive mines. Interviewer: How did those operate? You'd lay out of a barrier of these and then notify everyone on your side where they are? Jackson: [laughs] [inaudible] notify where they are, yeah. Now I didn't do any mine laying, but I know how it was done. Of course, you've got to have a clear channel through the mines so you can get to the dock. Key West is a bunch of reefs, you know, and the water's not very deep and it's very clear. But they had a channel that was safe. On either side of the channel mines had been laid by the United States. And we had, I won't get into it; you can get into a lot of discussion about particular types of mines, but these are bored [phonetic] mines, contact mines as we call them. They were a special type. They were chained, moored and [inaudible] some other little things. But anyway, I knew how they operated. But a ship from South America was…well, [inaudible] ore, which is tin [phonetic] ore, in big demand…was coming into dock at Key West and got out of the channel and hit a mine and was sunk right off the channel in the minefield. The water's not very deep there, so at low tide you could see the deckhouse. It was sitting upright. High tide, you could see the king [phonetic] posts. But it was my job, they sent me down there to get the mines away from that ship so they could send the tugs in there to get the mine…get the iron ore out of the ship, cause they needed it. So I go down there and improvise a lot and finally blow up all the mines around the ship. Interviewer: Is that what…that was the way to remove a mine is to simply blow it up? Jackson: Well, it ain't simple to blow it up. First thing, these particular mines had a float on them. If you hit this one on the float, well, it'd blow up the mine. But if you hit the mine it wouldn't. So what you do is get a wire out there between two ships—and this is an oversimplification—and when that wire hits that mooring wire, it blows the mine up. Now this is our mines. Japanese mines didn't have that. They were just a circular sphere with prongs on it and you had to hit one of those prongs and they had some…you'd bend it and it would let some acid flow down inside and it would cause a reaction and explode the mine. But that's a typical mine. These were that, plus some additional things. But a [inaudible] had positive buoyancy, so if you cut the mooring cable it'll float to the top and then you can dispose of it that way too while it's floating. That's what I usually did. Interviewer: Was there much media attention to the sinking of the South American ship? Jackson: No. So much going on. So many submarines out there sinking ships that were carrying supplies to England off the east coast of Florida. They were bad. German subs were all over the place out there. Interviewer: Do you remember your commanding officer when you were the commander for the Seventh Naval District? Jackson: My commanding officer's name was Commander Stackem [phonetic]. He was a retired Annapolis man. Interviewer: How often did you interact with him? Jackson: Well, his office was right in the same area. I was next to him and we'd talk a lot, friendly and about operations, that sort of stuff. He didn't know anything about mines and he didn't want to. Most people didn't. Most officers didn't want to know anything about them either. It's all kind of mysterious. Interviewer: They relied upon you for that. Jackson: Yep. Oh, absolutely. Interviewer: So, where did you go next after serving as commander for the Seventh Naval District? Jackson: Well, in December…November, December of nineteen forty-two…forty-three…I was there in during the year of forty-three. I decided…my conscience was getting the best of me. I wanted to get with it and get out into the Pacific where the action was. And I'd had enough of shore duty. So I called up a friend of mine in the Bureau of Personnel in Washington. And I told him that I wanted to get command of a fleet mine sweeper in the Pacific. And he said, “Fine”. He said, “I'll fix you up”. He knew me [inaudible] anything else. So I got orders to go to take command of the USS Revenge. Now I wanted him…I told him I wanted to get a new one that was being built at Portland, Oregon, under construction. I'd like to have that, you know, brand new and under construction, be there a while and know all about the ship before it went to sea. But it didn't work out that way with me. This ship was at Pearl Harbor already and had already been in one invasion in the Marshall Islands. When I got there, the next day I was supposed to go out to the invasion of Quadgalen [phonetic-probably Quadacanal] in the Marshall Islands with the fleet. Well, they decided…I say “they”. It was decided maybe the best thing to do was leave the commanding officer on board until that operation was over, which suited me just fine. Cause I didn't want to get on there, commanding officer of the ship, the next day go on out, you know, in this operation with a fleet that had never done that before. So that was fine. So that's what happened. We were in…we went right out to Quadgalen [phonetic], Marshall Islands, and we took that. Right after we'd taken it, I took command right there. Interviewer: So while they went out to the Marshall Islands, did you go with them or did you stay back? Jackson: I stayed on the ship. Interviewer: Okay. Jackson: Oh yeah. It was interesting. Interviewer: And people knew that you were going to be assuming command? Jackson: Oh yes. Interviewer: Of the ship? Jackson: Yes. Interviewer: So what was your role on the ship during [inaudible]? Jackson: Nothing. Interviewer: Is that interesting? Jackson: Observation. I wasn't [inaudible]. When you take command of a ship there's a ceremony. They read your orders and that sort of stuff and have all the crew on the foc'sle and that sort of stuff and officially congratulate the new commanding officer and all that. So, I was just a passenger on board. I had not put on commanding officer. I had no duties. Interviewer: Did any of the men know that you were going to be assuming that control? Did any of the men on the ship know that you were going to be command… Jackson: Well, I'm sure they did. You know, nothing passes without . . . important, everybody knows everything. Interviewer: Well how about…when did you have the ceremony? Was that in the Marshall Islands or [inaudible]? Jackson: In the Marshall Islands. Sure did. Right there in the middle of the lagoon in Quadgalen [phonetic]. Interviewer: Do you remember that day? Jackson: Oh yes. Absolutely. Interviewer: Why don't you describe that a little, the ceremony and taking command of the ship. Jackson: [laughs] Not any big ceremony. I had them make it out on foc'sle--that's the forward part of the ship—in formation. I think I read my orders and it's not too big a deal. I read my orders and so on and he accepts it and congratulates me and we shake hands and that's about it. You read your orders and that's it. Interviewer: And then turn the ship back toward [inaudible]? Jackson: And I'm in command and he leaves. That's it. Interviewer: Did you remember what your first orders were? Jackson: What the orders were? Take command of the ship. Interviewer: How about after that? How about after that? Jackson: After that we went up to an island and picked up a couple of ships to escort back to Pearl Harbor. Now these minesweepers were pretty big. They were two hundred and twenty feet long with about twelve officers and a hundred and twenty-five or thirty men. But we had all the equipment a destroyer had. We had sound gear, radar, three-inch twenty-five guns, twenty millimeters, forty millimeters and sound gear [sic], depth charges and kay [phonetic] guns. We had everything a destroyer had for anti-submarine war, which we were supposed to do when we weren't sweeping mines. So I had to escort them and what you do when you escort ships, you get out of ahead of them and you go back and forth from one side to the other with that sound gear sweeping out ahead, see if you can pick up anything. And it goes on constantly all the time while you're…and you can hear it sending out the pings. Interviewer: Was that technology accurate enough that you felt [inaudible]? Jackson: Oh yeah. There's no problem with that. No. But we had that thing going all the time. A man was operating it twenty-four hours a day. When you were at sea. Interviewer: Did you encounter any problems coming back to Pearl Harbor? Jackson: No. No. No. No. We just got back. And I think fortunately they had a problem with one engine. We had four diesel electric engines. Very powerful. You have to have lots of power because you're pulling that sweep gear, when you're sweeping mines. And we could do…we could tow vessels a lot larger than we were too. And we did. We had to tow one vessel all the way from [inaudible]…from the South Pacific to Pearl Harbor. Had to tow it all the way and we could do that. Well, what I was saying was, when we arrived at Pearl Harbor, we got orders to go to San Francisco to repair this main engine, which was very joyful news. We stayed there thirty days and then headed back. Interviewer: What did you do during the thirty days? Jackson: Well, I don't know what…everybody did a lot of different things. I don't think we need to discuss all that here. [laughter] Interviewer: All right. At the expiration of the thirty days, what did you do? Jackson: We went back to Pearl Harbor. Escorted a ship back to Pearl Harbor. And after that, I think that was about in July of nineteen forty-four. After that we did escort duty between Pearl Harbor and some of the islands. Always had to supply them. A lot going on back and forth. And that kind of duty was pretty dull. That's the problem on that type of work. A lot of times it's pretty boring. Same thing every day. You know, nothing. Well, you do a lot of training on board and you practice target shooting and all that sort of stuff. But it's kind of boring. It's an unusual thing, but I wouldn't unusual, but it's an interesting thing. The men on board were looking for any kind of excitement, sweeping mines, shooting at airplanes, anything. They never got…they weren't afraid of anything. All they wanted was something to do and get a shot at something. Interviewer: Did that ever come? Jackson: Huh? Interviewer: Did that ever come? Jackson: Oh yes. Particularly in Okinawa. Oh yeah. Plenty. Hell, yes. Interviewer: When did the monotony of it stop? Jackson: Where it stopped were two times, I suppose. Once when they had shore duty and could get off the ship or when we were sweeping. Or maybe going through training exercises. You know, go out with three or four ships at a time and do maneuvers with them. We'd fire at targets pulled by a plane. That sort of stuff. We'd go out and practice sweeping. Interviewer: So after you left Pearl Harbor, where did you go after that? Jackson: After I left Pearl? Well, when we left Pearl Harbor for good we went to Ulithee [phonetic], which was a staging area for the invasion of the Philippines. And that's when we went to the Battle of the Laytee [phonetic] Gulf. You've probably heard of the Battle of the Laytee Gulf. When there were mines in the entrance of that harbor…up to the gulf, there were mines and we had to sweep them and we did. And in bad weather. Tail end of a typhoon. That's what we had to watch out for. Typhoons occurred real often and didn't last long. You'd try to run away from them which you did most of the time. Interviewer: How does that affect your work when you're dealing with horrible weather like that? Jackson: Well, you say affect my work. The minesweeping, you couldn't do it if you were right in the middle of a typhoon. But you know, you could be on the edge or it could have passed by, but the weather still rough and the waves are still high. But you can…you prefer calm weather. But you can do it when the water's a little rough. It just makes it more difficult. But we had to do it the next day to keep the invasion on schedule and the water was pretty rough. And we went in there and swept some mines and it was kind of exciting for the boys because the way we disposed of them was with a thirty-caliber rifle. And he's stand up on the flying bridge with those rifles and man, they just had a big time. They'd hit one and hear this big explosion, you know, and shrapnel falling down on the deck and everything else. But there's a lot more details to it, you know. You have to watch out what you were doing as commanding officer. Be sure your ship doesn't hit a mine [inaudible] with a ship in front of you. But you know, [inaudible] formation of six ships, four to six ships. And [inaudible] formation where the first ship goes in without any protection. The rest of them, they go in and sweep there and the sweep gear streams out about forty-five degrees using the starboard—sometimes the port—but usually the starboard, to the right. So the second, third and fourth ship, they always…the ships [inaudible], but the sweep gear's in waters [inaudible]. But what you've got to do is watch out for the ship ahead of you. When he cuts those mines, you don't want to run into them cause they'll float. Interviewer: Did that ever happen? When you were aboard? Jackson: Oh well, I had a couple of exciting events happen when we cut two of them and had one of them on my port bow and one of on the starboard bow and I had to get out of the way of both of them. Interviewer: How did you do that? Jackson: Just maneuvered the ship properly. I watched it go down the sides, you know, and all that sort of stuff. Just by careful maneuvering the ship. Interviewer: All right. So after the Battle of the Laytee [phonetic] Gulf… Jackson: The Battle of Laytee [phonetic] Gulf? Interviewer: Where did you go next? Jackson: What did I do? Yeah. Well, we sweep the mines in the gulf and then we went in there and anchored. And we didn't do anything during the Battle of Laytee [phonetic] Gulf except hear what was going on. I didn't know all of it until later. But I knew that something big was going on and they had Japanese ships coming up through Suragawa Straights from the south and another task force of Japanese ships coming through San Bernardino Straights from the north. And we had six old battleships in there looking after us. And I figured they might get in there and start bombarding everything in there, everybody in the anchorage. So I was [laughs] on the bridge looking at the chart to find a place I could go hide from those [inaudible]. [laughs] I didn't actually take any part in the battle. But that was…we knew what was going on. We could see the flashes and hear the voice radios cackling and all that sort of stuff. Interviewer: Was that normal during battles for you to serve the purpose of sweeping mines and then to anchor and wait? Jackson: Well, we had done our job and sometimes they'll send us away immediately, to escort a ship that's been hit or something or even to tow some ship. In this particular case, there was a destroyer that was hit pretty badly. And I'll never forget this one. He came up alongside and tied to us for services. He couldn't cook, had no fresh water, no nothing because the ship had been damaged so heavily. He tied up alongside of us and it was a bad experience because I could see the bodies of the sailors. One of them was cut in half, you know, and he was straightening them out so he could bury them at sea and all that sort of stuff. It was pretty bad. But that…we did not have any further engagement. We don't do anything except sweep mines. And escort duty. Interviewer: Were you ever in a situation where you feared falling under fire? Jackson: Yes, but it was Okinawa. Now, that was another ballgame. Interviewer: Okay. Jackson: They really put us to work up there. Interviewer: Was that the next destination after this? Jackson: Yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Jackson: We went…we had a bad shaft. It was out of line. We had to go back to Pearl Harbor and get it straightened out. And then we went back to the rendezvous area where we would go with the task force to Okinawa. So we go up there with the fleet and we sweep the areas where the invasion's gonna go. They fired…they're firing right over us. You can see them, the battleships and the cruisers and destroyers are firing over you [inaudible] and while you're sweeping. And at that particular sweep, one of the ships hit a mine. One right ahead of me. Sank in about five minutes. Lost three men. But the problem at Okinawa….I say problem…was a responsibility that was pretty hard. We had to do picket duty. Now picket duty was done by destroyers and fleet mine sweepers. And that meant that maybe twenty or twenty-five miles from the anchorage area where the planes…where the Japanese planes would come down from the north, we'd be out there with our aircraft radar and pick up those planes and let the fleet know they were coming in. Well, they'd come in and they'd go after us sometimes, too, out on picket duty. And I mean, we had a hard time. Those destroyers did, too. And they were Kamikazes. You know what they are. Interviewer: Right. Yes. Jackson: And so we were doing that. That was pretty bad. And one minesweeper was hit and we shot down, I think, one plane coming at us. But there was also a Navy Corsair after it, too. So we don't know who knocked it down, but we had plenty of action. Interviewer: And you previously mentioned that your ship actually had a lot of the weaponry that… Jackson: Had what? Interviewer: …battleships. It had a lot of the weapons that battleships had. Jackson: Not the battleship, destroyers. Of course, the battleships had everything. Interviewer: Okay. Jackson: Yeah. Destroyers had larger guns. They had three-inch fifties…they had five-inch fifties and we had three-inch fifties. Interviewer: And these were what you were using to shoot at the aircraft? Jackson: Use them? Yeah. That, forty millimeters, twenty millimeters. Interviewer: All right. Why don't you tell me more about your service in Okinawa. Jackson: Okinawa, as I was saying, it was the hardest duty we had because we were on picket duty twenty-four hours a day. Day after day after day and these Japanese planes came down from the north on a moon-lit night or in the morning or at dusk. That sort of stuff. They were all Kamikazes, going to dive right into you. No bombs, just dive into you. And some unusual things happened, but we never did get hit. One little incident was kind of interesting to me. At this particular time, they had that…we were supposed to guard the anchorage area at night because there was a lot of Japanese on those islands, some islands around Okinawa there. And they had the word that they were going to send suicide boats in. Some of them would come in there and climb up the anchor chains and that sort of stuff and try to blow up the ship. So we were out there at night keeping an eye out. Of course, everything was completely dark. And I was in my bunk. They called me up to the bridge and said, “Captain, we have picked up a bogey, we think,” a bogey's an unidentified aircraft or vessel, “on the radar and there's not supposed to be any boats out there.” I said, “Sure is not.” So I looked at the radar and saw it was moving and kind of got a bearing on it and I said, “I'll use the signal gun and give them a code.” You know it was red light. You know what a signal gun is. It's just a barrel, a round barrel, white thing about three-inches in diameter. About that long. And you point it at the boat. Can't be seen on the side. You point it at the boat, you pull the trigger and you can send a Morse code with it. Well, I set the signal and got no answer at all. But it was coming in. So I called general quarters, which means everybody goes to their battle stations. And they get there in about three minutes. They get all excited. When that thing goes off, they're about ready. They put their lifejackets on, their helmets and they're gone to their battle stations. “I don't know what's going on.” Excitement. Well, I couldn't get any response. So I said well and he was still moving, coming toward me a little bit it looked like, moving certainly. So I told the fella at the search light. “The hell with it. Put that light over there and let's see what this thing is.” So we did and we could see it was a boat out there, about three men on it and they were monkeying around on the boat and it was going fast. It looked like it had a depth charge or something on it. I couldn't tell. But it started heading toward us at high speed. And I said to myself, “That's a Jap, sure enough. Got to be. Let them have it.” So man, they opened up and that thing was gone in about three seconds. And [laughs] two of them were swimming around in the water, the boat was ablaze, blown up and I called the task force command and said, “What do I do with these guys in the water?” I said, “Do I take them prisoner …try to take them prisoner or anything?” He said, “No. Shoot ‘em.” The hell with that. Well, I just couldn't see shooting men in the water, helpless in the water for some reason. So I told two or three of the fellas on the bridge there, they had rifles and submachine guns…I said, “Shoot ‘em”. And I walked on the other side of the bridge. I couldn't look at them. But had to do it. Of course, their attitude was, you know, these guys swim around the water, they'd come over some ship, climb up the chain or something like that. They were suicide people. So. That was kind of an exciting evening though. Okinawa was pretty busy. And according to my diary when I read it, I was getting awful tired. Day after day after day. And we'd go to anchor for a couple of days for maintenance in the area there called Corona Atoll, which is a bunch of islands with a lot of water in the middle where it was protected. Planes couldn't get in there very well. Japanese planes couldn't get in there too well. They were going to dive on us. So we went there and stayed about two or three days. But they'd still come in on moonlit nights or in the morning and at night. And you'd have to make smoke. [laughs] Wasn't much rest there and then we'd go back on the same thing. Finally, we got down to Guam. They sent us to Guam for some maintenance and recreation. And then we went back to Okinawa. Now this was about July, forty-five. The war in Europe was over. And that's when we heard about the atomic bomb. We were anchored in Nagygoo Sackywan [phonetic], which they call a bay now. We heard about the bomb being dropped and I wrote a few remarks in my diary when I figured…now I figured that the Japs were gonna have to surrender. This is a devastating weapon. They just can't go on with this type of thing. And then I had a little foreboding about what this meant about war, too, for the future, a weapon like this. But anyway, about a week later, of course, the Japanese said they wanted a treaty to surrender. Well, you never saw such excitement in all your life on that day. Everybody just went crazy. Shot their anti-aircraft gun, all up in the air, you know. Just looked like the Fourth of July. And shrapnel was falling around on the ships, everything else. Every gun in the whole bay, I think, was being fired. And of course, the admiral, now, he just raised sand about it and finally stopped them. But we knew that the war was over then. And about that time was when I got orders to take ships up to Tokyo, meet the Third Fleet, sweep the channel into Tokyo Bay. Interviewer: Well, what was that like? Jackson: So they sent us our orders and told me what ships I should take. I had…I think I had four A.M.s, which is my type of fleet minesweeper, and a bunch of YMSs, small woodened ships. Now, they are real good, the wooden ship because of magnetic mines. Now, I haven't mentioned that. It's something the Germans developed and used it on the British in the entrance to the Thames River and Thames Estuary. It was…a magnetic mine was dropped by plane, hit the bottom and it would set off an explosion by magnetism of the ship as it passed over it or nearby it. [inaudible] battleships have magnetic fields around them. And when that ship would pass over it, it would blow it up. The British didn't know what the hell was going on for a good while. But they finally dropped one on the beach and they figured out what it was. But we had developed it, too. As I recall, we didn't expect any magnetic mines, but you had to be sure. The YMSs were supposed to sweep the magnetic mines. They're wooden ships. And we had that problem too, you know. We had a magnetic field in a battleship. What they did at Pearl Harbor though, was what they called the gowshu [phonetic], which means they neutralized your magnetic field. You'd sit there and they'd put a field around you for about half a day and you don't have any magnetic field, so. But the wooden ships don't have any anyway, cause they don't have a magnetic field, a wooden ship doesn't. So they were sweeping the magnetic mines, for the magnetic mines. And they followed us. Of course, they didn't find any. But that's…they gave me a…when we got there, they put a Japanese naval officer on board, a lieutenant who had gone to Yale. Spoke perfect English. And he brought charts of the twenty-mile channel into Tokyo Bay. [Tape 1, Side B] Jackson: And they had to have a channel which was not mined to get their own ships in. So we were gonna use that channel. And then we had the charts. But they wanted to be absolutely sure there were no mines in the channel. So I was ordered to take these ships in there to the channel and go into Tokyo Bay, which we did. We swept the whole way, twenty miles. No mines. We got in the bay. The most exciting thing I saw first was a sign hanging from a warehouse building and it said, “Welcome U.S. Navy. Come and get us. Prisoners.” So then we went on in and swept anchorage areas and anchors. So we had a good op…I had a good opportunity to go [inaudible] Japanese battleship and destroyer. They'd been damaged. [inaudible] And then we got on a train and went to Tokyo. This other officer I mentioned, Dave Long. He was one of the commanding officers of one of the ships. Went to Tokyo and everything up there was dirty and smelly and damaged. No merchandise. No nothing. Of course, the Emperor's grounds were in perfect shape. And the people up there were…the train when we…we were on the train. They're full of Japanese. But they were very deferential, you know. And we'd been instructed, “Don't bow to a Japanese when they bow to you.” So we didn't. One little incident was kind of interesting. As Dave and I were walking back to the train station in Tokyo, we went through an area which somebody said had been an area where they made movies. Has nothing to do with the story. But anyway, walking along and there was a nice little cottage here and the man was standing right out there in the path there and he made some motions to go into his house. And Dave and I understood what he was trying to say and I asked Dave, I said, “Do you think we ought to go in?” He said, “Well, I don't see any reason why?” I said, “I don't either. Let's go in.” So we took off our shoes, went in, sat down on the floor and drank and sipped green tea. [laughs] They sip it out of a saucer. And they gave us a lot of little gifts—just as nice as they could be to us—which I still have some of them. But that's just a little incident there. But the Japanese, they didn't give any problem at all. No. Well, after that we had to do a lot of…we swept more mines after the war than we did during the war. There were lots of mines laid all around the east coast of Honshu, that's the main island, and out in the East China Sea. And I had to do a lot of that. And that is the last operation. I was out there, we were sweeping…had twenty ships sweeping big areas. Mines had been laid, I think, for submarine protection by the Japanese to protect against U.S. submarines coming up into that area. So we knew all the mines were way down in the water, that is the depth of the mine was no problem. They lay them under twelve feet, you in trouble see, because we drew eleven feet. If they laid them in twelve or eleven feet, why we'd hit one of them. They usually laid them at least ten or twelve feet because if they didn't, if the water got rough it might pull them lose. But anyway, we knew they were way down there. And we swept a world of mines there. And that's when I got relieved of command, which was the happiest day of my life. Interviewer: When did that news come to you? Jackson: Hmm? Interviewer: Do you remember when that news came to you? Jackson: It was in September of nineteen forty-five. Interviewer: And were you still over in… Jackson: But that point was that he was on the way. And I think the first one was August. But he got delayed for some reason. So I was elated and then despondent. And then finally they said somebody else was on the way. And he came and relieved me of command right out in there in the East China Sea and boy, was I happy. Interviewer: Did you stay in Japan or immediately return back to the States? Did you… Jackson: Came straight home to the States. Oh no, sir. It was a quite interesting trip back. Interviewer: What happened? Jackson: Well, nothing really happened except there was a big transport ship, had a whole bunch of sailors going back. And Dave and I were the only two commanders on the ship, in rank. I don't think he'd been promoted any. He was still a lieutenant commander. But I was in charge of all the people on board ship. And the captain was a nice guy but he said, “You're…” I don't know what term he used, but anyway. I was responsible for all the passengers, the seamen coming back, of the men coming back. So I said, “Dave, I'm gonna make you my executive officer. You be sure to look after this job.” [laughs] We looked down there and hell, they were gambling. You're not supposed to gamble on the ship, you know. We looked down there and they're playing cards and gambling and rolling dice. I says, “I didn't see that, did you?” He said, “No.” [laughs] But we ran into a mine and the captain was all excited. Of course, we were in danger of hitting it. He saw it. So what do we do? We can't…we see this mine floating out there and it's danger. I said, “We get rid of it.” So I told him to get me a thirty caliber rifle, two or three of them and get these boys to do some target [practice]. So they blew it up. But we got back and then we got on a train, a wonderful trip back to Chicago. Went to Portland, Oregon. Great Northern Railroad. I think that was the name of it. Full of Naval officers and Army officers. Everything was…everybody was happy and everybody had a bottle and everybody was playing cards. And we were trying to sing. It was a fun trip back. There was one other little thing that I wanted to mention. Of course, it has nothing directly with my duties. What happened here back in nineteen…was it nineteen ninety-two? Interviewer: What happened? Jackson: There's a group in Atlanta…[inaudible] group in Washington, D.C., that is called the Historical Remembrance Award. It gives a Historical Remembrance Award at a luncheon of the Surface Naval Association. This…what they do is honor heroes of World War Two, surface, not aircraft nor submarines. Surface vessels. A hero, an individual that did something unusual. And they…somebody mentioned to them that they ought to think about minesweepers. So they did and they selected me to represent the minesweepers. So I went to Washington and there they gave me that award. I'll just read this. I'll read it to you. “Please accept my congratulations on your selection to receive the Historical Remembrance Award at the luncheon of the Surface Naval Association on January fourteen, nineteen ninety-three…ninety-eight, ninety-eight. Both your selection and participation in the award ceremony made the Naval Mine Warfare Association proud.” [inaudible sentence] “Recognition of some of the feats performed by mine craft personnel during World War Two and Korea have long been ignored. Perhaps at this late date, some of these stories will come to life. Your acceptance speech might just have opened a door or two in this direction. I know that I speak for the entire Naval Mine Warfare Association when I say, Well done.” Now, the thing about minesweeping, it's the most unglamorous part of the Navy. Nobody knows anything about it and they don't want to know anything about it. I get the impression, when we had a destroyer or two would take us to an area to be swept and they just practically disappear over the horizon. They didn't want any part of it. It's a mysterious business. It is very unglamorous. I might read you something here that was at…Admiral Nimitz said. [reading] “Fleet Admiral Nimitz summed it all up when he wrote, ‘Whether the task was laying mines or sweeping them up, mine warfare was a far from glamorous business. [inaudible] and bad weather and dangerous waters, under enemy attack with low publicity and few awards for daring deeds and well done. No matter what the job was [inaudible] to mine craft, they did it. All of us [inaudible] most dangerous sea [inaudible]. There's no place for heroes in mine warfare. Men did their duty [inaudible] danger. Men died. But who they were, no one will ever know.” Nice words from Fleet Admiral Nimitz, but [inaudible] comes closer to the truth. The two top nominees were Commander J. Leland Jackson, USN retired and commanding officer of the USS Revenge, and Radioman Carl W. Allen, US Navy retired, who also served aboard the Revenge.” Well, that was the award in nineteen ninety-three. Unknown Voice: Eight. Jackson: In ninety-eight, yes. Ninety-eight. Interviewer: You also received a Navy Bronze Star? Jackson: Yeah. Interviewer: When did you receive that? Jackson: After the…after I got back to Atlanta. And this is in the [Atlanta] Constitution, as I showed you this picture of me. Interviewer: We'll photograph those or photocopy those. Jackson: Beg your pardon? Interviewer: We're gonna photocopy those [inaudible]. Jackson: What it says here, [reading] “Commander Jackson Awarded Star for Tokyo Feat. The Bronze Star has been awarded to Commander Jackson, of 1630 Johnson Road Northeast, for outstanding courage, leadership and ability as commanding officer of a Naval minesweeper and later as Task Group Commander of the Fifth Fleet's mine force during this minesweeping operation in Tokyo Bay before the first entrance by U.S. forces.” Interviewer: You'd mentioned that your friend Dave Long also returned at the same time you did? Jackson: Yes, he did. Interviewer: And he started his service at the same time, too? Jackson: Yes. Interviewer: So the two of you went to the same ROTC program? Jackson: Yes. Interviewer: You served and you keep in touch with him now. Jackson: I was his best man at his wedding. He was my best man. Interviewer: That's fantastic. Jackson: He lives here. Right now, he's not in good health. Interviewer: How did the Georgia Tech boys do when they were in service? Jackson: Well. Very well. I was even surprised. I ran into two of them, my friends, commanding officers of submarines. But they did very well and one of them had minesweepers in the Pacific just like mine, fleet minesweepers. I ran into him after we had defeated the Germans. They sent all the ships to the Pacific. All the minesweepers. And we ran into a few of them at Guam, coming back. They were all…they didn't know what the hell was going on. They were excited about getting over here in the Pacific. But I ran into a number of Georgia Tech boys. But they were very active in everything. They did well. I was asked by one of the chief of staffs before we went into Tokyo Bay, he was asking me about preparations [inaudible] some other officers around. And he says…he turned to me and finally says, “Commander Jackson, can you assure me there won't be any mines in that channel when the capital ships come in?” I said, “Yes sir, I can.” That's all he ever said. That's all [inaudible] and that's all he wanted to hear. But he called me over later and he said, “What class at Annapolis were you?” And I said, “Captain,” I said, “I didn't go to Annapolis. I'm Georgia Tech.” He said, “Well, there sure are a bunch of them around here.” I said, “You're right about that and they're good officers.” He said, “That's right.” But they were after officers then. When they got out of school in nineteen thirty-five, nobody could get a job of any kind hardly. And we all wanted to go on active duty. It was a job that didn't have any openings. Would take…took three people. One the Marine Corps and two in the Navy. But they were after them after the war was over. Interviewer: How were you received by Atlanta when you returned? Jackson: How was I received? Interviewer: Um-hmm. Jackson: I don't think that's a question I can answer because everybody was congratulating me and everybody, you know, any time they'd see an officer, they'd come up and congratulate you, welcome you home and all that. World War Two is completely different from anything that's happened since. Everybody during World War Two was gung ho about the war. High patriotism. Everybody. Everybody wanted to help. Everybody was a hero when he came back. Completely different. As a matter of fact, I wore my uniform for about three months cause I didn't have any other clothes particular. I don't think I could get in them. I gained a little weight. And I was on pay for three months so. I was actually on what you call terminal leave for three months and I was paid. Interviewer: Do you have any general thoughts or things about that war or anything since then? Jackson: [laughs] Words of wisdom, they call it? [laughs] Well, I'd say this maybe: It's interesting that very few people in the general public cannot, and a bachelor in particular, didn't care about talking about the war right after the war. They didn't…it wasn't that they were intimidated or felt like nobody wanted to hear it, they were interested. All I was interested in doing was getting myself married and get a job. And the future. Here I was thirty years old. I didn't know what I was gonna do. You're not interested in talking about what's in the past. You've got a future ahead of you. And that's…all the veterans felt the same way. You could go to school on the Navy. You could get a job where the Navy would pay part of the salary, which I did. But we weren't interested in talking about the war. It was past, see. You've got a future now you've got to worry about. The past…it's there but we were interested in the present and the future. And one other thing. I forgot what it was I was gonna say. We were pretty…the minesweeping part of the Navy, nobody much attention to that. That was the most unglamorous job you could have. It really was. It's like Nimitz said. Nobody wanted to talk about it much. You felt like the other Navy [inaudible], destroyers and cruisers and all that they kind of pushed you over to one side. “Well, you've got to get out there and get rid of the mines so we can go in and do some work.” Interviewer: Hopefully this [inaudible]. Jackson: So I was…it was unglamorous, but we didn't feel that way about it. [inaudible] Interviewer: [inaudible, talking at same time] Jackson: Not one of those officers would want to be on the ship when we were sweeping mines, I can tell you that, because there's too many [inaudible]. Interviewer: Was there anything I haven't asked you about that you wanted to talk about? Jackson: Well, not really, I don't think. When I was making that acceptance speech at the Naval Remembrance Award that I was talking about, I had it written out because I had a letter from the admiral informing me that they wanted me to receive this award and my acceptance speech should be held to three minutes if possible. I got up and I started out, I said, “I'm gonna tell you one thing. I've never asked a veteran yet any questions that he could answer in three minutes.” I said, “It usually sets him off for thirty minutes.” But I said, “That's the reason I wrote it out cause that's all I'm gonna say.” I did say a little more. Interviewer: Well Mr. Jackson, I thank you for your time today. Jackson: I've enjoyed it. Most I've talked about the war in a long time. Well, I'll tell you one more thing that I forgot to mention which means a lot to me. Has nothing to do with sweeping mines exactly, but we had to…on the way back to Pearl Harbor, we were proceeding independently and we were on this one shaft because we had to go back there to get repaired. But Christmas Day was right in the middle of the Pacific, halfway between Guadalcanal and Pearl Harbor. Had a baker on board, finest you ever saw. He was a fine Christian boy and he could really apple pies, I'll tell you. We had good food on board, no question about that. We had steaks about every other night and all that stuff, hams, turkeys. But he came to me. His name was Castle. He said, “Captain,” he said, “I think we ought to have a service on Christmas Day.” And I said, “I'm so glad you mentioned that.” I said, “What do you suggest?” He said, “Well, I'll tell what we can do.” So he kind of took charge, you know, and we finally wound up on Christmas Day with everybody, including the officers and the men's eating place. You know, if you get my age you forget names and places. But we had all kinds of good food. I had bought an accordion at Pearl Harbor, a used one. And I had learned to play it cause I took piano when I was real young. So I could play all the Christmas hymns. So we started singing. You never heard such singing in all your life as we sang all the Christmas hymns. And an officer read Scripture from a Bible, Castle gave a nice prayer. And we just had a wonderful time. And all the boys enjoyed it so much. Well, the thing…the statement I was gonna make is short and finality [sic]. There's nothing in my life that has ever matured me more than the Navy. When they tell you to do something, you don't say, “I'll try, I think I can, I'll do my best.” You say, “Yes, sir. I will.” I mean that's the way it is. We went to a reunion one time, a fifties reunion, the wife and I did. And she saw them come up and speak to me, you know, with such respect and all that. She was really surprised, you know. One fella, one little old boy came up and said, “Captain, you remember me?” He said, “I'm [inaudible] fell overboard on your ship.” I said, “Yeah, I remember you. I remember when it happened.” He says, “I was out there in the Pacific and all alone. The happiest moment of my life was to see the ship turn around and pick me up.” I said, “I bet it was.” And she says something about, “A ship's not very democratic, is it?” I said, “Hell no.” I said, “The commanding officer is responsible for everything that happens on the ship period. Whether he knew about it or saw it or anything else. He's responsible.” And I said, “He's a dictator. He has to be. If you're responsible for anything that goes on on the ship, you're gonna have to be a dictator.” Okay. [end of tape]
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Extent:: 1:11:02
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
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