William B. Baylor Oral History

              EW:	My name is Edward B. Williams. I’m a military historian. I live in Cold Springs, Texas, 77331. Today’s date is 16 April, 2003. We’re in the Cold Springs Public Library in Cold Springs, Texas. It’s my pleasure and privilege today to be interviewing Mr. William B. Baylor, Jr. Mr. Baylor’s birth date was 16 December, 1924. His current address is 111 Swan Lane, Cold Springs, Texas, 77331. Mr. Baylor served in World War II. His branch of the military was the United States Navy, and the highest rank attained during his military service was that of Yeoman Second Class. Welcome aboard, Mr. Baylor. To begin with, why don’t we take a few minutes and relate a little bit about what your life was prior to your military service? Where were you born?

WB:	I was born in Houston, Texas.

EW:	And I suppose probably you grew up in Houston, right? Did you grow up there? 

WB:	I went to school there and in Uvalde. My parents were separated when I was 6, so a lot of my time was spent with my grandparents in Uvalde on the ranch. 

EW:	Okay. Did you graduate from high school out here? Did you go to school?

WB: 	I graduated when I came back from service. 

EW:	Okay, so you must have been pretty darn young then by—?

WB:	Seventeen when I joined the service.

EW:	You were 17 years old when you entered the Navy, and that was in—what? It was in December of ’42.

WB:	It was ’42.

EW:	So just about a year after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

WB:	Right.

EW:	02:09.1 You enlisted, right?

WB:	Yes, right. I enlisted.

EW:	Okay. You weren’t drafted at that particular time?

WB: 	No, I enlisted in what they call the “Diaper Crews.”

EW:	Okay. And you were living in Uvalde at the time?

WB:	No, I was living in Houston.

EW:	Okay. Why did you join?

WB:	Well, everybody—all my friends—were going, and I was going to be drafted in a few months anyway. And I wanted to go in the Navy. I didn’t want to go in the Army; although, I had had 3 years of ROTC in high school, but I thought I preferred the Navy. 

EW:	Okay. You know that the old saying there is its sort of like going to jail when you go aboard a vessel, with the additional possibility of drowning. 

WB:	Right. 

EW:	So I don’t know whether you might make that choice after a lifetime of experience. Do you recall your first days in the service? Where did you go?

WB:	San Diego, California, to a training station there.

EW:	Which is still there and still in full operation. So what was it like? It was quite a shock for a 17-year-old?

WB: 	Yes, sir. It was completely different from anything I had ever known or even expected. We had a training chief whose favorite expression was, “I was in the Navy when the ships were made of wood and the men were made of iron.” And he told us he passed more lighthouses than we had telephone poles, and he had run more salt water out of his socks than we had ever seen. 

EW:	Well, I—some years after that, in the middle ‘50s—went through Marine boot camp right across the fence from where you were. I remember a similar statement. “I’ve worn out more sea bags than you have socks.” And a sea bag is a pretty heavy duty piece of material. 

WB: 	Well, I missed—just barely missed—being in the Marine Corps. When we were lined up at San Diego, every other man was going to be a corpsman in the Marines, and I was in the middle. I didn’t get picked. But they took half of us to the Marine Corp for hospital corpsmen. 

EW:	04:23.4 Yeah, maybe some future viewers of this tape might not understand that the corpsman—that is, the medical personnel that tend Marines, particularly on the battlefield—are Navy, and they are generally pharmacist’s mates. They wear a Marine Corps uniform with their Navy rating badge. So they’re sort of a unique part of that service. What was a typical day like in boot camp?

WB:	Well, we got up about 4:30. We went out on the grinder and assembled, and then we went to breakfast. We came back and we marched. We went to rifle drill; we went to gas mask drills. Mostly we did a lot of marching, double-timing. We had to go through the swimming pool. Everybody had to learn how to swim, if they didn’t already know. And there were a lot of people who didn’t know how to swim. They got shifted away from those of us that did, and they had to catch up with us. We did a lot of marching with a pack. They were filled with rocks.

EW:	Sounds familiar. We did exactly the same thing. I remember the swimming pool part of it—my particular situation—it was in the winter—you know—February, March, somewhere along in there, perhaps April. San Diego can be really cold at that time of year. 

WB:	Yes, sir.

EW:	I remember being blue in color. And we also had to jump off these high towers as if you were abandoning ship. I guess that’s fairly standard. 

WB:	Well, we had to learn how to tie the legs of our pants and fill them with air and use them for a life preserver. 

EW:	That’s right, and you sort of put your arms over that thing. It acted as an impromptu life preserver. And then of course, I’m sure you went to a lot of classes on some technical subjects and what have you?

WB:	06:34.4 Oh, yeah. We had to go to different training classes. We had to do KP duty. We had to— If you got demerits, you had to get out on the grinder and scrub it with a toothbrush.

EW:	I remember that. I never had to actually do that. I remember we were on KP for—it seems to me like it was about a week.

WB: 	Yeah, about a week on KP duty.

EW:	And I seem to remember being in the so-called scullery. That’s where all the pots and pans were washed. 

WB: 	I got to prepare the potatoes.

EW:	Well, congratulations—a traditional potato peeler. Yeah, I can still remember that in my particular case.

WB: 	The reason I got involved in the scrubbing of the grinder with a toothbrush, the whole company got involved in it. Our chief got mad at several of them for something they did. I don’t remember now. But all of us had to get out at midnight and scrub that grinder with a toothbrush.

EW:	Yeah, that’s sort of a common experience. Incidentally, a grinder—somebody watching this might not know what a grinder is. I know what it is, but would you—?

WB: 	Parade ground. 

EW:	Parade ground. And it’s a huge—at least at the Marine Corps recruit depot, and I’m sure over at the Navy base—

WB:	Yes, it was.

EW:	It was a huge, multi-acre asphalt, in my particular experience.

WB: 	Yeah, it was asphalt. 

EW:	And it was big, and there could be a lot of troops out there performing close order drill and various other and sundry activities associated with the training process. How did you get through it?

WB: 	08:12.2 Well, I did good. I didn’t have any problems. Then after I got out of boot camp, I went to radio school.

EW:	Okay, how long were you in boot camp? That generally lasts—

WB: 	If I remember right, it was 6 weeks.

EW:	About 6 weeks? That’s when you learned your basic military etiquette—how to salute, how to wear you uniform, and all of those things?

WB: 	Right. And how to do your own laundry.

EW:	How to do your own laundry. We received a bucket and a scrub brush.

WB:	We did.

EW:	And there was a place out somewhere there in the general vicinity of the barracks—

WB:	Next to the barracks.

EW:	—where you would go out there and you could scrub your clothes.

WB:	This was an every-evening performance.

EW:	That’s right.

WB:	You scrubbed all your clothes.

EW:	I remember that. So upon completion of your Navy boot camp training, where did you go from there?

WB: 	I went to radio school.

EW:	Where?

WB: 	At San Diego—stayed right there at San Diego. And almost at the end of radio school, I got in with the wrong bunch, and we went AWOL to Los Angeles. My dad was living up there. So I got busted out of radio school, and then I volunteered for submarine duty. If I remember right, out of 18 of us, there were 3 of us that passed for submarine duty. And then, I was transferred from there to down in San Francisco. And I stayed there until we caught a ship, went across to Honolulu. And when I got there, I got assigned to the USS Holland, which was a submarine tender.

EW:	09:57.8 About when was this? 

WB:	 This was in ’43.

EW:	It’d be some time probably along in late spring/early summer, I would guess. 

WB:	Yeah, it was probably summertime. 

EW:	Of 1943?

WB: 	Yes, ’43.

EW:	And that would be just prior to the first big invasion in the central Pacific, which was Tawara in the Gilberts.

WB:	Right. Well, we went to— We stayed in San Diego a while, and then we were on a ship. It took us, I think, about 10 days, by ship, to get over to Honolulu.

EW:	It’s 2500 miles.

WB:	Yeah, it took a while. So we all had to work. We couldn’t just sit around. I scraped the same paravane and repainted it five times on that trip.

EW:	Now, repeat again, what type of vessel was it?

WB:	This was just a troop ship.

EW:	Okay.

WB:	It was a Navy—actually, it had been a Merchant Marine, and they converted it to a troop ship to carry people back and forth.

EW:	How many people do you think were on there?

WB:	11:07.2 There was probably around 600 at the time. 

EW:	On a vessel that really had not been designed for personnel.

WB:	It wasn’t designed for that many, no. You were sleeping in tiers in your hammocks.

EW:	Yeah, they had maybe six or perhaps even more high, and you’ve only got a matter of a few inches between you and the one above you.

WB:	Right.

EW:	It’s hard to even turn over in those things.

WB:	If the guy on top gets out, well, he’s stepping on you coming down.

EW:	That’s exactly right. And then on top of which, you were probably down in the vessel’s hole.

WB:	Yeah, down in the hole. 

EW:	What had been the hole. 

WB:	Yeah, had been the hole, but they converted it to living quarters.

EW:	And it was no longer in use as a merchant vessel whatsoever. That was in the age long before air conditioning.

WB:	Oh, yes. Much longer. 

EW:	I guess you had the big ventilation fans and what have you, but even that—

WB:	Yes, the big fans were blowing, but all they’re doing is moving hot air around.

EW:	Well, that’s it. With all of those people crammed into these tight spaces, even that didn’t work very well.

WB:	No.

EW:	And it was hot and humid there, just totally uncomfortable. Did you ever get a chance to get up on deck much?

WB:	Yeah, when I was working on the paravanes or on the chains. We had to also take the chains along the deck to keep you from falling overboard. We had to clean them and repaint them. 

EW:	12:36.6 Oh, the chains—the rail.

WB:	Yeah. They called it a rail, but it was made of chains.

EW:	Yeah, it was actually chain link on most of them. I know what you’re talking about. When you’re talking about paravane—

WB:	That is an outfit that goes out from the ship, a long cable, used pick up a mine, and it’s got a cutter on there. That mine goes down that line until it comes to the cutter and it cuts it loose and then it pops up to the surface and they destroy it with a 20-millimeter or a machine gun or whatever. 

EW:	Well, I know what a paravane is. I was wondering what is a paravane doing on a troop ship. But I see what you’re saying. They didn’t have enough mine sweepers around, so individual vessels sometimes—

WB: 	We didn’t see a mine sweeper the whole time I was in the Navy.

EW:	But a lot of mines are designed to float just below the surface. 

WB: 	Right. 

EW:	And so you’d find those things by pulling these paravanes along after the vessel, and it can—

WB:	They’re kind of behind and out to the side. The way they’re designed, they run out to the side. 

EW:	13:41.9 Right, and if they encounter any mine cable, they will, in effect, start to—

WB: 	It will run right down that line and to that cutter, and it will cut the cable. 

EW:	And then the mine will pop to the surface and it can be—

WB:	Yeah. We did find some mines. Not on that ship, but when I was on the destroyer we found some mines. 

EW:	Were you in convoy going to Honolulu?

WB:	No. We were by ourselves. 

EW:	Well—you know—actually, I guess in the Pacific—and this being the far eastern Pacific—there really wasn’t any Japanese fleet activities that far away from—(speaking at same time).

WB: 	No, not this side of Honolulu. The other side, towards Midway and out through that way there was. 

EW:	There was a couple of very isolated instances where submarines up off the coast of Oregon—I think there was one—lobbed a few shells, but generally the Navy—the Japanese Navy—that was well beyond their area of capability, that’s for darn sure. What happened when you go to Honolulu?

WB:	Well, then I was assigned to the USS Holland.

EW:	Which was what type?

WB:	A sub tender. And then I as working on the deck crew for a long time. I had learned typing in high school. I had taken typing in high school. I had gotten to where I could type about 30 words a minute. So one of the yeomen was looking over my record, and he came out and asked me how would I like to—at that time they called it—be a striker for a yeoman?

EW:	What’s a yeoman?

WB:	A yeoman does the record keeping.

EW:	Like a clerk, typist?

WB:	Yeah, clerk, typist. I told him, sure. I wanted to get off that deck crew because we were out there holystoning those decks. Now, this was one of the few ships in the Navy that still had wooden decks. And you were out there every Saturday morning holystoning that deck.

EW:	Were you down on your hands and knees, or did you use a stick?

WB: 	You were down on your knees and you got this stone with a hole in it and you got this stick. And that is some real work. 

EW:	It’s very difficult work.

WB:	You’ve got salt water and that stone, and that’s gritty, and your knees start taking a beating and your feet take a beating and your hands. So I agreed that I should go into that office to get out of that. 

EW:	16:01.7 The idea of holystoning and the salt water was to turn that deck as white as you could get it.

WB:	Just as white as a sheet. 

EW:	That’s right. Yeah, that is a tough, tough assignment. So what was the typical day like aboard a sub tender?

WB:	Well, submarines came alongside for repairs. The sub tender is made with a curved bow, where you could pick the submarine up out of the water at the bow if it had damage.

EW:	Really? So you had a heavy duty crane up there?

WB:	Oh, yes. We had two of them; one on each side of that bow. 

EW:	And this is a World War II diesel electric sub. But, good Lord, I had no idea that a tender had the ability to do that. 

WB:	Oh, yeah, they could pick them up. We didn’t do any picking them up in Honolulu, but when we got out— We went first to Guam, and then we went to Saipan and Tinian. And we were picking them up out there. We went to Midway and then went to Guam and then went to Saipan.

EW:	17:10.4 How long were you in Honolulu before you sailed?

WB:	About 6 months. And then we went to Midway, and we stayed there about a month. That was my first experience with a gooney bird. 

EW:	The famous gooney bird. Midway was famous for that. 

WB:	Yeah, they’re something. You can get out there and dance with them. They’ll dance with you.

EW:	They’ll actually dance. Talk a little bit about what is a gooney bird. 

WB:	That’s a sea bird.

EW:	Sort of like a seagull.

WB:	He’s very awkward on land. He’s very graceful in the air. They would come in to land on the land, and they would just go head over teacup, just roll. And when they would take off, they would have to have a little drop off when they went off in order to get up airborn. If they didn’t, they couldn’t get off the ground. 

EW:	I’ve seen films of those things. There were a lot of them to. I think sometimes they were hazard to landing and taking off aircraft.

WB:	They were.

EW:	They could get into a prop or an engine or knock a hole in a wing.

WB:	They did destroy several airplanes. 

EW:	Yeah, I know what the gooney bird is. They were very— They didn’t have any graceful moves, that’s for sure.

WB: 	Not on land, no.

EW:	I’ve seen them landing. Like you say, they just head over heels, mostly. So you advanced up there to Midway.

WB:	Well, we stayed at Midway about—I think it was about 2 or 3 months. And then they—

EW:	You were anchored there?

WB:	We were tied up at the dock.

EW:	You tied up at the dock. Did you have subs coming along side?

WB:	Oh, yes. And then, we had one of those two-man Japanese submarines wash up on the beach.

EW:	No kidding?

WB:	They found that, so they turned everybody out to search the island. They felt somebody had come up and gotten out of that submarine and were on the island. And we searched that island all day. We never did find any people. 

EW:	I wonder what—? That’s odd, isn’t it?

WB:	It was. We don’t know what happened to them.

EW:	There’s no telling. 

WB:	19:14.0 They took that Japanese submarine back to Pearl Harbor. Of course, we don’t know what they did with it, but I’m sure they had their reasons. 

EW:	Yeah, I’m sure they wanted to take a look at it and see what kind of technology was involved. I don’t know whether you’ve ever visited the Nimitz museum in Fredericksburg. Are you aware there’s one there? 

WB:	No, I didn’t know they had one there. 

EW:	There is the George Bush Memorial Museum, or something to that affect, of the Pacific War.

WB:	Yeah, I remember when they first founded that. 

EW:	Let me tell you, I was out there last year sometime, and they have an actual Japanese two-man submarine there. And I don’t think it’s the one that you’re talking about, because there was one at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack that washed ashore. I’ve seen photographs of that, where it just washed up on the beach. And I think that the one out there at Fredericksburg is that particular submarine. But it’s bound to be about the same thing. So with these subs that came along, what sort of service did you render them?

WB:	20:29.2 Mostly we gave them fresh food, fresh fruit. Everything on a submarine is canned when they go out. 

EW:	Very few fresh articles.

WB:	Yeah, there’s nothing fresh, and that’s what they want when they first come in. And they didn’t have any facilities for movies. We had movies on the foredeck for them. They’d come over and watch movies. They played movies every night, as long as we had submarines along.

EW:	Every night out on the foredeck?

WB:	Uh-hunh (affirmative).

EW:	Probably the same movies, frequently. You didn’t have a whole lot of movies, did you?

WB:	No. I didn’t go to many of them because it was over and over to me. 

EW:	Right. But with these crews coming in, it was just sort of a—I guess—a luxury.

WB:	Yeah, it was something for them. And also the fresh food. They really like the baked bread. The bakeries were working overtime when the submarines were alongside. They would fly in to us, mostly by seaplane, fresh fruit and vegetables so that they could get it. And my understanding was that this is to prevent scurvy among the crew.

EW:	Well, it is—that fresh vegetable thing—you know—lemons and oranges. 

WB:	When I was in Pearl Harbor, they would come alongside those piers and tie up. They just had crates of fresh fruit out there. That’s the first thing those sailors went for.

EW:	Yeah, because they hadn’t had any in a long time. And indeed, it is necessary to prevent scurvy. 

WB:	I went aboard several submarines.

EW:	Do you remember what their names were?

WB:	Blackfish was one, which was eventually lost. 

EW:	It never came back from patrol?

WB:	Never came back from patrol. But those submarines were entirely different from what they have today. They were called “big boats” is what they called them.

EW:	Yeah, they were diesel electric. Now they’ve got the big nukes that are as big as an aircraft carrier. 

WB:	Yeah, the diesel, that tried to come up every so often for fresh air and to charge the batteries. 

EW:	Yeah, they ran submerged on storage batteries.

WB:	Right. 

EW:	And as you say, that would only last so long, so then they’d have to come up to recharge the batteries.

WB:	They came up at night to charge their batteries and go topside.

EW:	That’s right. They came up at night to avoid possible detection. Did you ever talk to any of those sailors?

WB:	Oh, yes, many times.

EW:	Did you hear of some interesting experiences they had?

WB:	Oh, yes. They were talking about how when a depth charge drops on you, you can hear the splash.

EW:	Through the sonar?

WB:	Yeah, through the sonar. Well, even with your ear to the side of the sub you could hear it. And then, what you waited to hear was that click when the detonator went off. If you could hear that, you were safe. If you didn’t hear it, that depth charge was right on top of you. And they talked about seams being split from depth charges and how much they were— They didn’t have any air conditioning. You could take their t-shirts or their shirts and, just like tissue paper, pull them apart. They wore out uniforms faster than anybody in the service. 

EW:	23:33.2 Yeah, well it was hot, damp, and—

WB:	Hot and sweaty. They said the whole time underwater, the walls were just covered with beads of water. 

EW:	Yeah, well, they would be, wouldn’t they?

WB:	Yeah.

EW:	And that does not make for a very pleasant environment, does it?

WB:	Some of them that I talked to said, “Well, if I’m on a submarine, I’m going to come back with everything I went with or I’m not coming back at all. I don’t want to come back missing a limb or being a paraplegic.” And this was their thinking. 

EW:	Yeah, a lot of those guys— I don’t know the exact number of American submarines lost out there, but there were a bunch of them. 

WB:	There were a lot of them—a lot of them lost. 

EW:	I’ve visited Pearl Harbor on several occasions, and right there where you embark to go out and visit the Arizona shrine, there is a monument to the submariners—and it’s not submariners, they prefer to be called submariners for some reason—of all the subs that were lost, and there were a lot of them.

WB:	Well, they had a rough time until, towards the end of the war, they got these torpedoes that were about a third the size of the one we’d been using. And you didn’t fire at the ship, you fired at the wake. When it hit the wake, it would turn and come up into the propeller and explode and leave that ship sitting dead in the water. Then they would call out the Air Force and they would come and destroy that ship. So we stopped losing so many submarines by doing it that way.

EW:	25:04.2 Well—you know—something that you mentioned that I hadn’t even really thought about, when I was thinking about sub tenders, or any kind of tender—you know—there are all kinds of tenders out there. The Coast Guard has buoy tenders, for example. I was thinking in terms strictly of repair. You’ve got metal shops and all of that. 

WB: 	Oh, yeah, we had all of that. 

EW:	You have all of that to do repairs, but I don’t think I really realized that you also stored those vessels with—

WB:	Oh, yeah, we replaced their torpedoes that they had fired.

EW:	So you had the torpedoes, also.

WB:	We had the torpedoes and the warheads. And the submariners slept on top of those torpedoes.

EW:	There were bunk spaces on those torpedoes. 

WB:	There was not any room for personnel to have a bunk anywhere, so they slept in shifts—three different shifts. You slept 8 hours, and then you were up 16 hours.

EW:	Right. Yeah, I knew about that. And those torpedoes, I might just comment on that. I don’t know—I guess probably along toward the end of the war they had begun to make some progress there, but they had a lot of trouble with the torpedoes at the beginning of the war.

WB:	Oh, yes.

EW:	Those things were very erratic. 

WB:	Yeah, if they hit a wave wrong they would go off course. They didn’t have the facilities that we had today, where they will follow sound or they’ll follow heat. Now they’ve got it down to a real fine art. 

EW:	Oh, yeah, this is just a whole different world.

WB:	26:40.3 But back then, it was just a kind of a guess as best as you could and hope you hit it. You always fired two torpedoes, they told me, when you fired. If they missed, then you fired two more. You had torpedo tubes in the front, and you had torpedo tubes in the back.

EW:	Correct.

WB:	And so, if you missed, then you turned and fired from the rear while they were reloading the ones in the front.

EW:	Yes, and as I say, I know that those things were a lot of duds.

WB: 	Oh, yeah, you’d hear them—they’d tell me you’d hear it hit and no explosion.

EW:	And no explosion. Sometimes I’ve read an account of where maybe a torpedo’s guidance device would fail and the thing would do a 180 and come back, and then the submarine was sweating not getting—

WB:	Trying to get away from it.

EW:	And it probably— There were probably instances where subs sunk themselves.

WB:	Yeah, we could have lost some that way. We don’t have any way of knowing.  

EW:	Well, I do know that they were very unsatisfactory there in the beginning.

WB:	Yeah. They were the best we had at the time. 

EW:	That’s it. So after Midway—? You were there about 6 months?

WB:	Yeah, then we went to Guam.

EW:	So you were into 1944 by then?

WB:	Yeah. We went to Guam, and we stayed there a little while. We got to go ashore there. And this was my first experience with the natives. We would go up to where these villages are. These people had children that had never seen a Coca-Cola or a candy bar. They didn’t know what they were. So whenever we went on one of these, what they call “shore parties,” we carried Coke, we carried candy bars, we carried beer for the adults, just to—you know—goodwill for them. And we talked to them, and they’d tell us how things had been under the Japanese for them.

EW:	28:36.3 Did they speak English? Obviously some of them spoke English. 

WB:	Yeah, a lot of them spoke good English. Some of them didn’t speak any English, but most of them spoke good English.

EW:	Do you recall any of the stories they had to tell about their treatment by the Japanese?

WB:	Well, they said that they were slave labor for the Japanese, and the Japanese took all their women and put them for their entertainment. They were real unhappy with the Japanese. They were very happy that we had liberated them from the Japanese.

EW:	They were treated very brutally, I know.

WB:	Oh, yes, very brutally. And you could see scars on some of them. I never got into any long discussions about that, but they’d tell me, “Well, I got this from the Japanese.” And they really didn’t seem to care about talking about it too much.

EW:	Yeah, well, it’s not something that—you know—one of their most pleasant life experiences. The Japanese were brutal during World War II. Anywhere they went, you’d find similar treatment. They considered the native population to be inferior, and they just were for their use in any way they cared to do so. 

WB:	We were bombed in Guam Harbor while we were there one night. They didn’t do much damage, but— Of course, we were on alert all night long.

EW:	Is a mine tender armed in any way?

WB:	Oh, yeah. They had five-inchers and they had 20-millimeters and they had machine guns. And of course, being a petty officer, you carry a side arm, especially when you went ashore, because there was still Japanese on these islands. 

EW:	And I might just interject here, I remember—it was probably 20 years after the war ended, maybe even longer—I remember reading this in the paper.

WB:	Yeah, I remember that. 

EW:	A couple of Japanese soldiers came out of the jungle—

WB:	Didn’t know the war was over.

EW:	Didn’t know the war was over, and literally this was 20-25 years after the war was over. And they had been back in those jungles. I’m sure they’d come out and steal food and that sort of thing, otherwise how would they have survived? But is that not incredible? Did not know the war was over.

WB:	Yeah.

EW: 	30:55.9 They were fanatics.

WB:	We went to Saipan from there. 

EW:	Same group, right?

WB:	Sir?

EW:	Same group in the Marianas there?

WB:	Yes, in the Marianas. And Tinian was just within sight of there, and that’s where we would go on our rear(?) parties. While we were in Saipan, they still had a lot of Japanese on the island, and we had to— Our mailman went ashore to get our mail, and a little kid took a hand grenade and blew him up. These people had been taught by the Japanese that we were going to kill them all—we were going to torture them. And they believed all of this, of course. And this little kid was about six or seven years old—a girl—and she took this hand grenade and pulled the pin and just rolled it at that mailman and he couldn’t get out of the way. 

EW:	And it killed him?

WB:	And it killed him.

EW:	Have you ever seen any of those films made on Saipan during the last phases where the civilian women, particularly, were jumping off those cliffs with their children?

WB:	Yeah, I went to that cliff where they were jumping off. They had been told that we were going to torture them and we were going to kill them, so they chose that rather than face whatever we might do to them. And they jumped off that cliff, thousands of them.

EW:	32:14.2 Yeah, I have seen film of that. It’s pretty famous film, and it’s also very disturbing. 

WB:	Right.

EW:	So you’re still servicing submarines in Saipan—or at Saipan. 

WB:	In Saipan, yes. And we had an aircraft tender right ahead of us in that harbor.

EW:	So you were anchored offshore?

WB:	No, we were tied up to a dock and so was the aircraft tender. Henry Fonda was on there.

EW:	On the what?

WB:	He had been in our barracks in boot camp.

EW:	Really?

WB:	And he had been a seaman first, like all the rest of us. So I went over on that aircraft tender to carry the newspapers that I put out, and I saw this name up there, Lieutenant Commander Hank Fonda.

EW:	Really?

WB:	So I went in there and I said, “How did you get this rank so quick?” He said, “Well, Bill, you know how it is.” But he was a nice guy, he really was.

EW:	And of course, you’re talking about the famous movie actor, Henry Fonda.

WB:	Yeah, Henry Fonda, the movie actor.

EW:	Who also made the film about World War II, Mr. Roberts, which was probably as true about the war as anything else—is that you spent very little time in combat and an awful lot of time being bored silly.

WB:	Right. Well, even when—I was on a destroyer—when I transferred to a destroyer—you spent more time watching for them than you did in actual combat. 

EW:	33:50.1  You know—the truth of the matter is, is that’s the case. Most of the time, combat is occasional. When it occurs, it’s terrible, but it is occasional. Most of the time is waiting for the next battle. 

WB:	Right. And you have to be on watch all the time. I have gone asleep leaning up against the bulkhead, because we had been on watch so long. 

EW:	Yeah, that’s one of those things like hours of boredom and moments of terror. 

WB:	That’s right. That’s what it is.

EW:	And that’s what it amounts to. And that was sort of the theme of Mr. Roberts. I might also point out, too, that any Army, any Navy of any size, there are very few of the total force that are ever engaged in combat.

WB:	That’s right.

EW:	Like right at this moment, we’re at the wind-down point for this operation, Iraqi Freedom. We’ve got something like, along with our coalition allies, 250,000 men there. I’d be willing to wager that less than 50,000 of those men are actively involved in combat.

WB: 	True. They’re just for backup.

EW:	The vast majority of people are logistical support of one sort or another. Of course, that doesn’t mean that those people aren’t in danger. Take the 507th Maintenance Company who just accidentally wandered off into an ambush situation. They suffered as heavy casualties as any frontline trip.

WB:	Oh, yeah.

EW:	So that’s sort of the way it is. Okay, from Saipan, what happened?

WB:	Well, I was putting out the daily paper on a mimeograph machine, which they don’t even have anymore, I guess, the old grinding kind.

EW:	I remember that machine.

WB:	35:41.1 And this boy came from a destroyer over to pick up their papers. He was the brother of a man that I had gone to school with and played football with. 

EW:	In Uvalde or in Houston?

WB:	No, this was in Houston at Stephen F. Austin High School. He said they had a yeoman on their ship that had chronic seasickness, and he wanted a transfer. Would I be interested in transferring? I told him, “I sure would, but let me find out what I can do.” And I went to the Admiral, who was over the whole fleet in that harbor. I went to the admiral and told him what I wanted to do. And he and I were on pretty good terms. He told me, “Whatever you want to do. Bring the paperwork up, and I’ll sign it.” And I had to do this while the exec wasn’t aware of what I was doing. He wouldn’t have let me go. 

EW:	The exec being the—?

WB: 	The executive officer. You had a captain, executive officer, and then the admiral was over all the ships. 

EW:	Right. The exec is the second in command of a naval vessel.

WB: 	Of that ship.

EW:	The XO, they call it.

WB: 	Yeah. So when they brought their liberty boat over with this guy on it, I was at the gangway waiting and I got on it. And as I was pulling away, that executive officer was up on the deck yelling at me to come back, and I just kept right on going because I had my papers signed by the admiral. 

EW:	Don’t you think—? Well, he might not have been a regular naval officer. But don’t you know those regular naval officers were driven literally crazy by you enlisted sailors—enlisted wartime sailors?

WB:	Oh, yeah. Well, the executive officer was—we called him feather merchant. He wasn’t regular Navy. 

EW:	Okay, so he was probably a draftee, too, that perhaps had gone to officer candidate school. 

WB:	37:40.7 Well, he really wasn’t very well liked by the crew. The skipper was—the captain—and the admiral was, but he wasn’t. 

EW:	It takes a real touch to be able to interface properly with a group of men. 

WB:	Oh, yes, indeed.

EW:	It takes a great deal of skill and discretion, that’s for sure. Okay, so now you’re aboard a DD, right?

WB:	Yes, DD-576 USS Murray.

EW:	The USS Murray. Okay, so where did you go aboard the Murray?

WB: 	As soon as I got on board the destroyer, we left and we went out on tomcat patrol.

EW:	And that is?

WB:	You’re on the outside limits of a convoy.

EW:	Task force, perhaps.

WB:	Of a task force and your purpose is to draw the enemy planes or ships or submarines to you, rather than to the task force.

EW:	You’re a screen out there. The centerpiece of a Navy task force being, at that time, the aircraft carriers, and probably anybody—

WB:	Yeah, they had aircraft carriers, generally one, sometimes two. They had battlewagons, maybe one, and they’d have several cruisers and then destroyers and destroyer escorts. 

EW:	And the destroyers and the DEs were out on—?

WB:	Way out on the outskirts.

EW:	Out on very outside of the task force. Sometimes these task forces covered miles and miles of ocean.

WB:	Well, this destroyer that I was on had been involved in—before I came on board—in taking a torpedo that was meant for an aircraft carrier. And the timing had been set for it to explode after it entered inside the vessel. It went clear through the destroyer and out the other side before it exploded. They only had one man that was killed. He got a piece of shrapnel right in the forehead. If he hadn’t have been hanging out of the 5-inch gun mount he wouldn’t have been killed. 

EW:	39:36.3 He was hanging over, looking to see what was happening?

WB:	Yeah, he was looking down to see what happened. This destroyed the mess hall. It went right through the mess hall, tore everything up in there. So they had to go into Ulithi and get patched up. And I’m talking about people telling me what had happened before I came on that destroyer. When they took Tinian, they took another—what we call—a Long Tom—took a shell from a Long Tom right on the bridge. They lost their executive officer, their skipper, their gunnery officer, and I believe their engineer. They lost half of the side of the bridge. They had to go back into Ulithian and get patched up. That’s when they came back into Saipan, when I was there. They had just come from being patched up.

EW:	I’m not sure— That was during the invasion?

WB:	Uh-hunh (affirmative). While they were doing the invasion. They went in to make a circle of Tinian.

EW:	Now, a Long Tom is a field artillery piece, right?

WB:	It’s like a—

EW:	A Japanese field artillery piece.

WB:	It’s like about a 16-incher. 

EW:	Oh, okay, it’s a shore-side naval gun.

WB:	It’s a shore battery, but it’s similar. They had these shore batteries in an embankment that was covered over with the coconut logs, and the shells just bounced off of that. They don’t penetrate.

EW:	That’s one thing that they learned, that they would go— Sometimes these islands would be, literally for weeks in advance, pounded by naval gunfire, pounded with bombs from aircraft, only, upon landing, they had not even been touched.

WB:	41:22.7 They hadn’t done a lot of damage. 

EW:	It’s because they were in these coconut-log bunkers.

WB:	Right. That’s where the flame throwers came into play.

EW:	Yeah, well, it took the Marines to go in there and dig them out.

WB:	They had to dig them out one by one.

EW:	And frequently using flamethrowers. 

WB:	Yeah.

EW:	Well, that’s interesting. So where did you go from Saipan aboard the destroyer?

WB:	Well, we just went on out in the Pacific with the fleet that was going from island to island and taking the islands. We did some bombardment. Not a whole lot because we stayed on tomcat most of the time. But we got strafed and several kamikazes just barely missed us and we were bombed. 

EW:	Did you all go to Iwo Jima? That was the next one, I think, after the Marianas.

WB:	Yeah, we were out there. 

EW:	Were you there during the invasion of Iwo Jima?

WB:	Yes.

EW:	Really?

WB:	We stood offshore and bombarded with our 5-inchers. And then, after that we went to—one night they told us we’re going in on a mission, five destroyers. After we got underway—it was after dark—they assembled everybody around the microphones and told us we were going into this (s/l Sarugawa), which was a river that ran into Tokyo Bay.

EW:	Now we’ve jumped ahead here. You were at Iwo. Were you all at Okinawa?

WB:	42:59.1 Yeah, we went out, but we were out tomcatting when Okinawa was going on. 

EW:	Okay, so this tomcat, part of this was probably into the Japanese home islands themselves?

WB:	Yeah. 

EW:	Okay, go ahead.

WB:	So they told us we were going in there and go up into the harbor and bombard—sink any ship in there. And on the way back out we were going to bombard an aluminum plant.

EW:	Now is this Tokyo Bay?

WB: 	This was in (s/l Sarugawa), which ran into Tokyo Bay.

EW:	Okay.

WB:	We went into Tokyo Bay and then back into (s/l Sarugawa).

EW:	About when was that, do you remember?

WB:	That was the last part of the war. It was in ’46.

EW:	Well, it would have been in ’45, because—

WB:	Yeah, ’45, I mean.

EW:	It was probably in the summer of ’45 sometime?

WB:	Yeah, it was in the summer.

EW:	So the war ended in August. The Japanese surrendered in August. So go ahead and talk about that. 

WB:	Well, we went in and after we got— Well, at first they told us, “We’re going to be issuing you side arms and we’re going to issue you rifles and we’re going to issue you rations. And if there are any survivors, make your way back to the mouth of the river, and a submarine will be out there and surface every night at midnight.” Well, this didn’t make us feel real good. But we went in, and after we got in they picked up on the radar behind us where they had blockaded the river. We didn’t know what with, but it was blockaded. We went into the harbor, made a circle, and there was no shipping in there at all. There wasn’t a single ship in there. 

EW:	44:28.2 And there were five of you, right?

WB:	There were five destroyers.

EW:	And you all were a line of destroyers?

WB:	We were abreast. This was a big, wide river. 

EW:	Really?

WB:	We were abreast.

EW:	All five abreast?

WB:	Five of us. So we went on in, and then we turned around and came back out and we stopped. We weren’t abreast now. We had lined up. We bombarded the aluminum plant for five minutes. And they were shooting at us with Long Toms, but they couldn’t decelerate them to where they could hit us. Their shells were going over us. You could hear them going over. It sounded like a freight train.

EW:	So you were close enough to where they could not defilate, I guess they call it?

WB:	No, they could not drop it on us. It was hitting the shore on the other side. So when we started out, we got abreast again and they said, when we get up so far—they had their signals—that we were going to shoot. Each one of us was to shoot four torpedoes down that river. So you were talking about 20 torpedoes going down the river. And when they fired those and they hit that obstruction down there— What they had done—loaded everything they could find with ammunition, shells, dynamite, everything. That was the biggest display of pyrotechnics I ever saw in my life. 

EW:	It really went up, huh?

WB:	45:45.2 When those torpedoes hit, it just lit up the whole place. 

EW:	Well, that’s really—

WB:	Cleared it all out and we went right on through. And they never could hit us with their big guns. So as soon as we got out of the mouth of the (s/l Sigurawa) and into Tokyo Bay, our planes came in behind us dropping tinfoil. Our destroyers were rated at—I believe it was 31 knots. We came out of there doing 34 knots with the safety valves tied down.

EW:	I can believe that. The destroyer was about the fastest fleet—(speaking at same time).

WB:	And we were moving. We didn’t have any bit of trouble at all. If it hadn’t been for our planes, we would have.

EW:	What did they drop the chaff for? 

WB:	Because that destroys their radar. When it hits that tinfoil, it just splinters.

EW:	Well, I wanted to make a point. Again, anyone that might be watching this at a future time—it’s a fact that by the end of the war, radar had come into general usage. It was pretty primitive compared to what we have today, but nonetheless, there was radar. And that enabled a lot of night action which really hadn’t been very practical up to that point. So dropping aluminum chaff, which is just little squares of aluminum—

WB:	Squares and long threads—call it graffiti or whatever. 

EW:	And what happens— They still do it.

WB:	Oh, yeah.

EW:	Even to this day—I mean—60 years later it’s the way of—

WB:	Submarines do it now too. They shoot it out the— Anyway, it goes one way and the submarine is going the other. The torpedo that’s after them goes after that. 

EW:	Yeah, it’s a way of deceiving some of these so-called smart missiles. And they still do that in Iraqi Freedom. Perhaps you’ve seen where they’ve dropped aluminum chaff and whatever. So that was a pretty interesting experience. It’s a wonder you all didn’t run into some mines in there too; although, I guess by that time there was sweeping.

WB:	47:44.5 Well, we had expected to, but somehow or another, we didn’t run into any.

EW:	Amazing. So what happened after that?

WB:	We went back and joined the convoy. About this time, they had dropped the bomb over there and then the second one.

EW:	Nagasaki.

WB:	Nagasaki and they had surrendered. So they came up— We all watched, and they opened the hatch to the living quarters down there and said, “The war is over. Don’t show any lights. Shut it back down.” So we were going to head for Tokyo. Our orders were to go to Tokyo. Well, we picked up a Japanese submarine that was up on the surface with a white flag. So we pulled alongside and they sent a boarding party over. And the first thing that Japanese submarine commander asked was, “Who is winning the World Series?”

EW:	You’ve got to be kidding.

WB:	He had graduated from UCLA in Los Angeles, and that was the first question he asked. Well, they didn’t want to give up their swords. They had destroyed all their weapons. And this submarine had a little—one of those suicide planes—hangar on the deck—but it was gone. And they didn’t want to give up their swords or their little hara-kiri knives. And they really protested that. But what they had done— Most submarines had one seacock. It opens and lets the sun come in. So they ran down there and shut that seacock off. I was about the only one that had been on a submarine before, or in the submarine service, and they asked me about it. I said, “Yeah, there’s one down there. Go down there in the engine room and you’ll find it and shut it off.” Well, it was still sinking. This submarine had two seacocks. They had to find the other one and shut it off. They wouldn’t allow us to eat any of their food or drink any of their water. Everything had to come from the destroyer over to us by boat. We took it up to almost Tokyo Harbor, and we turned it over to another group to take it on in to Tokyo Harbor. I think they took it on in to Tokyo Harbor, but they sent us to the very head of the convoy going into Tokyo Harbor. And we led them in, and as soon as we got inside, they turned us around and said take these five destroyers and several DEs—I don’t remember now exactly how many—and take these two aircraft carriers back to Pearl Harbor.

EW:	Really?

WB:	50:12.1 That’s when we got into the typhoon on the way back.

EW:	Talk about that.

WB:	Well, your waves were running 30 and 40 foot high, and the wind was up to over 100 miles an hour. And one of the aircraft carriers had about 50 or 60 foot of their flight deck just curled back from the waves. We lost two destroyers. They went under a wave and never came up—never surfaced. 

EW:	And that can happen. 

WB:	Oh, yes, sir. It did happen. And we thought it was going to happen. You’ve got 50:46 (__?) on every ship. When it reaches a certain point, you head for the top because it’s supposed to go on over. And we headed for the top four or five times that night. 

EW:	That’s right. I know exactly what you’re talking about. 

WB:	Nobody was on deck until that would happen, and we’d all run up and grab the lifeline. As soon as it would right itself, we’d go back down. And then we made it on in to Pearl Harbor, and I was transferred to the destroyer torpedo shop there. I spent—I don’t know—I was a yeoman and my rank was frozen and my discharge date had already passed, so I stayed in there probably 6 months after I passed my discharge date. And that was really a nice experience. I met people that I didn’t even know I— I went into a photography shop to get my picture made, and this lady came out and said, “Where is this Bill Baylor?” And I said, “Right here.” She said, “Come on back here.” And I went back there in the back and she said, “My name is Baylor too. I’m married to one of your relatives.” 

EW:	Really?

WB:	They were school teachers when the war started in Honolulu, and their hobby was photography. Well, after the war started, they figured they could make more money in photography than they could school teaching so they quit school teaching. He went into the Coast Guard out there, and she took over the photography shop. Of course, he helped when he was in. So I had a real nice time there because I had people that I got to know and could find my way around the island and really enjoy it. It was really an experience for me. 

EW:	52:35.3 And of course the Japanese surrender took place in Tokyo Bay in September of 1945. So unfortunately, you didn’t get to observe that.

WB:	No, I didn’t get to see that. I got sent back.

EW:	I wanted to ask you about Iwo Jima, when you were taking part in that. Destroyers are comparatively shallow draft compared to a lot of other naval vessels.

WB:	Right.

EW:	You could get in there real close and shell—offer naval gunfire support. Were you by any chance there when the flag was raised on Suribachi?

WB:	No, I didn’t get to see that. I don’t know where we were when that happened.

EW:	Well, you all were moving around, of course.

WB:	Yeah, we were up and down and would go clear around the island bombarding with our 5-inchers. The planes were dive bombing at the same time that we were firing on there, and then your battlewagons and your cruisers were out further shooting in there. I did get to see the Marines landing—the landing craft. And this was the first time I saw a rocket ship. They had an LST that had been converted to a rocket projectile. They had rows of these banks of them. And as they went— One of them started firing when it was right beside our destroyer, and by the time they quit shooting their rockets, they were about 30 feet astern of us. Every time they’d fire, it’d go back.

EW:	The recoil on there would drive them back?

WB:	The recoil would shove them back.

EW:	You know—I don’t really remember exactly when they started using those things. 

WB:	That was my first time to see them.

EW:	As part of an invasion force?

WB:	Uh-hunh (affirmative).

EW:	54:09.9 They were quite impressive, I know.

WB:	Oh, every impressive. They put out as much firepower as a cruiser can. 

EW:	Yeah, in succession. Well, I tell you, you had really interesting experiences out there in the far Pacific. Going on beyond that and talking a little bit about some of the more prosaic aspects of your experience, how did you keep in touch with your family? V-mail is what I recall as a kid.

WB:	Right. I got lots of letters from my family and from friends. At every mail call, everybody would say I got more mail than anybody else.

EW:	Really?

WB:	My sister would write and some of her friends. Some of the girls I had gone with in high school wrote, my mother.

EW:	Did you get mail pretty frequently?

WB:	Yes, we didn’t have any problem getting mail. Whenever we would pull up alongside of a— One of the things that we did on a destroyer, too, when the planes would come back from bombarding Tokyo, some of them would have to ditch. We had radio contact with them, and we’d talk them in close to our destroyer. And we had a crew ready to go into the ocean to get them, because if those pilots stayed in there over 5 minutes, they had hypothermia. We would pick them up and put them on the destroyer.

EW:	You actually did some of those?

WB:	Oh, yeah. We did that. 

EW:	That would be B-29 aircraft.

WB:	Yeah.

EW:	Really?

WB:	Well, and also some of the fighter planes that were escorting them.

EW:	55:44.6 Yeah, P-51 escorts.

WB:	They’d come in, and we’d talk them in. I was on the phone talking them in. We’d tell them when to ditch, and we’d pick them up and take them back to their aircraft carriers. 

EW:	No kidding?

WB:	We’d have to send them across in breeches buoy.

EW:	Well, did you actually ever—you know—a B-29 was the heavy bomber. They flew generally out of Tinian. Of course, that’s where the Enola Gay and the atomic bomb originated. But one of the big reasons for the invasion of Iwo Jima was the fact that it had an airstrip there.

WB:	Right.

EW:	And it was—well, let’s just say—roughly half way between Tinian and the Japanese home island. So this enabled damaged aircraft that had been damaged on a raid—that could not make it all the way back to Tinian—they could frequently make it there to the airstrip on Iwo Jima. So those were the big Boeing B-29 Bomber aircraft. But you guys—did you ever pick up any B-29 crew and see those things ditch?

WB:	I don’t think we picked up any of them.

EW:	You're talking about carrier-based aircraft that you picked up.

WB:	Yeah, we had carrier-based aircraft we were picking up. We’d take them back to their aircraft carriers. 

EW:	Oh, okay. Well, that was an interesting experience as well—on picket duty and picking up—

WB:	Yeah. Any time they called. We stayed on their frequency all the time. Any time they called, I was called up to go talk them in. 

EW:	We now have less than three minutes, so just sort of briefly, what happened to you after the war? You went back to Houston?

WB:	I went to Houston and went to the University of Houston on the GI Bill of Rights.

EW:	Wait a minute. Did you finish high school? You said Stephen F. Austin?

WB:	I finished high school in 2 weeks when I got back.

EW:	Really? Stephen F. Austin?

WB:	No, I had to go down to Sam Houston downtown. They had these special courses for us. 

EW:	Okay and then you went on right directly to the University of Houston?

WB:	I went to the University of Houston, and I stayed there for 2 years. Then I had a family, so I had to stop going to school and go to work. 

EW:	Just sort of in general terms, what sort of work did you do in the years before you—? You mentioned contracting.

WB:	Well, most of my life I’ve been a painter—I was a painting contractor. I’ve always done a lot of volunteer work. I did first aid instructor. I did teaching people how to train their dogs. 

EW:	When did you retire, more or less?

WB:	I retired in ’92 from MD Anderson Hospital in Houston. I was a painter supervisor there for 15 years. 

EW:	Really? 

WB:	I retired from there in ’92. I’ve been, most of the time, volunteering with the AARP as a safety instructor. 

EW:	Are you a member of any kind of veteran’s organization?

WB:	I belong to the American Legion and have for many years.

EW:	And that post is the one out here in Camilla—or in Conroe?

WB:	No, the one over on 3278. It’s the Camilla post. 

EW:	Yeah, right. It’s right there on the lake?

WB:	Yeah.

EW:	It faces the lake.

WB:	I thought you said Cleveland.

EW:	No, Camilla.

WB:	That’s right.

EW:	Yeah, I know exactly where that is. I was a member of the American Legion for a while, but never really got actively involved in it.

WB:	Well, I’m not real actively involved because they have a lot of smoking going on in there, and I’m a COPD patient. I can’t handle smoke. I keep my membership up, and I go down there and participate in some of their fish fries and all that kind of stuff. But the meetings, there is so many of them smoking that I just don’t bother going down there.

EW:	I can understand that. Well, listen, we’re just about out of time here. So in wrapping this up, let me, as a volunteer interviewer for the Library of Congress Veteran Interview Program, thank you very much for taking the time to do this. Let me also, as an American citizen, express my personal appreciation and respect for your World War II service. It was a difficult time and you were involved in some really interesting operations. You’ve got a lot to be proud of. So thanks very much for being here this afternoon.

WB:	The pleasure was mine.

EW:	Thank you.