ARIZONA STORIES: WWII
AN EIGHT/KAET PRODUCTION
SEPTEMBER 20 AT 7 PM
EIGHT/KAET-TV

In Their Own Words

1. John Taylor
John Taylor and his wife ran a grocery store in Flagstaff.
“We went to Flagstaff in 1939 and it was a busy little town, but kind of sleepy too. It depended mostly on lumber; logging operations for sustenance besides tourists. But when the war broke out things changed literally overnight. The railroads began to run innumerable trains. They pulled old stock out of mothballs and brought in old engineers and ran almost non-stop. A very noisy situation. They established Bellemont, which is a few miles west of Flagstaff. It was an ordinance depot and that was a huge undertaking so they brought in lots of people for construction. And the place blossomed overnight.”

2. Corporal Harold Bergbower
U.S. Army Air Corps
30 years of active duty
Harold Bergbower, Corporal, US Army Air Corps, spent 3 years, 3 months, and 15 days in various Japanese prisoner of war camps
“From day to day, you didn’t know if you were going to live throughout the day. We didn’t understand their orders; they didn’t understand our responses. They took all of our freedom away from us, and it was, well, you had no life really. You just lived from day to day and if it wasn’t for your buddies at times, why you’d never make it. At one time I got down to 78 pounds. If I had to use one word to describe my experiences, I’d have to use the word hell, but that doesn’t even begin to describe it. Hell is a pretty nice place compared to being in a Japanese prison camp.”


3. Radioman 3rd Class Doris Marlowe
U.S. Navy WAVES
1943 - 1945
Doris Marlowe was one of 80,000 women who served in the Navy WAVES - Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service.
“You know every once in a while, those of us who were married before we went into the service had a husband who was stationed someplace else. Mine was stationed in Australia. In the Navy. Well, we owed quite a bit of money back home and he wrote me one day and he says “You know, I want those bills paid, I don’t care how you do it. You can stand on a street corner if you want to.” And you don’t tell that to an Irish-German-Bohemian, believe me. That flag went up. I wrote him a letter and said “Mr. Marlowe, I will give you 30 days to return an answer. Unless then, I shall join the United States Navy.” Well, 30 days went by and no letter. So I went down and I raised my hand and I said “I do.” 31 days, I get a letter that says “Don’t you dare!” Well, needless to say the letter that went back to him that said “Dear Mr. Marlowe, I am no longer your personal property. I am now the property of the United States Navy. Go to hell!”

4. Captain Jack Nemerov (1)
U.S. Army
Jack Nemerov landed on Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944…D-Day
“Now each one of us going in had a heavy pack on our back because we had to carry an extra three-day supply of ammunition in our pack and an extra three-day supply of food—K rations. And we were all wearing our winter combat clothes because it was cold and wet and our winter combat clothes were wool, primarily. So when we hit the water our clothes would soak up another 8, 9, 10, 12 pounds of water. With our heavy packs and our armaments, conceivably each one of us weighed over 200 pounds in dead weight. In the first 15 minutes, we had 5000 casualties. Now, this is not shown; most of those casualties drown. They weren’t hit, they just drown.”

5. Private First Class Bob Chastain  (1)
U. S. Marine Corps
1943-1945
Marine Raider Bob Chastain fought on the islands of Bougainville, Emaru, Guam, and Okinawa, and was awarded two Purple Hearts.
“I was nineteen and it was an experience to me, I mean I was brought up in a Christian home and believed in the Ten Commandments and ‘thou shalt not kill.’ I used to hunt as a kid in Arizona; quail and deer, and I know the first time I hunted a deer and saw a beautiful buck out there I just, you know, I just froze up to shoot him and it struck me that night on Bougainville--there’s an enemy soldier, he has a uniform and he’s shootin’ at me and you’re surprised you know? Why is he doing this? But if a Marine stood back and hesitated to shoot too much, if you’ve got close quarters, it was the end of it. So that was something to me. Young 18, 19, 20 year old kids out there killing each other and it was something that…it was hard for me to get used to.”

6. Captain Jack Nemerov (2)
U.S. Army
On May 1, 1945 Jack Nemerov was among the first Americans to enter Dachau Concentration Camp.
“When we came in, they gave us a kind of a strange look because they were used to the idea of men coming in wearing different colored uniforms, come in, shoot some of them, and then leave because the Nazis had developed killing squads. Some of the killing squads wore black uniforms, some wore grey-green uniforms, some wore brown uniforms. We came in wearing khaki uniforms, so they figured well, another killing squad, another uniform. And they just kept moving around. So I walked up to a couple of them moving around and I stopped them like this, and I spoke to them in Jewish. And I said “I’m Jewish, and we’re Americans.” And they all started to gather around us, and apparently they didn’t believe that we were real because they reached out to feel the fabric of our uniforms and when they felt that the fabric was real they grabbed us by our arms and wouldn’t let go. They just hung on, and where some of them found enough moisture in their bodies to cry…but they cried. We did too.”

7. First Lieutenant Tom Wallace
U.S. Army Air Corps
In January of 1944 Tom Wallace was part of a squadron flying brand new B-24 airplanes from Hawaii to Guam. Along the way they made a stop on the island of Kwajalein.
“Kwajalein was one of the islands that was not bypassed by the Marine forces as they worked their way up toward Japan. And of course as usual, with any Marine landing on islands in the Pacific, there was a naval bombardment. And the bombardment just about leveled everything on the island. The only thing that wasn’t leveled was a palm tree. They’d bring us in and then they would turn the plane, that is we would turn the plane but they would direct the turning of the plane. You’ve seen them do it with airliners using handmotions. And so this guy directing us directed us to swing around and our wing tip hit that palm tree and wrecked the wing tip. The palm tree was later cut down I believe, but (laughs) they finally finished the job.”

8. First Lieutenant Tom Wallace
U.S. Army Air Corps
In February 1945 B-24 Pilot Tom Wallace flew a mission over a little known island named Iwo Jima.
“On the day the Marines landed on Iwo Jima we flew the beach with our B-24s that dropped 100 pound bombs just as fast as we could drop ‘em, making holes in the beach for foxholes, for those Marines when they landed. I never heard whether or not those foxholes were of any use to those Marines, but I can imagine they were. And I’ve talked to Marines since that told me ‘Oh yeah, if there was a hole on that beach, we could use it.’ Because it was a pretty rough landing.”

 

9. Private First Class Bob Chastain  (2)
U. S. Marine Corps
1943-1945
After two and a half years of fighting Bob Chastain was among the first Marines to set foot in Japan just prior to the formal surrender on September 2, 1945.
“We were the first troops to land at Yokosuka Naval Base and that’s where the two-man submarines were; that’s where they were training those people. And we stopped at a little island out in the bay and they had big naval guns there and we pulled the hatches back and took the slick chambers and knocked ‘em off and then the Navy ships and Douglas MacArthur came in a few days later and we went to the barracks at Yokosuka. And I tell you that Navy base had so many holes from aerial strafing that you couldn’t believe it. But for the first time in two and a half years we had a bunk and a place to sleep and the Japanese had two-man bunks and I thought, Boy I’ve got a place to sleep. Well I got a bottom bunk and I laid down on it and my feet hung over the end about that far.”