Oral history interview of William H. Brotherton, Jr.

Collection:: Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
Title:: Oral history interview of William H. Brotherton, Jr.
Creator:: Gantsoudes, Lillian
Brotherton, William Henry, Jr., 1917-2005
Date of Original:: 2004-06-16
Subject:: Hydrographic surveying
Atomic bomb
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Pearl Harbor (Hawaii), Attack on, 1941
Brotherton, William Henry, Sr., 1890-1951
Campbell, Hugh Lester, 1913-1993
MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
Fonda, Henry, 1905-1982
Byrd, Richard Evelyn, 1888-1957
Berlin, Irving, 1888-1989
Boak, James Earl, 1891-1956
Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
Brotherton, Wilma Lockhart, 1923-2010
Moore, Richard B. (Richard Bishop), 1871-1931
St. Mark's School of Texas
Columbia University
United Service Organizations (U.S.)
Standard Brands Incorporated
Location:: American Samoa, -14.289304, -170.692511
Australia, New South Wales, Sydney, -33.86785, 151.20732
Australia, Queensland, Brisbane, -27.46794, 153.02809
Fiji, -18.0, 178.0
French Polynesia, Bora-Bora, -16.50440635, -151.736669611035
Line Islands, Palmyra Atoll, 5.882204, -162.0748745
New Caledonia, -20.4542886, 164.55660583078
Papua New Guinea, Manus Province, Admiralty Islands, -2.2235542, 147.0182858
Tonga, -19.9160819, -175.2026424
United States, California, San Diego County, San Diego, 32.71571, -117.16472
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
Vanuatu, -16.5255069, 168.1069154
Wallis and Futuna Islands, Wallis Islands, -13.29884, -176.20929
Medium:: video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv
Type:: Moving Image
Format:: video/quicktime
Description:: In this interview, William Henry Brotherton, Jr., describes his experiences in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during WWII. Because the draft had been extended in the summer of 1941, Mr. Brotherton chose to enlist in the Navy. He was assigned to a survey ship and was in port in Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. He describes in detail the attack and the ship's response, as well as the aftermath. They were in the first task force to leave Pearl Harbor, mapping the islands throughout the Pacific. They encountered the Vichy French during their voyage. On their arrival in Australia, he was transferred to shore duty with the 7th Fleet.
William Brotherton was in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific during World War II.
Bill Brotherton Interviewed on June 16, 2003 Brotherton: . . . Congress by one vote extended the draft so that took care of that and so I went, decided to go into the Navy because I could be drafted to the Army for $20/month and the Navy made me an offer of $72, so that was fairly easy to see. In fact the story is even a little bit longer than that. I'd been recommended for a commission coming out of civilian life, but because I had astigmatism in my right eye, I couldn't qualify, so I found out I could go in as an enlisted man and they wouldn't hold that against me. So that way I got in through the draft, but I was not about to hold up and I couldn't go in the Army and think that the Army was going to let me out to go into the Navy, that kind of stuff, so I went ahead, on the advice of some of my good friends who spent many years in the military down in south Texas, in the mud flats of Texas. Interviewer: What year was this? Brotherton: This was about September of 1941. Interviewer: September of 1941. Brotherton: Yeah. Like I said, the commission deal fell through because of the astigmatism, so I went ahead and signed up in Dallas and then went out to the receiving station in San Diego. The receiving station, destroyer base and all that sort of thing. Interviewer: And what did you do in San Diego? Brotherton: Well, I was, see I went in as a Yeoman Second Class, which is a Petty Officer rating, kind of like in the Army a non-commission, whatever, and the second class, so immediately I was, they put me to work in the office there typing up beneficiary slips. So my job when the fellows came in was to get their beneficiaries. And, of course, I don't mind to tell you, a lot of them almost panicked when I asked who their beneficiaries were. They wanted to know: “What! Am I going to be long for this world or not.” I said, “Well, don't worry.” I said, “In World War I, hardly anybody in the Navy got hurt.” You see. But this is, it's real funny. A lot of fellows I signed up by the way ended up on the Arizona. Interviewer: Oh, wow. Brotherton: It was terrible [emotional]. Anyway, so I had this, in fact, one of the great delights I gave the Chief Yeoman there, I told him about my attempt to get a direct commission, you know, and they all think it's a joke because here's a man who has stripes and been here 12 years and he just got to be a Chief Yeoman, and here I was talking about, so, it gave him a great deal of pleasure when he got a letter from the Navy Department that said I wasn't eligible as a civilian, in the Navy I was not eligible. So it tickled him quite a bit, I mean, because . . . we'll show this reserve, so the ship, the U.S.S. Sumner, which had come around from the East Coast, it was a special duty ship, which had been originally built as a, believe it or not, as a subtender when subs were so small, it had a long bow and you were able to draw the keel of the bow, of the sub under that, so it looked like a yacht. See a lot of people thought it was J.P. Morgan's yacht or something like that, so they came around to San Diego and they needed a yeoman. I think they needed a yeoman First Class, but, you know . . . Interviewer: What are some of the, what are the duties of a Yeoman? Brotherton: Well, it's administrative. It's sort of personnel, administrative. You work in the ship's office. It's, I couldn't have asked for a better job. In other words, when they were going to enlist me, they were offering me to be a storekeeper or a yeoman, and I said what do they do and they told me they were going to say I could be a second-class storekeeper or a third-class yeoman. I said I'll take the third class because I knew that I would like that work better than being a storekeeper because it's the heart of the ship. In other words, you know everything that's going on. You have all the first knowledge, that sort of thing. It turned out to be a wise decision because later on I became a personnel officer and then you get a little stature, you get a little respect at that time because you control all of the orders. When people come in, they have to come to you, when they leave they have to see you. Interviewer: Alright. So tell me about this first, I'm sorry, the name of the ship was… Brotherton: Yeah, U.S.S. Sumner. Interviewer: Sumner Brotherton: So they put me aboard that. Interviewer: Tell me about that. Brotherton: Well, I didn't know anything. See, I was the biggest land lubber that ever came. I made all the mistakes. I called the deck the floor. I called the overhead the ceiling, the bulkhead, I called the wall. You know, they was, I was kind of a joke around the ship. You know, this stupid guy comes along. See about 80% of the personnel were regulars, and you had a few reserves like me, but they didn't have one as stupid as I was. But see on the trip out to San Diego, that's when things really got serious, is when we started having these drills, these general quarters drills. They, you turn all the lights off and then you throw on this special clothing. I said what's this clothing for. Well, the ship catches on fire. So, there was quite a little bit objection there. Even before we got to thinking about burning. Interviewer: Alright. Well, tell me, were these, was it a suit, was it a jacket? Brotherton: Special clothing. Interviewer: Special clothing? Brotherton: It was heavy clothing. They got a name for it, you know, it's, I don't know what they call it, but it was stuff they put on… Interviewer: So a call to general quarters, what is the first thing you would do? Put on the special clothing? Brotherton: General quarters is battle stations. Interviewer: Oh, okay. Brotherton: And you find out where your battle station was. Well, since I was in the ship's office, as yeoman, my, unfortunately I had the battle station on the ship's bridge, right by the commanding officer. In other words, when he wanted to communicate with the ship through the intercom, well then I was the one, I repeated whatever he said. And, you know, it came back. So I found out what I was supposed to do and so when I tell you it was real creepy doing these drills, the reason these drills were important is what contributed to our success. On December 7, we shot down two planes because we moved the ammunition from below deck, some magazines… Interviewer: And so you learned during the drills, to move the ammunition from below up to the deck? Brotherton: Yeah, well it contributed to that, but see we knew then the ammunition, see that was considered, well that was part of the drill. Well, when we got to Pearl, because we were kind of independent, we were operating really under the hydrographic office. See, administratively, we didn't have anybody looking over our shoulders. We were supposed to put that ammunition back in the magazines. Interviewer: Alright, you said that your mission was, I'm sorry, hydro – what? Brotherton: Hydrographics Interviewer: Hydrographic? Brotherton: We were doing charting. See, we had small boats aboard and we'd go into an area which we did later on, go out and chart the harbors, then go out using lead lines and get bearings, bring the information back to the ship, and we had hydographics engineers and, boy we were floating a hydrographics lab. They'd bring these bearings back and they would record them and then they would print these charts. You see, every harbor of the world had a chart. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: At some time or another, and then they would send a special sea plane in to distribute among the fleet. So we turned out literally hundreds of thousands of charts, which is pretty important. Interviewer: So you have, are you sailing directly from San Diego to Pearl on this boat? Brotherton: On this ship. On this ship. We had two or three drills, and on the way, naturally, and of course the key thing was to put the ammunition top-side and then when we got there, they just never did bother to put it below deck. Which, if we had, it would have made a big difference and so that, when we got to Pearl, you see that's why it was a mad place, it was all of the Navy in there, and you see we saw a whole fleet. You see Roosevelt had to get an admiral that would, to put all the ships in one place so the Japs could get at them. You see, he was using us as bait, you see, we turned out to be bait. Interviewer: When did you arrive in Pearl? Brotherton: Well, it was about two weeks before the attack, see. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: December 7. We got in the latter part of April, it took about, you know, it took a week or so coming after a week or 10 days. Interviewer: So what was Pearl like? Did you live on the ship, or did you Brotherton: You live, I slept in the ship's office. I didn't have to go anywhere. I had the mess deck below. I slept in the ship's office and I went up top-side for general quarters, so my life, it was controlled boatswain's pipe. You ever been aboard a Navy ship? It tells you what to do, what's going on. So I had the, a pretty good set up, and so we got out there on that particular morning and I had breakfast on the mess deck, which was just below the main deck… Interviewer: You're talking about December 7 now? Brotherton: I believe we're getting to December 7, and someone had said that there seemed to be a lot going on outside and so I got up and went over to the main deck and started, we were tied up in the sub-base at Pearl, berth 13. In fact it's right here, and here we are, you see the submarine base. Here it is right there. We were tied up in berth 13. Interviewer: I tell you what, would y'all just turn that around. I'm gonna . . . Female: It is _________________ right, see where it says submarine bases, Interviewer: Hold it up Female: Right, just so you can see where to go, right above that water. Interviewer: Alright, and while you've got it. This says this is the Nevada, Arizona Brotherton: That was a battleship row. Interviewer: The California. Battleship row is right here. Brotherton: That was Battleship Row. Interviewer: The Naval air station, submarine base and Navy yard. Okay. Brotherton: Yeah. And then something you didn't notice, were shield tanks. You see, we got several bricks. You need to… Interviewer: No. I've got it. You can point to the map. Brotherton: Yeah, see the, when these planes came in, the torpedo planes, they came in such a way that we were tied up and we didn't have to do a thing but fire, fire. If you had the nerve to fire. And, of course, I think the fellow, Red Kinnel. Interviewer: I'm sorry, the name again? Brotherton: A fellow name Red Kinnel. Interviewer: Alright, are we going to put the map down? Brotherton: The gun captain on the three-inch gun. See we had three-inch guns and he, went back to the fandale for 08:00. Everybody in the military knows that at 08:00 you have colors. So we're sitting there and suddenly these planes are going by and of course we thought they were our planes and just didn't pay them any attention. But the fellow in charge, he knew a Jap plane when he saw one. So he says, gee, he gave the verbal command. Up until that time, there had been no general arms. Incredible how far this thing went before anybody woke up. He said: “Those are not our planes, those are Jap planes. General quarters.” So I knew what that meant. So I, and then finally the ship came alive and they started to clang, clang, and clang, and so I got up on the bridge, and just as I got up on the bridge and turned around, this fellow Red Kinnel, I have to give him credit, because he didn't have anybody to tell him what to do when he was there and he fired, he had a direct hit. I mean that plane just exploded in mid-air. It was a beautiful sight, because we felt pretty stupid, you know, all of a sudden we have to digest the fact that we're under attack from Japan right here at Pearl Harbor. We said, oh my God, how bad can it get, but Red went ahead and fired and as it turned out, he was the only guy on the ship that got hurt. Because this gun, something to do with the mechanism, but he was courageous enough to put his elbow in there to boost us along and he ends up with a broken elbow out of it, but, so, he hit that direct and then a few minutes later, another one, which had already been hit, he finished it off. So we take credit for two planes. So here we are, a non-combat ship, see, just a service ship and we're firing, shooting down planes, but the battleships, for the most part, didn't even have, oh, yeah, I told you the rule, the Navy rule, Navy regulation, you were not supposed to have ammunition top-side in peacetime. See, that was it. You know everybody was afraid somebody was going to start something, so, but, so you had ship after ship after ship, all ships all around us, none of them were firing, because ammunition was below deck. So the guy that had the key to the locker, he's probably out on a picnic, so that was Sunday morning, a lot of people had gotten up at 6 or 7 in the morning and hit the beach or they'd go on liberty. So, we, that was pretty much it, because Red did the biggest thing for us. He shot the two planes down and then, because they went by, and of course we didn't know, and the main thing, the one thing I can see from that ship's bridge were the fuel tanks. And I thought, well why haven't they hit the fuel tanks? You know, I mean, they're hitting us. Why don't they hit the fuel tanks? Well, since that was my first war, I didn't know that they always hit the fuel tanks last. Of course, I didn't know it had a three-range plan. They were coming out on three waves. And the fuel tanks were put on the third wave. See, well, the, as it turned out, thank God, if they had hit the fuel tanks, I wouldn't be here. That would be the end of that. But, since they, because everybody has his own theory as to why they cut off after two waves. In two waves, they disabled every one of our battleships and did something to all of the airfields. So the Japs, and only lost 29 planes, those two planes we shot down.. Interviewer: 29? Brotherton: Twenty-nine. I mean, it just shows you how little was going on, and they have 350 planes. So you know something was working right for us, so the Jap admiral, I mean, if I were in his shoes and I've only lost 29 planes, I've disabled, their main objective originally was to disable the battleship fleet. Well, they disabled it. Well, what are we hanging, what are we waiting for, because our carriers were not in there. They were hoping our carriers were there and they wanted to know where our carriers were, but they had no way of finding out just where our carriers were. It turned out they showed up the next day, so, anyway, that admiral wasn't going to take any chances because they would not have been able to get back to Japan if our carriers showed up the same as their carriers. So, if he called the whole thing off, well, of course that saved us. So without losing the fuel tanks and us getting caught with it, so somehow we had a feeling without knowing what was going on, and we missed something. I mean, I thought this battle has ended too darn quick, you know, but it did and so then all we did was next… Interviewer: Well, finish that day for me. Brotherton: December 7? Interviewer: December 7, early morning, you all had shot down two planes. Do you spend the rest of the day on deck, on the bridge? Brotherton: Yeah, we stayed in general quarters. Interviewer: Stayed at general quarters. Brotherton: We stayed at general quarters from, till hell freezes over. Interviewer: But you didn't know what else was going on around you. You couldn't . . . Brotherton: Not too much. Well, we could see, we could see the Arizona burning. We could see certain, we knew that some of us were getting hurt. We knew we had gotten off “light” as far as us being hurt. Interviewer: Could you tell the difference between the two waves. I mean, you all participated in the first wave…, the second wave … Brotherton: Actually, the first wave is the one we took action in. Interviewer: Yeah. Brotherton: And we just knew there was a second wave because we could see the planes. But some of them kind of flew by us. Some of them I think were taking pictures or something like that, I don't know, but we just knew that there was two waves and that was the end and that really kind of surprised us. You know, we thought, well, something, something's missing here, and of course we didn't know that the third wave had been planned, so we just, from then on, while we were… Interviewer: You just stayed at general quarters for the rest of the day? Brotherton: They kept us at general quarters. She had all kinds of rumors going out, said Japs, well they said they were going to have some Jap transports off of Barber's Point, they were going to poison the water, they were going to go on to the west coast… Interviewer: How were you getting these rumors? Brotherton: Well, they fly, I don't really, they come out of the air. All the time I was thinking about Bunker Hill. I don't know why I thought about Bunker Hill. I realized I was in a historic… Interviewer: So you knew at that point that this was going to be a historic day? Brotherton: Oh yeah! Sure! I knew! My God, surprise attack with the Japs. I knew that there was a memorable occasion, and, but I never worried … whether we would survive or whether we would win a war. Female: Something you used to always, when you tell the story, this is Mimi [daughter] talking, you would talk about how you'd come out and how you were, something, you looked out and you saw the Jap plane and it was so close you felt like you could just reach out and touch it. And then also tell about with you looking out and the view that you saw when the ships were burning. Brotherton: Yeah, well, these planes that were coming in, they were actually looking at us and grinning, these Japs, insolently, and we were standing there saluting, and they could assume we were saluting them, of course, which we weren't, we were saluting the colors, but of course that ended pretty quick and that's when we went to general quarters. Well, from the bridge I could see the pandemonium that was going on around the harbor. I mean I could see the Arizona, I could see the whole row of battle ships there, California, a whole bunch of them, I could see all that, and so I knew that we had gotten off light, and I understood why, because we were not important enough to be a target. See, I like to tell people the way to survive a battle is don't be a designated target. If you're so far down, you don't make the list, why, you probably will survive. Interviewer: Would it be too painful to talk about what you were seeing? Brotherton: Well, I'd rather not. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: I don't want to get into that. Interviewer: Alright, now you had started talking… Brotherton: The idea of, and I can't stand it… Interviewer: We don't need to talk about that. What I'd like to, you had, in fact I sort of changed tracks on you a little bit earlier. You were getting ready to talk about the next day. Why don't we talk about the next day. Brotherton: Well, yeah, well the days from then on were, everybody sitting tight. We didn't know what was going to happen next. We didn't know whether there was going to be more attack on us, or what, and of course our carriers showed up and that made us feel good and so we knew that things were going, somehow work out, so we sort of guestimated that they had done their thing and hopefully gone on back to Japan. Interviewer: The speech that Roosevelt gave, did you all hear that, did you get it second hand, how did you… Brotherton: Don't bring up Roosevelt. Interviewer: Alright. That's fine. Brotherton: He insisted on putting us in harm's way, so that was his way of getting them to war. See, Roosevelt, I hate to say it, was a closet communist and he wanted to, he got in the war to help Stalin. See, Stalin, see the Russians were running our foreign policy then and, of course, Churchill wanted us in too, but Stalin had to have us because he would never have been able to withstand Hitler without us and, of course, England needed the help all along. But, see Roosevelt actually thought that Stalin had hit on something by letting the government spend money and run his life, so he thought he was following Stalin's lead at that time, so he, the war was really to make the world safe for communism. Interviewer: Alright. What did you do in the next days? Did you ever get off of general quarters or were you still on the bridge? And how long did you stay at Pearl? Brotherton: Well, what they do is set a watch schedule. You see after that, finally after general quarters, then you go on watch schedule so that you, every morning at daylight, two hours before and two hours after, and the evening, two hours before sunset and two hours after, so you spent four hours in general quarters because the attacks usually come early in the morning or late at night and then you have your general station, watch station, on top of that. So you had eight hours and then you had four, that's twelve hours, and then of course you had a job aboard the ship. I worked in the ship's office and I had things to do there, so I was busy all the time, and I never did, in fact I never did, never did, I never did get enough sleep for about a year and a half. Interviewer: What sort of things were you doing? What were your duties? Can you give us an example of something you might do during the day? Brotherton: See, mainly the thing was communication. We worked under the direction of the executive officer and he always had something he wanted to do, some orders to type up, go here, go there, whatever, whatever, kind of chasing around, it wasn't anything life threatening, or anything like that, so, things were pretty quiet, see, once they withdrew, then we were just sitting waiting to see what was going to happen next. Well, because we were, the type ship we were, by that I mean, not a combat ship, but to serve a purpose, they included us in the first task force to leave Pearl after the attack, and so they had the idea of taking Marines out to the different bases. In fact, there's a fellow in Gainesville right now who turned out to be a Marine passenger on one of the destroyers. See we didn't know, later on we never did get an escort, we were just supposed to looking out because we didn't have escorts when we did something like this, probably a task force would have the destroyers as escorts. So our idea was to go to Wake, I think it was. Well, as it turned out the Japs got there first, so then they changed us in mid-stream to go to an island called Palmyra, which nobody ever heard of before or since. Interviewer: Can you spell that? Brotherton: P-a-l-m-y-r-a. Palmyra. So, we go up to Palmyra, well, on that trip, then we became a designated target. This was a wonderful place for Jap subs to sit and wait outside a harbor full of ships, cause you know they had to know where they could go. They had to come out sometime, so they kind of followed us on this trip, so this is when they had a torpedo with our name on it, is the expression we used, and, but, unfortunately, their bureaucracy, I guess, interfered just like our bureaucracy interfered with us having ammunition top-side. Somehow they could rig their range finder only for big ships, big ships that go way down in the water, and I don't know whether they had, obviously they didn't have a control to come to our level, we were just a small ship floating on top of the water, so they fired and it missed us see, but, and this was their death warrant because it showed up on the other side and you had two destroyers out there and that was their job, was to see torpedoes running around in the water and figure out where they came from and get on top of them with a depth charge. So that destroyer sent us a message, said, sub last seen in a lake, so they sank the sub, in fact the skipper of that destroyer, I think, got the Navy Cross for sinking the sub, so that made things kind of interesting. Interviewer: When was this? What time of year? When are we talking about? Brotherton: Well, it was the latter part of December, see we, our trip, we left Pearl about two weeks after the 7th, so it was sometime in there before the end of the year. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: We were going down to Palmyra to bring back, in fact, this guy Mac Everett, he got dropped off. It was like you see in these cartoons with just a little island with a tree on it, that's about … Interviewer: That's where he got dropped off? Brotherton: You could see water all the way around it, and I thought, thank God I'm not a Marine because they dropped him off. I think he spent six months there before they finally picked him up and moved him somewhere else. But, I had many reasons to be grateful that I was aboard ship, because I always had a place to sleep, I had my food, you know, I really didn't, I didn't have too much to complain about, you know, as long as I didn't mind general quarters and watch duty and all that sort of thing. So we made that trip back to Pearl and then we were stuck there doing different things, really to do our regular duty, which was doing surveying, and so our first surveying job, the thing was placed, so a lot of people know about it now, they didn't then, Bora Bora, in the Society Islands. And our skipper was a mustang, a man that come up out of the ranks, his executive officer was an Academy man, so the mustang and Academy man are always like this you know. Interviewer: Do you know their names? Brotherton: Truett, Captain Truett, I .W. Truett was a skipper and Philips was his exec. They took turns trying to figure out how to make our lives miserable. But the skipper and the Truett, they didn't know whether that Bora Bora at that time—see the war was just getting warmed up and you had two kinds of French, so all that was controlled by France, so they didn't know whether it was free France or Vichy French, because free French were our kind of French, the Vichy was the other kind of French. So Truett had decided that they were not going to take this ship, I mean, if you got down there and turned out he was overpowered or something, so he had the gunners line our stern, or bow, the whole backbone of the ship, with dynamite because he was going to blow that ship up before he let the enemy have it, see. Of course we didn't find all of this out until later and we just kind of put it down as eccentricism and when we got down there, there wasn't anything there, it was just like a tropical island. You had, you know, girls doing the hula. I think we even went over at night time, you know, to watch the show. It was almost like something out of Hollywood, I mean, in fact, Bora Bora, for that book that was written about South Pacific, for example, Bali Hi, they were talking about Bora Bora because they had a peak on there that has a tendency to look like it was water but it looked like snow, so it almost looked as though you had a snow-capped peak in the south seas. I mean it was just a fantastic place and I've talked to people up there in the Navy who had their honeymoons down there, so I know it's a wonderful place. So, anyway, that trip turned out to be nothing to that. Now there, even though I was in the ship's office and I was always called on duties like going out to dynamite, for example, we had a lot of dynamite, that's the reason we could blow up the ship, we had so much dynamite. But the, you have these coral reefs that were on the chart. {the chart] they had was dated 1898 or something like that, so we did a new survey there and we'd go down and if they had things that were needed, so I got the chance to go out and work aboard the boats and do things like that. In other words, it wasn't all paperwork. And so, anyway, the World War was a great experience and then we went all through the South Seas, you name it, there's not a single island that we missed, Tonga, Fiji, American Samoa, British Samoa, Hebrides, New Caledonia, all of them, see, Wallace Island, which is an island I've never heard of. We had a great, we just had a tour of the South Seas. Now it wasn't all peaches and cream because any time you were at sea, and even when you were in port, they had you on watch duty on a routine basis, almost like eight on and four off or something like that. So they managed to keep you all fagged out, you see, but the only time we ever, we did have a little baseball, or they'd go to the bars, there would be some bars there and they would have fights. We would have to, one of my jobs was to bring them back to the ship after the fight. I had one guy come up to me later, and I didn't remember this, and he said, thank God, you got me back to the ship. Well, I didn't want anybody to get overtime, it's pretty serious when you're overtime when you're in the war you see. Interviewer: Well, tell me about playing baseball. Were you a good baseball player? Brotherton: Yeah. I was good enough for softball. It was just something new, in other words, those were your two choices, was baseball or the bar. You know, I tried to make it to the bar but I didn't, you know, all the time. Well, you were so limited, I mean, you'll always be restricted, you never did have too much fun, you know what I'm saying. You could have a little fun, but not a lot of fun and so we just fooled around all over the South Pacific. In fact, the greatest, well, I guess one thing I did do, I did see, no that was coming back, was, my real break occurred . . . see I had been turned down for a commission because of astigmatism in my right eye. The theory being that if you're an officer, you need 20:20 eyesight. Well, that's a farce, you don't. Because I had crow's nest watch and I had the same kind of sight I got now, so I was the most critical person aboard as far as look-out was concerned. When we finally got to Australia, and you're talking about going to Heaven. Good Lord, you see those sunsets in the south, in the southern hemisphere are absolutely fantastic. You know that French painter, Van Gogh or whatever his name was, he settled in the islands just to paint down there because they got colors down there you've never seen before and the sunsets were awesome. Well, they had one of those when we were going into Sydney, Australia and here I was in the crow's nest watch, taking in this beautiful sight and going to get off that ship. See, I was on that ship for a year and a half, see, so, nobody, we never did spend a night off the ship because they didn't know what might happen on the beach. So anyway we got to Australia and we actually got liberty that night. I couldn't believe it because usually they find some excuse to put it off for another day or so, so anyway I got a chance to see Australia. Well, now I got my biggest break there was because we had one more yeoman aboard ship than our allowance called for and because that was MacArthur's headquarters. At that time I think MacArthur was in Brisbane, but the Sydney was kind of administrative, so they sent a thing over, they wanted a yeoman to be transferred. So they put me up. Didn't make me mad at all. I think they thought they were getting rid of me, which they were, but boy I was never so happy to have someone just get rid of me as going to shore there, because once I got there, then I went up to Brisbane and I spent a year there. Interviewer: Alright, so tell me what time, when are you arriving in Australia? What time of year and what… Brotherton: Well, it was around early January or February of 1943. Interviewer: Of 1943? Brotherton: 1943, yeah. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: See we spent all of 1942 at sea, and then 1943 was coming up and so then I get to Australia and I got transferred to the, at that time they called it Com Southwest Pac Four and later on it became the 7th Fleet, and so, and it was MacArthur's Navy, really. See we were in the same headquarters when I went from Sydney up to Brisbane, really I was in the same office building. I lived in a hotel in Brisbane. It beat that ship. The nice thing about Australia is it's customary if you're in a hotel, they give you breakfast. And I was on a per diem of some kind, so here I got a free breakfast from the hotel and had the per diem, you know, for the rest of it, so I'm telling you it was quite the life after what I'd gone through. I thought, well, maybe I've lived to deserve this. I could see MacArthur almost every day because he would come down and go out in his limo to go to eat lunch at the hotel, the Lennons Hotel there in Brisbane and all the local folks would gather around, you know, to see him, and all I had to do was look out the window because we were in the same building, we were so under his control. Interviewer: You said he would have lunch at the Lennons? Is that . . . Brotherton: Lennons, well, that was a hotel. Interviewer: Is it, can you spell that? Brotherton: L-e-n-n-o-n-s. You know Lennons, MacArthur, the word was MacArthur had a suite, his wife had a suite, his son had a suite and the Chinese woman that looked after the son, she had a suite. He was living high on the hog, which you would expect. Of course, I admired MacArthur more afterwards than at the time because at that time, there was so much, you know, friction between the Army and Navy. If you were a good Navy man, you were supposed to boo him, you know what I'm saying, but I thought he was a great man then and I still do. But, so I think he was entitled to whatever he got, but, so he ran that show and I was in the office of personnel, which meant that all of the people who came into the states, came in to the Seventh Fleet from the states, had to come through our office, only officers did, so that kind of gave me a touch, I saw all kinds of people like Admiral Byrd, a lot of them, I saw Henry Fonda. I had a list of people that were famous that were in the Navy, you know, for a purpose so I had, it was kind of, it was an interesting place to be. Interviewer: Well, tell us what, as personnel officer, your daily chores were. Brotherton: Well, you keep track of orders. See, you had these people pouring in there, orders had to be endorsed, you had to keep records, you had to post records to see well where are they going to go. Sometimes they'd even give you the, you know, you'd have to place them somewhere, like, here's a unit over here that needs this one, so we send it over there. You took off some of those at that level, you see, so it was just, it was paperwork and it wasn't too bad. It beats standing on that deck of that ship, letting your life be controlled by the boatswain's pipe because I didn't have to have a boatswain's pipe, so I spent, well, by that time I had learned a whole lot in the Navy. I was getting real smart. I was a lot smarter than I was when I went in. And one of the ways that I found out, see, because when you go in, you know you think that everybody's going to look after you. Of course, nobody looks after you. You find that out real quick, so, anyway, the officer in charge wanted to recommend me for being an officer and I said, well, I've already had that happen one time and it fell down because of a physical. In the meantime, the war had progressed so they got to the point where they were changing a lot of the requirements. And so I thought maybe they'd change the physical. But anyway, I went ahead and, oh yeah, and then you had this, in the Navy, the Navy is more class conscious than the Army, see, because it's dominated more by the Academy people than the armies at West Point. So the last thing in the world a naval officer wants is to see a young enlisted guy become an officer. But anyway, this guy stood behind me, see by that time, I had a college degree and spent a year at Columbia University, so I had the educational background and maybe more than what they had, you see. But anyway, by that time I knew how to handle the Navy system. See, that was your key thing, was your knowledge. They were always losing things in the file, you see, so he finally said, “Billy, you're the only who can find anything in the file so we're recommending you.” So anyway, I finally got recommended for a commission. Oh, yeah, I had a friend in the Navy Department, that was another break which is almost another story, because he found that old application that had been side-tracked earlier and this was a new one, you see. And so then I go back to the states and finally got my commission and then I volunteered to come back to that same command cause I knew that command pretty well. So I wasn't gone more than about two or three months. When I walked in there they said, “Oh my God, we're glad you're back. We've been trying to find this file.” [laughter] Interviewer: So you were there for a year, so for 1943 you were in Australia. Brotherton: All of '43 and … Interviewer: And when do you come back, all right. Brotherton: End of '44. So it was '44… Interview: So what are the couple of months you spent in the states. Brotherton: Well, I went to naval training in Arizona. See, I knew a lot about the Navy but technically they want you to go to officer training, you know, learn how to do this and do that. Interviewer: Uh hum, all right. Brotherton: So I spent 2 years, I mean 2 months in Tucson, Arizona at the naval school there. So by coming back from overseas 1or 2 months and then another month, see I was in the states. See I was overseas for 50 months during the war. Interviewer: Yeah. Brotherton: There's only 44 months overseas—no—50 months on active duty—44 months overseas. So there was just a few months before and after that I was not overseas. I was usually aboard a ship. So anyway I went back to that same command that had been recommended and they immediately put me to work as officer because I knew where the files were and then later on this was a real break. It was north of New Guinea, some islands called Admiralty Islands, a lot of people have never heard of it—Atlantis is the chief base on that—it was a huge base, had a great harbor—they used it for the invasion of the Philippines. So they set up a subordinate command there. So then I could be there and be the personnel officer. See, otherwise before I was always working for some other personnel officer. So I had…see we had charge of bases like Moresby, Finchhousen, whatever—name all the bases in New Guinea and Northern Australia. So that was probably the best duty I ever had because the Admiral there—you really got to know everybody. In fact, that's where I met Irving Berlin—he was flying around doing these USO things—but you couldn't talk to him [laugh]; he sat with the Admiral and we all had…it was pretty good—it was a huge base. Interviewer: All right, this Admiral, what's his name, do you remember that? Brotherton: Well, the first one was name Boak, Admiral Boak was a tough… Interviewer: How do you spell that? Brotherton: Boak. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: He was one more tough hombre. Boy, I guarantee you when you walked into his presence you trembled. Interviewer: Um hum. Brotherton: So Boak was in charge. He was the one that established that base. See, they went out there when it was nothing. He was, the story about how he could get everybody whipped into shape, cause he was a worker—he was a worker. In fact, he built it up and got the Leion of Merit I think. And then he left and a real southern gentlemen came on, I can't think of his name. Interviewer: That's okay. Brotherton: The one thing I learned from him was to drink martinis—his test of you, if you were going to measure up well you had to be able to stand so many martinis. Unfortunately, we had a legal officer who couldn't hold his liquor so we had to get another one. Interviewer: How did…what kind of martinis? Brotherton: Well, any kind. Interviewer: Any kind. Brotherton: Oh listen, he had a guy there that could… I could have my eggs in the morning any way I wanted it—we had a Pullman porter chef—you see in the old days the best food you ever ate was on the trains—the Pullman trains. This guy, he could do anything, I'm telling you the guy was awesome. So you could have your eggs the way you wanted it and if you wanted a martini, if you wanted it dry, however you wanted it, he could do it for you. And I think this guy's name was Sylvester. He was from South Carolina, he was just a perfect gentlemen, we couldn't ask [for more]. The first guy, Boak, his idea of recreation was horseshoe pitching, you see, so you had to learn how to horseshoe pitch to get along with him. Martin, Martin that's what it was, Commandore Martin. See they were commandores—the rank commandore was just sort of between captain and admiral, just kind of an honorary salute. They were commodores, sort of admiral. And so, anyway, between Boak and Martin, Commandore Martin, it was a well run, well operated base. We had everything, air field, we had labor battalion, we had whatever. I almost hate to tell you this but noontime, because see in the Navy a lot of things that—and you will find this out—is comshaw. You get in a position where you can do something for somebody, they do something for you. So we could get a boat everyday. Down there you had the rains, but everyday at noontime the boat would make it to dock. We'd have the food brought right out there to play volleyball. Interviewer: So a little different at the end of your service than at the beginning. Brotherton: I had this multi-millionaire friend of mine. I had known, I knew his friend who had come for court-martial, and he managed, well, he didn't win the court-martial. It wasn't him, he was the plaintiff. Anyway, he and I got to be good friends. This guy was big and a lot older than I was but because his whole life was nothing but just having a good time. We had a lot of fun. Interviewer: Where were you when the atomic bombs were dropped? Brotherton: We were at Mantis Islands. This Commodore Martin—he took that very seriously. In fact he called the whole part of the camp, it was a huge place so maybe he just called together a group that was with us. And he said well, it looks to him like the wars were going to end—there weren't going to be any more wars. That was kind of his message because I guess the impact of the atomic bomb had done its duty and it did what we needed to be done, because we never would have survived. That Japan, they would fought individual by individual. They already figured it'd take a million men to conquer Japan. I want to give Truman all the credit in the world for dropping that atomic bomb. It was the stupidest thing in the world for us to want to fight in that war, with the situation like it was. Interviewer: And then how did you hear about the surrender? Brotherton: Oh yeah, that's when this lawyer from Boston got so drunk. I don't know if y'all know any Boston Irish. I've heard the story you know about people getting down when their chin was on the foot rail and I always thought it was just fiction. They had a bunch of Boston Irish, they actually, one of them got, actually ended up down on the floor with his chin on the foot rail. And then one of the other ones was going to beat up on him because of it and so on and so forth, so the commodore told me, he said, let me see who else is a lawyer on the staff. See, we had all kinds of people available. So they bumped him and they ran him off. He was a Harvard graduate, too, by the way. He thought he was supposed to, they thought they were supposed to let everything out, you see. Cause it was VJ Day. That's what we were celebrating, was VJ Day. We went on through VE Day. It was VJ Day, it was really the only important day for us because we were in the Pacific. We weren't over there in the Atlantic. So VJ Day was our big day. So then my challenge got to be how was I going to get back to the states, because I was still single, and the point system that came out favored the married men, you see. And so here I've been overseas four years and I rated way down here because I was still single. Of course, later on they changed that and the commodore also said I had to get somebody who was as good as I was. I said, well, you know, I was only one but I did find two guys. Picked two guys to take my job, so he was satisfied with that so he released me to come back. Interviewer: And when were you released? Brotherton: Well, that was in November of '45. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: One interesting thing that happened while I was, came back to the States—originally I was on the train. I don't know if you've ever been to the West coast, riding up and down between L.A. and San Francisco. Have you ever ridden that train? It has club cars and all that. Well, I met the president of Standard Brands on that train. And it turned out that he had been an enlisted man in World War I. He had gotten to be an officer and he was interested in me for that reason, because he knew that it's not easy to do in the Army and it's real hard to do in the Navy. So he took a little interest in me, so we got to talking and we found out, lo and behold, my hometown of Dallas, Texas, the man whose pool I learned how to swim in in Dallas, George Aldridge, was a director of Standard Brands. So, it so happened that George Aldridge worked with Jim Adams, who was the president of Standard Brands. So he said, well, he says, he gave me his card, and he says when you get back, he said, you know, come look us up. And I went to see Mr. Aldridge and he said, well, go on up there. He said they'll do something for you, you know. So that's where I just stepped into a job, you might say, when the war was over. And all of that helped, you see, my Navy experience and the fact that I re-enlisted and became an officer and all that kind of stuff kind of helped the cause. Interviewer: Well, it's a wonderful story. Tell me about . . . so you come back and you take a job in Dallas with Standard Brands? Brotherton: No, no. I went to New York. Interviewer: New York? Brotherton: They asked me whether I wanted to, said I had a choice between Birmingham and Atlanta. Well, I picked Atlanta. Apparently they had openings in both. So that's what got me down to Atlanta. And then, you see, early in the game, was the most momentous thing in my life was when I went to Miami and I met my wife, Wilma. Interviewer: Tell me her name. Brotherton: Wilma. Interviewer: What was her maiden name? Brotherton: Lockhart. Wilma Lockhart. Interviewer: All right. And when did you meet her, when is this? Brotherton: Well, this was about November, well about September of, let's see. I got out in '45, so this would have been about '46. Interviewer: September of '46? Brotherton: '46. I met her … Interviewer: In Miami. Okay. Brotherton: In Miami. And … Interviewer: How did you meet Wilma? Brotherton: There was a club, you see. I had a roommate who went to this club. It was for journalists. The man that ran this place was catering to the media, so it was what he called the Press Club, and all these … they'd go there and feel like they were special, you see. So, Wilma came with her sister's roommate who wrote for the Miami Herald. And so Wilma showed up and I showed up and Wilma, she pulled this. When we got up to dance, Wilma swooned, and I thought, my God, what's wrong with this lady. So, she could barely sit, and it was because of me. She couldn't take it. I was too much. Well, I had never had that tried on me before, and I— Interviewer: You hadn't experienced that sort of, a woman hadn't swooned on you before? Brotherton: Right. I went for it hook, line and sinker. I said, this girl thinks I'm wonderful and she's willing to say it. She's the kind of a girl I've always dreamed about. She really fulfilled my dreams. Just exactly the kind of girl I've dreamed about. And here she is, swooning. So she hooked me. She couldn't have gotten rid of me with a stick. She did it so well. She was real talented on that. We've been married 57 years, I guess. Something like that. I was very fortunate. I just lucked out. You know, one of those things. Interviewer: So, is that what you call love at first sight? Swooned at first sight? Brotherton: Love at first sight. Interviewer: When did you all get married? Brotherton: Well, about a year later. We got married November 1st of '47, I think. Interviewer: And you were settled in Atlanta by then? Brotherton: Well, let's see. We were, we came, we went to, yeah, we were in Atlanta by that time. Yeah. Married down there and then settled in Atlanta. I think we . . . Female: Or was it Raleigh? Brotherton: Huh? Female: Raleigh, North Carolina? Brotherton: Oh, that's right. We lived in Raleigh first and then went to Atlanta from Raleigh. I was working for Standard Brands and they finally moved me down to Atlanta out of Raleigh. Once I got to Atlanta, I knew I'd never leave because . . . Female: But you couldn't hear anything. Brotherton: Yeah. Right. Female: William, one thing. I know this is back tracking and I don't know if you want to do it … Interviewer: Let me start this back. We had to reset the tape player and so we're going to start recording again. Mimi, you had something that you wanted your Dad to include? Female: Well, this was back on December 7th. About when he would always tell the story that when he would look and see the ship's bombs going and the ships burning, you know, what he could hear, which was … Brotherton: Well, I didn't hear very much. It was real funny the way the noise was. It all went the other way. I don't know whether the wind was blowing the other way or not. But I could see all this pandemonium but couldn't hear a lot of it. I mean it was just, it was just where we were situated, we could see it, but we couldn't hear it, you know. And this was kind of a screwy thing and all of a sudden you'd wonder is my hearing aid working or something. Interviewer: Makes it surreal. Female: Yes. He always would say that it was surreal for that reason. Brotherton: Yeah. It really was. You know, you felt like you were witnessing, and you were just watching a silent movie. That's just like what it was. Interviewer: We've got just a few minutes left. Is there any part of the story you haven't told, that you would like to tell? Can you think of anything … is there a person that you remember, is there an event? You've told us several events. Just didn't know … wanted to make sure that we got all that you remember. Brotherton: Yeah. On December 7th or … Interviewer: Add anything. Add anything. Male: This is Bailey. The thing about the apartment. Brotherton: Oh, yeah. After Wilma and I met each other, in order to get an apartment, just to show you what happens when a war goes on, housing just dries up. And I was in Orlando. I'd been transferred from Miami to Orlando. That's when I knew God was directing me. I meet her in Miami, then I'm transferred to Orlando, and she only lives 50 miles away, you see. So, I was looking for a place to live, and I find out real quick that they would not lease out to any single people. So, I had to lie. Said my wife was going to join me. I put Mr. and Mrs. Brotherton so when Wilma came around checking on me, she looked at that and says, she had a friend with her. Well, apparently her friend was sophisticated enough to say, oh he probably did that just to get the room. I mean, she figures that. Which was correct, of course. But Wilma acted real serious, like, well, wait a minute now. Are you or are you not, you see. I said, well, you know it's kind of a common story that people tell in order to get in a place. And I felt, well, I was a responsible person. Because what they wanted to do was keep the single people out with all the partying and hell-raising and so forth. And I knew that I would respect their property so I felt qualified to qualify myself, you know. And so that was a little bit of a break I got. Being able to live there in Orlando and she was down in Haines City and we were able to visit back and forth until they got ready to transfer me again. And so by that time I'd made up my mind and she was going back to Texas with me and met my family and I'd even bought her a ring. Wilma wanted to skip the engagement ring. She said I don't care about the engagement. I want the wedding ring. To heck with all the frills. I want the bottom line. So, I went ahead and got the wedding ring and so then we were married there in Haines City where she lived and so forth. Female: This is Mimi. Dad, you might want to . . .cause you didn't do any background and I don't know how much you want to do but you might, I think it's interesting about you living with your uncle Dick in New York until 1928 with the World's Fair there and some of the things you saw and how he worked with Madame Curie and you lived with him at Perdue. And you know . . . Brotherton: What she's talking about there is my early years, I had an aunt who married a famous man, an international scientist, called Dr. Richard Bishop Moore. And he had a lot of claims to fame. One of them was that he worked with Madame Curie on radium. And he worked with somebody I'm sure that was big on helium. So he was the radium and helium expert in the United States. So my grandmother and I went and spent the summer in New York. I got to know New York like a book, you see. Because when you're young, you take everything in. New York, you know, with well-organized streets and all that kind of thing. So, she and I, we were in that national, that Metropolitan Museum of Art a hundred times. Museum of Natural History. Everything you could see in New York … that was when the Woolworth Building was the tallest building in the world. Interviewer: And when was this, what year? Brotherton: It was 1926. So that was a big step in education because they say travel is broadening and all of a sudden … And whenever I was away from New York, I'd start talking about New York and get people's attention. Somebody would say, oh shut up, I've heard that before. But that was quite an experience I had there. And I lived with him for two years. You see my mother had three sons, boys, and my aunt who married Dr. Moore didn't have any children, so they wanted me to live with them, you know, to give my mother a break and to kind of have another member of the family. So, living there with him, at Perdue, he was leader of the science school and head of the chemistry department. And with all of his connections with Madame Curie, he was going to build a, well, he did build a chemistry building. He wanted to get her to come and dedicate it. I think she did get to the Midwest, but I don't think she ever actually got to West Lafayette. But you know Madame Curie was quite a character herself. But he had all this prestige because he had been head of several big companies but he, like everybody else, he wanted to get out of the commercial rat race back into the academic because … Interviewer: What company was he president of? Brotherton: The biggest company I can … Interviewer: Dow? Brotherton: Dow. He was president of Dow Chemical Company for a while but he wanted to get out of that and get back into academics because that's where … you see, he was a research guy. People who do research, they are the ones that, you know, have got all the marbles and the man that was president of Perdue had sought him out for that reason. Because he knew that he would bring a lot of prestige to Perdue because of his research. Interviewer: Also when the president was ill … Brotherton: Yeah, well, when he was there, he was the highest ranking faculty person so when the president was out, Dr. Moore took his place. And you'd have famous people come to town, like the German that ran in the first World War, sank tons and tons of shipping but nobody lost their life. He was one of these Prussian elite people. But he didn't believe in killing people. He just sank their ships. I remember he came through there, and he was big on the circuit. And it was really quite an experience, you know, just to talk to somebody like that. Daughter: Also, in 1928 you stayed with them, with Uncle Dick, and you saw Gertrude Utterly, who swam the English Channel? Brotherton: Well, that was, yeah, that summer of '26 when I was in … I didn't actually see her. In the summer of '26 is the year that Gertrude Utterly, you know, the first woman to swim the English Channel. And then, you see, later Lindbergh came along. But I was sort of there at a time when a lot of things were happening. In fact, it was the Tunney-Dempsey fight. You know, the long count. And back then, of course, we didn't have a TV, we listened to it on the radio, you know. So I was sort of in New York at the time … oh yeah, when the movies, the speaking movies came along that summer. I remember the first one where you had … it was silent all the way and then at the end they brought in the voice. You see, that was the big breakthrough on that. Interviewer: Al Jolson? Brotherton: Yeah. Al Jolson and so forth. I was there at a real critical time so when I went back to Columbia later, you see, after I finished SMU, I got a scholarship to Columbia to see if I could get into law and I found out that I didn't have a legal mind. And I felt real bad about it until I found out that my best friend, John, who just left here earlier, and I told him about Dan Smoot, a friend of mine. He was brilliant and he got a scholarship to SMU but after he'd been in it for 90 days, he gave it back because he said in his opinion law was not an honorable profession. I mean here's this pipsqueak giving the dean of the law school, telling the dean, you know, take it … See, he had integrity. See, he had a brilliance … somebody with integrity. Interviewer: What I want to do is finish up. You have a large contingent of your family here today. Would you tell us who is in the room with us, so that it's on the tape. Brotherton: Well, unfortunately, my son is not here because he was deceased through an accident. Interviewer: And what was your son's name? Brotherton: Wilson. Interviewer: Okay. Brotherton: Wilson Lockhart. A great tragedy in my life. Interviewer: Alright. And who is here with us? Brotherton: The number two child is Mimi, Georgia Marie Brotherton, better known as Mimi. And she's married to a fine young man named William Davis Stitt. And the number three daughter was Betty Ann Brotherton who married a young man, McKay. Steve McKay. And Phillip McKay. Samuel McKay. They have, let's see, two boys … Interviewer: Two boys, one of whom is with us today. Brotherton: One of ___ and he's going in the Navy. Interviewer: Who's with us today? Brotherton: Well, Mimi is here today … Interviewer: I'm sorry. The grandson that's going into the Navy. Brotherton: The grandson that wants to go into the Navy, that's Samuel McKay. He's all signed up and everything, and he's going on active duty in July. Male: July. Brotherton: July, I believe. So I thought he might appreciate this interview that kind of tells how the old guy did it, you see. Interviewer: And you have another grandson in the room with us. Brotherton: I have another grandson, William Davis Brotherton. Female: His name is Brotherton. Brotherton: Oh, yeah. William … Wait a minute. Male: Just William Davis. Brotherton: Wait a minute. William Brotherton … Female: He's William Davis … he's David's brother. Brotherton: Oh, he's David's brother. Yeah, I got my name on him. And didn't I get my name on you? Male: … William Samuel. Brotherton: William Samuel. Okay, so those two are named … my name is incorporated in those two young men, you see. Interviewer: How many grandchildren do you have? Brotherton: Well, we have five now. Interviewer: Five? Brotherton: Minus the one that was deceased. Interviewer: Uh hum. Brotherton: Five surviving. Interviewer: Okay. Female: What about Laura? Brotherton: Well, my first … my son's surviving spouse has a daughter surviving. A terrible thing there – not only my son was deceased, but his son is deceased. So I lost both a son and a grandson. Female: Blake Lockhart Brotherton. Brotherton: And he's … Huh? Female: Blake Lockhart Brotherton. Brotherton: Blake Lockhart. Blake is deceased and Laura is living and she's surviving with her mother and we don't have any relations with her. Interviewer: And she's Laura Helen Brotherton? Brotherton: Laura Brotherton. Laura Brotherton, yeah. We don't have any relations with her at all. Interviewer: Alright. And then there's another guest in the room with us. Who brought you today. Brotherton: Oh, yes, this is the surprise guest. Tom Bauer. Tom is, well everybody in Gainesville knows who Tom is. Tom is a wonderful man. He made a trip down here and he drove me down here today and he's going to drive me back. Now, if you feel anybody can do any more than that, I don't know. But Tom … Tom, tell them how good you are. [laughter] When we were coming down the street here, he has service stations up and down the road here that he supplies with oil, you see. He's a service … and he does … some you just give them oil and some of them, you do the whole nine yards or so. Interviewer: Alright. Brotherton: But I tell you, this man needs special recognition. Interviewer: Well, thank you all very much. Male: Bill, tell them why they didn't blow up the fuel tanks until ____ not going to the ____ until the third wave. I always thought that was interesting. Brotherton: Well, I think the reason they didn't blow them up was because they wanted to get out of there. You see, time got real important all of a sudden there. They didn't know where our carriers were. If they had some way of knowing where our carriers were, and the carriers were a long ways off, I think they would've hit the fuel tanks. But because they had had so much success … You see, like they could only lose 29 planes and to look at all the damage they had done, and as far as the admiral was concerned, his goal was to disable the battle ships. And he did. Every one of them was disabled in some way or another. Some of them were later but at the time none of them were effective. So, he thought well what the heck, why should I risk, you know, an encounter with the U.S. carriers, because if they show up, they're not going to like what they see and they would naturally … they might sink those carriers that were going to carry the planes back. So I think that's what got him out. Male: You were saying that they didn't want to blow them up because the smoke would go over and cover the target. Brotherton: Oh, I said … oh, well, the question was … see I wondered why they had not hit the … earlier. Well, you see what happens, whenever you do a fuel tank, all of a sudden you got black smoke galore. And you can't find your way out of it. So the tradition is always … if there are fuel tanks involved, you're going to hit them last. And because they had a three phase plan, they had _____. Of course, we had no way of knowing that. I just wondered, you know, why they hadn't hit them. I mean, in my first war, I thought you just hit everything, you know. So that, you see, that blacks you out, so it's a darn good reason for not hitting them first because that always ends the attack because you can't see anything, and nobody else can. Because those tanks put out this tremendous smoke. Interviewer: Mr. Brotherton, I want to thank you so much for coming in and sharing the story. It is going to make … it makes a huge difference to us. So, thank you for taking the time. Brotherton: Yeah. Interviewer: We do appreciate it. Brotherton: Well, you're too generous. I don't know how I could _____. But thank you very much.
Metadata URL:: http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/356
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:: 1:14:27
Original Collection:: Veterans History Project oral history recordings
Veterans History Project collection, MSS 1010, Kenan Research Center, Atlanta History Center
Holding Institution:: Atlanta History Center
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