B04U, Rose Mahoney ‘86, Father, c 1925, Okinawa
In May 1985, I decided to interview my father about his experiences during the war. He is about 60 years old now.
Q: Where and when was your most exciting experience during World War II?
A: It was in Okinawa in March 1945.
Q: Can you explain why you were there?
A: I was on a U.S. Navy ship. There were hundreds of U.S. Navy ships. I was a radio operator.
Q: What was your exciting experience?
A: There were many Kamikaze attacks. Many Japanese aircraft were shot down in flames. Others crashed on the ships in the harbor. At night, suicide boats came out from hiding on the shore. They also had suicide swimmers, who swam out to a ship and exploded charges against the ship to sink it.
Q: Were many people killed?
A: Yes. Overall, the U.S. Navy lost 50,000 killed or wounded in Okinawa.
Q: How about the Japanese?
A: Many thousands were killed defending the island from the invasion forces. Towards the end of the battle, when the Japanese saw that they were going to lose, hundreds of them committed suicide from jumping off a cliff on the southern end of the island.
Q: What specifically stands out in your memory?
A: There were two things that stand out. One was that a kamikaze plane barely missed my ship, and the pilot sank with the airplane. The water splashed onto our deck. The other was several days later, there were hundreds of Japanese corpses in the ocean, being eaten by schools of sharks. The water was red with the blood of the victims.
Q: Can you explain more about the kamikaze planes?
A: What was interesting to me about the kamikaze attacks was that usually an experienced pilot would lead the group to Okinawa, and then he would return to the mainland. The other pilots had only enough gasoline for a one-way trip. They could not return, even if they wanted to. They had high explosives loaded into their aircraft, in order to sink the ships that they crashed into. Sometimes, more than one airplane crashed into the same ship without sinking it.
Q: How did the battle end?
A: The Americans won! Some of the ships, including mine, went to the Philippines. I was there until the war ended. We were getting ready to launch an invasion of the Japanese mainland.
Q: How would you summarize your feelings about World War II?
A: I think many more people would have died, if the Americans had not dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Q: Why?
A: Because the Japanese would have defended their homeland fiercely, and I believed there would have been a million or more killed on both sides.
Q: Do you ever regret being in World War II?
A: Yes and no. Yes, because people should not have to die when their leaders cannot settle their problems in a peaceful manner. No, because I am a patriotic American citizen.