[Thomas Naquin] July 7, 2009.
This is Thomas Naquin with the
National World War II Museum.
Today I'm with Mr. Herman
Bailey.
For the record, sir, please tell
me your full name.
[Herman Bailey] My full name is
Herman Paul Bailey.
[Thomas Naquin] When and where
were you born?
[Herman Bailey] Lancaster
County, South Carolina, in a
little two-room shack.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] What year, sir?
[Herman Bailey] 1921, September
12.
[Thomas Naquin] What
are your recollections
of the Great Depression?
[Herman Bailey] Well,
we had-our knees
were out, the cheeks of our butt
were out, went barefooted.
We walked to church.
We carried the shoes in our
hands and then put our shoes on
when we got inside the church.
We had bread and molasses for
breakfast.
We had milk.
We had to drink
a glass of buttermilk
before we could get a
glass of sweet milk.
Just the kind of thing back in
that Depression time.
In '29,
when the crash was,
I was 8 years old.
I don't know what time of year
this thing crashed.
I don't know that,
but I think '29.
I don't know when the crash was.
But anyway, we worked on the
farm.
When I was seven years old I was
plowing a mule.
My brother was guiding it.
[laughter]
Of course, at seven years old
you just bust the middles out.
You don't get up close to the crop.
You do it that way.
But that's when I
started planting
was when I was seven years old.
I was the oldest.
We done that.
About the time I was 12 years
old, I was full-time.
When I was ten years old, I was
a full-time plant hand farmer.
Take a pair of mules
and plow a field or
turn plow around and
around and around.
We done all that kind of stuff,
plant crops, pick cotton.
We would pick our cotton,
and then we would go pick
somebody else's cotton.
You take your cotton to the gin
to get six cents a pound.
Then you owed it to the man you
lived on his place.
We were sharecroppers.
They got most of the money and
loaned us some money to get by
to the next year.
It was rough times back
in them days.
That went on until I was 16
years old.
Then I got a job working at
Mullins Lumber Company.
I was a carpenter's helper.
Before I did that a builder
named Mr. Jennings hired-my
daddy hired me out to him for 75
cents a day and my dinner
from daylight to dark.
That's the way it was.
That's when I was 16 years old.
When I was 16 years old we got
our first radio.
It ran off a car battery sitting
outside the window.
[laughter]
It'd run out.
You had to go get it charged
up and do it again,
all that kind of stuff.
We moved to North Carolina when
I was eight years old, first
year to Statesville,
sharecropping.
Moved from there over to Polk's
farm at Hickory, sharecropping.
We were there two years, and
then we moved over
to the sister place
sharecropping.
We stayed there five
years and moved back
to Lancaster on North Corner.
Atlantic was straight up towards
Charlotte.
That was North Corner.
We were just three miles from
that corner.
We lived there three years.
That's where I went to work
outside the house, farming.
I went to work Mullins Lumber
Company as a carpenter's helper.
Mr. Pladard, he raised me up
and made me a carpenter.
Then we finished up a hotel.
That's where I spent my first
night when I got married.
He got [laughter]
to where
he was sending me down
to the package store
for a half a pint of Old Crow.
He kept on until he got me to
take a drink.
One day it rained
at about 10 o'clock in
the morning, and I quit.
I went to work in a cotton mill.
I worked there 1 year and 11
months.
That's when Camp
Croft-Army base-
broke ground right at the first
of December, 1939.
I was making $14.10 for 6 days
at the cotton mill.
I went to work over there at
Camp Croft as a carpenter.
Of course, Mr. Pladard, he
raised me up to carpenter, and I
got a job as a carpenter.
And—uh—
we worked there, and my first
paycheck was $87 plus overtime.
We had overtime every week.
We worked in the rain.
In 56 days they moved
troops in barracks
that we had built.
It was 56 days from when we
broke ground
until they had
troops in the barracks.
We ran all day.
Of course, I learned that on the
farm worked hard for the day
from dark to dark.
Working wasn't my problem.
[laughter] I could work.
Our bosses were from
Mississippi.
They bragged on me.
They were going to adopt me and
take me back to Mississippi
and all that stuff.
We finished at Camp Croft.
Then they asked us to go down
to Wilmington, North Carolina,
to work on-
to build a shipyard.
We went down to—
we started building in waves-
poured concrete to
build the ships on.
We had to pour concrete way up
high on your head and had it
taper down where the ships could
sit up on there.
We built—we worked-I don't
know how long we worked
there on the Cape Fear
River at Wilmington.
That's where they built the
ships and undock them,
and they'd float
out in the river.
We finished up at Cape
Fear River at Wilmington.
They asked us to go to
Columbia, South Carolina,
at Camp Jackson.
It's Fort Jackson now.
It was Camp Jackson then.
We built trusses for rec huts-
recreation for the troops.
My job and my daddy's job-
then the boss came along
and said, "Do you know anybody
who can work like you?"
I said, "Well, I got a brother at
home." He said, "Bring him in."
We made a crew.
We built trusses.
We built more trusses than anybody.
They couldn't keep up with us.
That's just the way it was.
We finished that, and we
went on down to Camp Gordon
at Augusta, Georgia.
We met union people out in the
street.
We got to join a union at
Augusta, Georgia.
We got to go to the package
store on the other side of the
street and get a fifth of
whiskey and go in the front gate
to the first girl
at the first desk
and give her a fifth of whiskey.
We joined a union like that.
From there we went down to the
next girl, and she hired us to
go to work.
[laughter]
We built barracks at Camp
Gordon.
My superintendent there was
Mr. Claude Welch.
We finished that job, and they
asked us to go to Panama City,
Florida, to build
Wainwright Shipyard
outside of St. Andrews-
out past St. Andrews.
We built the shipyard.
We built the office
building up there first,
and then we built the assembly
building, big old building,
out of 12 x 12s.
Two stories and had a crane in
it and all that stuff.
After we got the buildings all
built, then I went to school for
two weeks to learn how to
ship-fit.
I turned out to be a ship-fitter
in two weeks.
My job on that Liberty Ship-
LSTs-was to send in
the cargo hold,
the forward cargo hold.
That was my job. I had a welder-
a girl who was a welder.
We put it together; we'd go
to the assembly building
and get a template.
It was on the plan.
We would go get a template and
lay on the piece of steel.
We would cut it and put it together,
and she would tack weld it.
Then the welders would come in
and weld it.
We got that done.
The crane would pull up there
and pick it up and carry it
outside to put it on the ship
and start all over again.
Then I stayed there. So.
September.
My third deferment
came to an end,
and they told me I
couldn't get another one.
I was living up in St.
Andrews, me and my wife,
and we packed up
and got on the bus and went to
Lancaster.
I checked in with the draft
board.
I had went there six months
before then.
They later told me they won't
get another one.
This is just it.
I checked in, and the next
morning they put me on a ground
bus over to Camp Croft, the
place where I helped build
in December, January,
February, and March.
I walked up to the recruiter who
was an Army guy.
We were all in a line.
We met him first.
I told him I wanted to join the
Marines.
He said just step right over
there.
He was sitting over there with his
blues on and all of this stuff,
sharp as a tack.
I said, "I want to join
the Marines." He said, "Sit down."
He signed me up and
said sign that,
and I was in the Marine Corps.
But he gave me a ticket to
Columbia.
I went down to Columbia.
The next morning they stood me
out in the middle of the floor.
I had all my clothes off, and
they looked at me.
One of them said, "Your back's
crooked.
Does it bother you?" I said,
"No, it doesn't bother me."
He said, "Hold your right hand
on the Bible."
They swore me in on the 12th day
of October 1943.
I said, "Well, my wife's
expecting any day now."
He said, "We'll give you
a 10-day pass."
So I went home and she's—
That was on the 12th.
On the 15th my son was born.
Seven days later I was going
into gated Parris Island.
I'll never forget this old boy
from Savannah, Georgia.
He got on the bus before we got-
he picks them up all
along the road.
His shoe sole was loose.
Every time he made a step
clickety-clack, clickety-clack.
The old sergeant said,
"Hold up."
We didn't know halt and right
and left and all that stuff.
We didn't know anything about
that stuff.
He said, "Anybody got a knife?"
One boy had a knife.
He pulled his leg back like he
was shoeing a horse and cut that
shoe sole off, folded his knife
up, and gave it back to him.
He said, "Follow me."
We went down to the warehouse to
get all our trousers, shirts,
caps, and shoes.
A fellow with a goatee
looks at me and sends
me a pile of shoes
over to—boots they called them.
A size 10, just my size.
He was a World War II-
he shot a mortar,
and it went into
a smokestack of a Japanese ship
and blew it up.
His name was Lou Diamond.
I didn't know who he was until I
was out of boot camp
and found out that
he was a war hero.
I got to meet Lou Diamond and
didn't know who he was.
[laughter] We had our
eight weeks of boot camp.
When we first started off nobody
could just stay in step.
We were rolling all over the
place.
In about three or four days
we got the cadence,
just your heels
hitting the ground. Do, do.
You just got in step.
By the end of three or four
weeks we could march.
[laughter]
Well then, bootcamp out there
on that parade ground—
We would go along the sidewalk.
The sergeant said,
"Platoon halt."
Well, it kind of
caught me by surprise,
and I was rocking on
my feet like that.
The old captain jumped off the
sidewalk and got my shirt
and twisted it all up.
He said, "The sergeant
said platoon halt.
Don't be rocking back and forth."
When he got through with that,
he straightened my jacked out
and stepped back up
on the sidewalk.
[laughter] He was cussing
me out, you know.
They couldn't hit you, but they
could just twist your jacket up
and do all that talk and stuff.
One other time I'll tell you
about.
We were marching
on a parade ground,
and we were standing
at ease.
Some Marines back behind me was
talking—all recruits now.
"What should a Marine look like?
Well," one of them said,
"you look like Bailey up there."
[laughter] I ain't never
forget that one.
That was good.
Well, we go through boot camp,
and we moved out there to the
rifle range in the fifth or
sixth-the fifth week.
We'd lay down, and one
Marine would sit there
and be on that-being
on the rifle,
you had a thing and you
knocked the block back.
And you'd shoot and squeeze it
off, is what they kept telling
you, so you won't pull it off
the target.
That went on for over a week.
Then we got out on the firing
lines and shoot 200 yards
standing and 200 yards you were
shooting sitting down.
Then we moved back to 300 yards.
You'd sit down and shoot, and
then you'd stand up and shoot.
Then you'd move
back to 500 yards,
and you stood up all the time
up there and shoot 7, 8 shots.
When I qualified and made expert
at 500 yards, 1 bullet-
the stopper was
just-half of it was
almost inside and just a little
bit outside.
They called it I missed.
I got the second first ring.
Well, I made expert.
In time we moved back to main
side after that.
We went in and got our dress
greens and all this stuff.
We were as sharp as a tack,
all of us. We just—
We marched in there.
Then time come-the eight weeks
were up.
We got a ten-day pass.
We all went home.
My hair had grown out a little
bit.
You shaved your head when we
first got there,
so it wouldn't look too bad.
Then eight weeks it's going to
grow out a little bit.
I went home for ten days and
came back to Parris Island.
They put me on the rifle
range as a rifle coach-
rifle coach on
the rifle range.
They gave me A range target 21.
I stayed there for almost ten
months.
Then it was time to go overseas.
The fighting was getting bad
over there and all that stuff.
We didn't know that.
That's just how bad it was.
Well, we got—
we got through with that.
I made expert.
When I got over in that tent,
I shot 320 that time, 306 in
boot camp.
You get five dollars for
shooting a rifle.
I got five dollars.
They shipped us the first two
months while in boot camp.
I got five dollars a month.
Of course, that was a lot of
money back in those days.
Then we shipped out from
Parris Island on October 10
and went to Camp Lejeune.
I hadn't paid poker out
of 25 cent limits.
We got outside of Buford.
I got in a poker game.
It didn't last about 30
minutes, and I was broke.
[laughter] I went
to Camp Lejeune broke.
That's where we got our combat
training up in Camp Lejeune
crawling under barbed wire and
little things sitting
in a little ring and blow dirt all
over you
and you crawling on your back
and on your belly.
You had to keep your rifle
where it would shoot
when you got to the other side.
But that's where I learned
bazookas and flamethrowers
and how to throw a grenade and all
that stuff.
We got all of that there.
At that time Elsie came down to
stay with me too.
There was a guest
house for ten days.
That's all they'd let you have.
She came down for the ten days.
Then I was back out there
crawling on the ground again.
[laughter]
The time came to go to Camp
Pendleton, California.
We boarded the train there,
what I called it—
We got on the train
on the Atlantic
and wound up at the Pacific
in Camp Pendleton.
We went there—
we went to Los Angeles
and changed trains
that went down to
Camp Pendleton.
We was there for two weeks,
and then they called
us to go board a ship.
They never told us
where we was going.
That was sometime
towards the middle
of December '44.
We got to Pavuvu-Russell
Islands.
The island was Pavuvu
where we were going.
Coconut trees and barracks
under the coconut trees.
The clouds came, and
it rained every day.
My job was making coffee
on a 50-gallon drum.
[laughter] I had to gather wood
to start the fire and all
of that kind of stuff.
In the meantime you
would be going out
on marches and all
that kind of stuff.
Then it came time to get aboard
the ship again.
We got aboard ship, and we
didn't know where we were going.
We rode around there six days.
We went to shore on Guadalcanal.
If you've ever seen pictures
of a Japanese troop
ship, it'd run
up on the beach-a bunch of
coconut trees.
We had dinner there.
We had sandwiches at 12 o'clock.
We were out there six hours-just
learned how to go down the ropes
and go back up the ropes.
Well, we—
that six hours we
went aboard the ship
and rode around and rode around.
We spend just a little while.
They call it Mog Mog.
I think it was the Caroline
Islands.
It was a wrecked
island and warehouses
of beer and all this stuff.
You'd go swimming.
Three days there.
I went swimming and got fungus
in my ear.
Got aboard the ship heading on
to Okinawa. We didn't know it.
They told us we were
going to Formosa,
going to invade Formosa.
Well, we—
[laughter]—
We didn't know any
better until we got
into the Yellow Sea.
It turned to go to Okinawa.
It came on. "Now here it is.
Now here it is." All that shit.
"You're going to invade
Okinawa, not Formosa."
That's the first we knew where
we was going.
I'd been walking around the
ship and walking around the ship
and sit down.
I got in a poker game, and I
lost some money.
I went out on the deck and count
my dollar bills, and the wind
blew all my dollars out in the
water.
Doing all that walking around
that ship I sat down on one
of those round things where you
tie your rope around in port.
I was sitting there, and you
could hear the waves at night.
The ship every so often turns.
Everybody turns
at the same time.
You could hear the waves going
away, and I was going to lean
over and see if I could see the
waves.
My helmet fell off in the water.
I didn't have a helmet.
We were on there.
At night you couldn't sleep.
You'd get up there, and you'd
sit down.
You'd watch the stars sitting on
that round thing.
I ain't never remember the moon.
There must not have been a
moon out during at that time
or something, just stars.
So we sit there.
You think about back home and
working, and your wife
is at home, all this stuff.
That's the way I did it.
Then, finally on that
last walking around
and walking around, I sat
up there.
I leaned back again; I don't
know if it was a tower
or operator was sitting
up over my head or what,
but I'd just sit there.
That's why you could see tracer
bullets going up.
They go up there, and they
didn't hit nothing.
They'd turn over and go out and
then go up and out.
That's about midnight on March
31.
And we kept on going.
The tracers got brighter.
Every once in a while you would
see an airplane go down,
hit the water, smoke rings.
If it goes straight in, he can
make a smoke ring come up.
[cough]
If it went in on an angle,
it'd just fire and
burn out on the water.
Smoke-you could
see the went out.
Well, that kept on going.
The further you
went into the night
the brighter the tracers got.
The brighter they got the closer
you were getting
to where you
were going to shore at.
And at daylight
the Japanese was shooting at us
from the shore with artillery.
The artillery shells was going
in the water.
At first we didn't know what it
was.
Somebody passed the word
around and said it's artillery
coming from shore. It
never hit anybody.
So we got on up there.
You got 8:30.
The boats, all of
the regular troops,
was going to shore.
We were 32nd Replacement Draft.
And we was aboard ship.
They had the speakers
on all around the ship
keeping up with
everything going on.
All the first wave went in
standing up.
No firing.
Somebody fell off the
boat and broke his leg
when he got ashore.
There wasn't anything going on.
The Japanese, that was the
first time they'd done
that kind of stunt.
[laughter]
They set up down south, and we
didn't know it.
I didn't get to go in until 4
o'clock that day.
We went ashore on an Amtrak.
That was when I went on.
I got going over the rail.
The Sailor boys were
there to help us over
and get on the rope.
I'll never forget it.
This old Sailor boy said,
"Where's your helmet?"
I said, "I lost it."
He stuck his on my head.
I went to shore
with a Navy helmet.
[laughter]
So we went ashore—
nothing going on.
Walked in a ways and
went up on a hill
where you could see way out.
We could see ships
burning and smoke
going up and kamikaze planes.
We didn't know what they were at
that time.
So sometime during that next day
we learned all that stuff.
Good many tracers that night.
Tracers just going every which
way.
All day the next day
we stayed at the fox-I
never left the foxhole.
I stayed there that day.
You could see the ships
out there during the day
or those kamikazes blew them
until they were smoking.
At night you could see the plane
when it hit.
There weren't a whole lot of
them that go through.
All our gear was on the outside
of those carrier planes
and was shooting them down
before they ever got there.
We didn't know that.
We didn't know those planes were
going down over the ships.
In that first six days we learned
a lot of stuff. [laughter]
All this kept feeding back to us,
and we learned what was going on.
In the sky at night-I got a
picture.
I got Okinawa.
I want to show that to you.
Every night just like an
umbrella with tracers.
They lit the sky up every night.
Daylight you could see little
smoke streaks and stuff.
It didn't show up much
at daytime, but at night
everything was lit.
That went on for a 100-
39 days rather from April
to the 9th of May.
Every night that's what we lived
with.
Some people got hit with
bullets, not very many.
Just as we got ashore
that first day
two Jap Zeros come
right over our head
and landed on the Yontan
Airfield.
We stood there and looked at
them with our rifles in our hand
and never shot at them.
They had that little red thing
on the side.
But we got ready from then on.
We didn't need to get caught
flatfooted again.
They went up there and
landed on the airfield,
the Yontan Airfield.
I was up there on the third day
of April.
Me and Dunn from my foxhole, we
walked up there and asked them
boys what happened to them
planes.
He said, "Well, they
landed, and the pilots
just jumped out on the ground."
A Marine shot them and
killed them both right there
beside their plane.
I don't know what happened to
the planes.
I never did find anything out.
But then me and Dunn was
walking down by the south end
of Yontan Airfield, and we
came to this cave.
A bomb had fallen right
in the mouth of it-
big old crater— but you can't
really walk around the side.
We walked in that cave.
That's what I told you about
those pictures I picked up.
There were 2 Japs-homemade cots
are what they were laying on.
The first two had Japs on it,
and their bellies
were all swollen up.
Three or four days laying there
dead.
Done stinking.
It was early April, and it was
kind of cool.
There weren't many flies, and
maggots hadn't got into them yet.
When we got down in May we saw a
lot of that stuff.
That's where I picked all
that-that bomb, it made so much
concussion, and everything was
just scattered all over
everything in there, blankets
and everything.
I picked up 18 pictures.
I still got them.
Then I was late getting back to
the camp in the foxhole.
It got dark, and we got
challenged by guards.
We didn't even have the
password.
They asked for the password, and
we couldn't give it to them.
Finally they figured out we were
Marines and let us go.
From then on we go the password
every time we left.
One day I was standing there
with my MI rifle.
They had this air raid going on.
This here Japanese
kamikaze plane
had come over Yontan Airfield,
and he dropped out of the clouds
just before he got
to where I was.
Around them houses they had what
they called rubber
trees-real slender.
The wind would blow them,
and that plane got to the top of
those trees when he's passing me,
and I shot him twice with the
M1 rifle about that far apart.
When it went in that plane,
like a bluish/green flash
where that bullet went in the
side of it, so I know I hit it.
I was sitting there with
eight shots in an M1 rifle,
and I only shot twice.
But that plane went to the ship
out there along us.
He was sitting broadsided.
He went too high, and
the bottom of the plane
hit one of those trucks with
the little canvas top on it.
[smacking sound] He hit
the top of that thing,
and he went over like
this into water.
His bomb didn't blow off.
It didn't explode.
It turned the truck over.
It turned over.
Two days later that ship had
left, and there
sat that plane
out there in the water.
The water went up across the
canopy.
The right wing was up, and the
left wing was in the water.
I decided I'd go down there and
pull that joker out, and I
started out there.
They had an air
raid and shrapnel
just like hail
hitting the ground,
so I started running back.
I got to the hole where we'd
been getting in at night.
It was filled up, and me and
another boy was standing there,
and a piece of that shrapnel
went through his thigh.
It never hit the bone but just
went through the flesh.
He said it's just a little hot
streak.
I don't know who he was.
I never saw him after that.
We unloaded ships.
When I wasn't unloading ships I
was walking somewhere.
I was just gone.
I couldn't sit down.
I'd just go, most of the time by
myself.
One time I went walking
all by myself,
and I just kept
walking way back.
All the Marines sitting
around the foxholes
and waiting to go the front.
I went way on back. I turned
around and started back.
I heard these planes
coming from the south,
the south end down there.
They came up over some trees
and on down where I could see,
and this here plane was
right behind us.
It turned out to be a Jap plane.
I don't know what it was a Zero.
I don't remember seeing that big
old round thing on it, but that
Hellcat was right on his tail.
Just before he got
to me [bbrrrttt]
he went over his right
wing, went down,
and he went straight down below
me.
If he'd gone that way, he would
have got me, but he didn't.
He hit the ground.
He busted and smoke all coming up.
I just kept on walking back.
I didn't go down there.
That was kind of a scary time.
But I couldn't stay
in the foxhole. I walked.
I was just doing something all
the time.
Then that day came, May 9.
I happened to be at the foxhole,
and they hollered for us to
gather up, called our names,
and they started alphabetically.
There wasn't but
about one or two As,
and then they come to Bailey.
I was about the third one on the
truck. You're going to the front.
So I got on the truck.
I got up on the left
corner-on the left corner.
No seats.
Just standing up.
There were four truckloads
of us heading to the front,
and my truck was
leading the bunch.
That airport down there called
Kadena Airfield.
And just before—
we passed Kadena.
We ran into 155 howitzers ship
artillery pieces firing.
Next was 105s and then the 75s
and then the mortars.
Then when you hear the
rifles and machine guns,
you was at the front.
There was somebody there.
When the truck stopped
at the end of the road,
they would get us in and set
us down where we was going.
My place was on the end of the
key ridge kind of going down.
A three-man foxhole was already
dug.
The guy-I took his place-
was Sammy Diego
from San Fernando,
California.
I learned his name.
He was the bazooka operator, and
I was going to be the loader.
That's how I got done.
I didn't see him about a week
and a half, and he was gone.
I don't know where he went.
But I loaded the bazooka,
and every one of them fired.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] What ridge were
you at?
[Herman Bailey] When I
went to the front lines,
I was 32nd Replacement Draft.
When I went on that
truck I was in
the 1st Marine Division,
3rd Battalion, 7th Marines,
J, K, and L Company.
That's who I worked with.
I would say the rifle companies-
the rifle was up front.
Then people like me was about—
were running about six,
eight, ten steps back.
We dug in on the hill.
That way they were on the front
line up here.
That's the way it went on
until we got to Kakazu ridge—
stayed like that.
We went up-that was
about 4 o'clock
on the 9th when we got there.
The Jap was killed down there.
I showed you that on that
picture up there.
Killed next morning-killed Brown
that night.
At about 12 o'clock we go
the word to move up to go into-
it was just a valley then.
It hadn't been named.
I showed you on that
picture why we marched
up there by that dead Jap.
We went all the way up and
then turned over to the right
to turn down into Death Valley.
We got up there, and the
ones who went in before us
couldn't stay.
They had run rocket trucks.
They had six.
They always had these
six rocket trucks,
and they shoot sixty
rockets a piece.
They went off, and one of those
things went crooked.
It just wobbled.
We stayed up I don't know how
long waiting for them guys.
They couldn't stay, and they
came back.
This one boy, they brought him
on a stretcher,
sitting over in a little tent
where the doctor was.
I recognized that joker from
Camp Pendleton.
He stole my clothes.
I had a few words to say to him.
Just like I said when I was
writing that that you read it,
if it had been a week later I
wouldn't have said anything to him.
But I don't have anybody stealing
my clothes. They won't fit now.
But they did.
But anyway, I felt bad about it
a lot of times just
thinking about it.
I shouldn't have said nothing.
We went back to the same
foxhole where I come up there
and spent the night.
We'd get a sniper bullet coming by
at night every once in a while.
Artillery from back those guns we
had passed never stopped firing.
They just kept firing
continuous.
The Japs would shoot their
artillery pieces.
They would shoot seven or eight
shots, and they'd stop.
I didn't know that until
sometime later.
You'd learn all this stuff when
you're up there and people
telling you what happened.
On the 12th when we got over
there-let me get back just think.
On the 11th we were up at 1:15.
We went off on this side-started
off down to the valley before we
did, and then we went.
Just as we started, a machine
gun, a 30 caliber machine,
got started firing up there.
When it passes you like that
it pops just like it's
coming out of the barrel.
It makes little dimples in your
cheeks.
Well, it was about
40 degrees or something
like that down that hill.
We all just dived down that hill
and just slid way
down on our bellies.
I wound up in a little bush that
looked like a Cedar bush.
It wasn't but just a half a
minute or something.
The old sergeant said,
"Let's go."
We up and went on down and got
pinned down there in a little
old ditch.
Up on that ridge, the one
we were trying to take,
Japanese had those
little knee mortars.
They sit down; they stick a
thing between their legs
and put the thing in it.
Off here about 15 feet to the
left one hit the ground,
exploded.
Then here come another half that
far to where we were.
The sergeant said, "That's a knee
mortar," and we all jumped up.
The three guys-he got shrapnel
from the third one.
I was just past it.
That's why we went in a ditch.
We went in that ditch down
there, and it just goes
on both sides.
We got in that water just
above your knees, and
it was just blood red.
You didn't know it was water.
It just looked like blood.
The 30 caliber machine guns when
it hits you it just knocks a
hole through you, and then you
just bleed.
All your blood runs off.
We went on up that ditch and
found where that bulldozer had
pushed up a place up towards
that hill.
Sammy Diego, now he'd been on
Peleliu.
That was his second campaign.
That was my first.
I was following him.
He crawled up that thing.
We got up there and raised up.
There wasn't anybody there but
us.
We were by ourselves.
After a while people started
getting out of that ditch and
just kept on coming.
All the way up that ditch
on the side where we were
digging our holes.
The next morning a banzai charge
started up there I
told you about.
We could hear it, but we
couldn't see them.
They came running around that
hill.
The old lieutenant-this is what
was told to me.
He had his saber in his hand up
there waving it in there
hollering banzai and all of
those other guys following him.
An old boy had set up his
machine gun
up on the back of that road.
He killed every one of them,
just mowed them down,
except one of them.
One got hid in the ditch
or something.
It didn't kill him.
They called Sammy Diego and me
to come up there
with this bazooka.
Just as we got there that joker
jumped up and started running.
They were shooting at him with
rifles and machine guns, and we
shot 11 shots at him out of that
bazooka.
Sam told me they were all duds.
They hit the ground and didn't
bust, didn't explode.
The 12th one went over the hill
where he went over.
He had to shoot as high as it
would go.
It hit something, and it came up
black smoke just balled up over
there.
On the 16th we moved out going
over that way.
We got pinned down with mortars
busting everywhere and us.
The way I said it was just like
the world was blowing up.
That's where I got in a little
ditch.
These two boys sitting
at the machine gun
right above me up on a
little hill up there.
One of them mortars fell right
on the barrel of his gun,
and the loader was sitting
on my side of the machine gun.
When it shoots it's in the back.
That mortar fell, and that fella
rolled down towards me, and
the other guy went back.
It killed both of them.
That's one-if you read that
thing, I had a little word with
the maker.
I got up and went on past those
six rocket trucks again.
They were firing
up on those hills
where we went. We
went on up there.
We kind of went up to-I called it
twin ridges is what I called it.
I don't know what the name of it
was.
Anyway, we went up there,
and we went across the road
over to the second one.
That's when the first Marine
went across there a Jap shot at
him.
Then we started running, and he
shot.
He never did hit anybody.
We got over there.
It had been raining.
Tanks were out there.
They had one guy, but they had
him tied on top of the tank.
His head was just like a
loblolly.
He was going.
His head was just sloshing.
He just hadn't died, but
he-ain't no way he could live.
That's when I took my flashlight
and looked in that tunnel.
I found them two Japs sitting in
there.
They would have been burnt the
day before-flame throwing tank.
They just sitting back leaning
back against the side on two
here and ten over there.
It was so hot.
I call it it just froze them in
place, and they never fell over.
They just sit there.
That's when I knew how hot
napalm was, and you're on it if
you're on a flamethrower.
We couldn't stay.
We had to pull back, go back
across that road.
Nobody got shot again.
Then we came back the next day
and stayed.
The next day we pulled
all and moved off-
I think it was the
19th or 20th of May.
We went down through this flat.
There were four tanks out there.
We went off at 1:15.
You run, and you
zigzag as you go.
Wide open fields,
shooting at you with machine guns
over here all around them ridges.
It wasn't on the left;
it was coming
all the way around
the back over here.
When we went through there,
there were 160 of us went over
at that place and went through
those tanks and machine guns
were hitting those tanks and
bullets were ricocheting off.
Artillery was going into the
hills and mortars falling and
machine guns going.
That's the way it was
from the 9th to the 18th
when I got off the front
line all day and all night.
Flares all night.
Artillery never stopped.
We got over there as good as
this cliff about 25-foot house,
and we couldn't get on it.
Then we were piled up behind
this thing, and the Japs were
throwing hand grenades
down on those guys
up next to where the cliff was.
They didn't have any idea it was
going to happen.
It just happened when they got
up there.
I was shooting at them too over
here to the left with my rifle.
I missed the first shot, went up
about that high.
Well, I was an expert.
I wasn't supposed to do that.
I was shooting in that
tomb to keep any Japs
on it from firing
at us from there.
I looked back, and I could
see those Japs throwing
hand grenades with their arms.
That's all you could see, so I
started shooting up there trying
to hit their arm.
I couldn't do that.
The time came, but we couldn't
stay.
Word came to pull back.
Sammy Diego had got gone.
I was there, and his bazooka was
laying there.
I don't know if he got wounded
or what, but he was gone.
I never did see him again.
The sergeant put that bazooka in
a hole where it blowed out like
that and hit it with a rock.
It bent it in.
He told me to get going.
Well, I started running back.
An old guy about 45 years old out
there throwing smoke grenades.
He was down at Parris Island
when I was down there.
I never did know his
name, but he was
an old leather face
guy, and he was tough.
He was throwing smoke grenades.
We went through the smoke.
When we came out of the smoke
they started shooting at us.
One of them got to shooting at
me, and I guess he was too far
away the way I figured it,
but he was hitting the
ground around my feet.
I ran until they give out.
I had 12 bazooka
shells and an M1 rifle
and M1 addition and my pack.
I give out.
I said well, "I guess you just
have to shoot me. I can't run."
I just kept walking, and he
never hit me.
I went back there and got in the
foxhole and spent the night.
The next morning we counted
and there were 90—
90 combat out of 160.
Some of them were probably where
they could walk back when they
came on back because they got
wounded, but there were 90
out of 160 on that 3-1/2 hours.
So, we was all shot up, and
somebody else took our place.
They went back the next time.
We didn't go back.
Everybody was all messed up.
From there we came out on a hill
overlooking Naha.
I can't remember what
happened between that place
on top of that ridge
over there looking down.
Now it's just tore up.
It's all blown up.
The buildings are all gone. The
Yellow Sea was right out there.
That first day,
I called it like—
that thing was made like a
fist, you like make a fist
and a little finger sticking
out is what I call it.
I saw my first helicopter light
on that thing.
I never heard tell
of a helicopter before.
I thought to myself maybe
I'm seeing things, and that
ain't even been built yet.
But that was a helicopter they
had out there on that little
finger, little island
that sticks out.
Then what do they call spigot
mortars?
I never heard tell. I think
it's what they call them
on that—
I forget what that
peninsula's name is
sticking out in the China Sea.
Naha and the river come up
in there
and that peninsula was next.
On the other side of that thing
that spigot mortar started firing.
It did fire. Of course,
it went off to the side.
That thing hit the ground, and
it was the most awful explosion
I ever heard on Okinawa,
bigger than a 155
artillery piece.
It shot about five times.
When it left the ground it
started squealing and then boom.
The next morning I went in a
cave-I get ahead of myself.
I walked up there, and there's
this hole in the ground.
I got my flashlight, and I'm
looking in there.
There's a walkway going down.
I just kept on walking.
It was a natural cave.
And in that cave I found
a flag, a Japanese flag,
and a half a gallon of alcohol.
They always laugh at me
because of the way
I say alcohol.
Bloody clothes all over the
place.
I guess the way I figured was it
was a medical center,
a temporary place where they
came and patched them up.
All the clothes were just blood
everywhere.
It just so happened there
wasn't no Japs in there.
[Thomas Naquin] By yourself?
[Herman Bailey] Huh?
[Thomas Naquin] You
went in by yourself?
[Herman Bailey] I
went by myself.
The first time I went in a cave
by myself was that one.
I just walked in there like I
knew what I was doing.
[laughter]
But that night somewhere they
found some orange juice.
They mixed it with the alcohol,
and they got sick.
We were in a sweet potato patch—
sweet potato patch all up there.
They vomited all night long.
I was the only one who wasn't
sick.
Didn't nobody bother us all
night.
They got all that settled out, and
they all got where they could walk.
We pushed off and went down to
the-it's like a valley coming
from Naha from the river went up
there, and the railroad track
went down through that valley-went
all the way across the island.
I didn't know that then, but I
know it now.
After I got off there that
railroad went all the way to the
Pacific Ocean.
Out along that railroad track
they had all kinds of stuff like
shoes and pants and shirts and
hats.
We called it like you bail hay,
piled hay-haystacks we called
it.
That's the way they looked and they
had tarps on every one of them.
All that stuff was in there.
We went on by all that.
When we went by we just
pulled the tarps off to see
what was in the thing.
We went on up that railroad and
went out on the other side.
Frank Barrett, I met
him at Camp Pendleton
when we were there waiting that
two weeks to get on the boat.
I run up on him when we got out
up there.
He said, "Let's go in that cave
over there."
Okay.
We went up there.
We didn't post any guard.
We went in.
There had been all that rain
that we walked in-you
went downgrade,
and the water ran in the cave.
Them Japs-it was all like a
loblolly where they run in and
out at.
We went down about halfway in
that cave.
One went each way, and one went
straight on.
We turned left and went left.
They had bunk spaces dug out on
the east side.
They had one here and one here
and a space, one here, one here.
First time I saw this cave I know
of it, they had it dug like that.
There was one of these
little old lanterns.
We call them eight-hour lanterns
we had back in South Carolina.
You push the handle
down and light it.
That thing was still burning.
The Japs had been there
less than eight hours.
Barrett reached up to take that
thing down, and he didn't do it.
He was leading the way.
We just kept on walking and
walked down the low end down
there and went back to our
foxhole.
About 30 minutes that whole hill
blew up.
Dirt went everywhere.
So, I don't know whether that
lantern had anything to do with it.
I got to thinking is that
thing burnt the kerosene,
it would get lighter and
lighter, so it might
have triggered something.
If he'd have taken that thing
down, he would have triggered it
right then, but he didn't do it.
But Hill 57 in the old reading
book.
Said Hill 57 blew up like that,
but that wasn't Hill
57 what we was on.
That was another one.
We got away from that one.
Then we went on.
Up until then we
didn't see civilians
along the road until
we got on past Naha.
We got up on a high ground.
I can't say it.
I don't have it my book.
I could tell you what the name
of that thing was.
We were kind of just a little
bit past it on the high ground.
Then the order came for all the
special weapons guys to burn a
bunch of straw-roof houses, the
first we saw.
We burned all of
those houses down.
The thing was to keep the
Japanese from coming back in
and using them for
sniper's nests.
So we burned
all those houses down.
A boy got his knee blew off.
Those tendons back here were
what was holding them on.
[Thomas Naquin] A sniper?
[Herman Bailey] A shell or something
hit. I don't know how he got hit.
His knee was gone. All his
kneecap had fallen off.
Well, they got their heads
together.
They couldn't get any trucks up.
No way to get him out but carry
him down to the China Sea.
They asked for volunteers. Well,
I was one of his volunteers.
My job was on the left back
looking back as we went.
We went down by this little old
rocked in village.
All the way around that
thing-we found out
the next day the whole
thing was rock.
We went down by that rock
wall all the way down
to the rice paddies.
There's a big walkway all the
way out to the China Sea.
The Yellow Sea. I don't
know what they call it.
The China Sea.
We went out that walk,
and about halfway out
this Jap was lying
in a rice paddy
with his head back, and
he had his helmet on.
Just lying there, and the water
came up along here, like I said,
behind his neck.
Those guys had done gone.
I was last.
I got to looking at that fella,
and every time he would breathe
a little wave would go.
I said, "Yeah, you a sucker."
I shot him.
I've seen that guy ever since.
Anyway, when I shot, they sent
the guy down on the stretcher.
The corpsman was walking along
there beside him.
He had a tourniquet on his leg.
He adjusted that thing, and it
was on all right.
The artillery shell, 77,
started shooting at
the boat when they
came around the peninsula out
there.
All the shells were going way
over the boat.
We kept on walking, and the boat
came on in.
Just before we got to shore the
gun quit firing.
We got there, and the corpsman
went on with the wounded
guy with his knee off.
This one guy was running the
boat.
He was by himself.
I don't know whether he was Navy
or CB or what he was.
Anyway, we put him on there, and
the boat took off.
We started back.
The artillery piece
started shooting again.
They were still going over the
top of the boat.
He went on around the corner,
and the gun quit firing.
We went on back and started
going up beside that rock wall
by that little rock wall.
A Japanese stepped out
into the walkway,
and those guys up
front were surprised.
They didn't have time to shoot him.
He went back in.
They went up there and looked
around. They couldn't find him.
We went up and dismissed from
volunteer.
The next day we were sitting
up there, and this here guy-
I never saw him before.
We decided we'd go take a walk.
We walked down to high ridge.
We walked in that village.
We walked down.
We went down about 300 or 400
feet.
There is a big walkway
coming all the way
from the right to
the left, and you have all
of them rock walls.
Everything was rocked in about
six feet high.
So we turned left just
the two of us.
so we went to the first house.
We went in the gate, the rock
gate and had a little old wooden
gate on the thing-went in the
house.
It was a nice house, off grade.
We went in the house, and nobody
was there.
We came back out and walked out
into the barn.
The barn was on the inside of
that rock wall too.
There lay a girl on her
back in that hallway-
had like a robe
on and laid back.
She had been raped about 15
times.
Rubbers were laying there all on
both sides of her.
They had laid a hand grenade beside
her head and blew all of this off.
Just a little bit of her face
here was still on.
It was just done because there
were no maggots in her, and the
flies weren't even on her yet.
It just happened.
We started back out, and the
other boy stopped at the gate.
I said wait a minute, I want to
walk down beside the house.
I walked down there,
and there was a Jap
under there with his shoes off.
From here there's a block wall
on the side.
I couldn't see his face,
but that left foot, he
had a white sock on it.
He done pulled his shoes off.
I pointed at the gate.
I said, "There's somebody under
there."
We went on, and they didn't come
after us.
We went on back
to the foxhole, and
he told the sergeant
what I saw under that house.
So he got a bunch of Marines,
and they went back down there.
He had one of them Thompson
submachine guns.
They got under there and shot
the whole thing full of holes.
There were three Japs up under
there, and they never shot us.
The girl was lying out
there in the barn,
and they just raped her.
We was going out of there.
I don't know whether I'll
tell you this or not.
We went out through that rock
wall and turned to the left.
There was a house sitting back
out there under some trees with
a straw roof on it, just like we
had burned the day before.
There was a man standing out
there, and this boy with me, he
went to the right around behind
him, and I went in front of him.
He was kind of a leather-faced,
slim-faced fellow.
He was Okinawan I think.
But this girl came running
out of that house
with a hula skirt
on, barefooted,
no top, and run all
the way up to me,
just came right up there.
That man said something to her, and
she turned around and went back
in the house.
Just like that she was gone.
We went on back to the foxhole,
and that's when he told the
sergeant about the Jap under the
house.
They went down, and there were
three of them.
After that we got
to seeing people
all along the roads.
I don't know how they were
killed.
There would just be 30,
40, 50 of them in a bunch
laying there
beside the road.
Women, small kids, old men.
There weren't any young men.
It was all the old men.
This went on for
three or four days
running into this kind of stuff.
The women-the men were all
dressed.
But the women,
somebody had pulled
their robes back, and
they were lying there.
This is something I even said
maybe I shouldn't write this,
but this is something I'm
seeing.
Those people were eaten up with
maggots, and they just wiggled
and falling out the nipples
and falling on the ground
and going back under.
That's the kind of war I was
looking at.
That went on for about two weeks
every day.
We got up with the Japs on
Kunishi Ridge.
That's when all hell broke loose
for about five days.
We got there on the 11th.
There's a reason why I know it
was the 11th.
We went across at night, 3:30 in
the morning.
But I walked
in this sugarcane field.
I estimate it at 800 yards
across.
I walked in this cane field, and
a sniper started shooting at me.
He shot at me three times, and
was hitting down around my feet.
I got behind a tree.
He shot three times.
I stood a little bit, and I
started running straight back.
I got back, and he didn't shoot
at me anymore.
We went across that night at
3:30.
I was carrying a flamethrower.
The second time I carried one I
think.
I don't think I carried one-this
was the second time.
We went across that thing, and
we got about halfway across.
A Jap went through
the line behind me
and dropped a hand grenade.
There were two of them.
Somebody said something about a
Jap.
I looked around, and the flares
from the guns firing I saw that
there were two of them.
He was kind of behind a bank.
They went up over that bank, and
that hand grenade went off.
I never did know if it hit
anybody or not.
I never did find that out.
We got on the other side, across
that 800 yards.
A little old road went through
there.
We got daylight.
We got over there, and
all the rifle people
was way ahead of me. They were
all scattered all out there.
I came up, and this old guy was
sitting over on a white rock.
He was pouring water
from one canteen to the other.
I said, "What are you
doing that for?"
He said, "It cools the water."
I got talking to
him, and I said-
you could tell he had a
brogue or something.
I said, "Where you from?"
He said, "Australia."
I just joined the Marine Corps
to get into fight.
I left him sitting
there on that rock.
I don't know if he made it.
[laughter]
That's the funny thing.
"I'm from Australia.
I just joined the Marine
Corps to get in a fight."
I went on.
And we was—
[Herman Bailey] Okay, we got-
we got across.
We turned left going up on the
top of Kunishi Ridge.
We went up there.
I just made 350-400 yards.
When we stopped,
that's where I stayed
the whole five days right there.
That's my center place where I
went working from there every
which way.
We got up there.
Sometime up in the day
an old boy named Wydell,
Donald I. Wydell, we decided
we'd take a stroll.
Went toward the cane field and
turned a little bit to the left,
and there's a cave.
So I said, "You just stand guard.
I'm going to go on in."
I went in.
About 20 feet there lay
a Japanese rifle.
I pick it up and came back out.
It had been burnt.
It was a pistol grip.
I guess it was white phosphorus.
Anyway, it was burnt.
I carried that thing
with me all the way
to China and had a
carpenter build me a box.
I sent it home.
So they were something.
Kunishi Ridge was just hell
every day and night.
Always something going on.
People getting killed and
wounded.
So we-we-
I was there at that spot for
about five days.
I'd go from there.
Somebody need somebody to blow a
cave, and I'd go with them.
It just could be J, K, or L
Company.
It didn't make any difference.
I was going all the time.
But what made it so bad, you
throw a 24-pound satchel charge
in there, and the cave didn't
fall in.
That's the first one we ran into
that.
All the others were dirt.
They'd fall in.
But you blow those caves, and they
just still sitting right there.
And all them caves-it turned
out every one of those caves
just about went all the way
through down through that ridge
out the other side.
Shoot, you could tell-yo
throw a satchel charge in there.
If it was a dead end, you had
more blowback.
When you didn't have that
blowback you knew it went
all the way through.
You learn all this stuff when you
keep doing all this like that.
So
the next day Wydell and
me, we went by that cave
where I got the rifle and
then went down and around.
We came to a rockslide,
just like it slid over
about 15 feet just level.
It wasn't level, kind of
downhill like that.
They had parachuted
stuff in there for us
the night we got there I guess.
Them Japanese were carrying it
and stacking it all in there.
Just as we got there, a Japanese
come crawling out these three holes
dug, little square holes,
level with those rocks there.
One of them started crawling
out, and Wydell saw it.
"That's a Jap there!"
Before we could shoot him, he
went back in.
So I had a crazy idea.
We went back, and I told
the officer up there.
I said, "I got an idea.
"I want to take five
gallons of napalm
"and tie a 24-pound
"satchel charge on the side
of it and set it in front
of that hole
and blow it in the hole."
He said, "Go ahead and do it."
So we went down there.
I carried that thing up there to
the cave.
Wydell stood guard, and I set it
up there.
I must have set it a little bit
too far out.
That thing exploded.
Napalm went all over everything
and set a bunch of grass
and stuff in there on that
floor, the ammunition boxes,
and set that all on fire.
That can the napalm was in was
gone.
It went in the hole or just blew
it all to pieces or something.
I think it went in the hole.
Whether it killed anybody, I
don't know.
We went on back, and that fire
burned down there
until midnight.
Whatever was in
those wooden cases,
the shell and the case
in itself would blow up.
The projector would still be
laying there.
It didn't blow up, but the shell
would bust.
Those things kept
busting and busting
and busting way into midnight.
Nobody didn't wreck us out about
that.
The next morning we were sitting
up there in my place.
This Japanese started down
there, below where all that
explosion was, running through
that cane field about 400 yards
over there.
So I grabbed the M1 rifle, and I
started shooting at him.
I was leaning in too far,
and the bullets were
hitting in the side.
You could tell where it hit.
The next one looked like it just
went by his shirt.
The next one hit him in the
belly.
He went down on his left knee,
caught his head with
his right hand.
He balanced himself with his
left.
That joker got up and started on.
I was fixing to shoot him again.
An officer said, "You can't
shoot him over and over.
We got people over there.
All that whole ridge over there
was still occupied.
He kept on trucking.
He had to die.
He just had to die.
His belly was shot out.
But he got up and left.
[Thomas Naquin] Adrenaline.
[Herman Bailey] Something.
Anyway, that was a pretty good
day really.
[laughter]
I was an expert, but I missed
two times.
[laughter]
Well we-that day-
the next day I met
Frank Barrett back
at Camp Pendleton, and
we went in that cave
that the whole hill blew up.
I ran into him again.
So we worked together.
We had several guys
on J, K, or L Company
carrying a satchel charge.
And we went up toward
the cane field and went east.
We came to a little old cave.
We'd throw 24 pound.
It was a small cave.
Then when we got down to
the big, old cave-
big, round hole.
Don't forget now.
From May 9 until that day
there was artillery
going all day and
all night and flares burning all
night.
It never stopped.
All of this was going on all at
the same time.
Frank Barrett said, "Let's go in
there."
Okay.
Had a little ladder going down.
It went down five or six steps
to the floor.
Barrett was leading the way
again.
We went in there
about 70 feet back.
This cave went that way,
and one kind of went
over this way,
but we didn't know
how far it went.
They had sandbags
across the cave
with a blanket hanging
down on them.
He said, "You got
a hand grenade?" I said, "No."
I said, "I'll get one."
I went back to the thing, and
one of them boys threw one down.
I walked down to Barr-\
just walked up to him.
He was turning with his left
hand to get that.
I don't know what I had a right
hand or left hand.
He was reaching to get
that hand grenade,
and a Jap shot him from above.
It went down the back of his
shoulder.
It was a blue streak about that
long. It never hit the bone.
I said, "You go on," and I still
had a carbine that day.
I shot 16 times. [gun sounds]
I was shooting up
in there with that.
Now that bullet, whenever
that guy fired it-
Japanese-
it's just like you hit
the back of your hand
I guess on a 110 electric wire.
It just freezes you
for just a second,
and it's so loud.
It was so loud shooting
straight down at us.
I can just image what a 24-pound
satchel charge sounded
like in a cave
that you get from a
30 caliber bullet.
Old Barrett got
out, and I got out.
They had a stretcher
and attended to him.
I dropped a satchel
charge in there
down beside that rock wall.
All the pressure
went in the cave.
Then I put another in there just
for good measure what I called it.
I guarantee if that guy was
still up there, he's dead.
[laughter]
The concussion would kill him.
Anyway, Barrett-
that's the last time
I ever saw Barrett.
He was from Bradenton, Florida.
We was-all our grandkids play
baseballs, our boys.
They had a tournament down there.
We went through Bradenton.
I stopped and got on the
payphone, looked in the book,
and I found a Barrett name in
there, so I called it.
Bless it was his uncle.
I told him I knew Barrett over
in Okinawa and all that stuff.
He said,
"Well, Frank came home."
And he walked-I don't know
if he was married.
I never did find out if he had a
wife or what.
He said he moped around
here for a while
and went to California,
Los Angeles.
He had a half-brother out there.
He said, "I ain't heard
from him since."
They don't know what happened
to him, and I never got
to see him again.
It's kind of a coincidence.
Anyway, back to Kunishi Ridge.
We had-I don't know
if it was the 15th,
15th of June.
One company had me-
there were about five of us.
They were carrying
satchel charges.
Up on Kunishi Ridge
was an upper level,
and then it went up again.
There were caves all up there.
They'd been having trouble
sniping at them, so we went out
and started blowing those things
going to the left.
It was on the wrong side for me
to be throwing a satchel-
should have started down there
and went this way, but I had to
go left-handed on those caves.
So we blew caves there
a while and sat down.
I didn't know any of them.
They were talking to each other.
This boy sitting over here-
one sitting up there,
and he had his
leg out and his knee up.
This one here said he wanted to
go home.
This guy over here said,
"You mean that?
He said, "Yes."
He shot him through the knee.
It's a funny thing.
That bullet went in right there.
It blew out the side, but just
a little white blubber
came up in that hole.
I guess it was marrow from the
bone or something.
I never saw that before but just
a little blubber.
They got the corpsman to come up
there and doctor him up.
Those boys told him-the
corpsman-that somebody, a Jap,
had shot him from one of those
caves we hadn't blew yet.
I don't know what ever happened
to that.
I often wondered what I should
have done about it, but I just
kept my mouth shut.
Then the next day, we went on
east along the sugarcane field.
There was an interpreter up
there.
He sent word bacl for us
to come on up there.
He was in a cave trying to get
six Japanese to surrender.
He was just inside the cave.
I went around to the left-hand
side, got one of those boys to
give me a satchel charge, and
that boy, that interpreter,
came running out.
He said blow it.
I threw 24-pound TNT or C2,
whichever one it was.
That thing blew up.
Then he told me what would
happen.
He had six of them
sitting in a ring
talking to them trying
to get them to give up.
One of them stood up and
started walking back
in the cave, and
that's when he run out
and said blow it.
I blew it. I don't know if it killed
one of them or none of them or what.
Anyway, it didn't cave in
because it was rock.
[Thomas Naquin] What about-you
said if the caves were connected
they would come in.
They would demolish a certain way.
Could you tell?
Do you recall if it looked like
they were connected to other caves?
[Herman Bailey] Just a hole in
the ground.
You couldn't tell that.
[Thomas Naquin] Okay.
[Herman Bailey] But you
could take a 24-pound
satchel charge and
throw it in there.
If you had a lot of blowback, it
didn't go no where.
But if it was just mediocre-
go both ways-it went
out the other side.
[Thomas Naquin] The concussion
though.
[Herman Bailey] The concussion
would just bust your ears.
That's the cave I blew-the last
one I knew there were Japs in.
That's the last one I blew was
that one.
We went on back.
I think that was on the 16th of
June.
We went back to the place where
my holdup place was.
Wydell-
I don't know why we always went the
same way, never went the other way.
We went west.
We decided we'd go down by
that cave where the rifle was
and where the rock slide.
We went on past that, and we
were hopping from rock to rock.
We got down to the edge of the
cane field.
That's where the sniper was
shooting from.
Everybody that got in that cane
field-the way they were talking
he must have killed 1,500-I mean
15 people not 1,500.
They couldn't take him out.
They had to put him on tanks,
drag him up to the tank, and put
him through the bottom and send
him out.
That guy, he was just hitting
everybody.
But we walked up
on this big old rock.
I got a picture of that there, a
drawing I drew.
Here is a rock cliff over here,
a walk space, and this rock.
He had been chiseled in.
The cane field was over there.
Wydell said look at that gun
barrel sticking out of that
crack up there.
That Jap that loaded it
in about two seconds
he blew his head off.
This guy, the sniper, lying
in that sniper's nest,
he hit his head with a-
we could hear it. Bam.
That's the way they set the hand
grenades off.
Just five second it
went off, and it blew
the whole side of his head off.
He was laying-feet were down
towards us, and his head was
towards that hole.
He was lying on his back.
He had put that hand grenade up
here with his left hand, and all
that stuff just blew up all over
the cave up there.
Where his brains sit,
it blew right down
to he had two little
slots sort of where
this brain and-you
got a double brain.
[Thomas Naquin] The hemispheres.
[Herman Bailey] We
walked up in there,
and that guy was laying there.
There was smoke coming out of
his head.
But those places where that
brain is sit were just as clean
if you would have wiped it out
with a rag.
It just sucked his brain right
out.
But there his rifle was there
beside him.
He killed I don't know how many.
We walked and left the whole
thing.
We knew we would have got
ourselves in a jam if he was
allowed to walk out.
They could have killed-either one
of them could have killed both us,
and still they decided
to kill themselves.
[Thomas Naquin] They
were getting desperate.
[Herman Bailey] Well, what they
did-we get that all along.
They'd leave one
Marine- one Jap-
back in a cave, and
that was his place
to stay until he died the way I
understood it.
That may not be exactly right.
This guy was in the
sniper's nest,
and that boy's down
there loading the gun.
They stayed there and killed
both of themselves.
We went on back.
I guess you're saying I got
nervous that day.
I might have turned white.
But anyway.
That was a bad situation, and we
walked back and got out of it.
The next morning, that was the
17th of June, we moved off
the back of Kunishi Ridge
to the next place back there.
They were-
the colonel, our colonel,
was standing down there
at the edge of the
bushes saying,
"You go that way,
and you go that way."
There was a great big old boulder
rocks out there standing up way
higher than your head.
They were just like they had
been placed there.
We walked in there.
There wasn't anybody firing at
us or anything.
I had to do a number two,
and I went out there
in front instead of going back.
I got down beside a rock, dug my
little hole, and a Corsair came
from the right side and strafed
right down to where I was.
I was behind a rock. [laughter]
That's the last scary thing I
got into on Okinawa.
I moved on back, and we left-
moved off there between
12 and 2 o'clock.
The 6th Marine-I mean
the 2nd Marine Division
relieved us off the front lines.
We marched back.
We went back about 100 yards
from that sniper's nest.
This is what I said there
myself.
I said that guy was
still laying there,
flies putting their eggs
in his head, and the maggots ate
him up.
I bet there's still a greasy spot
there where they ate him up at.
That's what I was thinking.
We went on back a good ways and
dug in around a round-top hill.
That hill had been pushed all
the way around it.
It's like it had been pushed
off, and caves went off of that.
A sniper-we were there the first
night.
They had a big toe and other
toes.
The shoe had a toe-a big toe.
One of those jokers dug himself
out of that thing on the side
where we were and went around
and got down to a
stream of water.
Somebody down there shot him,
but he came out of that cave.
It was already blown
shut when we got there,
but he was still in there.
We stayed there, I think, five
days.
Back in Pavuvu, Russel
Islands-see the 1st Marine
Division had been to Australia.
This guy had a 32-1/2-he told me
it was a 32-1/2 cent piece
silver coin.
I got it off of him.
I was sitting there on-had me a
little piece of wood hitting on
that corner with a GI spoon.
The coronel had his tent right
above me.
He came out of there and said,
"What in the world are you
doing?" I said, "I'm making a ring."
He came down there and got the
spoon and the ring and tap, tap,
tapped on it.
He just got up and left.
So I made me a ring.
You cut the inside of it out
until it fits your finger.
I wore it on this finger.
Sometimess-I wore
that thing in 1980s.
It just fell apart.
I never kept the pieces.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] What about POWs?
Did you take any Japanese POWs?
[Herman Bailey] I told you-we
took prisoners but older people.
I have a picture out there of
two of them.
That's the only two I saw
prisoners, and both
of them-one of them was over 40
years old or around 40 and the
other one was like about 30. I'll
show you the picture out there.
That's why I said the older
guys.
They had a little-
they felt something for their
life instead of just giving it
to the emperor. I think
they'd die for the emperor.
The young guys, they would kill
themselves.
You didn't see any young people
that surrender until the last
like the 20th and 21st.
Got them down there at that end
of the island.
Let's see, that would have been
the south end.
I didn't how many we took
prisoner.
Last week on TV
they had one of these here
programs on the History Channel.
A whole bunch of these
young guys give out
on the south end of Okinawa.
The old general killed himself.
He killed himself with a knife
like that.
General Buckner-I got off the
front line on the 18th.
He was up there on the 20th or
21st, and an artillery shell
hit-it was all rocks down there.
A piece of that, a rock hit him
in the chest in that explosion
and killed him.
General Buckner.
Oldest general killed in the
Pacific.
At that time I didn't know he
was dead until we got up to the
north end of the island and
found out about it.
[Thomas Naquin] Where did these
older Japanese surrender again?
[Herman Bailey] When
I saw him, it's
just like they're sitting
in that picture out there.
One was sitting up there leaning
against the house, and the older
fellow was sitting out there in the
field-had a bandage on his arm.
I think that's right.
Just sitting out there with
his legs crossed sitting
in an open field.
I don't know how they got there.
I just happened to see them
there.
[Thomas Naquin]
What happened to-
this is earlier in the
campaign around the rock wall.
You remember you had
this Okinawan girl
come running at you and
then she turned around.
[Herman Bailey] That wasn't a
rock wall.
That's the rock wall village is
where she was.
This was just outside the village.
They had a gate.
It wasn't a gate.
It was just an open place.
We had come over here and went
in that way. We came in back.
We came and turned to the
left and go in there
to the grass roof house there.
The day before in the morning we
burned all of them houses.
Then they needed volunteers to
carry that guy to the China Sea
who blew his knee off.
We came back, and this was the
next day.
Me and this boy, we decided we'd
walk and went in that village.
The Jap was under the house and
the girl in the barn
with her head blown off.
We came out of that village and
here came this girl with a hula
skirt, grass skirt.
I called her a ten.
That was way back before they
had tens.
[laughter]
But anyway, she came right up to
me, and that man said something
to her, and she flipped around
and went right back in the house
just that quick.
[Thomas Naquin] How much contact
did you have with the native
Okinawans because a lot of them
were afraid of the Americans?
[Herman Bailey] There's one
thing I skipped over.
Let me tell you this.
We wasa in this valley
going up, way up,
and there was a spring up there.
It had three spouts coming out
the side.
When we got there, there were
about over ten Marines in there
all stripped off pouring water
over them with the helmets.
You'd catch from that pipe
and take a bath.
So me and Bennett, we were
kind of buddies that day,
we walked in there.
We pulled all of our clothes and packed them
in a spot and went in there taking a bath.
These two Okinawan women, they
must have been 25 or 30 years
old, they came from up that
valley and walked right in there
where we were.
Each one of them had two buckets
and a stick.
The Marines just stood back.
The filled their buckets with
water, got it on the stick,
and put it on their shoulder
and walked out.
Nobody said anything.
Nobody touched them or anything.
I wrote down on there what can
you say for the Marines?
We were all gentlemen that day.
That absolutely happened.
I was standing right there.
This is where Vince and Bennett
and I got a call to go down
with a flamethrower and burn
a cave down there.
It was about 200 yards down
there.
We went on down.
We got our bath and got our dry
clothes on and all that stuff.
We got down there,
and this woman
and a little girl had
come out of that cave.
There was an interpreter right
inside the thing.
He had talked those two to come
out.
This woman brought that little
girl out with her.
She was there, and a bunch
of Marines were
standing around there.
The little girl was lying down,
and the woman was standing up.
The little girl looked like she
had smoke and something.
That's the way she acted like.
She couldn't breathe right.
Then about that time
that interpreter
came out and said, "Burn it."
I turned on the two valves and
hit old Bennett on the butt.
He struck the match and
just walked right up there
and burnt that cave up.
That interpreter, he said they
were women in there.
We didn't know that.
That kind of sit-will stay
with you as long as you live.
Anyway, just a rough saw-me
being in construction I knew
what a 2x4 sized to size.
A rough saw 2x4 leaning up on
the right-hand side of that cave.
Bennett, he moved that thing,
and it hit the 2x4.
It came back and took
all the skin off
all the way up past his elbow.
He just kept on firing.
But all that skin had come off.
I didn't see Bennett anymore
until we got up north
of Okinawa.
I guess I messed it up.
That was kind of-that's
something that stays with you
the rest of your life.
Women in there.
That just grabs you.
[Thomas Naquin] Why did he order
to burn-the interpreter?
[Herman Bailey] There were
Japanese soldiers in there.
[Thomas Naquin] Oh, okay. [Herman
Bailey] Yeah, that's why.
There were Japanese in there.
I don't know if the women
were Okinawan women
or Japanese women.
I don't know that.
But that woman and little girl
were Okinawan.
[Thomas Naquin] They escaped,
right?
They escaped.
The woman and the girl.
[Herman Bailey] They came out
the cave on their own.
The interpreter talked them out.
They were out there on just a
little knoll like that.
That little girl was lying,
and the woman was standing
by her head.
They were all dressed.
The sniper's nest and burning
that cave with the women in it,
burning that cave,
and blowing the cave up with six
Japs in it, those are the kind
of things that kind of stick in
your mind.
[Thomas Naquin] But later on you
heard about the mass suicides of
the Okinawans?
[Herman Bailey] They had a cliff
down there.
I've watched this on TV a lot of
times.
What I can never figure out is
here are these two women,
about 25 or 30 years old,
walk right in there
with 15 naked Marines,
filled their buckets with water,
put in on their
shoulder, and walk out.
They weren't afraid of us.
That I don't understand.
But them women come down there
and throw their little babies
off and jump off behind them.
Then the next general.
He was in the last little rock.
I understand there was running
water in that cave he was in.
He came out on a little ledge,
and that's where he
had his little cloth.
He'd lay it down there and
killed himself.
[Thomas Naquin] The native
Okinawans didn't get the memo.
[Herman Bailey] That's a puzzle
there.
Those two women could come in
there with 15 naked Marines
taking a shower, or pouring
water on their helmets, but they
just stood back and filled their
buckets and left.
I ain't ever forgot that one.
[laughter]
I don't know.
I got off the front lines on the
18th of June.
We went back to the holding
place for five days.
That's where I made
my little ring
out of the 32-1/2 cent piece.
We just sat around. I didn't wander
off that day. I just stayed.
I didn't have no desire to go
no where.
I just sat there in my foxhole
all that five days.
I'll tell you one more thing.
Old Eskwith, that's my buddy
from East Hampton,
Massachusetts.
The fifth or sixth day in Death
Valley he got shrapnel in his
neck-sent him back to Guam.
He came walking up the hill
while we were sitting there.
The first thing he
said-I'll never forget it-
he said Paul Bailey, I knew
you would still be there.
I drove all the way to East
Hampton, Massachusetts,
to visit him.
Drove up there, and my wife went
with me.
Then I came through Philadelphia,
stopped through and saw my
brother, and came on back home.
[laughter]
He lived up there.
He met a girl from up there in
Pennsylvania.
Then we went down-on the 5th day
we were getting on the truck.
He showed a-
I said what it was-
he had a little slanted back
on the side, weapons carrier.
I was getting on that truck from
the left back bumper.
A Marine was getting on behind
the right back wheel, and he
brought his-I reached
up and caught the side
and pulled myself in.
[cough]
This Marine was getting on
behind the right back wheel.
He brought his M1 rifle over,
and it went off and went through
the side right under my arm.
[cough] Excuse me.
Wasn't anybody standing over
there. It didn't hit nobody.
Dust flew out of that
side where he hit it.
Nobody said a word.
[cough] Then we went
on down to the seashore.
LSTs are what I worked on
in Panama City, Florida.
We walked on that thing.
It was an LST made in
California.
We went up north on an LST.
[laughter]
We were up there-let's see.
That was in June.
We got up there sometime
in the last of June,
and we built our tent city.
We were going all
kind of weapons
and everything to go to Japan.
We went out and cut our own
trees-long, slim things-
and make our-
put our tent on it.
I was a carpenter.
It kind of suited me.
I could build that.
Wydell was in the tent with me.
The bulletin board was just
about 25 feet.
Every morning we could walk
over there and read
the bulletin board.
Then we were all getting ready,
and the biggest
invasion in history
was supposed to come
off in November
the way I understood it.
Estimated about a million
Marines and Army and Navy, and
everybody get killed in that
invasion.
Truman-he was the first
president I voted for when I got
back home-dropped that bomb.
On that bulletin
board the next day-
they dropped it on the 6th
and this is the 7th-dropped a
bomb on Japan.
There is so much dust and
smoke we can't tell how much
damage it did.
Three days later they dropped
the one on Hiroshima.
That was Nagasaki I think.
They dropped the one on
Hiroshima.
The bulletin board said the same
thing.
Everybody got drunk on the 17th.
Wait, I'm getting ahead
of myself. The 17th.
They had offered on the 10th
their terms of surrender,
and it was turned down.
They offered again on the 17th
unconditional surrender.
Peace was signed on September 2
on the deck of a battleship in
Tokyo Bay.
That's one of them-
the bulletin board said
the 1st Marine Division
will be going home.
Ten days later another one on
that bulletin board said no,
you're going to China and disarm
the Japs and send them home.
That was a mad bunch.
[Thomas Naquin] I'm sure.
[Herman Bailey] That's
the way it was.
We arrived at Taku Bar on the
early morning of September 30.
We went down that rope ladder
and got on a boat
and went ashore.
They were Japanese out
there-Chinese-dipping up bread.
The Marines would throw it in
the river.
They were dipping it and eating
it right there.
They were so hungry I guess.
We got aboard the train and went
up to Tientsin.
We were up there-
I don't know how long
we were up in Tientsin,
a week or something, before we
got a train.
Then we went up to Tianjin.
We went up there to
disarm the Japs.
See, the KMA,
the British coalmine, they
called it KMA Coalmines.
We were guarding
the KMA Coalmines,
and this is where we went out.
The first time we
went out on a truck
to disarm Japanese, we
went to an airport.
I don't know where
it's at from Tianjin.
We got up there, and we started
on the end of the runway
where the planes take off.
They had this big old dug like a
round well.
Six Japs were lying on the
floor-that's how big it
was-asleep.
Somebody hollered at them and
woke them up.
They came out and left the
rifles in the hole.
They came up there and lined up
in front of us.
One of them said something.
They had their hands on the
side.
The bowed to us all the way over
and stood back up.
[laughter]
I didn't think about this too
much.
All this time I never
heard anybody talk about
the Japanese bowing to you.
But the 1st Marine Division
done the first fighting
in Philippines
out in the zones and
all that stuff.
That's where I went to Bell
News in Augusta, Georgia.
I fell in the love with
the 1st Marine Division.
That's what I wanted.
By choice when we got
to Russell Islands
that's what I got the
1st Marine Division.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] So the Jap-you
didn't have any trouble
with the Japanese,
disarming them, at all?
[Herman Bailey] They just
like we were the king
and the queen, and
they bowed to us.
Everything we asked them to do
they did it.
You tell them get on the truck.
They got on it.
Take their rifles and put it on
another truck.
That truck would go get a load
and take them in.
They took them into Tianjin
somewhere.
I don't know where the holding
place was.
Anyway, they got a-I think they
took them on a train and got
them down to the ocean
somewhere.
I understand they went home
in an LST,
same type I worked on
[laughter]
at that
Panama City, Florida.
[Thomas Naquin] Did you
have any interaction with-
what about the Chinese people?
You said that they were hungry
and eating-
[Herman Bailey] They were
just-everything we did-now, when
we got to Tientsin we got in a
parade.
The old Marine book said it's
nothing like any division in the
whole United States
Army, Navy, anything-
had a parade in
Tientsin, China.
They were ten deep on both sides
of the street.
They just wanted to touch us.
You could stretch your hand out
and just do that.
One of the trucks behind me as I
understand, I didn't see it,
they pulled the top off the
truck.
We were the best thing
they ever seen.
[laughter] We were ding how.
That's what they-ding how, and
they stick their hand up.
Marines was ding how,
and the Japanese
were ding bu how
with the little
finger sticking down.
We heard that all day.
But we had-that was a parade
like no other according to
the old Marine book like that.
No other division has ever
been treated like that.
But I was-I believe
I was the first one that
the Japanese bowed to.
Came up out of that round
hole and lined up.
One of them said
something, and every one
of them bowed just like that
and stood up.
We told them to get on the truck,
and they got on the truck.
We never had any trouble
out of them whatsoever.
[Thomas Naquin] What about-did
you have any run-ins
with the communists?
[Herman Bailey] Well,
I got a picture
out there of me with a
flamethrower on my back.
It was taken while we were
standing there.
One of our trains got shot up
down there with the Chinese
communists.
We were ready to get on the
truck and go down there to get
the train loose, and they sent-
a Corsair went down there
and strafed up and down
both sides of the track,
and the train moved out.
We didn't have to go.
They were five Chinese officers
from Tientsin, China.
They had a colonel,
a Chinese colonel,
woman, beautiful girl,
spoke five languages.
She sat up at the front of where
we were.
I was on guard duty.
I never got to talk to her.
Some of the Marines
sat there and talked
to her all the way
to Ching Wang Tao.
I didn't never talk to
her, but she was starting
to laugh and go on and was fun.
Those five officers sat back
around a table on that car.
We were their guards going to
Ching Wang Tao.
We left them up there and came
back.
All along that railroad track-
I got pictures of that there.
The Chinese communists just blew
the bridges up, blow up trains,
engines, and all-but the train
we were on, they never bothered.
We didn't get shot at or
anything.
I have pictures of all that
stuff.
Maybe,maybe my angels
were with me again.
[laughter]
But we had a pretty good time
in China.
We disarmed the Japs and put the
stuff in warehouses.
Then we had to guard
the warehouses
to keep the Chinese
from stealing it.
They dug a hole in the back of
it-we were in the front, and
they were taking it out the
back.
I don't know whether it was
communists, probably, doing it
or something.
We stood up, and a Chinese
wedding came along.
I ain't ever seen something like
that before.
We came down the street
with all those old dragons
and all this stuff walking
and that old Chinese
music going all over.
I don't know what it was.
They came by our warehouse going
someplace.
They had that thing blowing
fire out of the mouth
and all this stuff.
I got to see a Chinese
wedding-part of it-a parade.
Then those kids over
there, Chinese kids,
all of them had a split-
they didn't have diapers
or anything just open.
They'd squat down.
They could just do their
business and stand up and go.
You see that all day every day
with the kids like that.
But the Chinese were good to us.
The Japanese were polite, bowed
to you.
They went home, and then we went
home.
[Thomas Naquin] How long did you
stay?
[Herman Bailey] We got off at
Taku Bar according to the book
the 30th of September.
That was 1945.
I left Tientsin at
the railroad station
on February 9, 1946.
It took us two days to get down-
it might have been blowing up.
We went down to where we come
ashore, Taku Bar.
That river emptied into the
ocean.
The settling just kept-it was
too shallow.
The ship had to park way out.
We had to go out in a boat, and
that was the last rope ladder I
climbed going back on that ship.
We left China.
We went by the low end of the
Chinese island.
There was a volcano erupting.
It was running down the side.
On the left-hand side cars were
going along-it was just after
dark when we got there-with
their lights on.
We didn't see any more lights
until we got to San Diego.
[Thomas Naquin] Going back a bit,
in Pavuvu before you hit
Okinawa, did you go to any USO
shows?
[Herman Bailey] No.
[Thomas Naquin] Okay.
[Herman Bailey] I went to one on K.
Kaizer.
He had these girls in
these little short things
and the lights on
to make it glitter.
He had three or four girls, and
they danced on the stage.
That's the only one I saw.
Bob Hope didn't come over there.
[Thomas Naquin] I was going to ask
you if Bob Hope was there
because I know he went to Pavuvu
I believe.
[Herman Bailey] I don't think he
came to Okinawa.
I don't remember hearing
anything about it.
He put on a good show what I saw
on TV and stuff.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] You carried a
flamethrower.
You also carried a bazooka,
correct, on Okinawa?
[Herman Bailey] I carried the
thing, but I never fired it.
I was trying to get
that-I loaded it,
and the other guy shot it.
The flamethrower, I've carried
it, but I never fired it.
I turned the valves on, and
somebody else would do it.
[Thomas Naquin] Okay.
[Herman Bailey] In the woods, he
fired in that cave with the
women, I didn't, but I was part
of it.
[Thomas Naquin] You carried a lot
of satchel charges.
You obviously couldn't
carry all of it. You had-
[Herman Bailey] This is the way
that worked.
J, K, and L Company-
the rifle man is up
front on every push.
I was back here.
When we stopped I was still back
there.
If they needed a cave blown, J,
K, or L, they sent somebody,
and the carried
the satchel charges.
I didn't have to carry them.
I had my little carbine when I
was doing that.
I had a carbine then.
They carried it to the
cave, and I took it
and threw it in the cave.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] That's a lot of
caves.
[Herman Bailey] It's just all
day every day.
There ain't no telling how many
people were in there.
I don't have no idea.
I don't want to dwell on it,
but I'm sure there were
Japs in some of them.
I know there were six in one.
Interpreter said he was.
I threw that thing in there.
In ten seconds it went off.
When he came out the
door in the mouth
of that cave, I
threw it in there.
I don't know how far it went
back, but you throw it and it
slides good if you don't have
any blockage or something.
It'd just slide way back in
there.
But anyway, that's the way I did
it.
I never had one to fail except
that one.
I crawled in that tomb, and it
moved in off the fuse.
All of them fired.
The bazooka at that time, we
shot it.
All I had the word was Sammy
Diego said the first eleven we
shot was dead, were duds.
I don't know that.
I was busy loading, and he was
watching where they went.
Anything you want to ask me, I
think I got it up here.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] Did
the war change you?
[Herman Bailey]
Well, I came home,
and I got a job.
I got home on a Saturday night.
I went to work on Wednesday.
My toolbox
is in Mom and Daddy's rail house
right where I left it.
I just had to pick that
thing up and go to work.
That I think helped me.
I was busy and thinking
about what I was doing.
My wife said I kicked
her out of bed at night
and be grunting and going on,
but that's the war did that.
I was doing that in my sleep.
There's one thing that
always puzzled me.
We would have-in my dreams
we would have a battle
with the Japanese.
It was always on a
hill with bushes,
and it went down like that.
Every time I dreamed
about fighting the Japs
it's that same dream.
We never did get it finished.
We never did win.
That's one thing that somebody
got to tell me that knows
something about dreams, but
that's happened many a times.
It was always the same hill
and the people coming
up there after us.
We were shooting
them and hollering
and shells going and
just everything.
I was never on that hill.
[laughter]
I was never there.
I don't know why that happens.
I don't know.
[laughter]
I-
in the beginning I didn't worry
about the war.
I could think about it.
That Jap I shot in the rice
paddy.
I went to church,
and they welcomed
all us guys as members
of the church.
That's when it hit me.
I was sitting in church.
Preacher Lockwartz was the
speaker.
I started thinking about that
guy.
When we left I was the only one
with tears in my eyes that day.
That's the way if affects you.
[Thomas Naquin] What is your
impression of the war for America?
[Herman Bailey] I watched this
thing over here.
The 1st Marine Division was in
Okinawa-I mean North Korea.
If it had been me, I can't stand
cold weather, and they were in
freezing weather fighting the
Chinese.
All that kind of stuff bothers
you.
It's your own division.
Of course, there's always
somebody else there.
You're not there anymore.
I felt for them guys.
Now you got over here in Iraq.
Walking down the street,
buildings all around up here,
and snipers over there,
and you're picking them off.
I can't see that.
By this day and time, get
the damn war over with.
Don't sit around here walking up
and down the street.
I can't stand it. I see them
walking down the street.
It just kills me.
[Thomas Naquin] What
is your impression
of World War II for America?
[Herman Bailey] Well, just like
when I killed that Japanese.
You know what I wrote?
Somebody in Japan
had him there that day,
and somebody in Japan
was the cause of me being there
that day.
They started it.
We finished it.
I'm proud of it.
[Thomas Naquin] Do you
believe that the war changed
the rest of the world?
[Herman Bailey] Well, not
shortly after that.
It seems like it just
as you go along it just
drifts further away.
It's just things-you got
people who are running their
mouth about something,
and they ain't ever been there and
don't know what it's all about.
If you've been over there in
Death Valley like I was, you
sing a different tune I think.
Five days before you can
get bloody clothes off,
that's a long time.
Somebody screwed up in the head
somewhere around here.
Can't pray.
That bunch gets on you.
Well, I don't know
what to tell you.
It just looks like it's getting
into pretty bad shape right now.
[Thomas Naquin] What was your
impression of the Japanese and
their weapons?
[Herman Bailey] You could take
a 30 caliber machine gun,
take ours and theirs, and you
fire both of them.
You know which is the Japanese.
It fires faster.
It fires faster.
You learned what a 77 artillery
gun shoots.
It's just something you know
that's what it is even if you
can't see it.
You just-I think their weapons
were good.
They always fired at us.
[laughter]
[Thomas Naquin] How about the
Japanese soldier?
What was your impression of the
Japanese soldier?
[Herman Bailey] Well, I
didn't change my mind
until I went with Myra
over there and my daughter.
You see the movie Letters.
It told how the Japanese had
wrote letters, and they buried
them out there because you
couldn't mail them.
They couldn't go.
How those guys would talk to one
another in the caves.
They were just like us. They
didn't want to be there either.
Their country put them there,
and then that's why we had to go
there.
I did-
you don't feel sorry for them.
When you see one of them died,
it's different now.
I've had a Japanese pickup
truck.
I got a Japanese car sitting out
there now, and it's the best one
I ever had.
I changed my mind about that
kind of thing.
It's not like it was when I was
at Okinawa.
[Thomas Naquin] Different time.
[Herman Bailey] It's different
times.
You learned-what hurt me the
worst, I thought about this,
when the United States give
Okinawa back to the Japanese.
The first thing I
thought about was Brown
got killed that first night.
I couldn't see it.
He was a coach on the rifle
range just like I was.
Good man,
had a beautiful wife,
and he's gone.
I didn't have his address.
I could never write his wife or
anything.
I didn't know.
But the Japanese
got what was coming to
them as we all look at it.
I sound like old Tibbets.
He dropped that bomb.
He said, "I never lost no
sleep."
[Thomas Naquin] Low call.
[Herman Bailey] Okay.
[Thomas Naquin] Yes.
What is the
significance of having
the National World
War II Museum?
[Herman Bailey] Well, I don't
know what I'm different.
It seems like I paid a pretty
good price fighting the war,
and they keep sending me wanting
me to send them money.
I wouldn't mind sending them
money, but it seems like I done
paid my price already.
Is that good enough?
[Thomas Naquin] Yes, sir.
Do you think it will help as far
as educate future generations?
[Herman Bailey] I
would think so,
but I don't think they teach
it in school right.
Some of them don't
know where Okinawa is,
and they don't know anything.
That kind of hurts.
I just used Okinawa because
that's where I was.
[Thomas Naquin] Well, sir, is
there anything else you'd like
to add about your experiences in
World War II?
[Herman Bailey] No, I just want
to forget it now.
I've been going to a
psychiatrist, and that's what
the next time I go to see her
that's what I'm going to tell her.
I ain't talking no more.
You tell me how to get it out of
my head.
That's all I can say.
[Thomas Naquin] Thank you sir, for
your time, sir.
[Captioned by Adept Word Management, Inc.]