NPGallery   Digital Asset Management System
Filter Results

Your search on Keywords contains 'bombard' returned 9 results, Showing page 1 of 1, Items 1 through 9

Page#:
View:
Sort:

Audio
Perez, Juan Namaulea_Z36_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_public.mp3

Perez, Juan Namaulea_Z36_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf. Juan Manuel Perez was 71 years old at the time of this interview. On December 8th, 1941, he was chief boatman for Pan American Airways. The upper manager told the maintenance crew that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and briefly told them what to do if a bomb was dropped, to lie down flat. Shortly after that shrapnel from a bomb hit Perez. He went home to pick up his family and went to the cave behind the church in Sumay with about half the residents in the area. After the planes left that afternoon he returned to work and found that the boat he operated was not hit. That night they heard the Japanese were ready to invade the island. Perez was picked up by the Japanese and held in Sumay for three days to train some of the crew on how to operate the boat. He tried to sabotage the boat and learned a week or two later that the transmission was not working. Perez made some trips to steal dynamite and distributed it to friends and family to use it to fish. The last trip he made with two friends to steal dynamite, they got caught and threw sticks of dynamite in front of the guards, then jumped over a cliff and swam across the channel to escape. They successfully hid from the Japanese that day but were arrested the next day and taken to the barracks in Sumay, where they were interrogated and tortured. That night they were fed and watched a movie with the Japanese. The next day they were taken to Agana and watched a firing squad in the cemetery, but still would not confess. They were taken to court; Perez was sentenced to five years, one of his friends was sentenced to ten years, and the other friend was sentenced to ten years to life. The prison where they were held was damaged and they would usually escape at night and return by morning. They had small rations but got some help from civilians in the area. This continuation of Juan Perez’s interview starts with him talking about how he wants his children to learn to forgive and not to forget. Juan talks about being brought to Agat, to a camp where the local people were stationed. The following day, he went the 59 Battalion and spoke to Lieutenant Commander Jenkin and told him he knew where the Japanese Army are concentrating – where they are now. He was interviewed at Island Command in Apra and they filmed him as he spoke. He pointed to the area where he knew the Japanese were moving. Up in Yigo, by Dededo, going to the northwest field. Juan explains how he was never able to return to his town, Sumay. When the Americans invaded the island, they were told that they made an arrangement for the people of Sumay to move to Ypan, but people of Sumay rejected that. They ended up in Santa Rita. Juan describes the beauty of Sumay before the war and tells about how the people in the town worked together and helped each other.

Perez, Juan Namaulea_Z36_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf

Audio
Reyes, Rafael_Z35_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_public.mp3

Reyes, Rafael_Z35_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf. Ralph Reges was fifteen, the youngest child and an errand boy at his home in 1941. His errand on December 8th was to take his niece to church for the lady of the Immaculate Conception day. About halfway through the mass they heard planes and then an explosion, and the priest ended the mass and told them to go home because Sumay was just bombed by the Japanese. Everybody went berserk, running and screaming. Ralph got his niece to his sister in Agana and ran back to his home in Agana Heights where his family was gathered. They loaded household items, provisions, and clothing onto the bull carts and prepared to go to the boonies. Ralph’s father sent him to help his aunt, a widower, who he stayed with throughout the war. When he and his aunt walked down San Ramon Hill to secure their surrender badges, it was like a different world with soldiers all over the place. Ralph was known as a hardworking boy and was selected for forced work details. He replaced his brother-in-law on the manganese mining crew for a couple of days. Toward the end of the war Ralph’s civilian group dug tunnels and foxholes. They hustled and had little rest. The only way to escape being hit, slapped, poked or struck with a bayonet was through good behavior. The experience reminded him of slavery in the South. Ralph was also chosen to lay mines on the shores as tank barriers. While on this detail it began to rain very hard and the American bombardment began, and he and four friends took cover under a raised hut. A shell hit the hut and one friend died immediately, another later that day. Ralph told his detail supervisor that he was not well and would be burying his friends, and he was told to be at home because soon people would be sent to the concentration camps. Ralph’s area was sent to the camp called Mata, in Talafofo, where they built shelters and were able to hunt and forage for food. He was climbing a coconut tree when he saw Americans. They did not realize he spoke English and at first tried to communicate with him like Tarzan, saying “You Guam, me American.” Marines worked to secure the area and led people out, and then Ralph learned that his brother had been brutally beheaded and his father was in a concentration camp elsewhere cooking for Japanese officers. From then on they knew they were in safe positions and started picking up where they left off. After the war Ralph served as a superintendent at the park in Asan where the emplacements [sp?] he built were located. At the tenth anniversary in August 1988 he made a statement about being the only superintendent in the National Park Service helping to protect and preserve what he unwillingly helped construct. The structures are deteriorating fast because they were meant for temporary protection from invading troops. When he was superintendent he was asked how he felt about the Japanese, and while he hated the one who beheaded his brother, he knows the Japanese were working under strict orders.

Reyes, Rafael_Z35_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf

Maroon snowcoach on snow covered road along the Madison River

Bombardier Snowcoach

Birds-eye view of bombs dropping from U.S. plane over Kiska. Japanese ships in water below directly underneath.

U.S. bombs falling towards Japanese ships

This is a print of an engraving from 1863 depicting the April 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter.

Engraving of the 1861 bombardment of Fort Sumter

Audio
Eddy, Jack_Z43_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_public.mp3

Eddy, Jack_Z43_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf. Eddy currently lives in Yigo and works for an advertising agency on the island of Guam. He has been living on Guam for about 10 years now and travels back and forth to the States, but this is his home. Eddy was the Platoon Leader of the Second Platoon of F Company Ninth Marines. He joined the Marine Corps on June 1, 1942 and landed in Guam on July 21, 1944. He was 23 years old. When Eddy’s platoon, F Company, landed on the beaches of Guam back in World War II there was just a lot of smoke and fire because the Navy had been bombarding them with shellfire trying to clear the way for the Marines. Eddy arrived on an LCVP, or Higgins boat, and they landed on the beach on the right flank, which would have been called Blue Beach. The Ninth Marines landed in a column of battalions and the Third Battalion was the first ashore, followed by the Second Battalion and then followed by First Battalion. On Blue Beach there were probably 1,000 Marines who had landed prior to when Eddy’s unit landed. There was intense fire coming from Asan Point Ridge because a company of Marines was in there meeting very stiff resistance. Eddy believes it was on the third day, which would be D plus two, the Second Battalion Ninth Marines was detached from the Ninth Marines and sent over to an area by Bundschu Ridge and put in Division Reserve. Eddy’s platoon spent the night there. The next morning, which would be D plus four, they replaced A Company Third Marines and the Second Battalion Ninth Marines and actually became a functional unit of the Third Marine Regiment. With Captain Lewis Wilson as the Commander, they attacked up the road that runs from Adelup up to Mount Tenjo. They occupied that road by 1:00 in the afternoon but continued the attack until about 3:00 or 3:30 in the afternoon all the way across Fonte Ridge. The fighting on Fonte lasted for another three days. However, Eddy’s platoon had had the worst of it the evening of the 25th and was down to about eight men left in the platoon and very little ammo. Eddy was convinced that his small unit was due to be wiped out. It did give Eddy some feelings of anxiety, maybe even despair, but it didn’t temper his resolve to continue to hang in there. Eventually, the Japanese ran out of men before they ran out of ammo and this is why Eddy is here 42 years later talking about it. The Japanese were definitely strong opponents. After the final beachhead line had been established, it was pretty obvious to everyone the Japanese were heading for the north end of the island to make one of their traditional last stands. Eddy’s unit ended up by Pati Point on the 10th of August and soon the island was declared officially secured, although there were probably as many as 5,000 Japanese troops scattered all over the island. The Ninth Regiment moved over to a camp between Ylig and Tocha Bay and from there Eddy’s platoon ran patrols up into now what is known as Windward Hills area and Baza Gardens area, as well as Talofofo. . Before he knew it, Eddy was heading to Iwo Jima around the 15th or 16th of February, 1945, but was wounded so that was the end of that campaign for him. He ended up on an evacuation ship headed for San Francisco. From there, he was transferred to a ward at Great Lakes Navel Hospital and was a patient there until June of ’46. What Eddy would like to see in Guam to commemorate the American soldiers would be a relief map showing the Asan, Adelup and Agat area plotting the American’s positions and the known positions of the Japanese, which would also depict the landing beaches. Now American soldiers walk down the streets arm-in-arm with the Japanese and Eddy wonders why in the world was the war necessary. The Americans got back their land but lost many men. The Japanese own the majority of the businesses on the island, the Japanese are employed at most of these businesses and they are second in the world as far as gross national product. For all in tense and purposes, the Japanese won in Eddy’s eyes.

Eddy, Jack_Z43_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Audio_transcript.pdf


Page#:
View:
Sort: