- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of R. Hopkins Kidd
- Creator:
- Wallace, Fredrick C.
Kidd, R. Hopkins, 1926-2014 - Date of Original:
- 2004-09-13
- Subject:
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Leyte Gulf, Battle of, Philippines, 1944
Merchant marine--United States
Kidd, Earl Lynn, 1894-1976
Kidd, Elizabeth Hopkins, 1898-1990
Clemson University
Floyd W. Spencer (YAG-36 : Transport ship)
American Red Cross - Location:
- Papua New Guinea, Wewak, -3.583333, 143.5
United States, California, City and County of San Francisco, San Francisco, 37.77493, -122.41942
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Georgia, DeKalb County, Decatur, 33.77483, -84.29631
United States, Georgia, Glynn County, Brunswick, 31.14995, -81.49149
United States, Georgia, Glynn County, Saint Simons Island, 31.15051, -81.36954
United States, Louisiana, Orleans Parish, New Orleans, 29.95465, -90.07507
United States, Mississippi, Harrison County, Pass Christian, 30.31575, -89.24754 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- Moving Image
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, R. Hopkins Kidd relates his career in the Merchant Marines. His family moved to Brunswick when he was a child so his father could work in the shipyards. His uncle, Thomas Hopkins, was the captain of a Liberty Ship. He recalls his early college days and his training in the Merchant Marines. He was a "hot shell man," wearing long asbestos gloves to catch the spend shells from the 3"/50 gun onboard ship. He narrates a time when he got into trouble for studying so hard he was inattentive to his men. At captain's mast, he was ordered to do some ditch digging as punishment. He was digging ditches when his mother and girlfriend showed up for a visit. Following training, he sailed through the Panama Canal to New Guinea, where his ship docked in Hollandia, Finschhafen, Wewak and Numfoor. He recites harrowing and humorous stories of his time in the Pacific, including an incident when three Air Force twin-engine bombers zoomed past him as he was climbing down from the ship's crow's nest. He relates the story of one of their navigational instructors who had been on the Murmansk Run when they experienced a seventy-five percent loss of ships due to German pocket battleships including the Tirpitz; in freezing temperatures he was on a life raft until arriving at Spitsbergen. Kidd relates transporting troops into Leyte Island; he tried to make them comfortable and describes how unprepared they were for war. He encountered some of them who had been wounded and were being evacuated. He also describes being attacked by a Japanese bomber; the captain was able to maneuver the ship and the plane's crew shot down the plane. He recalls his trip home and what his service meant to him.
R. Hopkins Kidd was in the Merchant Marine in the Pacific during World War II.
Judge R. Hopkins Kidd Veterans History Project Atlanta History Center With Fredrick Wallace undated [Tape 1, Side A] Interviewer: This is the beginning of the interview with Mr. R. Hopkins Kidd, judge of the magistrate court in DeKalb County. Judge Kidd is a veteran of World War Two during which he served in the U.S. Merchant Marines. This interview is being conducted at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. My name is Fredrick Wallace. I am the interviewer. Judge Kidd, as we discussed earlier, this is your story. This is your opportunity to tell the American people just what you experienced during the time that you were in the service and we want you to tell it in your own way. Begin at the time that, first of all, bring us from your childhood to the reason why you wanted to get into the Merchant Marines and from that point on take us, step by step, through your service in the Merchant Marines to the date of your separation. Kidd: All right. Interviewer: Judge Kidd, this is your story. Would you begin, please? Kidd: Thank you very much. I am Judge Hopkins Kidd. I live in Snellville, Georgia, at the present time with my wife. I'm married and we have seven children between us. We have ten grandchildren. And I do my judging in DeKalb County where I began the magistrate's court back in 1972, before the Georgia law was passed setting up magistrate's courts in each county. I'm a full-time magistrate and I work every day, every work day. I began…I want to begin by telling you a little bit about me. I was in Decatur High School, Decatur, Boys' High, when my parents moved to Brunswick, Georgia, the home place of my mother. They moved because my father had to work in the shipyard there in Brunswick. His business in Decatur could not continue on because of the war. They moved and I moved on Saint Simon's Island with them and began school at Glynn Academy in Brunswick, Georgia. This lasted only for about one quarter. Every other weekend, I would catch a train. And at that time they had a train from Brunswick to Atlanta with one stopover. And I would catch a train to Atlanta on Friday. The last time my mother and father would see me was on Friday mornings when I caught the school bus. Then I would go from there to the train station. Then from there up to Atlanta on the train. Arrive there early morning on Saturday morning. Take a streetcar to Decatur where I would then stay at my mother's house alone until the weekend and then I would get back on the train and they would see me again on Monday afternoon. This was at age sixteen. And I tell you this because I've been rather independent from there on here. After a bit of this, my mother finally…and father finally allowed me to live in Decatur. So I lived in Decatur by myself while I finished high school and did not get into any trouble. [laughs] The people ask me, “Well, what did you do?” I did nothing. I knew that if I did anything, my mother would come out of a closet and be there for me, so. But I graduated from Decatur High School and then entered Clemson College—as it was known then, it's Clemson University now—for pre-law work. I intended to go to Emory Law School after my pre-law work. While at Clemson, the opportunity came for me to join the Merchant Marine Cadet Corps, cadet midshipmen. This was an organization that was established on the line of West Point for Army and this was our West Point for Merchant Marine cadets. The program was one where you stayed at basic training school at Pass Christian, Mississippi, which is right down near Port St. Joe, Mississippi. And that was a three-month basic training to get you to learn something about the system and to also discipline you. We had very, very strict discipline in the corps. I asked for a…well, I wanted to join this or I was interested in joining it because it looked to me to be an opportunity to learn something that I've always loved and that is we've always gone to Brunswick on holidays and stayed at Saint Simon's Island and gotten on boats. And my uncle there was Captain Thomas Hopkins. He started out as a cabin boy on a sailing ship in Brunswick in his early years and ended, during the war, Second World War, as a captain on a liberty ship that was made there in Brunswick. And I've always been interested in the sea. And with this opportunity I joined and I was required to leave Clemson and go to the basic training in April of 1944. I had to take my exams early at Clemson. I was a month and a half before courses were finished and I applied for some stretch there, some leeway there, and received none. So I took my exams, and trigonometry I just quit. [laughs]. I hadn't had all of the trigonometry. But amazingly I passed two of the courses, two of the exams. That was history and Spanish and that was because I didn't have to know much. I then went to Pass Christian, Mississippi, and there… Interviewer: At the time that you went into the Merchant Marines, were you aware that the Merchant Marines were being used for wartime service? Kidd: Oh, yes. Yes. My uncle had told me of that. Interviewer: So you were fully aware of the fact that you would get into war. Kidd: And after three months at the basic training, I would be assigned to a ship. All cadets are assigned to a ship and there are two cadets on each ship. And then you have six months of duty on that ship. Six months to a year. Mine extended out, which I'll tell you about a little later. But we knew…we did not know where we would go. That's something that no one on the ship knew where they would go. But I also knew that I would be, as a cadet and as I'd had training with weaponry, somewhat, I would also be required to join the Navy gunnery officers there, not the officers but just the gunnery office there. And I was assigned to a three-inch fifty gun at the bow of the ship, now at seventeen. I was the hot shell man. I was issued long asbestos gloves and I would catch…and I practiced this. I would be dressed in my tennis shoes, my shorts, a life jacket—because we always were on general quarters when we practiced; we always practiced general quarters, too, which means an attack—the gloves and a hat. [laughs] I would attempt to catch the hot shells that came out red hot right out of the gun. As it fired, it immediately ejected the shell. And this was to keep them out from under the feet of the men who were loading and doing the other work there. So, I knew that I would be required to be under the auspices of the Navy because I was a Navy Reserve cadet, also. At Pass Christian, the routine was very strenuous. The routine allowed us only an hour and forty-five minutes per day for our own time. The rest of the time was assigned to us and we had duties to do, schooling to do and studies to do. And when they say studies, they meant you go in there and you study. Or if you didn't study, you have to look like you were studying. You had to look like you were reading your book. And they were very strict. About everything that they required, they were strict. This basic training lasted, as I said, three months. And during that time, I went in as a seaman, as a cadet. And I was upgraded, upgraded myself, to the company commander. I then became battalion commander and executive officer, and that's the one who wears three stripes. And I was destined, and I was charted, to be the captain of the basic training or the commander of the basic training outfit in school there. But I was assigned to a ship in the meantime. They would assign us to a ship as they could. And I was assigned and I would finish my basic training and they were just waiting on the ship to call me. I was waiting to be named the commanding officer of the base and the ship called me and said, “Come to New Orleans. We are leaving tomorrow.” And so I left. [laughs] I did not know where we were going. As I said before, none of us knew where we were going. We hoped that we were going to the Pacific, but we didn't know if we were going to South America or where. We got on a brand new ship which was made in New Orleans and I was ensconced there as a cadet. Interviewer: Can I stop you for one minute? Kidd: Yes. Interviewer: Prior to you going onboard the new ship, prior to you going to New Orleans, did you have an opportunity to go home to see your family? Was your family able to come visit you during training or how did that work? Kidd: It worked this way. I'll tell you a little side story to show that they were strict. I was a battalion commander. But I went to school with my platoon. And we had a platoon commander. And at a particular course, this instructor wasn't there right on time and the boys got restless and they were doing various things and I was studying hard to try to get my studies in and do whatever, and I was being attentive to myself. But I didn't become attentive to the noise and so forth around. When the instructor came in, he asked who was in charge and the platoon commander got up and said he was in charge. And he said, “I see Captain Kidd there,” Lieutenant Kidd, I think they called me, “and he is the highest ranking officer here. He was in charge. He is responsible for the lack of discipline here.” And they gave me a captain's mast because I had not kept the discipline in the room as it should have been. I was given a punishment under the captain's mast. I was found guilty of that and I was given a punishment of digging ditches. We were digging ditches for various things, the workmen were. And to punish you, they put you in the ditch and you dug ditches for so many hours. I pointed out… Interviewer: [inaudible] captain's mast is a non-judicial hearing. Kidd: It's before the captain and that's it. I pointed out to him that with my being in the ditches, you have to take off your shirt because it's hot and terrible there. Then you sunburn and become sunburned and then I would get another, maybe a lieutenant's mast for being sunburned. That was against their rules also. And I suggested that we start a boo-boo squad, a squad to learn to march together and I, as the captain of that squad, would march them around the field. I was doing that when I got word that my mother was coming down and my then girlfriend was coming down. And I applied to get a part of my sentence put over to another week so that I could go in and see them. And I had the booby squad. And that then stuck and we didn't have to dig ditches anymore. But the fact that I was there meant that I was to keep order in that area. And I was sort of surprised. Interviewer: Were they agreeable to you seeing your family? Kidd: Oh, yes. They allowed me to have time with my family. They just came down for a day. And then I just got a day off and got a picture of myself and my father when I came to Decatur. A day off before the ship left, I came back to Decatur. The cadets, when they are assigned to a ship, were assigned to the officers' quarters. We lived in nice quarters. We lived…we ate with the officers and we were treated…we weren't treated like officers. They treated us like cadets, the officers did. Young squirts that were coming up and were supposed to be learning something. We also had extra learning on a ship. We had work that we had sent to us by the academy, questions and answers and tests and things such as that. And we worked…we learned not only the practical way of seamanship, the navigation, the sea tactics and things such as that, but we then…and when we were in port, we were turned over to the boatswain [pronounced bo-sun]. Now the boatswain, or some people call them the boat swain, the boatswain was in charge of the enlisted men who worked and worked on the ship. And when the boatswain got me, he smiled and he enjoyed that, and he smiled because he thought I was gonna be his meat. Well, we started. He showed me how to chip paint and that is you take a hammer and another instrument and you chip little pieces of paint off of the ship when it's rusty underneath. And you go through the whole ship or as much as you can, chipping paint. You paint the ship and you don't paint it with a spray gun. You paint it with a paint brush. We cleaned the ship. We did various things and this was all in port, where I was just another one of his workmen. And that was also designed to make you feel like you were one of the workmen and what they had to do and what they had to go through. While I was…oh, when we went off the ship, when we were in a port, mainly these were military ports and until we finally got to Honolulu on a port, there was nothing to do except go out and see more military. And there was nothing much to do. Or see a movie. Sometimes we could see a movie. But we usually, the two cadets usually went together because the officers didn't have truck with us, so to speak. Interviewer: Didn't associate. Kidd: And enlisted men didn't want to fool with these just-up [laughs] cadets. So we usually went out together. It's the way we were treated. Nicely, except for that. The ship I was speaking of was the SS Floyd W. Spencer. It was, as I said, a new ship and we went from New Orleans. I'd like to show you on this map if I could. We went from New Orleans down through the Panama Canal and then over across to New Guinea. [inaudible, paper noise] Hawaii. We went directly to New Guinea. And to the lower part of New Guinea at a town called…I recalled it just a minute ago and now I'm missing it. Interviewer: A German name. Kidd: It's a German name. Right. Any more hints? I'll think of it in just a second. And we anchored there until we could get into a town, another base called Hilandia [phonetic]. This is where I'm pointing. This was up on the back of New Guinea. We spent several trips in and out of Hilandia because it was so active. We then went up the line of New Guinea and there's a little thing says, “We”. Pinchoffen [phonetic] was the name of the German town. The name of “We” reminds me that this was a Japanese base called Weewack [phonetic]. It was on the coast. It was full of Japanese soldiers and people and airplanes. We went up by Weewack and had no convoy or no attendant ships to go with us. We went to a town on an island named Numfor [phonetic]. Numfor is Dutch. That's the Dutch East Indies right up here. At the Dutch East Indies we found it very interesting. I found it very interesting because the American, a few American soldiers but mostly Australian soldiers had invaded the island of Numfor and we were coming there with certain supplies that they needed. But they had no harbor and we had to dock on the outside. Just come up to the edge closest to the edge as we could and we would lay out the anchors. And the current were swift and the things were hard to unload, the ship was hard to unload and it was just a mess. I was…one morning I was assigned to various things. We were in harbor, so I was doing leg work, chipping paint, painting and I was told to go to the crow's nest. The crow's nest is on the foremast and it's up at the top, near the top. It's not a place that I enjoyed thinking about but this is the first time I'd been on the crow's nest. And when a ship hits a wave or a wave comes in, if you're sitting on the ship it just jiggles it a little. If you're up on the crow's nest, you're swinging back and forth like this. And that was one of the reasons that I was fearful of where I was. But I did what I was supposed to do and before I could get down, as I was coming down iron handles on the mast, I saw on the American air base, three airplanes. They were double-engine airplanes they call one A-one-As [sic]. That's attack bombers. They were revving up on the runways and I thought, “Isn't that nice.” And I looked and I watched them for a minute. Then I started trying to get myself straight so I could get on down. And these planes came off the runway. They came directly at the ship. Just…and they were about…looked like they were about forty or fifty feet off the water. They could have been more. They could have been less. But I was looking down and I could see the tops of their planes. And not the bottoms. And not straight on the horizontal. And they were coming at us and I was just scared to death. I looked and just held on for the blow. And they came and as they came, one by one to our ship, they curved off and made a real sharp curve and came within very close distance, much too close. I couldn't get down out of that place for a few minutes till my hands stopped shaking. And later, after the war, I read about this. I was interested in it. What were those foolish pilots doing coming at our ship like that? I found that we were learning a new tactic in the Air Force and that was skip bombing. And they were practicing on our ship skip bombing, where they would come and curve all of a sudden and drop the bomb and let it skip over the water like a flat rock over a creek and hit the ship then. And that they could get better juncture with the ship with those bombs by doing that. So that satisfied my long thinking time of what in the world were those fellas doing that for. Interviewer: You speak of yourself as being a cadet. Kidd: Yes. Interviewer: And I'm wondering at what point did you become a full-fledged Merchant Marine seaman. Were you always a cadet? Kidd: I was always a cadet as long as I was in this program. Now, when the war ended I happened to be on land. I happened to be…before I was sent to the academy the war ended and people were getting out of the service. They were letting service people out. I applied for a discharge so that I could go back to Clemson College and finish my pre-law work and then go on to…because I did not plan to be a seaman all my life. Now this led to the cadetship, the cadet midshipmanship. When you graduated there to either a third mate in the Merchant Marine or an ensign in the Navy. Interviewer: I'm just getting ahead of you, I see. Kidd: Yeah. A little bit. Now, after this incident that I had…we had other incidents. I did crazy things. Saw a boat that was half-sunk come by us with this stream of water that was really heavy and I swam out to that because we wanted to see whether we could repair the boat and have us a little boat on the ship. Well, we couldn't and then I turned around and started to swim back and I didn't get anywhere with my swimming. The current was too much. So I called to them. They came and got me. And said, “Fool, don't you know that this is a big current here?” And I didn't know and I was foolish to do that. I didn't do many foolish things because I wanted to be safe, especially after that thing in the crow's nest. I told you before that we did not know where we were going. When I got on this ship we were out to sea before we knew where the ship was going. Of course, this was security. And the naval people on the ship did not know, the naval gunners. Our officers, to my…well, our officers knew but they weren't telling. They weren't telling this cadet who just came on board. And so, after several days, then we found that we were going to the Pacific and we were going to New Guinea. The reason I mention this is we had an especially good navigation instructor in our basic training. He was a very good person. And he was very good in teaching navigation and he would not…he had been on a ship and we knew it had been sunk but we didn't know what the ramifications were. He had been…he would not go on a ship again. He was staying there and he was going to be an instructor and that was it. And we found that he had been on a convoy that was going to Mermansk, Russia. Mermansk, Russia…let me show you here. It's a long way from the United States. Mermansk, Russia, you go from New York on over, you go under Iceland and then above the Norway, Sweden and Finland. You go under the Spitzbergen, these islands up here which are right on the North Pole almost. And then you come to Mermansk, Russia. This was the most dreaded ship duty that you could have. And this officer, after a while, we found out that he had been on the Mermansk run. There was a convoy of fifty ships that left New York. When they came around the top of Norway, Sweden and Finland, the Germans, with the pocket battleships and the turpets [phonetic] and the airplanes and what they had, attacked their convoy and they lost half of their ships. Then they unloaded in Mermansk and came back. The eighteen to twenty of them that were left came back. And coming back they lost half of their ships. So then they had a loss of seventy-five percent of their ships and men. And when you were attacked, you had no time to lower the lifeboats and throw this overboard and throw that overboard and whatever. You're fighting. And so, when the men would sink in the ships, they would get in the cold water and it was ice cold and they could last only a few minutes and then they died. So we lost not only these ships, but we lost the men that were on the ships. This man, with two others, got on a life raft that…they have life rafts that are loose and float, so when the ship goes down, they'll float. They got on that and went up to Spitzbergen. Never heard of Spitzbergen until I heard of that. And there they were rescued from Spitzbergen. He made it plain that he would not get on another ship because he was fearful that he would get on the Mermansk run. Now we knew about it. Interviewer: He related this story to your class? Kidd: After [inaudible]. He never related it at the very beginning. But we became friendly with him and we found this out that he was…what his problem was. Interviewer: Oh, you wanted to know why he… Kidd: Yeah. Why he didn't go out. He was such a good officer and so talented and so forth. And so nice. So. Now, at…I left you off at Numfor Island. Numfor Island was in the Dutch East Indies and we suddenly got notice that we had to debark. We had unloaded our cargo. Now they had people that unloaded our cargo. We did not unload that. But then we had what we called dunnage. Dunnage is things that go in between cargo. If there are barrels of oil they put wood underneath the barrels of oil and then they stack some more up and put some more wood in there. And all of that wood and dunnage and packing, so to speak, wives call it tissue paper and whatever, but was still in the ship and we spent all night with ourselves winding our own winches and throwing all this dunnage overboard. Stuff they make you keep normally. But it had to go for some reason. So we got our dunnage thrown overboard. We went back down the New Guinea coast and past Weewack and all the Japanese planes and Japanese people there. These were people that were surrounded by Americans. They did that often in the Pacific. They would just cut off the Japanese forces and leave them there and they would run out of supplies and put subs there and cut off their supply ships. So we went back by and went to Hilandia again. Hilandia's a nice place. It was. The thing about it I always remember was that it had red clay roads. It's just like Georgia. That's the only thing I remember about it. We found there in Hilandia, we were going to take troops on board. Now this is a liberty ship. This is not a cruise liner. It's a liberty ship. And I've got something to show you that shows you…this is the kind…this is the liberty ship. This is the John Brown liberty ship, I think it is. It wasn't ours. But they were all made the same. If you'll notice, there's nothing for passengers. Everything is for cargo. Everything is booms and so forth. And I want to show you on here the front round tub. We call that a gun tub. That is the gun tub that I was assigned to. Now, I'll have you notice the height of the gun tub. That looks like about twenty feet down if you jumped off the gun tub, which I'll explain later. But we had these soldiers. There were about fifteen hundred of them there. And they came aboard wondering what in the world they were on. And we welcomed them and put them in the holds. These are the holds. These are where they…we put stairs down to it. And this is where cargo usually stayed, but our cargo was soldiers and their equipment. We had their equipment on it also. And this is the thing that we had rushed down to get. And we didn't know why. The men had their kitchens on the front part of the ship and they had their bathrooms on the back side. And I thought, “Well, they know which way the ship goes and they put the right things at the right places.” They had outside bathrooms. Very uncomfortable for the troops. And whenever we could…we got to know some of these fellas and they were given sweets and things that we could find, that we could slip out of the mess hall with, or that the mess sergeant would let us have. And we went to a place where we had not been and that is to Leyte. Leyte is a name of one of the Philippine Islands and it is the first island that [General Douglas] MacArthur retook. And with this big map I'm going to find Leyte. This is the Philippine Islands. This is Leyte, right underneath the word Samar. Leyte and Samar are right close together. That's where, on the twentieth of September, the Army moved in with a tremendous number of people and ships and they invaded Leyte. The final battle of Leyte was over only after about, oh, three months or something like that. It was a terrible, terrific fight. Now these men on our ship, these Army men…and let me show you one other thing that'll make you know what I'm talking about. I've got a picture of them—here they are—on our ship. [laughs] Interviewer: That's too small. You won't be able to see it. Kidd: Too small? Interviewer: Yeah. Kidd: Okay. Well, those things that are there standing in front of us are lifeboats that are stacked there so that if we were sunk, they would float out. As the ship went down, they would float out. And I'm speaking of these round things right there. And then there are some men right in front of it. That's the only picture of all the men on the ship that I had. But they were very uncomfortable. They had to be uncomfortable. When we got there, we had talked to a lot of them and I remember that some of them said, “You know, we just had six weeks of training and I'm a stenographer.” And another fella said, “Well, I'm a typist.” And they were office personnel. And they said, “Do you guess that they need all of these fifteen hundred people for office personnel here at Leyte?” I said, “I'm sure that they got you for a reason.” And the reason I mention that is that when we came back from Leyte with some of the wounded men. [crying] This is gonna be hard to tell. But… Interviewer: Pause? Kidd: Yeah. There'll be two places where it's hard to get past. [tape stop] [note: When tape starts again, volume is extremely low.] Kidd: [inaudible] keep up on this ship. I said, “Well, good.” He said, “What did they do with you?” He said, “As soon as they got me established, they gave me a rifle and a carbine and I went out and started fighting.” And he said, “They didn't need stenographers. I was one of the stenographers that came,” whatever. And we were taking him back already, which is…I mean, that's sad because these men didn't know what they were doing. They had been in the Army six weeks and had their six weeks training. And then we carried them up and we brought one of them back. So. To a better [inaudible]. We stayed in Leyte. We unloaded. We unloaded their equipment. We unloaded the men and we went ashore several times to see movies or whatever. The American Red Cross sent us packages. Christmas came and we were still sitting there. The Japanese would send over planes at night. Single planes to see what was going on and also to bomb anything that they could see. But it wasn't…it wasn't bad. It was just harassing and that's all. Around…after Christmas had come, then we found that we were going to pack up and go back to Hilandia. We got the wounded men that we were bringing back and some other things, very few things. And they were in that same big rush. You know, it's like the Army as usual, it's either rush or stop and sit and wait. It's either rush or wait. But that was not…we weren't in control of that. We just had to go with the flow. So we were glad to get up and pull anchor up and go out with a convoy of about forty-five ships. We had a convoy going back. That was something different for us. I believe it was the first time we were in a convoy. We went all the way across the Pacific without a convoy and just winged it. The convoy had escorts, destroyer escorts, which were escorting us. These were smaller ships than destroyers and they were made really for this duty. They're very wily. They can go fast. They can…they don't sink too easily. We had two in the front, two on each side and two in the back. And I tell you that because I'll get to it in just a moment. These were…we felt very protected because we knew they had radar. We had no radar. They had sonar. We had no sonar. And they would detect any submarines or anybody that was trying to attack us. At about four thirty on January the first, 1945, that's a week after Christmas, we were just doing nothing, just sailing in our convoy. Zigzagging and so forth. When all of a sudden we heard an explosion, real near us but in the back of us and found that a plane had come over, a lone Japanese plane had over and had dropped a bomb. Some people said it was dropped at us. Some people said it was dropped at the ship next to us. Whether it was, they missed it. And we had missed seeing them. And it was only then that we had general alarm said. The plane, when I got up to my post up there in the front and bow of the ship, the plane had taken a circle all the way around the backside of the convoy, just miles and miles and miles away. It was just a dot. It had come then down low to the water and it was almost on the water, it looked like. It came between two of the destroyer escorts and the destroyer escorts were popping anti-aircraft at them. And it's not like you would think. It's like…it's just surreal. Not so real, but surreal, to see some smoke, some smoke and another smoke. Round smoke usually. Round smoke and hear some popping. And not realizing that there's a lot of metal going out. But this fella came between the two… [Tape 1, Side B] Kidd: …popping anti-aircraft, smoke. In came the plane. It was still fifty, a hundred feet off the water. Low. I did not see it. But on the way in, sometime on the way in, it had dropped a torpedo at us. And I'll tell you about that in just a moment. Because my eyes were on that plane. And he kept coming and coming. Our three-inch fifty gun began shooting at him, with long shells. We only had long and short. We didn't…we couldn't gauge so many feet or anything else. It's just long and we'd send up a barrage of long and then, when he came through that, we sent up about a barrage of short. And when we first started, the gunners were having trouble getting him sighted and they were moving the gun back and forth like this and I, sitting there with my asbestos gloves up to my elbows and further and with my shorts and T-shirt and battle hat on, I was moving back and they moved back and I moved forth and they shot. And the shell came right across my nose. It did not hit me. But I could feel that it was very, very hot. It's a red-hot shell that just comes out and it was going overboard. And that's the purpose of me, was to make sure that everything went overboard and didn't stay in that gun tub. At that point, I pulled off my asbestos gloves and I turned to the other men there in the tub, gun tub. I said, “Now some of you wanted souvenirs. I don't believe I'm gonna get a souvenir for myself, but if anyone wants to use these asbestos gloves, you're welcome to have ‘em and you're welcome to use ‘em and [laughing] you catch those things coming out the back of that wheeling breech of the gun.” I had no takers. And so, I saw the rest of the fight just from the gun tub and sitting there. When we got through with our long shells, we started shooting short shells. He came between us and the short shells and we stopped firing, because we couldn't hit anything. The twenty millimeter cannons were firing at them. And this plane got within two seconds of us. Two. Not three. Two seconds of us, on the same height as our gun tub. And we saw the starboard first twenty millimeter just cross the canopy of that plane and hit the pilot. And he fell immediately, the plane fell immediately, caught fire and fell immediately, within such a distance from the front of our ship that we could feel the heat from his flames. The gunnery officer began telling them to stop firing and they would not. They saw a piece of something floating and they thought it was maybe the pilot or whatever and they kept [inaudible] until that was gone. I knew at that time that…I wasn't scared during the events. You do things naturally and what you do, you do and you have to do. But I was scared afterward. I did not know it, but at that time, that torpedo had come under the back end of the ship. The back end of the ship when it's empty has a little slope to it. And the gunners back there saw the torpedo go out of sight underneath the ship and then come out the other side. Now, our second mate had…and captain took credit for it. But our second mate was on the bridge and when he saw the torpedo he turned it hard starboard into the torpedo so that it wouldn't be a larger target for it. And he saved the ship. Now, after that is all a letdown of other things that occurred. But I did not stay in the program until it was finished. I stopped, got my discharge. But I then had to stay in the Merchant Marines for a period of time. I had to stay for thirty-two months in the Merchant Marines with twenty-four months overseas duty. Overseas or academic duties. Interviewer: How did you return to the continental U.S. from the Pacific? Kidd: Quick story. We got to San Francisco. They paid us off. They gave us…I'm going to show you this. We got this medal. This is a combat medal. They only give it. It's not for sale in a store. It is now. They only give it if you've been directly attacked, hit or sunk. They gave us this medal and the star, which is a battle star. And a hundred and twenty-five dollars and that was it. I then went to a cousin's house in California at an air base. And I told her I had to get back home, but I didn't have any money. People said that we made a lot of money and things such as that. I brought my W-2 form, which in 1944, I made two hundred and thirty-six dollars and had nine dollars and seventy cents taken out in tax. And I spent most of 1944 in service. She took me out to the air base. I talked to some people and I was dressed in this uniform, all pretty and all. There it is. With the white hat and all the medals and so forth. And I talked to somebody and talked them into letting me have a parachute. Now what I told them…I bite down because I know I didn't tell them the truth to get that parachute. But I couldn't fly without that parachute. I couldn't get into an Army plane. I got my parachute. I got in the bombardier area of the plane and they took me back on a two-day trip. I got back to the East Coast and from there I got an Eastern Airlines plane to Atlanta. I didn't know how long I would be, so I didn't call my folks until I got back after the two-day flight across the country. But I was certain that I was okay and that I would get through it. I was very independent and I was gonna make it. Interviewer: And you did. Kidd: And I did. That's right. Interviewer: [inaudible] all memories. Kidd: [inaudible] I hitch-hiked across the United States to get back. Interviewer: And how did you feel toward the service about that? Kidd: Oh, fine. I knew what I was getting into. I knew that this is a service that requires discipline, requires things out of you. Marines talk about their service and they love it because of what they were required to do and how they were required to do it and they're proud of it. Interviewer: If you had to do it over again? Kidd: Same thing. Interviewer: Same thing? Kidd: Same thing. Yeah. Met a lot of nice people. Saw a lot of things after that. After this and I got back. Oh, when I got back they told me I hadn't gone six months so they put me on another ship and sent me back out. But that was a pussycat run. Interviewer: That's another story. Kidd: So and that was it. Interviewer: Well, Judge Kidd, this has been very, very interesting. And you have had some marvelous experiences. And things that I'm sure this is going really be helpful to you from…in the future when you want to recall. Not that you need this to help you recall but you'll be able to see yourself giving this interview. Kidd: Yes. Interviewer: And your grandchildren will also be able to review this. Kidd: Well, I found my son and I don't think he was distrusting me, but he looked through his computer and he found the story of the ship, of my ship, the SS Floyd W. Spencer, attacking and taking down that ship and if you read that when you get through, you may have that and he showed it to me. And I said, “You didn't believe me.” And he said, “No, I just was interested.” And it was the same as what I had told. Interviewer: We'll make this a part of the archives. Is there anything else that you want to add? We have only a few minutes remaining. Kidd: Well, in that few minutes I'll tell you this, that as I told you, if we had been sunk…now I was Merchant Marine Cadet Corps, hot shot cadet, supposed to be a learning thing and if I had been sunk on that ship I would have gotten a hundred and twenty-five dollars and then you have to pay your way back home. Now, that's a little difference, isn't it, in the service. And when they let me off at San Francisco, they gave me the money that I'd accumulated and said, “Goodbye and bon voyage and report back to the academy in New York on such and such a date.” And that was it. But that was what I joined and I knew it when I joined it. And I was a part of it. I joined in and became an officer and I joined in and I had officer's stripes on. And I did not, I was not mean or bad to people. I required them to follow the rules just as the instructor had required me to have captain's mast because I didn't follow the rules while I was sitting there. Interviewer: What would you say to a young person who is interested in joining the Merchant Marines today? Kidd: Well… Interviewer: What would you say to him? Kidd: Well, I would say that that would be very good, that it would be…it's interesting, you see a lot of things, you have a lot of experiences, I had lots of experiences just…even after I was not a cadet and I was sailing as a regular Merchant Marine so that I could get…so I wouldn't be…so I could get a discharge and get not drafted back into the service. So I would say that it was wonderful for me and what I did and what I learned. Interviewer: Well, Judge Kidd, this has been very, very interesting and thank you very much. Kidd: Well, I appreciate you and I… Interviewer: The Atlanta History Center will really appreciate this in the archives. Kidd: Well, thank you very much and I appreciate the fact that you let me do it. Interviewer: Good. [end of tape] Notable pages: p. 4—cadet training p.7—captain's mast p.11—crow's nest adventure p. 19—troop ship to Layte p. 20—lone bomber p.22—hot shell by a nose - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/235
- 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:
- 57:07
- 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:
-
