c07de4b7-4e43-4087-8a1f-fe55ecc68ffc

Farrow, Leo_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

Leo Arthur Farrow was born on March 8, 1922 in New York City, the oldest of three sons. Growing up they played stickball in the streets and he enjoyed the schooling, because high school was almost equivalent to a college education. He attended City College for a year. On December 7th, 1941, he took his girl to movies and after the movie was over they announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. He went to Bridgeport, Connecticut, to get a defense job, but they wouldn’t hire him because he was of draft age, so he worked for Columbia Records for a while. He decided to join the air force and went to New Haven to take a test, which he passed, but they required two years of college at that time. He joined the Marine Corps in June 1942 because he thought the Japanese were wrong on Pearl Harbor. He did not fear that he would not come home. Farrow went to boot camp on Parris Island. It was an entirely different world in terms of the strict discipline. He says the southerners didn’t like the New Yorkers. He was of Italian descent and they threw mail at him and one of them called him a dago. He hadn’t felt that kind of discrimination before. He says they wanted you to be angry and they wanted to train you. They broke civilian habits and in eight weeks they all considered themselves marines and had more or less forgotten about the hard times in boot camp. After boot camp Farrow was sent to Quantico, Virginia, for six weeks at small weapon school. He learned about small weapons and how to take them apart, clean them, use them, and teach school on them. The weapons included the .45 automatic pistol, O3, M1, the BAR semi-automatic rifle and the .30 caliber Browning machine gun. After small weapons school Farrow was supposed to go to the Sperry Corporation in New York, but he missed his call while he was on a weekend pass in Washington, D.C. He was sent to New River and joined the 2nd Battalion, 12th Marines, which was an artillery outfit. He was in battalion ordinance and showed people how to repair their weapons. From North Carolina they went to the desert in Niland in southern California on a training mission. In late January 1943 they left for New Zealand. From there they went to Guadalcanal to train. Their first combat action was the invasion of Bougainville, where they stayed for a few months. Back in Guadalcanal, they boarded their ship with the expectation of invading Guam and Saipan, but ended up at sea for 54 days when they found out the Japanese fleet was coming out of Japan. They were happy about getting off the ship when they learned they were going to hit the beach in Guam on July 21st. The night before they had a great meal with meat and fresh vegetables. The next morning they got up at four and packed. They packed socks and underwear, three days’ rations, a blanket, a poncho, and toilet paper. Their packs weighed about sixty pounds and they had to climb down the net on the side of the ship for about fifty or sixty feet and get into a boat. Each boat held 40 or 50 men and they waited until all the men were in the boats and then aligned. Farrow watched the marines run up the hill, and a lot of them got shot. Farrow’s unit was reinforcing the 21st Marines, so they were stationed on the beach at Asan and the 21st marines had moved up the hill. They set up batteries and the fire direction center told them exactly where and how to fire. Farrow was part of the ordinance set up and repaired small weapons. On the fourth day of the invasion the Japanese launched a banzai attack and broke through the lines of the 21st, so Farrow’s unit fired directly into the Japanese coming down the hill. Later they followed the 21st inland, and when they met the brigade who had invaded the island further south along with the 77th Army, they turned and started making a sweep up the north of the island. Farrow was on Guam from July through April, aside from going to Iwo Jima, where he spent about a month and a half. Iwo Jima is a battle he would rather forget. A day or so after returning to Guam they learned that President Roosevelt had died, and at the same time Farrow learned his youngest brother had died. Farrow’s outfit was already loading ships to go home. Coming back to the U.S. was traumatic. Farrow was scared to see civilians, especially women. His outfit was sent to Quonset Point in Rhode Island and was Guard Company. They were getting ready for the invasion of Japan and were scheduled to go back when the atom bomb was dropped, and Farrow was kind of relieved. He was discharged on September 21st. Being under fire was scary. Farrow thinks that in combat “you always have the feeling that you know people are going to be killed but you have the feeling that somebody else will be hit and not you.” Farrow’s youngest brother was killed in Germany a month before they surrendered, while Farrow was in Iwo Jima and their middle brother was in the Battle of the Bulge. Farrow’s close friend Joe Mirsa, a practical joker full of fun, was shot by a Japanese sniper while laying telephone wire and died. Farrow also remembers coming upon a dead marine and his war dog, which would not let anybody near his master and finally had to be lassoed and pulled away. Farrow always resented the Japanese and felt that he didn’t particularly like them. But in 1987 he returned to Guam for the first time and then went to Tokyo and Okinawa and was impressed with the Japanese people and their culture. He says the Japanese soldiers were doing their jobs but the American soldiers did resent them. Farrow did not see any civilians killed but heard that the Japanese treated them badly. The forward patrols found Chamorros who had been beheaded with their hands tied behind their backs. The interviewer asks Farrow about the legacy of World War II for our young people. Farrow says they were fighting for a great cause, to fight dictators, and the Japanese attacked us, so there were no qualms there. He says you’ll appreciate democracy a lot more now looking back on that. The interviewer asks Farrow what the Marine Corps meant to him. Farrow says it has been a good part of his life. It made better men of them, gave them respect, and helped him in the business world. He is proud of his experience and looks back with a fondness for the training and the travel.

U.S. National Park Service, War in the Pacific National Historical Park

This digital asset is in the public domain. This digital version was made possible through the National Park Service by a grant from the National Park Foundation through generous support from the Mellon Foundation. When using this asset for any purpose, including online, credit 'Courtesy U.S. National Parks'.

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War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Code: WAPA

Guam , Guam
War in the Pacific National Historical Park, Guam , Guam
Latitude: 13.3905000686646, Longitude: 144.654006958008

ICMS (Interior Collection Managment System) : WAPA-00246
NPS Museum Number Catalog : WAPA 4170

War in the Pacific Oral Histories

2025/03/07

T. Stell Newman Visitor Center, Collections room, Safe and Shelf SLF D-01

Public Can View

Rose Manibusan, Jennifer Craig

Organization: American Memorial Park
Role: Chief Interpretation
Address: Micro Beach Road, Garapan, Mp 96950
Email: wapa_interpretation@nps.gov

Sunday, April 6, 2025 1:03:18 AM

Sunday, April 6, 2025 1:03:18 AM

Farrow, Leo_WAPA-246_WAPA 4170_OralHist_Video.mp4

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2098.4 MB

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