Interview by Leland Graves
He was in the shower aboard the U.S.S. Nevada at 8 a.m., 7 December 1941. Farrell R. Louck joined the crew of the U.S.S. San Francisco after his ship the Nevada was beached during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Farrell rode the U.S.S. San Francisco through World War II and helped put her to rest at the Philadelphia Navy Yard.
I had the honor of meeting Farrell and his wife in the summer of 1980 in Phoenix, Arizona, and he agreed to an interview in which he reveals many personal experiences during the war and tells it in the attitude that he and many of his crew members felt at the time.
When did you go into the service?
St. Patrick’s Day 1941, March 17th.
And the war started that December?
Yes, December 8th.
Did your brother go in with you?
No. He went in about six months ahead of me. He went on the U.S.S. Nevada. I put in to be, what they call the special order brother; I could request to be with my brother and they would do it.
Without your parents consent?
Yes, there were no parents involved because we were both of age. I was 21 years old, and he was 23. All of the gang that we knew took off for the East Coast and went aboard some ship or something. We never saw them again. This Figley and I, we went to San Diego, and were there about three months waiting for a ship to go to Pearl Harbor, to get on the U.S.S. Nevada.
You were an electrician, and what was your brother?
He was a deck hand, but I was a machinist striker. I went aboard ship and found him. I knew what division he was in. He was in the deck force. He told me to try to get in the black gang, which is the engineering force because you’ll have a better chance for advancement. So I requested to be in the engineering force, and they made me a machinist striker—that’s second class fireman. I mean that’s as low as you can get. So I went down to the black gang and I was part of the engine crew.
Were both your parents living when you and your brother went into the service?
No, both of them were gone.
Where were you from?
From Mercer County, Illinois. Ledo, Illinois, is the county seat. I was born at a brick yard. It was run like a copper mine. The company owned the houses, owned everything.
Were your parents farmers?
No, Dad was a, well, he was a little bit of everything. However, while most of us kids were raised, he worked at the brick yard. He was a kiln boss at the Hydraulic Press Brick Company.
Did you work there, too?
I worked there for three months.
What made you want to join the Navy?
Well, I didn’t want to join anything, really. I mean, I didn’t have any desire to go in any kind of armed forces, but I was right at the ripe age of 21 years and they were starting to draft. So rather than be drafted … Well, my veterinarian was a World War I veteran and another fellow I worked for was a World War I veteran, both did duty in Europe and they thought the Navy was a great place because they never had to do anything.
Just haul the troops back and forth?
Yes. They never got into any big battles so they thought, “Well, you better join the Navy.” So I got on board ship July 8th at Pearl Harbor, and on the 7th we got it.
What was your brother’s name?
Marion, and he was, like I said, a deck hand on top side and when the bomb hit close to him it ignited one of the ready boxes next to the gun that they keep ammunition in—they had powder in it, actually. Then the shells are setting next to it. They are loaded by hand. Five-inch 38s and this bomb hit and everything went. My brother just got a flash burn. All he had was a skivy shirt and his shorts and he was just black—his face, his arms, legs, everything. Five days later I found him. They had taken him to the hospital. He wasn’t dead. So we got underway about two days after that.
What were you doing when your ship got hit?
I was taking a shower to go on shore. They had liberty call at 8 a.m. every day. Well, half the ship goes on one day, the other half the next day, port and starboard watch. Sunday happened to be my day to go on liberty. So, I was taking a shower. Eight a.m. is when they always play the flag up—on the ship—every morning. So everybody topside, they come to attention when they do anything with the flag. Right at that time is when the first bombs fell, and they hit us right at 0800. I was taking a shower, so I ended up wearing skivy shorts for three days. We had been on some really heavy maneuvering before this. I guess they had been anticipating something was going to happen. Anyway, we were out two weeks, in port one week, out two weeks. We did that for quite awhile. While on maneuvers they actually shot dummy torpedoes at us—you could hear them hit the ship—and they bombed us. We pulled spars behind the ship and they would actually bomb the spars.
In the actual attack, how many bombs hit your ship?
Seven bombs and three torpedoes.
The Japanese submarines were in the harbor and you were all the way in the harbor?
Yes. We were in the harbor. We were the only battleship that got underway.
You got hit with all that before you got underway?
No. The bombs while we were still. You see, the Arizona was ahead of us and sunk, and the Oklahoma—the Arizona was ahead of the Oklahoma and the Arizona went right down like that. They just sent her right down, and the Oklahoma rolled over. Okay, they hit with, I suppose they were those suicidal torpedoes … anyway, she turned over and three days after this all happened the guys went along the ship. They were patrolling out there for dead bodies and all this kind of thing, and it just looked like you were floating on oil because of all the oil that spilled out of the ships … just black, the whole thing was just black. And they heard some tapping. So they got up on the Oklahoma and they found out there were still some guys inside. So they got some torches and they cut a hole in it and they got, I think, thirty-some guys out of there. I don’t remember the exact number. They had been entombed for three days, inside that ship. That was quite a deal. But on the fifth day after Pearl Harbor, I went aboard the U.S.S. San Francisco.
All that time, in the meantime, you spent in the fields?
No. When we knew we were going to sink we just beached it; the after part of the ship settled in the mud. The forward part went on down—you couldn’t even see the forward part. I happened to be on the back of the ship and then, of course, the next day they used planks and pontoons and stuff and we had a plank off of the ship to go to the head and whatever we had to do out there. Some of the guys slept out in the cane fields. I think it was on the third day that they picked a skeleton crew to stay on board the ship and the rest of us all went over to the station. That’s where we got issued some new clothes and a new sea bag. Maybe not a full one but enough to get by for awhile and then we got assigned, or I did, to the U.S.S. San Francisco.
And that was a destroyer?
No, a heavy cruiser. Then we went out to Wake—or we were headed for Wake Island and our spotter planes and our ra-dio—I don’t know just how it happened, but we found out that the Japs had it secured so we did an about-face and came back to Pearl Harbor. That’s when I went ashore to the hospital and got to see my brother and there were guys in there dying like flies. It was the damnedest smelling mess I’ve ever seen, it made me sick. It was just so bad. Although he lived, he got discharged, and all the skin came off of him where he was burned, just like new baby skin.
How is he now?
He’s dead.
Was it kind of a result of this?
No, well, yes; he went to booze and just drank himself to death, is what happened. It’s too bad, but that’s the way it happened. He didn’t give a damn for nothing—just lived one day at a time after that, which is a funny thing but that happened to a lot of them. He was 51 when he died. He was an alcoholic all those years. He never had nothing. You couldn’t do nothing for him because if you’d give him ten bucks he’d go spend it, buy booze with it.
Did you stay on the San Francisco for the rest of the time?
Five days after Pearl Harbor I went aboard the U.S.S. San Francisco and I rode her all the way through the war and put her out of commission in the Philadelphia Navy Yard. That was the last she ever went to sea.
So when you got on the San Francisco you started for Wake?
Yes. Wake Island.
And the Japanese already had Wake Island?
Yes, secure, so we came back because they’d have sunk us.
And where did you go from there?
We came back and then we went out as a task force. The trip we made toward Wake we were alone.
Did you have any idea what you were doing?
I didn’t have any idea, it was all hush-hush, but after we got back we found out, you know, through the grapevine. Everything happened so fast, it was almost unbelievable. You just couldn’t com¬prehend what had happened for a long time there.
Did you get much news on board ship about what was go-ing on?
We had radios, we got Tokyo Rose and stuff like that. When the sun went down it was what they call darken ship. They closed all the hatches anyplace where light would come out, all through the war. You couldn’t smoke on top side. Every morning we had general quarters and everybody went to their battle stations an hour before sunrise. I did that for five years, too, every morning. Everybody on the ship had a station, that’s when you’re in battle. I was assigned to electrical places—distribution board, gyro, steering gear, central station, and some of them were assigned as trouble shooters in different compartments.
When you went on the San Francisco it hadn’t been in battle?
No, well, it went through Pearl Harbor but it didn’t get hit. It was in dock, a berth. Not too far from it was a dry dock and the Pennsylvania was in there and they bombed it. They couldn’t hit everything, you know. We were out here, the line of battleships, and that’s what they really concentrated on, and the carriers were supposed to be over here, however, the carriers were all out at sea. There was only one carrier there and it was just a training ship; it was an old ship and they sunk it—they thought it was one of our good ones. That was one of the things that really saved us. If our carriers would have been there, we would have been gone. I know because the way it was, they didn’t realize the damage they really inflicted on us and the panic, and everything. They could have come in and taken over. If they would have had their forces to have done it, they would have done it.
Just landed and taken the harbor?
They could have, if they had a back-up system behind all those planes. They could have come right in and took us.
Troop landing?
They sure could have … but they didn’t.
The only reason you got on the San Francisco then was that they just took on more crew?
Yes.
They didn’t lose anybody?
My ship was gone, so they had to put everybody that was on the Nevada, that was seaworthy and healthy, some place. So our complement jumped from 900 to close to 1,400.
On the San Francisco?
Yes, in one day.
You were over-manned?
All the time during the war, yes, every ship almost was over-manned. Of course, the latter part of the war it started coming back a little bit because after awhile we finally got more ships, but there was a long time there we didn’t have but just what we had—it takes a few days just to build one of those ships.
And the most severe battle she was in was at Guadal-canal?
Yes, Guadalcanal.
Right down the middle of two rows of Japanese ships?
Yes, and when we got through the Jap ships were shooting at each other. Man-o-man, but see a plane in the afternoon at Guadalcanal hit right here and it knocked all this out. [Referring to the book given Louck and the rest of the crew after the war.]
In the back of the ship?
Yes, and killed thirty-some guys, that were right in this area.
This is the battle you were talking about?
Yes, Guadalcanal. Then that night we were in the battle.
You had radar then?
We had radar and we had pretty much the latest stuff then, but after Guadalcanal, we had to come back to the States and I don’t think they re-rifled the main guns then but we did get, like, 40-mm and 20-mm guns—we got them new.
About how much time had elapsed from Pearl Harbor until you got into Guadalcanal?
November 12th and 13th, 1942. [Taken from Louck’s book.]
How many ships went down between those Japanese ships?
There was a whole task force, I suppose seven or eight ships.
Were you guys the lead ship?
Yes, we were the flagship.
Wow.
We were the flag. We had the admiral and the captain. Well, let’s see, we suffered severe damage and we lost Admiral Callaghan, Captain Young, and Commander Crouter, and when it was all over the highest in command were Lieutenant Com¬manders McCandless and Schonland. [Taken from the book.] They were lieutenant commanders then, they weren’t even full commanders yet. They were the top brass on our ship, so, see the admiral and he captain and probably three or four full commanders got killed, aboard ship. We had the flag, so we had more brass than any other ship.
Wasn’t that kind of dumb, putting all that heavy brass on the first flagship going in there?
Well, that’s where your admiral is always, on the flagship.
Isn’t that kind of dumb?
That’s what he’s there for, he’s supposed to be in charge.
But he can’t be in charge dead.
No, but that’s just one of the things, like I say, if they would have gone into the conning tower.
Every time the Navy goes into battle, all their big brass are right on the first ship going in?
This happened to be. It doesn’t always work like that—this was a freak deal. It was just something they figured out on the spur of the moment.
To do this?
Yes, they figured it out, how far the ships were, and that they could not depress enough to sink us, and we could them, so we went down in between them.
But you had to fight them anyway, one way or another?
Yes, well they murdered us on top side. They just killed a lot of us.
I mean, if you hadn’t done that, they were coming after you?
Well, if we hadn’t gotten them, they would have sunk us, because there was a lot more of them than there were us. We just caught them by surprise, but we lost a lot of people doing it, but, my gosh, it almost turned the tide. The war just turned around, and we became the aggressors from then on. Really aggressors, and they had to keep pulling back. I could wear seventeen battle stars, and then we also got the Presidential Unit Citation. I never wore my bars, there were so many guys that were wearing them that didn’t deserve it. I just decided, to hell with it.
The biggest battle was at Guadalcanal?
Yes.
Were there any other islands in which you met that much resistance?
That was the only battle that we really got hit bad in. I think we lost 169 guys. We had a guy—I helped throw him overboard—from Mazula, Montana. He told me at that time, one of his sisters had more than $400,000 buried. They ran a damn gambling joint, illegally. Actually, they ran a res-taurant but they had one of those back rooms. He was a quiet sort of guy. His name was Miller and he got killed. He had a diamond ring on him that would knock your eyes out, and a guy was stealing it. If he had taken if off in a decent way, but you could tell what he was doing stealing it. So we jumped him, and threw Miller and the ring both over. I mean the ring stayed on him but we really should have taken it off and sent it back to his sister, but this dude was trying to steal it while we were getting him ready to throw overboard. So we just threw him over, ring and all.
Anybody pick him up?
No, we put him down, see; we threw all 169 people overboard.
This is when this happened?
The next day, after Guadalcanal, that’s when this dude tried to steal the ring. Of course everybody on ship had seen that ring because it would really knock your eyes out, but he didn’t have anything to do with this guy. He slipped over there and started jerking that ring off and, boy, a guy clob-bered him and knocked him on his hind end and we went ahead and just threw him overboard.
Oh, I see, you didn’t throw the live guy over?
No, we tied a five-inch/38 slug on him to hold him down. They claim that would take him down 100 feet, they’d never surface with that much weight on them. Of course I suppose the fish would eat them, sooner or later or they’re going to deteriorate, but that’s the way we buried them.
And the only ones that got the plank was the officers?
Yes, well, the captain.
Did you have anything left to shoot with when you got past the line of Japanese ships?
Oh, yes. You see they have back-up systems for everything aboard a ship. We could still fire our guns.
All of them?
Well, not all of them, but our main guns we could. They were armor-plated. Our eight-inch guns were in full operation.
How many ships did you actually sink? [Louck was unable to remember the number and in referring to the book came to a page on the typhoon they were in.]
Now this is the typhoon we were in, which was really some-thing. In this typhoon, which was northeast of the Philippines, close to Formosa, which is now Taiwan. We were in this storm which scarred me more probably than any of the battles … just as much, anyway.
Really?
Well, look. Now a destroyer is one of the most seaworthy ships going. They’re small but they’re really seaworthy, and we lost three of them.
Wow.
Plus eight tugs, and we were heading for Okinawa, in this typhoon. That sea was so rough that the waves came up and busted our boats all to hell. I’ll show you the hangar. [Referring to the book.]
The whale boats are not actually boats are they?
Ha—no. It’s a motorboat, like what you go to shore on. Then there’s motor launches.
Why did it scare you if you were just sitting in there riding the rough seas?
By God, I thought we were going to sink.
Oh!
Here’s the hangar. Okay, there’s the plane, see it? We had one of these planes in the hangar when the typhoon came, and they take cables—now this is a steel deck—with screws in the deck and eye bolts and these guys, there are actually bunks along here and on this side—it just went back and forth until all that was left was an engine. Just beat it all to hell.
And those guys had to get the hell out of there?
Yes. And some guys got hurt, too. Well, let me see if I can find the picture. [Referring to the book.] It’s been so long since I’ve looked at this … Oh, here’s a picture of me. The only damn one in the whole book. See, I think you can pick me out. I’m older, but I still look like that. [Louck con¬tinued thumbing through his book.] Now, this is our dog. We got that dog in the South Sea islands. We got him because we took an admiral aboard ship, and a jeep. [Laughing.] He probably stole the damn jeep. We took it aboard, and this dog was along and we talked him out of the dog. That dog rode with us all through the war. He got his leg broke, got that fixed.
How did that happen?
I really don’t remember but he’d gone up and down them damn ladders like you wouldn’t believe, straight up and down. It was like home to him, and when we got back to the States we had to impound him and these monkeys. Well, we gave the monkeys to the zoo. They were aboard ship, too. This sucker here would bite you.
You had to impound them to check them?
They had to be quarantined, but we took the dog back. One kid took care of the dog. Somebody has to take care of a dog, otherwise everyone’s feeding him, and they don’t know where to go for anything. So this one kid kind of fathered the dog, the last year and a half. Well, he got out, you know, on points, out of the service. They had that point system. If you had so many points you could get out. Well, that was for people who were drafted. I was a regular; the day the war was over I had twice as many points than I needed to get out, but I couldn’t get out because I had to put in my time, you know, I wasn’t drafted. Anyway, he got out.
What was his name?
I forget his name. Anyway, that dog … just started going down hill.
Oh, from the time he got out, huh?
Yes. So somebody called the kid, and I guess they shipped the dog to him, and the dog just wasn’t no good there, either. So he brought the dog back to the Navy Yard and turned the dog loose. That’s the last I knew about the dog because I got transferred off the ship. He was so used to being aboard that damn ship, see, when we put her in mothballs everyone went off and that dog just went to hell. It was one of the funny things, but he liked that ship.
He was just a mutt, wasn’t he?
Yes, he was just a damn mutt but he was the ship’s mascot.
Where do you suppose that poor little devil would go when you were in battle?
Well, by God he went through them. I don’t know where he was. He was with that kid, I suppose, but you know, I really never thought about that. [Louck continues thumbing through his book.] You see we had photographers aboard ship. Here we are out in battle and this guy is taking pictures risking his life, right out, boy, where the smoke is flying and that’s his job, to take pictures. That’s his battle station.
Who did he work for?
The United States Navy, photographer. And that’s all he did.
And he took most all these pictures?
Yes. Just read that [referring to the book]. Just gives you an idea of the miles we traveled and what we eat and all that kind of stuff. It’s just unbelievable.
This is the total time the ship traveled during the war?
Yes.
My gosh, I wonder who had to add that all up?
I don’t know how they figured that all up.
You ate 734,400 pounds of beef. You ate 2,040,000 pounds of potatoes.
Of course, they had a record of all that junk.
They ate 5,760,000 slices of bread. They broke it down into slices.
I think they did that for kicks.
You smoked 1,838,780 packs of cigarettes. You were in seven seas, crossed the international date line thirty-three times and crossed the equator twenty-four times. You consumed 8,783,216 pounds of edible provisions. You drank 5,241,600 cups of coffee.
[Laughing.] That one I believe.
You fired 73,094 20-mm shells. Oh, and you had planes?
Yes, we had four of them.
On your ship?
It shows back there how, there on catapults.
Where did they land?
They landed on the sea. There’s a crane there.
I didn’t know you had airplanes.
Yes.
Then as soon as you got into battle, you’d shoot them off?
Yes. They’d go out and spot for us, see like, uh, Saipan, Iwo Jima, and those places. They would actually fly out over there and if they saw something we’d send a salvo out as near as we could. Then they would give us up so much or left or right or down and then they’d get spotted in until we got rid of it.
What kind of planes were they?
They called them SOCs. They were biplanes, there back in there someplace [referring to the book]. Shows them in the hangar.
Did you ever lose any of your planes?
Uh-huh, we lost one for five days, it went on a run. I don’t know what happened. They landed in the sea, and we came back five days later and they had a sail up on it and were floating along. They were scared to death when they saw us at first.
They were afraid you were an enemy ship?
Yes. [Louck continues looking through the book.] You can see here, the catapult … that line? Okay, that’s 60 feet long. Here’s another one.
They shoot them off of both sides?
Okay, you’re going into the wind, see, and they turn a little and shoot it right out. I went off of one of them buggers, made a mail run. Holy cow, I didn’t know a thing.
That’s trickier than on a carrier?
Well, no. You’re anchored to that and when you get out to the end there’s an explosion that blows you right off it. You got the thing full throttle and were doing probably 25 knots right into the wind. So it really isn’t that bad. Soon as you lift up it’s flying. [Louck continues to look through the book.] Here, okay, here’s the way they do it. See they’re shooting the guy off, see that explosion? That lifted him off. Okay, here he is landing, see here’s the sea. In order to make it nice and smooth for him we do a fast turn, see, and he comes in on that smooth slick and taxies up to the sled, and there’s a hook there, see that hook? He just rams her up on that sled, and shuts off the gas and she just settles back and the hook catches, and they let the crane cable down and he hooks it, and they pick him right up and set him right back on the catapult. It’s really something.
Oh, there’s two guys in each one?
Yes. He’s a radioman and gunner. We had four of them. At one time we had five of them in the hangar all the time. Actually, you could put four of them in the hangar but we always kept two of them off the catapult. You could actually put two on each catapult if you wanted to, to get it out of the way, if you were doing something in the hangar, like we had shows and stuff like that. When we were doing that we would hang them all up on the catapult.
And hope the heck nobody came?
Yes, well, we didn’t do too much of that, you see. We couldn’t have movies at sea or nothing, only in port. Then we could have movies. We couldn’t smoke cigarettes at night. Couldn’t do nothing that had any light to it. So after the war was over, you know, well that was one of the big deals, see, a lighted ship at night, beautiful, when you’d been used to dark for five years. I’ll tell you, then we’d have movies, on top side and stuff like that, at night—really something.
Well, then, your planes got chased by the Japanese sometimes?
Yes, well some, but they were used mostly when we were gunning these islands—they were spotters, reconnaissance and spotter planes—like Iwo Jima, Saipan, Tinian, and all those different places where we laid out there and bombarded the island, they spotted for us.
Most of the time during the war you guys didn’t do much as far as entertainment was concerned?
We didn’t have too much only when we were in a lagoon or someplace.
When you were in these seventeen battles were you in port much?
No, not that much. We were at sea a heck of a lot of the time. I think the longest we were at sea at one time was 175 days straight. That’s a long time.
What did you guys do for entertainment?
Played cards and stuff like that.
Talk a lot?
Yeah, did an awful lot of talking about home, girl friends. Wrote letters. I wrote more in the Navy than I ever did in my life before or after probably.
How did they get the mail to you?
By plane, or ships. See, you had ships coming, supply ships and tankers coming to refuel you and supply you, and they’d bring the mail. Now if you were anywhere near—say we were coming back from Pearl Harbor—they’d send one of these planes out and they’d have the mail there when we got there, all set for us. Or if we were out on maneuvers or whatever before the war started, they’d fly in and get the mail. Other than that we waited until a tanker came or a supply ship, and you’d get a big stack of mail at one time.
Would you rendezvous with these supply ships and tank-ers mostly at night?
No, mostly in the daytime. Because they’d have to put these hoses over and hook everything up. You’re working fairly close together, 50 feet and if the seas were pretty rough, sometimes you come, like this—it’s a little hairy so we never did refuel at night, that I remember. The longest we were underway was 175 days and we were down to where, before the war they had golden grain sacks of tobacco, roll your own cigarette, Prince Albert in a can, Bull Durham … so they had a lot of that stale old stuff aboard. We ran out of cigarettes. We had been out at sea so long we were using flour that had weevils in it. We knew it but we didn’t have any more, so I think they ran it through sifters to separate the bugs.
Bugs probably wouldn’t have hurt you anyway?
They wouldn’t have hurt us if we hadn’t known it but some of the guys spotted it and after that, they started doing things, but anyway we got down to where if I light up a cigarette you’d ask for the butts, and when I got done with it you smoked the rest.
Even roll your own?
Yeah, boy, roll your own was good. I mean that was it. It would have been a helluva good time to quit, and some of them did and they sold old stale chewing tobacco and stuff. They just cleaned the canteen out. We were practically down to beans and bread when we were finally re-supplied. This wasn’t too long after Pearl Harbor. They hadn’t gotten things organized. We were down around Samoa and we were operating right on the equator going back and forth on either side of the equator. It was hot and rainy. Right on the equator itself isn’t bad. It’s on either side of it where you get the storms and stuff it seemed like. I thought we never were going to stop. That’s a long time to be going and we never fired a shot. I mean we were just out there patrolling and then when they finally got things organized and got some task force and got something coming then when we started the chain reaction of all the islands, finally wound up at Okinawa.
Was that the last one?
Yeah, that was the last battle we were in.
If I remember reading the papers right, you went from one island to the next. The Navy would go in first and try to soften up the landings?
The Navy and planes and then the Marines or the Army went in.
While they were fighting on the islands would you just patrol around them?
Well, we were out there actually and they’d call.
And you’d help them.
Yes. They’d call for shelling at a certain place and whatever ship happened to be in that vicinity would lob them in there. We helped them all we could. Well, hell, if it hadn’t been for us there would have been so many more guys killed. Between us and the planes, we were lobbing big shells in there which blew things up pretty bad and then the bombers. But some of those islands those guys actually had to go in there with these fire guns [flamethrowers], and burn them out of the caves. Okinawa was one of them, and Saipan and Tinian. We almost had to kill them all there. Saipan, they just jumped over the cliff—women, kids, men and everything else. At the end, we had it almost secured and rather than surrender they just committed “hara-kiri”—they taught them that.
Was Saipan actually a Japanese island before the war?
That’s funny, they had so many islands, I never dreamed they had that many. Of course, a lot of them they struck simultaneously the same time they hit Pearl Harbor. They hit the Philippines, and a lot of these other islands. Wake, they took that the same day, too. They took a lot of these islands because nobody was expecting them and Cor¬regidor, remember that? They took all those places, and after they got the beaches secure they went in and mopped the whole thing up before we had time to move. They had us crippled at Pearl Harbor. It takes a little time to get stuff from one place to another. When we finally got going, we just started taking them one chain at a time, like New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands, and we actually didn’t have much to do with New Guinea itself although I know they did, but there were different task forces. They had three different task forces going all the time. I got pretty well in on almost every chain of islands out there.
Would the radioman put on Tokyo Rose on the the speakers so you could hear her?
Yes.
Did she actually make you feel depressed?
Oh, not really. We’d just laugh about it. We got awful Asiatic out there. We didn’t give a damn about nothing; it got bad.
Did anyone ever visit the ship besides Navy personnel while you were at war?
Yeah, we had people at Honolulu come aboard ship. And kids at Christmas time. Threw a big party for the kids. And then we had some entertainers like Eddie Peabody was aboard. I forget, four or five other big-time guys. They tried to do for us as much as they could but we were just out so much.
When they attacked the islands, where would they put the Army and the Marines for the landing … they wouldn’t put them on your ship, would they?
No, they had LSTs.
But they didn’t actually bring those LSTs all the way across the ocean did they?
Hell, yes.
You mean those poor guys would have to load on those and ride all the way across?
Well, no, not all of them. They had certain points for rendez-vous. If we were going to go from the Philippines to Formosa, they’d have so many LSTs, landing ships and they had tanks and all that stuff. I think most of them came right from the States. Then they’d go from one island to another, but they’d be loaded with tanks and personnel—you name it, and it was on them.
You mean, after they secured one island those LSTs would load these guys and take off for another one?
Yeah, the same guys might go to another island. They’d just keep working.
What would they do, stay with your group?
We were called a task force. We were out there to protect the islands from enemy ships. That was our major thing, however, whenever we were going to take over a bunch of islands, we went in close and bombarded, shot gun emplacements and stuff like that. If they had an airstrip on there and we wanted to destroy it, we’d do that but primarily we were out there to protect these people from enemy ships—ship-to-ship fighting. Which was bad, I found out.
Did they ever take any prisoners on your ship?
No, we never had any prisoners.
You probably never saw a Japanese, huh?
I seen a lot of dead ones floating around. At Saipan was the only place I seen them much in the water. Well, I saw a few at Guadalcanal, too, but they—I think the Marines or the soldiers—took care of them on land. They must have put them in a building or did something with them. We never took on any Japs at all. Heck, I don’t think one could have got on board our ship. I mean if he had been swimming, I think he would have gotten killed right there. I don’t think he would have had a chance. It’s funny how you get the urge to kill. I never thought I would have been that way, but I was that way, and I think all the rest of the guys were, too.
After seeing?
After seeing what they did to us and what they were doing, why you get that way. You get awful hard. [Pause.] We fired so many salvoes at Guam, there was a peninsula on Guam that stuck out like Florida. There were Japs out there and they wanted to knock a hole through that thing and isolate them, so we set out here with nine guns and just kept shooting salvoes at that thing.
Into the dirt?
Into the dirt and actually when we got done you could see from one side to the other. The barrels on the guns are painted battleship gray and underneath that is zinc chromate yellow. When we were done, we had all yellow barrels. But the reason they had us do it was we were coming back to the States for re-rifling. Those barrels got hot. We had shot so many salvoes that they weren’t as accurate as they should be anymore so they were going to give us all new barrels, so we just let her go—we just shot all day long.
So, the Japanese couldn’t get off there unless they got on a boat?
Then they went in and killed them all, I think. Ha! We were getting pretty rough then. Towards the last we were getting damn near as bad as the Japs. I mean, we figured the only good Jap was a dead one. That’s the way you get after a while. And so we went back to the States then, and got all new guns.
How would they get your boys off the ship when they were hurt so bad?
Oh, you see we had a regular hospital aboard ship. They did operations and everything aboard our ship.
How many doctors did they have?
Oh, they had probably three or four; they had a dentist. A ship is almost like a small city. In fact, it’s better than some small cities. They have everything you can think of on there—almost.
Except women?
No women, that’s the only thing they lack.
Were you married when you were in the service?
No, Florence and I were going together. I came home on a 30-day leave in January and we were married in May. I went back aboard ship and she was teaching school, and as soon as her school let out, well, she flew out and we got married the next day.
What year was that?
1946.
So, I guess when the guys went on liberty they went look-ing for women?
Yeah, women and booze, most guys. And you know, a funny thing, several times we had minister’s sons come aboard ship, green horn boots. They’d turn out to be the worst guys aboard ship, as far as getting in trouble, boozing, stuff like that. Seemed like, when they turned over, they just went from good to bad. There wasn’t any medium in there. I was kind of a mediocre guy. I could either take it or leave it. I boozed some, but I was never a heavy boozer and I never did much gambling. I did some, but some of those guys, that’s about all they lived for. We had a lot of professional gamblers aboard. You get every class of people there is.
That brings up another thing. Whenever you guys got paid you were rich for awhile?
See, we always got paid in cash, too, and down in the mess hall we had a paymaster aboard ship, and all these gam-blers—we had gamblers and we had loaners—you went through the pay line according to your number. You got so many bucks and then, if you were one of the loaners, you stood in line down there. You could lend money two for one, five for one.
You mean right at payday?
No, not right at pay day, that was the day you collected be-cause if you didn’t get right at the end of the that line, you might never get it. We had one guy in our division. He was a chief at the time, and every payday, he was standing in that line for somebody, and they paid him. They just lived from one payday to the next.
Did you get paid regular even when you were at sea?
Yes.
Every two weeks?
I believe it was every two weeks.
Regardless of what?
Yes, if we weren’t in battle. If we were right in a battle, they wouldn’t pay you that day. You’d get paid the next day.
So they actually carried the pay roll on board. So when you were at sea 175 days they had enough money to pay you for 175 days?
They had a lot of money aboard ship. In fact, I heard guys talking about robbing the ship. There were those kind of guys, too, and it could’ve been done.
Where the hell would they go?
Well, they didn’t have any place to go. That’s the hell of it. See, they had to do it when they came into port, and then steal it and get the hell out. All they could do out to sea was just talk about it because they couldn’t go anyplace.
Did they have to have money for soap and stuff?
Yeah, when you go into the Navy your first sea bag doesn’t cost you anything. That is, all your clothes and everything they give you what they call a sea bag allotment of clothes, and I believe they even give you soap, toothbrush and tooth-paste, and after that you have to buy everything, until you go from one class to another.
How much did they get paid a month?
Every grade had a pay scale. You start out from nothing. When I first went in the Navy I got $21.00 a month. That isn’t even a dollar a day, is it? Now the guys probably start out at $300.00 a month—that’s the difference.
Do you remember how much you were getting when you got out?
I was getting close to $500.00.
And what was your grade then?
I was a chief electrician’s mate. My next jump would have been warrant and that’s the next best thing to being a captain.
Did you ever have any trouble during the war with any of the guys missing the ship, while on liberty?
I missed the ship once in the Philippines, right after I made chief, and I got put on report. The old man restricted me the rest of the time we were in the Philippines, while we were on that cruise, which only turned out to be three days.
You just missed getting back on time, you didn’t actually miss the ship?
I missed the ship—it went. I knew where it was going, thank goodness. We were at Manila, and it went down to Subic Bay which was about 75 miles up the coast, so I hitchhiked a ride with a jeep, and then went aboard. What I did was get a hold of that overnight booze they were making, and I just blacked out. Those people over there were making booze—they called it Filipino wine—but it was overnight stuff, in gas barrels and stuff like that. Hell, I didn’t know what it was and, boy, some of the guys went blind with that stuff. It was terrible. I got half tight, and I didn’t care what I was drinking. You really don’t know what you’re drinking, unless you buy Stateside whiskey, and that cost $50.00 a fifth, if you could find it. I just blacked out. When I came to, the ship was gone, so I went down the beach the next day and got aboard it. We happened to have a guy that just came aboard ship, that was officer of the deck. I didn’t know him. If it had been anybody else on duty they would have flagged me right on. The other guys had already mustered me in for colors. They would have never known I was gone.
Did they get in trouble for doing that?
No, they didn’t, but they could have. The captain put me on report. I think the guy said, well, he thought he seen me laying in the bunk, that mustered me in, said he must have made a mistake. That’s all they did about that. In two days I had to go see the old man, and I was still so sick and weak that I almost fainted. I fainted—I don’t know—ten or twelve times during those two days from that poison. Every time I got up to take a leak I fainted. Some of the guys, a few of them, died of that stuff.
Oh, did you ever have liberty on some of the islands that you took?
Yeah, not too awful many. They’d pick a small island, where the beaches were half-way decent. So we’d go swimming, what they called it was a beer party. Okay—they would issue you two cans of beer. It didn’t cost you a thing. You went ashore, you’d go swimming or lay in the sand or do anything you wanted to do. If you didn’t want beer, you could have Coke, Seven-Up, something like that. There was quite a few guys that didn’t drink at all, but there was a lot of them that didn’t drink that would sell their beer. You could get a buck a can for beer. [Laughs.] Gosh, those guys wanted to get drunk; it didn’t take very long on hot beer, so it wasn’t too much fun because some of those guys would buy up beer and get drunk. Then they wanted to fight. It got to be a mess, but it was kind of fun.
Did you do any fishing?
Well, on the water the guys did. I didn’t do any myself. They caught a sand shark and got him aboard ship. He was a pretty good size fish.
Big enough to take off a finger or the whole hand?
He skinned that thing out and salted it down and was going to mail it home but they wouldn’t let him do it. [Laughs.] He had it all boxed up and everything, but somebody said something and I guess the mail man found out about it. He wouldn’t take it. It probably would have been a mess. They did some funny things. [Louck’s thoughts swing back to the war.] What we had to watch out for was airplanes more than ships. The biggest battle we were in and the only one we really got down to the nitty gritty was Guadalcanal. The rest of the time it would be Jap planes. I remember one battle we were in. The Jap planes got in the pattern with our planes. Hell, you couldn’t tell the difference from quite a ways off and they came right in and tried to land on the ship.
They tried to blow up the ship?
Yeah, with their wheels down and all set, and come right in the pattern. One of them, I think he just about landed—and I think he did bounce on the ship—they just knocked him off some way or another. Then they found out what was going on and everybody was shooting. When they get on final approach they aren’t very high and there are ships on both sides. You protect the carrier. The way it’s supposed to be, it’s battleships, cruisers, destroyers outside, so she’s in the middle. She’s the mother ship. The carrier—that’s what we are supposed to protect at all costs. She’s got all the planes on there, and that’s what won the war, the damn planes. Here we are shooting at these planes and hitting some of our own guys, because you’re shooting that low. We had several casualties from that. Just our own guys shooting from the other side, and they got us. Not trying to, they were trying to hit the planes, but we lost quite a few guys, not on our ship. I don’t think we lost anybody. Some of them got hit pretty hard. See those 20-mm and 40-mm? When they hit they explode and shrapnel flies. When the 40-mm goes everyone of them is timed, it has a fuse setting. You don’t have to really hit a plane. If you come close it explodes; it’s just like a little bomb going off and that shrap-nel hits the plane. See, you don’t have to have a bull’s eye … you just have to be real close.
And they fire ‘wiff-wuff-wuff’ one after another?
Yeah, duut-duut, yeah, they shoot pretty fast. Not like a machine gun, but they go pretty fast. So do the 40s there; fast, too, and, of course we had a lot of .50-caliber machine guns.
Mrs. Louck: He went through the war and all I did was write letters to him.
I got a letter from her every day, for what? Five years. Now, we were out 175 days, like that one time. I had a stack of mail like that—and she wasn’t the only girl that was writing to me.
[I laugh.] Did you know that?
Mrs. Louck: Uh-huh.
Well, one of her classmates wrote to me all the time, too, and, of course, I had sisters. I never did get any letters from my brothers, though.
I guess you felt good when you saw all that mail there?
I felt sorry for some of the guys. Some of the boys aboard ship were almost in tears. You can imagine being out there for two or three years, and don’t hear from anyone. I tell you that must be a sorrowful feeling, because some of them were actually in tears. You felt so bad. Then we had a few guys aboard ship that just got stacks and stacks of mail all the time. I think that’s all they did was write letters—they really got the mail. I knew I’d be getting one from her about every day. Then I wrote, not quite every day, but a lot, my first year.
[To Mrs. Louck] Did you keep those letters?
Oh, gosh, yes.
Everything was censored. You couldn’t tell them much about what was going on.
So when you broke it down to what you couldn’t say, there wasn’t a hell of a lot to say?
You could tell someone you loved them and just tell them what you did that day. I was on watch or I washed my clothes or I did this or I did that … very dull.
Were you allowed to keep a personal diary?
Yes, you could do that and I should have done it, too. You could have done it on the sly. There were a few guys that had cameras—we were not even allowed to have a camera until the war was over but there were a few that did. There are always a few that do things they’re not supposed to. This book they gave us—I don’t remember when I got it—but I think I was putting the ship to rest. No, it was after that that they sent that to me. Everyone that was aboard ship got one of these and I really treasured it because you can look back … kind of brings back a lot of memories although names … I’ve forgotten a lot of names. You forget them after so many years. You know the faces. We had so many guys coming and going all the time. Every time we went into port someone got transferred and someone came aboard. I put in for every transfer that came aboard in the electrical gang and never did get off. You know who got off?
Goof-offs?
Guys that weren’t worth a damn. Got all the good schools, all the shore duty—everything. The guy that tried to do right, he got the ratings but he didn’t get any schooling and he had to be out in the thick of it all the time. He just didn’t get a break. I happened to be one of those guys. I wasn’t the only one … there were other guys, too. I was just reading before you came that there were actually fifty-six guys that were on the ship from the day the war started until we put her out of commission. I would not be counted in the fifty-six because I didn’t get aboard her until the fifth day. Yet I rode her all through the damn thing, but I wasn’t counted because I wasn’t the original crew. I was one of the Nevada casualties. Five days after that then, I rode her all through the war but I didn’t get credit for being one of the original guys.
The guys that didn’t get any letters … was there any attempt made to set up pen-pals?
Oh, once in a while they’d get a letter but there were so many times that some of the guys didn’t know how to write. A lot of them didn’t know doodlie-shit when they came in the Navy. But most of them had a guitar or a mouth harp or a banjo or a fiddle or something and, boy, could they play. They really had the music in them.
Did they ever get up a group?
Oh, hell, yes, we had groups of guys. We had a guy that could make a piano talk—classical music.
Did you have a piano?
Yeah, we had guys that could tune it, too. We had everything aboard that damn ship. You name something and if you walk around the ship, pretty soon you’re going to find some guy that either has done it, or can do it. You have all walks of life down there. It wasn’t a matter of them wanting to be there, like me, it was a matter of they had to be, you know, and that’s the truth.
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