HEFFNER:      Good afternoon, Mr. Stern.

STERN: Howdy.

HEFFNER:  Could you give us your full name and address please.

STERN: George Randolph Stern, 115 Southwest 24th Street, Oak Island, North Carolina, 28465.

HEFFNER: And what’s your date of birth, Mr. Stern.

STERN: The 24th of April, 1926.

HEFFNER: Where were you born?

STERN: Brooklyn, New York.

HEFFNER: And where were you about the time World War II broke out?

STERN: I was living in Brooklyn with my parents.  I remember that Sunday very well.  I was in high school.

HEFFNER: Do you remember what grade you were in?

STERN: My mother made me finish so it must have been my sophomore or senior year, sophomore year I guess.

HEFFNER: And how old were you when the war broke out?

STERN: 1941, I was 15.  I was a sophomore.

HEFFNER: And were you drafted or did you enlist into service?

STERN: No, I enlisted.

HEFFNER: And in what branch did you enlist?

STERN: Navy.

HEFFNER: United States Navy.  Do you remember where the Induction Center was?

STERN: Oh boy, no I don’t.  That was a long time ago.

HEFFNER: And when did you enlist, what’s your date of enlistment?

STERN: January 10, 1944.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN: My mother made me finish high school.

HEFFNER: About two years after the war started.

STERN: That’s right.

HEFFNER: And after you enlisted, where were you first sent?

STERN: Sampson Naval Training Station, upstate New York.

HEFFNER: Remember the town?

STERN: Yeah, it was Sampson, New York.

HEFFNER: Okay, and this was a Navy boot camp?

STERN: That’s right.

HEFFNER: Just the United States Navy?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: Okay.  And how long was basic training?

STERN: Six weeks I believe.

HEFFNER: And what did it consist of?

STERN: Oh the usual stuff.  I remember going to ________, a lot of marching, exercising, standing watch and it was cold in 3 foot of snow.

HEFFNER: What time of year was it?

STERN: It was January.

HEFFNER: Did you learn basic seamanship?

STERN: Not that I recall.

HEFFNER: Manual of arms?

STERN: Oh yeah.

HEFFNER: You trained on weaponry?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: What kind of weapons, do you remember?

STERN: There were 22 rifles, Mossburgs.

HEFFNER: And it was a group of men?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: What unit was it, do you recall?

STERN: Yeah, 1004 I think was the group we were in.  I have a picture of it, but that’s the closest I can come to.

HEFFNER: How long did basic training last?

STERN: Six weeks.

HEFFNER: And what was your rating or rank when you were in.

STERN: I was a seaman.

HEFFNER: Just a plain ordinary seaman.

STERN: Mmhmm (yes).

HEFFNER: And what was your next assignment and station?

STERN: I went to Bainbridge, Maryland to Fire Control school.

HEFFNER: All right.  What that by your choice or were you assigned that rating?

STERN: No, took a lot of tests and they decided if I was interested, this was a good school for me.

HEFFNER: Written or physical tests?

STERN: Written tests.

HEFFNER: Had you had any experience with being a fireman before the service?

STERN: Now you’re confusing fire, it’s fire control, gun fire control, ballistics.

HEFFNER: Okay, nothing to do with putting out fires.

STERN: Not in the least, although we got some of that.

HEFFNER: Okay, fire control, all right.  Now what was the training that you got at that Maryland unit?

STERN: That was extensive.  That went on for about four months.

HEFFNER: What they’d teach you?

STERN: Oh a lot of math, ballistics primarily, optics, generally how to, where the bullet was going was the whole theory.

HEFFNER: Bullets?  We’re not talking about cannon shells or artillery?

STERN: Bullets, I use the term generously.  We had 9” heavy artillery on that boat.

HEFFNER: On the boat that you were…

STERN: We called them bullets.

HEFFNER: Yes, was there a boat at this training base that you had?  Is on the water?

STERN: No, it’s up on the river, near Bainbridge, Maryland.

HEFFNER: Did you train on a boat?

STERN: No.

HEFFNER: You just trained on the weaponry?

STERN: That’s right.

HEFFNER: And how to manage it.

STERN: Computers come into it too.  Not the type of computers you’re used to today.  They’re all mechanical.  Ball type integrators and so on.

HEFFNER: Was your training on how to fire the weaponry or how to load it.  What exactly…

STERN: How to control the gun.

HEFFNER: What does control mean exactly.  The gun is on the ship, its mounted, it’s got…

STERN: There’s a whole lot of machinery, of course the ship is not steady.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN:  But the gun barrel has to remain steady and we went into all the devices they used, gyro compasses and what not that keep the rifle or the barrel of the gun aligned the way you want.

HEFFNER: On the ship?  It’s anchored to the ship, it’s bolted down to the ship and it’s manned by one or two men and someone to feed ammunition.  How…

STERN:  It depends on the type of gun.  There’s always a 5” gun which is the anti-aircraft battery.  There were about a half a dozen in the turret and handling the loading procedure.   The main battery, it was a group of probably 20 men.

HEFFNER: Would your job be below decks or actually at the site of the weapon?

STERN: I was a range fighter operator, under certain conditions, watches, conditions of a range fighter operator.

HEFFNER: That means at the weapon or below decks or at other points?

STERN: It was on the weapon inside the turret.

HEFFNER: All right, where else would you do your duties?

STERN: Under ordinary conditions, all watches, I stood them in the anti-aircraft director which was on a pedestal 90’ off the water.

HEFFNER: Nowhere near the weapon?

STERN: Nowhere near the weapon, they’re all fired remotely.

HEFFNER: Is that right?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: Didn’t require sailors to fire?

STERN: Oh yeah, they were in the turret.  But the corrections were all done by the computer and the input that we put in from the aircraft.

HEFFNER: Okay, so…

STERN: It’s a little cheese, we call it a cheese box and the stick.

HEFFNER: You mean the place that you operated to learn how to use the equipment.

STERN: Oh yeah, I knew how to run some of it when I came out of school.

HEFFNER: Coming out of which school?

STERN: Bainbridge, Maryland.

HEFFNER: Well that qualified you to be a fire control seaman.

STERN: Out of the group that took the course, I guess there was 60 of us, one man got petty officer rank.  The rest of us got seaman first class.

HEFFNER: Let’s go back a little bit to basic training.  Any experiences there that stand out in your mind, good or bad?

STERN: Just the snow.  I’d never seen anything like it before. 

HEFFNER: You come from Brooklyn, New York.  They have snow in Brooklyn in the wintertime.

STERN: Not like they have upstate New York.  It was 3 to 4 foot deep and you had to stand watch around the clock.

HEFFNER: So the thing that stands out in your mind about basic training was the weather.  The training that you received I assume was rigorous like all recruits.

STERN: Oh yeah, a lot of swimming, jumping off platforms 30 feet high and I’d never done that before. 

HEFFNER: Swimming indoor I assume.

STERN: Oh yeah, always indoors.  Big gymnasium.

HEFFNER: And you were able to survive it, in good shape?

STERN: Oh yeah.

HEFFNER: And then you were shipped over to Bainbridge for the specialized training.  How would you characterize that insofar as was it adequate, were the officers good, were the enlisted men good?

STERN: There were enlisted men teaching it.

HEFFNER: Enlisted men?

STERN: Yeah, very few officers.

HEFFNER: You mean like petty officers or something?

STERN: Senior petty officers.

HEFFNER: They did the teaching?

STERN: Chiefs and first class petty officers.

HEFFNER: They taught you how to manage these firearms?

STERN: How to use them, how they worked.

HEFFNER: Okay, and was your training good?

STERN: Oh yeah, excellent, I enjoyed it.

HEFFNER: When you came out of Bainbridge, you felt that you were able to do your duties ship-side.

STERN: I was rated, it’s called striking for fire controlman.

HEFFNER: What about your ranking or rating, did that change?

STERN: After school it did.

HEFFNER: To what?

STERN: To seaman first class.  Striking for Fire Control and Petty Officer.  You had a little symbol down on your jumper.

HEFFNER: All right.  Now you still haven’t seen an ocean or a ship?

STERN: Nope.

HEFFNER: Okay.  So what happens after four months of Bainbridge?  Now we’re sometime in the middle of 1944.

STERN: Train ride to the West coast, were put up on, I try to remember and I can’t.  It’s in the San Francisco Bay area, an island, we went to.

HEFFNER: Like Alcatraz.

STERN: Not quite (laughter).  There was an island and we were domiciled there, had various duties for about oh six weeks, part of which was manning chow line, nothing to do with what we eventually would do.  We had to wait for a ship.

HEFFNER: Okay, was this a naval base or just a training facility?

STERN: It was United States Navy property, yeah.

HEFFNER: Property?  Stuck in the middle of San Francisco Bay somewhere.

STERN: Just about, yeah.

HEFFNER: And what was your unit, did it have a name?

STERN: No, I was just an individual along with a lot of other individuals who were scheduled to go overseas.

HEFFNER: You weren’t assigned to a fleet or to a ship.

STERN: Not at that time.

HEFFNER: How long would you stay on this island?

STERN: I remember it was about six, 6-7 weeks.

HEFFNER: Did you do any training there or just hung out?

STERN: No (laughter), had to work the cook line a couple of times.

HEFFNER: Nothing to do with gunnery work?

STERN: No, not a thing.

HEFFNER: All right, so you spent about six weeks there.  Now it must be the end of the summer or the fall 1944.

STERN: They put us on a troop ship.

HEFFNER: Ah hah, a troop ship.

STERN: And off we went to the Pacific.

HEFFNER: Where did it leave from, this island in San Francisco?  And what kind of ship was it, do you remember?

STERN: Yeah, the name of it was the General Sherman.

HEFFNER: And what was it, just a troop ship?

STERN: It was a troop ship, rolled, pitched something fierce.

HEFFNER: Was it loaded with troops?

STERN: Yeah, it was loaded with mostly sailors, were there troops on?  Yeah, there were come to think of it, but there was a lot of sailors on.

HEFFNER: Sailors going to serve on ships in the Pacific or on land or what?

STERN: The Pacific, going out to pick up a ship, went to Ulysie Harbor.

HEFFNER: Where’s that?

STERN: It’s down close to the Equator.

HEFFNER: Ulysse Harbor is the name of an island in the Pacific?  South Pacific?

STERN: It’s a series of reefs in fairly calm water in the center and the whole fleet anchored in there.

HEFFNER: What part of the Pacific?  You’re talking about, what island?

STERN: Closest thing would be Philippines I guess.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN: Just south of the Philippines, close to the Equator.

HEFFNER: That was the first stop?

STERN: They took us off that troop ship on a tugboat, about 15 of us went on this particular tugboat and they dropped me off at the U.S.S. New Orleans and my good friend, they dropped him off at the destroyer.

HEFFNER: What kind of ship is the New Orleans?

STERN: Heavy cruiser, CA32.

HEFFNER: A cruiser.  Armed?

STERN: Oh yes.

HEFFNER: Okay.  So this was actually your first ship assignment and you were assigned permanently to the New Orleans?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: As?

STERN: I was a seaman in the Fire Control Department.

HEFFNER: Okay.  What kind of guns, armory did the ship have?

STERN: It had three turrets, two forward, one aft each with three 9” guns in them.

HEFFNER: What millimeter was this?  You know?

STERN: 9 inches.  Let’s see, no, they didn’t use millimeters.

HEFFNER: How big were the shells?

STERN: 9”, about that big in diameter.

HEFFNER: For the purpose of?

STERN: That was just the bullet.

HEFFNER: Was that for the purpose of enemy aircraft or for enemy vessels…

STERN: That was for bombarding beach heads and so on.

HEFFNER: Oh, it was for land?

STERN: Oh yeah.

HEFFNER: It wasn’t meant for anti-aircraft?

STERN: That gun could shoot about 25 miles.

HEFFNER: With a 9” shell?

STERN: Oh yeah, easily.

HEFFNER: Not for anti-aircraft?

STERN: The anti-aircraft battery was a series of five turrets on each side of the ship.  They were 5” 38 caliber guns, single barrel, little short stubby things and they were all controlled from…

HEFFNER: A central location.

STERN: From computer cheese box on a stick, 90 feet.

HEFFNER: You didn’t get involved in that.

STERN: Oh yes, that’s where I started condition 4 watches.

HEFFNER: Okay, so in other words, you worked on other kinds of weaponry besides…

STERN: Always fire control.

HEFFNER: As long as it’s a weapon, you’re able to manage its operation.

STERN: We maintained them too.

HEFFNER: Greased them and oiled them and cleaned them, is that what you mean?

STERN: Yeah.  I remember that’s where I spent, when the war was over in Europe, when we got the news, no that was when the war was over in the Pacific…everybody else got a day off and I would have to finish a job down in the turret and that’s where I spent the rest of the day.

HEFFNER: Okay.  Let’s go back to New Orleans.  That’s your first ship assignment.

STERN: Right. 

HEFFNER: How long did you stay on that ship?

STERN: Until the end of the war and beyond.

HEFFNER: All right and where did that ship go after you first got on it.

STERN: The first trip was part of the Third Fleet, a massive grouping of carriers, battle ships, cruisers, destroyers and support boats.

HEFFNER: In the South Pacific?

STERN: Right.  We headed for the Philippines.  We were going to support an air strike and that’s the subject of that book.

HEFFNER: What book is that?

STERN: The book, The Typhoon, the Other Enemy, written by Raymond C. Calhoun, retired captain, United States Navy.

HEFFNER: Hold it up by your chest so we can see it.  That’s good.  What have you got to do with that book or what does the story in the book got to do with you?

STERN: That Third Fleet that I told you about.

HEFFNER: Yes.

STERN: That’s what it’s about.  They went through a typhoon which virtually destroyed the whole fleet.

HEFFNER: Were you involved in that typhoon?

STERN: Oh yeah.

HEFFNER: When was that?

STERN: December 16, 17, 1944.

HEFFNER: You were somewhere out in the South Pacific when the typhoon hit?

STERN: Close off the Philippine Islands, south and east of it, trying to get out of the way of the hurricane, typhoon.

HEFFNER: You knew it was coming?

STERN: They knew it was coming, but they didn’t know exactly where it was.  The admiral in charge was Halsey and he was on the Yorktown.

HEFFNER: Was he the head of the fleet?

STERN: Yeah, he was the top man.

HEFFNER: Commanding officer of the fleet of which your ship, your cruiser, the New Orleans was assigned.  Was that the first exciting experience you had, was the typhoon, or were there battles before that?

STERN: No, that was the first thing we did shortly after we got into Ulysse and assigned to the ship.  The next thing I know, we were heading out and this was where we were going off the Philippines to support that air strike.

HEFFNER: All right and how did you weather the typhoon?

STERN: Not very well. 

HEFFNER: What happened?

STERN: Nobody got sick if that’s what you mean.

HEFFNER: No, I mean any damage to the ships?

STERN: Considerable.

HEFFNER: Your ship or other ships?

STERN: We lost both the spotting planes, they were just washed overboard.

HEFFNER: You had spotting planes on your cruiser?

STERN: Oh yeah, you fire them off.

HEFFNER: Reconnaissance planes?

STERN: Yeah, in fact I got a picture at home, but damned if I could find it.  That’s a picture of the Indianapolis.

HEFFNER: Hold it up to the camera.

STERN: All right.

HEFFNER: A little higher and show me what you are pointing to, what you want to call our attention to on that.  A little higher, higher.

STERN: There’s a well deck right in this low spot and up above it, you can see the planes and they’re on a catapult thing, they can be swung out off the ship and fired.  They used a couple of bags of powder to fire them off.

HEFFNER: The ship the Indianapolis, that’s not your ship?

STERN: No, it was the same class.

HEFFNER: The same class, it was a cruiser?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: It was part of your fleet?  That’s the ship that had the unfortunate sinking when all the sharks and the men got killed.

STERN: Three, four days in the water.

HEFFNER: And the Navy lost sight of it for weeks.

STERN: Yes, the war was over by that time.

HEFFNER: Did you know anybody on the Indianapolis?

STERN: No.

HEFFNER: But it was part of your fleet?

STERN: Yeah, well it wasn’t part of that group operation we were doing.

HEFFNER: Oh, but it was part of….

STERN: Because it’s the same type of ship.

HEFFNER: It’s the same type of ship that you served on.  Okay, let’s get back to the typhoon.  Aside from a lot of people getting thrown all over the place and some damage, did it do anything very damaging to the operation?

STERN: Oh yeah, the operation was called off.

HEFFNER: You say the operation was called off. They went back to Ulysee.

STERN:   They went back for repairs.  The New Orleans went back to San Francisco for repairs.

HEFFNER: It was so badly damaged?

STERN: We were minor damage compared to what some of them had.  Let’s see, four carriers that I’m aware of burned, lost every plane, all their gasoline, explosions, fires.  The San Jacinto, which was a carrier, we were assigned to stay along side them in case they abandoned ship, we would pick them up which would have been a virtual impossibility, but the ship was burning and it wasn’t more than a quarter mile from us and I couldn’t see for the waves.

HEFFNER: This is all on this day in December 1944.

STERN: Yeah, 16th, 17th, over that period of time.

HEFFNER: That’s when the typhoon hit?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: What was the mission? Had it not been for the…

STERN: There was an air strike in the Philippine Islands and we were supporting it.  It was a major air strike.

HEFFNER: In our attempt to recapture the Philippines which were occupied by the Japanese after they had expelled General McArthur and the Bataan March and everything like that and your unit, your ships would have fired in support of the invading soldiers or Marines.

STERN: Yeah.  The carriers were the things we were all supporting cause that’s where all the planes were.

HEFFNER: The planes were going to have air strikes on the Japanese on the Philippines.

STERN: That’s right.  It was described as an air strike.

HEFFNER: And your cruiser was going to stay off shore and bombard…

STERN: Well if necessary, but primarily we were there to keep the carriers in one piece so they could land.

HEFFNER: How to keep them in one piece, keep the enemy…

STERN: Keep the submarines and other vessels away from them, fight off aircraft.  The average carrier doesn’t have that much in the way of gun battery, but we had plenty.

HEFFNER: So your mission was to support the aircraft.

STERN: That’s essentially what it was.

HEFFNER: Not to fire shells from these weapons.

STERN: We never used the main battery, we never planned on using the main battery.  It was the anti-aircraft guns, the 40s and the 20s we had on board.

HEFFNER: But the mission was aborted by the typhoon so the carriers never launched their ships, nor did you protect the carriers.

STERN: They didn’t launch them, most of them, the planes blew over the side or started breaking loose in their moorings down below decks, smashed themselves to pieces, exploded and burned.

HEFFNER: Now during this period of time, the time the New Orleans reached the Pacific theater until the time that you had to go back for repairs, how much time elapsed?  Was it a matter of weeks or months or days?

STERN: About 30 days.

HEFFNER: 30 days you were at sea out there.  Well in that 30 day period, what happened.  Did you see any combat?

STERN: Just that third fleet operation.

HEFFNER: Which was?

STERN: The one I told you on the Philippines.

HEFFNER: Yes, but nothing happened.

STERN: Nothing happened.

HEFFNER: It was supposed to be an operation, but it was aborted.

STERN: It didn’t come off.

HEFFNER: And why did the New Orleans have to go back to San Francisco, was there heavy damage?

STERN: Heavy damage and the repairs and once they had us back there, they refitted us with guns.

HEFFNER: It takes a long time to get back, doesn’t it?

STERN: Two to three days.

HEFFNER: That’s all.

STERN: It moves pretty fast.  That carrier could do 30 knots.

HEFFNER: So now we’re talking about the early part of  1945 by the time, do you go back to sea from San Francisco?

STERN: Stopped overnight in the Hawaiian islands, then right out to Okinawa.  Iwo Jima was on at the time, but we went to Okinawa.

HEFFNER: That was the first assignment after the ship was repaired.

STERN: Then we went and stayed about 40 days.

HEFFNER: What was the mission?

STERN: Bombardment.

HEFFNER: Not protecting aircraft carriers this time?

STERN: No, protecting ourselves (laughter).  There were aircraft carriers out there.

HEFFNER: But you weren’t supporting that.

STERN: They were part of the battery.  They were sending planes in, bombing and we were sitting off shore with the battleships and the cruisers shooting at the beach.

HEFFNER: All right , so there’s your land firing, firing at Japanese in trench positions on Okinawa?

STERN: On Okinawa.

HEFFNER: In support of the Marines.

STERN: And we’d go in and they’d take small boats and sneak in at night and bring out the wounded Marines.

HEFFNER: Who would.

STERN: We would and other boats would do the same thing cause there were plenty of them shot up.  The Marines, that is.  And they brought them back on our ship and we kept them there until they could be transferred to hospital ship.

HEFFNER: What were you doing, what were your duties during the bombardment?  Were you assigned to any particular gunnery or anything?

STERN: Yeah, I was range fire operator in turret #2.

HEFFNER: For what weapon?

STERN:  For the 9” guns, main battery.

HEFFNER: Are you responsible for aiming the gun or the range or anything like that.

STERN: Well the way the range finder works, they have a grid pattern supplied by the Marines on the beach saying this is where we want you to drop the bullets.  The computer can calculate it roughly and my job with the range finder was to watch the bullet when it went, and when I saw a puff of smoke to where it landed, I could range on to it, press a button, give them a correction that goes directly into the computer and the next bullet would be right where it belongs.

HEFFNER: We’re talking bullets, but you mean 9” shells.

STERN: 9” shells.  This went on six days a week.

HEFFNER: Heavy bombardment.

STERN: There were four other operators that run the range finder.  They shoot them at night, during the day, didn’t make any difference.

HEFFNER: Were you on deck or below deck?

STERN: I was inside the turret, by 12” of steel.

HEFFNER: Of the gun?

STERN: Yes.

HEFFNER:  Doing your range finding duties?

STERN: Right.

HEFFNER: And of course the range finding duties before the shell is fired.

STERN: And afterwards.

HEFFNER: Afterwards too.

STERN: The only reason I was assigned to the stereopticon and for that type of duty, was I was a little color blind.  In fact, I’m a lot colorblind.

HEFFNER: How did that help you?

STERN: I can look through camouflage and see through camouflage a lot easier than people that have perfect color vision. 

HEFFNER: See the camouflage on the land?

STERN: Well there was stuff on the beach and up in the land to try to deceive us as to what we were looking at.

HEFFNER: Okay and this lasted for how long?  This bombardment of Okinawa that you were involved in.

STERN: Oh, between 30 and 40 days.

HEFFNER: Consecutively, no breaks?

STERN: Oh yes, once a week on Sunday.  On Sunday, we would take the boat out and go to a place about 20 miles away, an atoll called Caramereta.

HEFFNER: Who was we and what kind of boat?

STERN: The whole boat went.

HEFFNER: The whole ship?

STERN: We were out of ammunition, we shot it all.  And then we would settle in where there were supply ships loaded with ammo and the destroyers would come out and lay a smoke screen over the whole thing and we’d start taking the ammo off the supply ships, putting it on and storing it in the turrets.

HEFFNER: So you transported the shells from one location back to your ship?

STERN: Then we’d come back and got in line and started shooting again.

HEFFNER: This wasn’t shore leave, this was work.

STERN: Work is right and on top of that, the reason they’d put the smoke screen down is because the Japanese kamikaze would come over and just take a shot into the smoke trying to hit one of us and if they did, it would be all over because it was exposed ammunition laying out on the decks.

HEFFNER: This is after you had picked it up.

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: Was that the only experience that you had coming under enemy fire, was when the kamikazes tried to do this.

STERN: No, and then during the six days of firing, the kamikaze would come in.  There was no schedule or anything, every once in a while, you’d see them and they’d hit something.  They never dove on us fortunately.

HEFFNER: No, but they hit other ships in your fleet on this operation?

STERN: They did a lot of damage.

HEFFNER: Did you see it?

STERN: Yeah, sure, visibility was good (laughter).  We were only 2400 yards off the beach, about 2 miles.

HEFFNER: To do your firing?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: Who would advise you what to fire at, were there spotters, air spotters?

STERN: They’d be in touch by radio.

HEFFNER: They meaning the Marines?

STERN: The Marines, or whoever else was out there fighting.  They knew where they wanted the bullets to land and they would do the same thing with aircraft, where to drop the bombs.

HEFFNER: Did you have direct contact with the land base spotters or was there somebody in between you and them?

STERN: There would be somebody up in the main spotting tower.

HEFFNER: And he’d tell you or they’d tell you based on…

STERN: The whole ship was in touch by sound powered phones.

HEFFNER: In touch with whom?

STERN: Everybody.

HEFFNER: On shipboard.

STERN: I could talk to the tower just as easy as anybody else.

HEFFNER: And who did you get your orders from as far as plotting your courses on the ship.

STERN: They’d set it in the computer.  See there was a main computer down in the belly of the ship, deep in the center of the ship, the big computer.  Ever been on the battleship out here?

HEFFNER: No.

STERN: It was exactly the same thing on a heavy cruiser.

HEFFNER: Except the battleship was much better.

STERN: Actually the computer was the same.

HEFFNER: Back then in those days, they had computers?

STERN: Oh yeah, but they were all mechanical.  It was a large box.  The computer was a cube, about 5 feet.

HEFFNER: So there was no plotting manually of any of these operations.

STERN: Oh, you would need a certain input information and the range finder could give them range approximately and I could do that.

HEFFNER: Did you?

STERN: Oh yeah.

HEFFNER: That was part of your duties?

STERN: They would want me to range on a certain, go out and say there it is, all I had to do was hit a button and it went automatically into the computer.

HEFFNER: You were never directly involved with firing the weapon?  Never fired it, just plotted the course, maintained it.

STERN: Yes, and I watched the results.  You could see the puff of smoke go up when you shot over a mountain or over a hill and landed and you could see the puff of smoke come up under the range on the…

HEFFNER: How did you spot the shells?  By binoculars or something?

STERN: No, by looking through the range finder.

HEFFNER: Oh you could see it visibly even though it was half a mile away.

STERN: I could see the ship’s shells going, they’re not as fast as you think.  They just go a long ways.

HEFFNER: Did you ever come in contact with any Japanese land based forces, soldiers, or did you see any?

STERN: Yeah, there was one time.  It was in the Philippines.  I had a small crew of about six Japs that were digging holes in what amounted to a concrete pier.  It was some kind of punishment and all my job was was to sit there, keep an eye on them, keep them working and if they tried to escape, shoot them.

HEFFNER: You were armed?

STERN: I had a 45.

HEFFNER: 45 revolver?

STERN: No, 45 automatic.

HEFFNER: Small automatic weapon.  This was just an additional duty that you picked up.

STERN: Yeah, it was pretty much after the war.

HEFFNER: Okay.  Now we talked about the Okinawa operation, which lasted over a month you said.  What was the next theater of engagement or was that it?

STERN: There wasn’t any.

HEFFNER: That was it.

STERN: The war ended about that time.  The war on Japan, they dropped a bomb of course and in September it was over.

HEFFNER: So the battle of Okinawa was the only combat that you engaged in during your service in the Pacific?

STERN: That’s right.

HEFFNER: Did you get a battle star for that one?  For the Okinawa campaign?

STERN: Yeah, and for the Philippine thing.

HEFFNER: The Philippine theater.

STERN: Air strike on the Philippines.  That the third fleet I told you went through the typhoon.

HEFFNER: Okay, but I thought the mission was aborted.

STERN: Okay, but you still got a ribbon and a star.

HEFFNER: Really, even though it wasn’t effective.

STERN: I forget, there were 700 men died in that typhoon including my good friend.  When I got off the tug on the  New Orleans, he got off on the same tug on the destroyer nearby.  This guy I had gone through school with and his destroyer went bottom up and sunk along with two others.

HEFFNER: You lost three ships in that typhoon.

STERN: Three destroyers went down.  That’s the subject of that book. 

HEFFNER: Who’s it written by again?

STERN: A fella named Calhoun was a destroyer captain on one of the boats during that typhoon.

HEFFNER: That was sunk?

STERN: No, no, his didn’t sink.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN: He was used to live here on Caswell Beach.

HEFFNER: Used to, what happened to him?

STERN: I don’t know, he’s gone.  He was also a college professor after the war.

HEFFNER: Did you know him?

STERN: No, but I know he lived here.  I would have liked to have met him.  I had a hard time getting that book.  I finally dug it up in a bookstore in California.

HEFFNER: Does it relate primarily to that typhoon?

STERN: That’s all it relates to and basic design faults with Ferragut and Fletcher class destroyers.

HEFFNER: He’s critical…

STERN: Very much so.

HEFFNER: Of their inability to weather the typhoon.

STERN: He’s critical of Admiral Halsey.

HEFFNER: For not warning them or not positioning them better?  What’s his problem with Halsey?

STERN: One of his concerns was that there were things that happened, barometric readings and information they had that wasn’t relayed properly to the fleet or not understood by the fleet, the group commander, which got them in trouble.  The weather system they were relying on, the weather reports they were relying on, came from Hawaii all the way across the Pacific Ocean, to tell them what their weather was and what they should watch out for and it was just bungled all the way.  We knew it.  I remember the talk on the ship.  I was just a young fella, just 18, a lot of talk about it.

HEFFNER: Before, during or after the typhoon?

STERN: Right after the typhoon on the way back to San Francisco.

HEFFNER: When your ship was damaged.  Okay, so besides the typhoon and the Okinawa campaign,

STERN: That was it.

HEFFNER: That was the extent of your action in the Pacific, which was enough of course.  Did you maintain the same rating, rank?

STERN: No by this time, I was Fire Controlman Third Class.

HEFFNER: And that was the rank that you eventually were discharged with?

STERN: Yeah.  I had all my, what they called, peonies_____ in…

HEFFNER: What’s that?

STERN: For second class, it’s all the test work you have to do for second class.

HEFFNER: But?

STERN: But there was no opening at that time so you can be qualified, but if there’s no opening, you don’t get promoted.

HEFFNER: So after Okinawa, your ship, the New Orleans, went back to San Francisco or did it go someplace else?

STERN: We went up into the China Sea.

HEFFNER: Was the war still on or was the war over by now?

STERN: The war was over.  We were up there sweeping the area for mines.

HEFFNER: After the war.

STERN: We dragged  _________ in the water with wire cutters on them in essence and they’d come along the chop off the mines.  Mines would pop up in the Marines or anybody else who wanted to handle a gun, just took target practice on them and blowing them up.  It was just to clear the ways for marine traffic.

HEFFNER: I believe that the war ended on September 2, 1945, when General McArthur and the rest of the personnel in Tokyo Bay.  Do you remember where you were at that time?

STERN: We were probably sweeping mines.

HEFFNER: In the China Sea?

STERN: In the China Sea.

HEFFNER: Okay.  Just your cruiser or part of the whole…

STERN: No, there were other boats out there. 

HEFFNER: That wasn’t your original training though in that?

STERN: No.

HEFFNER: What exactly did you do.

STERN: Maintenance.

HEFFNER: Of?

STERN: Gun turrets, both the main battery and the anti-aircraft battery.  There was a lot of work to do.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN: We had gunner mates in the division too, Fire Control Division, and theirs was mostly the mechanical parts of the battery.  We handled all the electrical and maintenance of the computers and so on. 

HEFFNER: You didn’t receive any wounds during your service?

STERN: Nothing, I've been hit by shrapnel, but it was our own.

HEFFNER: During these engagements?

STERN: No, this was on the way out and the way back to have drills to tighten up the training on the gun crews and the anti-aircraft guns didn’t have stops on them to keep them from swinging around and shooting our own super structure away.

HEFFNER: These were accidents?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: These injuries that you sustained, right.

STERN: The guns are trained up for fire at drone that they would be flying around.  It’s funny really.  All five turrets on one side are going at a drone directly over us and everybody looked at it, we missed that one and all of a sudden, it dawned on us, they were firing straight up and we just ran for cover and I got hit in the back by a chunk of shrapnel which I gave to my mother when I got home.

HEFFNER: Where did you go after the China Sea clean-up mine sweeping operation?

STERN: Back to Honolulu.

HEFFNER: Okay.

STERN: Stayed over there for a little while and then we headed down to the Panama Canal and up on the Atlantic side to New Orleans.

HEFFNER: New Orleans, Louisiana was your first American port of call aside from the stopover at San Francisco.

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: This is when now we’re talking about?

STERN: This is after the war, I’m still waiting for my points to accumulate.

HEFFNER: What does that mean?  You have to serve a certain number of months before you’re eligible for discharge.

STERN: You had to accumulate some points and I don’t know how it all worked, but they kept track of it.  I could check my points any time I wanted to, just go and ask them where I stand and they’d tell me, it will be two more months, two and a half more  months.

HEFFNER: It’s time, points are related to time served.

STERN: That’s what it is.

HEFFNER: Before you’re eligible…

STERN: Because I enlisted for the war.

HEFFNER: Duration.

STERN: I didn’t sign up, that’s why I said I was in the Reserve.

HEFFNER: So your term should have expired with the end of the war in September 1945, but it didn’t.  When were you discharged?

STERN: March, about the middle of March 1946.

HEFFNER: Okay, was that from New Orleans where you landed or were you sent someplace else?

STERN: No, after stopping at New Orleans, Louisiana, for recreation so to speak, they had the, this is 1946 by this time and the Mardi Gras had been suspended for war time and this was the first Mardi Gras.  I just thought of something else funny.  The first Mardi Gras after the war.

HEFFNER: You were there?

STERN: I was there.

HEFFNER: The New Orleans was there.

STERN: In fact, the U.S.S. New Orleans was in New Orleans, Louisiana for this celebration, so to speak.

HEFFNER: Was that a coincidence or it just so happens…

STERN: No we wanted to do it that way, the town had asked us, if we were coming home, the ship was due to be put in mothballs and this was a stop on the way up there.

HEFFNER: How long did you stay in New Orleans?

STERN: Five days, five glorious days.

HEFFNER: Okay, was that your first liberty since you had left San Francisco.

STERN: Yeah, well we were on the beach a little bit in Honolulu, but enough to go out and get a meal and a beer or something like that, but that’s about all, but this was the first time.

HEFFNER: The first real liberty in about two years.

STERN: And the ship was open to the citizens  of Louisiana to come down and see it and entertain groups, school kids and so on, and by this time, the crew was greatly diminished.  There were only a small number of us on board.  I say maybe 250 men on board and officers and I was a leading petty officer in the Fire Control Department by this time.

HEFFNER: Oh, you were promoted?

STERN: I was a third class petty officer, but at the time because of reduction of staff, all the old-timers, the guys that were there when the war started, they were all gone, so lower ranks were in there.  But there wasn’t much to do.

HEFFNER: Where did New Orleans go after New Orleans?

STERN: Well we had another captain on board by now whose name is not important, but he was a destroyer captain and he brought into the delta of the Mississippi River which is about 100 miles and the whole town was out to see the U.S. S. New Orleans pull in and we were all standing in quarters…

HEFFNER: On deck?

STERN: On deck.  We all said to each other, when is he going to slow the boat down?

HEFFNER: He was going too fast?

STERN: He was coming up too…I said to one guy, I guess he thinks he still the destroyer.  Anyway, we finally heard the bells, throw it into reverse.  We put it in reverse, it wouldn’t slow down, we hit the docks at the foot of Canal Street.

HEFFNER: In New Orleans?

STERN: In New Orleans in the timbers, 12 x 14” timbers splitted out.  The mayor and all the Daughters of the American Revolution, what else was down there, there were all kinds of flowers, and they all ran like hell to get into a warehouse.

HEFFNER: So your captain didn’t navigate well on the Mississippi?

STERN: He navigated well, but he forgot what he was running and it was considerably larger than a destroyer.

HEFFNER: A cruiser is bigger than a destroyer?

STERN: Oh considerably, twice as long.

HEFFNER: Is that right?  Where did you go after New Orleans?

STERN: Around Florida and up to Philadelphia Navy yard, they put it in mothballs there.

HEFFNER: And what happened to you?

STERN: Well I was still trying to accumulate my points so we took all of the guns, sealed them, main battery and aircraft battery, the small guns were removed and put away in storage and my points came up and I left.

 HEFFNER: When?

STERN: About March 7, I guess.  I had to go from Philadelphia to Long Beach where I was mustered out.

HEFFNER: Long Beach?

STERN: New York.

HEFFNER: Long Island?

STERN: Yeah, it’s on Long Island?

HEFFNER: That’s where you were mustered out?  Was there a Naval facility there?

STERN: Yeah, there was something there because that was, it was all Naval people.

HEFFNER: How did you get from Philly to Long Beach?  By land?

STERN: By Long Island railroad, by train I think.

HEFFNER: So there was no other ship for you beside the New Orleans and that was mothballed?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: It died in Philadelphia Naval yard?

STERN: I think it was scrapped.  I remember coming back about two weeks after I left, I came back because I left some stuff on board and I come back and I remember the names of the guys who were in, Franklin Twist, he’s a Nebraska farm boy and he couldn’t understand why he wasn’t developing points to get out.   And when he checked, he found out he had enlisted in the regular Navy for a four year hitch.  So he would be reassigned when the ship was all done.

HEFFNER: While you were at sea in the Okinawa campaign, was there ever a time when you felt scared, endangered, or you just went about your job?

STERN: I was young, I was 18, 17 when I went in and turned 18.  I didn’t know enough to be scared.  I was scared in that typhoon now.  I figured this was it.

HEFFNER: You thought the ship was going to capsize and you’d go under?

STERN: Or I’d get blown off the side.  I had to come out of that cheesebox on a stick with the wind blowing 80-90 miles an hour and I had to climb down the ladder.  I remember my shirt split open wide in the back.

HEFFNER: From the force of the wind?

STERN: And I was clutching that ladder like this.

HEFFNER: So your experiences are two-fold, the battle and the typhoon.

STERN: The typhoon I’ll never forget.  I’m in the Coast Guard Auxiliary now and I spend all my time in the water, in rough water, calm water, but I've never seen anything like that and I hope I never see it again.

HEFFNER: What about a hurricane?  That’s pretty close to a typhoon.

STERN: But you don’t get 100 foot waves in it, seas with a minimum of 60 up to 100 feet.

HEFFNER: Were the seas going over the, lapping over the decks?

STERN: (Laughter) The whole deck.  You could sit up in that cheesebox on a stick control tower and look out and watch the whole bulk bury itself in the water including turret #1.

HEFFNER: How many feet up is the cheesebox from the deck?

STERN: 90 feet off the water.

HEFFNER: How would you characterize your war experiences in general, I mean are you glad that you went into the Navy?

STERN: Oh yeah, I would have gone on sooner, but my mother wouldn’t let me because at 17 you had to be signed in and I wasn’t going to lie about my age.  I was big, but I wanted to go in and she wanted me to finish high school and that’s what I promised.  I graduated and three days later, I was in the Navy.

HEFFNER: After Long Beach, did you go back right home to Brooklyn?

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: Which wasn’t very far.

STERN: No.

HEFFNER: A train ride.

STERN: You’re familiar with the New York area, I take it.

HEFFNER: I lived on Long Island.

STERN: Whereabouts?

HEFFNER: Huntington, East ______ area.

STERN: I worked for somebody that lived out there, Errol Rambush.

HEFFNER: You got the medals for the campaign you were in?

STERN: Yep.

HEFFNER: Anything else?  Good conduct or something like that?

STERN: Never got any Good Conduct medals.  They don’t hand them out annually, it takes a period of time, just like it does in the Auxiliary, it’s five years.

HEFFNER: All right.  Is there anything else that you want to tell us before we conclude the interview?

STERN: No.

HEFFNER: We covered most of the highlights and low lights?

STERN: Yeah, yeah.  There isn’t anything really to talk about other than that.

HEFFNER: Besides the one buddy of yours who was, went down in that typhoon, did you have any other buddies that experiences?

STERN: Yeah, I had a friend who was a Marine, went through high school with him, he got killed on Iwo Jima.  You see, there were a whole bunch of battles I missed because we went back to San Francisco to get re-gunned and repaired, but he was from North Carolina too, lived out in Moorehead City, Raymond Guthrie.

HEFFNER: And he died in the battle of Okinawa?

STERN: No in the typhoon.  He was on one of those destroyers that tipped over.

HEFFNER: Oh, he was a Marine?

STERN: Yeah, he was fire controlman like I was.

HEFFNER: Oh, okay.  Did you go through basic training with him.

STERN: Yeah.

HEFFNER: And the special training, fireman?

STERN: The special training, nice fella.

HEFFNER: Okay Mr. Stern, I guess that covers it.  Thank you so much and we’ll conclude the interview at 2:50 p.m.