THE ADMIRAL NIMJTZ HISTORIC SITE - NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE PACIFIC WAR
Center for Pacific War Studies Fredericksburg, Texas
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Interview with Odis Taylor U.S. Navy, Submarine Service is
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Mr. Mr. Thvlor -2 had a general store in Prattsville.
Mr. Joimson: Mercantile type?
Mr. Taylor:• Yes. Sold fertilizer, barbed wire, overalls, things that really were a necessity.
Mr. Johnson: You grew up in Prattsville, went to school there? mr. Taylor: Yes, went to school there and graduated high school in 1940. Then I wanted to get in the Navy, and I wanted to be a radio operator in the Navy, so I found out that if I would go in the CCC,that they had a school that would train radio operators, and so I went to Little Rock and joined the CCC and got an agreement that they would send me to this radio school. The radio school was in Spokane, Washington, at Fort George Wright. That turned out OK. About a year later I went into the Navy and went to Portland, Oregon to be sworn in, and then went to San Diego for boot camp.
Mr. Johnson: And when did you actually join the Navy?
Mr. Taylor: That was 7 January of 1941. Before the war started.
Mr. Johnson: So you were in almost a year before the war started. Did you go to another Navy radio school when you finished boot camp for more training?
Mr. Taylor: Yes. I was lucky enough to make third in my class of 200 because of the prior training.
Mr. Johnson: Did that give you a preferential assignment when you had a good standing in class?
Mr. Taylor: Yes, it did. I met some sailors that were on battleships in Long Beach, California, and I decided I would ask for a battleship, and my friends, we all decided to do it together. So they assigned us to the West Virginia. They put us on the Tennessee for transportation to Pearl Harbor, so on the way over they asked for volunteers for submarines, and I thought—I was kind of the leader of this group—so I thought, hey that sounds great. I’d been on there about three days, and I had trouble finding my bunk, I had trouble finding the mess hail, far too big. I thought, a submarine is not so big. It had other disadvantages, though, that I overlooked.
Mr. Johnson: So you volunteered to change...
Mr. Taylor: At quarters one morning, they asked for the volunteers, so I thought about it just a few seconds and I stepped out and volunteered for it. And then I looked back to my friends and they were all laughing. They said, “Odis is going to be on a submarine.”
Mr. Johnson: So when you got to Pearl, you were sent to the submarine force? Taylor - Mr. Taylor: Right, over at the submarine base.
Mr. Johnson: Were you assigned to a ship?
Mr. Taylor: I was assigned to a ship immediately, the USS Sculpin, SS-191. Then I later found out that this was part of a group that they were planning to send to the Philippines to reinforce the Asiatic Fleet a little bit. I only stayed there a month or so, maybe two months, before they sent 29 submarines to Manila. That was in about October of ‘41. Not very long before the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Johnson: Were you assigned as a radio operator on the submarine? Your rating now was a radioman?
Mr. Taylor: Yes. When I came on the Seulpin the chief radioman gave me a test. He found out I could stand watches with everybody. That kept me off of mess cooking and a few other things.
Mr. Johnson: Were you a third class petty officer by then?
Mr. Taylor: No, I wasn’t until maybe six months later.
Mr. Johnson: So you were standing radio watches on the submarine, traveling across the Pacific.
Mr. Taylor: Yes.
Mr. Johnson: Anything interesting happen, or anything notable happen, on your trip from Pearl Harbor to Manila:
Mr. Taylor: No, there wasn’t. There was something on the battleship, though. We got into a terrible storm, the worst storm I ever was in all the time I was in the Navy going to Hawaii and a lot of people were injured falling down ladders, and one man was killed. He bit his head on the deck after he fell down to the bottom. So I saw my first burial at sea.
Mr. Johnson: When your sub reached the Philippines, these 29 submarines, I imagine they were given different areas. Where was your area?
Mr. Taylor: We did some training exercises up north of Luzon. Some of the others were down south and some other places. They had us come in after these, but there wasn’t much time between the time I got there and when Pearl Harbor was bombed. They bombed us shortly after, a few hours after Pearl Harbor.
Mr. Johnson: You say “us,” you mean the sub base?
Mr. Taylor: The sub base, yes. And they sunk one of our submarines. I think it was the—I can’t remember the name. But they sunk it. And then, we were ready to go to sea. We had taken Taylor - on fuel and torpedoes and everything, so they sent, the submarine command at Pearl Harbor, sent us to the north side of Luzon. They thought that’s where the Japanese would come down first. But it turned out they didn’t. They didn’t come down, so we were two to three weeks up there of not seeing anything, not doing anything much. Then they moved us around to the east coast of Luzon, and that’s where they were coming down. And we sunk a ship the first day after they gave us that assignment.
Mr. Johnson: How many subs were in your flotilla or squadron?
Mr. Taylor: There were three of us together.
Mr. Johnson: And how long did you stay on that patrol down the east coast of Luzon?
Mr. Taylor: We stayed there, I think, about a month, another month. And then they—there wasn’t enough activity over there. The Japanese were going somewhere else at that time and we didn’t see much, and so they reassigned us to a base—they sent us to Australia, to base on the west coast, at Freemantle and Perth. We started making those long trips back up there, and we’d stay out about a month and then go back to Freemantle. Freemantle was a good liberty port. The Australians thought that we were saving them from the Japanese, so they returned a lot of favors.
Mr. Johnson: Other than the one engagement where you say you sank the Japanese ship, any combat situations during these patrols out of Freemantle?
Mr. Taylor: Yes. Our operating area was the South China Sea, but we found out we were getting more action going through those straits around Java and Sumatra. Almost every time we went through there, either going north or coming south, we’d run into the enemy. We got a lot of depth charging. But we also sunk some ships there.
Mr. Johnson: Supply ships mostly?
Mr. Taylor: Yes. At one point the Japanese figured out that we were all using Makassar Strait, and so they put two destroyers down there. We sunk one of them the first day. They kept the other one there, but they didn’t send any replacements.
Mr. Johnson: Did you have any touch-and-go situations?
Mr. Taylor: We did. One time we had battle stations and my battle station was on the Sonar in the forward room. Radio operator on the surface. But going to the forward room I came by the crews’ head, and there was a fountain, a big fountain of water, coming out of that head, and it was flooding the decks, and I thought that was it. I got down to my battle station and then I kept hearing them talk on the phone, and they called the crew that fixed things, damage control people. They fixed that problem in five minutes. Taylor - Mr. Johnson: How long did you do this patroffing in the South China Sea area?
Mr. Taylor: In the South China Sea we pretty much stayed there for months, a few months. And then we were—the enemy shifted some of its assets, and they shifted submarines to meet it. They sent us to Brisbane instead of the west coast, and Brisbane was our base. A few months after that a man came into the radio shack. We were getting ready to go the next day, and he said “I’ve been in the Navy three years, been trying to get on submarines all that time, and I’ve never made it.” He just begged me to trade jobs with him. I said “What is your job?” He said, “Oh, I work at VHF-9.” That was the radio station. He was in touch with all the submarines at sea. I had just met a girl named Margaret, in Australia, so that had a little influence on my decision.
He said, “I’ve already asked my C.O., and he said it’s OK if it’s all right with yours.” So I went and asked my C.O., and he said OK, he approved it. So I went ashore. About a year later the submarine was sunk. They sunk it at Truk. The man that swapped with me was also named Taylor. He was lost. There were only 22 saved off it, out of about 68.
I went to other things after that. When the war progressed and people were moving north, I went on a submarine tender, and it was an acting radio station. They had powerful radios on there and antennas, and so we kept moving north. Near the end of the war I was at Guam. That’s when the B-29s were bombing cities in Japan. I have a friend now that was on the Sculpin. When I was a seaman and he was an ensign, he would come to the radio shack when I had the mid-watch, and read my press report. He said, “I want to know what’s going on in the world.” I was trying then to copy WCX, which is a very fast, powerful, New York station. I was doing my best to copy it solid, and I succeeded to some extent. That’s the press report I would put on the bulletin board. But he wanted it early. Now, he lives in Benbrook, which is a little town that touches Fort Worth, and we see each other regularly and go to dinner and take trips together.
Mr. Johnson: To go back a little bit and look at some of your thoughts, after you got off the battleship and moved into submarines, did submarine life crack up as good as you thought it was going to? How was live on the sub?
Mr. Taylor: I thought it was pretty good. I expected it to be depth-charged and things like that, so it seemed like everybody on there expected it, so I wasn’t any much different from that. I was glad to be on that rather than a battleship.
Mr. Johnson: You didn’t have claustrophobia, I guess.
Mr. Taylor: No, I didn’t.
Mr. Johnson: You didn’t have a problem with cramped spaces and being under water in the dark? Not really dark, but...
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Mr. Mr. T.ylor - 8 so much. Then we would get all that together and put it on the teletype. His base was only five miles, at Anderson. Then, in a day’s time he’d have new weather information, and he wanted it as close as possible to the time he was going to send these bombers out.
I later worked for the Army Corps of Engineers and I went to Guam. This was 1965. I went to Guam and I told them “Hey, I want to go see my radio station while I’m here,” and they were very helpful and gave me a jeep and a driver and I told them, as well as I could remember, where it was located. It was a quonset hut, a huge series of quonset huts. The banana plants had just about wiped that building out. They grew up through the driveway, through the pavement, and got huge and made it hard to even locate. We had a terrible time locating that old building. I saw it again, and I gave lots of thanks to those people who helped me.
The same thing happened in the Philippines when I was working for the Corps of Engineers, I went back to Manila and I told them, “Hey, I was over here when the war started. I’d like to see Corregidor again.” They,took me over there and showed me around. Did that ever happen to you?
Mr. Johnson: No, not exactly. I visited Korea one time. It was a very interesting place.
Mr. Taylor: Another thing that we would do at Guam—thiswas getting near the end of the war—is every time we had a day off we’dget a driver and a jeep and he would take two of us out looking for Japanese caves. The Japanese stay overnight with somebody, they’ll try to build a cave, you know. We went for months and didn’t find any that hadn’t been discovered before, and all the souvenirs had been taken away. But we found this one that had not, it was a first aid station. It had lots of bodies still lying on the ground and in the bunks. Of course, this was—along time had expired. But they were only bones, the skeletons had lived through all that.
We went to this one, and there was a machine gun at the entrance. Who can have a machine gun for a souvenir. But I found a .9mm rifle, so I thought I might be lucky enough to get that one home. I found a lot of radio gear, blankets, and medicine, and doctors’—itseemed like the doctors and nurses all wore the same uniforms. Shorts, very light top on it, that was about it.
Mr. Johnson: So you finished the war on Guam, did you? In the submarine control, I guess?
Mr. Taylor: Yes.
Mr. Johnson: ComSubPac, is that who you were working for?
Mr. Taylor: Yes, ComSubPac. Admiral Lockwood was the man.
Mr. Johnson: What was your rating, by the time the war was over? T.ylor - Mr. Taylor: First class. And then when the war was over they were hardup for submariners, hardup for a regular one, and they offered me one or two promotions if I would sign up and stay. But I wanted to get back to Prattsville. Get home to Arkansas.
Mr. Johnson: You certainly would have had enough points to go home as quickly as the war was over, having been out there 1941.
Mr. Taylor: But I was regular Navy, so the points didn’t count. I had to do another six months or so before I got to come home.
Mr. Johnson: So you stayed until the end of the year, or later than that, before you got out.
Mr. Taylor: Right.
Mr. Johnson: But you never did move up into Japan with the occupation forces?
Mr. Taylor: Yes, I did. I didn’t go with the occupation, but I went later. That was during the Korean War.
Mr. Johnson: I meant in ‘45.
Mr. Taylor: No, I didn’t. Something that happened the last few days of the war, after it was over, I was in the radio room and somebody came and tapped me on the shoulder and said, “Odis, weren’t you on the Sculpin?” I said, “Yeah.”They said “Sculpin people are offloadling on the ship out here.” They’d been in a prison camp. I was all glad to go and take a look at them and see them and talk to them, but when I got out there, I got close enough to see them coming down the gangway and some of them couldn’t walk down the gangway, they were brought out of a cargo hatch or something, I recognized two or three of them. They looked so bad that I gave up the idea of even telling them I was there, because they would have thought, “Yeah, you had the life of Riley while we were eating grass in Japan,” so I didn’t.
Mr. Johnson: They’d been in a Japanese prison.
Mr. Taylor: Yes. In Japan. One of them was a good friend. We had one of our submarine reunions, national reunion, in Phoenix about two years ago. One of these that I saw coming off of that ship was this guy. His name is Ryan. He came to this meeting and I told him “I was standing io feet from you when you came off that gangway, but I didn’t have the courage to let you know I was there.” But I hadn’t seen him in all these years since that until two years ago.
Mr. Johnson: Your ship has not had reunions, the Sculpin?
Mr. Taylor: Oh, it was sunk. T.vlor - 10 Mr. Johnson: It has not had reunions, the...
Mr. Taylor: Oh, yes. We do.
Mr. Johnson: The survivors of the Sculpin.
Mr. Taylor: But we’re getting so old that a lot of people can’t travel, they don’t have enough money, they just can’t come to very many of those. And so that’s what we have there now.
Mr. Johnson: You got out in 1946, you were discharged?
Mr. Taylor: And went back in in ‘50 and stayed until ‘52. That’s when you were in, wasn’t it.
Mr. Johnson: Yes. I was in the late part of the Korean War.
Mr. Taylor: I went on, when I was called back, I was in the Reserve. I did stay in the Reserved. I was called back and they said “Youcan get a submarine if you want it. If you want to see what your luck will bring you, why, don’t get a submarine.” I had brought my wife already to California, and children, so they were there and I said “OK, I’ll do that.” Well, I got a troop transport, the General Anderson. Big troop transport. I was still first class, but on that ship they treated first class like chiefs. They bad two separate groups, chiefs here, next to them, first class. That was great. Also, I got to be in charge of the radio group, as a first class. That’s usually reserved for chiefs. That went very well. We’d make a crossing from Yokohama to Fort Mason, California, stay three days in California, and make another crossing. Took 17 days to make the crossing. Stay three days in Yokohama, and come back again. I stayed at sea a lot.
Oh, and another thing I did on there, I for a long time had an interest in photography. The photographer on that ship, they had a ship’s photographer, he fell off of a little gun turret they had there and hurt his head and they shipped him off to the hospital and we never heard from him again. So I heard about this, and I went and volunteered to be the ship’s photographer. It was a lot of fun. They were having meetings then with the Korean people, Navy and civilian meetings, and they always wanted pictures. I had a Speed Graphic, and I told them that I’d rather have a Leica. I told them, “Hey, I don’t like that Speed Graphic.”
Mr. Johnson: After you came back from the Pacific in ‘46?
Mr. Taylor: I got married in Decatur, Illinois, in ‘47.That was the first real job, except working for my dad. That was the first real job I got, was up there.
Mr. Johnson: You said you moved your wife and your children to California in 1950 when you were called back.
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