- Collection:
- Veterans History Project: Oral History Interviews
- Title:
- Oral history interview of John Howett
- Creator:
- Marr, Christine
Howett, John Spurgeon, 1926-2009 - Date of Original:
- 2003-07-16
- Subject:
- World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Campaigns--Pacific Ocean
Napalm
World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps
Nazis
Monastic and religious life--Kentucky
World War, 1939-1945--Atrocities--Philippines
50 Caliber gun
Mailer, Norman
Higashikuni, Naruhiko, 1887-1990
Meisinger, Josef Albert, 1899-1947
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 43rd
United States. Army. Infantry Division, 97th
United States. Army. Cavalry, 1st
John Herron Art Institute. Art School
Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani (Trappist, Ky.)
Cabanatuan (Philippines: Concentration Camp)
United States. Servicemen's Readjustment Act of 1944 - Location:
- Japan, Yokohama-shi, 35.444991, 139.636768
Philippines, Cabanatuan, 15.4905045, 120.9684264
Philippines, Ipo Dam, 14.8750709, 121.147309576094
Philippines, Manila Bay, 14.5906216, 120.9799696
United States, Georgia, 32.75042, -83.50018
United States, Georgia, Atlanta Metropolitan Area, 33.8498, 84.4383
United States, Illinois, Fort Sheridan, 42.2173902, -87.8211171
United States, Indiana, Camp Atterbury, 39.2890345, -86.04064325
United States, Indiana, Marion County, Indianapolis, 39.76838, -86.15804
United States, Kentucky, Trappist, 37.652506, -85.569232
United States, Texas, Smith County, Camp Fannin, 32.42367925, -95.2112318132556 - Medium:
- video recordings (physical artifacts)
mini-dv - Type:
- Moving Image
- Format:
- video/quicktime
- Description:
- In this interview, John Howett describes his experiences in the Pacific Theater in World War II as an Intelligence and reconnaissance scout. He discusses life as a new, young soldier in the closing days of the war in the Philippines and as part of occupational forces in Japan. He relates witnessing the devastation at Yokohama and Hiroshima; atrocities at a prison camp holding Chinese prisoners; and guarding captured Japanese and Nazi leaders. He tells of the importance of contact with his family, describes the effect the war had on him, and how those experiences influenced the remainder of his life. He describes his post-war education and work.
John Howett was an Army scout in the Pacific during World War II.
JOHN HOWETT VETERANS HISTORY PROJECT ATLANTA HISTORY CENTER Interview Date: July 16, 2003 Interviewer: Christine Marr Transcribed by: Stephanie McKinnell TAPE 1 SIDE A CHRISTINE MARR: This is Christine Marr interviewing for the Veterans History Project on July 16, 2003, at the Atlanta History Center in Atlanta, Georgia. Today I'm interviewing Dr. John Howett to gain his story and experience in World War II. JOHN HOWETT: To make it clear that Dr. John Howett is a Ph.D., not a medical doctor, a professor. My name is John Howett, and I live in Snellville, Georgia, just outside of Atlanta. What else did you ask me? CM: Spell your last name. JH: Howett, H-o-w-e-t-t. CM: Begin by telling us how you came to be enrolled in World War II. JH: I was drafted. I graduated from high school in June of 1944. I worked that summer in a radar plant, and then I was drafted when I turned 18 in August. CM: Where were you living at that time? JH: Kokomo, Indiana. And I was sent to Camp Atterbery in Indianapolis, Indiana, which was the assembling point. CM: What was it like? JH: It was terrible for a greenhorn. We were issued our olive drab uniforms which didn't fit and our shoes which didn't fit. My first experience with nasty corporals ordering me around. But the first week I got poison ivy on my arms and got blood poisoning and was sent to the hospital to get rid of the blood poisoning because it was going to kill me. There I met the veterans sent back who had been burned in, mostly in the European theater. So I sort of got the first taste of what the war was like by being put with those veterans, but it was interesting. CM: How did their stories make you feel? JH: I was scared, you know. It was all so new and frightening, strange. I wasn't being coddled at all by my family anymore. Then I was sent to Camp Fannin. Actually, they gave you an IQ test and tests like that. My IQ, it turned out, was pretty high, and I'd never known that. They asked me if I wanted to be an officer. I couldn't answer the questions. It was a whole panel of officers, colonels and majors asking me questions. It was obvious that I had a poor education. I might have been smart but I was dumb, you know. So they sent me to Camp Fannin, Texas to study for the, what's called the intelligence and reconnaissance units of the infantry. Your MO, your modus operandi, everybody gets and MO, and I was scout, MO was scout. We were trained by rangers to reconnoiter, gather intelligence. So it was a kind of rough basic training. CM: What was the average day? JH: There was no average day. I mean one day you're climbing a telephone pole to learn to splice wires, and another day you're chasing cadre dressed as Germans. I went to the Pacific, but I was trained to go to Europe. You learn basic German phrases. You know, compass readings and you know, the usual stuff. Part of it's basic training that everybody goes through. Part of it was advanced training for intelligence and reconnaissance. I got sick there too. You know, you have to crawl under machine gun fire and run through an artillery barrage. The artillery was too close. I got hit in the backside with a hot piece of shrapnel, but it affected my ears. Years later, this ear, you know, I can't hear out of it very well. But anyway, I was in the hospital for that. And they cured, they said maybe I would be sent home, but they cured me, unfortunately. CM: What year was this? JH: That's still 1944. Sulfa, they used. And so I didn't get discharged. But I did miss being sent to the Battle of the Bulge, so you know, being trained to fight Germans was out. I was sent to the Pacific because the war in Europe was really wrapping up after the Bulge. So in April, I shipped out with a whole bunch of guys that were seasick. I was never seasick, but they were. It seemed like the whole boat was seasick. CM: How was morale at that point? It was well into the war. JH: Kind of, you know, we all wanted to fight that war somehow. It seemed like a war that had to be fought. I was 18, and I mean a dumb 18. I'd never been anywhere, never done anything. I was just a you know, a robot. So then, I remember I was on the ship when Roosevelt died. I think he died on April the 17th. CM: How did you hear about that? JH: They announced it over, you know, the speaker. And I'd been raised a fervent Republican, so it didn't matter much to me. My grandfather who mostly raised me had thought that Roosevelt was part devil. Later I learned that he was a great president. So there was a kind of atmosphere though, the kind of demoralization, the leader was gone. We didn't know who the new guy was, Truman. So sometime at the end of April, we landed in the Philippines. We passed by Guam, or New Guinea and then went into Manila Bay. There were boats half sunk all around. Looking at the charred shore, smoke and black, I think was the first time I got a stomach ache that remained with me for another two years. Then you know, you climb down those ladders, those nets, you know, that they hang over the side of the ship. Then to landing craft. Then the landing craft takes you in. Again, everybody got seasick but me because the landing craft had flat bottoms. You yaw and roll you know. What people don't realize, if they see movies about World War II, guys are going in on landing craft, that before they hit the beach, half of them are seasick. It's not just getting shot at, it's being in this boat. But anyway, then I was, you're sent to something that's called a replacement depot, a repo depot. Go ahead, you want to ask me something. CM: What were your initial impressions landing in Manila? JH: Well, Manila, I didn't see much of it. It was all bombed out, and we did pass by the old center, the Spanish center, I remember that. It was horrifying. I'd never seen a bombed out city before. It was sort of a mixture of excitement and anticipation and fear. You know, sort of anxious to know where they were going to put you. So at this repo depot, they assigned me to the 43rd Division, which was a lucky thing because it was a great division. It was the Maine National Guard, and it was the oldest division in the Pacific, it had been there since '41. So some of the men that I joined had been through the battle for what was then three years. Three years of war. They were a very war-weary bunch. Very sad. I was a replacement. I replaced somebody who was killed or wounded you know. You know, an 18-year-old greenhorn is not welcome because you might mess ‘em up, you might do something. So what the I&R does, the I&R is… CM: I&R is? JH: That's the intelligence and reconnaissance. If you read Normal Mailer's “The Naked and the Dead,” it's about an I&R platoon in Luzon, so it's pretty much what I did. It's made up of athletes and sort of brainy people. I suppose that's where the high IQ put me because I wasn't athletic. So you're, the I&R I started to say is headquartered in the regimental headquarters with the colonel. A colonel runs a regiment. The colonel assigns you patrols to go out behind enemy lines, you know, through your own lines to find out what you can about where the enemy is, if they have artillery, are they well-fed, are they ready to fight, you know, tanks, all kinds of stuff. My special thing was to make little maps because I'd always been a drawer. So I went to the regimental headquarters and I was put in a tent with four other men. Two of them were old, old veterans. Most of the old ones were from Maine because it was the Maine National Guard. One old, kindly sergeant taught me to play chess. Because we would go out on patrols and then we would come back. See that was the advantage, see, we got to come back and then we could have hot food. We didn't have to stay on the line. But whenever we went up on the line and passed through the line, they would, those soldiers would say, boy, I'm glad I'm not in the I&R where you have to go out on patrol. But I'd always think, yeah but, I can, if I make it back, I'll get a nice, warm meal. CM: Do you remember specifically any of the men that served with you in the I&R? JH: That's the funny thing. I remember faces but I don't remember names. I have to tell you that this, I keep reading about camaraderie in the army, how you make close friends. I never experienced that. These old veterans weren't too friendly. There was that nice old sergeant that taught me to play chess. But we went out on patrols together but I guess I wasn't there long enough to… I was in three divisions in two years. I never, I think if you were trained together in basic training and got shipped as a unit, which a lot of soldiers did, then you would have that. But if you're a replacement coming in and not knowing anyone, if… but anyway, it wasn't that I felt ousted or isolated, I just didn't form close friendships. I have a feeling of sort of loneliness really. CM: Were you keeping in contact with your family? JH: Oh, yeah, I wrote letters home all the time asking for things. When I read those letters—I have a few that were saved by the family—they are just sappy letters. 18 year old stupid stuff, you know. . . . just trying to make feeble jokes and telling them I'm OK. And of course the first letters are all cut up because if you write something that's a giveaway, it's sort of like holding up a piece of paper with everything missing on it because they cut it out. But then finally towards the end, they relaxed the censorship a bit. I was asking for ink, and I was asking for sardines. I was saying don't send cookies because when they arrived, they were just boxes of crumbs you know. The heat and the humidity was terrible there. Every day at 4 o'clock it rained. So it was, mainly my memory is of mud and rain, constantly. And fire, lots of fire. People don't realize that we used napalm in World War II; they think that's a Vietnam thing. But I remember napalm planes flying over and whole mountains going up in flame you know. That's something we had to be careful about because we would be sent out into those territories. And I remember that these two guys in our tent had a pet monkey. The monkey was an atrocious animal. Just terrible animal. Lewd I would say. CM: You stayed in _____? JH: No, you stayed in tents because it was regimental headquarters with a 50 caliber machine gun pointed somewhere. One thing they did in the Philippines at night, they put spotlights up on clouds because it was always raining. The light would make it more like moonlight to keep people from creeping up on you. The first battle I was in was for the Ipo Dam. Ipo Dam was the water supply for Manila. It was high above Manila, and you had to fight through tall palisades. If you've ever seen New Jersey palisades, these tall, rocky palisades. There were lots of caves, and the Japanese had tanks and artillery in there. They were really dug in. That's why I got the blue ribbon, that's the unit citation we got for, they had wired the dam for explosives, and they were going to blow the dam up. It would have flooded Manila and also deprived them of drinking water. But we got there in time, I wasn't part of that operation but just the general operation. We got there to diffuse the bombs. We more or less saved Manila from that part of what the Japanese wanted to do. But it was tough part of going through those mountains. Little Japanese tanks, they're funny looking little machines. I have a vivid memory of those. CM: Hold up the medal? JH: I saved a handkerchief, I don't know why, from the army. It's just something. This is the unit citation, the blue ribbon. These are two Bronze Stars that denote battle operations. I don't know what all these ribbons mean to tell you the truth. This to me is the most important badge that one can get. It's the Combat Infantryman's Badge. Now everybody thinks the Purple Heart is an important medal, and a lot of us never got wounded. So the only thing that says that you were in combat besides the Purple Heart is the Infantryman's Combat Badge. So that, to me, is important, more important maybe than the ribbons and things. CM: After the Ipo Dam battle, what came next? JH: That's, this map is an Air Corps map on silk. It helps me remember what the Philippines looked like. We were sent from, we were operating just north of Manila. Just a little farther up, we were sent to a camp, to make a camp at an old prisoner of war barracks at Cabanatuan. Cabanatuan was where the, remember the death march of the Bataan prisoners, that's where they were put, at Cabanatuan. They were marched from Bataan, all the way up to Cabanatuan. And we were to set up a camp there. That's where, that was my last place of operations in Luzon, because from there, all of our operations went out into the area around Cabanatuan. We had intelligence that said that the submarines, Japanese submarines were coming into Dengalin Bay, which is over here near Cabanatuan. The Japanese were told to go and get, be evacuated from the Philippines because they were losing this war and go back to Japan on these submarines. So we were intercepting them, and we captured hundreds of Japanese soldiers. It's a myth that they didn't want to surrender. They were eager to surrender. They were in very bad shape, starving, and some of them were hurt. I remember that one man we captured had a bandage on his foot and when we unwound it, nothing but bones and maggots. The maggots had saved his life, they had kept his flesh clean, but so they were in pretty bad shape. You know, MacArthur said that the Philippines was liberated in July. But Yamashita, the general in charge of the Philippines, didn't surrender until September. That was after the emperor had surrendered. So we had a lot to do all through that summer. CM: When was it that you were sent to the camp at Cabanatuan? JH: I can't remember. It was after Ipo Dam campaign. The date might be on there. Oh, that was June, the end of June, so sometime in July. The end of July because I was interested in, oh, sorry, the Ipo Dam campaign was May 7 to May 17. So it was the end of May. April, May, June, sometime in July, I was sent to division intelligence. Regimental intelligence is S2, division is G2, and I was sent up there because maps were my thing, to study maps for the invasion of Japan. CM: Tell me a little bit about your mapmaking tasks that you _? JH: Well, they, I don't really remember too much. In basic training, or training for the I&R, I would, part of the thing you learn is to do these little combat maps. I guess I was better at it than most people, and it just sort of stayed with me. Anyway, I was sent up to division headquarters to study maps for the invasion of Japan. Then we were going to invade the southern tip of Honshu, it's on this map. I was there with, you know, the division headquarters was a lot nicer looking than regimental headquarters, lots of officers around and everything. I'm still 18 and dumb. All of a sudden, I was sent back before I finished my work. Then I realized that, August 6th, I realized why, because they were preparing to drop the atom bomb. They weren't going to invade Japan. They'd already decided evidently. That was the end of July, so maybe a week later, they dropped the atomic bomb. I have a letter that I sent home saying how we all were happy that the war was over. We all drank and we all got a beer ration. To drink some beer, it was 3.2 beer. It was hot. I also expressed my dismay that this was a rather frightening prospect for the world, but the bomb—even a stupid kid like me could see this was a terrible thing that was looming over civilization. CM: How did you hear about the bomb? JH: I don't know. I imagine it was announced to us somehow. I don't know. Maybe somebody just went around tent by tent. We weren't gathered together in any way. I can't remember, I'm sorry I can't' remember. CM: Did you ever go to Japan to see the effects? JH: Oh, yes. Then my division, 43rd was sent immediately to Japan after the signing of the, on the Missouri. So I think the date was September 12, somewhere around the second week of September. We were among the first in. When we went in at Yokahama, it was absolutely devastated. It was just like Hiroshima. I mean, you know. Well, you know later, I saw Hiroshima, I showed you those photographs. But it was devastated because we had fire bombed it just the way we did Dresden in Europe. Tokyo was that way, fire bombed. But Yokohama, I think, was even worse. So hardly any buildings were there. But the Japanese were remarkable people. They had swept, unlike the Germans, they had swept the streets clean and had planted gardens already in the places where houses had burned down. So it was sort of strange to see it sort of neatly piled up. We were driven in on trucks, and the first thing we saw were little children. GIs being GIs they started throwing candy to them. Then a couple of days later, you began to see old women, old men. We didn't see young men until well into the occupation. Because I guess they were afraid, maybe some of them were veterans. CM: Did you ever have any personal interactions with any of the Japanese? JH: Oh, yes, because part of our job as I&R shifted a bit. We were still the colonel's people. But we were sent into little villages up in the interior of Japan. There's a group that would come after us that were experts in setting up city governments. I forget what they were called. But our, we were the first ones to go in and secure villages. We were given banquets by the fire chief, the police chief, and the mayor. They had very little food but they would, each of us, you know, I wasn't even a corporal yet, I was still a private. We had a little girl, a little geisha girl here cooking sukiyaki on a stove. We were around a banquet table. We were given what food they could give us, boiled cabbage, eggs, and stuff. It was nice. CM: Did you speak Japanese? JH: Not at all. We had interpreters with us. I should have told you that we had a Japanese interpreter in the Philippines assigned to us as part of our intelligence. We also had an American Indian, a Ute, probably as a code talker, I'm not sure. But he was a staff sergeant attached to us. And so we had an interpreter all along at these different places. The first thing we did besides going to these villages, and so much of it I've lost, it's all foggy, the whole two years, two months is foggy. I turned 19 in August when, the day after they dropped the atomic bomb. So I'm 19 in Japan. So in September, they sent the 43rd home. All of those guys had been over there for three years. They were sent home. You were sent home according to points, the amount of time you'd been over there, whether you were married or not, whether you were wounded or not, stuff like that. I hadn't been wounded, actually I'd gotten nicked with shrapnel, but everybody got a nick of some sort. In my outfit, if you weren't sent to the hospital, you were ok, you didn't get any Purple Heart or anything, they would put a bandaid on you. I was in the hospital in the Philippines; I got malaria. That was an important thing for me because when I had malaria in the Philippines, I had never read much. I'd spent my youth chasing women I think. But anyway, I went into the PX in the hospital and I saw a big book up there. I said, OK, I'll take that one. I knew I'd be convalescing for a while. It turned out to be War and Peace by Tolstoy. I fell in love with reading. I still have that book. I still have that same edition, yeah. On the dust jacket were lists of the books—it was a Modern Library edition—it had a list of books they published. I checked off the books I wanted to read starting with Plutarch's Lives, going through Dickens. It was my first experience with intellectual life. Later I became a professor of art history, but you know, it sort of started back there, having malaria in the Philippines. But go back to Japan. I had malaria for years afterwards. I had what they called tertiary malaria, keeps recurring. When I first got married, I scared my wife to death because we had gone to see “The Bridge Over the River Kwai,” not a horrible movie, you know, but it was enough to see the Japanese soldiers. But that night, I had a flashback, and I had malaria symptoms. I had fever, chills. It scared her to death. That's the kind of thing that lives with you, if you've been in those situations. You just never get over it. You just never do. Anyway, so where am I now? We're in Japan, and we're assigned a very important mission with the—now I'm with the 97th, did I say that? I'm with the 97th Division now. Because 43rd went home, and because I didn't have points, I had to stay. So I was assigned to the 97th Division, a curious division. It had been in Europe. It had been formed by all the guys in Europe that didn't have enough points to go home, sent to Japan for the occupation. They did a lot of the important ground work in Japan, the 97th did, and one thing they did, they assigned our I&R unit to capture the Nazis that were there. There were Nazi officials you know, politicians mostly. But one guy was known as the butcher of Warsaw. There was a Hitler Youth… CM: [Asks name of “Butcher of Warsaw.”] JH: I had his business card. We caught him riding his bicycle out of town. He was a [groth], you know a duke, [durkheim] I think it was. I can't remember. I had his card for a long time but I got rid of it. I remember going into, I'm still just a private and I'm only 19, so I'm not a big leader. So I was assigned a house, and I went into a house. It was like being in Europe. It wasn't a Japanese house at all, it was in a mountain resort. There was also a hotel; I have a photograph of the hotel. But there was a lake, and there were houses. These Nazis lived there. This house was just like being in America except that on the end table was Mien Kampf, and on the wall was a photograph of Hitler. And two blonde daughters. First blonde girls I had seen in a year and a half, two years. Blue eyed, blonde girls, you know I fell in love with both of them, of course. CM: How did you feel—? JH: Well, I felt sort of strange, you know. In our unit, we always carried what's called a carbine, you know, it's a small rifle. I had big boots on, I felt sort of weird, you know, invading their house. CM: Were you alone? JH: No, there were others. Part of the squad, maybe five of us, something like that. They weren't going to give us any trouble. They weren't soldiers. You know, they were all politicians of some sort, over there in Japan as allies of Japan. I think some of them had an early inkling, fled to Japan, hoping that they would be there for the end of the war. So we rounded them up, and again, another unit with different expertise came and took them off. Our first job was just to arrest them, which we did. CM: And was this regular, did you have other assignments? JH: Yes, the other assignment we had with the 97th, which has lived with me for a long time, is that we liberated a Chinese prisoner of war camp. But all the prisoners had been blinded by the Japanese by chemicals. So all their eyes were white. They had put drops in their eyes of some sort, blinded them. Because they couldn't guard them; they couldn't afford to you know, too many guards. So when we came to that camp, the Chinese, they still had their offices and the men. I remember they were cooking rice in a fire; they were getting around, you know, with sticks as canes and everything. But it was very scary. And no guards. CM: How many prisoners were there? JH: At least 100, maybe more, I don't know. A crowd. Because the bivouac or the barracks were on either side, there was like an opening in the middle. We went through a gate, drove in Jeeps through a gate into this center piece. I don't know who we talked to, maybe the interpreters, maybe they knew Japanese. CM: Where was the Chinese prison camp? JH: I don't remember. And I don't remember where all these little villages were. I remember, oh the other thing I should mention, the first assignment was to guard the prime minister. Because when the Japanese government shifted after the surrender, Tojo, you know, had been arrested. A man by the name of Prince Higashikuni, and my Japanese accent is terrible, but Prince Higashikuni lived in a town, I think it was called Ikaho. That was his palace. We were sent to guard him, I think, to rather keep him from doing anything. So that was the first assignment. That was before the Nazis and before the Chinese. So probably all around the same area. CM: What was it like to guard the Prince? Did you stay at the residence? JH: No, you had to stay outside. We didn't even go inside; we were just outside at the doorway. I remember how beautiful it was. Later when I saw Kurosawa movies, you know, I sort of remembered how beautiful the prince's palace was. We stayed outside. CM: After the 97th? JH: Oh, yeah. After the 97th, it was disbanded. I don't know why, but you know, there's not always rhyme and reason with the army you know. CM: Was it a long time? JH: No, no, not a long time. Maybe six months. We did all of this activity, the occupation, and maybe six to nine months, Japan was pretty well sealed down you know, without any more trouble. They disbanded the 97th, and I was sent to the 1st Cavalry. That's the unit that was in Vietnam and is I think going to be sent to Iraq. We were headquartered in an old country club, a golf course and country club, which was kind of nice. But there was no more work for the I&R. CM: And this is still in Japan? JH: Still in Japan. I remember being the only combat veteran in the 1st Cavalry unit that I was with. I don't remember what company it was. Since there was no work, oh, and I had malaria again, got sent to the hospital in Japan. So when I came back, they gave me the job as mail clerk. All I had to do was spend an hour sorting mail, and I spent the rest of the time reading and visiting, you know, around the little town. CM: Did you miss being out of the combat environment? JH: Oh, no. I was actually pretty sick. Malaria had drained me spiritually and psychologically. I was not in very good shape. I sort of needed to, I wanted to go home. I was tired, and I really desperately wanted to go home. CM: Were you still communicating regularly at that point with your family? JH: Oh, yes, writing, and when I was in the Philippines, my brother—I only had one brother, an older brother, he had been in the service but had been gassed in basic training. He was training to be an officer in Georgia, Fort Benning. CM: His name? JH: His name was Joseph Howett, Joe, my older brother, three years older. I remember when he came home, he was happy to get out, his lungs were just in bad shape. He got caught in a mock gas attack, and it affected his lungs, so he was discharged. They had a son when I was in the Philippines, he got married and had a son, and they named the boy after me, John Spurgeon Howett II. It was very touching. I got a cablegram from him. It took like eight weeks for it to reach me before they got it out to Cabanatuan. It was July 10th, was when he was born, so it was a little while to get to me. CM: How long did mail normally take? JH: Oh, several weeks. Several weeks. It depended on where you were. If I was on patrol, I would sort of be out of contact you know. But if I was back in regimental headquarters, which we often were, then, you know, I got mail probably sooner than people in the line companies did. But it took several weeks. CM: What did you all do in the Philippines and in Japan on a recreational basis, in down time? JH: My dear, you don't want to hear those stories. TAPE 1 SIDE B JH: … I don't, the soldiers are, soldiers are you know pretty rough. One thing I learned about the army was how vulgar everything was. Vulgarity is just everywhere. It's stomach turning too, I mean if you're not used to it. I mean I certainly wasn't a prude when I went into the army, I was a regular high school jock kid, but vulgarity just terrible, terrible. Everything has to be made vulgar, and you know, recreation, there just wasn't a hell of a lot of recreation. I mean there wasn't much chance for recreation. You drank whenever you could. In the Philippines there's something called tuba, I don't know what it was made of, palm trees or something. Then sake in Japan. Japan, it turned out, made very good whiskey. Satori made good whiskey. At some point, somebody looted the Satori distillery. Anyway, it was when I was with the 1st Cavalry, I got a whole fifth of excellent bourbon, got smashing drunk. I remember that the, a guy was visiting, was the only veteran of combat from the Philippines, and we got drunk together. He was an old guy. But in the Philippines, there was no chance for recreation. You played chess or you read or you just sort of waited for the next assignment, you know. CM: What about your meals? JH: Well, you had your choices of three kinds. On patrol, you know, on patrol you had two kinds. You had K-rations, which are dry, and C-rations, which are little cans with beans and stew. So you, what I would do is open a K-ration and take the… it's interesting, they gave you two cigarettes with every K-ration. You got a little grapefruit, powdered grapefruit drink. I should tell you that we had our own medic with us. See we were a, I&R is a shortened platoon, it's a two-squad platoon, not a four-squad platoon. So we had a medic whose alcohol was pure medical alcohol, you know, 190 proof. Drinkable. So we would have, he would have this big ration of alcohol for the squad. We were understaffed too besides, so we didn't have what the regular component was. So we did drink a lot. I understand in Vietnam they smoked marijuana, but I didn't know anything about that. I just knew about alcohol. So medical alcohol, tuba, and sake became sort of, you want to talk about recreation, that was pretty much it except for some things I can't tell you about. They're actually wartime secrets. [laughter] CM: Are there aspects or anybody in particular that you remember from your experience with the Japanese? JH: I remember a beautiful little Japanese girl. I don't remember many people. As I say, I didn't make friends. I don't remember men that I was with. My memory is foggy over a lot of things. I remember some of these important incidents, things we did on patrol. It was pretty monotonous mostly. CM: How did you then return to the United States after . . . ? JH: Yeah, I should remember that, shouldn't I? I remember going from the Philippines to Japan, how nice it was on a Navy ship, so clean, and they had ice cream. I just remember that when we came into San Francisco Bay, there was a faded banner, tattered, grey, and faded, that said very weakly, “Welcome home.” You know, it was a year later, you know. And on the dock were some heroic Salvation Army people serving coffee and donuts. No Red Cross. Salvation Army. And my experience coming home was I think what a lot of soldiers experienced, and that is that civilians don't want to talk to you about the war. I mean, you know, I see these pictures of VE day and VJ day, and everybody is celebrating. But you know, those of us that stayed on for a year, by the time we got home, people were, you know, tired of it, forget it. So when I got home, I remember I went to Chicago to Fort Sheridan, and then I was mustered out, given these ribbons. Then I, with a terrible hangover, I got on a train and went to Kokomo, Indiana, Pennsylvania Railroad. I remember pulling into the station and seeing my mother and my stepfather and my grandfather and grandmother, my brother and his wife and their little boy whose name was my own. That's the end of that chapter of my life. CM: When did you actually return? JH: Yes, it was October, but officially I wasn't mustered out until November. But they send you home before you're officially mustered out. CM: That was 1945? JH: That was 1945. CM: Do you recall the name of the Navy ship? JH: No, I don't. CM: I understand you also joined a monastery at one point. JH: Oh, yes, I did. I was raised, actually my grandfather was a devout Methodist but my parents, my father left my mother when I was an infant, and I had a stepfather who came on the scene when I was about five. They weren't church people at all, so I wasn't, you know, I didn't really have a religion. But because of my war experiences, I was spiritually hungry. The first thing I did was take all of my money I'd saved when I was in the army—you know, I couldn't spend it, it was sent home. I went to France because with all the reading I'd been doing, I got interested in being an intellectual, and I heard that all the intellectuals were over there, Gertrude Stein and Ernest Hemingway and all those people. So I went to Paris. And I met Catholics who were intellectuals. Then I came home to go to art school, and then at art school I decided that I, I got interested in the Catholic Church, and I became a Catholic and . . . CM: Which art school? JH: John Herron in Indianapolis. So when I got out of art school, I went to Maine to paint. Went to New York, didn't like that, went to Maine. And I was going to Mass everyday, and I was painting everyday, and I thought, well, this is what monks do. I was meditating. I had ridden up with a guy by the name of Thomas Merton, so I went to his monastery, a Trappist monastery in Gethsemane, Kentucky, the mother house of the one out here in Conyers. And I stayed there for a year. What's interesting about that, what's important to me was that there was no vulgarity. It was a sharp contrast with the army. I felt like I had purged myself of all that insanity and that chaos and that violence and that vulgarity. But I wanted to get married and have a family and live a bourgeois life and so I have four beautiful daughters and married a great woman, beautiful woman. I was a policeman when I was… CM: Tell me about your wife. JH: Oh, her name is Catherine, with a “C,” Mahoney Howett. CM: And your daughter's names. JH: I have a Megan, I have a Mave [?], I have another Catherine. The Catherines by the way are named after a saint [name], whose feast day was just last Monday. And I have a Keenant [sp?]. I have two lawyers, a museum director, and a nurse who is studying for her PhD at Emory. CM: How would you say the war has affected you and yours views? JH: Well, it's made me a peacenik. I belong to a group called “Veterans for Peace.” Absolutely opposed to, I mean I'm not a pacifist in the sense that I don't believe you can't fight some wars, I think you should fight some. Current things, I mean I would say that Afghanistan makes sense and Iraq doesn't. I think negotiations should be tried and often aren't. So it affected me deeply; it affected me spiritually. But in some ways I'm grateful. I'm grateful to have found a religion that means a lot to me. I got the GI Bill. I would have never gotten to college; my parents were poor. My father, my stepfather was a shoe salesman. I mean, we had no money. But I got the GI Bill, I got to go to college, I got to go to Paris, you know, with the money I had saved. I was a walking wounded, you know, almost every veteran is. But I got all of these benefits. I mean I am so blessed now, and I am blessed with my wife and my family and my faith. I got to realize that I was intelligent. The army taught me that I was intelligent. And, I value the life of the mind very much. So you know, some good, some bad. CM: I thank you very much. JH: You're very welcome. Thank you. - Metadata URL:
- http://album.atlantahistorycenter.com/cdm/ref/collection/VHPohr/id/373
- 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:
- 58:56
- 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:
-
