Each time the media tell me of another suicide bombing in Iraq or Palestine or Israel – an almost daily report, it seems – I feel a resonance in my memory. I am reminded that the diabolical weapon it has become is not a new phenomenon. Normally I can push the recall aside. After all, it was over 60 years ago.
But lately, as I have tried to imagine what it would be like today to witness or even survive such an insidious attack, I can’t help thinking back to World War II and the fear-packed days and nights in the summer of 1945 in the anchorage of Kerama Retto outside of Okinawa.
A huge fleet floated in that “protected” harbor within a circumference of hilly atolls – U. S. Navy ships, all. Hundreds of them of all sizes, each a tool of war, including ours.
As a Navy pilot I was living with our entire squadron aboard the U.S.S. Whiting, a seaplane tender. Our aircraft, PB2Y Coronado flying boats, were tethered to buoys in the bay. From a tactical point of view it was the penultimate enemy territory before the final assault on Japan. Ground forces were still fighting on the main Okinawan Island when we first arrived from Saipan. Even before airstrips could be built on secured soil, our seaplanes, however, could land and take off -- on the water. We had to be sure to dodge the cruisers and destroyers and other Navy ships and small boats filling up the basin.
I vividly remember one night when we were summoned out of our bunks by a GQ (general quarters) alarm warning of approaching suicide planes called Kamikazes. “Man your battle stations!” That meant every sailor and officer – except us fly boys who were guests on this floating hotel and who had been resting prior to assuming our battle station in the air over the vast Pacific the next day. But I certainly didn’t want to miss the action by staying in our cabin, so I found my way to an upper deck. If only I had or could find something to do in order to help. But no one had time to attend to me. So I stood there on deck shivering in the summer night’s heat as the sounds and sights of an entire harbor-full of ships were shooting off barrage after barrage of anti-aircraft missiles. The relentless thunderous explosions shook my very vulnerable being. The dazzling pyrotechnics accompanying the sound-and-light show were almost blinding.
Then came the smoke. Boats with smoke pots scattered around the harbor and gradually we all were bathed in the acrid mist that was meant to prevent the enemy Kamikaze pilots from finding us “targets” below the man-made undercast. Alas, one of my flight buddies, was a casualty one morning after returning from a long overnight patrol when he and his crew could not see where to land safely in the still-smoke-filled lagoon and had to ditch at sea. A day later his body washed up on shore. We buried him on one of the “safe” atolls.
The string of volcanic islands circling the anchorage included some land still occupied by enemy soldiers. One of our anchored seaplanes discovered this new frighening reality when a grenade-bearing swimmer made his way from the beach in order to toss his deadly explosive into an open hatch of that Coronado. The vision of that near-tragedy (he didn’t succeed) inhabited me each time after that when I was on night-duty watch aboard our bobbing seaplane and sat up on its wing with machine gun and binoculars, hoping and praying that no hostile visitor would arrive.
But the even more haunting memory is the event in broad daylight when a lone Kamikaze pilot sneaked his plane at low level out of radar range and zoomed up and over one of the islands to enter the harbor. Somehow he had avoided the picket line of destroyer escorts positioned to avoid just this sort of thing. The self-sacrificing pilot sought his target among the exposed ships. And, lo! We were it! I remember that we were in the wardroom next to a starboard side top deck when we were almost blown off our chairs by the horrendously deafening boom that filled the room and rumbled through the entire ship. We rushed out on the deck to discover burning remains of a disintegrated Kamikaze plane and the scattered flesh and bones of its pathetic suicidal “hero”. Miraculously, a gunner had been at his station at the time – actually quite by accident because as yet there had been no GQ signal. He was quick-thinking and he surely was the authentic hero of the day. He opened fire when he realized that the rogue airplane – not one of ours but the enemy’s -- was homing in to our ship and then, by reflex, he jumped up to trigger his gun. He opened fire and hit the intruder and this exploded the bomb -- intended for our death -- before it could take our lives.
I wonder if he is still alive, that gunner. In all of the chaotic activity of that event, I sadly neglected to check on him. I hope he was recognized and duly rewarded. Maybe some day I can find him if he survived the war and the following peace time that he and I and the hundreds of others aboard the Whiting could enjoy because of his daring deed.
Mine is a mild story, with a rare happy ending among the hundreds of tragic incidents that have occurred in other times and places of the globe over the years. What of those who perished? And what of their families? Some, like me, survived and now live daily on borrowed time. I need to rehearse memories like this in order to reassert my determination to do all I can to stop the mad carnage of continuing war. I realize there there may be something that each of us can do to pressure for change. At the very least, I can pray for the vulnerable in the world wherever they may be and for the decision-makers who might yet be guided by the beautifully prophetic words the Bible quotes from the Prince of Peace Himself: Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God.
10-31-06
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Page last modified by Richard Lee on 15 July 2007 |
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