December 15, 2008 – 12:32 am
Bob was 17 when he joined the Navy in February of 1944. After boot camp training, he was off to Hawaii where he boarded LST226, not knowing for sure where he was headed. By June 15, he was taking part in the invasion of Saipan. Following the first wave of troops to invade the island, his ship returned to refuel. He spent the next few months in the Marianna Islands
On September 15, Bob took part in the battle at Pelelieu, which turned out to be a terrible disaster. Many American lives were lost. Because the ship’s water tanks were broken up from the coral underneath, the ship headed back for repairs; this time all the way to the States. Bob recalls being in San Diego when President Roosevelt died April 12, 1945.
Shortly after that, he was sent back to the Philippines. He and the others were loading up the ship when they heard the news that the atom bomb had been dropped.
His next assignment was to go to Shanghai to move Japanese military troops out of China and repatriate them to Japan to the port of Kobe.
For the next six months, Bob spent time visiting the sights of Shanghai. One day he noticed a Star of David on the outside of a building and, being Jewish, he told the man pulling the rickshaw to drop him off there. (More about this adventure in the next blog.)
Meanwhile the Navy sent his ship to Hyphong by mistake. When they arrived at Hyphong, the town officials had no idea what to do with them. Further research discovered that the Navy should have sent them to Hainan, where they were to pick up Chinese soldiers to take them to ChinWangTao, where the Great Wall of China joins the sea. Here the Chinese soldiers would join up with Chiang Kai Shek’s forces to fight Mao.
On the lighter side, Bob, a trumpet player tells of going to the Park Hotel, the great hotel in Shanghai, where occasionally the Chinese jazz band asked him to sit in with them.
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