Center for Louisiana Studies Archival Catalog

daily life; games / recreation; Catholic church / religion / religious faith; education; learning English language; work / jobs; The Great Depression; World War II; dance halls / dancehalls; celebration of holidays; food / diet / cuisine; marriage

daily life; diet; clothing / costume; morale; townÕs appearance; daily life; effects; town appearance; morale

daily life; diet; clothing; morale; townÕs appearance (Morgan City?)

lived near Erath, Vermilion Parish; work / jobs; sewing baby clothes / material culture / textiles; working on a farm; washing on a washboard; money / economics; getting married / marriage; starting a family;living in a nursing home; hearing; bingo / recreation

Great DepressionWorld War IICajun FrenchLafayette

Food, clothes, education, chores, language, change from French to English, entertainment

New Orleans; World War II Ñ U.S.O.; Gentilly; multi generational households; food; costume / store bought clothes; food / diet / cuisine; started working at the age of twelve; telephones Ñ party lines

radio; politics; school; orphans; work in field Ñ wages were $2.00 a day; clothing / homemade clothes; self-sufficiency / grew own food; sold eggs to the local store; brothers served in World War II; French language / Cajun French; telephones Ñ party lines; electric lights / electricity; punished at school for speaking French;education; water wells; outhouses; material culture; G.I. Bill

Great Depression; World War II; daily life in Crowley; education; food / diet / cuisine; recreation; chores / duties; travel

Great DepressionWorld War II

Ned Arceneaux: Jason Theriot

Member of First Army Joint VII Corps Headquarters, inducted in May 1941
-Talk of how Arceneaux was in charge of the reunions from 1975 to 2004
-where they were at, how he set them up and how many men showed up
-Last one was in 2003 and 10 men showed
-wonders what will be in 2004 (the year this interview took place)

May 15, 1941 drafted into the Army (11:00)
-Was 22 years old working as a clerk in the Post Office and was drafted in the second draft, as his boss was able to defer him in the first
-met at the courthouse and a man named McMannis was appointed leader and Arceneaux was put as the assistant leader
-he was the last one to get on the bus

They were sent to the new camp, Camp Livingston, which had just been built by Alexandria in the woods (funny story on the way there) (18:08)

Sent to Camp Blanding, Florida (21:00)
-The others in the National Guard were sent to Africa
-Each morning names would be called and deployed
-eventually Arceneaux and another man from Baton Rouge, Floyd Bourgeois, were the only ones left and they were sent to Birmingham, Alabama
-Arceneaux's MOS was at the Post Office and then he was sent off to the Louisiana Maneuvers

Declaring of War (26:20)
-December 7, 1941 back in Birmingham Arceneaux and Bourgeois had come back from eating lunch and at 3:00 on the radio:
-“All VII Corps HQ personnel report immediately to headquarters. War has been declared.”
-He was in charge of supplies and eventually was going to the Pacific but his company was stopped in San Jose, California
-stayed for 9 months, where they were to stay as the defense command of the western coast

-When stationed in London Arceneaux was the apart of the quartermaster staff and in charge of the food and liquor for 450 men in the VII Corps Headquarters, all mostly Cajuns
-he knew where all the winery’s and bars were and would order in French
-While there they were prepping for an invasion but didn't know when it was to happen

When they went on to the invasion for D-Day (38:20)
-Their company took 2 ships and Arceneaux was in a Jeep
-they landed about 9 in the morning on June 6th to Utah beach, left in the early morning hours
-"My first thought (when he saw the Atlantic Wall) was, “We’re never coming back. We’re never coming back.”

Utah beach landing and afterwards (45:40)
-Set up a command post in Ste-Mere-Eglise for a few days and took fire

Carentan and up to Cherbourg (49:53)
-He was tasked with two Chaplains to find another priest or bishop as four division were going to be sent out to Cherbourg to take it
-they went into a German hospital and found a French priest that gave them wine and cognac and they stayed till 3:00 as by 4 the city and fort was to be taken;
-they joined the fight and found a warehouse full of liquor and had six trucks sent to take as much as the liquor they could pack in them

Full Transcription:

Ned Lawrence Arceneaux
630 Wilson St.
Lafayette, LA 70503
Born: 29 December 1916
VII Corps HQ
Utah Beach, D-Day

Years later, I was asked to put together a reunion for VII Corps Headquarters. Gen. Collins, Army Chief of Staff at that time, told me that the only way he would come to a reunion was if I would show him the Cajun country. He said that he always wanted to come to south Louisiana, so we had the first reunion in Lafayette. Last year, we met in San Francisco…there were ten of us there.

My family is from between the Carencro-Lafayette area. I grew up speaking French and couldn’t speak a word of English until I started school. I was drafted into the Army on May 15, 1941, because Uncle Sam said, “I need you! I want you!” I was 22 and working as a clerk at the post office. We met at the courthouse and they had a fellow by the name of McMannis. Everybody voted to put him as the leader, and they put me as the assistant leader. A bus would be coming later on to pick us up. My Papa and brothers were there with me, and he took myself and three other fellows to have dinner at Mama’s place. Mama had a big meal with wine and whiskey and all that. We left to meet up with the rest of the fellows at this restaurant because the bus was coming to pick us up. The leader, was too drunk to sign the check at the restaurant, so I signed it for him. Anyhow, we got to the bus station and I was the last one to get on the bus. As I’m getting on the bus, my daddy was there with a fifth of whiskey. He said, “Ned, for the trip.” My poor Papa.

From Lafayette, I was sent to Camp Livingston. It was a new camp that they had just built in the woods over there by Alexandria. The four of us, who had eaten dinner together (Ernest Courret, and who were the others?) sat in the back of the bus. We were all new inducties and one lady on this bus. When the bus started, one of them fellows said, “Hey, you got that fifth, let’s have a drink.” The other fellow said, “Wait, there’s a lady in front of us. We should go and ask her if it’s alright for us to drink.” So, he goes over to her seat and says, “We have a bottle of whiskey, and we don’t know when were are coming back, but we are going into the Army. So do you mind if we have a drink.” She said, “Oh, hell no, I’ll have a drink with you.” She had the first drink out of the bottle.

When we got the camp in Alexandria they had this army corporal who greeted us for orientation. He took us out and lined us up. He knew me and he knew the rest of them boys, too; he was from Lafayette. He said, “Alright, all you drunk ones, take a step forward.” Shit, nobody moved. He said, “Well, in that case I’d better inspect.” So this fellow at the front of the line had the bottle behind his back. And as this corporal made his way down, we’d pass the bottle to the next guy, then the next one. When it got to me, I passed back the other way.

So, he took us out to this latrine and made us strip down to take a shower. It was a cold, cold shower. Boy, that sobered us up quick! (Welcome to the Army!)

From there we went to Camp Blanding, Florida. Every morning this sergeant would come in, blow his whistle, and order us into formation. Then, he’d holler out three or four names, “Joe, Tom, Bill…You gonna leave this afternoon on train so and so to go to so and so place.” One morning, we got up, he blew the whistle, and there was just two of us left—a fellow by the name of Floyd Bourgeois from Baton Rouge and myself. He had been in the same tent with me. The sergeant said, “Well, you fellows gonna take a train this afternoon at four o’clock and you’re headed to Birmingham, Alabama. And they’ll have a car waiting for you at the station tomorrow morning.” We figured that the only reason why we were the last two is because this sergeant couldn’t pronounce our last names—Arceneaux and Bourgeois. So, we ended up in Birmingham, Alabama.

Bourgeois was assigned the HQ of the Adjutant General. My MOS was to work in the post office, but I was not assigned there. I was put in the kitchen for a few days. Then, I was assigned to the supply section. We made some maneuvers in Alabama, and then we went to the Louisiana maneuvers.

We got back to Birmingham and on December 7, 1941, Bourgeois and I had gone to church and we had lunch with this family. We were listening to the radio at about three o’clock and here comes a flash: “All VII Corps HQ personnel report immediately to headquarters. War has been declared.”

I was put in charge of the supplies. We went to Fort McClennon to draw up equipment and we were headed to the port of embarkation in San Francisco to go to the Pacific. On the way, we stopped in San Jose, California, where we would stay as defense command of the western coast.

We stayed in California for nine months and made the Mojave Dessert maneuvers. My job as supply officer was to get all the food and equipment for the men in headquarters.

Then we left for England. We stayed at Bremmer Castle north of London. We stayed in dormitories and slept in cots. We were preparing for the invasion. I was in the quartermaster staff and stocked what we needed: all the food, supplies and equipment. There were 450 enlisted men, officers, and NCOs in VII Corps HQ.

We had an exercise to simulate the beach landings. We were in the English Channel and these German E-boats came in and killed a bunch of our men. That didn’t come out until many years later. We knew we were going on an invasion, but we didn’t know exactly when. That was up to Eisenhower and his staff, when they said to go.

I had a friend named Dr. Bourgeois who was stationed in England. He was a captain. I also had two Arceneaux cousins from Carencro in England. One was in an MP company. He was a big husky fellow, and rough. The other was with the 82nd Airborne Division in the glider section. His name was Raoul Arceneaux. On D-Day, they took off first. In fact, we were on our LSTs waiting in Southampton, and we could see the gliders flying over on their way to the invasion. They called him Frenchie and he was a sergeant. This one fellow asked him, “Frenchie, I don’t like to sit by that window. Can you change places with me?” He said, “Oh, yeah.” So they changed places. And when their glider landed and hit the hedgerows in Normandy, everyone on the glider got killed except my cousin. He was sitten by that window and he was the only one who came out alive.

We left early that morning and landed at Utah beach; it was about nine in the morning on June 6th. A lot of boys got sick going over. When we landed, you could see all the dead bodies floating all over. My first thought was, “We’re never coming back. We’re never coming back.”

Before we left from England, I had found out that this piece of property was for sale next to the farm that I was raised on. The owner wanted $10,000 for 50 acres of land. I wrote to my brother back home and told him that I have a $10,000 insurance policy. I said that I don’t know if I am going to make it home or not. I said that if something happened to me and I got killed, I wanted him to go ahead a buy that farm for Mama and Papa.

I didn’t know if I was coming back or not. Regardless of the danger, regardless if you killed or not, you knew that you had to go. From the General all the way down to the Private, they didn’t know if they were coming back or not. It was enthusiasm to fight for our country; that’s what we went for. We didn’t know why we were fighting, but the president said we gotta go, so we went. It was just instinct to serve your country. That was instilled in us.

I came in on a jeep that had been waterproofed. The exhaust pipe was way up high, but when we landed water came over the top and we stopped. These engineers came in with these DUCKS. When they saw that we were blocking the way, they came and hooked onto us and pulled us out of the way. I had my duffle bag with dry clothes and shoes.
We were taking on fire for the few days while we were there. Then we moved onto to Ste-Mere-Eglise and set up our command post in a farmhouse.

From there we went to Carentan and then followed the coast up to Cherbourg. When we got up there, Gen. Collins called me and two Chaplin’s—a catholic Chaplin and a protestant Chaplin—and he told us to go to Cherbourg and find a French priest or a bishop because that afternoon he was sending four division (30th, 4th, 9th, and 1st) to take the port city.

When we got to Cherbourg, they were fighting street-to-street and street corner to street corner. The Protestant Chaplin was a colonel and he said, “We can’t go in there. There is too much gun fire.” The Catholic Chaplin turned to me and said, “Gen. Collins gave us a mandate and I’m going in there.” He asked me, “Ned, will you come with me.” We put on our Red Cross armbands and went into this German hospital. We went looking for a German priest or somebody. So we went in and I met this nurse. In French, I asked her, “Where is the Priest.” I carried a .45 pistol and I shoved this pistol in her side and asked for the priest. She told us to go outside and down the street in a building was a French priest. So we went down there, knocked on the door and this priest came out screaming, “Oh, American! American! Come in! Come in!” He was glad to see us and gave each of us a glass of wine. After that, Father Gleason, an ole Irishman, said, “Ask him if he’s got Cognac.” I said, “The priest would like some Cognac.” No problem.

We stayed there for a while and the fighting continued in the city. There was this German fort that we needed to take to liberate this city. When we got there, they were taking these German prisoners out of this fort and hauling them back to VII Corps headquarters. After all the Germans were taken out of this fort, Father Gleason said, “Ned, let’s go in there and see if we can get some loot!” We go down this big hallway and there are large offices and warehouses on each side. We open this one door and it’s a warehouse full of liquor. (Priest was in heaven!) We got each a bottle of Cognac for ourselves and left. I told my jeep driver to call headquarters and ask to speak to Gen. Collins. I got him on the line and said, “General, we captured this fort, and Father Gleason and myself discovered a warehouse full of liquor.” He said, “Go-head!” I said, “Yep, we got all kinds: wine, scotch, whiskey, cognac, anything you want.” He said, “Ned, stay where you are. I’m sending six trucks your way. When they get there, start loading up as much as you can and send them back to headquarters.” When we got back he told me, “Redline those trucks and tomorrow morning I want you to go to each of the four divisional headquarters and bring them each a truck. Tell them its compliments of J. Lawden Collins.” So I did that, then General Collins said, “Well, Ned. There’s two trucks left. Ones for me and ones for you!” So, we had those trucks with us from Cherbourg on!

Minos Armentor: Jason Theriot; Hewitt Theriot

-Starts with when Armentor remembers Pearl Harbor and brief summary of his service
-Was practicing law and was above the draft age but finally did enlist as an officer
-Went to New Orleans to the Naval Officer Procurement with another man, Wilbur Allain
-Armentor went to the Pacific as Allain went to the Atlantic
-Did training for a seaman in Tucson, Arizona and in Fort Schuyler, New York
-Then in Panama he got on an oil tanker and eventually to Okinawa (end of 1944)
-Never was in battle but hit 2 typhoons; lost a lot of men

-While in the Pacific gave out information; the big joke at the time was that they'd see the "Golden Gate '48," in that by 1948 they'd be able to see the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco again

-President Truman then dropped the 2 bombs and that was the end of the war
-So instead of getting back in '48, Armentor got back in the first month in 1945
-they were prepared to stay another 3 years and attack Japan
-Kamikaze planes would come over them in Okinawa Bay and they'd turn off all lights so then they couldn't crash into just one ship or any ship if they couldn't see

"Question: Where did all that oil, gasoline and petroleum your tankard had refuel for cargo?" (5:23)
-Had Panama oil tanker come and fill them up; some had enough for the fighter and merchant ships
-A lot of the oil came from the west coast, Alaska and Mexico
-Louisiana was not a part of the oil

"Question: When you were commissioned as an ensign, what month and year were you on the cargo vessel?" (7:45)
-May 1943 joined the Navy commissioned and then training
-Tucson was going through shortage of water so they could not go on ships
-Fort Schuyler was too close to the rocks to do anything except study
-At Panama for 3 months, on fishing vessels to protect the canal from the Japanese
-controlled the traffic from the Atlantic and Pacific

On the oil tanker (10:29)
-By the end of 1943 Armentor was commissioned to the oil tanker and was on there from 1944-1945
-It was a liberty ship tankard with really thin armor and had machine guns and depth charges
-Armentor was the stores and commissary officer and took care of the supplies and helped loading
-Ships would pull up aside to be refueled; aircraft carriers were the hardest

Back to Okinawa (14:24)
-Aircraft attacks from the Kamikaze; they wanted either ammunition ships or the tankards
-No escorts when travelling to be protected
-supply ships took different routes than the fighting ships or the fighting was finished before they reached there

The tankard (16:38)
-Armentor's cargo ship was a liberty ship called the Kangaroo, just oil
-100 crew member, 10-12 officers
-Could go 10-12 knots, real slow; had radar (maybe got it during the war)
-Was never attacked or ever saw battle; only ever fought was the winds and rain of the typhoons
-Many ships sunk from the typhoons

Route to Okinawa Bay (20:47)
-Left U.S. with fuel and stopped in Tulagi and then New Guinea and then Okinawa

"Where did you tank again?"
-Other tankards met them in midocean; they would just anchor and everyone else would come to them to refuel
-Hard parts were the hosing and cranks of the big pumps
-Okinawa was the final spot and if Truman hadn't dropped the bombs, they'd have gone into Japan
-Would follow the fleet

Talking of the careers of others, the people that have passed and retirement (24:20)

Back to the war (26:36)
-The bombs are dropped and Armentor was loaded onto an aircraft carrier on the tankard
-Had been at sea for mostly 2 years; only made one trip back home to be married
-On the way back (from leave) at San Francisco went on another ship (The Chotouk) to the other tankard
-Heading home (at end of war) went above the Hawaiian Islands and came down to San Francisco; the Arctic Circle more or less
-Took a plane or a train home can't remember

Talking and retracing his route again (31:00)

-Talking about Theriot's work and people interviewed (33:20)
-Someone's story about dealing with a bazooka
-The interview with Dr. Harry Bernard
-Telling of one of his stories of his rescue by submarine (pilot rescue)
-Talking about people they wish to interview or had interviewed
-Remark on a few people that had interesting interviews but do not go into detail

Cuts off into silence (40:24)

Meeting his friend (40:42)
-Met up with a buddy from Houma during the war
-He had heard that he was fighting in the mountains of Peleliu and Armentor wanted to see him
-Somehow he was able to come out of his post and waded out to the water and Armentor walked towards him
-Parted and he watched him go back to his post
-Then noticed a clam that was about 3-4 feet in length open (feeding), so he put a stick in its mouth to shut it before it got his legs
-Shocked Armentor that there was something that big and how close he got to having his legs snapped
-Friend was Bruce Hebert and was a good catcher for the baseball team

Ends Armentor interview; after is another interview on the bazooka story and a personal note (47:08)

Transcription:

Minos Armentor
Born Nov. 18, 1914
Interview 10-15-2001

LT. (j.g.) M. Armentor served as officer aboard oil tanker in Pacific.
He entered the service in May 1943.

I was practicing law at the time. (Beginning of WWII) I was above draft age. Finally the draft improved and I was ready to go into service as an officer, which I did. Wilbur Allain, from Jeanerette, and I went to the Naval Officer Procurement in New Orleans and we were both commissioned as ensigns. Wilbur went on to the Atlantic and I went to the Pacific.

Before that I spent 60 days of training in Tuscon, Arizona and 60 days of training in Fort Schuyler in New York. I trained for seamen ship, navigation, and all the things a naval officer should know. Ironically, Tuscon had a severe shortage of water. We hardly had enough water for showers. We really didn't have any ships to train with there. It was the same thing in New York. At least in New York, at Fort Schuyler, we were close to the water. While I was there I was able to ride the subway, and go to the Commodore Hotel on weekends. That was while we were off, the rest of the time we were studying to become officers.

Then I went down to Panama for about 3 months. I was stationed on the West Coast of Panama. We were assigned to fishing vessels; protecting the coast from the Japanese. They (Japanese) wanted to capture the Canal. Who ever controls the Canal controls the traffic from the Atlantic to the Pacific. They (Japanese) had plans in the works to attack the Panama Canal. So, we had a bunch of these fishing boats. There were two officers and about 14 sailors per ship. And we would go up and down the coast, about 15 miles from the Canal Zone. We had a machine gun on top, depth charges, to drop in case we came across submarines.

And then I got onto an oil tanker. Actually it was a liberty ship tanker- The Kangaroo. Very thin armor. There were about 100 crewmembers and about 10 or 12 officers on board. Those liberty ships were slow, only about 12 knots. We had machine guns in the back and depth charges. It was a tanker that would supply oil and diesel fuel to the fighting ships. We went down to the Solomon Islands. We were anchored off Tulagi. We were refueling those ships that were fighting the Japanese right there. And ships would come along side while we were anchored and we would fill them up. I was stores and commissary officer. I was in charge of loading all the supplies on board ship; food and every thing else, including the beer!

Tulagi was very popular place. We were able to get off and have a few drinks at the officers club there on the island.

From there I went to Treasure Island in the New Guinea area. Finally I ended up at Okinawa. Up until that I had not been in any battles or any danger. At Okinawa we had two Typhoons that we ran into. We lost a lot of lives. I had a good captain on the ship that I was on. And he kept our ship anchored, double-anchor, all throughout the Typhoon, against the wind of course- to keep from having our anchor line broken. Many ships capsized and a lot of sailors drowned. We were never attacked by the Japanese- only by Mother Nature. Of course that was just a few years ago. (Jokingly)

All the while in the Pacific we jokingly said, 'Golden Gate in '48.' We were hoping to get back to the Golden Gate (Bridge) in San Francisco in 1948.

I was able to come home on leave to New Iberia for about a week. I was married at that time, but when I got back to San Francisco, I was assigned to a new tanker-The Chotouk.

From Panama on into Guadalcanal, we had huge oil tankers come and fill us up, sometimes in mid-ocean. Some of those big tankers would have enough to fill up the fighting ships and merchant ships. We were a merchant ship more or less. A lot of that oil came from Alaska and Mexico. All of that oil came to merchant ships, commercial ships. Merchant tankers were loaded down with oil. It was crude oil, more or less. But others carried gasoline and diesel. This is the main reason why the Islands (Aleutian's) in the North Atlantic were so important. We had storage areas for oil all over the place: East Coast, West Coast, Panama, Midway Island, etc…

Aircraft carriers were hard to fuel up. We fueled up destroyers, cruisers, and landing craft too. We used hoses, cranes, and big pumps to distribute the oil to those ships.

We had no escorts. We traveled alone.

If President Truman had not dropped those two bombs on Japan we would have made the invasion of the home island. See we would move up as the fleet would move up. We would have lost thousands of American lives. But we were prepared to attack Japan if it came to that.

We had these Japanese Kamikaze planes come over where we were in Okinawa Bay. And we had over a thousand ships in this huge bay. Finally we all got smart enough to figure out- the hell with the Kamikaze- we will just put all of our lights out. When we got notice of the Kamikaze coming we put all of our lights out (aboard ship) and tend our battle stations. The next thing you know, the Kamikaze didn't know where to hit us, because they were coming to hit an individual ship. It was a personal thing with them (Kamikaze pilots). They were giving up their lives for this.

Thanks to President Truman, when he dropped those two bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. When he did that, it was the end of the war. We were then able to get back. I got back to the states, instead of 'Golden Gate in '48'; I got back in the December of '45.

To come home, I got on an aircraft carrier. I came into San Francisco Bay. I took a plane home from there.

I'll tell ya, us youngsters 84, and old timers 86, we're lucky we still hanging around.

Larry Aucoin
Jason Theriot

-Born in the Philippines and was almost 8 years old when they went into the civilian prison camp in June 1942
-Family from New Iberia; both sides
-After his little sister was born, the Japanese started taking over; they were on the Island of Negros
-When the Japanese began island hopping, Aucoin's father heard that if they made it to the mountains a submarine would come and bring them to Australia
-they stayed there for a couple of weeks and then decided to take their chances in the camps
-Their first camp, the camp commandant was a graduate from UCLA that spoke English and French as well;
-a lot of the Japanese had been educated in America and did not believe they'd win the war, only the lower ranking soldiers did
-They were fairly nice to the civilian prisoners, so as long as they were treated with respect; like bowing when meeting

Before the Japanese came, the Aucoin family lived on the island of Negros and his father was a sugar mill manager (5:24)
-The whole island was dedicated for sugar making
-a Philippine company owned it and the boss would still give his father money so he could buy extra food in the camp
-They stayed in a civilian prison camp and never saw any soldier prisoners
-119 civilian prisoners from the island of Negros (American, Australians, British, and Canadians) were sent to Manila, to the camp Santa Tomas, which had a little over 8-7,000 prisoners and at the end of the war it was probably 4,000, many had died from stress and malnutrition

-The Filipinos were disturbed how the foreigners had been put in these camps
-they'd pass along news but the Japanese made sure to only highlight when they had won a battle with the Allies
-Yet with each time the Americans/Allies were beat, the battles were closer and closer to where the Philippines were so the adults in the camps were able to keep track of war through this method
-From November 1944 to February 1945 the Navy was near Manila and would bomb them daily
-fighter pilots would fly over the camps and drop their goggles with messages and news

The 1st Marine Cavalry came into the camp to liberate them (14:00)
-Set up a pounding of the Japanese and they retreated
-Japanese outnumbered the American, but they didn't know that

Life in the Camp (16:04)
-They had never tried to escape, the Japanese made it clear if caught you were tortured and publicly executed
-there was no place to go on an island anyway
-At first when they were picked up, in the camps they had family friends from the same island
-In Manila at camp Santa Tomas the men and teenage boys were separated from the women and children at night
-Had breakfast, hardly anything for lunch and then a supper
-Food ration from towards the end of the war:

Breakfast
1 cup of watery mush (watered down rice)
Weak coffee
Lunch
1 cup of soybean soup
Dinner
1 cup of boiled sweet potato leaves
1 cup of gravy

-His father weighed 120 lbs. when they were liberated
-In the beginning the food wasn't bad and they could pay for extra from the locals but at the end of the war, paid food was taken away and meals rationed
-The locals did as much as they could to support them
-Aucoin's father had connections in Manila as he worked there before

After the Fact (23:10)
-The one thing that has really bothered Aucoin was that the Japanese Nesi got $20,000 tax-free for spending 3 years in the internment camps in Arizona and had three meals a day compared to what they had in the Philippines
-Aucoin had also found out that his father in 1941 tried to get them back into the states but was denied by the American Embassy
-They were not allowed to leave as Roosevelt felt that if there was mass fleeing it would demoralize the Filipinos;
-Americans were told to stay there for the good of the country but were treated worse than the Japanese Neisi and not paid for it like them
-Roosevelt wanted to get involved in the war and the Japanese were his ticket in, so they had the Americans in Philippines stay in hopes to use the Philippines prisoners as an excuse for going to war;
-got Pearl Harbor instead
-After the war, his father spent a lot of time with Senator Long going through documents in Congress trying to prove that this happened, but at that time everything was classified

Back to Prison Camp Life (26:22)
-Went to school for half a day and was taught by Belgian nuns and when they went "home" their father would teach them
-When liberated and going back to America Aucoin was shocked to find they had to go to school all day long
-Aucoin stayed with the smaller children and women in the camp and on their side there was a chicken coop that he'd crawl into to wait for eggs; always hungry
-They had 50-acres of land to play on in the camp, so to Aucoin it did not feel like they were prisoners but he did understand that they were being held against their will
-He can only imagine the worry his father had trying to feed all of them
-They played a few games like soccer and the Japanese would organize boxing matches between the kids for entertainment
-They had their own structure of government/medical treatment within the camp; their own laws and justice
-Santa Tomas camp was a university before the war, so the buildings were set up as dorms, medical treatment centers, etc.
-The weather was a tropical climate

Liberation (41:17)
-Was in the camp when the Japanese surrendered
-Aucoin was more interested in the planes with the rising sun on their wings flying over; no American planes till mid 1940s
-The planes were flying over but no air raids were made so no one (prisoners) could figure out why until someone saw the star on the planes when the marines landed and started pushing back the Japanese (but they didn't know that)
-That night their camp was liberated, a tank broke down the gate and began firing, scattering the Japanese and prisoners
-But they seemed to know where the Japanese went and as they all holed up in one building; they were there for 2 days before surrendering
-The prisoners hid under their cots waiting to be told to get out and then escorted out to occupied sections of Manila
-Had to go on a diet as the food the Americans had was too rich and everyone got sick
-They left Manila to the island of Leyte that was an army convalescent camp and injured soldiers center
-kids had it made there as the soldiers would "adopt" them and give them whatever they wanted

They eventually got on a transport ship to San Francisco that was going for supplies (51:48)
-They came back to the U.S. with nothing; their home on the island of Negros had still not been liberated
-When it was decided that the Japanese would be able to captured them, Aucoin's father buried a bunch of valuables they had under the house;
-the house was burned but a few friends/servants managed to send a few things back
-Aucoin or his family have never been back to the Philippines or the island of Negros; after the war it became dangerous
-Aucoin found some papers from his father and found a document that showed they were given $400 for the three years in the camp
-From San Francisco they took a train to New Orleans and stayed at his late grandfather's home
-He had died in April while they were still on the island of Leyte and missed the funeral

-The only big memory that Aucoin has of the camp is that he was always hungry and didn't understand why they couldn't have more food
-Slept well at night and woke up at 6ish in the morning and was kept busy with lessons or working in the gardens
-Aucoin remembers that they could have all the peanuts they wanted in the beginning as the Japanese thought it was cattle feed until someone told them otherwise and the peanuts were taken away;
-they fed them soybeans instead as the Japanese fed their cattle soybeans (was used to make the prisoners lose face)
-Kids would make up games or played in the mango trees
-The Japanese were never cruel physically to the civilian prisoners unless "someone asked for it"

Transcription:

Larry Aucoin
Born: November 22, 1934
POW-Philippines

I was very small, about 7 years old, when the Japanese attacked the Philippines. I was born in the Philippines. My dad, Lawrence Aucoin, was from Morbahan, and my mother, Adele Hebert, came from Franklin. We went into the prison camp in June '42. My youngest sister, Dorothy, was born in April of that year (My other sister, Sylvia, was only 4 years old at this time). We were captured on the island of Negros, which is farther south of Luzon.

After the Japanese started taking over the islands, my father was told that if we hid in the mountains, a submarine would eventually come and bring us to Australia. We gave it a try, but after a couple of weeks in the mountains with a newborn, he decided that it wasn't worth it. He hoped that the Japanese would be more civilized than what a lot of people said they were.

For the first ten months, we lived in the Bacolod Internment Camp on the island of Negros. The first camp commandant, Colonel Ota, was a graduate of UCLA. He spoke French and English and my father said they used to talk about the war. The commandant said that after living in the United States, he knew there was no way that the Japanese were going to win the war. He had seen the industrial capabilities of the US and knew that the Japanese could not win. But, he was a soldier and by nature he had to obey orders. There were quite a few Japanese soldiers that had been educated in America and they also really didn't think that they would come out on the winning side at the end. I guess the lower ranking soldiers believed that they were invincible.

The basic thing that they wanted was respect. We had to bow every time we came across a Japanese soldier. If you did not bow, you were slapped. For the most part, that was all the abuse that the families got. I know it was much worse for the American soldiers. The captured soldiers were treated horrible. The Japanese proved that with the Batan Death March.

As long as we treated them with respect, that was all that they really cared about. I guess, in a way, we were more of a pain in the neck to them, because they had to house us and feed us and we were moved around a lot.

Before the Japanese came, we lived on the island of Negroes, where my father was a sugarmill manager. The whole island was dedicated to producing sugarcane and still is today. A Philippine company owned this mill. In fact, that's what helped us survive in the prison camps. His boss, Louis Osorio, a Filipino and the owner of the sugarmill, would give money to my dad to buy food. The Japanese wouldn't feed us much, but if you had money they would let you buy food from the natives, and the Japs would take a cut of the sale.

There were 119 civilian prisoners on the island of Negroes: American, Australian, British, and Canadian. On March 7, 1943, after five days of waiting at Bacoldo Harbor on a small, filthy freighter, the "Naga", we left for Manila. This trip took three days and upon arrival at Manila, on the island of Luzon, we were taken by truck to a prison camp. Santa Tomas, the camp in Manila, was a university before the war, and it held over 4,000 prisoners. At the end of the war there were maybe 3,500. The rest had died from stress and malnutrition.

All the men in Santo Tomas were required to work in the camp garden for four hours a day. This garden was used to feed the prisoners. We grew sweet potatoes and made soup with the leaves. We never did eat potatoes, because they took too long to grow. We had to have something right then! Something, anything with calories. The Japanese let us eat all the peanuts we wanted, they thought that was cattle feed, or food for their horses. But when they found out it was the most nutritious thing to eat, they cut that out right quick. So we ate a lot of soybeans, again cattle feed for the Japanese and loss of face for us. My sisters and I would get the same amount of beans every day. And every bean was important.

During the war, the Red Cross was sending food parcels to the prisoners. After we were liberated, we found out that the Japanese had stored up all this food in a building next to the prison camp. They were using it for their own supply. Whenever an international Red Cross committee would come to visit, the Japanese would hand out a little bit of that food, so they could say that the food was getting to us.

Everybody was treated the same at meal servings. The only difference with my family was my father's boss gave him money, and we used that money to supplement our diet. At the end of the war an egg was going for $12. A can of evaporated milk, if you could find one, was going for $150. If you were starving to death, a can of milk, diluted with water, might mean the difference in someone continuing to live for a while.

I can remember hiding in a bamboo area where there was a chicken coop. I'd crawl in the bamboo and wait for the chickens to lay eggs. Then and I'd steal the eggs. We were limited to what we could do, and we were always hungry. I understood that we were held against our will, but it didn't feel like a prison camp. As kids we played soccer and had boxing matches to entertain the camp. We had a 50-acre plot of land that we were free to roam around in, but I was too young to really realize the seriousness of what was going on around us. The worries that my dad must have had trying to figure out how to feed the four of us.

We were able to get some news, but the Japanese always censored it. They always slaughtered the American forces in battle. They never lost a battle against the allies, but the battles were always fought 50-100 miles closer to Manila, than they were the week before. So we knew the Americans were getting closer, that's how we were able to keep up with the war. We could get the printed news, after it was censored.

From November '44 to February '45, I guess the navy was close enough to bomb Manila daily. Every once in a while, a navy pilot would fly over us and throw his goggles out of the cockpit with a message or news to let us know that they knew we were there and they hadn't forgot us. The Filipino people kept us informed a good bit. When we would read about such and such battle, the adults would go to the library and look at the maps to locate the American forces. The Japanese always claimed they were winning, but the battles were always getting closer.

We never did think about escaping. The Japanese had made that very clear to us from the beginning. There weren't a lot of guards around to watch us all day long, but if you went over that wall, and got caught, you would wish to God that you never born. Early on, a few people did escape, but where are you going to go on an island with a hundred thousand Japanese. They were caught, tortured and publicly executed.

In Manila, at Santa Tomas, all the men and teenage boys slept in one part of the camp, and the women and young children slept in another part of the camp. For the most part, they kept the families together. We made friends with some of them. Most of my father's friends were French or British and we became friends with their families.

In the beginning we had breakfast, not much lunch, and a supper. The food at the beginning wasn't too bad, but towards the end that got worse. This was another way that we could tell the Japanese were losing the war. The food rations were less towards the end. By the end, we couldn't even buy certain foods, because it wasn't available. Up until December '44, we ate about 1400 calories a day. After that, food rations were reduced to:

Breakfast
1 cup of watery mush (watered down rice)
Weak coffee

Lunch
1 cup of soybean soup

Dinner
1 cup of boiled sweet potato leaves
1 cup of gravy

On February 3, 1945, the Americans finally liberated our camp. I can remember that night, when soldiers from the 1st Marine Cavalry, 37th Infantry, and the 44th Tank Battalion came to our camp. They arrived about 6 days ahead of MacArthur's main military forces. Leonard Breaux, from Loreauville, was in the 1st Marine Calvary (43rd Combat Engineers). He was there. They came in with 17 tanks from the 44th Tank Battalion, and the Japanese in Manila, who out numbered the Marines 10 to 1 or more, thought that this was the main force, so they retreated to the other side of the river. They could have counterattacked the Americans and easily wiped them out. When the Marines came in and took the control of the camp, all the Japanese guards in our camp holed up in one of the buildings. They had a ton of gunfire going on. The Japanese had a machine gun and they were firing over the wall of the camp. My family was in our barracks under our beds the whole time. We finally were able to say, "The Americans are here!"

The first American tank broke through the iron gate and came into the camp. Wherever the tanks saw a Japanese guard, they fired their machine guns at them. The Filipino Guerillas must have informed the Americans as to how many guards were there, and were they were. These tanks surrounded the building that the Jap guards were in. The fanatical Japanese camp commandant ran out of that building with his samurai sword and went on a bonsai charge at that first tank. They mowed him down. The Americans eventually let the Japanese soldiers go to another part of Manila, where the Filipino Guerillas were waiting for them. Six of them surrendered, and the rest were killed.

The Japanese garrison at Manila was defeated on February 27, 1945 and we left the camp some time after that. I was 10 years old by then. When we got out I must have weighted about 60 pounds. My dad weighed 120 pounds. We went to the island of Leyte for a few months and stayed at an army convalescent camp. This was a place for injured soldiers and the kids had it made over there. There would be three or four soldiers that would adopt you, and I never ate so much ice cream in all my life. I stayed in contact with one soldier, Harmon Ansevin, through letters for a good while.

We took a transport ship back to San Francisco. We came back with nothing! My father had buried some valuables under our house on Negros, but the Japanese burned the house down. The Filipinos were able to find the buried items lot and sent us back some of my mother's china and jewelry.

When I was in the prison camp, we went to school for half a day, and my father would teach my sisters and I the other half. There were some Belgian nuns who taught us in the morning. When I got back to the states, and found out that they had school all day long, I was devastated. I didn't want to go to school for a full day.

In 1941 my father tried to get us back to the United States. The American Embassy wouldn't let us go back to America, because President Roosevelt decided that if there was a mass exodus of American and British personnel from the Philippines this would demoralize the Filipinos. When you went to the Embassy to apply to go back home they would say "No can do. You have to stay here." I feel that we were treated worse than the Neisi's in America were. As Americans, we were told, for the good of our country we had to stay here, so we would not demoralize the Filipinos. We had servants at our house, because we could afford them. Our Japanese servants told my parents, before it all started, that the Japanese were going to start a war with America. They knew it was coming. My father wanted to send all of my mother and us kids back to the states, while he would stay behind, but our Embassy wouldn't let us leave.

Roosevelt didn't evacuate any Americans from the Philippines because he wanted to get the US involved in the war, and the only way he could do that was to have Japan do something that would instigate it. Well, he got his wish at Pearl Harbor! I don't think he figured that it would be that horrible. He could have gotten us out of the Philippines, easily, but he didn't. He wouldn't do it! After the war, my dad spent a lot of time with Senator Long going through documents in Congress trying to prove that this happened, but at that time everything was classified, top secret. Now, it is probably declassified, but who gives a damn! Most of those people are dead!

One thing that has really bugged me is that the Japanese Nesi got $20,000 tax-free for spending 3 years in camps in Arizona. They had three solid meals a day and I guarantee it was nothing like what we had. After my father passed away I went through his papers and I came across a legal document, which showed that he collected about $400 for the three years that my sisters and I were interned in the prison camps. That's all! God bless the "Penny Pinching" Democrats, because I sure will not!!

Mrs. Nelson Badeaux; Jason Theriot; Hewitt Theriot

-Nelson was stationed in California
-Mrs. Badeaux was very young during the war, in high school
-She met Nelson in the summer 1945 while he was on rotation and was going back to Europe
-He was in the 82nd Airborne Division and before he was in the National Guard 156 Company and left it in 1940
-He left the Guard as he was in the infantry and decided that he wanted to parachute instead

Talking about the history and looking at photos from a book (4:00)

-Remembers him saying that in England the weather conditions were so bad they could not jump during an invasion in Holland
-Before he was in Africa, then to Italy and then England

Looking at a book and photos (5:48)
-Talking about a few people she knew of in the photos

-Nelson was the oldest son, his brother Ned Badeaux was younger and they looked very much alike
-Nelson died in August 1979 from a heart attack

Nelson in the Desert (10:20)
-Tells them to refer to some books as he never told her
-Looking at photos and the books
-He might not have been in the 82nd yet when they were in Africa; might have been training at the time
-(Much debating on whether he was there or not; looking at the book)

Talking about family and kids (16:30)
-Looking at the books and photos
-(She answers a phone call; Theriot read from the book aloud)

Back to interview (28:50)
-Consulting the book on Nelson's company
-While in Holland he did have to attack a few bridges; Bastogne
-(Debating on the company and what the book says; the 101st and the 82nd)

She met him when he was on rotation/ leave and he was to go back to Europe when the war ended (38:44)
-Had been in the service for almost 5 years and was due some rest
-He might have been in communications and when he came out of service he worked at the LineMen; climbed poles
-Looking at pictures in the book

Cuts off to silence (40:20)

Picks up on her remembering a visit they had to New Orleans with another couple (40:40)

Lloyd Berard; Jason Theriot; Hewitt Theriot; Mrs. Lloyd Berard

-Berard had a deferment and worked on a dredge boat in Panama
-Stationed in Morgan City and every week had to go to Lafayette for a checkup for the draft board
-decided to just join instead of waiting (1942)
-Put him on limited duty at Camp Beauregard and the officer in charge tore up the papers and got him new orders
-Camp Claiborne for basic training for 13 weeks and (physically) built up that camp as the 372nd Engineers
-assigned to the engineers because of past experience (as a tug boat captain?)
-Went to Fort Belvor, Virginia; his crew was almost as good as the 331st Engineer Regiment
-Crossed on the Queen Mary to Birmingham, England and then hitched hiked 150 miles (a week) to South Wales
-England didn’t have the resources to spare to transport them

-They were there to build concrete barges; 2 feet thick, 40 feet high, 150 feet long, 80 feet wide
-Broke big rock themselves and ground it up into concrete with the machinery
-Berard drove the dump truck with the crushed rocks to where they ground them up
-They’d have 5-6 holes in the barges with valves; a barge for either side of ship
-Once in position the valves would open and water would sink it and the ships were then able to land
-They were building these for the landing at the worst place—Omaha beach
-Used tug boats to bring the barges from South Wales to Omaha beach, took 2 ½ days
-Berard was on the position of opening a valve for one of them; they had 8 barges

-Once the barge was sunk they came to England/South Wales and waited around
-Built hospitals, schools, and churches for the English as they were being bombed all the time
-In France they did the same there; whatever was needed to be done the engineers were called, they did plumbing, carpentry work, building Niesent huts

“Mud Barges” (17:22)
-Above water the barge was 8-10 feet, it didn’t need to be above water so much as it needed to be below the water about 5 feet
-It would break the waves in the channel so the ships could land and still maneuver themselves
-Before D-Day (June 6) they brought the first barge in at the end of May to the beach
-The Germans did not think the Allied forces could land there so it was not being watched
-They pulled in right into the bank and dropped the barges and went back to England before the invasion

When Berard was hurt in February 1945 (21:43)
-They were in Briey, France building hospitals and acting as an interpreter for the army
-Berard had 2 truck drivers, 2 helpers and 2 French people to flag traffic for a flat tire on their truck
-They had a German halftrack come to help but the French didn’t know how to drive it; instead of stopping they accidently sped up
-some of the French were against them so Berard never knew who was a friend or not—they could have been inexperienced driving or purposely drove forward
-Berard starting running to the front of the truck (the one with a flat) to catch the side mirror and swing over so they didn’t run him over, but the halftrack caught him before he did that
-The halftrack was coming in slow at first and they thought it was stopping but then they sped up
-the 2 helpers were still fixing the tire and Berard and a driver were by the road
-It crushed his left foot, right hip, right hand and both arms
-he was told that he was the only one hurt and later found out the other 3 men were killed
-All 3 of these men had been with Berard since Camp Claiborne
-Going back to the States he went from England to Camp Shank, New York and then to Tennessee

Speaking French (31:58)
-In one place they were in at France, he had to go to a hardware store frequently
-Berard had become friendly to the owner and he was invited to their house for dinner sometimes
-One day on a visit to him, Berard had gotten a letter with photos of his 2 nieces and showed the man

-“And I said, in French, like I would at home, “Me chichnes.” (my lil nieces)” (the old way of saying it)
-“So he called his wife and said to me, “dis come ta dis” (say it like you said it)
-But then I tried to say it in real French. “No, no,” he said, “say it like you said it.” So he tells his wife, “They talk just like us. They speak the same patois”
(talking about the French language 35:30)

Translating (38:27)
-Berard would go to the lumberyard to find pieces of wood (2x2)
-However French were on the metric system so it was more like a 3x3
-In one town a Frenchman told Berard that there was a cheese factory and as an American he could have as much cheese as he wanted but the French were rationed
-he was asked to get some cheese for the this man
-Got 10-12 blocks of cheese and the Frenchman wanted to hide the cheese; but it was Lambo cheese so it smelled

Recovery Back Home (41:40)
-Came back home on crutches and in a boot
-Had a month leave in New Orleans where he met his wife
-Most of his family was in New Orleans working in the shipyards and she was staying with his sister
-That night they threw a party for him and they danced all night long
-They danced the whole month when they could

-Went to Memphis, Tennessee and then shipped him out to Texas
-Never did get a purple heart

Talking about family history and family members (45:25)

Transcription:

Lloyd Berard
Coteau Holmes
372nd Engineers
ETO

I had a deferment from the service. I was working on a dredge boat in Panama. When the job was over I went to Morgan City. The dredging company had a yard over there in Morgan City. Every week I had to come to Lafayette for a check up with the draft board. I decided that instead of coming to Lafayette every week, I just a soon join. That was 1942.

I had asthma, so I was supposed to be a 4F. They put me on limited duty. I went to Camp Beureguard and gave the officer in charge of recruits my papers and told him, “I’m under limited service.” He said, “Yeah! Unlimited Service!” And he tore up my papers and said he would get me some new orders.

Then we went to Camp Claiborne. There were camps all over Louisiana: Beureguard, Polk, Claiborne, and Barksdale. Claiborne was probably the biggest. We took our basic training there: 13 weeks. We built that camp up, the 372nd Engineers. After 13 weeks we went to Arkansas and worked on the levee. Then, we came back to Claiborne. From there we went to repair the levee in Mississippi that had broke.

I was assigned to the engineers because of my experience before the war. When we came back from Mississippi, we went to Fort Belvor, Virginia. The 331st Engineer Regiment was the top engineers in the Army, all the way back to WWI. And we were almost as good as they were. In fact, when it came to laying mats for landing airplanes in the swamp, we beat them. So, we had a pretty good working crew.

We crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary. It took us nine days because there were German torpedo boats all over the ocean. We landed in Birmingham, England. We had to walk to South Wales. England was really down n out; there was no transportation. They couldn’t transport us to South Wales, so we marched. That was about 150 miles. It took us a week. We had a full field pack and a lot of equipment. At night we’d take over a little field or a little town, like as if we passed through Coteau Holmes and just took it over. Let’s face it; we had priority. But the British were glad that we had come there.

We were sent to South Wales to build these concrete barges—mud barges we called them (Code name Phoenix). They were big, bigger than a house. The thickness of the walls was a little over two feet. That thing was about 60-foot high, 150-foot long and 80-foot wide—a big block of iron rods and concrete.

We broke the rocks ourselves. We took big rocks and crushed them with our big machinery. I was driving a dump truck. They’d load me up with crushed rock and I’d go dump them where they would make the concrete.

We had five or six holes, eight inches in diameter, with valves. When you got the thing where you wanted it, you opened the valves and the water would come in and it would sink. You’d sink one here and one here where a ship could come in to be able to land. This place where we were supposed to be landing—Omaha beach—was the worst place to land.

The Germans were sure that was one place that we could not land. So they weren’t watching that place. When they decided to land there, I heard, Eisenhower asked all the other generals where was the worst place to land. And they said Normandy. They said there was no way you can land there. Well he said, “Well that’s where we landing.”

Once it was sunk the barge stood a few feet above water. Actually, you didn’t need to have it above water, just so had it sunk. It could five or ten feet below water. The ships would come in between two barges. The idea was to break the waves for the ships to come in and land. When a ship is out in the open, it can maneuver, but when it gets in close to the beach against the waves—not like coming in at the harbor in New York or the port in New Orleans—the ship becomes too big to handle.

I only went over the Channel with one of them. We built it on like a dry dock. When it was finished, we opened the valves to let water in and then we moved it by tugboat. We took it from South Wales, England to the coast of Normandy. It took us about two-and-a-half days. We got right to the beach. I was on the barge tending one of the valves to open it and sink it. I think we built about eight of them. After we sunk the barge, we came back to South Wales and passed the invasion fleet heading to the beach. We waited around in England building hospitals, schools, little churches. The British had it rough; they were bombarded everyday by the buzz bombs.

Then we crossed the Channel into Normandy. Once we got to France we built buildings and bridges and all kinds of things. Whatever needed to be done, they called the engineers to do it. Some things we couldn’t do, but we tried. We did plumbing and carpentry work and built Niesent huts to use as schools and hospitals. They still have a few Niesent huts in Shreveport, built halfway underground with grass growing over it.

We were in Briey, France, building hospitals. I was an interpreter for the army. When we were building things they needed someone who could speak the language. For instance, when I’m working, I may need 14 two-by-fours. But there are no two-by-fours in France. It’s close, but not two-by-fours. So I’d go to the hardware store and say that I needed 20 pieces like this. Their two-by-four had a measurement that was pretty close. Their two-by-four was closer to a three-by-three. So we had to figure out how to use a three-by-three. So I communicated to the man running the lumberyard.

One day we needed go to this little town about 50 miles away to pick up something and this Frenchman tells me that there is a cheese factory up there. He said, “I can only buy so much, but you can buy all you want.” Because I was an American, I could buy 20 times as much cheese as he could. I told him that I didn’t want any cheese, but he wanted me to buy some for him. I said okay. So we over there and I tell this ole Frenchman selling cheese that I needed quite a bit of that stuff; ten or twelve blocks. So I paid. This old Frenchman put the package in the top of his truck and said, “We need to hide this.” I said, “Hide it, they can smell it.” He said, “If they catch us I’ll tell them it’s for you.” I said, “Yeah, but if they want to catch us all they have to do is smell.” That was lambo cheese.

We moved along the countryside and there were these mountains. Them Yankees called them hills, but to a Cajun, I called them mountains. I didn’t speak French that well, but I could get by. I was buying some supplies from this hardware store. I became friendly with the old man who was running the place. He told me, “Any time to want to eat something and drink some wine, come to my house.” He told me where he lived and said I could come by any time. So I was leaving my barracks when the mailman came and gave me a letter. I went to this old man’s house and was sitting with him on the porch. I opened the letter and there were pictures of my two nieces. They had grown quite a bit in two years. And I said, in French, like I would at home, “Me chichnes.” [my lil nieces] So he called his wife and said to me, “dis come ta dis” [say it like you said it]. But then I tried to say it in real French. “No, no,” he said, “say it like you said it.” So he tells his wife, “They talk just like us. They speak the same patois.” I always tried to speak real French while I was there, but when I got excited, I spoke like we speak at home, which is the ancient French. This old man and his wife spoke the same way. Our French hadn’t changed much.

My mother could write French, in fact she taught school.

On February 16, 1945, I got hurt. I had two truck drivers and two helpers to help fix a flat tire. I had two French people flagging down traffic. We had given the French a captured German halftrack. Evidentially, they didn’t know how to operate that thing. So they were coming and the flagmen flagged them down. They slowed and almost stopped. But when they got a few yards away it looked like they stepped on it. I don’t think that they did it on purpose, but some of those French people were against us. They said that they weren’t used to operating the track.

So I started running towards the front of the truck with intentions of catching the side mirror and swing over the hood of the truck. But they caught me before I got to that. I figured that they might pass over my head and I had my helmet to protect me. But then I figured that the halftrack would have crushed that helmet. So it had to pass over the tire, because they tell me that the halftrack cut two of them boys into three pieces. It had to be that it passed over the wheel before it passed over me.

It crushed my left foot, my right hip, my right hand, and I broke both of my arms. The other three boys were killed. I was in a field hospital in France. I was out for a few days. This lieutenant and this captain came to see me in the hospital. I asked them how the other boys were and they said they were okay. When I got back to the States this lieutenant and I wrote to each other. He told me in a letter that three of them boys were killed. These were three guys who I knew real well. We had been together since Camp Claiborne. I guess the army didn’t want to make things worse by telling me.

From France I went to England, and then I flew to Camp Shank, New York. I stayed in a hospital overnight. The next day I came to Tennessee and stayed at a hospital there.

I came back home on crutches. I had a foot with a shoe that long. And my arm had healed up. So I went on leave for a month in New Orleans and that’s when I met my wife. I had written to her. She was living at my sister’s house while she was working in New Orleans. Almost everybody from here (Coteau Holmes) was working in the shipyards.

That night they had a party for me. And you know the Berard family likes to have parties. So I’m sitting on one side of the room and she was sitting on the other side. I asked her to come, but she didn’t want to come. So I took my crutches and walked across to her. I said, “We’ll dance.” She said, “You can’t walk.” I said, “I can’t walk, but I can dance.” So we danced, danced all night. The next day went out in town to dance. The next day—same thing. That went on the whole month. When I got back to Memphis, Tennessee, in June, the doctor said, “I don’t know what happened, but whatever you did, you did alright.” He said, “We never saw a man so broken, heal so fast.”

We got married on July 18. I never did get a purple heart.

Harry Bernard, Jason Theriot, and Hewitt Theriot

-Was in school at VMI during 1941 when Pearl Harbor happened; went into the Navy
-Went to Pensacola for flight training and then Miami for further training
-Had to become a pilot before getting a commission for officer
-9 months of training

Invasion of Palau (8:25)
-Bernard’s squadron took out 25 ships and 121 Japanese planes
-Bernard was shot down and started swimming towards Hawaii (2,000 miles); submarine picked him up
-Rode the submarine for a month before getting to Hawaii

-Saw MacArthur land at Mindano, Philippines and watched them take pictures
-Took them 5 takes to get the right one
-Bernard was sitting on the beach
-Most of the boys did not like MacArthur
-They also hated the Red Cross as they wanted them to pay for their supplies
-They gave the worst materials for clothes and the everyday supplies they needed

-When the war started with Pearl Harbor, everybody wanted to join the Navy, never needed to draft them

Flew a TBM (19:27)
-Had rocket launchers
-100, 200, 500 and 2,000 lbs torpedoes
-And even a few bombs
-4 machine guns in the front and 2 on the wings

Back to the Carrier (21:00)
-Stayed on the at carrier for almost a year and half
-Flew every day; Hawaii was the only time he ever touched the ground
-Bernard rejoined his fleet and carrier in Majuro as they were secretly heading to invade Guam
-They had 4-5 big carriers; 18,000 ships in the fleet; 35 cruisers and 51 destroyers
-About a day into the trip Tokyo Rose (Japanese broadcasting) told them “We’ll be waiting for you at Guam.”

Memories (25:10)
-Had a pilot, machine gun operator and radioman on his plane
-Could carry up to 15 people on his plane ferrying them onto Guam to the carriers
-Bernard’s friend was shot down on the coast of Iwo Jima; he survived
-Once was flying in Davao Bay all day long taking pictures but saw no ships
-Coming back to the States heard that MacArthur had shot down 5-6 Japanese ships in the area;
-Bernard never saw MacArthur’s air force in that area at all (looking at photos)

-Bernard’s fleet hit Manila long before MacArthur came in
-They came in with a whole line of torpedo planes
-Dr. Castro, a Filipino now living in New Iberia, watched the whole thing as a child, dive-bombers hitting the waterfront
-Bernard sunk a 10,000 ton tanker
-Flew 200 knots at 200 feet, straight as an arrow so they would run right
-They targeted gun emplacements, road junctions, and ships, whatever they could find

Revisiting being shot down (38:13)
-Was in the water for about 12 hours before being picked up
-Started swimming to Hawaii but he knew he was never was going to make it
-Gave his lifejacket to a crewman who he lost
-The life rafts were dropped but once it inflated it flew away and they didn’t try to go after them
-3 people on the plane but Bernard was the only one to have survived
-They all got out for the plane; one of the men couldn’t swim and drowned immediately
-He had nothing and was stuck swimming/treading water that whole time
-Did not know if anyone was going to come find him;
-There were other planes above him but never knew if anyone had seen them

Manila and the end of the war (44:00)
-Manila was Bernard’s last engagement
-They were brought back to the States on a jeep carrier
-Landed in San Francisco and was reassigned to Atlantic City
-Received the DSC medal and almost refused it
-Later on sent to Boston to fly fighters
-They were to head back to Japan on another carrier group

-Then after V-J Day and they were told those that had families, enough points in the system, time put in to the service or the DSC medal and higher were to go home
-Bernard was sent home the next day
-Drove all the way back to New Iberia

Transcription:
Harry Bernard
Avenger Torpedo Bomber pilot
Pacific

I entered the service in late 1941. I was in school at VMI during Pearl Harbor. I joined the Navy. I went to Pensacola Florida for flight training. I went to Miami for further flight training after that. You had to become a pilot before you became an officer. My flight training lasted about 9 months. I trained with all the navy planes: N2N's, N3N's, Steersmen's, SNJ's, 0S2U's, Bruster Buffalo's, TBD's, and TBM's.

Our squadron, Torpedo II, was organized at Quonset Point south of Rhode Island. From there we went to the West Coast and boarded a carrier. We were on the USS Hornet, the second one. And we went to Hawaii.

On a carrier we had a bomber squadron, a torpedo squadron, and a fighter squadron. We had 30 fighter planes, 18 torpedo bombers, and about 18 dive-bombers.

We took part in the invasion of Palau (September 1943). Our squadron sunk 25 ships and knocked down 121 Japanese planes in that invasion. I was flying a TBM. I got my ass shot off there. My plane was shot down by antiaircraft. I hit the water and started swimming to Hawaii 2,000 miles away. When we crashed in the water, I undid my strap and got out. All three of us got out, but one guy couldn't swim. I was in the water for about 12 hours. I had nothing. I gave my lifejacket to a crewman, who I lost. The rescue planes would drop us life rafts, and as soon as they (rafts) would hit the water, they would inflate and blow away. I'm the only one that survived. The other two died, that was two too many. A submarine picked me up- USS Gar. I rode in that submarine for a month, till we got to Hawaii.

When I finally got to Hawaii, I tried to borrow some money and clothes.
I got back on the carrier and the issued me another plane. On a TBM we had rocket-launchers. We carried 100, 200, 500, and 2,000 lb. torpedoes and bombs. I had a machine gun in the back and two on the wings. It was a three-man crew: a pilot, a machine gunner, and a radioman. We had enough fuel to fly about 5 hours. We'd go back to the carrier, refuel and rearm, and take off again. We did this all day long. I stayed on that carrier for a year and a half. It was my home. My feet never touched the ground except when I went to Hawaii after I was shot down.

Our fleet left out of Majuro. We were 4 carriers with battleships and cruisers. We were secretly headed to Guam, to invade Guam. About a day or two into the trip, Tokyo Rose came on and told us where we were going. She said, "We'll be waiting for you at Guam."

So we invaded Guam (July 1944). There were a bunch of Japs and an airfield on Guam. We bombed the little towns and I took pictures of it. I flew a bunch of men from Guam to a carrier to get some ice cream one time. I fit about 15 men in that plane that day.

We hit Manila Bay way before MacArthur thought about coming back there. I was 22 at the time. Here is a picture of the ship that I sunk. I kept a camera on board. They wanted us to take pictures; we did what the told us to do. We used these pictures to find the spots that we wanted to hit. We targeted gun emplacements, road junctions, and ships, whatever we could find.

We came in with a whole line of torpedo planes from two ships. We hit the waterfront in Manila (He has a picture of the bay). The fighters hit Clark Field. Dr. Castro, the Filipino, in New Iberia was sitting right here watching the dive-bombers hit the waterfront. We came in and sunk all these damn ships. I got me a 10,000-ton tanker. I put a torpedo on him. I was flying 200 knots at 200 feet. You have to fly as straight as an arrow so your torpedo will run right. Castro was just a young boy. He told me years later that he watched the whole thing.

I watched MacArthur land ashore at Mindano in (October) 1944 (Philippines). I was sitting right there on the beach watching him do it. They were taking pictures of him land there. It took him five takes to get it right. Most of the boys didn't favor him much.

I had read a report that MacArthur's airforce had sunk 5 Japanese ships in Davao Bay, south of Mindanao. I was flying that area all day long that day and took pictures. I didn't see any ships. MacArthur's airforce was not flying in that area. These were falsified reports.

My friend got shot down off the coast of Iwo Jima. We were flying along with the fighters, and we were ordered to pick up any men who got shot down.

Our torpedoes weren't worth a shit at the beginning of the war. The Japanese had better torpedo's that we did. We got better equipment as the war went on.

After my last engagement in Manila I was sent back to the states. We came over on a jeep carrier. We landed in Frisco and I got reassigned to Atlantic City. I got my medal. It finally caught up with me, and I almost refused it. (What medal was that?) The DSC (Distinguish Service Cross). This skipper talked me into it, into accepting it.

I was sent to Boston to fly fighters. We had another carrier group together with nothing but fighters and we were headed to Japan. We had F6's, but we were getting F8's. Then V-J came. They started sending people home. If you had some points, you could go home first, or if you won the DSC. I was out the next day. I drove my car home.

Raymond “Eboo” Bienvenu: Jason Theriot
(Eboo means swamp owl in French)

-Bienvenu was getting ready to graduate from high school at age 17 and decided to cut classes to go to Lafayette to sign up as a volunteer for pilot training in the Army Air Corps
-They decided to take Bienvenu but he was under age and unless his father signed a minor release he had to wait till he turned 18
-took the form and had Borden’s ice cream (near UL/SLI campus) before forging his father’s name on the form
-Once graduated Bienvenu was sent to Denver, Colorado for basic training; but there was already too many pilots for assignments
-They told him that if he wanted to fly he should try for bombardier or navigator; chose bombardier and went to Madison, Wisconsin
-Had a crash program on electrical, mathematics and astrology; became a navigator instead, a crude way without radar
-Got on a converted luxury ship in New York with 7,000 men, double loaded—half day above other half in beds
-No convoy or escort; headed up towards Iceland where they were hit by a big storm and German intelligence reported that their ship had sunk
-What really happened: they left New York on the “USS Washington” and while at sea some sailors repainted the name to “Mount Vernon” to confuse the Germans (which it did)
-Most of the British men were fighting in North Africa or the Pacific trying to save their Empire; no men but Americans in England

Troop Carrier Group (6:30)
-Bienvenu had joined as a replacement of a troop transport squadron, the 75th Squadron of the 313th Troop Carrier Group; hauled paratroopers and gliders
-When attacking, they never went far back into the enemy lines; always left in the dark
-Left England at night and at day break hit their targets and then tried to get to the English Channel; everything wide open
-All the good navigators were in the Pacific; if they lost an island then they’d run out of fuel and crash—had to find your own way there
-Bienvenu dealt with dead reckoning, triangulation and crude radar from the British
-Flew mostly C-47s and gliders; 3 missions on B-25s
-Had to wear sheepskin suits and a leather helmet

D-Day (11:17)
-On D-Day Bienvenu flew a diversion; dropped paratroopers that night before in Belgium to trick the Germans on where they were trying to land; most probably were captured or killed
-Dropped the 101st and the 82nd Airborne that night
-Never did get the results of the diversion

-Gliders were suicidal
-When the war ended the gliders were discontinued altogether
-Gliders were assembled in about a half-hour
-Cloth over aluminum tubing; fuselage had only 6 bolts

Rhine River (17:11)
-Really took a beating at the Rhine River near Wessell, Germany
-Germans were holding them off so they couldn’t cross the river
-Flew C-47s to the front, small enough to land in a pasture, and pick up the wounded and went back to England
-Germans would pick them off in counter attacks when they came in
-Poorly equipped in defending themselves; they (Bienvenu) were given very little to use to fight with

-They were at an old German airfield that they had bombed before
-Took cover in a shell hole and Bienvenu only had a .45 pistol; just best thing to do was stay quiet
-An older British soldier came up to them to help them; several incidents like that where they would get caught in the fighting and had to defend themselves

-Once flying over Wessell, they were hit and went into a bank and plowed into a potato field; had a busted nose but no deaths
-Troops found them and pulled them out and gave them rifles to defend themselves as they went back

German Airfields (21:40)
-Another time they left England was to go to an abandoned German airfield in France
-They were just going to take over this little field; it was rough
-They knew how far the Germans could fly before doubling back to the base to refuel; figured that the nearest base was too far for the Germans to come out to them
-So no one was watching and a FW 190 comes out and takes a few of their planes down
-They had no clue where that plane came from, figured there was a secret base somewhere but never did find it
-Later on they noticed that the Germans would use a JU 88 to haul a FW 190 and then cut it loose so it could fly father out but still have enough fuel to make the trip back to the base later

-What really beat the Germans were the Russians; all the best German fighters were on the Russian front
-Towards the end of the war, they began running into young soldiers that had just been drafted
-In the Pacific the Japanese were suicidal in their attacks which made it harder, at least these young Germans were cowards and did not want to die any more than they did

France and Speaking French (25:14)
-The French hated the Americans
-When the Germans took over they hardly killed anyone; Americans probably killed more French people than the Germans did
-Eisenhower told them to not come back with their bombs; had to unload them somewhere
-Flying over little towns, they’d just drop the bombs; “we killed a lot of Frenchmen”
-Spoke a little bit of French, just enough to get by

-In Mons near the Belgium border, wounded men and troops went by train back to Paris to recover or have time off
-Bienvenu went there a few times to fix antennas on the Eiffel Tower for navigational purposes; hated it as it would move with the wind the further up you went
-On one trip back it was cold and they had stopped at this one station and there was 3 Frenchmen and a potbelly stove in the station house
-The commanding officer asked if anyone could speak French so they could ask the Frenchmen in the troops could go in single file to warm themselves up for a bit;
-Bienvenu went in and asked and they told him no
-The officer sprayed the building with a Thomas machine gun and burned the train station to ground
-“Eisenhower said, “If you need something, then take it. If somebody gets in your way, then shoot’ um.” There might have been better moments, but from what I saw it was bad.”

Coming Home (33:40)
-Went over as a replacement for a squadron in North Africa
-They had orders if you could not make it back (to England or Africa) then land in Zurich, Switzerland
-The Swiss were neutral but they were pro-German until the end of the war when it became clear that the Allied forces were winning
-The Swiss at the end of the war said they’d take so many old combat troops as guests of the Swiss government; Bienvenu’s squadron had been there for a while and so they picked him
-They were put up in a fancy hotel and they could eat whatever they wanted for 6 weeks
-They were given the choices of touring the castles of Switzerland or go up into the mountains
-Bienvenu went to Omnimount to take up skiing lessons; could see 4 countries from the top

-After the 6 weeks Bienvenu had enough combat points and came home
-Got back to New York and sent on a troop train to Camp Shelby in Mississippi where he was discharged
-On the GI Bill he went to LSU and graduated in electrical engineering; got married
-First job was in upstate New York for 6 years; it was the pits
-Came back home but never did work in St. Martinville, always out of town
-Fought in the war for almost 4 years and toured 11 countries

Transcription:

Raymond “Eboo” Bienvenu (“Eboo” is a French name for a swamp owl)
St. Martinville, LA
Born: October 22, 1925
Navigator, ETO
75th Squadron/313th Troop Carrier Group

When I was seventeen-and-a-half getting ready to graduate from high school, I needed a way to get out of this part of the country. I had never been anywhere before. So about a month before graduation, I cut classes and went to Lafayette to volunteer for the pilot training with the Army Air Corps. I went down and took all the test: physicals, IQ’s and all of that. I remember being in a room where they had given us a bunch of numbers to add up. So I was concentrating on my numbers when somebody from in back of the room fired off a shotgun with a blank in it. Everybody else jumped; I kept on adding. It scared the hell out of me, but I kept concentrating on my numbers.

They decided to take me, but they said, “Well you’re only seventeen-and-a-half, so you have to wait until you turn 18, unless your father signs a minor release.” I said, “Well give me the form because my dad is working in Lafayette.” I remember going by the UL—SLI back then—campus and Borden’s had an ice cream place right near there. I knew that so I went by and got myself a banana split. I waited just a little while then I forged my daddy’s name and went back and said that my daddy had signed it.

As soon as I graduated, they took me. I was seventeen-and-a-half.

I got on a train in New Orleans and they sent me to Denver, Colorado for basic. We went through basic, but when they started getting towards our assignments, they told me that I had signed up to be a pilot, but they had more pilots than they knew what do with. They said if you want to fly you’d better try for navigator or bombardier. I thought, Bombardier? Well, what would you do with that after the war, assuming that you make it? So I decided to train for navigator (3:46). They sent me to Madison, Wisconsin, the University of Wisconsin. They had a crash program on electrical, mathematics, and astrology. Anyway, I became a navigator. But it was crude; they didn’t have much radar in those days. It was a crude way of navigating, but you could get to where you were going.

I ended up getting on a ship in New York in the early part of ‘44. It was a converted luxury ship and there were seven thousand of us on it. We were doubled loaded—half the day you were on the deck, the other half you could to the bunks below. That was a mess. We took off without convoy escort and zigzagged across the north Atlantic toward Iceland. When we got off of Iceland there was big storm and the German intelligence reported that our ship had sunk with all the troops aboard. Anyway, we left New York City on the USS Washington. But while at sea, to fool the Germans to think that we had sunk, some sailors climbed over the side and painted the name out and they called the ship the Mount Vernon. So we left from New York on the Washington and landed in Liverpool, England on the Mount Vernon.

Most of the British were fighting in North Africa against Rommell or fighting in the Pacific trying to save the British Empire, so there were no men. We were it! They had so many of us in England we almost sank that damn island.

I went over as a replacement with a squadron that had been in North Africa. I was part of a troop transport squadron: the 75th Squadron of the 313th Troop Carrier Group. We hauled gliders and paratroops. That was something. We had C-47s that could land anywhere. Each one would pull two gliders. They’d send them in crates and we’d assemble them. The pilots who trained to fly those hardly had any experience at all. They’d carry seven men plus equipment in each glider. They had skids that landed on the ground then the nose would pop up and everybody would run out. Oh Lord man, to get off the ground, we couldn’t afford to get a jerk. We had to get them all in a line and some of us in the last plane would have to get out and push the gliders, like pushing a car to start it. That’s how crude it was. That was rough getting up there pulling two gliders fully loaded. Then again, they couldn’t swing so they insisted that we use brand new nylon rope, about an inch, and it would stretch. So the pilot of the glider could disconnect if something went wrong or the C-47 pilot could let them both go. Then they were on their own. It was rough. But once you got airborne, with one in back of the other, one a little longer than the other, so if they criss-crossed they wouldn’t hit each other.

When we’d hit a target we never went far back behind enemy lines, but enough to do the job. We hauled paratroopers and gliders. Paratroopers were okay; they’d bail out then they were on their own and we’d head back. We always left in the dark. We had a free ride into the target area, but at daybreak we caught hell and fought our way back to the English Channel to get back to England. We left at night and hit our target at daybreak. The planes weren’t pressurized and everything was just wide open.

All of the good navigators were in the Pacific where you had to find your way. If you lose an island, you gonna run out of fuel and crash in the sea. They needed somebody who could really navigate to those islands. Our navigation was with dead reckoning, triangulation, and crude radar from the British.

I flew three missions on B-25s and several on gliders. We used to have to wear sheepskin suites that fit over your shoes. We wore a leather helmet.

On D-Day we flew a diversion. The night before we dropped some paratroopers in Belgium to trick the Germans into thinking that we were landing further north. Those paratroopers probably got captured or shot or something. We dropped 82nd Airborne that night. The gliders were suicidal. The Germans had built these posts in the ground and we couldn’t see them from the air. Man, when the gliders hit, it was a blood bath. Many of them were whipped out.

The gliders would come in on crates. We’d assemble one in about a half-hour. They were nothing, really, just cloth cover and aluminum tubing. There were control cables or pulleys that were used to tow the gliders. When you pulled out the fuselage all they had were six bolts. It was crude.

We flew three planes abreast, low, each towing two glides, with seven men and equipment in each glider. They were peppering us with ground fire and we didn’t have anything to protect ourselves. There were bullet holes in the planes, and it look like a pencil hole. All of our planes took on small arms fire from the ground. Once in awhile they’d get lucky and hit somebody in the plane.

The Germans had good anti-aircraft. And once we got higher, the German airplanes, the Meshersmit 109, would attack us. That was a good one. It was comparable to our P-51 Mustang. They also had a stub-nosed plane, called the FW 190. That was a gun platform with a plane built around it. They used that for strafing; they could hit a truck and turn it over.

They were all mostly low level missions. Get in and get your ass out!

We really took a beating later on when we were caught at the Rhine River near Wessell, Germany. The Germans were holding off so we couldn’t cross the Rhine. We had a stand off and couldn’t get across for a while. There was a lot of artillery up there. See, in a C-47 we used to fly right up to the front, land, and pick up wounded to bring them back to England. We’d land and stay there for a while. You could land a C-47 in a pasture. That was a mule.

Often times we’d land on a captured German airfield and a few times these Germans counterattacked. This one time over Wessell we got hit flying over the area. We couldn’t bail out because we were too low. We just went into a bank and we landed back on our side and plowed up a potato field. I was holding on to my chair and hit a bulkhead in front of me behind the co-pilot and busted up my nose. We were all banged up and we were all right. Our soldiers pulled us out of the plane and we were given rifles. We defended ourselves as best we could. We got some help and our troops finally pushed the Germans back. But for a while it was touch-n-go, those Germans attacked and man they were tough.

We were a bunch of us together and those Germans were all over, bullets flying all over. We had bombed that place before. It was a German airfield, so these Germans knew where it was, because they had built it. Six of us jumped in a shell hole where we had dropped a bomb. All I had was .45-caliber pistol. I told them that the best thing to do was to keep quiet. All the Germans had to do was drop a grenade in that hole and we are all gone. So we heard some running and this ole timer, an old British soldier—he looked like hell—came running up to us. He looked around at us and said, “Hey Yank. You guys look scared.” We said, “You damn right we scared!” He said, “Not to worry lads. When it gets too rough for you, Mother England will take you back into the fold.” I thought that I’d remember that for the rest of my life. Those British soldiers were something else. They were some brave son of a guns.

There were three separate incidents like that, at least, were we caught in the fighting and had to defend ourselves. But our infantry came up and pushed the Germans back each time. One time there was a German pillbox, which was probably a field headquarters. The Germans had left, I guess, and when I went inside there was souverniers all over the place. There were flags and guns and all kind of stuff and I took a few. I lost them all before I came home.

One time we left England and were going to this deserted German airfield. We knew about how far their airplanes were from us and how far their planes could fly. So here comes this one FW 190 and it made a strafing run, knocking out a couple of our planes. There was this old Frenchman who had been picking up our garbage and he had an old
jackass. He used him to pull his cart around. Well when this FW 190 made a pass that jackass was on the ground kicking and our cooks went out and cut the back legs off. They made steaks out it. That was the toughest damn meat I ever had; like chewing on rubber.

But the whole damn thing is that we were worried about where in the hell that FW 190 came from. We didn’t know if there was a secret base or what, but they never found it. Later on we took over this one place and the Germans had a plane called a JU 88, a Junkers 88. It was a three-engine bomber: one on the nose and one on each side. They found one on the ground that had a FW190 strapped on top. The JU 88 would get airborne with a FW 190 strapped on it, fly to an area, then cut itself loose, and then the FW 190 had enough fuel to get back. They were pretty smart people.

What beat those Germans most were the Russians. They were all tied up on the Russian front. Germany’s best people were tied up on that front and the Russians ate their lunch. What we ran into when we got towards the end were young soldiers who had just been drafted. But we were all just children on both sides. They didn’t want to die anymore than we did.

It must have been a bitch in the Pacific with those Japanese suicidal attacks. If I’m in a war, I’d much rather face a coward than a religious fanatic.

The French hated our guts. When the Germans invaded France they went around the Maginot Line and France surrendered. I don’t think the Germans hardly killed any French people at all. But we did. We killed more Frenchmen than the Germans did. Eisenhower said don’t come back with your bombs. Bombs don’t discriminate. That got to me later on because I flew a few missions on a B-25 and I’d look down at the little towns, as we’d bomb them. We killed a lot of Frenchmen.

When the Germans took over France they sent a lot of the men off to labor camps and had all the women for themselves. Then, when we got there we had all the French women. By the time the war ended, I doubt that there was virgin in France over 13. That’s how bad it was.

Towards the end of the war, we were in this little village in France and there was like a town square where everybody would meet. Well there was a platform and these older women would bring up one of the younger girls who had been with a German. They would sit her down in a chair and in front of everybody they would shave her head bald, strip her down buck naked, make her walk out of town and tell her not to come back. That was a sight.

We were in a town called Mons, right on the Belgian border. They were sending troops on a troop train to Paris to rest and sending fresh troops back to the line. I had gone a couple of times for different reasons. I used to go up the Elfle Tower to fix antennas for navigation purposes. I hated climbing that tower because it would move in the wind. Anyhow, I got on this troop train headed to Paris with a rough bunch of soldiers. Man they had been through hell. Well we got side tracked. So we stopped at this train station. It was cold as hell; I’ll remember that. We went inside this train station and there was a big potbelly stove with three Frenchmen manning the train station. That stove was red hot, but it was cold, cold. This major with his Thompson machine gun asked if any of us spoke French. I said that I did and he told me to go in there and ask the Frenchmen if his men could come in there, single file, and warm their hands up on that stove. So I went in and they said “no.” I went back and told that major, “They said no.” He said, “What?” I said, “They said ‘no.’” He sprayed the building with his machine gun and boy those Frenchmen took off running. He turned to his troops and said, “Burn it!” We set the building on fire, burned it to the ground, and the Frenchmen were screaming at us. Those boys weren’t take shit from nobody. They had had enough.

Eisenhower said, “If you need something, then take it. If somebody gets in your way, then shoot’ um.” There might have been better moments, but from what I saw it was bad.

We had orders that if our plane was shot up and couldn’t make it back we should land in Zurich, Switzerland. The Swiss were pro-German. The Germans had been putting all their money and gold in the Swiss banks. But towards the end they switched sides because they knew that we were going to win the war. At the end of the war, the Swiss said that they would take so many old combat troops as guest of the Swiss government. My squadron had been there a along time so they picked us.

We went to the big fancy hotel in Zurich where the kings and queens used to go. They said we could order anything that we wanted to eat. The menu was in German. I recognized one thing: beef steak bijarskie. I thought, That couldn’t be bad. It was stewed meatballs. Everybody was getting good steaks and I had stewed meatballs.

Anyhow, I went up to Omnimount to take up skiing lessons. Can you image that, a boy from Louisiana? We went to the top of this mountain where there was a restaurant and you could see four countries with the naked eye. We skied back down. That was something. The thing that got me the most was after living in tents and what not we slept in goose-down mattresses and blankets. Damn that was nice. Comfortable and warm. I never slept so good in all my life in that little town. That was six weeks.

I got back to New York. And when we landed we went to this big mess hall where they gave us a little coupon where we could get fresh milk, fresh eggs, and steaks, anything you wanted. I took a troop train to Camp Shelby to be discharged. I went to LSU on the GI Bill and graduated in electrical engineering and married a coonass from back home.

John Boudreaux, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Was hanging out at the Estarge Drugstore on Main St. when they heard about Pearl Harbor on the radio
-Most of them at the time were 17-18 years old and they didn’t think too much about it at the time
-What really changed their views was when they heard stories from other friends in the National Guard (1941)
-Boudreaux decided that he wanted to at least be able to shower while serving, so he joined the navy

-Joined the navy with Claude Patout in New Orleans in November 1943
-Was sent to San Diego for basic training
-Then went to Memphis to radio school for the dive-bombers (TBF's)
-Boudreaux didn't want to fly so when testing to see if he could stand on one leg and then close his eyes, he failed it on purpose and was sent back to California

-Eventually sent to Pasco, Washington (Walla Walla) for 6 months; training pilots
-Trained pilots by having them take off to the Pacific Ocean and the practice bombing the airport (just like the Japanese attacking a carrier force or island)
-Those on land would track them with radars and then send out fighters to meet them

-A big dish was a on a truck with a large antenna on land, but on the ship the antennas were smaller
-The wavelength on the radar would show whether it was a friend or foe
-Americans had IFFs while Japanese had nothing
-Could catch these wavelengths about 100 miles out which would give them enough time to send out carriers to protect the convoy--the destroyer’s job

-At the end of 6 months the navy decided that the Japanese were not coming back to the island the navy was readying to invade and take so Boudreaux's unit of 250 men was disbanded

Time at Washington state (12:00)
-On the weekends they could go into Walla Walla for mass
-At Pasco they'd work at a factory that made crates/boxes to earn a little extra
-On the base all they did on weekends was stand watch around the clock; sometimes it could be all night (funny story 14:00)

After being disbanded (14:50)
-Everyone wanted to go overseas to fight
-They were sent back to California and then over to Pearl Harbor to be reassigned and get on-the-job training for radar surface
-Stayed there for about a month and then assigned to a Destroyer Escort the "USS Abercrombie"
-12 men as the radar operators for one ship
-Sat 4 men at a time at the radar for 30 minutes and then they all stood guard for 4 hour shifts

-Left Pearl Harbor to the Pacific to fight the Japanese; always inside at the radars when fighting
-First battle was at Okinawa; they arrived 4 days early of the invasion (April 1945)
-They would take control of 5-6 small islands and create a harbor out of the escorts for other ships to be protected
-They were only escorts, Destroyer Escorts, they would surround an island for about 8,000 yards and patrol
-They were the first line defense for the bigger ships in the navy

Okinawa (23:51)
-Shot down 3 planes and knocked out a few ships
-One of the sister ships was sunk midway by a Japanese fleet
-Kamikaze (suicide planes) did damage to the navy;
-They would circle around at night dropping bombs and around 3-4 in the morning would start dive-bombing--one way ticket for them

-When they made the first invasion of Okinawa there was no resistance
-Japanese did not show up until a couple days later; stayed on the island for 72 days
-Once Okinawa was secured they left to the Lingayen Gulf, Philippines
-Escorted transports of troops to the island
-Details of invasions--Lingayen Gulf, Leyte Gulf and Okinawa

Escorted 2 Army Tankers to Jinsen, Korea (36:40)
-Then went to Japan for occupation duty for 2-3 months
-Landed at Wakayama and were the first Americans there; Japanese were friendly and spoke English

Jumps to stories of time in the navy and after (38:26)
-Looking for pilots
-Initiation rituals
-When the news came that the war had ended over the radio
-Ships he escorted and travel time
-Returning to California and seeing friends in the navy (Carol Lapyouse)
-A time he came home on leave and drove from Texas to Louisiana
-Standing guard stories
-Meeting girls/people they know

(1:04:20)
-Boudreaux remembers praying at Okinawa, they were so scared they'd get hit
-The ship was never hit or damaged and they never lost anyone
-Mostly afraid of the Kamikaze; seeing them on the radars wondering if they'll get hit
-Sometimes the Kamikaze would drop aluminum foil to confuse the radars into making it look like a fleet of planes was coming

Transcription:

John Boudreaux 9/27/01
Born: November 25, 1925
Radarman/Destroyer Escort-USS Abercrombie DE 343

On Pearl Harbor Day, as usual I was hanging out at Estarge Drugstore. That was on Main St. right across from the Evangeline Theatre. We'd hangout outside the drugstore, about 25 of us. That's where we heard about Pearl Harbor, on the radio, and from people down the street. We were all mostly 17, 18-years old. We didn't think much about it at the time. I guess we really didn't realize how serious this was. But I knew about the conflicts overseas and I knew where Pearl Harbor was.

A lot of the older guys had joined the National Guard in '41, before Pearl Harbor. We had a group of guys that would go down to the Sports Center and play pool: JC Upton, WJ Trappey, and Slappy Rouso and them. These old guys would come in on leave from the Army and the Marines. They would tell us about how they never washed their cloths, never took a bath, and how they lived in a foxhole. I decided that's not my bag, I wanted to get in the Navy. Water to drink and a shower to take a bath, that's exactly what I had. It might have been a small shower, but at least it wasn't in the mud.

So Claude Patout and I went to join the Navy together. About two or three weeks before we turned 18 we went to New Orleans to join. We joined in November 1943. I had graduated from highschool the year before and I had gone to Southwestern for a year. JC Upton and I were working that summer for a shooting crew out of Johnson Bayou. We were making big money-forty four cents and hour, living on a quarter boat and working in the swamp. The mosquitoes were terrible, and we had to wear a mask and a helmet with a screen to work in the swamp. We worn coveralls and the mud buggy would get stuck and we'd have to walk back to the quarter boat. But the snakes were about as big as your arm. That's when I said, "Well the Navy can't be no worse than this. I'm gone!"

So I joined and went to boot camp in San Diego. They sent me to Memphis to radio school for the dive-bombers, the TBF's. When I got there I saw where they were going to send me and what I was going to be doing. I didn't like the idea of flying a torpedo bomber. We found out through the grapevine that if you couldn't stand on one leg and close your eyes they wouldn't take you. So that's how I got out of that, and they sent me back to California.

I was sent to Pasco, Washington for six months on a land based Seabee outfit. We were training pilots there in the mountain valley. The pilots would take off and fly to the Pacific Ocean and come back to practice bombing the airport. We would track them with radar, and send fighter planes to intercept. Just like the Japanese. The idea was to train these pilots to intercept Japanese planes that might attack a carrier force or an island. I really enjoyed it.

In Pasco we had a big dish mounted on a truck with a big antenna up on top of a hill. On the ships they were much smaller of course. Depending on the wavelength, we could identify friend or enemy on the radar screen. If Americans would have their IFF on you knew it was American plane, but if no wavelength came in on the radar you knew it was a Japanese. And you could catch them out sometimes as far as 100 miles. And this gave us enough time to get to our carriers to protect them, which is what the destroyer's job is.

We stayed on the base during the week and we had weekend passes. But somebody would have to pull guard duty at night or on weekends. See this radar was something new and we were right there close to the Pacific Ocean, you never knew about the Japanese. One night I was pulling guard up on top the hill, guarding the radar station and I heard a noise. So I said, "Halt!" And I heard no reply so I chamber a bullet in my rifle. I walked out and it was a dog-on cow! I was really nervous though. You never know, people were nervous about the Japanese.

After our six months stay in Pasco, the Navy decided that the Japanese were not coming back to the islands that we would invade and take. We had about 250 of us. So they disbanded us. We were glad. We wanted to go overseas and fight the Japanese.

They sent us back to California and I was sent on an aircraft carrier to Pearl Harbor. It was just a transport for us. I didn't know where I was going. They were sending us to Pearl to get reassigned. They sent us to radar surface school there. I met Roland Breaux and Allen Breaux there; they were from New Iberia. So they assigned me to a Destroyer Escort-USS Abercrombie. It was built in Orange Texas. There were 12 of us radar operators on the Abercrombie. They assigned us four to a watch. We sat at the radar for 30-minutes at a time, because they didn't want us to damage our eyes. We pulled shifts on the scope every thirty minutes and then we'd stand guard on four-hour shifts.

We left Pearl for the Pacific to fight the Japanese. I never saw outside because our job was to watch the radar. I'd hear the guns going off, but I never saw the planes.

We went to Bouganville, Manus, and Saipan. We mostly trained for combat. Our first battle was at Okinawa. We arrived off the coast four days before the invasion. That was in April 1945.

The Destroyer Escorts were just that, escorts. We would patrol about 8,000 yards, back and forth from the coast. We were the first line of defense, before the Japanese would get to the big ships.

I did go up top, on the deck one night and you could swear it was Christmas with all the lights on account of the bullets (tracers). For the rest of the invasion I was stationed below deck.

We shot down three planes. And we knock out a few ships. The Navy really caught hell at Okinawa on account of the Kamikaze (Japanese suicide planes). A lot of these Japanese dive-bombers would start their runs in the evening and they'd dropped bombs all night. And the suicide bombers, well they would have their funerals on the island before they would take off. It was a one way ticket, a suicide mission for most of those pilots.

I had some buddy's who were radar men on the USS Roosevelt. The radar stations were targets for the suicide planes. If I'm not mistaken they took a direct hit and the ship might have sunk.

The whole island was surrounded. When we first made the invasion, the Marines landing did not have any resistance. The Japanese didn't show up until a couple of days later. We stayed on Okinawa for 72 days. We slept in our clothes, and when the alarm went off we had two minutes to get our shoes on and get to battle stations.

Eventually we went to Saipan for dry dock. There was a floating dry dock there. We were painting the bottom of the ship and doing maintenance. We were there for about 4 or 5 days and then they sent us back to Okinawa.

Once Okinawa was secure we went to Lingayen Gulf, Philippines. We were escorting transports of troops to go to the island. Then we went down to Mindanao and Leyte Gulf.

(The invasion of Lingayen Gulf was on January 1945, Leyte Gulf was on October 1944, and Okinawa was in April 1945. Did your ship go on the invasion of Leyte Gulf first, then Lingayen Gulf invasion, and they to Okinawa?) Yes

We caught a typhoon and the ship would list (tilt) forty-degrees. The antennas would all most touch the water. I got seasick.

When Japan surrendered, we were escorting battleships and cruisers and carriers. The radio came on and they announced that the war was ending soon. We stayed up all night listening to the radio.

We escorted two Army tankers to Jinsen, Korea. Then we came back to Okinawa and then we went to Wakayama, Japan for occupational duty. We stayed there for two or three months. We were the first Americans to land on in that area of Japan. The Japanese were friendly; they weren't hostile. They spoke broken English. And they would trade with us. The Japanese men would stop to relieve themselves walking down the street with his family behind him. His wife was always walking behind him.

I made it back in November to San Pedro, California. When I got back I saw Carol Lapyouse's ship coming in, the Nassau. I borrowed somebody's binoculars and I took a peak at the ship and I picked him out, I saw him on his ship. And he knew it was my ship too. He saw me looking at him. I'll never forget that. Carol and I went out to eat the next couple of nights and we had a good time. Carol was "Mr. Transport." We talked about home. When you ran into somebody you knew from home that's what you talked about- if you heard from this girl or from that guy. We talked about home, not about the war.

I borrowed my uncle’s car and drove it to Louisiana. We busted a piston on the way home.

We were most afraid of the suicide planes. That's what worried us the most. And I could see them on the radar, hitting our ships. One time I saw a plane and a few seconds later I saw a whole bunch of planes. This was three o'clock in the morning. So I woke everybody up and come to find out, this Japanese pilot had dropped aluminum foil out of his plane to confuse the radar. When the radar would hit that aluminum it would appear as an enemy plane.

We talk about things like that when we have our reunion every year.

When I went into the Navy during WWII, I wasn't attached to anybody. It was just my parents and myself, I wasn't married and didn't have a girlfriend. I had the idea in my mind going in that if a bullet had my number on it, no matter who you are; you can be as safe as you wanna be, but when the Lord says it's your time, then it's your time. That's the way I saw it.

I can remember praying at Okinawa. We were so scared that we would get hit. Our ship was never damaged and not one life was lost. Thank God.

Therese Boutte, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot, unnamed woman:

-Boutte enlisted in 1942; she was working at a telephone office and was not being paid much
-Was about 21 years old and single; joined the Army services to get a change
-Sent to Des Moines, Iowa for training, went by train; did basic training there (marching and calestintics)
-After training was sent to San Antonio, Texas for schooling in cryptography; they weren't allowed to talk about what they were doing
-Was probably chosen because of her background in telephones

Schooling in San Antonio (5:50)
-Decoded and coded messages; followed a little book, a codebook guide
-An armed guard would come in to take and give messages to them
-They were in little cubbyholes and they were always locked in
-The messages would come in all garbled, they'd decode it and type it up and the guard would come to take it

-Was in the service for 3 years
-Stationed at Kelly Field in San Antonio
-Came home on leave a few times
-Took a trolley into base everyday

Others from the area in service (10:50)
-Boutte signed up for service with another girl from New Iberia, Jenny; she was sent to California
-Talking about men they interviewed and how no one in their families had heard these stories

Photos (16:10)
-Looking at pictures, during or after the war
-Boutte on the air force base

Life on the Base (17:27)
-Worked every day, sometimes at night even
-Lived in barracks; washed their own clothes
-Quite a bit of people on the base
-Few movie theaters on base; no nightclubs on base
-Some girls would go into Mexico on the weekends: Boutte never went as in the mornings they had calestintics
-Food was basic enough

Yard Workers coming in (19:38)
-Introductions
-Families they know or related too
-Cutting down a tree; yard work

Picking Up on Base Life (22:10)
-Might have got off on the weekends
-Took buses into San Antonio from the base
-Received letters from home sometimes

-At one point Boutte was supposed to go overseas and was sent back to Des Moines for training but the war ended
-Only made it to a Corporal but should have gotten a Sergeant
-Eventually was discharged and sent home; doesn't remember how she was discharged

Talking of others (29:30)
-Women in the service that they interviewed
-How some knew what was happening in the war and others that had no news of advancements of the war
-Other woman talking about her memories of the war; President's speeches and rations
-Talking about yard working and Boutte's workers

Transcription:

Therese Boutte
Born: April 30, 1916
Loreauville, LA
WAC-Communications

I was working at the telephone office here and they weren't paying too much, so I decided to enlist in 1942. I was 21-years old and I needed a change. I went to the recruit station here and joined the Army with my friend Jenny (What is her last name?).

I was sent to Des Moines, Iowa for basic training and Jenny was sent to California. I went by train. They'd wake us up early every morning and we'd have to do calesthenics and march.

After basic I was sent to Kelly Field in San Antonio for schooling in cryptography. But I can't talk about that. It was supposed to be very secret. I guess I was chosen for that because of my experience with telephones. I worked in the office coding and decoding messages. We used a codebook as a guide.

I worked in a little cubbyhole for an office and an armed guard could come and pick up and deliver the messages for us. The message would come in scrambled and we would have to decode it, type it up, and send it off. I don't remember much about all it; that was over 50-years ago.

I was supposed to go overseas to Europe, so they sent me back to Des Moines, Iowa for more training. Then the war ended in Europe so I was discharged and they sent me home soon after.