Dee Taylor Transcript

Sarah- 0:04- Alright, Please start by stating your name and where you are from.

Hersey- 0:08 - Now or then?

Sarah- 0:09 - Then.

Heresy- 0:09 - Now?

Sarah- 0:10 - Then.

Heresy- 0:13 - Then. Uh, My name is Hersey D. Tailor and I'm from Province Town MA.

Sarah- 0:21 - Alright, Um... Were you drafted or did you enlist in the military?

Hersey- 0:24 - I enlisted.

Sarah- 0:26 - Alright.

Hersey- 0:28 - Do you want to know why I enlisted?

Sarah/Alyssa- 0:28 - Yeah.

Hersey- 0:30 - Because I wanted to have 3 square meals a day and a place where I could lay my head at night. So I enlisted in the Navy.

Sarah- 0:38 - What advise would you give your grandson if he wants to join the service? If you had a grandson, I don't know if you do.

Hersey- 0:47 - I would suggest that he, uh, join either the Navy or the Coast Guard.

Sarah- 0:56 - Tell us about your journey into the Army.

Hersey- 1:00 - About what?

Sarah- 1:01 - Your journey into the Army... Like first training and...

Hersey- 1:06 - Oh, Well, My birthday falls on the month of May. And back at that time the minute you turned 18 you were drafted. And I didn't want to become drafted. So I enlisted in the navy. Now, I was not able to graduate with my class or take part in the graduation ceremony. Because, on the 16th of May, just before the 20th of May, which is my birthday... I enlisted in the Navy in Boston MA.

(Pause) I can take you from there to boot camp?

Alyssa- 1:08 - Alright

Sarah- 1:51 - Alright, yeah.

Hersey- 1:52 - Alright, Umm, Not being able to graduate with my class I was going to school up in NH. Uh, I went to the Fargo building in Boston. Then I left for Samson and the Navy.To a boot camp training station in NY where I received my boot training. They call it boot camp.

Sarah- 2:15 - Alright, what was your role in the war?

Hersey- 2:18 - What was the who?

Alyssa- 2:20 - The role. Like what did you do in the war?

Hersey- 2:22 - Well I did several things. Of course at boot camp, In order to be a Seaman 1st class you have to become a seaman second class, then you have to become a sea man third class. And I was supposed to go to radio school in Washington DC. But uh, my name came up and I was shipped out to Fleet City, California, from which I left on an amphibious draft for the island of Saipan.

Sarah- 2:54 - What was that like?

Hersey- 2:56 - Uh, what was what like?

Alyssa- 2:58 - Saipan.

Hersey- 2:59 - Well in Saipan, Uh, there were some Jap... Japanese in the hills. And, our first night on shore we were going to be assigned. Of course, the war was over then, but the Japanese were still around. So they put us in a tent. And um, they told us not to go outside at all at night. Because what the Japs would do is they would come down at night and try to raid the, the food and things like that so that they could get some things. And umm, uh, I was awakened... in the middle of the night by a fellow right, right in the cot next to me. And I said "What are you doing?" and he said "I've got to go to the bathroom." And I said "But you can't go out, he said not to go out." And he said "But I have to go out." Well I rolled over. And the next thing I knew, I heard a commotion outside. And when I went out there there was the fellow who was in the cot next to me, and he had his neck cut all the way across. And it was a Jap who had come down. And I've always thought about the situation where if gone out with him... Or if I had stopped him... Or maybe that could have been me.

4:26 - And umm, the next day I was assigned, we had the line up and they were assigning us to different ships. And uh, I went up to the office and they said "What have you got to offer?" Ha. I says, "*Laughing* What you see, is what you get." I was supposed to go to a radio school in Washington. Well, he says "Alright. You please report to the Cascade, the AD16. Which is the repair ship. And I went aboard the destroyer repair ship, as a Sea man first class. Striking to be a third class radio man.

Alyssa- 5:00 - What does a radio man do?

Hersey- 5:02 - A radio man at that time, they had what they call "Mikenan" A communication system, to use a microphone like a radio. And we also had code. But well, here I am. Couldn't type, didn't know the code. Or anything like that. So I would go and watch, And when I was on watch, I would be the low man on the totem pole so it was my job to make sure the coffee was all ready and always full, and that the cream and the canned milk and like that... I was more or less the butler for everyone else on that watch. But, besides I had to sit down, and every message that came over the radio and I had to type who it was from, who it was to, and what the message was. And here I am, all like that, "hey wheres the coffee?!" and I had to stop and go and get the coffee. So uh, when I got through, my watch I then had four hours of class. And learning the code and learning how the radio and everything like that operated. And uh, I... Stayed on them uhhhh, on the Cascade, all the way up to umm, to the sea of Japan. And that's where we had what they call pig boat duty. And we were the first American ship to go through the sea of Japan. And this is why they made us do this pig boat duty, because we got a wooden boat, with arms on it like that, that extend out like that-

Sarah/Alyssa- 6:43 - Yeah.

Hersey- 6:44 - Uh, on those arms there were balls. Like hooks like. And we would go through the water and try to stir up any, umm, uh, bombs, or, or, see, they mined all those waters. And a mine when a ship would come up through would attack the boat, then it would blow up. So our job was to go through and uncover something like that and you'd get this rifle, and you'd shoot them, so they would explode. And I did that. And I stayed in the Cascade up until I came off the Mid- Watch one night. And a fellow of the name of Jackson, from New Orleans, and myself, we went up in our bunks, And we uh, were ready to go to sleep and the Chief radio man came down and he says, "Tailor and Jackson, you can pack your bags and report to the quarter deck. Well, we didn't know what to think. Then we got up there and they were starting to form the Mander cruise division one. And they- Why they picked us, I don't know. We had to report to the Chicago. And um, with the flag... We left the Cascade. And two days after we left the Cascade, the Cascade received a message of "Proceed to Philadelphia navy" by Berlin harbor and the Panama Canal. Well Jackson and I were fit to be tied, because we just left and were expecting to come home together.

8:36- And then they transferred the flag from Chicago to the Columbus. Which is a boat that is a heavy cruiser. And I stayed with the, the um, with the um, Columbus until I had enough points to come home. And so I came home and so I came home on a- and another fellow and I, we worked our way back. We didn't want to have to sleep down, in where everyone else was. So we went up to the captain of the ship and we wanted to know if- We agreed to publish a news paper. Because you see, we had contact with the radios and all. And we had the radio to like San Francisco. And if we did that, could we sleep up there and be as if we were actually the ships company. He said Yes. So, we worked our way back. And we got back into San Diego. And then I came back on a group trian to Boston. And at the Cargo building, in Boston, now the only thing I've missed telling you here was that finishing boot camp in Samson we went out on a troop train. And we called them Cattle Carts, because thats pretty much what they were. And you couldn't tell anyone where you were going. So someone thought up a very bright idea, of bringing these penny postcards; and we'd write a message on the postcards and address it. We went through the various freight yards, we had these carts that workers were on, and asked them to mail them.And this is how the folks knew where we were.

Sarah- 10:33 - Yeah, that's like how you talked to your family?

Hersey- 10:35 - Yeah. And because it was three months before anything, I received anything from home. Even though they mailed it. Because I was moving around. Now that's a thumb nail sketch. I was on the Cascade in a Japanese City called Wakanoma.That is where I went over to Hiroshima with three other fellows and we came back, we shouldn't have gone over there. But we did. It gave me a chance to see a lot of Japan- Kori, Osaka, Wakyama, and Yokosuka. Yokosuka was there big naval base, Yokosuka was the big city it was built into a mountain. In other words the dug a hole. You had the whole city, stores and schools... Hospitals, restaurants, in the mountains. So if we had ever tried to attack that, we would have lost a lot of men. So that and I got a chance to ride the Japanese train, talk about a fast train- going over 100 mph.

12:12- And I came to realize that Japanese women had not really realized their independence. And with our occupation over there, which I was part of the occupational force. We saw the sociological change start to take place. Because they saw the American take place. How we treated women. And the Japanese kinda fell into that as well. But you have to realize, at that time they were completely rebuilding it because of our planes. It's what they call a fire bar. They drop bombs, and what they do when they explode they shoot fire and destroy Tokyo. It was timber, so it burned.

Alyssa- 13:05 - Did you see that?

Hersey- 13:06 - Well, I saw it after. It was devastating, it really was. And the Japanese people both were I don't know exactly how to word this, but they were watching us... They mimicked us. And they saw how we did things. Now they had a saying going on at that time, and I'm not casting any discouraging remarks about the Chinese but they compared the Chinese to the Japanese. You can tell the Japanese and show them something and a week later they'll forget it. You do the same thing to the Japanese, they'll come back a week later and improve it. Very, very clever. And smart people. I didn't mean to talk so long.

Sarah- 14:18 - Like what did you do in your spare time?

Hersey- 14:21 - What did I do in my spare time? Well, I never smoked or I never drank... Until I got in the service. Now, this is a round-a-bout way of answering your question. On the Cascade they would send us on liberty parties, well they usually had a liberty party come to the islands out there. They weren't the... They weren't inhabited at all. In other words, if we went on the island, that was it. So, there was no water or anything. So to get the water, they would send out cases of beer. So, that's the first time I had anything to drink. And being in the radio shack, you sit there with a type writer- everyone was smoking. So I started smoking. It was a habit. What did I do in my spare time? Well, we had a baseball- Softball team. That when we went on one of these islands for recreation, we would play sports or something like that. But, I spent a good year of my spare time in class trying to learn to be a radio man. So, you have a watch of 4 hours on and 4 hours off. And my 4 hours off, I was supposed to be in class. So, until I got into the occupational forces, of Japan... I didn't do too much.