Interview of Jack James
Transcript Number 077

SEPTEMBER 6, 2001

My name is Paul Zarbock of UNCW's Madison library. We're interviewing today Mr. Jack James, a resident of Oak Island, North Carolina. Mr. James enlisted in he Marine Corps, but there was a fair piece of life that preceded that.

INTERVIEWER: Mr. James, tell me, why did you go into the Marine Corps?

JACK: Well, to begin with, I remember vividly, the attack by the Japanese on December 7, 1941, Pearl Harbor. I was a lad of 13 in the eighth grade, and on Monday morning, December the 8th, in a Social Studies class, our teacher brought the radio, and we listened to Franklin Roosevelt's address to Congress. He asked the United States Congress to declare war on Japan. That afternoon when I got home, I immediately told my mother and dad that I wanted to join the Marines. They kind of chuckled and being an only child, I'm sure they just took it lightly. 

Over the years and at that time, there was no television. We saw movies and you saw the news in the theaters. I followed the Pacific campaign as well as the campaign in North Africa and Europe. I always liked to see the movie Wake Island and I always liked to see the movie Guadalcanal and was interested in that. I continually bugged my parents almost incessantly to let me join the Marine Corps. I wanted to join when I was 16, but they would not agree to sign.

Anyway the years went by. Finally, after just really making a nuisance of myself, they agreed to let me go in at the end of my junior year when I was 17, junior year in high school. I was 17 on March 17th, St. Patrick's Day, and I enlisted in the Marine Corps on June 10th, 1945. I was immediately sent to Parris Island, South Carolina. With one other person from North Carolina, we arrived in Yemassee, South Carolina at midnight, June 10th. Spent the night in a run-down barracks in Yemassee, South Carolina, and the next morning, along with 70 other future Marines, we were herded over across the bridge onto Parris Island, South Carolina for June, July and August. That is an experience to be in Parris Island for those summer months.

We began our training immediately that day. For a 17-year old, the minimum weight was 118 pounds to join the Marines and I weighed 124 pounds. I had them about two inches as far as height goes. I enjoyed it. It was rough. There were a lot of funny stories, a lot of sad stories, but anyway we had 10 to 12 weeks of boot camp training in Parris Island. We were to leave Parris Island, South Carolina, the latter part of August 1945. We were scheduled to go to Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, for 21 weeks of additional infantry training. 

INTERVIEWER: Was everyone in boot camp like you, 17, 18 years of age?

JACK: The Marine Corps at that time, I'm glad you asked that Paul, the Marine Corps at that time were made up of enlistees, 17 and 18 years old who had joined the Reserves. The Reserves then were in for the duration of the war and six months thereafter. We had 72 people in our platoon, half of which were 17 and 18 year old enlistees. The other half were Selective Service people who were drafted into the Marines. In June of 1945, the Selective Service system, except for the few 18 year olds they were drafting, they were scraping the bottom of the barrel so to speak to get people who had not been drafted earlier in the war. 

We had several in our platoon in Parris Island. One of them, in particular, was from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who had six children. He was either 36 or 38 years old. He had not been drafted until that time because of the number of dependents that he had and his age. So you can see the diversity of the platoon that I was in. Here you've got 35, 17 and 18 year olds, and believe it or not, we had one 15 year old and several 16 year olds who had lied about their age and their parents had signed for them to come in. We had a group of youngsters who were gung-ho like myself and then we had the rest of the group that were older gentlemen who really had it tough, tougher than we did.

We had drill instructors, three drill instructors, the first month we were there. Then we dropped down to two drill instructors. All these drill instructors were veterans in the Pacific campaign. Our buck sergeant, who had fought in Guadalcanal and Saipan; we had a corporal who had been wounded severely on Saipan. The other corporal that we had had been a sea-going Marine aboard a battleship in the Pacific. They had a little bit of patience and a little bit of, I guess, sympathy for the younger guys. They knew we could do nothing about our age. The guys that were in their 30's and late 30's who had been drafted, they were about the same age as the drill instructors and in one case, may have been a little older than they were. I think they resented the fact that these guys had not been in the service until this time. They had been through a rough situation on these island-hopping in the Pacific. 

Anyway we spent the first month at Parris Island. You're doing a lot of close-order drill, PT training and different things like that. I guess that's your introduction to the Marine Corps life. The second month, you moved with all your gear, not by truck, but on foot, to the rifle range in Parris Island, South Carolina. At that time, you spent a month at the rifle range. You did not even come in at all. You stayed out there in quarters that were really not the best in the world. No screens on the windows. 

You could close the doors, but June, July and August in Parris Island, if you close the doors, you absolutely burned up. We slept under mosquito nets because you'd wake up at night down there and you would have two mosquitoes at the end of the bunk and they'd be fighting whether to eat you there or take you into the swamp and eat you. That was a funny expression down there.

The first week out there, we spent one week firing the M1, 9 1/2 pound M1 rifle. The second week, the old carbine had been introduced at that time. We spent a week on the carbine. The third week, we spent it on the Browning automatic rifle, the BAR, which I think probably now is obsolete. The fourth week, we spent it on grenade launches, hand grenades and that sort of thing. For the last month, we went back into the main base at Parris Island for more close-order drill, things like that. We didn't get any more advanced training because we were schedule to go to Camp Lejeune when we broke boot camp. We would go to Camp Lejeune for an additional 21 weeks. Little did I know what that training was going to be for and I will get into that a little later.

My parents had saved gas rationing stamps the three months that I had been in Parris Island in order to come from Fayetteville, North Carolina, where we lived to pick me up when we got to Camp Lejeune. We would go to Camp Lejeune, check in and get settled in our tents. You were in tent city there. We would have been in tent city. Then they gave you a 10-day leave to go home and come back in ten days to Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville, North Carolina. 

Well I think on Monday or Tuesday of the week that we were to leave on Friday to go to Camp Lejeune at 11 o'clock at night, I remember vividly, our drill instructor, anytime he wanted to get you out at night, he just opened the door and blinked the lights about 10 or 15 times, which he did. Everybody raised up in their bunks because we had been asleep since 9:30. Raised up in your bunks and he said, "Gentlemen, the United States has dropped some type of bomb on Japan". That's all we knew. He put the lights out, nobody cheered and nobody said anything. Everyone put their head back on their pillow and went back to sleep. 

The next day, we found out instead of going to Camp Lejeune, all this had been changed. We were to board a troop train. I would estimate somewhere between 500 and 800 Marines from Parris Island were loaded on a troop train going directly to Camp Pendleton, California. This was a terrible disappointment to all of us because the Marine Corps at that time, I guess still, they had two bases that supplied boot training for new Marines, San Diego, California, and Parris Island, South Carolina. If you lived east of the Mississippi, you went to San Diego. If you lived west of the Mississippi, you went to San Diego. Consequently all our people were from the east coast. Everybody was looking forward to that 10-day leave at home with their parents before they started their infantry training at Camp Lejeune. 

Needless to say, they had a few pay telephones that you could get to if you waited in line. We all had to call our parents and tell them that we were not coming home. It was a terrible disappointment for me and my parents; the fact that they were not going to come to Camp Lejeune and pick me up. On Friday morning of that week, we were taken back into Yemassee by trucks. We loaded on a troop train that was really, the old saying was they were cattle cars. The train I would estimate to be at least a half-mile long. I forgot how many people they had in each car, but you sat on upright benches that had no Pullman or nowhere to sleep. They did have a place where you could brush you teeth and wash your hands and face, go to the bathroom, but no shower or no bath facilities at all. We boarded that train in Yemassee, South Carolina, and for the next seven days and seven nights, we rode that train across country. I remember three straight days and nights it took to get across the state of Texas. Being a youngster that had only been to Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina, that was quite a trip for me because we stopped every morning at 9:00 for physical training, PT, regardless of where we were. If we were in the middle of the gosh-awful boondocks, we still stopped, got out at the side of the track and did our physical training. 

Another thing, we stopped for every freight train, every passenger train, between South Carolina and California. I guess that's the reason it took us so long to get there. Anyway we got to Oceanside, California, which is halfway between San Diego and Los Angeles. Camp Pendleton, California, it's one of the largest bases area-wise in the country, a tremendous base.

INTERVIEWER: Let me ask you, while you were on the train, how did you get fed and on what did you sleep?

JACK: You slept sitting up on these benches or either the backs to these seats folded in or folded out. When they folded in, there was a cavity under there that you could crawl in there and sleep on the floor. You either slept sitting up or you lay down on the floor and those things, I guess at that time, were run by coal. We were all absolutely filthy when we got there. They fed us the best they could with cold rations. I don't remember any hot food that we had on that trip. The food is, it's a little hard to remember what we ate. I do know that when we did stop in the few small towns, we were not allowed to get off at all. They had MP's; the Marine Corps called them MP's, just like the Army. We had MP's stationed on that train. You were not allowed to get off at any of these stations. You could look out the window and raise the window. Of course, it was the end of August and it was warm all the way across especially in the southern part and the western part of Texas. 

Anyway, getting back to our trip to California, we arrived there. They loaded us up, carried us in to Camp Pendleton, California, which is a beautiful place in the hills over on the coast of California. We got there around lunchtime and we took our Sea bags and our belongings and checked into a barracks that they had waiting for us. The next thing was, without cleaning up or anything, it was time to go to the mess hall for our noon meal. Lo and behold, we got there, this is showing you how things were during this time. The atomic bomb had been dropped now about eight to ten days. The war by then was officially over. I think MacArthur and the Japanese counterparts had met on the battleship and had signed the peace agreement.

His 500 to 800 Marines that landed at Camp Pendleton, California, we go to the mess hall for the first meal and they didn't know we were coming. For our first meal there, we got stainless steel pitchers of iced cold milk and fresh bread which was delightful because we had not had any cold milk or anything like that. That was our first meal there. This is when the rumors began to fly. We stayed there and for the next day or two, I think a lieutenant or a captain, we were just doing nothing really but flying around doing a little close-order drill. A lieutenant came in and said, "Well, gentlemen, you're going to Japan for occupational forces. We don't know exactly when you're going". So, we continued to do our drilling, our sleeping, lounging around, policing up the area, keeping the barracks tidy. This went on for about two weeks.

The next news we heard was that we were not going at this time. They had decided to give us our boot leave which we should have had on the east coast. So here is several thousand troops from the east coast that are going to get a ten day leave to go back to, in my case, to North Carolina and at my expense or my family's expense. 

INTERVIEWER: The situation is now all fouled up, is that right?

JACK: Right, right. There's a Marine Corps expression that the situation was snafu. 

INTERVIEWER: Yes.

JACK: And I won't get into that. But anyway true to form they did, they allowed us a 10-day leave and depending on where you lived, a number of days travel time. In my case, I got 10 days leave and 10 days travel time. The only catch to it, I had to pay my way back to North Carolina. We made our way to Los Angeles and the group split up and everybody went home, I assume went home. I certainly did. Luckily, I made it on a regular passenger train in five days. So I had a full 10 days in North Carolina with my family. 

At the end of that 10 days, I went back on the train through Chicago at that time and back to Los Angeles and down to Oceanside, California, which was just a small resort town on the beach as I said, between Los Angeles and San Diego. We got back then with the full expectation that I had told my family when we got back, we'd be going to Japan as occupational forces. When we got back, all that had changed again. For some reason, we were going to be sent to Hawaii, but they didn't know exactly when. So again, we're doing close-order drill, we're cleaning up the barracks, we're cleaning up the area, we're doing KP duty and a lot of free time. But we're waiting, as you've often heard in the service, you spent 50% of your time waiting in lines.

We had all our shots, everything was completed for us to go. For some reason, we went to Hawaii. We all suspected that we were going to Hawaii to a staging area and then from there. we would probably go to Japan. This went on for at least three to four weeks. During this time, nobody knew anything I don't think. I never saw anybody with a rank higher than a captain and I'm sure they didn't know what was going on because by now, the troops in the South Pacific who had been through several campaigns, they were being discharged with the point system. There were so many points given for each month you were in the service, so many points given for the days or months that you were in combat and this is the way that points were accumulated.

A lot of those boys had been on Okinawa, Iwo Jima, Saipan and some of these other islands. They did not come home and accumulated enough points to immediately be discharged. Well they had already begun arriving back in Camp Pendleton. They had a large staging area there for discharges. We got an opportunity to talk to some of them. They were located in an area next to where we were in our barracks. 

We kept waiting for the orders to go to Hawaii and we expected most any day to be taken down to San Diego and board troop ships to go to Hawaii because they did not fly troops during that time from one destination to another. You went on the troop ships. That was one thing that I dreaded. I really dreaded the trip to the South Pacific on a troop ship because I'm prone to get seasick. I think I dreaded that worse than I did facing the Japanese. 

Anyway, as I said, we kept waiting. We moved from at least to one or two or three different areas at Camp Pendleton. As I said earlier, it was a tremendous base covering a lot of square miles. At one point, we were taken out into the boondocks and we stayed in Quonset huts. If you're not familiar with a Quonset hut, it's a metal oval building with a concrete floor with bunks in it, with a door on either end with a couple of windows. They can get extremely warm in the summertime, but at Camp Pendleton, it was warm during the day, but awfully chilly at night. 

By this time, it's already into October or November of 1945, and the troops were really pouring back in from the South Pacific. These boys were anxious to get out. The only ones that were not getting out were the ones that had enlisted earlier during the war in the regular Marines for four years. We did have some of those. They were not in the Reserves and not Selective Service. They had joined maybe 1943 for four years of service. Some of those had points to get out, but they still had to stay in until their enlistment was up. Some of those were assigned to us. The young recruits, like myself, when they would talk about their situation, which a few of them would, and I got to be good friends with a few of them, they were, they had some horror stories to tell about Iwo Jima, Saipan, Okinawa and these other places. 

The young lad that I was and innocent as I was, I felt like I couldn't wait to get into the battle in the South Pacific. After talking with these fellows, I realized then it was probably a great thing for me that they did drop that bomb because I could see what they had been through and some of the conditions it had left some of these guys in. As I said, we moved around in several different locations at Camp Pendleton, doing really just a minimal amount of work, mostly just laying around, killing time and still a lot of close-order drills. In the Marine Corps, if you're not familiar with it, they are famous for close-order drilling. I guess they think it instilled a lot of discipline in you. We did an awful lot of that and an awful lot of policing of the areas. Getting out on a few patrols when we were out in this Quonset hut area, we did do some of that.

INTERVIEWER: Did you go back to the rifle range?

JACK: No more, supposedly in preparation for our occupational duty in Japan. I guess they felt like there was still going to be a lot of hostility there and that we needed to be prepared for that. We did not go back and fire any other weapons during this time. We did this, like I said, this was probably November or early December by now. We were summoned one day and our entire group consisted of probably 300 people by this time or more, and told that we were not going to Hawaii. All this had been changed. There were so many Marines that were coming back from the Pacific and a lot of them that were in the regulars that were going to stay over there in Hawaii. 

What they were going to do with us, they were going to send us to the base nearest our home, at least nearest to the place that we enlisted. In my case, I had enlisted in Raleigh, North Carolina, so the nearest base would have been Cherry Point, the Marine air base or either at Camp Lejeune in Jacksonville. So this delighted me. I was just absolutely delighted to be going back home.

We had a general then, the commander of the Marine Corps was General A.A. Vandergrift. He made the statement the latter part of September or early October, that by September the 1st of 1946, that he would have no Marines in the Marine Corps except for the regulars which were in for a four-year term of duty or tour of duty. I just thought it was a bunch of hogwash. I had no earthly idea and no one else did either that as fouled up as things were, that they could have hundreds of thousands of Marines out by say in ten months or eight months. I thought it was strange that they were going to send us back to the base nearest our home. 

We began to wait for these orders to go to Camp Lejeune or Cherry Point. Again, we waited for another three weeks and again, they have us fall out with the news that Camp Lejeune, Cherry Point, Great Lakes Naval Station where they had Marines up in Great Lakes, were absolutely swarming with people. They had nowhere for them. They had nowhere for us at Camp Lejeune because of the influx of the people being returned from overseas. They had no idea, I guess, how many people there were over there in Hawaii and these islands that they were bringing home that had accumulated enough points to get out. I know at Camp Pendleton, we just had them coming in there daily by the thousands to be discharged. Anybody that could type, they took those guys and put them in a unit doing nothing but typing up separation papers to get these guys out. 

We were in the barracks adjoining where they kept them or in an area adjoining where they kept these returning veterans from the South Pacific and as I said many times, we had a lot of free time on our hands and these guys would come back with these sea bags that they had dragged all over the South Pacific with all these combat boots and uniforms and things in there. All they wanted to do was to get home. They'd just throw sea bags and everything away. They were going; all they wanted was the uniform that were issued, the Marine green uniforms to wear home. So a lot of them threw everything they had away except their personal things. They left there with just an overnight bag. As far as sea bags, anything we wanted that we needed, we could just go out to the dump because it was full of that kind of stuff. If we needed another pair of shoes, you had to turn a pair of shoes in to quartermaster to be able to get a new pair of shoes. All we had to do was to go out there and look in the sea bags. We could get combat boots, we could get dress shoes, we could get anything we needed by picking up a pair and taking it to the quartermaster and getting a new pair because most of those guys were discarding well worn items of clothing. By this time, it was into the next year, into early 1946. Again we really didn't know what was going on. They had so many people...

INTERVIEWER: Was that your first Christmas away from home?

JACK: Yes it was my first Christmas away from home.

INTERVIEWER: What did that feel like? 

JACK: I'm sure it was a sad time, but I really don't remember that much about it at this time. Anyway, by this time, we were pretty much reconciled to the fact that we were going to be at Camp Pendleton until we did get discharged. 

We were placed, my group was placed in a guard battalion. Let me tell you what a guard battalion is. You probably know from the name, but a guard battalion at Camp Pendleton, California; during the war, I guess the early part of the war; they had a tremendous amount of ammunition dumps up in the hills in Camp Pendleton. They were bunkers built back into the mountain with a steel door on it. They were locked, but they had ammunition stored up there, I guess in case of a Japanese invasion because it was a pretty known fact that after Pearl Harbor the Japanese could have attacked California and gotten quite a distance inland before we could have repelled them. I guess that's what these ammunition dumps were doing there. 

All of them had to have a guard on them, so our guard battalion, it was four hours on duty, eight hours off. These bunkers in these places that they'd assign one guard to was so far back in the hills and the guard truck, it took over an hour from the first drop until you picked up the last one. If you had four hours on, when you got back to the barracks, it was really, you didn't get eight hours off, you got seven or maybe six. It was like this seven days a week. Guys that had been in that guard battalion had not had a weekend off in months. Anyway we were all assigned to this guard battalion for this kind of duty.

In the mountains of Camp Pendleton at night, it got extremely cool and the only thing up there were some rattlesnakes and coyotes. I mean it was full of coyotes. During this time, I guess a lot of people were being discharged; they came in one day, and having been...

INTERVIEWER: Excuse me; did you have a loaded weapon with you when you were on guard duty?

JACK: Yes, you had a loaded M1 rifle. 

INTERVIEWER: With bayonet?

JACK: No bayonet, just a loaded M1 rifle. But anyway, having been from Fayetteville, North Carolina, and my father had a business at Fort Bragg, I spent a lot of time in the earlier years out there in the earlier part of World War II and I knew quite a bit about what was going on with the military. I'd always been told never to volunteer for anything and during my time at Parris Island or in my early months at Camp Pendleton, I never volunteered for anything, but this guard duty was a bad situation. They came in one day; a sergeant came in and said "We need some volunteers to go to cook school". I said, "Well, what does this mean?" He said, "Well, you're going for three weeks to cook school". I said, "Well, it certainly going to beat what we're doing now". 

So it was about five or six of us raised our hands and we volunteered to go on the same base to a cook school. So we went to a cook school. We were under a staff sergeant who had been a cook in the Pacific. I think he had 15 or 18 years in, but anyway, he was a good chef. I learned an awful lot. I certainly appreciate the opportunity I had because now I can get in the kitchen and stir up a little SOS or some of those things that we were served and I still enjoy that.

At the end of that three weeks of cooking school, we went back to the same outfit we were in. The only thing was we had 24 hours on and 24 hours off. Each week we had a 48-hour pass. Consequently, we went to work at 12 and we worked from 12 until 12, then we were off from 12 to 12. Each week we got off either Thursday noon to Saturday noon or Saturday noon to Monday noon. We really had some good duty. The ones that were working on KP and the cooks and the bakers and the butchers, we had our own tables that we sat at in the mess hall and we were feeding over 2,000 men each meal in this mess hall. It was a tremendous job. 

On Thanksgiving, I think we baked somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 turkeys for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. We served a lot of food in tremendous quantities. If you were having eggs for breakfast, we'd break, it was 30 dozen eggs to a case, we'd break 60 dozen eggs easily every morning because nobody missed a meal. You were required to come to the meal. You could walk through the cafeteria mess hall. If you didn't want to eat, that was fine, but you came to the meals and went through the line. By working in this facility, we were off the guard duty and we did have some time off. We got some good food.

INTERVIEWER: Did you weigh more than 124 pounds?

JACK: Yes, I gained weight by this time; I'm probably up to about 150 by now. It also gave us an opportunity to visit some places in Southern California. One thing pointed out in the military today, everybody has an automobile and access to transportation. We had one man in our entire company that had a car back then. That was the only person we had that owned an automobile. This has been early 1946. He had his family there and he lived in Oceanside on the base. A lot of hitchhiking done then on Route 5 from Oceanside, California, up to Los Angeles. It was a three-lane highway at that time. I had been back out there and now it's a super interstate, but at that time, California 5 up the coast was a three-lane road and it was a deathtrap. You could see literally hundreds of service people, Navy and Marines, especially from San Diego, hitchhiking to Los Angeles. I got an opportunity at that time, which was quite a thing for a 17 year old to be able to go to Hollywood and some places in Los Angeles. 

I got an opportunity, at that time there were no TV shows, but got an opportunity to visit the Jack Benny Radio Show. I attended that. I was amazed at the sound effects and the way they did that. We just been on the streets in Hollywood. At that time, you saw a lot of famous stars that I had seen in the movies in my lifetime. I don't recall their names right now, but I did get to see several of them. I never did get an opportunity to tour the studios, but you could see them drive up with a chauffeur. They'd get out and go in a store. You'd see some of that. I also got an opportunity to visit San Diego which was another beautiful city in southern California. So I got an opportunity after I got into the mess hall to do a little bit of traveling and seeing some things. 

Later on in that year, we were sent to the All American Canal in southern California, west of San Diego; a small base that they were closing down, but you still got to remember, you're winding down from a massive World War II situation to all of a sudden, there was peace. Nobody knew what was really going on because it happened so fast. They were closing a base down, a small base, over in the desert on the All American Canal. You'd cross the All American Canal and you were over into Mexico. We were there for a couple of months and just had a guard battalion then. Luckily, we had three cooks there that were preparing food for the small guard battalion. We got an opportunity to be there, it was really a great interest. The border patrol then was still having trouble with immigrants coming across from Mexico. Everyday they would come through our base with their vehicles chasing the people that were crossing, wading across the All American Canal that irrigated southern California and all the truck farms out there. They'd catch them wading across the canal and take them back across. We were amused with a lot of what was going on at that time. 

After about six weeks, we went back to the main base at Camp Pendleton. On one occasion, I had thought about it recently because the summer of 2001, they had a lot of forest fires in Montana and out west. One time, to show you that they needed something for us to do, they had us all fall out and carried us up into the northern part of California where they had a forest fire. Recently they had a detachment of Marines from Camp Lejeune that they sent out west. I saw that in the newspaper. They actually took us, a couple of hundred of us up to help fight a forest fire and we knew nothing about a forest fire. The place we went to though, I remember that vividly, it already burned over. We got there in the middle of the night and they gave us a shovel and they had some flashlights, and they said, "Well, the fire is past this situation or past this location so you try to put out some of these twigs and some of these logs that are still burning". It was cold up there that night. 

We worked for an hour or two and there was no more fire there. We were cold. The guys learned real quickly how to handle that. We just gathered up small rock, turned the shovel upside down, put the rock under the shovel, lay down on the ground and put the shovel under your head. The shovel immediately got warm. We spent the majority of the first night there just sleeping on the ground with a warm shovel under your head. It felt real good to have those warm rocks there, but that was another experience. We were only there one night and one day. I guess the forest fire was under control. They took us back down to Camp Pendleton.

I spent the rest of my time doing the same thing there. Some of the experiences there with guys...by this time, we had about half of us that were like myself and the other half were the regulars. We spent a lot of time listening to their war tales. I'm sure most of them were true. Our quarters were rooms that we had four people sleeping to a room, so we were not in a barracks anymore. This duty that we had then, that mess hall was really great duty. The days that we were off if we were there on the base, we could go over and fix whatever we wanted to for food. We ate a lot of steaks and we really enjoyed that. I put on quite a bit of weight during that time. 

I guess by then, it's in the summer of 1946. Another time I was transferred to a small guard detachment. They had two people up there fixing food for about 30 people. It was up close to San Clemente, California. That's where President Nixon had his summer home in California. We were right across the highway. We were right on Highway 5 across the road from the beach. I spent one month up there in the summer of 1946, right outside of San Clemente. You can see that the moving around that we were doing, really what they were doing, they were trying to find something for us to do until they could get you out. 

The people that came back from the Pacific certainly came first. The points, I'd forgotten what, but when they began the point situation, I forgot exactly how many you had to have, it seemed to me like it was 70, 80, 90 points, maybe more. They scaled down as the troops were discharged. The points were decreased. Of course, in our case, we didn't have any points because we had not been in combat. 

We had one young fellow from South Dakota. He was in the Aleutian Islands and I'd become close friends with him. He spent the entire time after he left boot camp, he went of course to San Diego and I don't know where he had his advanced training, but he had been assigned to the Aleutian Islands which I guess they didn't have any combat in the Aleutians, but he spent a lot of time there. He didn't accumulate a lot of points. I think he had maybe 20 or 30 points, but he had to wait a good while before he could get out because the points had to scale down to his level. He had some interesting stories about the Aleutians. He and I shared a lot of time since he was from South Dakota. 

I had one good friend from Texas who had been in Guadalcanal and a couple of other islands over there. He had some interesting stories about those campaigns. The 1st Marine Division, which he was assigned to, had been in Guadalcanal. That was really the first island invasion after we halfway recovered from Pearl Harbor. After the Marines secured Guadalcanal and the Army relieved him, they were taken to Australia for some additional training for some R&R. They spent eight months in Australia before the invasion, I guess, the next invasion, which was Tarawa or either Saipan. 

They had an interesting, he told a lot of sea stories about the time in Australia, about the steak and your eggs and about his eight months there in Australia. The 1st Marine Division thoroughly enjoyed their R&R in Australia. Most of the Aussies, I guess, had been in North Africa and the female population was about 5 to 1 for the men that were left in Australia so the Marines had a lot of girlfriends and a lot of good food in Australia in 1942. That's when they were there. 

Those relationships we had with those guys, they didn't resent the fact that we had not been there because they knew how old we were and most of them were in their mid-20's. They knew in our case we had joined of our own free will and most of us by this time were 18 years old. I never had any resentment from those people at all. I think the Selective Service people that went in at the tail end of the war like I did, I think there was some resentments with these folks. 

One little interesting tidbit, the gentleman I referred to from Pittsburgh in boot camp that had six children and was 38 years old, they did know to get him out. Right after the atomic bomb was dropped and we got to California, that gentleman was discharged. I guess his pay and the amount of money that they were sending to his wife and six children got someone's attention because he was discharged and sent home after about 90 days. They did know that if it was costing you money, they could get rid of you. 

That brings up another point that's quite interesting. When I went in, June of 1945, the pay then for a private was $50 a month. After about six months after I got to Camp Pendleton, I did make private first class which was better known then as PFC. My pay increased to $54 a month, but we always got paid in cash. You got two 20's, and a ten. They didn't pay you the first of the month, and the 15th, they paid us on the first of the month, two 20's and a ten, crisp, new ones. It didn't last very long. 

I soon found out that these old salts that were in with us, that had been in the Pacific, when they got paid, the first thing they did, they took a foot locker and a green Marine Corps blanket and put it down and either played cards or played craps on the blanket. Well being a 17-year-old lad from North Carolina, I'd never played poker or blackjack or craps either. The big game was craps and I thought I could really like that. I think the second payday after we were in Camp Pendleton and I'm skipping around a little bit, they broke out the footlocker with the blanket and started a crap game. Well, I needed to get in that. They were shooting craps for a dollar, two dollars, and three dollars. To make a long story short, in less than an hour after I got my two 20's and the ten, mine was gone. I mean I had not one penny. I said, "Well, I've got to make it for 30 days with no money at all". Well the only thing we really needed money for was to go to PX and buy shaving supplies and if you wanted what the Marine Corps called it "pogey bait". Anything sweet in the Marine Corps was "pogey bait". In Parris Island, you were not allowed to have any of that until the last week that we were there.

The first month that we were there, our drill instructor delighted in taking us to the PX to buy ink, stationery, toothpaste or something like that. He told us when we got there, he said, "If I catch any of you with any pogey bait, you will pay for it." Well, none of our people, they knew not to buy any candy or ice cream. The guys that were finishing up their boot camp, it looked so good to see them and it was then in June, the last of June, eating an ice cream cone or drinking a coke and we could not have any of that. The first nine weeks we were at Parris Island we did not have a Coca Cola or any soda or any ice cream unless you got it in the mess hall, nothing in the way of candy, Hershey bars or anything. 

Well anyway, getting back to the Camp Pendleton and the first experience with a crap game, in a matter of 20 minutes I had lost my $50. I managed for about three weeks without any money at all. I think I may have borrowed $2 from a friend of mine that let me have a couple of dollars. Along about the third week, I really did need to have a little money. I called home occasionally. The only telephone available then was a pay phone. A few of them were scattered around on the base. The only way really to transfer money then was by Western Union. They had a Western Union base on Camp Pendleton. I called home and asked my folks if they could wire me $25 which they did. That was the only time, I believe, that I asked for money while I was in the service. 

That pretty much cured me of playing cards with experienced people and shooting craps with experienced people. My $50 was gone in a matter of minutes. That was a lesson well learned.

INTERVIEWER: How did you end up your military career?

JACK: Well, as I said, by this time, it was obvious that we were going to spend the rest of our time in Camp Pendleton. I was still working in the mess hall at the same guard battalion. After shifting around at least two or three times, I'd always come back to the same place. 

By the 1st of August of 1946, we really began to realize that Commander Vandergrift, we called him General AA Vandergriff, that he was going to be true to his word that we were going to be out by September 1st of 1946. In other words, if I got out by September 1st, this would have given me a little over 16 months in the service. By this time, I realized that I was ready to get out. I left school as I had told you in my junior year and I kept thinking and corresponding with my folks. If I could get out by the 1st of September, I can get back home and go back in the senior class and I will not have missed but one school year. 

So true to his word, we were discharged. I think it was August the 28th, and they did discharge us in California, and of course, by discharging us out there, I got seven cents a mile for travel for 3,000 miles. So I got, you know, travel expenses to get home and made a little money on the thing on the deal. It took me about four or five days to get home. I got home the early part of September. I think I might have been on the train near Labor Day crossing the country again from California to North Carolina. I got home and within three days after I got home, I was back in high school as a senior in Fayetteville, North Carolina, high school. 

I was very fortunate that I only had to miss one year of school because that year we had, we organized a Veterans' Club. We had 20-some GI's, sailors and I think I was the only Marine that came back to finish high school. Some of them had been gone three and four years. Some of them were 21, 22 years old. Some of them started back to high school and drew GI bill to go to high school. I did not want to do that. I knew that I wanted to go to college and it was a situation that I saved my GI bill because it certainly didn't cost anything to go to high school.

I was very fortunate that I didn't have to go overseas and I was very delighted with the time that I spent.

INTERVIEWER: All of your military experience and all of the situations that you saw, and all of the people that you met, what did it all mean now that you have had a few years to reflect about your youth and the experiences? What did it all mean to you? What did you learn?

JACK: Well, to this day, even though I only spent 16 months and only served three months until the war was over, roughly three months before they dropped the atomic bomb and the war was over in the Pacific, I still have a strong feeling for the Marines. I guess the old saying simplified, once a Marine, always a Marine. I have great admiration for the Marine Corps. It's a wonderful organization. They certainly have gone down in history as earning their laurels. I still am very thankful that I didn't have to get into combat, but I wouldn't take anything for the 16 months that I spent. They took a 17 year old, in fact, I don't know whether you can zoom in on it or not, but here's a 17 year old Marine that this picture was made immediately after I got to Oceanside, California, in the fall of 1945. That's what a 17-year-old Marine in his green uniform looked like in the fall of 1945. I wouldn't take anything from the time I spent. A young lad grew up and became a man in those 16 months.

INTERVIEWER: Thank you for doing that.