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Sugarloaf, not so sweet: World War II in Okinawa was a rude awakening for Willcox's Richard Seidel
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| Richard "Dick" Seidel holds his memoirs, "A Century of Progress," which includes a section on "Okinawa Remembered." Seidel, owner of The Willcox Commercial store on Railroad Avenue, enlisted in the Army in 1944 and then spent several very long months in Okinawa during World War II. (Ainslee S. Wittig/ARN) |
Compiled by Ainslee S. Wittig/Arizona Range News
Richard Seidel of Willcox wrote "Okinawa Remembered" and dedicated it to Clifford "Drano" Shanafelt, "the best foxhole buddy in the world," who passed away two years ago.
Seidel enlisted in the Army in 1944 at the age of 20. He came from a farming family in Sandoval, Illinois. He is now the owner of the Willcox Commercial Store, the oldest continuously running store in Arizona. He has owned and operated the store since 1974, now with his family's help. At age 84, he enjoys local Arizona history, living in Willcox -"the best place he's ever lived", and his grandchildren.
Here are some excerpts from his memoirs, "Okinawa Remembered."
Army Private Richard Seidel left in a troop ship from Puget Sound, Wash. on St. Patrick's Day, 1945, headed for the South Pacific. He stopped at Pearl Harbor and Saipan before reaching Okinawa by April Fool's Day.
Landing
"After 15 weeks of infantry training, train and boat rides to the other side of the world, we were ready to unload on Okinawa. There was never much fighting on the beach. The resistance was held up in fortresses inside of the hills in the lower part of the island. At its smallest width the island was as slim as three miles wide, and 60 miles long.
When our troop ship left us on Okinawa, all of the replacements were gathered, waiting for a truck to take us to the front. All of the Infantrymen had already gone and only seven of us were left to go to a mortar company supporting the Marine line (91st Chemical Mortar Co, and Seidel was in the Chemical Warfare Service). They took us to our company. We only got our "hellos" done when I had to go relieve myself. I moved about 30 feet from our mortar station to take care of my urgent urge. I pulled down my pants. Thirty seconds later a bullet sang by my ear that I can still hear today. I needed a septic tank.
Sugarloaf
Sugarloaf may sound sweet, but it turned out to be the most intensive battle since Gettysburg in the Civil War, according to Newsweek Magazine at the time. It was my second battle station with only four days battle experience.
We unloaded our truck on the run. We had to dig in our mortar and get going. The base plate had to have solid dirt under it so it would be stationary when it was aimed. As soon as we had time, we had to dig in our foxholes for the guard stations. They would be deep and slim so two people could get in easy and crouch under if needed. The last thing to do was dig our personal foxholes about three feet deep, and big enough to sleep in.
I didn't even know how intense the battle was going. We all took turns firing to give our arms and ears a break. Our ears would take the hardest beating. It wasn't unusual to see blood coming out of ears after getting a mortar blast. I have seen as many as 13 shells in the air all at once. We were good at our job.
Fart Sack
It was near Sugarloaf Hill when Drano (his foxhole partner) started calling me Fart Sack. It was raining hard. I thought it was concussion shock or maybe we had put a lot of holes in the sky. A few years later, someone asked me how I had that weathered the typhoon that was going by.
Early the next morning the Nips opened up a barrage. They were doing what I called search and traverse. We were like a checkerboard and they would start their artillery at the bottom and systematically hit a shell in every square so they wouldn't miss anyone.
We heard them across the bottom and starting up the next row. Drano said, "They are getting closer." I kept telling him, "Go to sleep, it is too early to get up," They kept getting closer. Finally, they hit our square. The explosion and concussion was deafening. A shell fragment clanged off our metal top and cut a big hole in my poncho.
"They are coming in on us!" Drano shouted. I told him to settle down and it would go away in 10 minutes, and then we would have something for breakfast. Drano decided then that there was nothing that could wake me up and he called me Fart Sack from then on.
We heard a truck drive away. We found out they were taking two of the seven replacements that came in with us in the truck. Ryan got a shell fragment in his shoulder and Goober got grazed across the top of his head. They said Ryan was hurt worse, but he did come back to the outfit after a trip to the hospital in Guam. We never heard of Goober again. Leona (Seidel's wife) and I stopped to see Ryan in Wisconsin on the family dairy farm when on our honeymoon, but we couldn't find Goober.
More Rain
The continuing rain brought the battle to a soggy conclusion. Our Sergeant reported that the Nips were slogging out of Sugarloaf Hill. They probably ended the affair for the same reason we did. No ammo. No food. Wet, tired and discouraged. How many days of wet clothes can you wear without the body shrinking and wrinkling off the bones?
We got a chance to dry out one evening. We had lots of wet wood from our ammo boxes. We had some excess increment that was used to propel a mortar shell. That started a fire good enough to dry out with. We set up in an area that looked like sand bag bunkers. We got our fire going and our bodies and clothes were warming up and starting to dry out.
Our Sergeant walked by and asked us if we knew what we were sitting around. To answer his question, he took a tiny speck of white powder out of one of those gunny sacks that we thought were full of sand. He threw it in the fire and it went WHOOM! The gunny sacks were loaded with Nip explosive. Not a good place for a campfire.
The Smell of War
In Nam, the name of the game was the body count after each engagement. We didn't count the bodies in Okinawa; we just smelled them. Anyone who doesn't like these kind of stories better stop reading now because this won't get any better. All five senses are offended during war. From movies and pictures, we expected the sound and sight of war. We didn't expect much of Army field rations and the taste never improved. The body was never comfortable living in a wet foxhole. The fifth sense, I never got used to.
For 42 days on the line, I never got to smell anything but rotten Nips. You can call it odor, stench, smell or stink, but I couldn't ever get away from it. Sometimes while eating, we would try to get upwind from the bodies, but there were always more wherever we went. The dead were everywhere.
Battle's End
The battle was over. We didn't know it yet then, but it would be the last of WWII. We pulled back several miles to a place where we could put up a pup tent instead of a hole in the ground. The first announcement from the company's commander was "(Clifford "Drano") Shanafelt and Seidel will be a Private First Class." We agreed. For surviving 42 days on the line would entitle us to another $5 a month on our salary.
War's End
We hung around a month on Okinawa after the battle. We spent a lot of time on the beach, which was a mile and a half east of our camp. Around Aug. 1, 1945, we took off for the Philippines. It was to be the staging area for the invasion of Japan, which should start in a couple of months. No one was looking forward to doing that.
After Sugarloaf Hill, the survivors wrote to Washington and stated that the Americans could not take that again. I think that Sugarloaf Hill may have decided the direction that the war would take. The hard decision the president made to close the war was no doubt a factor in the letter that we had sent to him.
We boarded a landing ship for the trip to the Philippines. It was less than 1,000 miles to the Philippine Islands, but it took about two weeks, so that tells me that the old tub wasn't spent for speed.
That two weeks at sea changed the world forever. The first thing we heard on our loud speakers was the news that the Russian Army had invaded Manchuria and was declaring war against Japan. That was the best news we could have heard. The troops were elated. The next announcement on August 3 was that the atomic bomb had hit Japan.
On Aug. 6, we listened over the loud speakers that we hit them with another one of those big bombs. We were beginning to think that something was going on. On Aug. 12, the Japanese told the world that they were quitting. What a day. We disembarked on the island of Mindora in the Philippines. I think everyone on the island lined up along the road and cheered us as the trucks were riding in drove by. Everyone was so happy. The war was really over.
June 22, 1945, was a day I will remember, as we were the winners and we had finally pulled back from the line and could relax. We had just killed all the 111,000 Japanese left on Okinawa and due to the atomic bomb, we didn't have to fight anymore. We had already killed more people than the atomic bomb did. Fifty thousand Americans were killed or wounded, including 5,000 sailors dead. More of our people died at Okinawa than Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal together. More American ships were sunk and damaged around Okinawa than Pearl Harbor.
Change Of Heart
I was as patriotic as anyone in WWII. I turned in my airtight deferment, over the objection of my draft board. I knew I had to get those evil Japs, but after 42 days on the line, I found the Nips brave, fearless, tireless men who would die for their country. I did not hate them anymore.
Near the end of the war I became a pacifist. I will tell the story now. At one point on Okinawa, we fired upon a raft of Nips when they tried to come ashore at our camp. They left, but we thought they had landed either north or south of our camp. We were alert, watching the north and south roads entering the village. I am glad they put my guard post facing the north. I could hear machine gun fire from the guard post facing south. I could hear a baby crying.
Oh say, what we saw, by the dawn's early light, was death. The Marines up front had let some civilians go through, only to be met by our machine gun. One Okinawan woman was killed by the machine gun. Her crying infant was still tied to her back. I thought - was this lady and her baby any more guilty than my mother and my eight-week-old brother back home?"
(Compiled by Ainslee S. Wittig/Arizona Range News)
Richard Seidel of Willcox wrote "Okinawa Remembered" and dedicated it to Clifford "Drano" Shanafelt, "the best foxhole buddy in the world," who passed away two years ago.
Seidel enlisted in the Army in 1944 at the age of 20. He came from a farming family in Sandoval, Illinois. He is now the owner of the Willcox Commercial Store, the oldest continuously running store in Arizona. He has owned and operated the store since 1974, now with his family's help. At age 84, he enjoys local Arizona history, living in Willcox -"the best place he's ever lived", and his grandchildren.
Here are some excerpts from his memoirs, "Okinawa Remembered."
Army Private Richard Seidel left in a troop ship from Puget Sound, Wash. on St. Patrick's Day, 1945, headed for the South Pacific. He stopped at Pearl Harbor and Saipan before reaching Okinawa by April Fool's Day.
Landing
"After 15 weeks of infantry training, train and boat rides to the other side of the world, we were ready to unload on Okinawa. There was never much fighting on the beach. The resistance was held up in fortresses inside of the hills in the lower part of the island. At its smallest width the island was as slim as three miles wide, and 60 miles long.
When our troop ship left us on Okinawa, all of the replacements were gathered, waiting for a truck to take us to the front. All of the Infantrymen had already gone and only seven of us were left to go to a mortar company supporting the Marine line (91st Chemical Mortar Co, and Seidel was in the Chemical Warfare Service). They took us to our company. We only got our "hellos" done when I had to go relieve myself. I moved about 30 feet from our mortar station to take care of my urgent urge. I pulled down my pants. Thirty seconds later a bullet sang by my ear that I can still hear today. I needed a septic tank.
Sugarloaf
Sugarloaf may sound sweet, but it turned out to be the most intensive battle since Gettysburg in the Civil War, according to Newsweek Magazine at the time. It was my second battle station with only four days battle experience.
We unloaded our truck on the run. We had to dig in our mortar and get going. The base plate had to have solid dirt under it so it would be stationary when it was aimed. As soon as we had time, we had to dig in our foxholes for the guard stations. They would be deep and slim so two people could get in easy and crouch under if needed. The last thing to do was dig our personal foxholes about three feet deep, and big enough to sleep in.
I didn't even know how intense the battle was going. We all took turns firing to give our arms and ears a break. Our ears would take the hardest beating. It wasn't unusual to see blood coming out of ears after getting a mortar blast. I have seen as many as 13 shells in the air all at once. We were good at our job.
Fart Sack
It was near Sugarloaf Hill when Drano (his foxhole partner) started calling me Fart Sack. It was raining hard. I thought it was concussion shock or maybe we had put a lot of holes in the sky. A few years later, someone asked me how I had that weathered the typhoon that was going by.
Early the next morning the Nips opened up a barrage. They were doing what I called search and traverse. We were like a checkerboard and they would start their artillery at the bottom and systematically hit a shell in every square so they wouldn't miss anyone.
We heard them across the bottom and starting up the next row. Drano said, "They are getting closer." I kept telling him, "Go to sleep, it is too early to get up," They kept getting closer. Finally, they hit our square. The explosion and concussion was deafening. A shell fragment clanged off our metal top and cut a big hole in my poncho.
"They are coming in on us!" Drano shouted. I told him to settle down and it would go away in 10 minutes, and then we would have something for breakfast. Drano decided then that there was nothing that could wake me up and he called me Fart Sack from then on.
We heard a truck drive away. We found out they were taking two of the seven replacements that came in with us in the truck. Ryan got a shell fragment in his shoulder and Goober got grazed across the top of his head. They said Ryan was hurt worse, but he did come back to the outfit after a trip to the hospital in Guam. We never heard of Goober again. Leona (Seidel's wife) and I stopped to see Ryan in Wisconsin on the family dairy farm when on our honeymoon, but we couldn't find Goober.
More Rain
The continuing rain brought the battle to a soggy conclusion. Our Sergeant reported that the Nips were slogging out of Sugarloaf Hill. They probably ended the affair for the same reason we did. No ammo. No food. Wet, tired and discouraged. How many days of wet clothes can you wear without the body shrinking and wrinkling off the bones?
We got a chance to dry out one evening. We had lots of wet wood from our ammo boxes. We had some excess increment that was used to propel a mortar shell. That started a fire good enough to dry out with. We set up in an area that looked like sand bag bunkers. We got our fire going and our bodies and clothes were warming up and starting to dry out.
Our Sergeant walked by and asked us if we knew what we were sitting around. To answer his question, he took a tiny speck of white powder out of one of those gunny sacks that we thought were full of sand. He threw it in the fire and it went WHOOM! The gunny sacks were loaded with Nip explosive. Not a good place for a campfire.
The Smell of War
In Nam, the name of the game was the body count after each engagement. We didn't count the bodies in Okinawa; we just smelled them. Anyone who doesn't like these kind of stories better stop reading now because this won't get any better. All five senses are offended during war. From movies and pictures, we expected the sound and sight of war. We didn't expect much of Army field rations and the taste never improved. The body was never comfortable living in a wet foxhole. The fifth sense, I never got used to.
For 42 days on the line, I never got to smell anything but rotten Nips. You can call it odor, stench, smell or stink, but I couldn't ever get away from it. Sometimes while eating, we would try to get upwind from the bodies, but there were always more wherever we went. The dead were everywhere.
Battle's End
The battle was over. We didn't know it yet then, but it would be the last of WWII. We pulled back several miles to a place where we could put up a pup tent instead of a hole in the ground. The first announcement from the company's commander was "(Clifford "Drano") Shanafelt and Seidel will be a Private First Class." We agreed. For surviving 42 days on the line would entitle us to another $5 a month on our salary.
War's End
We hung around a month on Okinawa after the battle. We spent a lot of time on the beach, which was a mile and a half east of our camp. Around Aug. 1, 1945, we took off for the Philippines. It was to be the staging area for the invasion of Japan, which should start in a couple of months. No one was looking forward to doing that.
After Sugarloaf Hill, the survivors wrote to Washington and stated that the Americans could not take that again. I think that Sugarloaf Hill may have decided the direction that the war would take. The hard decision the president made to close the war was no doubt a factor in the letter that we had sent to him.
We boarded a landing ship for the trip to the Philippines. It was less than 1,000 miles to the Philippine Islands, but it took about two weeks, so that tells me that the old tub wasn't spent for speed.
That two weeks at sea changed the world forever. The first thing we heard on our loud speakers was the news that the Russian Army had invaded Manchuria and was declaring war against Japan. That was the best news we could have heard. The troops were elated. The next announcement on August 3 was that the atomic bomb had hit Japan.
On Aug. 6, we listened over the loud speakers that we hit them with another one of those big bombs. We were beginning to think that something was going on. On Aug. 12, the Japanese told the world that they were quitting. What a day. We disembarked on the island of Mindora in the Philippines. I think everyone on the island lined up along the road and cheered us as the trucks were riding in drove by. Everyone was so happy. The war was really over.
June 22, 1945, was a day I will remember, as we were the winners and we had finally pulled back from the line and could relax. We had just killed all the 111,000 Japanese left on Okinawa and due to the atomic bomb, we didn't have to fight anymore. We had already killed more people than the atomic bomb did. Fifty thousand Americans were killed or wounded, including 5,000 sailors dead. More of our people died at Okinawa than Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal together. More American ships were sunk and damaged around Okinawa than Pearl Harbor.
Change Of Heart
I was as patriotic as anyone in WWII. I turned in my airtight deferment, over the objection of my draft board. I knew I had to get those evil Japs, but after 42 days on the line, I found the Nips brave, fearless, tireless men who would die for their country. I did not hate them anymore.
Near the end of the war I became a pacifist. I will tell the story now. At one point on Okinawa, we fired upon a raft of Nips when they tried to come ashore at our camp. They left, but we thought they had landed either north or south of our camp. We were alert, watching the north and south roads entering the village. I am glad they put my guard post facing the north. I could hear machine gun fire from the guard post facing south. I could hear a baby crying.
Oh say, what we saw, by the dawn's early light, was death. The Marines up front had let some civilians go through, only to be met by our machine gun. One Okinawan woman was killed by the machine gun. Her crying infant was still tied to her back. I thought - was this lady and her baby any more guilty than my mother and my eight-week-old brother back home?"
(Compiled by Ainslee S. Wittig/Arizona Range News)
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