Interview with Richard Sterling [November 2002]

Beth Sterling:

Today is Friday, November 29, 2002, and this is the beginning of an interview with Richard Sterling, at his home on 14 Breckenridge Drive in Hoquiam, Washington. Mr. Sterling is 76 years old, and was bom on November 4, 1926. My name is Beth Sterling, and I'll be the interviewer. Mr. Sterling is my grandfather, and he is my father's father. Mr. Sterling, could you state for the recording what war and what branch of the service you served in?

Richard Sterling:

World War II, the United States Army.

Beth Sterling:

And, what was your rank?

Richard Sterling:

Tech 5, I was a Corporal.

Beth Sterling:

And, where did you serve at?

Richard Sterling:

I served in the Philippines and Japan.

Beth Sterling:

Thank you. Where were you when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor?

Richard Sterling:

I was in a movie in Chicago; it was Sunday afternoon, and we were in a movie.

Beth Sterling:

How old were you when this happened?

Richard Sterling:

I was, I just turned 15.

Beth Sterling:

How long after Pearl Harbor was it until you enlisted?

Richard Sterling:

I enlisted in about September of 1944.

Beth Sterling:

And why did you decide to enlist?

Richard Sterling:

Because my father had been in the service, in World War I, and he had volunteered for the Marines. And I wanted to become a Marine, but I tried several places to enlist, and I had to take a test, one of the physical examinations, and one of the parts of the physical was a colorblind chart that I had to read, and I found out I was colorblind. And I was rejected by the Marines.

Beth Sterling:

Did you have to go to boot camp?

Richard Sterling:

I went to basic training in December 1944 from Chicago, to Fort Sheridan, where we were given our first shots and physical. Fort Sheridan is in Chicago. And we shipped to Camp Fannin, Texas, which is near Tyler, Texas. And I spent four months in Infantry Basic Training.

Beth Sterling:

What was that like?

Richard Sterling:

Oh, it was, I've got some pictures. It was all kinds of bad. Bad weather, good weather... The time passed pretty rapidly. And we got, I think it was 16 weeks of basic training.

Beth Sterling:

At this time, did you miss your home very much?

Richard Sterling:

I'd been away from home before. In 1943 when I was a junior in high school I'd spent a couple of months in Idaho, working for the Forest Service in a trail crew. And in 1944 I spent a couple of months, April through September I was in Idaho, on a trail crew for the Forest Service, and a lookout. A fire lookout. So I'd been away from home before.

Beth Sterling:

After Boot Camp, how long was it until you were deployed in where you were serving.

Richard Sterling:

In fact, we had further training at Fort Benning, Georgia, and I went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. And then I went from there to Port of Embarkation in California, San Pedro. And we were, we were stored while there was transportation, becoming available to ship us, to send us over, and we were shipped out of Fort Ord. And then Camp Anza, which would have been California. And we got on the ship at San Pedro in August of 1945.

Beth Sterling:

Where was your first assignment?

Richard Sterling:

Well, we were replacements for the war, which was going on. We were going to be replacements, and they were shipping us to Leyte in the Philippine Islands. From there we were being sent to various divisions that needed replacements in preparation for the invasion of Japan.

Beth Sterling:

Did you ever end up heading to Japan?

Richard Sterling:

The war ended when we were halfway across the Pacific at a base called Ulithi Atoll. And when we got to Layte, which was the destination of the ship, we stayed there about, probably ten days. And then we got on another ship, by way of Manila Harbor, and up to the South China Sea. About that time a typhoon hit, so we had to go around the typhoon, we didn't get into the typhoon. We ended up getting to Japan, about the, I think about the tenth of September.

Beth Sterling:

How did you feel when the [atomic] bombs had been Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Richard Sterling:

Well, we were, quite happy to not have to go into some kind of invasion, by way of landing craft, or whatever would have taken us into Japan. Everybody was just celebrating as much as you could celebrate, and was happy that we didn't have to invade Japan.

Beth Sterling:

What was your daily life like?

Richard Sterling:

Where?

Beth Sterling:

Going on the ship heading to Japan. (Interrupting)

Richard Sterling:

Aboard the ship, well there was, as I remember there was about 1600 of us on this C3, which was I believe a Liberty Ship, or something like that. And there was a cargo on it, and also all these Gl's, and we had two meals a day because there wasn't enough time, you didn't need any more to eat. I didn't enjoy sleeping below deck, so I managed to get my bed roll, or whatever you call it, sleeping bag or whatever we had in those days, and I slept on the hatch cover the whole way across the Pacific, rather than go below deck.

Beth Sterling:

Cool. What was the food like?

Richard Sterling:

Well, it was kind of nondescript. We had to take this adavrin tablets, which is a substitute for quinine, which is an antimalaria medicine. They started us out on that just about the time we left the states, and you had to have those before you ate. And they were, you swallowed them, and even then they were bitter, very bitter pill. But, there was really, we entertained ourselves by playing cards, and shooting the breeze, and standing in line of course for, for what they call dress call. And we were in a convoy which traveled very slowly. These ships had to go as slow as the last, the slowest ship in the convoy. So it took us 26 days, with one stopover to get from San Pedro to Layte, and I think it's, if I'm not mistaken, it's around 7000 miles

Beth Sterling:

How did you stay in touch with your family and friends?

Richard Sterling:

Well we had this thing called V-Mail, you could either a letter and write on the inside and fold it up. And, I don't think they charged us any postage, I think we just wrote our APO Number across where the stamp would be, and so we sent letters off. We didn't get much mail until we got a permanent station in Japan.

Beth Sterling:

Was life onboard the ship very stressful?

Richard Sterling:

No, it was good weather, I remember some of the guys, to wash their clothes, they would hang them out over the side of a ship with a rope, and just wash them in the, through the water. It was very calm in places, almost like a lake. You know the middle of the summer. It might have been dry when we left San Pedro, because it was August when the war ended, and it took us better part of a month.

Beth Sterling:

Did you ever do anything very funny or entertaining?

Richard Sterling:

Oh, I think once in a while somebody would have some movies, and we had movies on the, let's see, it would be up on the front end of the ship, ahead of the superstructure. Everybody couldn't go to the movies, but you could take turns, and we saw a couple of movies at night. And, they had screen kind of hooded, so theoretically there wouldn't be any light getting out. I imagine that most of the pictures that they had we'd seen already, but they were, you watched what you had.

Beth Sterling:

Where there ever any pranks?

Richard Sterling:

No, no you just, there were a lot of guys below deck who where gambling. You know, they had card games going perpetually. And I remember one fellow; I remember they dragged him out about the time we got to Layte. He'd been below deck all the time. He was so sick; they didn't want him to come out on deck. And he was, the rest of us were all sunburned or suntanned from being out in that sun all the time, and he was almost as white as a sheet. We had to take saltwater showers, of course. And, they had this, what they called saltwater soap, which was just next to worthless. If you've ever been in saltwater, you know what it feels like when you get through rinsing in saltwater.

Beth Sterling:

Just out of curiosity, was gambling sanctioned by the Army, or was it just one of those things that went on behind the scenes?

Richard Sterling:

Oh, it was, as far as gambling, nobody had that great of amount of money. It was just that money wasn't worth anything where you were going, and the theory was you couldn't you know, you just lived from one paycheck to another. We got, I think at that time it was about 50 dollars a month less deductions that they took out. And, a lot of us had money sent home. So, there was nothing to do with it. There was a PX; I think it was open a little bit. You could buy occasional candy bars, and things like that. From the PX that was open, but you had to stand in another line into it. So, they fed enough, so we were in good shape when we got there. Nobody starved to death.

Beth Sterling:

That's good. On your average day on the ship, what were your duties like?

Richard Sterling:

No duties. Really, there was nothing to do.

Beth Sterling:

That must have been really nice.

Richard Sterling:

Just, shoot the breeze with each other, and the crew. Once in a while some of the crew would be around from the ship. And, everybody got along just fine.

Beth Sterling:

That's good. Did you make any really good friends?

Richard Sterling:

Oh, I met some people on the ship that I was with; we were transferred together, and were together about a year. We were in different outfits we were in, but we got scattered around. Most people, with that many people, 1600 people, why, you kind of, some of them, either you're from the same town, or you've got some similar interest with. You get to talking just about where you lived, and what you did, and what your folks where doing and so forth. And something about where you lived. There were people from everywhere in the country in that ship.

Beth Sterling:

Did you happen bring any pictures back at all?

Richard Sterling:

I don't know. I don't have any pictures from on the ship. Because I don't think, I don't think I have any pictures from the time, I don't think we were allowed to take cameras along. I didn't get a camera until I got to Japan. I have some pictures that I took in Japan, because there were, there were lots of cameras available in Japan.

Beth Sterling:

Is there anything at all that stood out to you from your days on the ship?

Richard Sterling:

Not really. It was just kind of a long, slow, boring, kind of tedious you know. Time just kind of stood still.

Beth Sterling:

Once you got to Japan, what did you do when you were there?

Richard Sterling:

Well, the first thing we did was help clean out the prisoner-of-war camp at Zama, Camp Zama, which was 'Zama,' Z-A-M-A, which was, I was told was like the West Point of Japan. It was an old military installation, and they'd had prisoners-of-war, British Empire prisoners-of-war there. And we cleaned up the camp, which the Japanese had just abandoned, and they took the prisoners-of-war out to the hospital ships. They evacuated by air, also. So that they could get hospitalization. That was the first thing we did, we cleaned up the camp.

Beth Sterling:

And, what did you do after that?

Richard Sterling:

Well, I was transferred with a group to the 27th Infantry Division, which was in Niigata, Japan. And that was on the northwest coast of the little island Honshu, and their duties over there were to occupy that part of Japan. And this port was heavily mined prior to the end of the war, so there was no way ships could get in so all the equipment and everything had to come by rail up to Niigata on the Japanese railway. They were already there, and we were transferred there about, probably some time in September, late September of 1945. And, what I seem to remember about Camp Zama- we were not allowed to go into, have our liberty, to go into Yokohama, or Tokyo, because it was in bad shape because of bombing. And I have a map somewhere, where it was a topog [topographic] map, and it was on the bulletin board, and when we left Camp Zama, why I ended up with this topog map that shows a line around Tokyo that says Troops will not cross this line.' And I don't know where this map is, though I probably could look it up. I might dig it up; it's possible I still have it around here somewhere.

Beth Sterling:

After camp Zama, did you then head back to the states?

Richard Sterling:

No, we went to, I said we went to Niigata, I was transferred in; I was just a replacement then. And, I was unattached while we were cleaning up Camp Zama, but we were attached to the 27th Infantry Division and when we got there, I was stationed with the 102nd Combat Engineer Company. It was the 102nd Engineers.

Beth Sterling:

I got my names slightly confused. But then, how's that N-word said again?

Richard Sterling:

Niigata.

Beth Sterling:

Niigata.

Richard Sterling:

Niigata. N-l-l-G-A-T-A. Niigata.

Beth Sterling:

After Niigata, where did you after that?

Richard Sterling:

Well, we were there for about two months, and the troops that were in Japan were more than they need for occupations. They didn't have any problems with the population, or any need for all the troops that they sent there, so they deactivated the 27th Infantry Division, or sent them home, and since I didn't have enough points to go home, I was transferred back toward Tokyo, to the 43rd Engineer Construction Battalion, at Irimagawa, which is north and west of Tokyo, and there was an air force base there that the Japanese had built, and it became an Air Force, an Army Air Force then. An Army Air Force Base and it was called Johnson Field. And one of the jobs they had was to get the landing strip in shape. And, we were there, I was with the 43rd there from sometime in October, winter, maybe it was November, to about, oh, probably about April. And we were working on a project there, and it was the 5th Station Hospital. I guess the 5th Air Force was the Air Force Organization that was in Japan. And this was the 5th Station Hospital. It was a prefab [prefabricated], metal building type of construction. That was the work that they gave us to keep us busy, and I've got some pictures of these prefab buildings. We had to put them together just like you would, we'd call them Erector Sets, you know, Tinkertoys, and everything came with a set of plans, and the parts came, and the parts were all numbered, and it went up just really easy. It had steel framing, and then steel walls, and insulation, all the necessary materials. There were enough people in the engineer battalion that people were carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and we got it put together, so they made a hospital out of it.

Beth Sterling:

Where did you go after that?

Richard Sterling:

We were transferred then to a place called Tachikawa, and there was another Japanese Air Force Base there, and all the bases had pretty flimsy surfacing, because most of them were just designed for fighter air craft. You know, they were defensive air craft. And they wanted to build these strips up so they could land transports and other two-engine, multi-engine crafts. So we were in the process there for the rest of the time I was in Japan. Till September, I worked rebuilding, resurfacing and improving the strip there, which is about a mile long, I think in Tachikawa. We had to put gravel on it mainly. And then, I don't think we paved that surface at Tachikawa, but then, about the time I left Japan, they were moving into a place called Yakota, they were going to pave, they were actually in the process of paving a strip there for four-engine bombers. I stayed in Japan until Japan until September. Another thing we built when we were in Japan was a hydroponics farm, which is where you just have, like greenhouses, with gravel, with nutrients, gravel, sand, and a mixture of nutrients that they irrigate these beds with, and they can grow a number of vegetables for use by the Army over there, because the Japanese grew everything with their method where they used human waste for fertilizer. And they didn't want us to be eating any of that because of the health problems. So, if you look up the word 'hydroponics,' why, it's kind of an experimental deal. Other than that, we wouldn't get anything but refrigerated food or canned food, or freeze-dried food. This is before they had frozen food like we know today. So, the biggest problem in Japan was, and the thing I remember most about was about the food, about how bad it was to begin with, and how it slowly got a little bit better. And they we learned to eat a little bit of Japanese food.

Beth Sterling:

When you were in Japan, what was daily life like there?

Richard Sterling:

What was life like in Japan?

Beth Sterling:

Uh-hmm.

Richard Sterling:

Well, a lot of places around Tokyo were severely bombed, but there were other places that they hadn't bombed of course, even in Tokyo there were large areas that they spared, like part of the downtown, and the Emperor's Palace. All the area around it, and, there were a lot of non-military targets in a big city like Tokyo, so they didn't, they didn't... There were parts of it that was just utterly flattened. Burned, they had been burned seriously by fire-bomb attacks. And, I've got pictures of that, a lot of pictures took in Tokyo. But other places, they had electric trains running through most of Japan. We were able to get around, visit different parts of Tokyo and Yokohama. And as time went on, more of it got repaired. The people were living on pretty meager rations, but their diet of rice, and fish and vegetables, they were able to survive. They weren't deprived of things that we normally eat here. They ate a lot of fish, and were able to get those right out of the local waters.

Beth Sterling:

So, when did you finally head back to the states?

Richard Sterling:

I was in Japan one year and one day. I came back in September, and where it took 26 days to come across, I think we made it back to San Francisco from Yokohama in about 14 days.

Beth Sterling:

Where you very eager to get back home?

Richard Sterling:

Oh, it was, it was a wonderful feeling coming in under the Golden Gate Bridge. It was a big occasion. We all jumped up and down, screamed our heads off...

Beth Sterling:

After you got back to San Francisco, where did you go to after that?

Richard Sterling:

Well, I had to go back to... I was still in the service. I had to go back to Ft. Sheridan, which is where I was inducted, and they gave us a physical again, and processed us. It took about, oh, maybe a week. When you came back from a foreign country in those days, they wanted to make sure that you didn't have some sort of contagious sickness. So you were kind of quarantined, and after you had you physical, they processed your papers and you got a temporary discharge certificate, and eventually you got your discharge certificate in the mail. I think I got that in, I think that was, oh about a month or two later, I got papers in the mail. In October, I think.

Beth Sterling:

Where did you head to after that?

Richard Sterling:

Well, I got out of the army just in time I could start school. It so happened there were so many Gl's coming out of the army and the navy discharge from the service that they opened up a branch of the University of Illinois in Chicago, and it started about a month later than school normally starts, so I was able to start college in October of 1946.

Beth Sterling:

What did you do in college?

Richard Sterling:

Well, I had for the forest service when I was in high school, and before I went in the service, I wanted to go to forestry school. I started a basic, freshman curriculum for trying to get into forestry school and I wrote applications to a number of forestry schools, and eventually was accepted at Washington State College.

Beth Sterling:

How do you think that being in the army changed your life?

Richard Sterling:

Well, there was travel, meeting a lot of people that you find out about how the other half lives. Just a lot of camaraderie with the people your own age, and some of them a little older than you, that were, some of the people that had been in the service for four or five years that were like old men to some of us kids.

Beth Sterling:

Do you have anything else to add?

Richard Sterling:

Well, not really. I still think about the service, and once in a while I read about some of these organizations that either were in the service when I was, or I know a lot of people in the Veterans of Foreign Wars Post here. We talk about some of the places we've been, and some of the people we've met, and so forth.

Beth Sterling:

Did you yourself join any veteran's organizations?

Richard Sterling:

Yeah, I'm a member of the VFW.

Beth Sterling:

I didn't know that.

Richard Sterling:

Yeah, good.

Beth Sterling:

And, anything else?

Richard Sterling:

Not much. Just like I told your brother Bob, I said that being in the service was being a member of the biggest club in the world.

Beth Sterling:

I guess that just about this up. Thank you very very much for your time, Grandpa.

Richard Sterling:

Thank you, you're very welcome.