Contributed by Charlton Stanley (aka Otteray Scribe), Guest Blogger
Pearl Harbor
7 December 1941
I remember where I was and what I was doing shortly after one o’clock in the afternoon on December 7, 1941. My dad called me in to where he and a couple of his friends were sitting by the huge Stromberg Carlson 350R console radio, its front doors swung open. They were leaning forward, hanging onto every word coming out of the polished walnut cabinet. The breathless announcer was talking so fast he sometimes stumbled over his words. The usual calm and soothing baritone of a professional radio news reporter was replaced by an almost panicked staccato, an octave higher than his voice would have sounded normally. One phrase has stayed stuck in my mind’s ear all these years, “They stabbed our boys in the back!”
At first I thought they were talking about Japanese soldiers bayoneting our soldiers and sailors in the back, as I had seen them do in the newsreels of the massacre of Nanking. Even as a kid, I knew war was on the horizon. Six weeks earlier, a Nazi U-boat had sunk the destroyer USS Reuben James as it escorted a convoy of cargo ships carrying food and supplies to England.
Everyone thought that when war did come, it would come from Europe. No one but a few farsighted tacticians like General Billy Mitchell were looking west, and even predicting that an attack would come by air. Mitchell was Court Martialed for his outspoken military and political heresy. When Americans were killed in what was to be the first military engagement of WW-2 with the sinking of the Reuben James, President Roosevelt held back committing troops and sailors to combat despite the provocation. Hitler was counting on that kind of restraint, or he would not have been so bold as to sink an American warship. He knew the US was not prepared to fight a war, since American troop levels had been drawn down to very low numbers, and much of the equipment was either obsolete or obsolescent. The country was recovering from the Great Depression, and needed time to re-arm.
Admiral Yamamoto took Roosevelt’s options away from him that Sunday morning. Hitler was said to be furious with his Japanese allies.
Which brings us to the story my cousin Jimmy.
Jimmy Gates was from Cleveland, Mississippi. He grew up hunting squirrels and other game to help put food on the family table during the Depression. He was a crack shot. After he got out of high school, the economy was still reeling from the Great Depression, and opportunities were few in the Mississippi delta cotton fields. Seeing the peacetime military as a way to escape the hot farm fields, He joined the Army Air Corps as a Private. He liked airplanes, and figured it would be a lot better branch of the service for him than being an infantryman. For Jimmy, flying beat walking any day. The Air Corps liked Jimmy too. He was a superb marksman, and had unusually good eyesight, traits which seem to run in our family (when I was his age, my eyesight was 20/13). They made Jimmy a bombardier and nose gunner in a B-17 bomber. It was a good choice, because his ability to put bombs on target was uncanny, at a time when the average bomb fell a quarter mile off the intended target.
Hickam Field
7 December 1941
Jimmy was playing pool in the Day Room that Sunday morning. He heard airplanes flying at combat power settings and bullets hitting things outside. He ran to the window and saw planes with the “red meatball” markings wheeling overhead and diving on Hickham Field. He dove out the open window, because he knew buildings would be a target. After all, he was trained as a bombardier, and knew exactly what bomb aimers would be targeting. He tumbled out the window into the flower bed and took off running. He had only gotten a few steps when a bomb came through the roof , exploding in the room he had just vacated. The blast knocked him down, but he wanted to get as far from the buildings and flight line as he could. Those would be the targets, and he was in no mood to be a target that day. He was a 24 year old Sergeant at the time, and wanted to have a 25th birthday. He knew his next birthday might be his last, if he did manage to live that long.
He got a chance to fight back soon enough. As the runways and ruined hangars were repaired, new B-17 bombers were arriving from the mainland US. After a few more weeks of training, Jimmy Gates went to war. He had lost good friends that December morning. It was payback time.
When his eye was not glued to the eyepiece of his top-secret Norden bombsight, he was handling the machine guns in the nose, looking for enemy aircraft.
He sank several Japanese warships, one of them by putting a bomb down the smokestack. Apparently one of his crew-mates had bet him he couldn’t do it. It was most unusual for a bombardier shoot down a fighter plane. I know he was given full credit for shooting down at least one Zero fighter. He told of one mission where the crew voted on whether to bail out or stay with the crippled plane. He elected to stay. When he jumped down from the plane, shredded ribbons of his parachute started falling out a hole in the chute pack. There was a piece of antiaircraft shell the size of his hand in the middle of what was left of his parachute.
The August 7, 1942 New York Times reported that Air Corps Sergeant James F. Gates of Cleveland, Mississippi was awarded the Silver Star for gallantry in the Solomon Islands area. It would not be his last medal, or his last Silver Star. Jimmy wore very little flash on his uniform. He was as different from soldiers like General David Petraeus as night is to day. After it was created in 1958, he was awarded the Air Force Commendation Medal.
Jimmy survived WW-2, but stayed in the Air Force. Because of his outstanding skill, bravery and intelligence, he was sent to officers candidate school, and was now an officer. When B-29s arrived on the scene in the Pacific, he was assigned to a B-29 squadron. He flew right up until the end of the war, including some of the last raids on Japan. In the early 1950s he came to visit at our house. I had about a million questions, but some he would not, or could not, answer. I asked him if he had been one of the crews selected to train for the atomic bomb. He changed the subject. I remember him suddenly wanting to talk about the outstanding performance of the P-38 in dives and climbs, compared to the Zero. I found out later he had been assigned to the 509th Composite Group, and my suspicions had been true.
Jimmy went on to fly during the Korean war. He was one of those aviators for whom flying was a way of life, so he stayed in the service. At various times he was assigned to B-47 and then B-52 bombers when his squadron got them. He was a three war veteran, staying on through the Vietnam war.
Find A Grave contributor
Jimmy retired from the Air Force with the rank of Major. He eventually became the victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, living his last years in a nursing facility in Springfield, MO. He is buried in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Springfield.
I prefer to remember the young man who took his brother Billy and me to the Saturday afternoon matinee, and who loved to go squirrel hunting. He made a joke of diving out that open window into the flower bed that sunny Sunday morning, but I know now something I didn’t realize then. There was a hell of a lot of pain in those memories. Seventy-two years ago this morning.
Popehat continues to dog JT, 74/90
OS,
I’ll be glad to stop by next time we go.
I’ve saved the Sec/Row number in a file.
With these modern cameras we can shoot a bunch of pitches & send them easy.
All I’ll need to know is what you want pictures of. IE: Front gate to the cemetery, historical markers, etc.
As I recall there’s a large Federal Penitentiary & a major Federal Psych Hospital very close by.
(Maybe my wife can drop me off there at the psych ward for an afternoon of electro shock therapy? ) 🙂
We’re trying gather up more info for a rode trip back to West Virgina & by Gettysburg to see with my own eyes what the terrain looks like.
Gene, if your grandfather was with the 509th Composite Group at North Field, Tinian, the chances they knew each other–either well or casually–is about 98%. That was a rather exclusive club. Some crew members are not listed on the web site I linked to. Not sure why, but suspect a combination of nobody looking for them hard enough and those files being classified until years after the war. Most crews had backup members as well, in case somebody got sick or wounded. Officially the 509th CBG had 15 B-29 bombers and five C-54 transport aircraft. The whole unit only had 1,764 officers and enlisted personnel.
At the time, the first half 1945, North Field on Tinian was the largest and busiest airport in the world. It had four parallel runways to handle all the traffic. Additionally, the south airfield on Saipan was also busy; so close it was a job to keep the traffic at the two airports separated. You can see Saipan from the north end of Tinian island. If you look on Google Earth, you can see North Field is being overtaken by the jungle. The south field on Saipan is now the main commercial airport, well kept and modern. Same for the south field on Tinian.
Sometime I am going to have to tell the story of the guy who made my first flying lesson possible. He flew a B-29 out of Saipan, had six DFCs and five Air Medals, plus a Caterpillar Club pin. Talking to him, you would never have guessed his history, but a few years after the war, he went to medical school and became a beloved doctor, practicing until late in life. He died at the age of 91. I have to wonder if those thirty-five bombing missions, including the horrific one of 27 January 1945, influenced his desire to become a healer.
Chuck,
That is a wonderful story, beautifully written and packed with emotion. I loved it.
Oky1
If you make it by the Springfield National Cemetery again, he is in Sec G, Row 17, # 0921.
Get some photos, please. As many as you can. I will let you know how to get them to me. Jim was one of my favorite people, and loved to talk about flying. Or to put it another way, aviators don’t exactly talk as much as they use their hands to make imaginary airplanes.
That’s a great story, Chuck. A lot of guys attached to the 509th didn’t like to talk about it. I wonder if he and my grandfather knew each other? I wish could ask him. Pearl Harbor Day was always a rough day for my grandfather. It’s sometimes hard to look at the political landscape and shape our nation has taken and to think about what that generation was fighting for, but it is never as hard as what they lived through. They are never gone as long as they live in our memories nor is their nobility and courage forgotten.
Well told, OS. Thank you for telling your cousin’s story.
Randy,
Jim was given sole credit for five Japanese warships and one Zero. There were more which were not independently confirmed.
If whoever it was that bet he could not put a bomb down the ship’s smokestack had ever gone squirrel hunting with him and his .22 rifle, that bet would never have been made.
OS I have to assume that he got those ships while docked or moored. If he nailed them under way, that is even greater and damn near impossible. Even hitting a ship that is dead in the water is a real feat. My salute and gratitude to him and his crew.
I got to know a real hero, Dan Illerich, who was featured in the book, The Airmen and the Headhunters. Dan and I were flight instructors at Aero Academy at HOU, and he is a great guy and he told me about his exploits when he took vacation to go back to his Aussie comrades in arms when we were working at the flight school. I would recommend that book to all and they made a TV movie about it too. Dan also stayed in the Air Force and retired as a Lt. Col. He later became a flight instructor and Designated Examiner at HOU.
The government is preventing a U.S. citizen from boarding a passenger plane to get to her trial where she is suing the government for harrasment (Papers, Please!).
She is a doctor.
That must cast a shadow on Pearl Harbor Day … assuming it has anything to do with constitutional rights that is.
LET NO ONE FORGET, TODAY IS PEARL HARBOR DAY:
Remember those that were lost on this day at Pearl Harbor and the follow years to defend your nation and our Democracy. No words can be said of the bravery and courage of our Men and Women of that era. Everyone fought and gave to their ultimate. A lot and probably most have left us and we mourn their passage and pray that we can have the courage to continue their bravery to keep this nation free. Anyone that had the honor to know these men and women know that few spoke or said very little of those times and what they had to endure. We can now see that actions and deeds spoke louder than words could ever of what they accomplished. I only pray that I and all of us can only measure up in a small way to honor them. May God bless them, us and our Nation today and in the Future.
Red Worthington
While I was not born until at the end of WWII, I was fully aware of it since it was very recent history for all of my family when I was growing up. In fact, I can still remember the roles all of my friends dad’s played in WWII, their branch of service and where they fought. Even later I knew of the service of all the men of that era when I met them. I recall where my mother and dad were when they found out about Pearl Harbor and their shock. My grandfather even tried to get back into the service as a WWI veteran, but was too old, so he signed up as a Civil Defense Warden and my grandmother was a Red Cross driver.
My father had just gotten married to my mother, and as a grad of MIT in electrical engineering, signed up for the US Navy. He served as an instructor at the Naval Mine Warfare School for most of the war. I tell my brother that Col. Tibbetts, and your cousin, and Robert Oppenheimer are the reason he is alive since Dad was going to go to Japan for the invasion as a minesweeper captain. That was rather high risk duty since minesweepers are the first boats in the van and their job is to clear mines from the approaches to the beaches. So they get to sail up and down the coast within range of shore guns in small boats clearing mines. They do not stand up well to .50 cal rounds or any other large caliber ones. If one gets a bit careless in sweeping mines the damn things have a bad tendency to blow up, and even steel does not fare well with that kind of thing. So I wish to add my family’s personal thanks to your cousin.
He must have been one hell of good bombardier since I do not recall many ships being sunk by a B-17. I would be interested in knowing which ship and where he got that one. At Midway, the USAAF claimed many Japanese ships when in fact they missed all of them and it was the Navy which did all the damage.
As for irony in Vietnam, the British gave the natives a lesson in treachery and stabbing in the back that would have made Hitler and Tojo proud. When the Japanese surrendered, the anti-colonial Vietnamese who were our allies and supported our troops took control of Vietnam. The Brits landed and decided that the wogs could not be allowed to run their own country. They re-armed the Japanese, let the imprisoned French Vichy colonialists out of the prison where the Vietnamese had put them. Then proceeded to jail and shoot our immediate allies. The French colonialists then went on a rampage of murder and looting in retaliation for their imprisonment under the watchful eyes of the Brits and re-armed Japanese who were under British orders.
Not to be outdone, the Nationalist Chinese forces took the Japanese surrender in the north part of Vietnam. They did the only thing that Chang’s troops were ever any good at which was murder, raping, and looting the locals. Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh had a hard time keeping the Vietnamese peaceful against these atrocities. They advised them to leave the Chinese alone and let the Nationalists go home since they had a more pressing fight against the Red Chinese Army and would not stay long.
As to the French Foreign Legionaires, it is doubly ironic since they were mainly ex-SS troops after the war. So they hired on to reprise their exploits against oppressed people which is the only thing that they were good at. They got their a@@es kicked in the Battle of the Bulge by the 101st Airborne and cooks, clerks, mechanics and rear echelon troops with no air support. Those support troops are the kind Rumsfeld and his ilk had no use for since they were not combat units. I remember seeing photos of graves of Vietnamese colonial troops with the inscription that they died for France. That has to be one of the most dishonorable things for a Vietnamese to have on ones grave and they deserve the contempt and neglect that they richly deserve.
O.S.
Once again, with the impeccable focus on the greatness of his purpose, you have brought Major Jimmy Gates to life for us.
Thank you for that wonderful gift……Darrel
Another conservative source (Wall Street Journal), explains what would surprise, in a bad way, those incredible people OS speaks of in his moving post:
(comment made on the Mike S post today).
Michael Murry gives a perspective on history in his comment up-thread:
History is something one of the greater generals (Napoleon) had an interesting perspective about:
One General’s opinion.
Unfortunately, those incredible people would all likely be surprised to see the country now.
Perhaps we should change that if we can.
General Eisenhower gave one formula:
(She’s Come Undone).
Say what one will about the Japanese attack on U.S. naval and army facilities at Peal Harbor on December 7, 1941, but at least they waited until the dawn. The U.S. now regularly starts wars against countries that never attacked America by “stealth” bombers and robot drones operating like ninja assassins in the dark of night. Talk about “stabbing in the back.”
While serving an eighteen month tour in Vietnam from July 1970 through January 1972, I would occasionally pass a dilapidated little plot of ground just outside Tan Son Nhut airport in Saigon. Rank weeds choked the ground and many tombstones had fallen over or seemed just about to do so. At the edge of this sad little cemetery, a faded sign with barely legible Vietnamese and English writing proclaimed: “The Vietnamese people will never forget the sacrifices of the brave French legionnaires.”
Just a thoughts about the irony of history.
Honored to have a angel like him watching over us now.. OS bless you and your family
**He made a joke of diving out that open window into the flower bed that sunny Sunday morning, but I know now something I didn’t realize then. There was a hell of a lot of pain in those memories. Seventy-two years ago this morning. **
OS, I too have seen that look in far to many boys eyes, that’s why I wrote that comment.
Pearl Harbor Day,
509th Composite Group:
I had been so busy I’d forgot the day Dec 7 until OS’s piece jogged my memory.
Here we all stand again today on the Literal brink of War, WW3! And Why?
One hundred years ago this month Dec. 24, 1913 British Red Coat Banks & Royalty trash, others, conspired with US Wallst banking trash & pushed through the Federal Reserve Act.
President at the time Wilson signed it into law & despite his assurances otherwise he entered US troops & the nation into WW1 on the Red Coats side.
What would the world look like today if there was no Federal Reserve System that enabled the last 100 years of wars like WW1?
Would there have been a WW2 Hitler & his Nazis & their Jap/Italian Fascist friends?
We’ll never know that answer now.
But what we are absolutely positive about the 509th Composite Group is that it wouldn’t have existed without Albert Einstein.
I don’t recall all he is credited with, But on This Day, Dec 7, his prophecy to the world should be on everyone’s mind.
Paraphrasing, he wasn’t sure how WW3 would be fought, but he was positive WW4 would be fought with sticks & stones.
So before we jump off the cliff into Dante’s Inferno, what I believe Al was trying to tell us was we had better devise a better strategy for managing our governments policies, economic activities & product works of the world’s people then blowing the hell out of the planet though more needless/senseless government conceived wars against humanity.
** He eventually became the victim of Alzheimer’s Disease, living his last years in a nursing facility in Springfield, MO. He is buried in the Missouri Veterans Cemetery at Springfield. **
OS,
Some may think it odd but my wife & I have made a hobby of tracking down relatives that have passed, going to the towns in which they lived & finding their tombstone if possible.
We’ve been by that Veterans Cemetery many times & will again maybe in the spring or fall next years.
Thanks for sharing that story.
Chuck,
An amazing story about an American hero! We need more like him!