Interview with James Corr [March 26, 2002]

James Corr:

This is James Corr, I served in World War II as a manner fighter pilot flying course airs out in the pacific. I went in the, got in the Navy first B5 program in 1942 and went overseas after the -- the sqaudron was formed in May '44, I believe, and came home in December '46.

Wellon Lee:

Where were you located?

James Corr:

Out in the pacific, we-- let's see, we left California, the west coast, and went to Midway Island on a carrier and from there we went to the Marjon Islands "(ph)" and landed and started operating off of Qaudland "(ph)" Quadland was one of the larger islands and had been taken by the American expeditionary forces sometime previous to that, that part of 1945 and then from that base we made strikes on different islands ?Wiljam ? --a couple that I can think of many of these were bombing and strafing missions where we would either go to a destroy aircraft off the ground or if we caught them in the air, shoot them down. And to eliminate shipping because the Japanese controlled the Marshals at that time. In fact, after the fall of Correigdor in the Philippines the only islands that the U.S. controlled at that time were Hawaii, Midway, and then in the Barnorion "(ph)". And the Australia and everything else in the Pacific was controlled by the Japanese. You want to know from there, where?

Wellon Lee:

That's great if you want to talk about it.

James Corr:

Well, from the Marshals we next went to the to the ?icle berts? I believe. Went to ?Enjabay? And operated off of there. And and then from Enjabay we went straight to Okinawa. We went in on D Day plus two, and as soon as or planes went off the carrier we catapulted off the carriers and strarted operating off of the off of the union tan and cadeana "(ph)" airports. If I remember correctly, D Day was from the first of 1925 and we went in on, I think D Day two plus three. Anyway, from those two airstrips this was the last and the largest battles of the pacific after all of the major islands like Ewa "(ph)", and Iwo Jima, and Tarawa, and others that had been taken from the American forces. At the end of the battle of Okinawa appeared that the next major engagement would be then invasion of Japan. President Truman interceded that even though the military spent months and months preparing and moving men and ammunition and boats and provisions and everything further west and north and the pacific preparing to invade Japan and then president Truman made his decision to drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshna and the second one on Nagasaki. And then shortly after that the Japs capitulated, the war was over. And then I think the omsis was signed some time in August of 1945, August or September of 1945 and we all headed home. I left the island in December of 1945.

Wellon Lee:

Did you think it was a good idea for Truman to drop the bomb?

James Corr:

I sure did. Since then we learned that the planners, the military planners of the invasion much Japan both the Army and the Navy and the Marine Corps expected casualties in the excess of a million men it very well could have been two million men. I think the mind set of the Japanese particular in defending their homeland that every living person would defend it to their own death so if that was the case there wouldn't be that many surrendering they were going to kill themselves defending their home. So, it was probably an extremely smart move to drop the bomb which changed the choir cultature of the war at that time and perhaps all wars into the future because the atomic bomb it was such a, a tremendous increase in destructive power over the bombs that we had that I don't think that anybody even realized what the destructive force that it was. Not only did it destroy the earth within a certain distance from the center, but the radio active fall out killed thousands of Japanese over a period of a number of years and to a great degree effected even children up into their senior years with burns and certain types of mal deformaties that occurred when they became adults. Anyway, it was a horrible thing. I actually saw--we went into Nagasaki, I think it was three days or five days, I can't remember exactly, we flew up there in a DC3, several of us, and saw the destruction of Nagasaki, and there wasn't anything left of that town. It was a big shipping center near by and it was obliverated also. It just a terrible thing to see.

Wellon Lee:

What was your rank? Were you awarded any medals or citations?

James Corr:

While you're in flight school in Pensacola, you have to elect about six months before you graduate whether you want to stay in the Navy and be commissioned a Ensign or if you want to transfer to the Marine Corps and be commissioned to second luitenant. I thought I could be get into the heat of things by gets into the meaner course so I volunteered to become a second lute in the Marine Corps, so I graduated from flight school in Pensacola as a second luitenant and I chose fighters. And right after graduation we were sent to Jacksonville, Florida to start an SS squadron, and then we went from Jacksonville to Cherry Point, North Carolina and operated up there and got us a squadron and groups formed, and then we were ordered to to report to the west coast for additional training because the Marines are the amphibious of the groups and one of the things that the Marine Corps did was they supported their own groups. And when a landing is made and the Marines are going to make the landing usually the fighters, the F4's and others that the Marine Corps uses we are the cover and support. So we spent two or three weeks out there engaged in beach landing tactics so we could support the Marines as we started taking the islands in the pacific. As soon as we completed that, we got on a carrier and headed for the Marshals.

Wellon Lee:

Did you marry Grimley while you were in flight school?

James Corr:

I married Grimley a week after I got my wings.

Wellon Lee:

After graduation?

James Corr:

Uh-huh.

Wellon Lee:

Then you moved?

James Corr:

Went to Jacksonville and went to Cherry Point, and then she went back to--after that and I went to the west coast and came back a couple of years later.

Wellon Lee:

When you were overseas what was it like day-to-day?

James Corr:

It wasn't bad at all. In fact, I think most of us enjoyed it, we were young and probably crazy. But I never really worried about getting killed. You just, I don't know, maybe some did. I remember some of the boys got -- you know when you gret almost killed and you survive, you could get afraid and most of the boys, if they got afraid they were sent back states because they were going to kill themselves sooner or later. Fortunately, I never got scared. It was--I think the majority of my age group thought it was an honor to fly and to defend the-our country and, of course, the war in Europe was going on several years so war was nothing new and some of my friends in high school left and they opted to go in the Armor Air Course and they ended up in Europe and most of them were killed. And then those of us in the Navy we went into the pacific and most of us came back.

Wellon Lee:

What was it like to be in combat?

James Corr:

The mindset has to be that you are better than whoever you are going to run into. And whatever he does you will do better and if you get close enough to him you are going to kill him. That's the perspective of every flier or there's no need to fly if that's not your aim. And if you weren't in air combat then you were making strafing runs or rocket runs or bomb runs. {Interviewee answering phone}. (Continuing with interview)

Wellon Lee:

You were telling me about combat. Did you ever think about that person; did you have to have a certain mindset towards the Japanese to be able to kill them?

James Corr:

No, they were the ones that attacked us, we were defending ourselves, we were not the aggressors, they were. And if we were to have left it up to them they would have taken control of the entire pacific. They had 7 been fighting in China long before they attacked Pearl Harbor, and then they would have landed on the west coast because they sure tried to at one time. And if we consider that if Germany had not attacked Russia and Germany might have have well defeated England, and if that were the case we would have had a war where Germany would have stopped whether England was enough, and consolidating all of Europe except Russia would have satisfied Adolph Hitler. Who knows, but the Japs were going to land on the west coast and where that went to after that lord only knows. So where two wars going it was truly a defensive move, I think, on the American's part and we were trying to stop a nation that had changed this thrust and was a hundred percent dedicated towards an aggressive posture to America, and I guess you have to read that as they were going to destroy us one way or the other.

Wellon Lee:

What was -- go ahead.

James Corr:

Well, it doesn't bother me at all. Shooting one of them.

Wellon Lee:

Why was--what was your base camp like; just of the food and sleeping conditions and that kind of stuff?

James Corr:

I think that food was the biggest strife, was what everybody had because what you wanted was what you got at home and that wasn't possible. And things like scrambled eggs, real eggs, grits, biscuits, fried chicken, vegetables, ice cream. Cakes that your mom made all that kind of stuff you left at home. And then I guess that we all got so used to dehydrated foods and then the can foods started arriving out then. I will never forget that we got a gallon can of peaches and when that amphebious boat came out of the water we stopped right there on the beach to see what he had gotten off of that support ship out there and found out he had a load of peaches. We took our knives out and cut the net and took three cases of peaches out and sat right there and eight until we had a belly ache. That was fun.

Wellon Lee:

What are some of your most memorable experiences?

James Corr:

I think the first one was the kind of young man that I met in the Marine Corps and some of the older ones. When I say older you know, in their mid 20s late 20s, early 30s and the senior officers were in their 40s and 50s. But the type of person that was in the air course I thought was rather exemplory. The older ones were college graduates and those of us who had not finished college were just college kids. But we all seemed to be above average in intelligence. By the time you had gone through flight school and gotten enough hours in the air to really know how to fly an airplane and be and aggressor and not a defendor, and how to attack the enemy and survive. By the time you did that you learned that often times it took two of you to be a survivor. I think that was the important thing that you learned, that you could trust someone else with your life. That was important because you knew that they were depending on you. So when you have that situation, each of you trying to protect the other that's pretty invincible in my book. I never lost a wing man.

Wellon Lee:

Did you have one man that I would fly with all the time?

James Corr:

We had five guys. Five different men made a division, and one guy is off and four flying and you rotate so you get a day off every fifth day, unless somebody is sick and then the rules always change and you might, for whatever reason, your division might fly every day. And you might fly two times a day or even three times a day because that was what was needed, and when you had to do it you did it and no body complained because everybody had to face the same thing. It was tough if you know some of our air planes were even damaged in flight or engaging the enemy or we had mechanical problems or somebody went to sleep and ground looped the plane or damaged it in some way and we were short of planes. That made it pretty tough because after a few days of two or three hops a day you are not as good as you aught to be so there were some substitutions. Pilots who, because of the shortage of planes, and then once the planes were returned and usually there were about 30 air planes per squadron, somewhere between 24 and 30. And so, if the lineman and the machanics could keep the planes flying. We flew every opportunity that the squadron was given. And after Okinawa was taken and we were making strikes on all of the islands north to Japan and we were going into Chiushu "(ph)", Honshu "(ph)", Japan, to make bombing and strafing and rocket runs, and we were trying to clean all of the shipping out of that entire area in the pacific. And quite frequently somebody would spot another, a single boat or a group of ships whether they were military or supply ships and let the word would be known and new guys would come up with bombs or rockets or what ever to try and sink the ships and we got pretty good at that. And so after a couple of months of after the war, I mean, after the island of Okinawa were secured we really started blasting everything north and including making runs on the island of Japan. And once that started the B29s started flying off of Tengrin and Gaum and they were dropping bombs, and we were dropping bombs, and the Army was coming in and dropping bombs. It was just a question of time that we assumed that we were going to bomb them enough to get ready for the invasion forces. In retrospect, I think the smartest decision made in the war was when President Truman made the decision to drop the atomic bombs, because I truly believe that we would have had casualties surely equal to the estimate. Because in the pacific and all of the islands that we took for the first time from the Japanese our casualties were generally in excess of what the forecast were. The only difference they can remember was they told us that they thought that the loss ratio of the planes and American pilots on the squadrons when we went out could run as high as 60 to 70 percent. It didn't run that high. In fact, I don't think in our squadron, I don't remember, that we lost probably eight or 10 guys over a long period of time. And some of those were accidents that occurred. They weren't by the Japanese.

Wellon Lee:

Grimley told me that you--before you went overseas you fell off of the wing of a plane. Was it your liver or kidney?

James Corr:

Yes, I damaged my right kidney. And what happened was I was stand on the wing of the plane waiting to get in it because the early course is instead of having a--they had looked like a 10 gauge shot gun shell that you put in the breech and the powder that exploded in that shell was enough to start the impeller turning and the impeller would turn the propeller and if you were lucky and had it primed right the engine would fire and keep running. Sometimes you have to fire two or three shells to get the engine started. So the skipper decided that it was best to let the plane captain start the engines. Your choice was you could either stand on the ground until they got to do plane running but when you did that it was tough crawling up on the side of that--of course you had to put your feet in little notches. It was easier to walk out on the wing and you walk straight out to the fucelage and get in. So I walked out on the end of the right wing and I had my back turned to the front of the plane, and another guy came in to park next to us that had been up on a flight and I never saw him coming but he came in too fast, but has wing tip hit me above my ankles and just took me off the end of the plane and I landed on my back across the parachute and the boat pack. And the point of that thing went in, hit me on my -- where my right kidney was, it didn't break the ribs but apparently--well, I went to the sick bay and I was passing blood for a couple of weeks. The doctors concluded that the injury was to the kidney, the kidney that was, what was bleeding, that was why I was passing blood. And we were going overseas and I wasn't about to let anything like that stop me from going. Soon as the bleeding stopped the doctor gave me I don't know if it was aspirin or something else or what they had, some sort of pain killers, so I took those.

Wellon Lee:

Did it bother you when you were overseas?

James Corr:

Occasionally it did. When I sat for four or five hours, not all of the time, but sometimes I might get extreme back aches and many occasions when that would happen I would start passing blood again. And anyway, when it was all said and done and the war was over I came back and when I got out of Pensacola, they wanted me to go to the hospital and see what was wrong with that kidney. I didn't want to do that I was afraid of what doctor I might get. Everybody was leaving so I opted to leave it alone and I went to my own physician in Selma "(ph)", and over a period of months, we figured what was wrong and we took the kidney out.

Wellon Lee:

Where were you -- you said when the war ended it really didn't end to y'all; where were you?

James Corr:

I was on Okinawa. We stayed on Okinawa and the F7F, the Tiger Cat, was a twin engine fighter came out, and unfortunately, got there after the war was over so they took my squadrons, course airs and the pilots that brought the F7 out; this was the first trip out in the pacific, they took our course airs and went to garrison duty in China, Kimchunchu and left the F7's with us. But my squadron VMF 312, and so we all transitioned to the F7, of course, the war is over but we all wanted to learn to fly this twin engine fighter because it really was quite a step up. And so, we stayed on Okinawa from -- until December and flew the F7. And there were other course 14 airs there and other squadrons, but, we--they also started a program started GCA, ground control aircraft, where the radar operators could bring you through the clouds to the run way by radar wheras before we had to use a different technique, it's called a radio beacon. There weren't many instances of that. You would just let down over the water until you got under the over cast and then came in to land because if you had a radio beacon the Japanese could follow the beason right to your field. But if you were like in the states they had beacons and they were what they called A and N Fields. They don't use that anymore, but you come in and identify the call and then you would go north or south to determine what side of the beacon you were on. And once you determine that, you would set up the instrument approach and you just descend down to the clouds and when you broke out you landed on the field. But then, when the GCA came out, that was really quite revolutionary and we had a lot of fun working with the radar controllers because they were trying to learn how to guide an air plane and we were aches to have something bettered than radio beacon.

Wellon Lee:

So you wanted to stay and learn more about air planes than go home?

James Corr:

No, we couldn't go home. I mean you couldn't go home until orders came to take you home and they took the senior most men first and everybody had a point system. You could count up your points and when they got to your number of points and all senior, people with more points and then you got to go home. Our bunch out there we didn't meet the quoutan until December. So we piddled around out in Okinawa until then. And really during that time, I guess, gave everybody an opportunity to sensibly think about their future. Am I going to stay in the Marine Corps; am I going to make a career of this? What is the Army or the Navy or Marine Corps going to be like after the war? And do I want to go finish college or if I was a college graduate what was my major? You know, where am I going to find a job and that sort of stuff. And for the guys that were not married, you know. If you didn't have a girlfriend, got to start all over. And for those of us that were married we wanted to go home and either get a job or go back to school and start a family and kind of start a normal life over.

Wellon Lee:

Was that a hard adjustment coming back home?

James Corr:

No, I think it was a great relief to everybody. I don't think the military is too restrictive that -- except that you're confined physically and geographically, but restrictions beyond that, other than you have to perform your duties...

[Conclusion of Interview]