Avery Derouen, Jason Theriot, Hewitt Theriot:

-Took basic training in San Diego, California, was 17 years old and volunteered into the Navy (1944)
-From the base was transferred to a battalion amphibious force with the 4th Marines overseas on APA 162; it was an amphibious transport ship
-Made two invasions
-First invasion was Iwo Jima and fought for 3-4 days
-Was driving the LST landing craft near the beach and waited to bomb the beach so they could land
-The next day they landed; it was a dirty fight and lost a lot of men and boats; Derouen sunk his by accident
-Describing how he ferried marines back and forth to the beach (coxswain)

(5:30) “How did you become a marine?”
-Went to training for 6 weeks as a Navy and an amphibious force (part of the Marines)
-Worked as a coxswain for the Navy in the amphibious forces
-Was trained as a Navy but fought with the Marines

-Couldn’t land on Iwo Jima as there were pillboxes about a foot above ground and a foot apart
-No one could land until they were gone
-Describes how he worked the boat in landings
-Stayed until the island was taken over
-From Iwo Jima invaded Okinawa and “did what they had to do”
-Then waited for orders for invasion of Japan

(10:00) Talking of various subjects and going back and forth
-The hindsight now of the death tolls on Iwo Jima and Okinawa; was so new to war
-Was scared but Derouen volunteered so he did what was needed of him for his country
-Pushing the Japanese to the other side of the island on Iwo Jima; Theriot explaining the battle of Iwo Jima
-Coxswain of a LST and a LCM; describing each boat and the large boat APA they lived on

(18:00) Re-describing of going from San Diego to Iwo Jima; talks of few other places he went to
-Bombing on the beaches and the ships they had in their convoy
-The people Derouen had in his boat and what each person did; he drove
-Waiting on the orders for the atomic bombs to be dropped so they could invade Japan; there were rumors already about the bombs
-Had to patrol a coast city in Japan for 6 months; 6 Japanese men worked under him

(27:25) The fight on Iwo Jima and leaving for Okinawa
-The one man submarines the Japanese used at Iwo Jima; they came to do a job and did not go back home
-Re-describing the changings of his boats from Iwo Jima to Okinawa
-Being a Navy and Marine in amphibious forces; the differences of each one
-Used Higgins boats at Okinawa
-Describing seeing 3 Kamikazes at Okinawa; shot 1 down himself
-Types of guns Derouen used as a coxswain on his boats or on the large ship (jack of all trades)
-On the APA ship everyone was a Marine with separate a crew

Volunteered for the Navy in 1944 (46:28)
-All his buddies were going into the Navy as well
-Didn’t stay long at Okinawa, Derouen never touched land; maybe about 2 days there
-Probably took 3 -5 trips to Okinawa with soldiers and supplies during the invasion
-Food came from Australia; ate horsemeat
(Looking at photos of an LST and the island of Iwo Jima)

(52:06) came home from Japan
-Went back to the states with a different group, took 17 days; landed in San Diego
-Put on a train to Louisiana, 3-4 days and discharged in New Orleans at the Navy base
-Not once all his time in the Navy saw his buddies or anyone from Louisiana
-Never had a reunion so Derouen has no idea what happened to the rest of the men on his ship, APA 162
-Went through some rough times and was glad to make it back home

(56:54) Talking of Various subjects again
-Besides horsemeat ate a lot of lettuce and bread, goat meat too
-Beer rations of the green beer from the states and Australia; made you sick and couldn’t drink it cold, had to be hot to taste better
-April in Okinawa and the bombs dropped in August, Derouen stayed on an LST, a dry dock, driving around while waiting for the bombs to be dropped
-They knew of the atomic bombs and the idea of using them but when and where they didn’t know; didn’t know what an atomic bomb was even
-Drove his LST to Japan and then worked there for 6 months waiting to be discharged; they took his boat back
-What he saw when working on Japan (never saw the bombed cities), their fortifying methods and the machines they used (the Japanese)

(1:06:03) Rode the greyhound bus from New Orleans to home
-Hadn’t been home for about 2 years
-After the war Derouen worked as a milk man in delivery; had 3 trucks
-Worked off shore until retirement
-Talking about people they know that also served in the war; telling stories

Transcription Begins:

Avery Derouen
Born: November 1, 1926
10614 Hwy. 14
Delchambre, La 70528
Coxswain- Iwo Jima/Okinawa

At 17 I volunteered for the Navy for my country to do my duty in 1944. I took my training in the Marine base in San Diego, California for six weeks. I learned how to drive the little landing crafts. We practiced landing on the shores of San Diego with the marines. We had our packs and rifles and everything else. We had to land and crawl underneath barbed wire fences. I also trained with the big machine guns, the anti-aircraft guns. We practiced shooting those too. From the base at San Diego I was transferred to a battalion with the amphibious force, with the 4th Marines overseas on APA 162. It was a troop transport ship. I made two invasions: Iwo Jima and Okinawa.

The APA took us from San Diego to invade Iwo Jima. We were all marines onboard except for the captain and his crew. It was a big ship and it had the little Higgins boat, the LST's, hanging on the side. It had a dozen or so of these little Higgins boats. From San Diego we went down to New Caledonia in the South Pacific for a day or two. Then we rendezvoused with the rest of the invasion force and went to Iwo Jima. That all took about a month.

I was a coxswain with the amphibious force and I did all the fighting with the marines. My main job was to drive the boat with the marines to the beach, but if I had to get out and fight with them I was trained to do so. I fought at Iwo Jima for three or four days. I was driving an LST, landing craft- Higgins boat. It had one engine and could hold about 20 men. It was made out of plywood.

The Japs had these pillboxes on Iwo Jima built about a foot above the ground and about a foot apart on that beach. That's why we couldn't land there the first day. They were all waiting for us. We had battleships, destroyers, light cruisers, and airplanes, and they bombed that beach all day and night long.

I was bringing a load of men to the beach but it was too hot the first day, so we came back to the ship and circled for another day until they bombed the beach enough to clear a path for us to land the marines. So we did. The next day we landed. It was a dirty fight on Iwo Jima. We lost a lot of marines there. I lost my landing craft while backing up in the water. I had dropped off a load of men and I was backing up to get off the beach, to save my life, and I hit a rock or something in the water and it blew a hole at the bottom of my boat and it sunk. So I had to get out with my carbine and go ashore on the beach with the marines.

I dug me a foxhole on that beach and spend the night there. There were Japs running all around shooting at us. I was involved in firefights all night long. I stayed in that hole until the next day. You could see the little windows in the Jap pillboxes and you could see their little rifles and machine-guns in there. Somebody would have to crawl to that pillbox to get rid of them.

What a coxswain does is he drives up to the beach wide open with a load of marines, then drop the gate down to let the men out. Then while you backing up, you raise up the gate and get out of there in a hurry. But you are going back in reverse wide open against the waves. And it's got a plywood bottom. I must have hit a rock.

I went to a dry dock and they gave me a LCM. It was a bigger landing craft. It had twin engines and it could hold about 60 marines. It was made out of steel. So I brought a load of marines to shore that day and I had to land with them.

I saw a lot of marines killed at Iwo Jima. A lot of things go into your mind when you see that. I was seeing things that I never saw before. In some way I was scared for my life, but in some way the job had to be done, so I tried my best.

Before the landing they would give us two or three shots (injections) a day. I don't know what those shots were that they made us take. Maybe it was to keep us from getting scared or sick. I don't know. I had to drop my shirt and take a shot. They did that until we went on the invasion. I guess it was for diseases or malaria or something. They had a lot of flies on that beach from the corpses and what a smell. It was bad.

Iwo Jima was something else. We pushed those Japs off of Iwo Jima. When my boat sunk I had to go ashore with the marines and fight against the Japs. They were waiting for us. We pushed them back to the other side of the island and we were shooting them in the water as they swam away. They couldn't fight anymore after a few days. As we pushed them out of those pillboxes they had no place to go. (6,800 marines and 22,300 Japanese were killed at Iwo Jima. The Pacific Campaign. P. 382)

I brought the LCM to that floating dry dock and stayed in the harbor waiting for orders.
By the time we took Iwo Jima and they raised the flag on Mount Suribachi, I had left and I was awaiting orders to go on the next invasion- Okinawa. Okinawa was a little different. We surprised the Japs there. The beach wasn't as hot as Iwo Jima. I brought men and supplies ashore for two days, three or four trips in a day.

We'd get our food from Australia. We ate canned horse meat and goat meat. It was sweet and had long treads. It wasn't too bad. We ate a lot of lettuce and bread. We had that green beer, but it was hot and it made you sick. It was bacou.

I saw three Kamikaze at Okinawa. The ship I was on shot down one of them as it passed over and crashed the ocean. That same morning, they had put me on the deck manning a 40/40 (dual 40 mm) machine gun. That was my station at general quarters. I would sit in the chair and two fellows would load me up as I went to shooting. (Coxswain was a "Jack of all trades"- gunner, soldier, boat driver, boat maintenance.) I can remember, early that morning, we could hear these airplanes coming, but it was still too dark to see them. The men up in the bridge spotted two of them Zeroes coming our way. So we got ready and loaded up our guns. Those Jap planes made a funny noise and they had a red circle underneath their wings. They came over us and passed us. I said thank God. They made a big circle, and I don't know what ship they were looking for, but they had an order to hit one. Maybe they were supposed to do something, but they didn't. If they were given an order to do something, like ram a ship, they had to do it. There was no going back.

The Japs had these one-man submarines. When that Jap would leave in that sub, he wouldn't come back. He was in that sub to do a job. They had quite a bit of them. He was on a suicide mission, like the Kamikazi. We were lucky that there weren't any Japanese surface ships around Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The navy bombers sunk the big Japanese battleship (Yamoto.) It was the biggest battleship that they had. (The majority of the Japanese Navy had been defeated and destroyed at Leyte Gulf and near the Philippines before the last two invasions.)

I was staying on that dry dock when the war ended. There was a rumor about the atomic bomb. We had heard about it, but we didn't know what it was. We were waiting to invade Japan when they dropped the bomb. After they dropped the bomb we went in for occupational duty. I drove my little Higgins boat into the harbor at Japan and docked it. I was making supply runs for a while and then they put me on guard duty on land over there for six months.

When we got there, the first thing we had to do was to get rid of those mines in the water. The first ships to go in were minesweepers. They had mines all over the place. The Japs were set up for the invasion. They had concrete bunkers and pillboxes. They had these big caves with all of their machinery and equipment inside. That's where they were making all of their parts and whatnot. They would have outnumbered us 15 to one, easy.

I was an MP and I had six Japanese men working for me. I had orders and I would instruct them what to do, but I didn't mess with them too much. I told them that they had a job to do and they would listen for the most part. One of them could speak English and he would transfer my orders to the other men. I was at a little coastal city. They wouldn't let us go near the cities that were bombed because of the radiation. But them two cities that was a junk pile; I mean a junk pile.

I came home with a group. It took us 17 days to get back to San Diego. They put me on a train to come home to Louisiana, and I fought that for three or four days. I arrived at the big Navy base in New Orleans and road the Greyhound bus back home to Delchambre.

Clifton Delahousie, my wife's cousin, and I went into the service together. He was my buddy. He was on APA 163 and I was on APA 162; they were two sister ships. When we got discharged I met up with him there in New Orleans. We got back at the same time, but I hadn't seen him since we left. I remember I was outside walking down the sidewalk and I raised up my head and I recognized him. Just when I saw him, he saw me, and man we started running towards each other and we hugged. I hadn't seen him in over a year. He said to me, "You made it back." I said, "Yeah, and you made it back too." We went in together and we got back together.

I went through some rough times but I'm glad I made it back home.