Admiral Nimitz Museum

1 The National Museum of the Pacific War (Admiral Nimitz Museum) Center for Pacific War Studies Fredericksburg, Texas Interview with Lester Dee Carvey 6118459 1st class Pharmacy Mate USN Great Lakes Naval Training Station, Illinois Interview By John Tombaugh and Peg Van Meter 1 Lester Dee Carvey 6118459 1st class Pharmacy Mate USN Pacific Theater Medals earned: American Campaign Medal World War II Victory Medal Combat Action Ribbon Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal w/1 star Japan Occupation Medal Ruptured Duck Original Interview by John B. Tombaugh and Peg Van Meter completed 29th Jan., 2005 With reinterview with of Lester Dee Carvey by John Tombaugh 2 My name is John B. Tombaugh and Peggy Van Meter and I are interviewing Mr. Lester Dee Carvey. Mr. Tombaugh Would you please give your name and address? Mr. Carvey My name is Lester Dee Carvey, 12523 North 200 West Macy, Indiana. Mr. Tombaugh What were your parents names? Mr. Carvey Lester and Madge Calloway Carvey. Mr Tombaugh What year were you born? - Mr. Carvey March 24, 1921. • Mr. Tombaugh You attended high school where? Mr. Carvey Macy High School at Macy, Indiana and graduated in 1939. Mr. Tombaugh What did you do after graduation? / Mr. Carvey I went to Manchester College for two years. I then went to Mortician College for one year and then I joined the Navy. Mr - Toinbaugh Do you have a sister? Mr. Carvey Yes, Aretha. Mr. Tombaugh Where were you on Dec. 7, 1941? Mr. Carvey I was going to Mortician College and working in a funeral home. Mr. Tombaugh Do you remember that day? Mr. Carvey Definitely, I was playing cards in the back part of the funeral home with four other fellows when we heard about Pearl Harbor we 3 sat there in a daze, when we came out of the daze, there were twenty-one embalming students there. Then the chemistry teacher showed up and he was in the reserves and he didn’t know what to do, then the Dean of the School came in and said, “I thought I’d find my class here, suppose you fellows want to go into the service?” We said, “Yes.” So he said, “Ok, let’s load up.” So we loaded up in a bunch of cars and went to the Army, they said we don’t want you now we want you later. We then went to the Marines; they said we do not want you we get our medical personnel from the Navy. So we went to the Navy and they said “We have enough medical personnel right now we want you to finish your schooling then we want you right away.” I always kind of thought the Dean had already been there, but we couldn’t prove it. So I came home and worked at Bunker Hill Air Base. I drove a caterpillar tractor 0 8 with 12 yard scoop and help build runways. I then went to Chicago to visit three cousins who were in submarine service, in World War I. I think one or two had lied to get in because they were so young. Told them had come to visit them then was going to Indianapolis to join the Navy. They said we enlisted in Chicago, and if was good enough for us its good enough for you. They marched me down to the recruiting office and got down there and went right through the physical and was signing the papers, and said qualified for full submarine service report to New London, Connecticut. I tore that paper up real fast and I took off. They got me back up and I entered as 3rd class Pharmacy mate, and reported right out to the hospital. I never went through boot camp. I only marched a block and half in three and half years of service. Mr. Tombaugh Can we back up a moment. You said you were building the runways at Bunker Hill was that when my grandfather, Jesse L. Tombaugh, was doing the contruction there? Mr. Carvey I don’t know when he was in there? Mr. Tombaugh He did the first extension for the runway at Bunker Hill. Mr. Carvey No, this was the original ones. Mr. Tombaugh Who were you working for at that time? Mr. Carvey It’s been too long. Mr. Tombaugh When you were taken into the Navy, and didn’t go to basic, you were issued the standard clothing? 4 Mr. Carvey Not for two weeks, I worked in my own clothes, basic clothes. then I got my Mr. Tombaugh What were you doing? Mr. Carvey Working on a ward taking care of patients. Mr. Tombaugh Medical? Mr. Carv-ey I was on the tuberculosis ward and officer’s ward. Mr. Tombaugh Where was this at? Mr. Carvey Great Lakes Naval Hospital. Mr. Tombaugh When you were at Great Lakes did you make friends and have they lasted over the years? Mr. Carvey I only made one friend. His last name was Korn, a Jewish boy, nobody wanted to associate with him and I felt sorry for him. But it paid off. When I came back two halt years later, he was the first one I met, and he took me in and helped me get a job at the masters arms office. I had charge of patient liberty and staff liberty, which was about 5,000 boys. That was good duty. Mr. Tombaugh After you got done at Great Lakes where did you go then? Mr. Carvey I went to Oakland, California. That was a Naval Hospital that had taken over a country club there and built a few wards. I was just there a month and fourteen days and got assigned to the AP 7 Wharton. USS Mr. Tombaugh Out in California what were you living in did you have your own barracks set up? Mr. Carvey At Oakland we did. But when I was assigned to the AP 7 USS Wharton we went to San Francisco, then Goat Island, Terminal Island, Treasurer Island, San Diego we was trying to catch the ship, then back up to San Pedro. When got aboard ship and a tanker 5 came along side they were refueling us and I got called to the office. I was just an enlisted man and seeing those four stripes I was scared to death. He said this Captain of the tanker wants a pharmacist mate 1st class who is an embalmer, I said “I am just 3rd class, what happened to your other one?” He said, “He was going from the bow to the stern and he got machine gunned.” I said, “I don’t know anything about records or papers or anything.” I talked my way out of that real fast. I had only been in the Navy two or three months. So then the ship took off. Mr. Tombaugh What year would this be? Mr. Carvey 1942. Mr. Tombaugli Wharton From: Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships AP-7 Displacement 21,900 Length 636’2” Beam 72’O” Draw 31’3” Speed 16.6 k Complement 66 Armament four 6”, eight .50-cal. mg Class “Southern Cross, a passenger-cargo liner built for the Muson Steamship Line at Camden, J.J., by the New York Shipbuilding Corp., and completed in September 1921; operated in the South American trade until acquired by the Navy from the Maritime Commission oh 8 November 1939. Two days later, the ship was renamed Wharton and designated AP-7. She was converted to a troop transport by the Todd Shipbuilding Corp., in the Robbins Drydock in Erie Basin at Brooklyn, N.Y. The transport was commissioned at the New York Navy Yard on 7 December 1940, Capt. Ernest L. Vanderkloot in command. “Wharton departed Brooklyn on 7 January 1941, bound for Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where she conducted shakedown before proceeding on through the Panama Canal to her home port, Mare Island, Calif. Assigned to the Naval Transportation Service, Wharton transported service personnel and their families, as well as cargo, on triangular runs from San Francisco, San Diego and Pearl Harbor. She also made one trip to Midway Island. “When the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on 7 December 1941, Wharton was undergoing overhaul at the Mare Island Navy Yard, Vallejo, Calif. On 6 January 1942, the transport sailed from the west coast for her first wartime voyage to the Hawaiian Islands. A series of runs followed in which Wharton transported service families and dependents home to the west coast on her eastbound passages and troops and cargo to Hawaii on her westbound trips. “From June through September, Wharton made three voyages to the Southwest Pacific theater (loading and unloading at such ports as 6 Pago Pago, Samoa, Auckland, New Zealand: Espiritu Santo, New Hebrides, Noumea, New Caledonia; Canton Island, and Savu, Fiji Islands) before returning to the west coast for an overhaul which lasted into October. The troop transport then began a series of trips to the Aleutians which lasted from December 1942 to February 1943, carrying troops from Seattle, Wash., to Kodiak and Dutch Harbor and returning with civilians, troops, and patients. For the remainder of the year, Wharton made five more trips to the Southwest Pacific, during which she revisited Pago Pago, Noumea, Suva, Espiritu Santo, and Wellington, while adding Apia, British Samoa; Guadalcanal, Solomon; and Efate, New Hebrides to her itinerary. “In January 1944, Wharton joined Transport Division 30 for the Marshall Islands operation. Equipped with seven manned LCVP’s, Wharton sortied from Pearl Harbor in Task Group 61.1 on 23 January 1944, bound for Kwajalein and Eniwetok, with 626 Army Headquarters troops embarked.

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