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Transcription

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[T. Lofton] All right. Today is October 31, 2008.
It's Halloween.
This is Tommy Lofton. I'm here in Vicksburg.
If you would, sir, can you give me your name for the camera?
[G. Bacon] Giles Bacon. >>[T. Lofton] Yes, sir.
Can you tell me what unit you were with during the war?
[G. Bacon] I was an MP on Ford Island,
which is a Naval air station in Pearl Harbor.
[T. Lofton] What rank were you? >>Sergeant.
[T. Lofton] Okay.
[G. Bacon] Well, I wasn't a sergeant when it broke out.
I was corporal when it broke out,
but I made sergeant right after that.
[T. Lofton] I want to start—can you tell me a little bit about
where you were born and where you grew up?
[G. Bacon] I was born in Thompson, Iowa,
on April 1, 1920.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me a little bit about what it was
like to grow up there and what your family was like?
[G. Bacon] My folks lived on a farm.
Then we went through the Depression
and kind of lost everything
like millions of other people.
It got
The Depression in the '30s there.
Then we moved helter skelter all over
to try to find work and everything.
And then I went out on my own after my mother died.
I think I went on my own when I was 12, 13 years old.
The folks I went to live with,
they're just like my adoptive parents.
I was there until—we see what was happening in the world then.
I talked to a few guys.
I had a cousin that was in World War I.
He says get in there early where you get some rank,
and that's what I did. That's what I did.
I chose the Marine Corps. It was hard.
But
you come out knowing more than you did when you went in it.
Of course, I'm a little bit partial to the Marine Corps,
but I'll tell you one thing right now.
I have nothing but respect for the Navy Corpsmen.
Of course, the Navy Corpsmen they are assigned
to a Marine detachment, but I had nothing but respect for them.
If it hadn't been for them, there are a lot of guys
that wouldn't be here today.
And I figured I'm included as one of them
that way.
But there are some—
some things I won't talk about.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me why join the Marine Corps?
[G. Bacon] Well, Just like I say, the Depression was on.
There was nothing like—we could see it was coming,
and it was hard going out on the farm.
If it hadn't of been for livestock and stuff like that,
that's what kept us going.
Of course, the banks wouldn't—
they wouldn't gain nothing by foreclosing and everything,
but we come out. We finally come out on top
and all the same.
But I joined the Marine Corps,
took my training in San Diego, California.
[T. Lofton] When did you join? Do you remember the date?
[G. Bacon] January 17, 1939.
Serial number 280947.
[T. Lofton] Bet you'll never forget that.
No.
In fact, I've been asked quite a few times,
being involved with the VA, that number.
There's a lot of surprise that I can snap it off right away
like that.
[T. Lofton] What was it like being in the Marine Corps
in 1939?
[G. Bacon] Like any other kid. Scared to death.
Wonder what are you going to get into.
Of course, they took a couple of platoons
and see what was the rush.
I think it was anticipating this way back then
and see how fast they could put your boot training—
put you through.
They put us through just under 30 days.
But boot camp,
you're training is in there to learn respect,
take orders, and—
You take your training—
you get your training after you leave boot camp.
But—
you also got to look at from the day you leave boot camp
it's constant training all the time,
irregardless of where you're at.
But I'm proud to serve there.
But I look at it this way,
the Army, the Navy, and all, we had to have them all.
We have to have them all right now.
They're all of them over there.
I hope they all come back.
[T. Lofton] Where did you go from San Diego
after your boot camp?
[G. Bacon] My first camp was to the—transferred up to the
Naval prison in Miramar, California.
It's a Navy yard up there.
They got a small military prison there.
Went up there and done duty up there.
Of course, I was scared to death the first night.
The first day I was out on assignment as a prison chaser.
Working up there in the Navy yard,
and you'd be out there—
Well—
They didn't work right down in the Navy yard.
They worked up around in the old areas like
all your fields, gardens, like that.
They had a big dairy there too.
They had
the prisoners, they did a lot of garden work
and stuff like that.
I was assigned.
It was a short-time prison.
I think about a year about most of them.
All of the rest of them went to Quantico, Virginia.
That is the big slammer.
[T. Lofton] What were your daily duties there?
What kind of things were you doing?
[G. Bacon] Well, military police duty just like I say.
Prison chaser.
Right back in there just like that
when you do your police work just like you got your patrol duties
and everything just like a policeman
within the city like here.
We sit up there. There was a big guard unit.
It took care of the whole Navy yard, but
you was—I was assigned over to the prison over there,
but I did duty in both
down in the Navy yard like that.
See, there are ships being built there too.
I think while I was there the
USS Curtiss and the USS Wright were built there
at that time.
I remember the launching of those.
Of course, you take one of those places like that,
it goes 26 hours a day instead of 24.
Back then that's the way they built ships.
It took a little bit longer.
With the techniques and everything that they got now,
they could assemble one right now.
Look at some of our big aircraft carriers right now.
It's an airfield in itself.
You get like on the old Enterprise.
You get up on the bridge and look down there.
That's not a very big place for a plane to be coming in
at about 100 and some mile an hour
to land on.
Those boys had to know what they were doing
or they would've been off in the creek.
[T. Lofton] How long were you there? >>Pardon?
[T. Lofton] How long were you there?
I was there probably about five months,
five or six months.
Where in the hell did I go?
Oh, I went to the East Coast.
I was in Quantico. Then I left there.
Oh, yeah. That's when I got transferred to China.
And I was over there for 18 months.
I was credited with 18 months.
That was back then.
If you'd done duty outside the continental limits
of the United States, you was credit time and a half.
I spent 1 year over there,
but I was credited for 18 month
up there because
I was stationed up at the embassy.
Whatever country you're in if you got an embassy,
you're always going to find a detachment of Marines.
That's what the old saying is,
"The sun never sets on the United States Marine Corps."
All of them count with that.
A lot of diplomatic work and everything like that.
You still get a certain amount of training.
You don't forget what—they don't give you a chance
because you never know when anything is going to happen
at one of those embassies.
Some nut could come in.
Just like—well, there was a good example of it.
It was President Reagan down on Grenada down there.
Some nut went in around through there
to try to get to all those students.
It didn't take him long to quell that.
Starting of this conflict we have here now—
Beirut over there where all those boys were killed that day
in the bombing of the barracks.
Let's forget it.
[T. Lafton] Where in China were you mostly?
[G. Bacon] Peking.
That's the capital of China.
That's where the embassy was.
[T. Lafton] Need a break for a second?
That is orange juice in case the camera was on.
[T. Lofton] I know sir.
Can you tell me a little bit about
what it was like working in an embassy at that time?
[G. Bacon] Well,
you took your duties you were assigned to.
You performed guard duties like as protection of the embassy.
Like I say, some of these kooks we got running around here now.
You've always had them
ever since the Revolutionary War like that.
You were at the command
of the guy that was in charge,
the ambassador that was over there.
You were carrying out the orders that he gets
from his headquarters which is
from the U.S. capitol.
It will start there more or less from the president
because he is commander in chief.
It was interesting.
You got to see a lot of nice territory.
A lot of people—you don't really realize how big China is.
China is a big country.
Once a month you would catch duty
on the mail train.
It would run from Peking to Shanghai.
It took three days to make the round trip.
That's how big it was.
Just like the old stage coach day, you rode shotgun
on the mail train.
A lot of our duties was there,
and I left there—
when the hell did I leave there?
The very first part of 1941.
Stopped off at Guam,
and then I landed into Pearl Harbor.
I was in Pearl Harbor there for quite a while.
At the Marine barracks at the Navy yard
is where I went.
But Ford Island, prior to that, the Army had had it.
They had big guns that they placed out there on it.
The Navy took it over, and that's where they made
the air station out of there on Ford Island.
As we stopped and looked now,
they just wasn't thinking
giving them the Navy yard
because man they had you.
Just like shooting ducks just like the morning of that raid.
They came in from the east,
bright sun like we have around here.
You was over here looking over there,
and they were coming right down across the channel.
How far could you see looking into the sun? Not very far.
That there— and then you take
The Air Corps—the Air Corps at that time
was not the United States Air Force like we have now.
It was the U.S. Army Air Corps.
That was Hickam Field.
That was just outside of the main gate at Pearl Harbor—
Hickam Field was.
What did they do with all their planes?
Like they did the battlewagons. They were all lined up.
Instead of staggering them, they lined them all up.
The Navy did the same thing
because we had it right there on Ford Island.
Of course, right over in the back of the brig
where a lot of the—it was amphib.
These planes would land in the water right there.
They had them lined up along with
some of the fighter planes,
the dive bombers, torpedo planes.
They raised havoc with them
because they came down with incendiary bullets.
Incendiary bullets
and airplane fuel,
they just don't mix.
Did the good. They sure as hell do a little bad.
I went up around through there.
Since then they moved that out of there,
whether you've been over there or not.
Have you been over there? Kaneohe?
Kaneohe was started after—
oh, I think it started about in '43.
They started everything over there now.
I think the Last time I was out there
was in '77.
A lot of the work as far as the Navy yard goes
is repair work and everything.
Of course, you got the big dry docks
over there for the ships. It's just repair.
Ford Island, it's about like a private place now.
You don't see those monster battlewagons sitting there
and everything, aircraft carriers tied up around there
or anything like that.
I've seen them as high as—
well, one who list of ships there—
10 or 12 battlewagons all sitting right there
along side by side,
sitting in wide open water.
They came in over the guest farms,
never even touched any of them.
That's why it looked so suspicious to this day.
If you read this one story why I have doubts
that we were sold out.
I say that
because I think Roosevelt knew.
He wouldn't say.
We had—
the Japanese code broke in 1940.
You probably through others have heard that
and statements backed up by that.
There are various things that lead up to it.
I know
it came out that a news item broke
which you probably read it
in some of this stuff here.
On November 27, 1941,
a Japanese tanker pulled out of Oakland, California,
full of aviation gas.
Now, where do you suppose that tanker was going?
It met the fleet carrier north of the Hawaiian islands.
There are a lot of things. You could talk about it.
It's hard to prove.
But you get into politics, but I ain't going to get into
that now. No way.
No way. I'm sick and tired of it right now.
[T. Lofton] I understand.
What can you tell me about that morning
and what you remember from December 7?
[G. Bacon] What I remember of it.
I got to say,
I was still in bed.
I was rig warden.
I was over there in the building
down the other side of Ford Island.
I think I had seven or eight prisoners in there.
Some guys had been bad boys.
I only had one that he was coming back to do time.
It was a murder deal.
I'd like to say no more.
Like I said, like I told you before,
we had been out the night before
drinking too damn much Kool-Aid.
I could reach from here across the street
to scratch my head of thought.
I did never think there was a cure-all for a hangover,
but a Japanese air raid sure as heck
cured it right quick.
I was laying there.
We didn't know what was going on
with all this machine gun fire and everything.
I hollered at the centurion on duty
to unlock the main gate going back to the bullpen,
tell the prisoners to stay next to the wall—
because the wall was a big, thick wall—
stay next to there.
Trustees come out.
I was trying to get my clothes on.
The brig itself was big thick-walled,
but the roofing was made—
it was a shingle roof, wood roof.
All the planes that were on searig plants
right out back of the brig, they were all lined up.
The fighter planes were doing their job.
They were coming down through swooping down
setting them on fire and everything.
There were a few bullets bouncing around there
on the floor. Then I got out of there.
Then I found out—
well, I had the MPs that were on duty doing their duty.
I headed over to Battleship Row
because there's where all the smoke and the fire was.
I went over there to help,
help rescue some of my buddies.
Because when the Arizona went,
that was just about it.
Of course, a lot of the other ships were going down.
I think the West Virginia was going down.
All of them had damage.
You see it in there in that one.
That one pamphlet there.
It was the guys that were abandoning ships.
By that time all that oil coming out of the ships.
The oil was probably two or three inches deep
on top of the water.
A lot of people couldn't take waters on the fire.
When they got word of abandon ship,
they got out where they could.
Some of them just dove over the side and jumped in.
Well, they lit that oil.
Trying to rescue them down there.
I got down.
The first thing I got a hold of was
a branch off a palm tree.
The bank was down there
and coral rock because Ford Island—
a lot of it is coral.
A lot of coral has been hauled in to make Ford Island,
make the airport.
That's where I got here.
I tried to get them. You'd holler at them
don't open their mouth when they come up.
Don't open your mouth. Don't open your mouth.
Stick it—poke that palm tree branch out
to try to help pull them in.
Hell, I was in water clear up to here.
You didn't realize all of that stuff
to try and get them in
until you want to remember it.
At that time those battlewagons were carrying
around—it said between 2,200
to 2,400 guys on it
on those battlewagons.
Ford Island was the only place you could get those
other than those that got blown off.
There's pictures there you can see where
there's boats out in there trying to pick up
bodies and others.
Out of 8 battlewagons, how can you visualize
probably take the average of 2,100 guys
coming off all of them?
A lot of them all they had had clothes on
was their underwear.
It was right in there on Ford Island.
Ford Island isn't very big.
The airport itself, the runway,
is about 2,100 feet, and that is from one end to the other.
We had those guys running around there on the station.
You didn't know whether he was an admiral or a captain
or who he was.
If he got some clothes on, you still didn't know who he was.
It took four or five days before we got that data under control
because we brought some MPs over
from the Navy yard.
We tried to get those guys lined up.
Then they set up tables over there.
What ship was you on?
You get in that line over there
like for the West Virginia or the Maryland,
the Tennessee or whichever one it may be.
That's where we started getting things together.
Of course, the body count—
But we survived it.
I know that night the comical part—
we're starting to think about it—
they broke the water main coming from the Navy yard
over to Ford Island, so we didn't have water.
The Army came in.
They had a big ferry that ran from the Navy yard
over to Ford Island.
It could haul vehicles and passengers
and everything on that.
The Army got in there with field kitchens—
had it by eight o'clock that night.
Of course, you'd been all that day and all you got to drink was
if you could get a hold of some warm pop.
What do you think 7-Up tasted like out there
in the 80 degree sun?
They got some food lined up.
They was all night cooking food to feed those guys
because remember that was eight o'clock at night.
That would have been 12 hours.
At midnight they were still trying to feed.
Like I say, it took us all:
The Army, the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard,
and civilians.
You take the Navy yard over with civilians,
they turn to promptly.
That night
any plane that was approaching
to come into Pearl Harbor was ordered to come
straight down the channel.
They were friendly planes,
but some of them—
guy probably didn't get the right information
or didn't quite know where they were
because you really didn't have any lights
because of the account of the blackout.
They would come down that way here.
A couple of them came in over the Navy yard.
Of course, some of the ships were sitting down on the bottom.
The average ship at the harbor was probably 35-40 feet.
Some were sitting down on the bottom,
but they could still— the anti-aircraft equipment
was still visible.
When those planes came in,
they called machine gun fire at that time.
Every fifth round of machine gun fire
was an incendiary bullet.
Boy, they put out a lot of sparkle.
You could have probably read a newspaper.
We knocked down two of our own boys,
but one of them—he took care of a Japanese hotel.
He landed it into the hotel over there.
We put him out of commission.
Put the hotel out of work too.
[T. Lofton] You saw that happen?
You could see the plane go down over Pearl City.
It's right there on that map— [T. Lofton] Yes sir.
[G. Bacon] where I showed you where Pearl City was.
Right over there.
Well, I was— [cough]
I was back out there in '77.
Out of all of them there,
there's two ships that you can see the results of.
I think the USS Raleigh
and the—
yeah, the Raleigh right here.
You can still see parts of her and the Utah too.
You can see some of her.
But the main one is the Arizona.
You can see her down under the water.
She just went right—she sunk in seven minutes.
because she
had a bomb had dropped on the funnel
right straight down to the magazine where all the
ammunition was.
It was one heck of a boom. I'll tell you.
They got the—
the Pearl Harbor Monument itself, as you've seen it,
it's sitting right over the top
of the Arizona.
I was talking with a guy the other day,
and he'd been over there.
He says you can hear all the noise you want,
but he says the minute you step
up on that memorial,
he said you can practically hear a pin drop
of all the people that are still on it.
Well, I noticed that too when I was back out there.
I know when I went back out,
I called the commanding officer in the Marine barracks
there in the Navy yard.
I told him who I was and what I would like to have.
The commanding officer says,
"You be at the main gate tomorrow morning.
There'll be orders there for you."
My brother and I and our wives, we pulled up out there.
I told him who I was.
They called for the sergeant on duty there
at the main gate there at Pearl Harbor.
He came out. He introduced himself.
He said, "You see that big grey building right up the street
up there?" He said, "Does that look familiar to you?"
I said yeah. I said that is the Marine barrack.
He said, "You pull up there. They'rewaiting for you right now."
So he pulled
one of the duty sergeants,
pulled him off duty and put him in the command car.
They took us any place that we wanted to go
in restricted areas and everything on account
of the command car and everything.
They went down to load us on the ferry,
took us over to Ford Island.
They did the whole trip around there so we got to see all of that.
Then he pulled down the guard book.
He showed it one day there in August 23,
I think
'42 or '43, '43.
It said in there Sergeant of the Guard Giles Bacon.
Eighty-two men on duty in a 24-hour time.
I know the CO, he looked at his first sergeant and said,
"What would you do if you had 82 men on duty right now?"
He said, "I'd probably go nuts."
[T. Lofton] Can you hold that up and show me where you were
when you were pulling people out of the water?
Can you hold it up toward the camera
once you figure it out?
[G. Bacon] Just a minute. I'm trying to figure out.
[T. Lofton] Okay. [G. Bacon] I was right down
in here.
Here's the—
There was the Oklahoma.
I was right down in here where I was.
See the Arizona had went, and I come right on down over here.
I was on the beach right here down there by the Maryland.
This is a gas dock that come out here.
Here's the California. It's up in front of the Marine barracks.
I was telling you about PBOI squadron and 23.
This is all it was right down here.
It's around over here.
Probably one of these—one of these buildings right here.
These brigs next to a hangar.
Right here. That's where we were on the other side of
Ford Island.
That's all the street down around through there.
That's where officers, married families lived,
and some non-commission officers with married family
lived in all those little houses there.
This is where the admiral lived here—where he was living.
I had one. It was a better one, but I must be out of those.
[T. Lofton] That's all right.
You actually—while you were standing there,
you actually saw the Arizona go up?
I seen the results of it right quick like.
When I come to, of course I got knocked into that tree,
knocked the wind out of me,
I got up dazed.
You could hear a lot of people hollering help.
That's why I tore down around over there
and grabbed the first thing I could.
I got out in water up to here handed out
to try to get the guys in.
Don't open your mouth. Don't open your mouth.
And then
it's in this one story here.
Don't—
there's a time right now to this day.
It doesn't matter it's been 60-some years ago.
You can hear that pecking on the noise
of the Oklahoma, guys that were trapped in there.
You couldn't—a lot of people say why
didn't you take torches and cut it?
Man, you would have caused another big explosion
because there could have been gases all down in there.
You would have killed them all.
The armor plating on those ships was so thick.
Try to cut it with jackhammers
and everything like that
to try to get them out of there.
That peck, peck, peck.
It tells in here it sounded
like that guy
when he was interviewing.
He had his computer out there,
and he was typing.
That's what it sounded like.
That's haunting, very haunting.
Did you get to go up to the big Military cemetery
out there in Honolulu?
That is a beautiful place up there.
They really done a nice job where all those guys are buried.
Of course, there's guys buried there that was killed down
on some of the other islands.
I know there is one civilian there.
A lot of the guys had the chance to meet him.
It was Ernie Pyle.
He's buried there
right along the side of the road right there.
He was a great reporter.
He never ever come around and asked for protection
when he went out to get his story.
He went out to get it.
That's what I heard here the other night on there
is a lot of these senators love these reporters.
They'd be better off if they'd stay out of that conflict
we're in right now because all it does is
it takes a man off the firing line.
That's how it's come farther on down into the battles.
Iwo Jima. Like that.
The word got out that Marines wouldn't take prisoners.
Well, we were short.
If we took a man off the firing line,
he wasn't backing your buddy up.
You think 20, 30,000 men like that, but boy if you're
scattered out all over everything.
All of them couldn't be on duty at one time.
Some of them had to have a break someplace.
Because a man staggering around in a daze
for the lack of food, for the lack of rest,
he's really no good to you.
That's why it takes so many men.
Just like we got right now
with the conflict we got over there.
We're still sending—we're sending fresh troops over there
to try to bring those guys back.
You take 11 months of that stuff it's hell.
I tell you.
You can't—your body can only take so much.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me
when you stepped out of the brigs and barracks area,
can you describe what the air looked like during December 7?
[G. Bacon] What the air looked like?
[T. Lofton] With the aerial attacks and everything.
Can you kind of describe what you were seeing when you walked out
the doors for the first time? [G. Bacon] There were planes
everywhere you looked, Japanese planes.
See they cut loose in the two different ways
over 240 some planes.
When you take a small area like that,
wonder they weren't running into each other.
You take that.
There was some antiaircraft fire going.
As I recall, it's been a long time ago,
I think two planes got off the ground
that were out there.
There were two of their fighter planes.
I don't whether torpedo planes or scout planes
got off or what it was,
but I know there were two of them had gone off out there.
But boy, they was set up—
talk about a jungle of weeds.
It's nothing but a big thistle patch.
Boy I went out there for that MP duty,
and I thought oh.
I know one of my centurions, I got a picture of him here.
He was armed with BAR that night.
He was on patrol duty, and he heard that noise
the very first night of
rattling the weeds, stomping, and everything.
He hollered halt. He hollered halt three times.
They still kept coming. He just opened fire.
Big old Holstein cow. Belonged to a China man.
That China man, he came, and he didn't like it very well.
But the old man took care of that right quick.
Stuff like that, it's scary, but it's true.
Well, he done what he was supposed to do.
Of course, then we went for four or five nights
small planes they said they were coming off of
like a cruiser or some of them float planes.
They call them Sewing Machine Charlies.
Flying at night, I don't know if was reconnaissance recounter
or what.
But it was enemy planes. We knew that.
We put up air raid going off all the time.
It wasn't a very comfortable place.
Hawaii right now might be the island of paradise,
but it was a hellhole creation
that day and for a couple, three nights there it.
I want to go back out there once more,
but like I say being 90 years old
I can't do the traveling.
I got it up here, but I don't got it down here.
[T. Lofton] Tell me, I guess as the day went on
and the next several days, was there any rumor
or any worry of companies attacking?
[G. Bacon] Oh yeah, we had rumors they were landing
on the islands and everything like that.
We had—we had those rumors going all the time.
Of course, that's what kept everybody on their toes too,
I guess. Maybe it was a good thing we had those rumors.
It wasn't ignoring them.
But the funny part of it was,
you take that morning— and another thing, believe me,
that they knew what they were doing
because right here,
here's where they come in at, right over here.
There were great big gas farms right up here.
You probably saw them if they still got them there.
They flew right over. They never even touched them.
They didn't even touch the sub-base.
All those tankers full of fuel.
I wonder why they didn't touch them.
They knew where there was a fuel supply.
That's one of their biggest troubles then
and one of the biggest troubles now
is now you take out the fuel.
It kind of gets me about all this fuel in Alaska.
Where does it go?
Japan.
That's why it goes there is to take care of own oil front.
[T. Lofton] What else do you remember from that day
that just sticks out in your mind?
What I remember mostly—
let's stop.
Let's not talk about it.
It sticks out in my mind.
For days after on patrol you see body parts.
That hurts.
When you take guys that's only 17, 18, 19 years old,
a lot of young kids.
As the older I get, those kind of things stand out in my mind.
[T. Lofton] Do you still think about that day a lot?
Oh, yes. Yes.
The greatest thing that a person could do right now
when he knows he's a veteran
just walk up to him, shake his hand, and say thank you.
That does me more good,
and I know it does a lot of others.
I have a lot of people when I'm over at the Veteran's Hospital
over there or if I'm around town or anything.
They see this cap right here
that says Pearl Harbor on it. Was you there?
My answer is yes. It is there. I was there.
Right over at the hospital, a lot of those other veterans
they'll walk up to me and shake my hand and say thank you.
That helps you right there.
Because you take us guys, we are the veterans now.
We know what the guys are going through partially
over there right now.
Of course, they're better equipped than we were.
And we'd better keep it that way.
There's some people— don't spend a nickel.
[T. Lofton] All right. Today is October 31, 2008.
It's Halloween.
This is Tommy Lofton. I'm here in Vicksburg.
If you would, sir, can you give me your name for the camera?
[G. Bacon] Giles Bacon. >>[T. Lofton] Yes, sir.
Can you tell me what unit you were with during the war?
I was an MP on Ford Island,
which is a Naval air station in Pearl Harbor.
[T. Lofton] What rank were you? >>Sergeant.
Well, I wasn't a sergeant when it broke out.
I was corporal when it broke out,
but I made sergeant right after that.
[T. Lofton] I want to start—can you tell me a little bit about
where you were born and where you grew up?
I was born in Thompson, Iowa, April 1, 1920.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me a little bit about what it was
like to grow up there and what your family was like?
My folks lived on a farm.
Then we went through the Depression
and kind of lost everything
like millions of other people.
The Depression in the '30s there.
Then we moved helter skelter all over
to try to find work and everything.
I went out on my own after my mother died.
I think I went on my own when I was 12, 13 years old.
The folks I went to live with,
they're just like my adoptive parents.
I was there until—we see what was happening in the world then.
I talked to a few guys. I had a cousin that was in World War I.
He says get in there early where you get some rank,
and that's what I did. That's what I did.
I chose the Marine Corps. It was hard.
You come out knowing more than you did when you went in it.
Of course, I'm a little bit partial to the Marine Corps,
but I'll tell you one thing right now.
I have nothing but respect for the Navy Corpsmen.
Of course, the Navy Corpsmen are assigned to
a Marine detachment, but I had nothing but respect for them.
If it hadn't been for them, there are a lot of guys
that wouldn't be here today.
I figured I'm included as one of them that way.
There are some things I won't talk about.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me why join the Marine Corps?
[G. Bacon] Just like I say the Depression was on.
There was nothing like—we could see it was coming,
and it was hard going out on the farm.
If it hadn't of been for livestock and stuff like that,
that's what kept us going.
Of course, the banks wouldn't—
they wouldn't gain nothing by foreclosing and everything,
but we come out. We finally come out on top.
But I joined the Marine Corps,
took my training in San Diego, California.
[T. Lofton] When did you join? Do you remember the date?
January 17, 1939.
Serial number 280947.
[T. Lofton] Bet you'll never forget that.
No.
In fact, I've been asked quite a few times,
being involved with the VA, that number.
There's a lot of surprise that I can snap it off right away
like that.
[T. Lofton] What was it like being in the Marine Corps
in 1939?
Like any other kid. Scared to death.
Wonder what are you going to get into.
Of course, they took a couple of platoons
and see what was the rush.
I think it was anticipating this way back then
and see how fast they could put your boot training—
put you through.
They put us through just under 30 days.
But boot camp, you're training is in there to learn respect,
take orders.
You get your training after you leave boot camp.
You also got to look at from the day you leave boot camp
it's constant training all the time,
irregardless of where you're at.
But I'm proud to serve there.
But I look at it this way.
The Army, the Navy, and all, we had to have them all.
We have to have them all right now.
They're all of them over there.
I hope they all come back.
[T. Lofton] Where did you go from San Diego
after your boot camp?
[G. Bacon] My first camp was to the—transferred to the
Naval prison in Miramar, California.
It's a Navy yard up there.
They got a small military prison there.
Went up there and done duty up there.
Of course, I was scared to death the first night.
The first day I was out on assignment as a prison chaser.
Working up there in the Navy yard,
and you'd be out there—
They didn't work right down in the Navy yard.
They worked up around in the old areas like
all your fields, gardens.
They had a big dairy there too.
The prisoners, they did a lot of garden work
and stuff like that.
I was assigned.
It was a short-time prison.
I think about a year about most of them.
All of the rest of them went to Quantico, Virginia.
That is the big slammer.
[T. Lofton] What were your daily duties there?
What kind of things were you doing?
Well, military police duty just like I say. Prison chaser.
Right back in there just like—
You do your police work just like you got your patrol duties
and everything just like a policeman
within the city like here.
We sit up there. There was a big guard unit.
It took care of the whole Navy yard.
I was assigned over to the prison over there,
but I did duty in both
down in the Navy yard like that.
See, there are ships being built there too.
I think while I was there the
USS Curtiss and the USS Wright were built there
at that time.
I remember the launching of those.
Of course, you take one of those places like that,
it goes 26 hours a day instead of 24.
Back then that's the way they built ships.
It took a little bit longer.
With the techniques and everything that they got now,
they could assemble one right now.
Look at some of our big aircraft carriers right now.
It's an airfield in itself.
You get on the old Enterprise.
You get up on the bridge and look down there.
That's not a very big place for a plane to be coming in
at about 100 and some mile an hour to land on.
Those boys had to know what they were doing
or they would've been off in the creek.
[T. Lofton] How long were you there? >>Pardon?
[T. Lofton] How long were you there?
I was there probably about five months,
five or six months.
Where in the hell did I go?
I went to the East Coast.
I was in Quantico. Then I left there.
Oh, yeah. That's when I got transferred to China.
I was over there for 18 months.
I was credited with 18 months.
That was back then.
If you'd done duty outside the continental limits
of the United States, you was credit time and a half.
I spent 1 year over there,
but I was credited for 18 months.
I was stationed up at the embassy.
Whatever country you're in if you got an embassy,
you're always going to find a detachment of Marines.
That's what the old saying is,
"The sun never sets on the United States Marine Corps."
All over with that.
A lot of diplomatic work and everything like that.
You still get a certain amount of training.
You don't forget what—they don't give you a chance
because you never know when anything is going to happen
at one of those embassies.
Some nut could come in.
Just like—well, there was a good example of it.
It was President Reagan down on Grenada down there.
Some nut went in around through there
to try to get to all those students.
It didn't take him long to coil that.
Starting of this conflict we have here now—
Beirut over there where all those boys were killed that day
in the bombing of the barracks.
Let's forget it.
[T. Lafton] Where in China were you mostly? >>Peking.
That's the capital of China.
That's where the embassy was.
[T. Lafton] Need a break for a second?
That is orange juice in case the camera was on.
[T. Lafton] Can you tell me a little bit about
what it was like working in an embassy at that time?
You took your duties you were assigned to.
You performed guard duties like as protection of the embassy.
Like I say, some of these kooks we got running around here now.
You've always had them
ever since the Revolutionary War.
You were at the command of the guy that was in charge,
the ambassador that was over there.
You were carrying out the orders that he gets
from his headquarters which is from the U.S. capitol.
It will start there more or less from the president
because he is commander in chief.
It was interesting.
You got to see a lot of nice territory.
A lot of people—you don't really realize how big China is.
China is a big country.
Once a month you would catch duty on the mail train.
It would run from Peking to Shanghai.
It took three days to make the round trip.
That's how big it was.
Just like the old stage coach day, you rode shotgun
on the mail train.
A lot of our duties was there,
and I left there—
when the hell did I leave there?
The very first part of 1941.
Stopped off at Guam,
and then I landed into Pearl Harbor.
I was in Pearl Harbor there for quite a while.
At the Marine barracks at the Navy yard
is where I went.
But Ford Island, prior to that, the Army had had it.
They had big guns that they placed out there on it.
The Navy took it over, and that's where they made
the air station out of there on Ford Island.
As we stopped and looked now,
they just weren't thinking
giving them the Navy yard
because man they had you.
Just like shooting ducks just like the morning of that raid.
They came in from the east,
bright sun like we have around here.
You was over here looking over there,
and they were coming right down across the channel.
How far could you see looking into the sun? Not very far.
The Air Corps—the Air Corps at that time
was not the United States Air Force like we have now.
It was the U.S. Army Air Corps.
That was Hickam Field.
That was just outside of the main gate at Pearl Harbor—
Hickam Field was.
What did they do with all their planes?
Like they did the battlewagons. They were all lined up.
Instead of staggering them, they lined them all up.
The Navy did the same thing
because we had it right there on Ford Island.
Of course, right over in the back of the brig
where a lot of the—it was amphib.
These planes would land in the water right there.
They had them lined up along with
some of the fighter planes,
the dive bombers, torpedo planes.
They raised havoc with them
because they came down with incendiary bullets.
Incendiary bullets
and airplane fuel,
they just don't mix.
Did the good. They sure as hell do a little bad.
I went up around through there.
Since then they moved that out of there,
whether you've been over there or not.
Have you been over there? Kaneohe?
Kaneohe was started after—
oh, I think it started about in '43.
They started everything over there now.
Last time I was out there was in '77.
A lot of the work as far as the Navy yard goes
is repair work and everything.
Of course, you got the big dry docks
over there for the ships. It's just repair.
Ford Island, it's about like a private place now.
You don't see those monster battlewagons sitting there
and everything, aircraft carriers tied up around there
or anything like that.
I've seen them as high as—
well, one who list of ships there—
10 or 12 battlewagons all sitting right there
along side by side,
sitting in wide open water.
They came in over the guest farms,
never even touched any of them.
That's why it looked so suspicious to this day.
If you read this one story why I have doubts
that we were sold out.
I say that
because I think Roosevelt knew.
He wouldn't say.
We had the Japanese code broke in 1940.
You probably through others have heard that
and statements backed up by that.
There are various things that lead up to it.
I know it came out that a news item broke
which you probably read it
in some of this stuff here.
On November 27, 1941,
a Japanese tanker pulled out of Oakland, California,
full of aviation gas.
Now, where do you suppose that tanker was going?
It met the fleet carrier north of the Hawaiian islands.
There are a lot of things. You could talk about it.
It's hard to prove.
But you get into politics, but I ain't going to get into
that now. No way.
No way. I'm sick and tired of it right now.
[T. Lofton] I understand.
What can you tell me about that morning
and what you remember from December 7?
What I remember of it.
I got to say,
I was still in bed.
I was rig warden.
I was over there in the building
on the other side of Ford Island.
I think I had seven or eight prisoners in there.
Some guys had been bad boys.
I only had one that he was coming back to do time.
It was a murder deal.
I'd like to say no more.
Like I said, like I told you before,
we had been out the night before
drinking too damn much Kool-Aid.
I could reach from here across the street
to scratch my head of thought.
I did never think there was a cure-all for a hangover,
but a Japanese air raid sure as heck cured it right quick.
I was laying there.
We didn't know what was going on
with all this machine gun fire and everything.
I hollered at the centurion on duty
to unlock the main gate going back to the bullpen,
tell the prisoners to stay next to the wall—
because the wall was a big, thick wall—
stay next to there.
Trustees come out.
I was trying to get my clothes on.
The brig itself was big thick-walled,
but the roofing was made—
it was a shingle roof, wood roof.
All the planes that were on searig plants
right out back of the brig, they were all lined up.
The fighter planes were doing their job.
They were coming down through swooping down
setting them on fire and everything.
There were a few bullets bouncing around there
on the floor. Then I got out of there.
Then I found out—
well, I had the MPs that were on duty doing their duty.
I headed over to Battleship Row
because there's where all the smoke and the fire was.
I went over there to help,
help rescue some of my buddies.
Because when the Arizona went,
that was just about it.
Of course, a lot of the other ships were going down.
I think the West Virginia was going down.
All of them had damage.
You see it in there in that one.
That one pamphlet there.
It was the guys that were abandoning ships.
By that time all that oil coming out of the ships.
The oil was probably two or three inches deep
on top of the water.
A lot of people couldn't take waters on the fire.
When they got word of abandon ship,
they got out where they could.
Some of them just dove over the side and jumped in.
Well, they lit that oil.
Trying to rescue them down there.
I got down.
The first thing I got a hold of was
a branch off a palm tree.
The bank was down there
and coral rock because Ford Island—
a lot of it is coral.
A lot of coral has been hauled in to make Ford Island,
make the airport.
That's where I got here.
I tried to get them. You'd holler at them
don't open their mouth when they come up.
Don't open your mouth. Don't open your mouth.
Stick it—poke that palm tree branch out
to try to help pull them in.
Hell, I was in water clear up to here.
You didn't realize all of that stuff
to try and get them in
until you want to remember it.
At that time those battlewagons were carrying
around—it said between 2,200
to 2,400 guys on it
on those battlewagons.
Ford Island was the only place you could get those
other than those that got blown off.
There's pictures there you can see where
there's boats out in there trying to pick up
bodies and others.
Out of 8 battlewagons, how can you visualize
probably take the average of 2,100 guys
coming off all of them?
A lot of them all they had had clothes on
was their underwear.
It was right in there on Ford Island.
Ford Island isn't very big.
The airport itself, the runway,
is about 2,100 feet, and that is from one end to the other.
We had those guys running around there on the station.
You didn't know whether he was an admiral or a captain
or who he was.
If he got some clothes on, you still didn't know who he was.
It took four or five days before we got that data under control
because we brought some MPs over
from the Navy yard.
We tried to get those guys lined up.
Then they set up tables over there.
What ship was you on?
You get in that line over there.
The West Virginia or the Maryland.
The Tennessee or whichever one it may be.
That's where we started getting things together.
Of course, the body count—
But we survived it.
I know that night the comical part—
we're starting to think about it—
they broke the water main coming from the Navy yard
over to Ford Island, so we didn't have water.
The Army came in.
They had a big ferry that ran from the Navy yard
over to Ford Island.
It could haul vehicles and passengers
and everything on that.
The Army got in there with field kitchens—
had it by eight o'clock that night.
Of course, you'd been all that day and all you got to drink was
if you could get a hold of some warm pop.
What do you think 7-Up tasted like out there
in the 80 degree sun?
They got some food lined up.
They was all night cooking food to feed those guys
because remember that was eight o'clock at night.
That would have been 12 hours.
At midnight they were still trying to feed.
Like I say, it took us all:
The Army, the Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard,
and civilians.
You take the Navy yard over with civilians,
they turn to promptly.
That night
any plane that was approaching
to come into Pearl Harbor was ordered to come
straight down the channel.
They were friendly planes,
but some of them—
guy probably didn't get the right information
or didn't quite know where they were
because you really didn't have any lights
because of the account of the blackout.
They would come down that way here.
A couple of them came in over the Navy yard.
Of course, some of the ships were sitting down on the bottom.
The average ship at the harbor was probably 35-40 feet.
Some were sitting down on the bottom,
but they could still—
the aircraft equipment was still visible.
When those planes came in,
they called machine gun fire at that time.
Every fifth round of machine gun fire
was an incendiary bullet.
Boy, they put out a lot of sparkle.
You could have probably read a newspaper.
We knocked down two of our own boys,
but one of them—he took care of a Japanese hotel.
He landed it into the hotel over there.
We put him out of commission.
Put the hotel out of work too.
[T. Lofton] You saw that happen?
You could see the plane go down over Pearl City.
It's right there on that map— [T. Lofton] Yes sir.
[G. Bacon] where I showed you where Pearl City was.
Right over there.
I was back out there in '77.
Out of all of them there,
there's two ships that you can see the results of.
I think the USS Raleigh—
yeah, the Raleigh right here.
You can still see parts of her and the Utah too.
You can see some of her.
But the main one is the Arizona.
You can see her down under the water.
She just went right—she sunk in seven minutes
A bomb had dropped on the funnel
right straight down to the magazine where all the
ammunition was.
It was one heck of a boom. I'll tell you.
The Pearl Harbor Monument itself, as you've seen it,
it's sitting right over the top of the Arizona.
I was talking with a guy the other day,
and he'd been over there.
He says you can hear all the noise you want,
but he says the minute you step
up on that memorial,
he said you can practically hear a pin drop
of all the people that are still on it.
I noticed that too when I was back out there.
I know when I went back out,
I called the commanding officer in the Marine barracks
there in the Navy yard.
I told him who I was and what I would like to have.
The commanding officer says,
"You be at the main gate tomorrow morning.
There'll be orders there for you."
My brother and I and our wives, we pulled up out there.
I told him who I was.
They called for the sergeant on duty there
at the main gate there at Pearl Harbor.
He came out. He introduced himself.
He said, "You see that big grey building right up the street
up there?" He said, "Does that look familiar to you?"
I said yeah. I said that is the Marine barrack.
He said, "You pull up there.
They're waiting for you right now."
One of the duty sergeants pulled him off duty
and put him in the command car.
They took us any place that we wanted to go
in restricted areas and everything on account
of the command car and everything.
They went down to load us on the ferry,
took us over to Ford Island.
They did the whole trip around there.
We got to see all of that.
Then he pulled down the guard book.
He showed it one day there in August 23,
I think, of '42 or '43, '43.
It said in there Sergeant Guard Giles Bacon.
Eighty-two men on duty in a 24-hour time.
I know the CO, he looked at his first sergeant and said,
"What would you do if you had 82 men on duty right now?"
He said, "I'd probably go nuts."
[T. Lofton] Can you hold that up and show me where you were
when you were pulling people out of the water?
Can you hold it up toward the camera
once you figure it out?
Just a minute. I'm trying to figure out. >>[T. Lofton] Okay.
I was right down in here.
There was the Oklahoma.
I was right down in here where I was.
See the Arizona had went, and I come right on down over here.
I was on the beach right here down there by the Maryland.
This is a gas dock that come out here.
Here's the California. It's up in front of the Marine barracks.
I was telling you about PBOI squadron and 23.
This is all it was right down here.
It's around over here.
Probably one of these—one of these buildings right here.
These brigs next to a hangar.
Right here. That's where we were on the other side of
Ford Island.
That's all the street down around through there.
That's where officers, married families,
and some non-commission officers with married family
lived in all those little houses there.
This is where the admiral lived here—where he was living.
I had one. It was a better one, but I must be out of those.
[T. Lofton] That's all right.
You actually—while you were standing there,
you actually saw the Arizona go up?
I seen the results of it right quick like.
When I come to, of course I got knocked into that tree,
knocked the wind out of me,
I got up dazed.
You could hear a lot of people hollering help.
That's why I tore down around over there
and grabbed the first thing I could.
I got out in water up to here handed out
to try to get the guys in.
Don't open your mouth. Don't open your mouth.
It's in this one story here.
There's a time right now to this day.
It doesn't matter it's been 60-some years ago.
You can hear that pecking on the noise
of the Oklahoma, guys that were trapped in there.
A lot of people say why didn't you take torches and cut it?
Man, you would have caused another big explosion
because there could have been gases all down in there.
You would have killed them all.
The armor plating on those ships, it was so thick.
Try to cut it with jackhammers and everything like that
to try to get them out of there.
That peck, peck, peck.
It tells in here it sounded like that guy
when he was interviewing.
He had his computer out there, and he was typing.
That's what it sounded like.
That's haunting, very haunting.
Did you get to go up to the big Military cemetery
out there in Honolulu?
That is a beautiful place up there.
They really done a nice job where all those guys are buried.
Of course, there's guys buried there that was killed down
on some of the other islands.
I know there is one civilian there.
A lot of the guys had the chance to meet him.
It was Ernie Pyle.
He's buried there
right along the side of the road right there.
He was a great reporter.
He never ever come around and asked for protection
when he went out to get his story.
He went out to get it.
That's what I heard here the other night on there
is a lot of these senators love these reporters.
They'd be better off if they'd stay out of that conflict
we're in right now because all it does is
it takes a man off the firing line.
That's how it's come farther on down into the battles.
Iwo Jima. Like that.
The word got out that Marines wouldn't take prisoners.
Well, we were short.
If we took a man off the firing line,
he wasn't backing your buddy up.
You think 20, 30,000 men like that, but boy if you're
scattered out all over everything.
All of them couldn't be on duty at one time.
Some of them had to have a break someplace.
Because a man staggering around in a daze
for the lack of food, for the lack of rest,
he's really no good to you.
That's why it takes so many men.
Just like we got right now
with the conflict we got over there.
We're still sending—we're sending fresh troops over there
to try to bring those guys back.
You take 11 months of that stuff it's hell.
You can't—your body can only take so much.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me
when you stepped out of the brigs and barracks area,
can you describe what the air looked like
during December 7? >>What the air looked like?
[T. Lofton] With the aerial attacks and everything.
Can you kind of describe what you were seeing
when you walked out the doors for the first time?
There were planes everywhere you looked, Japanese planes.
See they cut loose in the two different ways
over 240 something planes.
When you take a small area like that,
wonder they weren't running into each other.
You take that.
There was some antiaircraft fire going.
But as I recall, it's been a long time ago,
I think two planes got off the ground
that were out there.
There were two of their fighter planes.
I don't whether torpedo planes or scout planes
got off or what it was,
but I know there were two of them had gone off out there.
But boy, they was set up—
talk about a jungle of weeds.
It's nothing but a big thistle patch.
Boy I went out there for that MP duty,
and I thought oh.
I know one of my centurions, I got a picture of him here.
He was armed with BAR that night.
He was on patrol duty, and he heard that noise
the very first night of
rattling the weeds, stomping, and everything.
He hollered halt. He hollered halt three times.
They still kept coming. He just opened fire.
Big old Holstein cow. Belonged to a China man.
That China man, he came, and he didn't like it very well.
But the old man took care of that right quick.
Stuff like that, it's scary but it's true.
He did what he was supposed to do.
Of course, then we went for four or five nights
small planes they said they were coming off of
like a cruiser or some of them float planes.
They call them Sewing Machine Charlies.
Flying at night, I don't know if was reconnaissance recounter
or what.
But it was enemy planes. We knew that.
We put up air raid going off all the time.
It wasn't a very comfortable place.
Hawaii right now might be the island of paradise,
but it was a hellhole creation
that day and for a couple, three nights there on.
I want to go back out there once more,
but like I say being 90 years old
I can't do the traveling.
I got it up here, but I don't got it down here.
[T. Lofton] Tell me, I guess as the day went on
and the next several days, was there any rumor
or any worry of companies attacking?
We had rumors they were landing on the islands
and everything like that.
We had those rumors going all the time.
Of course, that's what kept everybody on their toes too,
I guess. Maybe it was a good thing we had those rumors.
It wasn't ignoring them.
But the funny part of it was,
you take that morning— and another thing, believe me,
that they knew what they were doing.
Because right here.
Here's where they come in at, right over here.
There were great big gas farms right up here.
You probably saw them if they still got them there.
They flew right over. They never even touched them.
They didn't even touch the sub-base.
All those tankers full of fuel.
I wonder why they didn't touch them.
They knew where there was a fuel supply.
That's one of their biggest troubles then
and one of the biggest troubles now
is now you take the fuel.
It kind of gets me about all this fuel in Alaska.
Where does it go?
Japan.
That's why it goes there is to take care of own oil front.
[T. Lofton] What else do you remember from that day
that just sticks out in your mind?
What I remember mostly—
let's stop.
Let's not talk about it.
It sticks out in my mind.
For days after on patrol you see body parts.
That hurts.
When you take guys that's only 17, 18, 19 years old,
a lot of young kids.
As the older I get, those kind of things stand out in my mind.
[T. Lofton] Do you still think about that day a lot?
Oh, yes. Yes.
The greatest thing that a person could do right now
when he knows he's a veteran
just walk up to him, shake his hand, and say thank you.
That does me more good,
and I know it does a lot of others.
I have a lot of people when I'm over at the Veteran's Hospital
over there or if I'm around town or anything.
They see this cap right here
that says Pearl Harbor on it. Was you there?
My answer is yes. It is there. I was there.
Right over at the hospital, a lot of those other veterans
they'll walk up to me and shake my hand and say thank you.
That helps you right there.
Because you take us guys, we are the veterans now.
We know what the guys are going through partially
over there right now.
Of course, they're better equipped than we were.
We better keep it that way.
Some people— don't spend a nickel.
[T. Lofton] Have you—I guess since that time,
have you been able to watch some of the war films
like Tora! Tora! Tora! or the other movie
that's not that great was Pearl Harbor?
[G. Bacon] Let's see.
I tell everybody there's only one of them
that is true.
There are not movies a lot made.
You would take Tora! Tora! Tora!
That is true shots.
That is true on that, but some of those others.
What was it? The one they just came out with about Pearl.
All it was was an officer and a love scene.
Pbbt!
[T. Lofton] I didn't like that one either.
Wasn't as good as I thought it would be.
[G. Bacon] Nah.
With you, I try to tell everybody
the only one to see—and it will be coming on again,
I've probably seen it a dozen times—
is Tora! Tora! Tora!
Because you can take and see the show one scene,
pick it up at another time. They'll be some stuff.
They cut a lot of that film, remake it and everything.
That's what there is.
I've seen that in a lot— I'll see it in one movie
then I don't see it in the other.
That was a good movie and it's a—
It tells all about the supreme prices
that we paid for
and everything, but we learned
one hell of a lot about it too.
The thing that's surprising to me,
if you don't think that they didn't come together.
Look at all these ships that has been down.
You got a history there. You can read about it.
How fast some of those was put back into action.
Now, another thing I had come through my mind.
That morning of the raid,
I just got out of bed and got my clothes on,
grabbed my service pistol,
and here come one of our—
I would suppose it's probably about as far as
maybe that house across the street.
Here come on to our destroyer is tin—
We call them tin cans.
I mean he was coming up around through there,
and he was putting white water over his bow.
Between one of those two men Japanese submarines rose up,
that was curtains for him
because he come out of there cut loose the depth charges.
He liked to blow him own self out of the water.
But, boy, he just raised that two-man sub
right straight up out of the water.
It came way up and over.
Then another one got in some way,
and they used it
for tours.
I put it on a flat car and got it back to the states.
I put it on a flat car for the bond drives
to buy bonds.
It got down underneath the—
it was a hospital ship. What was the name of it? Hope?
No. It was a Naval hospital ship.
It got down underneath of there.
You knew it was there.
If the hospital ship tried to move, they'd move with it.
What they did after about three days—
they had there in the Navy yard what they call the Mary Anne,
a big floating crane. They took it down over there.
They took divers down, sent divers down,
and took cables and slipped it over the screws
of that submarine.
When he started it up, that's all they wrote.
Those cables were so tight he couldn't move.
Then they threw the line on the hospital ship,
and one of the tugs pulled her back out of there.
They got her out of there; I think that's the sub right there
that they raised and brought it back to the states, and put it on
and they used it for those bond drives.
Because that's the only one I remember they salvaged.
We salvaged some planes that had gotten knocked down.
They'd lifted them out of the water.
Because I was—
I was there, and I was kind of looking for a little souvenir.
There was this one plane that this Japanese pilot
was still hanging in there.
He had— he had a pistol belt on.
I reached over to—I wanted that pistol.
Just as I got it in my hand, a big arm came over my shoulder.
Naval Intelligence. I didn't argue.
But I sure wanted that.
It turned out to be a German Luger.
A P38. A German Luger was what it was.
That'd have been a nice souvenir,
but all I got is memories of it.
But they raised some of those planes up,
and then they took them in.
There on Ford Island they had a big building
what they called the A&R building, assembly and repair.
I mean they went through those planes with a fine-tooth comb.
Everything you can think of to find out
how they were built, what they were made of,
and everything like that
which is all documented.
It was secret there, but it sure isn't now.
[T. Lofton] Being an MP, did you hear about
the Japanese prisoner that they took from the Japanese sub
that washed ashore? Did you hear about that?
Oh, yeah. I remember the one.
On his left hand— what do you wear?
A ring. What does it say on there?
St. Louis High School 1939.
He graduated from the high school
there in Honolulu, Hawaii.
I remember that very, very much. [T. Lofton] So you saw him?
[G. Bacon] Oh, yeah.
[T. Lofton] How much interaction did you have with him?
[G. Bacon] None.
Because they were knocked down.
They were buried alive, but they didn't last long.
[T. Lofton] That was the one in the plane?
That was the guy in the plane? [G. Bacon] Yeah.
[T. Lofton] I'm talking about the—
There was an I-boat, a Japanese— the small sub.
There was one guy that came to shore
that one of the boats washed ashore.
He got out of it, and they took him prisoner.
Did you know about that at the time?
[G. Bacon] No, I didn't. This is the first I've ever heard of that.
[T. Lofton] Really? [G. Bacon] Because when
that ship—when they blew it up,
hell, she just went down kaboom.
The other one, like I say, it got underneath there.
But there were three men in that, but they were dead
because they'd run out of oxygen and everything.
But they got—
Maybe one of those out there— they got another one
just out there to the channel— maybe that's where it come from.
But this is the first I've ever heard of that.
Of course, there were a lot of things that went on all over.
You weren't the right Johnny on the Spot
to see at all.
It could have happened.
I could see how it could have happened
because we had guys we got out of our own ships
after they had been down
who got in around through there,
but there were a lot of them that we didn't get.
I know of 88 from the state of Iowa alone,
and their names are carved in granite on that monument
in Des Moines, Iowa.
We know that.
But there are a lot of things that went on.
We didn't see everything.
Because
you take your military instillations strung out
all over the island of Oahu.
You take Schofield Barracks,
Kaneohe,
and Ewa,
Lualualei.
That's a big Naval dump out there.
That's a big Marine detachment that's out there.
As far as I know, that was the last horse patrol
that the Marine Corps had
because they rode patrol, rode the horses on there.
I mean we went out there one Saturday night.
We stayed all night.
It was for meal, breakfast, ball games, and stuff like that.
I mean it was there on the beach out there.
Pretty good breakers come in. You could hear them.
You'd hear them. But dark.
Man it'd be as dark you couldn't see your finger out.
But like the Marines said when they was on patrol,
if that horse stopped, you start reaching around.
You'd hit a post. There would be a telephone there.
You'd call in.
The horse made the trip so many times,
he knew where he was going.
But that was way before.
It was right down like in a little valley
down in there where they had all that ammunition stored
like that because the ships come in
for repair and stuff like that.
They'd unload all the ammunition off of it
before they'd ever take it in and then put it on a barge.
The tugs would take it out there, and then they'd
put it in those big caves.
That was our ammunition mounds, man-made ones,
where they'd store the ammunition
in there.
There was a lot that went on.
That's like I say, you never got around all of it,
but that is completely news to me about the Japanese.
But I won't say it didn't happen,
because it could have happened.
But like I say, it probably where it did is where
they sunk one of them out there at the channel
before he got it because that's where it started
was that one destroyer.
Open fire on that one.
[T. Lofton] Did you—how close were
some of the Japanese aircraft to you that morning?
How close? As far from here to the street.
Hell, I could look out my damn window there, and I was trying
to put my clothes on. Zoom.
He just went down right back up like he's—
[T. Lofton] Did you shoot at any of them?
[G. Bacon] Huh? Oh, hell yes.
But just like the little boy that says, "I shot an arrow
into the air. It fell to earth, I knew not where."
I lost more damn arrows that way.
That's what I did with my bullets.
I was shooting at them. Whether I hit them, I don't know.
But he was shooting at me, so what is it?
An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
That's what you're taught to do.
That's what those pistols and rifles and stuff
are issued to you for,
not only in your defense but the defense of the country.
Oh, yeah. You had to.
But like I say, you don't know if you hit one.
You sure aimed at him.
They'll swoop down.
They were coming down—well, they came down so close
that when they dipped to climb elevation to get—
that's when you could see the rising sun on that thing there.
That's the way we knew it was the Japanese right there.
That happened about 10, 15 minutes after the raid started.
Because where we were on that side of the island,
they had the big hangars over there.
There were a lot of planes that were over there.
Some of it was crippled, and some of it was due in for
repair work.
I can remember one—he's a close friend of mine—
he's dead now. Joe Foss.
He was the first World War Ace.
His plane came in to Midway,
and I don't think you could hardly lay your hand
where a bullet scratched some kind of—
He had 26 flags painted right on him.
He was the governor of Dakota up there.
A very good friend of mine invited him to come down
to go pheasant hunting there in Iowa.
He was one of my security guards for Ford Motor Company.
Then he heard me talk about that incident.
He walked up to my desk,
and then he says you know this guy?
I says yes, I do
because I used to give him a ticket for speeding through the
hangar area around through there.
He just got back from getting the Congressional
Medal of Honor.
Old stupid me didn't remember, and I wrote him a ticket.
Then it dawned on me.
Boy, I went tearing into the old inn and told him.
He said, "So what?"
He said "We'll have some fun."
Joe was standing there. We got to laughing about it.
He said, "I remember that now."
[coughing]
But little things like that it happens in the past like that.
But—
I can sit here now six years later and talk about it.
[T. Lofton] How long was it before you could talk about it?
[G. Bacon] Quite a while.
Some of the things I could,
but there's some to this day I won't.
It's personal with me.
That's one thing I can say about our great Constitution
that we have is freedom of preach.
Freedom of speech and stuff like that.
So—
I've had an interesting life.
I don't know how much longer I'm going to go.
I had a brother that lived to be 94.
There was five of us from my family
who were in the service all at the same time.
I had two brothers older and two brothers younger than me.
Of course, they're all gone now.
[T. Lofton] Where did you—
after the attack, where else did you serve?
Did you stay at Pearl the rest of the war?
[G. Bacon] No, no. I went on.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me about that a little bit?
Makin Island
with the another of the—
they sent about 120
of Marines.
Put us on a submarine, took them down there.
The Japanese—there's a little island down there.
They had a radio station on it.
They sent us down there to get it.
It was a specialty group.
Each man had his—it was Carlson's Raiders.
That's where the Green Beret and all of that came from.
They disbanded them right after that
and went to—we went down there.
We had three hours to get the station and get out of there.
We did. We never had a casualty on our part.
[T. Lofton] You were a Raider, or you went into the Raiders?
[G. Bacon] Yeah. There—
that was a good bunch of guys, but you could leave
at anytime you wanted to, and you could leave with honor.
Because it would get to you after a bit.
[T. Lofton] When did you get into that?
[G. Bacon] At Pearl.
We joined—made up all around over there.
We did a lot of training up in the mountains up there
up in Aiea and up in there,
And then—
out at Lualualei, and Waipahu over there.
Big landings. We would come out of there.
There was always some pretty good waves
and everything like that— breakers coming in.
You take your training there like that
and up in the mountains, those caves, volcano.
That's what a lot of those islands out—excuse me—
that's what a lot of those islands are
is all volcano stuff, the results.
You take the one over on the big island
of Hawaii, a HELO.
that volcano. See, it's an active one.
It's a sight to fly over it,
especially when it's in action.
There's a place I don't want to go for a weenie roast.
But that black lava is funny. It's coral.
Then you can go out there,
and then you get into the old coral reefs.
You take—you take the runway there on Ford Island.
They haul barge after barge. They dredge it in.
It was practically white.
They bring that in, but boy it made a good airfield.
They'd get in there and get that stuff like that.
I got whacked up down there, so that about did it.
They sent me back, and I wound up back in my old place
on Ford Island.
Then they were getting ready to make up
the fifth Marine division, and all the non-commissioned
officers were overseas.
They loaded a whole mess of us up on—
it was a big passenger liner the Navy took over.
Matsonia is the one I came back on.
They brought us back.
They were getting ready to make up the fifth Marine division.
Went into Okinawa like that.
I wound up getting Malaria after I got back.
I never had it all the time I was over there.
I come—I got to go on a 30-day medical leave.
A little bit too much celebration.
Didn't take care of myself.
But when I got back and I came down with that stuff,
that is wicked.
I tried—they released me from the hospital.
We went up in the mountains up there around
Laguna, California, to start training.
I didn't make it. I wound back up in the hospital.
First thing I knew I was in a convalescent hospital.
I thought oh hell.
I didn't want to leave the Corps,
but the doctors said different.
That ended my career in '45 I think it was—
'44 or '45—
'45 I think it was.
It's been so damn long ago.
[T. Lofton] How long were you with Carlson's Raiders then?
[G. Bacon] Probably about six months altogether.
[T. Lofton] Did you go anywhere after that radio station run?
Did you go anywhere after that radio station run?
[G. Bacon] That's when I went in. We went down there.
We were on that.
That's when I left. Just shortly after that I came back.
I said I don't want anymore of this.
I said I've seen enough killing for a while.
[T. Lofton] How much opposition did you have there?
[G. Bacon] None because
some way there was surveillance.
They had it down pretty well pat.
The centurion was on duty, he didn't know what hit him
because every man that was in there,
he was especially in that.
Like one with knives, like hand grenades, like explosives
and everything like that.
Well, Marine Corps usually is small-arm fire.
We hit the barrack where the radio transmitter was.
That guy never even got a chance to put his fingers to the key.
We mowed it with submachine gun fire.
The rest of us were standing back out over there
throwing hand grenades to the squadrons where they were at.
The last thing to go were the towers.
We had the guys
that were specialized in that explosive.
That's what we had.
We had our time to go
or we were going to get left there.
We got back down.
We used those rubber dinghies.
We got off of that and got back on the sub.
Took the knife and cut them and let them sink.
And we was gone.
But that's—
I can see now why it was abandoned because it took
a lot more training then—
because boy it's practically what you call
personalized training on some of those
like your Navy Seals now, kind of like that, like those guys.
The first thing is to learn survival.
If you don't survive, you got nothing.
Now I'm back here in the country.
And then—
they had election in Iowa.
I was working at the Highway Patrol Office.
They wanted a veteran of World War II.
And then hey found out—some of the politicians found out
I was a Pearl Harbor Veteran.
I was assigned to be the governor's driver.
That was all right. I stayed with that for a while
until I decided I wanted to go back to school.
I went up to school in Ames for a while.
Like a lot of these guys coming back, you don't know what
you want to do.
I feel sorry for a while of me, but you feel
somewhat right now is worse.
Nope.
You see.
I went on from there, and now I'm here.
But I got the best one right there.
[T. Lofton] Can you tell me what do you—
is there anything special you do every December 7
to remember that day? [G. Bacon] Oh, yes.
See, like I told you, I am still
President of the Pearl Harbor Veterans.
Every morning we used to—at night—
we were like a lot of these other outfits like
America Legion, Shriner's, all of them—
a bunch of hell raisers—but we changed it now
of a morning to a breakfast.
And that's I think I showed you one.
[T. Lofton] Yes, sir. I saw.
[G. Bacon] One here. Yeah, that's it right there.
We go up there.
There's that one place out over there.
They have a big meeting hall.
We had the breakfast around— I don't know—
9 to 10—from 9 to 11
like that because all of them are around.
But every year for the last eight or nine has it been,
we go in there and have breakfast.
But the one thing I'm more proud of,
civilians—somebody has always come in, stepped in
and paid the bill for that breakfast.
There are still a lot of good people.
Those breakfasts run 400, 500, 600 dollars.
We don't know who they are.
We always put pieces of paper and thank them.
Of course, we know who a couple of them were.
But every year—
my vice president, he's up there right now.
He takes care of everything.
But they still put me back in office.
I haven't been up there now— what—two years now?
The driving—it takes a couple of days
for me to drive up there.
And flying, man I'm telling you.
It gets costly.
You just can't do it.
But we have a lot of fun.
But last year I talked to Dick,
and he had four veterans out
that'll fly there doing himself.
I just talked to him here the other night.
He says I don't know if we're going to have a veteran or not
this year.
He says I know of four.
You and I and Reiber and Nugam.
Only one we know out of 500 and some names
that are on that monument.
So our ranks are getting pretty thin.
Now all the World War I guys, they're gone now.
You take the World War II guys, they're going out now
average of 1,500 or 1,600 a day.
That could put a heck of a dent.
As far as the Pearl Harbor guys,
I wouldn't dare to say how many there are.
If there are 200 or 300,
that would probably be a surprise to me.
Because just like you say, you travel around.
You've met what three or four?
Well, that should kind of give you an indication
what's happening to them.
[T. Lofton]. I guess with that in mind,
do you think it's important that we continue
to study World War II in the future?
[G. Bacon] Yes, I do.
Let's get it across these kids in these school.
Now my vice president and I up there,
what we do, we just don't stop at December 7.
We go around to a lot of these schools.
We talk to them. We don't care what grade,
whether it's kindergarten or up in high school.
Now you get some of these second to third
and fourth graders, you'll want to watch out.
Boy they can put you on the spot in a hurry.
We always have to laugh at one because of a deal
between and my vice president.
We're all the time pulling something on each other.
This one kid—we were sitting at a table,
and the teacher had them lined up.
They came marching around by us like that,
shook our hands, and they'd ask a question.
This one kid, he looked right at Dick.
He said, "Did you have any girls over there?"
Well, it's a long story.
Yeah, there's Dick and one of his girlfriends.
That's what I told him.
I pulled that on him on his birthday.
I took that. I knew he was out—
him and his wife always went out and walked every morning.
They went down to a mall.
I knew he was down there, so I took that mannequin.
He had a little place that was something like we got here
but not quite as big out over his back door.
Well, I set it there dressed up and had that dog.
I managed to get a hold of three of them.
I had it setting there.
Well, he couldn't see it when he drove up.
When she got out of the car, slammed the door,
and turned around, there was that whole thing.
She let out a scream.
Well, Dick though she'd fell.
But when he went tearing around, he seen that.
He said, "Damn Bacon, I'll get him yet."
Well, he—
He took one. Hell, this is one of them right here.
He made a bathing suit.
He went and got it a diaper and everything like that.
My station wagon was parked
out in the parking lot out there.
He knew right where it was at. He pulled up there.
He was scared all of the time because it's life size.
It was a big one.
He was taking it out of his car to go
transfer it back into mine.
Well, out of this one right here,
I had a garage sale, so I set her out there on a chair
right by the curb.
Somebody go out, and more damn people came driving by
just taking a picture of that.
We took that little dog.
We gave it to him.
His grandpa was my—he was a secretary of the group.
He had a stroke while he was down to one of the meetings.
He had a stroke, and his daughter—
they lived in Wisconsin. They came down.
We gave him that stuffed dog that day.
Dick said you couldn't have more given it away.
He said you're putting her with a growing man.
But he prizes that dog more than anything than he's ever got.
Another one of the mannequins—
it was a silent auction. It was a big deal going on.
I know what it was.
My stepdaughter took it over there and put it up
at the silent auction.
Three or four people came by and just write down there
what they'd bid for it.
You know what goof could buy?
Five-hundred dollars.
That was a laugh for a long time.
I can tell you about that later.
Then another one.
I didn't know if it was her or another one I had there.
I sold it to a gal up the street.
She was a seamstress.
She wanted something to—I think she could put clothes on
to help her with what she was sewing.
She said I'll give you 75 dollars for it.
Give me your money.
It's things, things like that.
That still goes on.
It hasn't been very many years ago. What's it been?
Only about 10 years ago I had that—10, 15?
[female] That was before my time.
[T. Lofton] Tell me this.
Do you think it's important that we have museums like
the National WWII Museum? [G. Bacon] Yes, yes, yes.
Very, very so because it's history.
That's what I say we got to get into these schools.
You can go in and ask a lot of these guys,
ask them right now, kids that are in high school,
what was Pearl Harbor?
There's somewhere, someplace, someone, or somebody
is letting it down.
That's what museums— museum is history, isn't it?
Are they teaching it?
They teaching history in schools?
[T. Lofton] Not very well.
[G. Bacon] That's my question to you.
[T. Lofton] They are, but it's not what it should be.
[G. Bacon] Right.
I know that what we're going to get it through
is through stuff like what you're doing.
You can take newspaper reporters and have all kind of—
but you read it and throw it away.
I got this one here.
I'm really proud of this one out of all of them.
I've been interviewed so many times
you get sick and tired.
You see a microphone coming, you duck.
It gets old too. Go sic them on to somebody else.
Just like Mary said there a while ago
about the Marine Corps Museum
up there in—if you ever get a chance going through
up in that part of the country, stop and go in there.
It is beautiful.
Him and his dad. His dad was a captain.
In fact, his dad was a captain,
and he lived in Pearl City at the time of the raid.
Him and I, we could sit there and talk.
His son, he's retired from the Marine Corps.
They got that.
Some of the things in there, the things that I've seen,
it brought back a lot of memories of things I did.
Of course, when I was in there,
they were just bringing the women into it.
We didn't have any of them overseas.
First one I saw, she was a captain in the
Salvation Army.
She was standing at the end of the ramp
when we came off of the ship there in San Francisco.
We had some war prisoners on there, some Japanese prisoners.
They took them off first.
Then they started calling us guys out.
I came down. I had my sea bag on my shoulder.
Of course, by the name Bacon—
they called you out alphabetically.
I came down there. I got down to the bottom of the ramp.
I swung my sea bag around, and it hit her
like knocked her in the brink.
I just kept on going.
She up and hollered.
That was a captain, a woman captain, in the Marine Corps.
I just kept right on going.
I didn't know who she was.
That's why I say I thought maybe she was dressed up like
one of those Salvation Army people.
I didn't get court marshaled over that.
I just kept right on going.
One thing I'm more proud of than any of them,
and I told it to a doctor over there while Mary
and I were over at the VA Hospital.
The one thing I was more proud of, this one ribbon that I got,
is a good conduct.
That doctor, he likely fell off his seat
he got to laughing.
He said a Marine Corps—a Marine get a good conduct metal?
Because I did. I'm more proud of that one than any of them.
Because I pulled some lulus,
some of them I'm not very proud of.
That's why I say I've had a good life
thanks to the American people,
thanks a lot to her.
She's the best.
[T. Lofton] I think I've got only about—
I think I've only got about one more question. >>Okay.
[T. Lofton] I'm curious.
It's sort of a weird question, I guess, to end on.
After going through all of that at Pearl,
what are your feelings now towards the Japanese?
I always said right from the beginning
the Japanese people, I have nothing against them.
It was their war lords.
They got their dues. The one got hung for it.
It was their war lords like that.
They were vicious.
They were as bad as the Nazis in the other.
But the Japanese people themselves, no.
I got some people that—I got other people too
in countries that I haven't got any use for too.
That's what I say about the Constitution.
Your rights that you have, so that is it.
The Japanese people, I felt sorry for a lot of them
on that atomic deal.
A lot of them blamed Truman.
He was like a war mug, but he's not.
That man saved more lives because they were anticipating
the landing that we made to Japan
would be over 450,000 guys
either killed or maimed in some way.
Like I say, the Japanese people themselves,
I feel sorry for a lot of them.
You take a burn victim right now.
You take a young kid.
You go around these Shriner Hospitals—the burn victims—
see how they're all scarred up and everything.
They didn't do it.
We did it, but why did we drop it?
On the account of their leaders.
We were not the aggressors in World War II.
The Japanese were.
Sure they got us right at first,
but in the long run remember Pearl Harbor.
That's our motto, and that's the way I'll leave it.
[T. Lofton] Thank you very much for sitting down with me today.
Thank you for your service.
[G. Bacon] I've enjoyed it very, very much.
You've been very kind. You've been very thoughtful.
Maybe I'll live to see another year. I don't know.
[T. Lofton] That'd be good. Thank you, sir.
[G. Bacon] You're welcome. Good luck.God Bless.
[Captioned by Adept Word Management, Inc.]

Annotation

Giles Bacon served with an MP [Annotator’s Note: military police] battalion on Ford Island at Pearl Harbor. He was born in Thompson, Iowa in April 1920. He grew up on a farm during the depression, his family lost everything. The family moved around the country to find work. He went off on his own after his mother died; he was twelve or thirteen years old. He went to live with another family; the people he lived with were like his adopted parents. He saw what was going on in Europe and his cousin, who had fought in World War 1, convinced him to join before the United States became involved in the war to gain rank. He chose to join the Marine Corps. The training was difficult, but Bacon came out knowing more than he did when he went in. Bacon chose the Marine Corps for work; he had nothing during the depression. He joined the Marine Corps on 17 January 1939. He trained at San Diego, California. He was scared to death when he joined the Marine Corps. He went through rushed boot camp training, just under 30 days. He is proud to have served in the Marine Corps, but he was and still is respectful towards the other branches of service. After boot camp, Bacon was transferred to the naval prison at Merritt Island, California. He was assigned as a prison chaser [Annotator’s Note: guard of military prisoners].

Annotation

Giles Bacon remained at Merritt Island for five months before transferring to Quantico, Virginia. He then transferred to China for one year. He was credited for eighteen months. He was stationed at the American embassy in Peking, China. His duties were to protect the embassy. They were under the command of the ambassador, who got his orders from the president. He did not realize how big China was. Once a month, he was placed on mail train duty. He returned to the United States in early 1941. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor, at Ford Island. The navy took over the island from the army and created an airfield. He could see the battleships from Ford Island. They were sitting ducks. Personally, Bacon thinks that Roosevelt knew the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor, he just would not say it to anyone else.

Annotation

In 1940, the US Navy broke the Japanese code. On 27 November of 1941 Giles Bacon heard about a Japanese tanker that pulled out of Oakland, California full of aviation gas. There are a lot of things that Bacon knows that could prove that Roosevelt knew about the Japanese plans before they happened. On the morning of 7 December of 1941, Bacon was still sleeping when the attack began on Pearl Harbor. He was hung over, but the attack cured him off it. They had no idea what was going on, he told the sentry on duty to make sure the prisoners stayed against the walls of the cells. Bacon struggled to get moving and put his clothes on. Bacon remembers the Japanese fighter planes shooting at the navy airplanes on Ford Island. He could see the smoke coming from battleship row and he went over to help rescue men in the ships. He could see the USS Arizona (BB-39) and USS West Virginia (BB-48) going down. The oil on top of the water was two to three inches deep. He helped pull some of the men onto the shore using palm tree branches. He had to tell the men not to open their mouths when he pulled them out because of the oil. Each battleship carried between 2,200 and 2,400 men. Most of the men coming out of the ships were only dressed in their underwear. No one knew each other’s rank or which ship they were from, everything was in a state of chaos for days after the attack. The body count was extraordinarily high. That night, they had no water on Ford Island, so they found whatever they could to give the men to drink and feed them. Everyone helped, including civilians.

Annotation

[Annotators Note: Giles Bacon enlisted in the USMC in January 1939. He was assigned as a brig guard at Pearl Harbor and was on duty at the time of the Japanese attack.] That night [Annotator’s Note: 7 December 1941] any aircraft that approached Pearl Harbor were ordered to come straight down the channel. They had no lights, it was a forced blackout. Some of the pilots did not receive the message and were shot down by their own men. He saw machine gunners shoot down a Japanese airplane that night. He remembers seeing and hearing the explosion of the USS Arizona (BB-39). He went back to Pearl Harbor in 1977. He was given special treatment on the navy base. [Annotator’ Note: Bacon shows on a map exactly where he was on Ford Island during the attack on Pearl Harbor.] There are times to this day that he can still hear the men tapping on the inside of the USS Oklahoma (BB-37), trying to get out. It is a haunting sound.

Annotation

Giles Bacon visited the military cemetery at Honolulu years after the war. It is a beautiful memorial. One of the men buried there is war reporter Ernie Pyle. When he stepped out of the barracks on the morning of the attack, Baker remembers the air being filled with Japanese planes, over 240. There was some antiaircraft fire, but not enough to combat the Japanese. Hawaii was a hell hole that day and the days that followed. Bacon heard rumors of Japanese attacks in the United States and on some of the other islands for days after the attack; they kept everyone on their toes. Bacon says the Japanese knew exactly what they were doing. They left the oil fields alone because they knew that if they captured Pearl Harbor, they could use that oil. Bacon still cannot talk about the memories from that day. The worst part was seeing all the body parts of the young soldiers, most of who were 17 and 18. He still thinks about that day quite often. The greatest gift someone can give him is thanks for his service. Bacon says it means a lot to him when people shake his hand and say thank you. He knows that other veterans appreciate it as well.

Annotation

Giles Bacon has seen some of the movies made about Pearl Harbor in recent years. He thinks the most accurate is Tora! Tora! Tora! The morning of the attack, Bacon remembers seeing the Japanese submarines in the harbor. He recalls the navy salvaging some of the Japanese Zeros [Annotator’s Note: Mitsubishi A6M fighter aircraft, referred to as the Zero or Zeke] from the harbor and using them for war bond drives. They pulled one out of the harbor with the pilot still in it. Bacon wanted a souvenir, so he tried to take the pistol, but he was stopped by naval intelligence. Bacon remembers hearing about the Japanese prisoner they took from an airplane. The prisoner had a class ring on from a local high school in Honolulu. He remembers the various commands and patrols that took place on the island.

Annotation

Giles Bacon remembers that the Japanese aircraft were close enough to shoot at, which he did. He had no idea if he hit any of them, but they were close enough to the ground for him to see the rising sun on the wings of the aircraft. He would not talk about most of the things he saw at Pearl Harbor until many years later, he still will not talk about some of things that happened to him. He reflects on his life, it was very interesting. During the war, he had four brothers that were in the service the same time as him. After the attack, Bacon was transferred to Makin Island to take a Japanese radio tower. He went into the Marine Raiders while he was still at Pearl Harbor. They trained in the mountains of Oahu. Bacon was sent back to the United States to the 5th Marine Division, but he had contracted malaria on Makin Island. He was given a 30 day leave, but he could not heal and was discharged.

Annotation

Giles Bacon was with the Marine Raiders [Annotators Note: 2nd Marine Raider Battalion] for six months. He had enough of being with them. The Raiders could leave at any time with dignity because of the missions they were given. He came back to the United States shortly after the raid on Makin Island. They had no opposition on that raid. They were given little time to attack. After the war, Bacon returned to Iowa. He worked in law enforcement and was for a brief time the personal driver of the governor of Iowa. Bacon is still the president of the Pearl Harbor Veterans Society. They have breakfast together every 7 December with the veterans’ society. The society'’s numbers are thinning each year; there are not many Pearl Harbor veterans left. He thinks it is important to study and preserve World War 2 history for future generations. He goes around and talks to children in schools about Pearl Harbor and World War 2. He remains good friends with some of the men in the veterans’ society. They still play jokes on each other.

Annotation

Giles Bacon thinks it is very important that The National World War II Museum exists. History is not being taught well in schools. The museum is really the only way to inform the public of what happened in the war. He also thinks the Marine Corps Museum in Quantico, Virginia is vital to preserving the history of the Marine Corps. He remembers when they let women into the Marine Corps. He is the most proud of getting a medal for good conduct, because he caused some trouble in the Marine Corps. After going through the events at Pearl Harbor, Bacon had nothing against the Japanese people, he disliked the Japanese war lords. It was not the peoples' fault, they followed orders. He felt bad for the Japanese people after the bomb was dropped. In the long run, remember Pearl Harbor.

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