INTERVIEWER:  Leo, tell me when did you go into the military, why did you go into the military and what was life like at the time?  Did you enlist or were you drafted?

BEDNARCZYK:   Paul, I enlisted in the U.S. Navy about two days after I left high school in June of 1942.  I was one of six kids, the only one that was able to complete high school and during that period of time we had a number of lessons, not only in school but in the newspapers telling us about what was happening in Europe at the time. 

Both of my parents were born in Poland, migrated to this country shortly after the turn of the century and we were told about the Nazis invading Poland and what devastation they prevailed over a rather pacifist nation that was not even equipped to fire a gun.  Many of the relatives that wrote to us were telling us that the country was overrun.

On the other end of the spectrum even before I graduated from high school, I learned about the Japanese intrusion into China and at Nanching where they killed over 250,000 men, women and children.  Of course then came Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and that was six months before I graduated from high school. 

So when you gather up all these things and then following Pearl Harbor, we heard about the death marches in Bataan and Corregidor and I don’t think there was a red-blooded  young man who graduated from high school or even before that wasn’t anxious to join the Armed Forces in one shape or another.

My parents were always prompting me to get the best education I could because they could not and some of my friends, older neighbors than I had been in the Navy and they told about educational opportunities in the Navy and that’s why I chose the Navy.  So I spent my early days at boot camp in Great Lakes.

Following that, I went to diesel engineering school in my hometown of Chicago at the Navy pier and then it was shortly afterwards I found myself in an amphibious training camp in Solomons, Maryland about 65 miles southeast of Washington.

INTERVIEWER:   Now how old were you at that time?

BEDNARCZYK:   I was 18.  I graduated high school on my birthday June 17, 1942.

INTERVIEWER:   How long was boot camp?

BEDNARCZYK:   Boot camp was 12 weeks at the time and I went there in the middle of winter and I graduated in April and while I was there, I had a very pleasant experience.  I was a baseball player and a golfer in high school and I had the opportunity to see the 1942 world’s champion St. Louis Cardinals play against the Great Lakes Naval Training Station that was managed by Nicky Cochran.  So this was a happy day in my life, to be able to see the world’s champions play Great Lakes.

While at the amphibious training base in Solomons, Maryland, I was part of a skeleton crew destined to take over a ship. Now we didn't know what ship it was going to be, but the next training assignment was on the Chesapeake Bay on a landing ship tank, an LST and we were trained by the Coast Guard.  The day I set foot aboard that ship, my engineering officer said, “You are going to be my oil king”. 

Well I didn't know that I was going to become a part of royalty so early in my career in the Navy, but let me explain what the oil king designation was.  Having had a technical training in high school and then going to diesel engineering school in the Navy, I was only destined for two places, one the submarine service or the amphibious landing crew service or as we called it, the gator Navy simply because all of them were propelled in some form or another by diesel engines.

So having had this great drafting course in high school, I was a so-called engineer by then and the engineering officer asked me if I would not go through the motions and draw him a map of all of the piping aboard the LST which is over a football field long, all of the tank locations and all the valves so that I knew not only how to shift ballasts on the ship, but also to take on and govern the maintenance of inventory of fuel and fresh water.

INTERVIEWER:   This officer, was he a relatively young man?  This sounds like a tremendous responsibility being put on you.

BEDNARCZYK:   Well he said he was three years older than I was.  In fact, I saw him two weeks ago and he just turned 81, a pharmacist by trade, but became a well-known anesthesiologist.  So that was his background, although he did have three weeks or three months, I’m not sure, of diesel engineering at the University of Illinois.  So he had four weeks more engineering experience.  I probably had more engineering experience than he had.

But to this day I say, “The reason that you wanted me to make drawings of the ship” because the Navy didn't provide us anything other than manuals on all of the equipment aboard, but I don’t want to get ahead of my story, but I always kid my engineering officer who became our executive officer that the only reason he asked me to do that was because he didn't know and I really believe that because it was the first time on the ship for him too.

From Solomons, Maryland, we, as a skeleton crew, were sent to Evansville, Indiana, where the rest of the crew was assembled and we helped commission the landing ship tank, fabricated, assembled and sailed out of Evansville, Indiana.

INTERVIEWER:   The year is what?

BEDNARCZYK:   1943, this is the summer of 1943.  We helped commission a ship in Evansville, Indiana.  We didn't sail it down the Ohio, we had a skeleton crew of merchant seamen and tug masters and tugboats that helped us sail down the Ohio River and the full length of the Mississippi to New Orleans.  We only sailed during the night and tugboat captains were transferred on a daily basis because each of them had limited knowledge of the Mississippi and we wanted to be sure that we got to our destination.

INTERVIEWER:   And you only traveled at night?

BEDNARCZYK:   Yes sir.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your rank in those days?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well, by this time, I was a machinist mate 2nd class.  It was a rapid advance.  I’d only been in the Navy for maybe less than a year, but through testing and I guess tenure at that point, I was 2nd class machinist mate.

INTERVIEWER:   This is petty officer 2nd class?

BEDNARCZYK:   Petty officer 2nd class, yes sir.  From New Orleans, we went to I believe it was Biloxi where we picked up a battalion of Seabees, probably the least recognized part of the service who I admire to this day because they were all the tradesmen of the Navy.  They were the ship fitters, they were the bricklayers, they were the carpenters, electricians, refrigeration specialists and ultimately we delivered them to Guadalcanal where they helped build an airfield and barracks for the Air Force.  So I want to be sure that I mention the Seabees.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you have a full crew at that time?

BEDNARCZYK:   At that time, we did have a full crew and it numbered about 125.  We also took on a landing craft tank.  This was a vessel that was self-propelled, that was put on our top deck and it had two marine engines and it was about, I would say, 40 feet wide and 50 feet long.  It too was going to be used for invasion purposes to take personnel into the beaches of the Pacific.

INTERVIEWER:   Let me see if I understand this.  The ship that you’re on is a landing ship tank?

BEDNARCZYK:   Yes sir.

INTERVIEWER:   And the ship you picked up and put on the top…

BEDNARCZYK:   On the deck, yes sir.

INTERVIEWER:   Is another landing ship tank?

BEDNARCZYK:   No, it was a small landing craft.  We were going to actually launch it in the South Pacific so we carried it there.  It was heavily strapped down with chains and I must add as the individual who had the responsibility for our water inventory and we were about to embark on a long trip to the Pacific, water was rationed to everyone including the Seabees.  The landing craft that we carried was another vessel that provided us an opportunity to fill it with water in its tanks.

So the Seabees were rationed from the LCT that we carried aboard.  I might add that the landing ship tank or LST also had two small boats.  These were boats powered by diesel engines and they were about 8 feet wide and 20 to 30 feet long and were able to carry 20 infantry or Marine personnel into the beaches, but it was also used for inter-ship transfer of men and machines, materials and so on as is.

We left New Orleans, headed for the Panama Canal and en route we saw sinking of one of our oil tankers and helped some of the survivors and picked up whatever we could, but other quicker ships and more maneuverable ships did the rest of the job and we visited with the sub ______ when we arrived in Panama.

INTERVIEWER:   This was a U-boat attack?

BEDNARCZYK:   This was a U-boat attack in the Caribbean, yes sir.  And I might add that after that sinking, none of us slept for the next three days.  We were vigilant even in bed, sleeping with our eyes open.

INTERVIEWER:   So you went through the Canal?

BEDNARCZYK:   Yes sir, and our next stop 92 days later was Bora Bora, which is in the Society Islands.  In convoy the LSC probably had a top speed of about 8-1/2 knots so it was…

INTERVIEWER:   Would you like to make any comments about that 92-day cruise that you took (laughter)?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well, most people say it must have been a luxury cruise.  In this day, Bora Bora is a wonderful island and everyone goes to visit.  When we arrived there, I think possibly sometime maybe in December, all the buildings, if you could call them that, had thatched roofs, had mats for floors.  They were on stilts and most of the Polynesians were raising pigs, chickens and ducks at the time, but they were some of the happiest people that we’ve ever met in our lives.  We went there to fill up with water and fuel oil.  Apparently the strategy of logistics of our war machine had provided those principal supplies for ships of the Navy.

INTERVIEWER:   But during this 92-day voyage across the Pacific, how did the crew and how did the troops…was there any entertainment?  Was there any recreation?  Just stood watch and went to sleep?

BEDNARCZYK:   We stood watches, went to sleep, read and slept.  Most of the watches in my position on the ship, I didn't stand a watch cause I was on call at any time 24 hours a day and when we did get to shore, my first duty was to fill the ship up with fresh water and replenish our fuel.  So for the first day and a half, I was a busy guy while everybody else had gone out to have some fun. 

From Bora Bora we went to Samoa and then our next battleground we went to in the southwest Pacific was Guadalcanal.  This was after the battle in the Coral Sea and Iron Bottom Bay when the first battles of the Navy…we did engage in the mop up operations and the invasion of Bougainville in the Solomons and that was our first taste of combat.

INTERVIEWER:   Are you hauling troops?

BEDNARCZYK:   We moved troops and supplies, yes sir.  Marines usually at that point were infantry.  Those were our passengers on most of the trips into combat.  In between, we were used as a cargo ship because an LST could…we called it gator Navy because we were on land and sea and our ship could crawl up onto the shore and discharge tanks, trucks, artillery and manpower.  So we carried every conceivable cargo that we possibly could from one island to another in our hedgehopping process across the Pacific. 

Two of our major military campaigns ...the LST-124 when I was aboard was involved in six invasions ... The two most prominent ones were Saipan and Tinian.  Saipan was the first when we lost about 3000 Marines because of the reefs, the tides and because they were in waist water in deep and the enemy was firing at them and they were just wiped out.

Finally when we discovered how to manage it, we were able to get our troops ashore safely and it was also at a time when our Navy air power came into prominence and during the Battle of the Marianas, this includes Guam, Saipan and Tinian, we must have knocked down about 300 enemy planes and that was I think the turning point of the war because the Japanese Naval air power was just knocked out.

One interesting sidelight I would like to mention is that the Japanese were fanatical ferocious battlers and I’m just assuming that the Japanese were so fanatical that they even taught the civilians that were on Saipan as an example that they should never surrender because the enemy was as fanatical and ferocious as they were. 

On the island of Saipan after we had maybe a D+5 or D+6, it was evident that we were going to take the island, about 3000 Japanese civilians jumped off a cliff and committed suicide and this is a clear illustration of what the mentality of the Japanese military minds were.  They had brainwashed their civilians into thinking that the entire world was as fanatical as they were.  It also points out why we had the death march of Bataan and Corregidor and the mutilation of people, the Chinese.

Another interesting sidelight that I think is interesting to mention, the next island we hit was Tinian, and Tinian, I don’t exactly know the size of this at all, but it was probably the most suitable island to build an airfield on.  Well as it turns out, Tinian became the airfield from which the B29’s flew to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

On a personal note, it wasn’t 50 years later that a very dear competitor in a local high school was doing some history lessons in school.  It turns out he was Colonel Fred Levy, an adversary of mine in high school in baseball, who was a copilot of the plane called Boxcar that bombed Nagasaki. 

Fred and I became good friends and he told me if I was ever in Chicago to visit with him or if I’m in Dayton to go and see his plane and a picture of his crew in the Dayton Air Museum.  Fred incidentally became, after he retired as a colonel in the Air Force, he then became the chief engineer, bridge engineer of the city of Chicago.  So these are the culmination of some old friendships and some adversarial relationships on a baseball field, but to me they are memories that I’ll never forget.

I’m often asked what was the worst experience I had.  Well certainly the invasions of Saipan and Tinian, I will always remember because we lost so many lives.  We had a doctor aboard on the ship and when our cargo deck which appeared to be a dancehall within a ship below decks that was perhaps 40 feet wide to maybe 80 or 90 feet long, and we had to take all of our equipment out of it and it became a hospital. 

Because we had a doctor aboard, our small boats were assigned to go pick up the boys that could be treated aboard our LST.  So that those of us, as an example, my normal battle station was in the engine room, shifting the balance for invasion, my assignment outside of that as a boat engineer making sure that the boat ran and taking either our troops in or taking the wounded out.  So that was my assignment outside of the battle station.

I started to say that another one of the worst experiences that I had, it was a non-combat experience and it happened on May 21, 1944, in a place called Westlock, an annex of Pearl Harbor.  Pearl Harbor has annexes called Southlock, Westlock, Northlock and Eastlock and we happened to be in Westlock and it was an area where ships with a shallow bottom such as an LST was, could go in and get their fuel and ammunition and in this case, there must have been 50 LST’s tied up in groups of five or six.

In our case, we were the outboard ship and the inboard ship caught fire.  It not only caught fire, it exploded.  The second one caught fire and exploded.  The third exploded.  The fourth sunk and we were the sixth ship and we were able to survive.  So I’m a survivor of the Westlock disaster that was finally shown on the History channel on December 10, a year ago, in 2001.  I have a tape of that.  Following the disaster, we were again in our small boats.  It was similar to the culmination or the end of 9/11.  We were part of the disaster crew.  In this case, we were picking up the remains of Marines and sailors, some 359 of them who were either killed or maimed.

INTERVIEWER:   Did you have any injuries on your ship?

BEDNARCZYK:   We did not have any injuries.  We had shrapnel flying over us, but we were fortunate.  Plus the fact that most of the sailors in this crew and most of the cargo were ashore.  It was the middle of the afternoon about 3:00 when it happened.  Since I was responsible for taking on the fuel, I was aboard ship. 

The crew that was responsible for latching down the ammunition that we brought and the ammunition I mean not for our own use, but for use of our troops in the forthcoming invasion of the Marianas.  So here we are and I’ll never forget it because I saw people dressed in rags, you know, officers dressed in rags that were survivors of some of the ships. 

The fortunate part was that we recovered from this and left Pearl Harbor three days later without any delay because we were scheduled to leave on the 24th of that month for the invasion of Saipan in the Marianas so we left on time and that’s what happened.

INTERVIEWER:   Why didn't the explosions and the fire move onto your ship?  Was it because….

BEDNARCZYK:   We had seen it.  I don’t remember where I was at the time.  But my executive officer at the time could see what was happening and immediately summoned me to start the engines along with another, one of our engine men, and we got the crew members to untie the ship and he just took us away.  We started the engines and we gradually drifted away from the holocaust that happened there.  We were just extremely fortunate. 

Of course all the other ships in the area were alerted too so they got underway at the same time to get as far away from that disaster as possible because there were detonations of all kinds.  We had skid loads of armament for fuel artillery aboard ship.  I mean all of us could have just blown up had we not escaped that disaster.

INTERVIEWER:   Did the investigation later indicate how the explosion started?

BEDNARCZYK:   Strangely enough, I have a part of the naval inquiry proceedings and the conclusions reached were really noncommittal.  According to the History channel rendition that’s taped, there was a young lieutenant who was a captain of one of the LST’s.  He had gone to see the harbormaster at Westlock to tell him about the unsafe loading practices that were employed and about how careless some of the workmen were that were working on the ship. 

The same man who was a retired Coast Guard captain featured on the History channel program again reiterated his concern.  It was his feeling and assumption that this was kept secret for 30 years simply because the Navy was embarrassed because it didn't take action to improve its safety provisions. 

Looking back, when you’re loading and getting 1600 ships ready for combat, it doesn’t surprise me that safety practices may have been overlooked in order to get us all ready for what was coming.  So there’s reasons against, there’s reasons for.  This is just the conclusion that I have reached.  I suppose that none of us even knew that the proper safety provisions were not being employed. 

How were we to know?  Many of the workmen that were there working on our ships were using welders when we were in port.  We usually used civilians.  We were ashore enjoying ourselves after long stays at sea.  In my case when we commissioned a ship in I think it was August 18, 1943, I didn't get home until January of 1946.  I was gone for almost 30 months so during that period of time, we saw a lot.  We didn't particularly do anything or pay attention whatever civilian workmen were doing.  They were dedicated to do their job.  I think they did it the best they could and we did what we thought was the best that we could under the circumstances.

INTERVIEWER:   Well you’re loaded with ammunition.  You’ve just seen this holocaust in your words and you’re pushing off to sea.  Where did you go?

BEDNARCZYK:   We went to Saipan.  That was for the major invasion that we were involved in.  We were headed for the Marianas.  We didn't know where we were headed at the time.  Certainly they weren’t going to tell an oil keg where we were headed until we were well under way and then we were discovered because during that period of time, the Marines that we carried were under a mode to keep physically fit. 

Their platoon leaders were telling them exactly where they were going to hit.  So it’s a combat orientation for all of us.  We were told at the time that we were going to encountering the reefs around the island.  We were going to encounter heavy resistance with pillboxes.  We didn't know what a pillbox was up until that point.  And that there were cliffs on the island so they would be shooting down at us. 

So as it turned out, the cliffs were not heavily fortified simply because the reefs in that area were considerably greater than they were in other areas.  So it was not the proposed landing area.  But it was suggested that we would have a heavy defense on the island because Saipan had been occupied by the Japanese for many, many years as one of their possessions.

INTERVIEWER:   Did your ship, was your ship able to get up on the shoreline itself or did the reefs….?

BEDNARCZYK:   No, actually one other thing that I failed to mention, because there was a knowledge that there were reefs, we had two pontoons welded to the sides of the ship that were the full length of the ship and the full height of the ship above the water line.  So that as we approach and got into the Saipan harbor, and the timing was right, that these were burned off the side of the ship.  They were tied to the front of the LST.  When the bow doors were open, it provided us another maybe 200 feet of landing area where we could drive tanks or vehicles off.  We didn't do it, but the troops did.

But at that point, even the Marines were anywhere up to knee deep or up to belly deep in water.  So that moving, sort of like Normandy where troops were pinned down and killed because they were immobilized in the water. They couldn't move fast.  If any of us tried to walk in water that’s up to our knees or up to our belts, we’re just sitting ducks and that’s what the troops were and our hearts went out to the Marines in infantry.  At least we had the armor of the ship that protected us and fortunately we never got hit.  We had shrapnel, but that was about it.

I have pictures of the pontoons that we carried and how they were askew because of the seas.  We did get stuck on a reef even as big as we were.  That was probably why we were stuck on a reef and we were there for three days as sitting ducks and we didn't get hit.  But these are days gone by. 

INTERVIEWER:   Well how did you get away?  You said you were stuck there for three days.  Were you towed off or did the tide get you off?

BEDNARCZYK:   You see, we had a method for doing it and that was part of my job.  But as we were approaching the landing area, we would drop the anchor, the stern anchor.  At the same time, my battle station, I was told to fill the forward tanks with seawater so it would provide weight for the bow of the ship and as we disgorged our troops and our equipment, my order would come down to empty the _______ in the bow of the ship.

Simultaneously the anchor was being pulled out so between these two forces of physics, we would pull our ship off and that was the mechanism that we used.

INTERVIEWER:   Well why were you stuck there for three days?

BEDNARCZYK:   Because we were, the conditions were such that, probably atmosphere conditions, maybe the tide was low.  I real don’t know.  All I know is that we were sitting ducks for three days.

INTERVIEWER:   And you finally….

BEDNARCZYK:   Finally quite by accident, you know, maybe the tide came in or maybe the engine motor pulling our anchor was a little stronger or we did it at the right time, the conditions were right.  So I don’t know, but we were able to get off.

INTERVIEWER:   And where did you go?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well, we waited around.  We went to a nearby island.  Actually it wasn’t three weeks later, we invaded Tinian which was a neighboring island near Saipan.

The one that I described became the airfield from which the Enola Gay and the Boxcar flew to bomb Japan.

INTERVIEWER:   Give me the time of the year and what year is it?

BEDNARCZYK:   This would be June of 1944, almost simultaneous with the invasion of Europe, Normandy, a little bit later, maybe June 15 or June 16.  But these two major battles that really ended the war I think.  Normandy I think was June 6, 1944, this was about June 15 or 16th at Sampan where the Japanese Naval Air Forces were decimated.

INTERVIEWER:   So were you a member, was your ship more accurately, part of the D-Day invasion of Tinian?

BEDNARCZYK:   Oh yes, we were part of the invasion forces that hit Tinian, yes sir.

INTERVIEWER:   Tell me about that.

BEDNARCZYK:   Well that one was not as brutal as Sampan simply because the shores around it were not heavily reached and so there were forces that were able to get to shore and the island was such and the island was such it was more of an atoll and it was not conducive to putting pillboxes or tunnels or things like that so that while there were many, many Japanese troops on the island, the island was not defended, the defense was not as adequate as it was on Sampan.

INTERVIEWER:   Who went ashore, Marines or Army?

BEDNARCZYK:   Marines usually went ashore first followed by the infantry.  I don’t recall if Tinian…by this time, the Army was on site so it’s very possible that the Army infantry was part of the invasion force, yes, cause I can recall about D+10 on Sampan.  I even met a very dear friend of mine from my neighborhood, the south side of Chicago.  Here I’m walking aboard, I’ve got a 45 strapped to my side. 

I probably wouldn't know how to shoot it and I’m looking down and here this boyhood friend of mine, Steve Shantel, with the Americal Division of the Army and he’s hustling artillery shells and sacking artillery shells in a long foxhole and I saw him there and I said, “Steve, what in the devil are you doing here?”  He said, “The same thing you are”.  And I’ll never forget it because he said he’d been there in that foxhole for three days, but primarily not in the forward position.  And I said, “Steve, you look like you could use a meal and a shower.”  We put him in a small boat.  I took him aboard ship and it turned out, we worked for the same company when we got home.  I mean we went to work for the same company.  He was a forklift driver for Board Warner in the factory that I worked at and he told everyone that I saved his life because I fed him and gave him a shower on Saipan.  This is one of the happier moments of my military career.

INTERVIEWER:   It is funny how these absolute unbelievable things do occur in a war.

BEDNARCZYK:   Well I was walking along the beach of Guadalcanal one day and I met the third baseman on our baseball team in high school, a fellow by the name of Ed Senna from Fenger High School in Chicago and I was a shortstop at the time.  In Pearl Harbor I met dozens of people that I knew. 

I met a cousin that was in the Army and I traveled about three hours to go his base across from Honolulu to visit with this cousin that I knew was there and he was a baseball pitcher and he had the toughest fastball.  He said, “No one wants to play catch with me.”  He said, “I’ll get a catcher’s mit.”  Well I hadn’t caught a ball for a year before then and my left hand was just a piece of pulp after I get through catching for about an hour (laughter). 

INTERVIEWER:   I’m going to take you back to Tinian.  Are you still a petty officer 2nd class?

BEDNARCZYK:   By this time, I was first class.  Before I left the ship, I believe it was late December of 1945, I was the acting chief engineer at the age of 19 so I had full responsibility.  And I say full responsibility because our engineering officer had gone, my chiefs had gone.  They had more points to get home.  One of them was married and a whole new crew of people were coming on and I was a senior guy and at 19, I was the chief engineering officer for all practical purposes.    And it had a great influence on my life because it gave me the confidence that I needed to become whatever I did become.  I had the confidence and was able to do it.  It prompted me to continue going to school and I might add that during my Navy career, I always took correspondence courses.  They’re called USAFI correspondence courses and I took those all the time.

INTERVIEWER:   For the purpose of the transcriber, USAFI?

BEDNARCZYK:   United States Educational Program.  I don’t recall what the acronym really stood for, but I do recall remembering that all of the publications were called USAFI.

INTERVIEWER:   United States Air Forces…

BEDNARCZYK:   Forward Instructional type of opportunities.  So I was always taking correspondence courses.

INTERVIEWER:   College level?

BEDNARCZYK:   Not so much Navy advancement.  These were college level courses, but they did influence my advancement in the Navy too simply because all of the letters that we wrote were read by officers.  I forgot the term for that, but none of our mail left the ship without being censored.

INTERVIEWER:   Censored, that’s right.

BEDNARCZYK:   Censored, so they knew what I was doing and I think that subliminally my interest in education had a great deal to do with my advancement in the Navy and my performance of course too.  I won the Good Conduct medal.

INTERVIEWER:   What was your career after Tinian?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well we had been out there a good length of time, primarily a cargo chip.  We did advance to t without specific areas in the admiralties which is the farthest point east at the time and I can recall that there were two big islands near New Guinea called Truck and New Britain Island and they were the Pearl Harbor of the Japanese Navy.  But the only passage that we had to go to a forward island in the Admiralties as between New Guinea and Truck so it was general quarters for about three days with very little sleep.  In order to provide some preliminary supplies, we thought we were going to invade an island.  Well there was light resistance and we carried New Zealanders and Australian infantry to this island.

INTERVIEWER:   To Truck?

BEDNARCZYK:   No, not to Truck.  We skirted Truck.  Truck was so well defended by the Japanese that we just bypassed it.  This is part of the hedgehopping process in the Navy so we get an island maybe 250 miles east of there, again an opportunity to provide our forces with a supply base, we knew we could get there. 

It was very likely defended and the New Zealanders and the Australians were very happy about that.  In fact they shared some of their warm dark beer with us after the invasion because they did carry it with them and that’s about all I remember, that forward _____, a place called Green Island and Emirau, east of the heavily fortified Japanese installations.

INTERVIEWER:   You said Green Island and?

BEDNARCZYK:   Green Island and Emirau and I believe these are in the Admiralty Islands, at that point, the furthest island east in the Pacific as far as we were concerned in the hedgehopping process.

INTERVIEWER:   And after that where?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well after that, we were used more as a cargo ship in advancing forces and material to forward islands that were secured.  Lots of work with CB’s or construction equipment and that was about the last of our combat because our ship was really running…. as a matter of fact, we had to go to Auckland and Wellington, New Zealand, for an overhaul.  So we were rusting out and wearing out about that point.  This was in the middle of 1945, early 1945 and when VJ Day happened, we were in New Caledonia which we visited as a supplier many, many times.  We must have been in New Caledonia 50 times during our cruise in the Pacific because it was a big supply base.  It was nickel producing island for the French. 

They were very friendly to us.  We had plenty of fuel and what we liked about it, it had good water.  We could fill up our tanks with water.  We did it every opportunity we could possibly find because we did not have evaporators or our own water producing equipment so we were completely dependent on our good friends that had good water. 

INTERVIEWER:   Recount for me the situation when you found out that the war was over.  Where were you, do you remember it?

BEDNARCZYK:   We were in New Caledonia.

INTERVIEWER:   On ship?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well actually we were on shore because New Caledonia had a great beach and this is why LST’s were so useful.  Most other ships if the harbor didn't have deep water, it was very difficult.  We had a few cranes to load the ships with whereas an LST could beach at New Caledonia or maybe 20 LST’s could beach at New Caledonia.  They could roll a truck right on, unload the pallets on our tank deck or on the upper deck and we could get loaded and out of there into a forward location where the troops or materials were needed let’s say in a day and a half or two.

The LST was one of the first roll on, roll off ships. Today they’re very popular as a means of unloading and loading primarily vehicular equipment aboard ships.  In fact, two of the ships up until two years ago in Wilmington were roll on, roll off and when I wear my LST 124 cap, it says well you were the first roll on roll off and I said, “I know that very well, sir.”  But today they’re about three times longer than we were and I’m told that the roll on roll off in Wilmington could carry up to a 1000 automobiles in one cargo so that’s how the progression of LST’s has progressed over the year since 1942.

INTERVIEWER:   Well who told you the war was over?

BEDNARCZYK:   We were radioed.  Our captain was radioed and the first thing I remember was the captain says, “This is Captain Williams.  Now hear this, the war is over.”  This was I believe in September of 1945, we were beached at New Caledonia and he ordered, signaled the crew to put flags the full length of the ship and he says we’re going to break out the beer cause we had a cargo of beer that we were not permitted to drink aboard.  So all of us were permitted two cans of beer on the shore of New Caledonia and we celebrated.  I have a photograph of our entire crew in front of the LST-124.  I’m even holding a Japanese flag and toasting a beer to my friends wherever they were.  But that was the celebration that we will never forget.  We were happy and it was three months later that I was sent back to the States to go home in late December of 1945.

INTERVIEWER:   And you’re probably now, what 20 years of age?

BEDNARCZYK:   I’m 20 years, yes sir. 

INTERVIEWER:   20 years of age.

BEDNARCZYK:   But we were all 20 at that time.  Age doesn’t mean anything, although one of my friends happened to be a man from the Bronx and he played baseball in the New York Giants Farm Association and he and I would play ball together.  He was 40 years old and I called him, “Pops, let’s play catch”.  He was an executive with Cheeseboro Ponds and we had so many fine visits after the war. 

INTERVIEWER:   What was your total length of service?

BEDNARCZYK:   Let’s see.

INTERVIEWER:     30 months did you say?

BEDNARCZYK:   Oh, it was more than 30 months.  I was gone for 30 months, but about 3-1/2 years was the total duration.

INTERVIEWER:   I’d like to ask you to consider two things.  The first thing is that through the marvel of this technology, you’ll never be a day older than you are today.  You know this is captured and you’ll always remain this age.  You’ll always remain this vital.  You’ll always remain this interesting.  For example, I sometimes think of President Kennedy as being 40.  Why he’d be in his 80’s now if he was alive.  So you’ll never change.  The second thing I’d like to ask you to consider is people unknown to both of us are going to read this transcript and see this tape.  So I wonder if you would look right into the camera and sort of talk right to the future.  Tell me or tell us what did you learn from all of that experience in wartime away from Chicago, shipboard the whole experience.  What did it all end up meaning to you?

BEDNARCZYK:   Well I think one of the things it left me with is that one of profound respect for the leadership that I was blessed with during my term in the service.  I think we had great leadership in our government at the time and for the same reasons I gave you in my opening comments, it gave me more of an appreciation of the liberty that we really enjoy. 

I think this is something that should never be taken for granted and if I were asked to do it again, there would be no question as to whether I’m ready to suit up right now, put the uniform back on.  I think that it helped me to live my life better.  I was encouraged by the opportunities that were presented by being in the service to the leadership that I just described and I think that I look for leadership like that in my life after I left the Navy and here to I was extremely fortunate to be working side by side, not only in the military, but in the civilian side of my life, that I’ve been very, very fortunate.  But I think it’s the lessons that I learned in the military, both being led and to some degree  being a leader that gave me the confidence to continue being a good American, a lover of this country and one that will continue to make whatever contribution I can to this great country that we live in.

INTERVIEWER:   I’ve enjoyed meeting you.  Thank you.

BEDNARCZYK:   It’s been a pleasure being with you Paul.