At Iwo Jima we got to see the flag raising. Being on the command ship, the flagship, we were right up next to the island, close there, all the time. We were shelling the island and got to see the landing and the flag when it was raised on up Surabachi.

Then we went on the Okinawa campaign. And we were there several days and we had several kamikaze airplanes coming in; every day and night. We had shot down, oh, six or seven planes. And then we were hit by the kamikaze. It was early that morning, the day before the landing of the invasion on Okinawa. I was in the mess hall eating and all of a sudden the loudspeaker said, "All hands man your battle stations."

I put my tray down and headed up and forward to the bridge, where my battle station was. About the time I hit mid-ship on the main deck, the kamikaze hit on the port side, hit stern. The delayed-action bombs, one of them went down through the mess hall where I had just come from. It exploded at the bottom of the ship with such force that it blew the stern of that ship up into the air. When it came down, water washed across the main deck. So it was quite an explosion.

Scented Toilet Paper?
Then we put a concrete bottom in it, buried nine of our sailors and headed to the United States. We got repaired and intended to go out to do some gunnery practice -- kind of a shakedown after we got repaired. Instead, we were ordered to go over to Hunter's Point in San Francisco, where we picked up a big box.

And this big box turned out to be the first atomic bomb that would be dropped. We delivered it to the island of Tinian. The Enola Gay later flew it over and dropped it on Hiroshima. And of course no one knew what was in this big box. I leaned on it -- it was on the main deck -- as I talked to the Marine guards all the way over to Tinian. We made a speed run: nine steaming days. That's 24-hours-a-day in nine days from the states to Tinian. That's still a record for a surface vessel. We averaged about 29.5 knots all the way there. We delivered the bomb.

There was a lot of scuttlebutt going around about what that box was, about what we were carrying with such speed: The best one, I think, was that it was full of scented toilet paper for Gen. MacArthur. But it turned out to be the atomic bomb instead of the toilet paper.

We got over there and unloaded the bomb and still didn't know what we unloaded, but then we went to Guam, which is just a few miles from Tinian, and got supplies. Then we headed out for the Philippines to join the battleship Idaho in gunnery practice because everybody was preparing for a Japanese invasion of the homeland.

Our Capt. McVay tried to get an escort. They did not allow us an escort. Usually a ship of our size and all heavy cruisers demanded a destroyer, at least one to be sent along as an escort. We had no sonar equipment with which we could detect submarines. All we had was some radar for airplane detection. We headed out toward the Philippines. I believe it was the second at night that we got sunk.

"Total Surprise"
We were about halfway across, going to Leyte Gulf. I had a midnight watch so I went up to bridge and was just about to take the phones. That was my duty on the bridge. And Capt. McVay had retired a little before I went on watch. He had a compartment up on the bridge where he could sleep, with a bed up there. And he had left the word with the officer of the deck to zigzag if the weather turned good; to resume it. This is what he was charged for in his trial: They said that he was not zigzagging and that he didn't give proper orders to abandon ship.

I went up on the bridge -- been up there just a few minutes, maybe 10 minutes or so -- and there was a terrible explosion. Blew me up in the air. I don't know how high, but probably 3 or 4 feet; 5. I came down and hit on my stomach on the bridge. I looked up, started to get up, and there was debris and water and sparks and fire. Of course no one knew what had happened; it was just total surprise. Well I started to get up and then another torpedo hit and blew me up in the air again.

It was my understanding that it blew the captain plumb out of his bunk up in the compartment by the bridge. Anyway, he came out on the bridge, of course wondering what happened. He was trying to contact the engine room through the phones and the lookouts and couldn't get any power whatsoever, so he sent a runner down on the main deck and back to the engine room to assess the damage. Meantime, some of the officers on deck said: Somebody get the captain a life preserver. I got him a life preserver and helped him put it on and we all put our life preservers on. All this within maybe five minutes. And we were listing terribly to the starboard side. And the officer that had been checking for damage, he came up and said everything was knocked out and he told the captain we were sinking and he recommended to abandon ship.

Well the captain looked over the damage from the bridge that he could see. By this time, you could nearly walk down the smokestack, it was such a list. So McVay told everyone to pass the word to abandon ship. And so that's what we were doing -- just by word of mouth, by yelling and all.

"Abandon Ship"
When he said everyone abandon ship, we were nearly on a roll to our starboard side. And I hadn't heard about how you'd be sucked under and how the superstructure -- if you went off on the wrong side -- would fall on you.

I'd also remembered stories about the captain going down with the ship. And I left him. When he said "abandon ship," I went to the port side and swung out over the main deck there. I grabbed a steel hook and swung out over the deck and hit the hull of the ship and bounced into the water. I imagine it's 40 feet to the water.

It didn't hurt me but when I came up, I had my mouth open. I guess I drunk saltwater and oil and went to vomiting. As I was swimming away from the ship, maybe 50 yards, I turned and looked and already the nose of the ship was under. It just stood up on its nose and the stern was straight up and down. In fact the screws with the propellers were still turning, slowly turning when it was going, going down. And you could still see intermittently the moon was coming 'round and you could see sailors still jumping off the ship.

The first sailor I came to was a close friend of mine, from a little town, Airedale Texas, which was probably 70 miles from where I lived. The name was Josey. Clifford Josey. And I swam up to him and I couldn't hardly recognize him.

I said, "Is that you Josey?" and he said, "That you L.D.?" I told him yeah.

He had been flesh burned and I guess someone -- the corpsman or the doctor -- had given him a shot, put a life jacket on him and let him go into the water. Anyhow, he didn't last over a hour or two. He's too bad injured and all the hide, the skin was coming from his face.

Then I was looking around. I never saw a boat or a life raft. But I saw a group of probably 25 or 30 men and I swam over to that group. I think there was a few rafts, two, three or four rafts. I don't know how many for sure. Maybe might have been a boat or two that didn't go down with the ship, that some of the boys got in. But I never did see them. I didn't see a boat. It was too dark.

Anyway it was about 30 in this little group that tried to stay together to give more support. We figured that by being together, the sharks would be less likely to attack.

At night it would be real cold and then, in the day time, it would be so hot we just couldn't stand it hardly. Just hot and cold. During the night we'd want it to be day.

When that ship went down, I could feel a bubble in my groin. I always thought that it was probably a boiler exploding or something; as the ship sank it probably released some tremendous air.

The first day we were all talking about did we get a radio message off. It sunk in 12 minutes, estimated time. For a ship that's over two blocks long -- 610 feet long -- to sink in 12 minutes, it's just unheard of. I think the first bomb hit forward. I believe that maybe several feet of bow had blown off. The second torpedo hit about mid-ship and exploded and hit the munitions room too. That's what made it sink so fast.

We were still moving some, too. The captain couldn't reach the engine room; nobody told them to cut the power. I'm sure they still had the screws turning, waiting to get the word to cut the power on it. That's my supposition.

But I have heard some of the men talk about it and I do know that we just kind of acted like a scoop. All open in the bow and still moving forward so we just scooped up the water. Whatever movement there was just decreased the time we were afloat. We were going to sink anyway; it had just flooded too many compartments and blew too big a hole in the ship.

Anyway, the first day everybody thought maybe we got a message off and we were hopeful that we did. We knew we were in a route that several ships would take going from Guam to the Philippines and we figured we'd be seen. We were due in port in just a day or two. We figured they'd start looking for us if we didn't show up. So we had hope. We could see planes everyday, real high. Nobody ever saw us and we'd scream and yell and all and kick the water and they'd just fly on.

Sharks
The first day, the sharks started. And second day came and men -- with no water to drink or food -- began to get thirsty and hallucinate. I know the first or second day, an Irish potato came floating by and I got it. But I was so afraid it was saturated with saltwater that I didn't eat it. I just threw it back in the water. Then the men began to lose their senses, a lot of them. The third day came and some of them would take their life jackets off and dive down in the water saying, "I'm going below for a drink of water."

Our water fountains were on the second deck and to get a drink of water you had to go down. Below. To get water. So I guess they thought they were still on the ship. One of them, in particular, within 10 feet of me, he took his life preserver off to dive down and he came back up and told how good the water was and all, and we got his life jacket back on him but he died within just a very few hours from drinking that saltwater. I don't know all the medical terms, but it just dehydrated him faster and foam came in his mouth and nose and he just passed away.

And then men would swim off from the group. We had two kind of life preservers. We had new kapok -- kind of a Mae West they called them -- that we took aboard at San Francisco before we left. Most men wore a little folded rubber thing around their waist, a life preserver. That's all they had, was those to blow up. They were continually having to blow them up. As the men would die, we would take the Mae West jackets off and give to those that had only those rubber life preservers. And very soon we didn't need any more life preservers. All we'd do is just take them off and say a prayer about the men who died, let them slip below the surface. We'd take their dog tags.

I think it was the third day we had an officer or two in the group. I had stood watch with one of them. And he told me that he wanted me to be a guide -- that there were some islands, secret islands out there and that he wanted me to be their guide and, and they were going to swim to it. It was an officers island, officers only; enlisted men couldn't go aboard the island, according to him. And I told him, I said I don't think there's anything out there. And he said, "Yes, we want you to be our guide so they'll probably let you come aboard the island if you're with us."

Well, you get to where you don't know who's sane or delirious or who's not. I didn't think that there was (an island) but I went ahead and we three swam probably 100 yards away from the main group. And I said, "Now I don't know where I'm taking you. And I don't know if there's an island out here and I don't think you all know and I'm going to go back to the group." So they said, "You have permission to return. We're going on."

And nobody ever heard or saw them any more.

I went back to the group. That night -- I believe it was the third night -- a guy hollered, "Hey everybody, be quiet, quiet, no talking! I have a radio and I'm in contact with a submarine below."

I didn't think he had a radio or walky-talky, but you get to where you don't know for sure about anything. So everybody was quiet and he said, "I've got a submarine below us and it's one of ours and they're going to surface and pick us up."

During the daytime you would see sailors by themselves, floating. Floating within 50 yards of the group. You'd yell to them, "Hey, have you seen land?" One of them we yelled to said, "Yeah, I just came from there."

He didn't make any attempt to come forward to us and we didn't make any attempt to swim out to him. We were all getting weak. Our life preservers were getting full of water. You couldn't sleep. You could sleep a little the first two days because you had enough buoyancy to lift your head. If the sea wasn't rough you could lean your head back and get a little sleep. And then a wave would throw your face down in the water and you'd wake up. That's the way it was just continually. The more waterlogged the life preservers got, the less time you had to have calmer water and the less sleep you would get, because your face would be in the water. You'd strangle, wake up, and strangle, wake up.

The Planes
We'd see airplanes every day and some at night. We'd see the lights. And finally, the evening of the fourth day just before dark, we heard an airplane and you could tell it was low and off in the distance just on the horizon you could see it was a PBY. It was flying just above the water, probably maybe 300 or 400 yards up from the water.

We screamed and yelled and all and he just kept going so we thought, well, that's as close as anything has ever come to finding us. After an hour or so we heard motors again and looked and it was another plane or the same one -- I never did know which -- a little closer to us. And we yelled and screamed and splashed and he just never did see us, just went right on.

Well we thought that, that's it. It's getting nearly dark. And the guys were out of their heads about half the time. And I guess I was mine. I did tie my life jacket in hard knots with all the string so that I couldn't take mine off.

I still had my jacket on, and everybody just knew that that was the end. We heard the motors again and we looked and, and there was that plane, the PBY. I guess it was a quarter or half-mile from us and it directly turned and came right over us and there was a guy -- you could see a guy standing in the door of the plane, waving to us.

And I'm telling you, that was the happiest time of my life.

My hair had to stand on end. I couldn't even feel my scalp. And of course everybody screamed and yelled and kicked and waved and everything. And the plane dropped a floating package. And I swam out with another guy or two and we got it back to the group and I think it had some water in it. I don't remember whether I got any water or I didn't. 'Cause I don't remember anything from the time that we got the package until that night.

I don't know what time it was, whether it was near morning or when, but I remember a light that looked like it was shining from the heavens down onto the ocean. Actually a ship had its big floodlights shining up into the heavens and it was reflecting on the clouds. And it was a beautiful sight. I remember that.

And that gave us hope and we knew that we was found and knew people would be there pretty quick and everybody was hollering "Hang on! Don't panic! We're going to be picked up. Don't die, don't panic."

Well, the next thing I remember was a strong light in my face. It was raining. The first time it had rained. We had had no water whatsoever but it was raining. There was a light in my face and a strong arm was pulling me into a boat. It was a landing craft of some sort; the ship that picked me up was the Basset. I got over to the Basset and there was a rope ladder over the side. I had enough strength to climb up this ladder with a little help. I got up on to the deck and took two steps and fell on my face. And they carried me into a bunk and this bunk was a canvas bunk. No mattress, just canvas bottom that they rolled me in. I rolled over on my stomach and I put my hands under me and when I woke up my hands had stuck to the canvas and nearly pulled the hide off of me. We were just rotting.

The skin, after being submerged for four days and five nights, was rotten. It seemed like the muscles pulled away from the bone. It's just a terrible thing.

Some of the crewmen of the Basset took me in and bathed me as best they could; soaked me down and got some of the diesel oil off of me. And they took us to the island of Simar in the Philippines and put us in the hospital.

They wrapped me in gauze, everything but my stomach. All my arms and legs and all. And they'd have to change that bandage twice or three times a day. It smelled so bad. They took a tweezers and the dead skin – particularly on the shoulder area where the life preservers had rubbed and killed skin -- came off on pieces nearly as big as your hand. I had sores all over the body and all my hair came off; slicked off just like a peeled onion. Didn't have any hair on my body and my fingernails and toenails came off.

I think it was the second or third day we were there, they came in and said: Your ship delivered the atomic bomb and it's dropped on Hiroshima. Then, of course, they announced the end of the war. Anyway, we had to drop another bomb before the Japanese surrendered. But that's when we learned that what we had done was to deliver that bomb.