THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE PACIFIC WAR
Center for Pacific War Studies Fredericksburg, Texas
An Interview with
Julius “Bud” Masinick Warren, Michigan September 7, 2010 USS Icefish SS 367 6 Patrols
1 Mr. Misenhimer:
My name is Richard Misenhimer and today is September the 7th, 2010. I am interviewing
Julius “Bud” Masinick by telephone. His phone number is 586-773-5989. His address is
21763 Dexter Court, Warren, MI 48089. This interview is in support of the National
Museum of the Pacific War, Center for Pacific Studies, for the preservation of historical information related to World War II.
Bud, I want to thank you for taking time to do this interview today, and I want to thank you for your service to our country during World War II.
Mr. Masinick:
You’re welcome.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Do you have a middle initial?
Mr. Masinick:
No.
Mr. Misenhimer:
NMI, okay.
Mr. Masinick:
On my dog tags and everything it was “Julius None Masinick.”
Mr. Misenhimer:
Right. The next thing I need to do is read to you this agreement with the museum. When
I do these in person, I let the man read it and sign it; since this is by phone let me read this to you.
2
“Agreement Read”
Mr. Masinick:
It’s fine. I agree all the way.
Mr. Misenhimer:
The next thing I’d like to do is get an alternative contact. We find out that sometimes several years down the road, we try to get back in touch with a veteran he’s moved or something. Do you have a son or a daughter or someone that we could contact in case we needed to?
Mr. Masinick:
I have a daughter. Her name is Amy O’Brien.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What’s her address?
Mr. Masinick:
3929 Ruthland, Troy, MI 48080.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How about a phone number?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes. 248-524-2824.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Thank you. What is your birth date?
3 Mr. Masinick:
02/05/25.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Okay, and where were you born?
Mr. Masinick:
Mary D, Pennsylvania.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you have brothers and sisters?
Mr. Masinick:
Six brothers and two sisters.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Were any of your brothers in World War II?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes. Let’s see, my oldest brother Mickey was in there. I had two older brothers in the Army and one younger brother in the Navy.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Are any of those still living?
Mr. Masinick:
No. None of the three.
Mr. Misenhimer:
They came home from the war though, right?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, they did. My mother and dad were white-haired when I got home.
4 Mr. Misenhimer:
With four of you in there, that would be something that would make your hair turn white. How about your sisters? Were they involved in war work?
Mr. Masinick:
No, not at all.
Mr. Misenhimer:
December 7, ’41 Japan attacked Pearl Harbor; do you recall hearing about that?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh my goodness, I’ve got a story. I was there coming home from the bowling alley. I was in what they called a kids’ league, I wasn’t…let’s see it was ’41, so I was…
Mr. Misenhimer:
You would have been sixteen.
Mr. Masinick:
Sixteen. There was very few bowling alleys that allowed kids, and there were no kids; bowling leagues except this one, and I was bowling in it. We bowled like Sunday noonish. I was coming home in the afternoon, I had to walk about two blocks from the bus stop. It was a warm day, and all the people had their doors open, just the screen door, and you could hear the radios blasting.
“Pearl Harbor’s been bombed!” ‘What the heck? Pearl Harbor, what?’ So, I got home and I said to my dad, “What’s this Pearl Harbor?” He said, “Looks like we’re going into war.” He told me about Pearl Harbor. How many people knew about Pearl Harbor at the time?
Mr. Misenhimer:
That’s right.
Mr. Masinick:
Then I went to school the next day. I was a senior, I was sixteen year old, but I was a senior. The homeroom teacher got us in the room, in our homeroom before the start of the day, and he said,
“Listen you guys, I know you want to be patriotic and everything, but you graduate in June. Stay
5 here, don’t be running down to the recruiting offices. June, when you graduate, you can join up then.” That was pretty much it. Of course, most of the guys were older and a lot of them did just that: after graduation they enlisted. I had to wait ‘til ’43 to register for the draft. I did and that was February 5th. April 17th I was in Great Lakes Naval Training Center; it was that quick.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Of ’43.
Mr. Masinick:
’43, right.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Were you drafted or did you volunteer?
Mr. Masinick:
I was drafted. I’m no hero; I was drafted.
Mr. Misenhimer:
You went to Great Lakes?
Mr. Masinick:
Great Lakes Training Center.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you have any choice on the Navy or how did you get in the Navy?
Mr. Masinick:
No, they just put me in the Navy, period. I was thankful.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How did you travel to Great Lakes?
Mr. Masinick:
We went by train.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How was that train trip?
6 Mr. Masinick:
Well, it was long, and this funny part about it is: I had a dream while I slept on the train, you know, and I had this dream and it said, in essence, “You ain’t seen nothing yet; this is only the beginning.” It’s a dream, “this is nothing”, I didn’t hear a speech on that or anything else, but that was in my dream. How true. (laughing)
Mr. Misenhimer:
Had you been that far from home before?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, in fact I played baseball. In fact, the previous year, I was on an American Legion team, I don’t know if you’re familiar with American Legion program, but they have local chapters that you played for, then you go to a district like we went to our district in Charleston, West Virginia.
Then we went to the regional is Charleston, South Carolina. That’s where we lost and we were all done. We went all the way up to the finals in the national. I was an enthusiastic baseball player; I thought that was all there was in life was baseball.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What position did you play?
Mr. Masinick:
Then I was a first baseman.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Okay. Now, what did you do from the time you finished high school ‘til you went in the Navy?
Mr. Masinick:
I was not eighteen years old, so I couldn’t get into a war plant. I went out to Ford Motor
Company, way out to the Rouge, all the way from the east side, and they said, “Well, we can make you a mail boy,” although all their mail boys up until that time were sons of fathers who had been killed on the job at Ford. They gave them these mail carrying jobs, and their pay was only ten cents less than the guys on the line, but they were given this job for the support of their
7 families ‘cause their father was lost. They said I could be a mail boy. I was the only mail boy where I had a living father, and I was there for three months and the foreman who was about twenty-one, twenty-two years old got drafted into the service. They called me in, they said, “You want to be foreman, ‘cause you’re the only high school graduate, so we’d like you to be the foreman.” Which I was. I was until April of ’43.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What did this plant make?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, Ford Motor Company, my goodness, they were making Jeeps and out at Willow Run they were making airplanes, up at Rouge they were making primarily Jeeps.
Mr. Misenhimer:
You were at the Rouge plant?
Mr. Masinick:
Yeah. Then they started making amphibians, you know, the amphibians.
Mr. Misenhimer:
The amphibious Jeeps.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes. You know, a strange thing on that, when I was still carrying a route, when I first started, there was a building, it was called a B Building, in fact that’s where they ended up – the Jeeps – ended up being packing up in the crate and shipped off right out of the B Building; but the plant protection man standing there was who would you know but Jim Thorpe. The Jim Thorpe. He didn’t speak much, he was typical Indian, but I would stop and try and to converse with him. He was just big, a big plant protection man; Jim Thorpe.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Good.
8 Mr. Masinick:
Carrying mail at Ford I got to know the whole plant, ‘cause after I became foreman I had to go out with the carrier once in a while to make sure everything was copasetic, you know. That was the Rouge; that was the Rouge and the Navy called. There was things right in the main side area where it had offices, military offices, they were under budget so they’d go buy a whole bunch of typewriters and then just dump them after a while because they didn’t need them. That was strange. No wonder the war cost so much.
Mr. Misenhimer:
You’re right, right. Now, tell me about your boot camp there at Great Lakes.
Mr. Masinick:
That is kind of a laugh. I was in boot camp for three weeks. The third week is your work week.
Usually they’ll send the whole company for a whole week to a mess hall and you dish out mashed potatoes and gravy and stuff; you served the chow line. Well, I could type so they sent me up to the what they call the hostess house. The hostess house was just what it said. There would be passes sent out, which I did a lot of typing of during the week, out to families that wanted to come and visit their boot. On Saturdays and Sundays, they had to have a pass and they could meet with their boot at the hostess house. The hostess house was very, very nice; magnificent dining room which served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The families would sit with their boot and visit, whatever, until it was time to go. During the week, there would be a stray soldier coming in, they just happened to be… maybe he was going to Fort Sheridan and he remembered his brother was at Great Lakes so he’d stop at the gate and want to come in to visit his brother. So, I’d have to call his brother at his company, his boot company, and tell him to be over at the hostess house in a half hour, and I’d go down to the gate and pick up his brother and drive him up to the hostess house and put them together. Visiting, they had their own visiting day.
9 Well, this went on, I was enjoying this, it was kind of folksy, you know, and I was working for a lady, she was a dowager type, she had a lot of money. She lived at that… what’s that Forest- something right near Great Lakes, but that’s where her residence was. Wednesday or Thursday she said to me, she said, “How would you like to spend the rest of the war working this office with me?” I thought, “Gee, that’d be great. Well, how do you do that?” She says, “Admiral
King is having dinner at my house Sunday. I will ask him.” This is humorous because my chief in boot camp was Russell Letlow, he played guard for the Green Bay Packers before the war, and you know jocks, I was a jock, he’s a jock, there were two of three of us. We just kind of had our laughs together; Monday morning he’s got these orders in front of him, and he says, “Jughead,” if he liked you he called you ‘Jughead.’ He said, “Jughead, what’s all this?” I said, “What do you mean?” I’m playing real dumb. He says, “You have orders here to report to the hostess house every morning the rest of your boot camp tour and all you have to is your musts,” like gas mask drill and rifle range and stuff like that. I said, “Gee, that’s pretty nice.” He laughed. He said,
“Boy, what a dealer are you on.”
Anyway, I spent the rest of my boot camp at the hostess house, but you know, there was a Mickey
Cochrane, he was manager of the Tigers in ’34 and ’35 when they won the pennant, and he was a
Lieutenant Commander in the Navy. He was managing the Great Lakes baseball team, which was loaded with major league ball players like John Mize, Barney McKoskey, Shoolboy Rowe. I could go on. He used to come into the hostess house visiting, probably killing time, visiting the ladies, and I met him there. He, after a few conversations where I told him I’d played American
Legion ball, he says, “Why don’t you go and work out with the team everyday when you get through here.” So, I used to go on the other side, what they call the ‘main side’ which was like the Holy Land for most of us. The main side was where all the biggies were. I’d go over there, and I’d work out with them. I remember John Mize, he was a first baseman, he’d say to me,
“Hey, take infield practice for me.” He’d go out and lay in the shade of the scoreboard. Anyway,
10 there was a Chaplain there, he was a Lieutenant, Catholic Chaplain, Father Strange. He’d say to me, “Son, I don’t know how you’re going to fight the war, what are you going to learn here with these old ladies?” I said, “Hey, Father, everything is going to be copasetic.”
End of Icefish’s first patrol run, we pull into Majuro, Majuro atoll, down there in the Marshalls.
When a boat comes in after a patrol run, we have visitors right away. All the Admirals and all the brass in the local area come down; they got a band, they bring in ice cream, and oranges, and the mail. And the Chaplain accompanies these Admirals. Well, I just happened to be standing the gangplank watch and here comes these officers down. Whose the Chaplain? You’ve got it:
Father Strange of Great Lakes. He came up to me and he put his hands on my shoulders, he says,
“Son, I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it.” I says, “Hey, this has been fun.” That was my episode with Father Strange.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Small world sometimes.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What’s some other things that happened in boot camp?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yes, yes. I became a boxer. When they did exercises out front before breakfast every morning, we had two groups in with us – we were a bunch of guys from Cincinnati and we had a bunch from Detroit. There was a few from Kentucky, but for the main that was it. This one guy from Cincinnati he was …he was probably thirty. We were all eighteen. He said to me, he said, he was leading both platoons, these two platoons in the company. He’d stand in front and do the monkey drills and all the exercises. He said to me, “Why don’t you come and do the other platoon?” So, I’d be up there in front of one and he’d be in the other, and jumping up and down
11 and doing all our Navy exercises. Then he got sick. Well, in the Navy, in boot camp, if you get sick and you miss two or three days, what they do they set you back in another company to catch up, you know, a company that’s two or three days behind. Anyway, I lost him and I became the gym leader. So, I was leading this group one morning and I hear boom, boom, sounded like something getting kicked. I looked up and Letlow had the night duty, my Chief, and he was pulled in the Jeep and he was watching and seeing some of these guys were not doing the exercises. So, he walked up behind the ranks and there’d be a guy not doing… he’d boot ‘em.
He’d boot ‘em. Then he came up and told me, he says, “You see what happened out there?” I says, “Yeah, you got ‘em to do the exercises.” He says, “I want you to do the same thing.” I says, “Boot ‘em?” He says, “It’s up to you.” So, I did some booting the next day. The thing is, you know, in the Navy you cannot… you can’t get into a fistfight blatantly, you know. You can’t drop everything and start fighting, you’re in real trouble then. But, if you had differences, you’d go to the hostess house that night where they a gym set up and you’d get your comeuppance from the guy or whatever you get it all straightened out in the ring up there. So, a guy turn on me, I’d say, “If you want a part of me, we’re going to the hostess house tonight.” I was up there almost every day fighting, hitting somebody.
I mean, it was really weird because then when I went to service school and it was Yeomen’s school, which is hardly a fighter’s end, and there was a Chief by the name Chief Rush there, he said, “Any of you fellows,” we used to have to go this exercise thing every night after our classes,
“any of you guys want to get out of these exercise drills after,” he says, “come and see me.”
Well, what it was, he had a boxing program. He had a smoker every Friday night, he had a card of ten fights, and he told me, “Well, if you train on your own, you don’t have to come to the drills here, but you fight on Friday night.” Hey, that’s good, I like that. So, it’s something. The following Friday my name’s on the bulletin board; I’m fighting the sixth fight. So, okay, I go down to the field house and I check in. They give me a towel and a cup and boxing shoes, which
12 I never saw before in my life, and trunks, you know, the whole works. Tell me I’m fighting the sixth fight, okay. So, I was sitting over by my locker and two little guys, little lightweight, light heavyweight… one was a featherweight one was a Bantam weight, and they said to me, “Where’s your second? Where’s your manager?” I said, “I don’t know… what’s that all about?” I didn’t know any of this kind of stuff. They explained to me that they’d be my seconds because they were fighting the early fights. So, the sixth fight comes, and I get in the ring, and this guy he’s got about, he was a dark-complected like a Greek or something. He had a lot of… what I’m saying probably seven o’clock that night he had a growth of beard, and I didn’t even shave yet.
So, we get in the ring and I throw a punch at him, and he hit me with about five of them. I thought, “Oh, my goodness, what’s going on here?” But then I got, I realized my left arm length was longer his and he never touched me after that, because I kept that left right in his face the rest of the game, the rest of the night. So, I won the fight. I won the fight. I won eleven more after that. Every Friday night I fought because you got, if you fought you got to eat all the steak you wanted and all the milk you wanted to drink. You know, we didn’t get that much in boot camp and service school. So, that was pretty good. We did that, and the thing about it is, in service school, they put us in field day cleaning crews, you know, and I was assigned to clean the head.
There was a quartermaster, an older guy, in charge of the group, and Saturday morning came and we had to go in and clean the head. I go in there and I hook up a big water hose and I was squirting down this whole room. He says, “What the hell are you doing?” I said, “I’m in the head cleaning crew.” He said, “Get out of here and I never want to see you again.” So, this was really a free wheeler, so then I’d walk across the field, there was a drill field there, I’d walk across there and you were in the barracks that the ball players were staying in, what they call the ship’s company, John Mize and those guys. So, I’d go down there on Saturday mornings and visit with them. I never had to do any field day. I’m getting away with something again.
13 That was service school. Then I got, I was up in front of the room in Yeoman’s school, and the instruct orsaid, “Anybody want to sign up for submarines, I’ll take the first five guys.” I was right there. He put the slip down and I signed my name. Two minutes earlier if you had asked me, I would have told you you were crazy, I would never go into submarines. I didn’t know why
I signed that thing. I had never given it a thought before. It never was… I never was approached or no one ever said, “Do you think you’d like to go to submarines?” Never did. Anyway, I went to New London in December started my submarine career. It was good. I like submarines.
School was good, the treatment was good, and it’s a different world going out in a submarine.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Let me go back and ask you some questions. Now, how long was boot camp?
Mr. Masinick:
I think it was six or seven weeks.
Mr. Misenhimer:
And then service school, what was service school?
Mr. Masinick:
Sixteen weeks.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What did you do in that?
Mr. Masinick:
I learned Navy forms. I could type and write shorthand so I was way ahead of the bunch, although they didn’t teach shorthand at the school. They taught typing, but I didn’t learn the shorthand by accident. I was in a college prep course in high school, and I was so ahead of the game I had a lot of… I had enough hours to graduate almost without going to the twelfth grade.
This one teacher, she was a baseball nut it turns out, and she saw me in the hall one day and she said, “Why don’t you come into my shorthand and typing class in the twelfth grade?” She explained to me, and Roy Columbine, who was an old time ball player, had done the same thing.
14 She had him in her class. So, I says, “Okay.” So I went in there, and like I say, I became a
Yeoman because I could write shorthand and type. I thought, “Hey, that’s a pretty good job,
Yeoman.” But, you know, a lot of guys just wanted to like Brooklyn Navy Yard, they spent the rest of the war there.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, were service school and Yeoman’s school the same thing?
Mr. Masinick:
No, no. No, no. Yeoman’s school was an entity by itself.
Mr. Misenhimer:
And that was how long?
Mr. Masinick:
That was sixteen weeks. Then I went to New London for submarine school. That was six or seven weeks. You had different assignments out of submarine school. I got assigned to new construction, which was always the plum if your first choice was new construction. I got assigned to the Icefish, which was still being built, it was launched in March of ’44, it was commissioned in June of ’44. So, for a month I was sent down to Key West, I was on the R-11, and learning sound gear. We’d go out and make sound runs on Coast Guard boats, ships. On a bus coming back from the pier, I noticed there was a baseball team practicing. So, I thought,
“Well, gee, let me off bussy, I’ll walk the rest of the way.” I went and saw these guys, it happened that they were all Marines. They lived at the ball park; their barracks were underneath the stands, and all they did was take care of the diamond and play baseball. I asked them, “Hey, can I work out with you guys?” You know baseball, you always need another guy to chase the balls, so, “Oh yeah.” So, I would stop every day and work out with the Marines. I’d get this, you know, get a few swings and stuff like that. It was fun.
15 So, we were down there a month and we went back up to New London. Now, the crew from the
Icefish is collecting. We’re in the barracks up in New London, and we’re going through some drills. They had one of those make-believe conning towers you would shift sideways up and down. We did some drills on that; just getting your crew together the best you could do without going to sea. So, we’re in these barracks and all at once one day, there’s a baseball team, a baseball players out… outside there’s a baseball outside our barracks, and my friends, you know, typical kids. “Hey big leaguer, why don’t you go out there and play ball, you know, you got the glove. Oh sure.” I says, “Come on, I’m going to show you what it is to be a ball player.” So, I got out there and Jimmy Gleason, who played second base for the Cubs before the war, he was a
Lieutenant and he was the manager. I walk up to him, big bozo, I says, “Who’s running this ball club?” He says, he hesitated, he’s all, “I guess I am.” I says, “How about a try out?” He said,
“Well,” he says, “bat next,” he says, “jump in front of those two guys. You get three swings.”
So, I get in there, and I hit three right on the nose, boom, bang, bang. He came running at me, he says, “Hey, what position do you play?” I told him, “First base.” So, I go out there, I was a great first baseman. I was one of them fancy Dan guys, you know. I’m out there working out, twisting and turning and spinning, all at once he comes running out there. He says, “You’re my first baseman.” Inside of twenty minutes I was his first baseman. There was about 150 guys out there. So, we got the team together, played a couple of ball games, and in April the Icefish got the call to go to Manitowoc, we were built in Manitowoc. I came in to see the Skipper. I said,
“Skip, I got to go.” He said, “What do you mean you’ve got to go?” I said, “The Icefish got the call; the crew’s leaving for Manitowoc tomorrow.” He said, “I can keep you here the rest the war. No, you don’t have to go.” I said, “I don’t think so; I think I’d better go. I think all that training and everything…” Stay there and play ball, what a dummy I was. But, I left.
I left and went up to Manitowoc, and we made a couple weeks of practicing in Lake Michigan, and down we go on the Mississippi. We went down a Chicago drainage canal into the
16 Mississippi. They put us on a floating dry dock, and we went down to Astoria, which right next to New Orleans, and put live torpedoes on us. Off we go, down through Panama, and it was kind of scary. We just left New Orleans, we were down in the Caribbean on the way to Panama. I’m on look out, and I see a torpedo wake. Holy smokes, you know. You know, they had German U- boats down there. There was a torpedo wake, and we got out of that, ran … hell bent for election, and we got to Panama all right. That was quite an experience, because half these guys were hung over from their last liberty in New Orleans. I’ll tell you, it didn’t go to well.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Let me go back and ask you some questions. That sub school in New London, the first school you went to, what all did you do there?
Mr. Masinick:
We learned submarines. We learned both theory and we actually went out on a submarine every other day or so.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What was it like the first time you submerged?
Mr. Masinick:
I don’t know, I kind of liked it really. I knew what it was going to be like, but it was on an old o- boat, the thing was built about 1912. That was an experience. The first day out on the O-6, they told me, “Masinick, you’ve got the number four line.” You know, number four line to a civilian, which I was still really, but it’s back there. Anyway, I started back, it was dark, and there was a very… an o-boat’s got a very narrow aft end there. I slipped and I grabbed the cleat as I was falling down and I didn’t fall in the water, but I’m hanging over the side, the engine’s running, nobody can hear me, and I’m screaming. But, I got up. I got up, and I didn’t say anything to anyone about it because I didn’t want to sound like a dummy. That was my first day on a submarine and I had quite an initiation.
Mr. Misenhimer:
17 I understand in that submarine school you have to go up through a tube of water, is that right?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yeah. There’s a hundred-foot tank and it’s simulating escaping from a submarine, a downed submarine, escaping with the Momsen lung. The Momsen lung had as a big mouthpiece, you breathe through your mouth, put the clip on your nose, and you would ascend on this rope. It was like a clothesline with a knot every, I don’t know if it was six foot or ten feet, but you had to time yourself so you didn’t go up in a hurry and get the bends, you know. That was easy. There was an officer swimmer, we had a bunch of guys from Penn State that were on a swimming team, they made them officers and they’d just swim. They’d swim up this thing with us, saying, “No, no, don’t bend your knees,” “stay straight,” “you’re going too fast, slow down a little bit,” you know, stuff like that. That was easy. That was easy.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What were some other things you did there in sub school?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, we were in that pressure tank, you know they put you in there and they start building up the pressure see how much you can handle. Some guys couldn’t handle it at all, and they washed them out. They had psychiatrists and psychologists, but I remember me going to a, I don’t know what he was, a psychiatrist, a psychologist, and I walked in there and he looked at me and he says, “You got a girlfriend back home?” I says, “I think I’ve got about five or six.” He said,
“Get out of here, I didn’t want to talk to you.” (laughing) That took care of that.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Anything in particular happen during that school?
Mr. Masinick:
No, there was nothing pressing, nothing… I remember there was a little guy that I befriended. He liked me because I was an athlete. His name was Phil Kelly, but he got rheumatoid arthritis, he called me in the morning, one morning, and he said, “Bud, you’d better get over here, I can’t
18 move!” I said, “Get out of there.” I helped him out, I said, “Let’s go run it off.” It turned out it was rheumatoid arthritis, and I still remember little Kelly. It was so tough. He was such a little guy, young looking kid, and to come down with that. Of course, that washed him out to the
Navy.
Mr. Misenhimer:
So, you got down there in December of ’43, to New London then?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
And that was six to seven weeks?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
]Mr. Misenhimer:
So somewhere end of January, first part of February you finished up there.
Mr. Masinick:
Then I went down to Key West for a month.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What all did you do in Key West?
Mr. Masinick:
Nothing, we just went out to sea every day, and I learned sound gear. We’d come back, and you were pretty much on your own. You had liberty, and what the heck I’m 18 years old, I’m not no wild guy to go out and boozing it up and all that. That was out of my nomenclature. So, I just hung around the barracks or went to see a movie or something. Nothing wild; nothing wild.
Mr. Misenhimer:
When did you actually get aboard the Icefish then?
Mr. Masinick:
19 Let’s see, it was commissioned in June of ’44, so it was June of ’44.
Mr. Misenhimer:
That’s when you joined.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
And you went down the river to New Orleans. About when did you leave New Orleans?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, let’s see, it was July. It was in July.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Of ’44, okay.
Mr. Masinick:
Yeah. We spent some time down around Panama doing dives and trials and stuff like that. We’d just anchor out at Nicht and do the same thing until we finally went over to Pearl through the canal. We were over at Pearl in September.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What was it like going through the Panama Canal?
Mr. Masinick:
Kind of different. I mean, I got a kick out of it, you know. I’ve been through the locks in the
Great Lakes area, this was a little different. It was, you know, the length of the submarine and everything, you had to be careful.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you get liberty on either end of the canal?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, yes. We did have liberty. Balboa City and Panama City. But, there was nothing. You know, you went into town, you had usually a few beers, and looked around at the sights, which
20 weren’t much of anything. Go into the bars and first thing you know some girl’s saying, “Sailor, you buy me Blue Moon?” which all it was was iced tea. But, no, we weren’t in Panama long, and there was nothing that happened of consequence.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Then, when you left there for Pearl Harbor were you alone or with other ships?
Mr. Masinick:
No, we were alone. There was no escort or anything. We did a lot of training on the way over.
We dove and we dove and we dove. A lot of practice.
Mr. Misenhimer:
About when did you arrive in Pearl Harbor then? In September, huh, okay?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Okay. When you got there, was there still much damage left from December 7, ’41?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yes, there was a lot to be seen. You know, the Arizona’s mast was still up, and the Iowa, I think, and there was two or three ships still laying in… they hadn’t been towed out of there. It was kind of hard to take knowing that it was our side, you know.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Yeah, right. So what did you do there at Pearl Harbor?
Mr. Masinick:
We trained for a while. Then, they put a little more equipment on it, different odd guns and that and off we went. Off we went down to, straight to our assigned area. First patrol run.
Mr. Misenhimer:
In Pearl Harbor did you get any liberty in Honolulu and things?
21 Mr. Masinick:
Oh yes, yes. In fact, I remember going into Honolulu and being surprised that there was a Sears store there, Sears Roebuck, you know. But, I bought three pair of shorts, they were like swimming trunks, they didn’t have Bermudas back then. That was what I wore most of the time I was at sea. Aboard ship nobody wore uniforms. You might see a guy in a matching dungaree suit, shirt and pants, but rarely. Rarely. T-shirts and shorts, sandals, and that was it aboard ship.
Except aboard ship we had one dress code: you had to have a shirt on when you came to the mess hall.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, was that your first patrol you left for Leyte?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, first patrol, right.
Mr. Misenhimer:
About when did you leave on that?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, it was still, I think it was like early in September.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Of ’44.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Okay. What all happened on that patrol?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, it all started out, first they wanted to get a crew together to save fliers, and they couldn’t get anyone to be the swimmer, so they asked me if I would be the swimmer. I told them, “Yes, okay.” So, we’re underway, almost in the patrol area, and they call me to the bridge. “Masinick
22 to the bridge.” What’d they want me up there for? Anyway, the Captain was there with the Exec and the diving officer, they told me there was, they think there was two planes they were in a dogfight. One of them got knocked down, and they think it was a British guy knocked down by a
Japanese fighter. And they wanted someone to go over the side in case the aviator was out there.
I asked them for permission to go below, I’d just be a minute. I went to my locker, and I had a big Bowie knife that a guy at Ford Motor Company made for me, I still have it, it’s a dandy. I came up with that stuck in my belt. I figure, if I’m going down, I’m going down fighting.
Anyway, we were out, oh we looked for about four hours. Nothing. Not even debris from anything. So, we gave up there and went on to the area. That’s when all the fun started.
October 24th we were told, earlier we were told, that there was a convoy of fifty ships leaving
Tokyo coming down to the Philippines. You know, they were getting ready for the battle of the
Philippines. And, by the time they got to the Icefish, there were thirteen ships left only. So, on the 24th of October we sank a freighter. There wasn’t much action after that, but on the 26th we noticed all at once this troop transport. It was loaded with troops, hanging over the side practically. We put a couple of torpedoes into that, and then kingdom came. They started depth charging. They had three escorts. They had nothing else to do but come after us. They dropped depth charges all day long. We had havoc aboard. We lost hydraulic oil, we lost fuel oil….
Mr. Misenhimer:
Okay, so they started depth charging you and what happened?
Mr. Masinick:
All hell broke loose. We started… all the lines were being ruptured, lights went out, of course, we were in silent running. By the time we surfaced that night, we had everything pretty well patched up and plugged up, and we had a whole bunch of clothes that we used to mop up the oil and the water and whatever was breaking out there, so we had to throw them over the side that
23 night. We had this bucket brigade up through the hatch, out of the control room, over the side with the clothes, you know. We lost everything, believe me. But, we survived. In fact, that was the best meal of the day, or the year for me. We didn’t have the grill on in the galley all day, nothing was being served food-wise. When we surfaced, the cook turned the stove on in there and he made up some scrambled eggs and fried Spam. I always tell people that was the best meal
I ever ate, ‘cause I hadn’t eaten all day. But, we survived that pretty good.
Mr. Misenhimer:
About how long were you being depth charged, for how long?
Mr. Masinick:
All day. From morning ‘til night. Then at night, of course, we got away.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you count the depth charges how many he dropped on you?
Mr. Masinick:
Not really, because there were many, many, many. But, we were hurt, in fact like we lost all our hydraulic oil. With everything being powered by hydraulic power, we got to do something, so what they did: they got Mazola oil and fuel oil and they mixed them. We used that for hydraulic oil the rest of the patrol. The rest of the patrol didn’t last much, we were going back in; we were hurting too bad. Like our rudder was very noisy because of the hydraulic pumps. I mean, it just couldn’t operate without hydraulic oil. We got back into Majuro and everything was hunky dory then. We had a nice rest camp in Majuro.
You know, that was another strange thing. We anchored next to the tender in Majuro. The next day we’re going ashore on Majuro, and we’re lining up at the mess hall, soon as we hit the land over there. And, I hear some guy yelling, “Masinick! Masinick!” I waved. He came running over. Here, it was a guy from the, there was an A&P store in my neighborhood when I was a kid.
My mother used to buy her groceries there. This guy was yelling at me, was a ship’s cook, he
24 was an apprentice butcher at that grocery store, A&P store. He says, “Get out of line,” he says, “I got something special here. I knew you were coming in,” ‘cause they knew the Icefish, he knew I was on the Icefish and corresponding with my mother. Then he says to me, “What are you doing tonight?” What am I doing? He says, “’Cause I got a case of beer on ice and we’re going to sit under a palm tree somewhere and you’re going to tell me everything that I’ve missed since I’ve been over here.” Which was true; he was such a… he was kind of a one of them guys… Mr. Nice
Guy, you know. He was very emotional about things and he was glad to see me anyway, because he hadn’t seen anyone in a long time. His name was Vic Cynaua. I even saw him after I got home; I saw him for a while. He was married and on his way. That was pretty much the end of patrol number one.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Then you went back to Majuro, right?
Mr. Masinick:
Right.
Mr. Misenhimer:
That’s in the Marshall Islands?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
All the way from Leyte or the Philippines?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
That’s quite a ways across there.
25 Mr. Masinick:
Well, when I think of that submarine, as primitive as it was, being as far north as the Yellow Sea and as far south as Australia, I figure it could do anything. It was capable of anything.
Mr. Misenhimer:
I’m just looking at a map here, and it’s quite a ways across.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
So, how long were you at Majuro then?
Mr. Masinick:
Two weeks.
Mr. Misenhimer:
And they got everything fixed up?
Mr. Masinick:
Yeah, the relief crew fixed everything up and got us in working order. We did a few trials and off we go up to the Yellow Sea.
Mr. Misenhimer:
On your second patrol.
Mr. Masinick:
Right.
Mr. Misenhimer:
About when did that leave?
Mr. Masinick:
You know, I’ve got those dates stashed away somewhere… Anyway, it was in November.
Mr. Misenhimer:
November of ’44.
26 Mr. Masinick:
Yeah. We didn’t get very far. We didn’t even get to the area, and the hydraulic system started acting up, the rudder was just making outlandish noise, and the Captain took it upon himself to head back to Pearl, of course, he couldn’t transmit to get permission, so he was taking it on his own. It was strange because he was a strange Captain. I didn’t see anything wrong about him, but he wasn’t too friendly with the crew.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What was his name?
Mr. Masinick:
Peterson. [Comdr. Richard W. Peterson]
Mr. Misenhimer:
Go ahead, then what happened?
Mr. Masinick:
So, all at once he, like I say, he’s taking it upon himself to go to back into Pearl without permission, but all at once he became friendly with the crew. He’d go back and sit at the maneuvering watch bench with those guys, you know, and converse with them and walk through the boat, which you never saw him do normally. He was getting us all lined up in case there was any kind of court. So, we got in and we could transmit, when we got to the Bonin Islands, and then they told him, “Come on in, come on in.” Then, soon as we hit port, Pearl, the Admirals came aboard and they were down there for a couple of hours. I heard them leaving, they were saying, “It’s okay, Pete. You did the right thing, Pete,” you know. All at once somebody, the
First Lieutenant, asked him about some job they had discussed previously to get done, and he went and asked him about hit; and he, with some rough language, he says, “You’re the First
Lieutenant, you get it done.” I says, “Uh oh, the honeymoon’s over,” but it’s true.
27 Then we’re at Pearl Harbor. We spent two weeks at the Royal Hawaiian, which was very enjoyable.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Then what happened?
Mr. Masinick:
Everything was okay; we got fixed up. We went out again and the third run we were down; we went to Formosa. We were, well let’s put it this way, there wasn’t much traffic as far as Japanese shipping was going. We got a report that there was a B-25 knocked down, and we started running to pick it up. Well, after many hours and the fliers had been in the water for twenty-four hours, we ran across them. So, we got to go get them. So, I’m getting ready to go over the side, and they said to me, “Don’t forget, if we have to dive, you might be left up here.” I knew all about that stuff. So, I’m out halfway to the aviators, and I’m looking at the coast of Formosa. I’m looking, “Where am I going to swim into if I’m out here alone?” You know, I’m on my own if need be. Then, a Navy plane came over, what they call a Cat. And, I looked up and he flipped his wings, and I saluted him, and everything was okay. So, we tied a line onto these aviators, and we pulled them into the Icefish. We had a Jacob’s ladder over the side. I don’t know if you know what a Jacob’s, one of those things that’s like… it’s just squares of rope.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Yeah, right.
Mr. Masinick:
And, hang over the side, and these aviators were in this… there was two rafts tied together, and the sea was about three or four feet, so it could only… we had this line lax, and the rafts would come up. I would grab one of the fliers out of it and throw him against this net and the guys on board would pull him up. Now, these fliers, a good thing they were about only 150 pounds, but that last guy he was kinda stocky, and he was a little heavier. So, I had him by the collar and by the shoulder, and I was going to throw him against that Jacob’s ladder, and uh oh I’m not going to
28 make it, so I threw him back in the boat; back into the raft. We got him next time. After we’re settled aboard and we got these aviators in the bunks, and the Captain said to me, I had all that camouflage in my hair, my hair was green, he said, “You’d better go take a shower.” So, I showered, and came out of the shower one of the guys told me, he said, “One of those fliers wants to talk to you.” I felt really, real good, he’s going to say how nice it was to talk to me, and it was the guy, the last guy, and he says, “You no good SOB,” he says, “You almost killed me throwing me back in that raft!” Okay, all right. We exchanged them; we gave them to another submarine.
They took them in, I don’t know where they went.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How many were there of them?
Mr. Masinick:
Six.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Six.
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, that was another thing. One died that night, that evening. There was a guy, he’s a motor mech, he’d been in the Navy a while, he knew about knots and sewing and all that stuff. So, I helped him, and we made a bag out of a couple of hammocks, canvas, and he got a big needle and thread out, he’s sewing this bag. We put the aviator in there, the dead aviator, and with this shell which weighed about 90 pounds or 100 pounds. Then we took him, the Captain was having… was going to read a little prayer thing out of a book, and we had him on one of the doors from the head, we had him on that then we slid him over the side. You know, it was a funny thing about… last year at this time, I saw this guy I did this with Charlie my brother, we’ve been great friends since the war, and he said to me, he said, “You know, we were kind of dumb. We put that shell in that bag, we should have put it in him when we got topside, it wouldn’t have been so hard to
29 get him up there.” (laughing) Which was true. But, anyway, burial at sea. Not very military, but they read some prayer and they shot a carbine off and back to work.
Then we went into Australia after this tour.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you sink any ships on that patrol?
Mr. Masinick:
No, we didn’t have… all we got was the aviators. That was when we went into Guam. That was something else. They have a… there’s a rest camp they built there, it was called Camp Dealey after Captain Dealey who was on, I think it was the harder where he says… he was wounded and he says to take it down, you know, and they left him up there. Anyway, they named the camp after him. So, we get to camp, we get to Guam, and the next morning before we went ashore onto
Guam from the boat, the Exec came up to me and he says, “You’re the athletic officer.” I said,
“Oh, I am?” He says, “We get into the Camp Dealey, go see the recreation guy over there, and he’ll tell you all about it.” So, what it was, they got two submarine crews in there, the Spadefish and the Icefish, and they were building a program, a rehabilitation program. They told me, this guy told me, you have to have a softball team,, a basketball team, a horseshoe pitching team, a ping-pong team, tennis team. In fact, the next morning two officers came to my Quonset hut and they said, “Can we be on the tennis team?” I says, “Yes, sir.” We had a softball team, and if you hit the ball over the fence, they had it, you know, roped off, you left it because there were
Japanese out in the jungle there. So, we did have fun. We played the Spadefish. We played them softball, we played them basketball, and like I say horseshoes and whatever. But, it was fun.
That was about it.
Then we went down to the Gulf of Siam for our next patrol run. Which nothing happened. Like I say, the war was going, and we ended up going into Australia for our next rest camp. It was in
30 Perth, Fremantle. We stayed in a hotel, and it was kinda nice. It was kinda nice. The only thing of adventure came, I was getting ready to go out on liberty, and there was a… the clerk was an old time wrestler, what they used to call it catch as catch can, and I used to talk with him every once in a while. So, this was about after six and I was coming down the stairs into the lobby, and he’s saying to these three British sailors, “No Mate, no mate…” They were wanting to come into our lounge, and there’s a big sign there “For American Military Personnel Only After Six o’Clock.” I guess we could have guests, but anyway, they got… there was two sign there, one was made of cardboard. They tore that up. The other one was wood; they jumped all over that.
About that time was when I came into the scene. I leaped over the railing and I decked one guy, the first guy. Then, all at once, our guys were in the lounge right there, and they came out and we had, long story short, three Limey sailors dumped into the ditch out in front of the hotel. So, I had some blood on my skivvy shirt, so I went up, changed it, then left, then went and picked up this Australian girl and we went to the movies. I could hear sirens. “Oh,” I said, “no.” I could hear sirens all the time I was in the show. So, I told her, when we came out, I said, “Now, if anyone jumps me, you keep walking or run.” We came out of the show and there was nobody on this one block, except down at the end there was two Limey sailors. I said, “Uh oh, oh geez.” So
I says, “Now Amy keep walking.” So, I didn’t even give these guys a chance to say anything to me. I went up there and splat. We took off, and what had happened: all those sirens, it was oh every patrol wagon in town, was picking… they ended up with Americans, the New Zealanders, and the Dutch, I think, fighting against the British guys and I don’t know who else. But, anyway, it was a riot in town. So, I get back to the hotel and this guy says, “See what you started?” I said,
“I don’t know a thing about it, what is this?” But, that was the start of it. That was the only excitement we had in Australia.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Then what?
31 Mr. Masinick:
After Australia, we were on our fifth patrol. We were submerged outside Hong Kong, submerged at night, the radioman came running in, he said, “The war’s over.” That was it. I was never so glad in my life. Even gladder than when they dropped the atomic bomb.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Tell me about when you heard about dropping the atomic bomb.
Mr. Masinick:
I couldn’t believe it. That was right then, about then, I was in the doldrums, you know. “Hey this, war is getting, it’s too much, let’s get out of here.” When they dropped that first atomic bomb, I knew, I knew what was going to happen: “We’re going home. Hey, we are going home.” That’s all I thought about.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How many total ships did you all sink?
Mr. Masinick:
We only had two. Two big ones on that first run. We sunk a lot of the little what you call a gunboats, small craft like… toward the end of the war we were told to pick, accost all small craft.
What they were doing: they were sneaking Japanese officials back to the mainland in these 20,
30, 40-footers, you know, ‘cause if they were on a liner, a big ship, they’d be sunk. Anyway, our part in that was we had a boarding party for them. Guess who was in the boarding party? Me.
I’m the first guy over with the sawed off shotgun, there’s a Chief with a .45, the First Lieutenant with a .45, and a gunner’s mate with a machine gun. Anyway, we go over on this, oh, about a 35- footer, and I scraped out a Japanese guy, and I kinda booted him and shoved him over to the edge so our guys could bring him up to the Icefish. We get underway, we got two guys, and then we sunk that thing after we got it cleared. The Captain said, oh yeah, incidentally, I was only a
Yeoman Striker, like at that time I think I was Third Class. We had a Second Class who was really in charge of the Yeoman shack, you know. But, I was supposed to be learning from him.
32 Anyway, the Captain said to him, “We’re going to have to take this guy’s testimony.” Smitty says to the Captain, “You’d better let Masinick do it ‘cause he can write shorthand.” So, the
Captain didn’t trust it, he says, “Yeah, but you come in and take it in longhand.” So, we go in there and I’m sitting alongside the Captain and we’re facing this Japanese guy across the table in the ward room. The Captain’s got this pigeon English book out and he’s gobledy-gooking to this
Jap about… and this Jap look at him, he says, “Can’t you speak English?” So, evidently this
Japanese guy had taught English at a girls’ school in Japan prior to the war. Anyway, we gave them… we were coming across another submarine that was going in, and they took them in. That was our third or fourth patrol run, it was not much. But, the fifth patrol run, like I say, we were off Hong Kong, and we surfaced and they had a message coming out of the radio shack that
“Cease operations, it’s good. Let’s go.” So, we pulled into Saipan shortly thereafter, topped off fuel, got underway from Saipan on the way to Pearl. That was when I realized the war was over,
‘cause I was topside on the bridge and they turned on the running lights. See, all during the war, that red and green light hadn’t been on. It really made me feel like, “Hey, the war is over. Let’s go.” We headed into Pearl, and we were only at Pearl a few days, and we went into San
Francisco. We anchored out on Tiburon Bay. That was about all of World War II for the Icefish.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Were you ever with any wolfpacks?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, yes, yes, but you don’t operate that closely, you know, like when the Shark II was depth charged we were with them down at Leyte; they were with us. Oh, there was another time when we were with the Sawfish and the Drum. It’s very spasmodic and hardly noted, you know, it was no big deal that we were with the Drum or we were the Rock or whatever. It was just… in fact a lot of guys aboard ship never knew where we were. (laughing) I at least had access to the, you know I was up on the bridge once in a while, I’d be in the conning tower or the control room.
Some of those guys were in like the engine room guys, they ran the engines, go from their bunk
33 to the engine room to the chow hall, never go to go topside. We weren’t one of those boats where you could take a sunbath after a while, you know. You just performed your duties and wherever you were that’s where you stayed. As I say, there wasn’t a big thing, like nobody aboard said,
“We’re with the Sawfish today,” you know. That was not a big thing.
Mr. Misenhimer:
I see, okay. What else happened on your patrols, anything else?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, we had a radar man we had to remove a cyst from the base of his spine. I used to help the pharmacist do that. We didn’t have any very serious problems as far as health goes, nobody aboard except this radar guy that we had that developed this cyst at the base of his spine and couldn’t operate any more. We hated to see him go because he was a good radar man.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Was he part of your crew?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yeah, yes. He was the guy that repaired the radar with chewing gum and tinfoil.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What happened to your radar that caused problems?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, he’d repair it, he was very good. He understood the radar. Radar was in its infancy then.
Both SJ and SD, like the aircraft radar, you knew it was out there, but you didn’t really know the distance or anything. You just knew the direction and that it was out there. Of course, surface craft the same thing. But, it was radar. Now, this guy, he was good. He understood. Middle of the night, the radar goes out. “Anaforian to the bridge! Anaforian to the conning tower!” Here he comes, he’s got tinfoil and every other piece of junk, but he’d fix it. He would actually fix it.
You know, it was a strange thing about it, I liked him because of this for one thing, and he was very intelligent. Anyway, we got an ice cream machine aboard that you poured this ice cream
34 mix into it, and it had freon in and developed a sort of soft ice cream. Anyway, there wasn’t a lot of it, so it was kind of rationed. So, they were divvying it out, and I could not eat ice cream. I had gotten sick a couple of years before on ice cream, and I still hadn’t recovered where I could eat. I says, “I don’t want any ice cream.” This Anaforian said, “Can I have it?” I says, “You of all people, you can have my ice cream, righto.” Anytime we were served ice cream Anaforian got my share.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, when he left did you get another radar man then?
Mr. Masinick:
He left, we got another one. Very formal, alert, knew every bit of that radar because he tore it apart and threw the chewing gum and tinfoil away and he built it the way it was.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Anything else happen on your patrols you recall?
Mr. Masinick:
I can’t think of anything.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How many men in your crew?
Mr. Masinick:
Seventy and ten officers.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Seventy plus ten.
Mr. Masinick:
Yeah.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Seventy EM.
35 Mr. Masinick:
We were off the coast of Java, I think it was our third patrol run, and we battle surfaced on, there was three fishing boats is what they turned out to be, and they were Javanese, you know, with the
‘v’ not the ‘p’, Javanese. They were beautiful, ‘cause I was up on the… I was on the front 40; I was the gun captain. These three ships were sitting there, beautiful, beautiful masts, sails, and the prows were carved wood. It looked like they were sleeping over there. So, the Captain said to me, he says, “Kick one out, but give them a lot of room to the left. Just wake them up.” So, we kicked one shell out and there was a guy down on the main deck with a 20mm and for some reason he thought someone said “shoot.” He unloaded a whole magazine practically into those three ships. The masts were falling down, they started to list, ‘oh geez, we’re in trouble.’ So the
Captain says, “Topside crew go below.” And he told me, “Keep your group here.” So, we ended up sinking those three fishing boats. It was a sad time aboard because everything went wrong.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How as the morale with your people?
Mr. Masinick:
Pretty good; pretty good. We didn’t have… ‘course we had no squabbles or anything, we played our cribbage games and card games, and everything had gone pretty well and got along pretty well. There was no, nothing scary, except the first one we got depth charged to heck, but other than that it was pretty normal.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How many different times were you depth charged?
Mr. Masinick:
Actually, that one time was, we had bombs dropped on us but this was the only serious one.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, what about having bombs dropped on you, what happened there?
Mr. Masinick:
36 That’s one thing, you know, where you have planes coming in on you and the lookout spots them, and we dive. Usually the plane is… he’s got to drop that thing practically right into your conning tower to make it do any good. Three or four incidents like that, you just dive, and see it like the normal thing to do.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Were you ever under friendly fire?
Mr. Masinick:
I don’t think so, I don’t think so. The thing is, you have to become aware of it because all these hotdog flyboys, you know, they figure, hey they get a submarine they didn’t care what… you know, none of them are showing flags. And, you know, a submarine looks like a submarine, you know, most submarines looked alike; bigger or smaller, but… so you had to be very well aware of them so they don’t take a shot at you.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you have a pharmacist’s mate on your sub?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes we did. In fact, when he was going on leave, all the married men with kids got to go first.
I’m sitting in the crew’s quarters and he’s going up the hatch and he turns around and he threw me his keys. He says, “Hey doc, see you in thirty days.” I used to help him. So, all at once I was the pharmacist’s mate for thirty days.
Mr. Misenhimer:
When you crossed the Equator, did y’all have any kind of a ceremony or anything?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh, we did, but it wasn’t bold like some of them were, where they shaved your head or anything.
For the head part about it, they mixed up some raw eggs and some mustard and stuff and made a concoction and then they rubbed it into your head. They were really nothing, and then you had to kiss the belly of Neptune or somebody they had a big… one of our electricians sitting there with
37 his exposed belly. Other than that it was kind of mild. I had to laugh at our Captain: he was not a shellback at the time. He was still a pollywog. You remember, I told you how mean he could be, well, he told the guys that were putting on the initiation he wanted to go first. So, I was standing by the radio shack and here he comes from his quarters, and he’s carrying a Mae West life preserver and he’s got a couple of bottles of French dressing; they were taped together to look like binoculars. He came through for the control room, he said, “I’m looking for the Equator.” I couldn’t stand it. I rolled over, I couldn’t… I had to laugh so hard. From him, but he was a good sport about it, you know he took the initiation. Like I say, they didn’t do anything rash. They didn’t dunk you or anything like that.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you ever hear Tokyo Rose on the radio?
Mr. Masinick:
Once. I think once and I didn’t get a good hearing of that when we were up towards the Yellow
Sea, I think we got a smattering from her. She was… she got a lot inside stuff… she never said…
I never heard Icefish, “Men of the so-and-so, your wives” and all this other garbage. Tokyo Rose, she was good for Japan, I’ll tell you.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What would you consider your worst day?
Mr. Masinick:
My worst day? My worst day was the day we pulled those aviators in, and we buried that guy that night. The next morning I was not worth a dime. My dobber was low, I did not feel like doing anything, I didn’t get out of my bunk. Our cook had evidently asked somebody where I was, and they said, “He’s not out of his bunk yet.” Well, I was usually in the chow hall I was one of the first ones there. So, he came to my bunk and he said, “What’s the matter?” I said, “I don’t feel good at all. This whole war has just got me down.” He said, “If I fix you something good, will you get up?” I say, “Okay.” So, he went and he got this big platter and he, I don’t know
38 how he did it, but it was strawberry shortcake. I said, “Yeah, I’ll get up I’ll get up.” So, I was okay after that, but boy prior to that I was punk. I was terrible.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What would you consider your most frightening time?
Mr. Masinick:
Most frightening time?
Mr. Misenhimer:
Yes, sir.
Mr. Masinick:
The depth charge, I think.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Yeah, I assumed that.
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yes, without a doubt. That was number one, that was a real class A depth charging, I tell you.
You know, you hear depth charges all the time that are nowhere near, and you don’t even give them a second thought, but this one was right there. This was, for all the marbles, believe me.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, April 12th of ’45, President Roosevelt died. Did you all hear about that?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, we did. Yes, we did. We kind of… it was a little sad, but there was nothing… we’re hung up out there, what are we going to do?
Mr. Misenhimer:
Then on May the 8th of ’45 Germany surrendered, did you hear about that?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes. Yes. That was when we started feeling good.
39 Mr. Misenhimer:
Then, of course you told me about when they dropped the first atomic bomb how you felt. Then when Japan surrendered on August 15th, did you have any kind of a celebration then?
Mr. Masinick:
Not us, but I understand the people like in Australia there was boats that came in right after, the next day or so, and they told them all the beer was gone. They’d drunk every drop of it. We had no special celebration. We were off Okinawa standing lifeguard duty when the force went in.
Like I say, we must have been ten miles off the coast of Okinawa, and that night there was so much firepower, the whole sky was lit up. I mean, like I say, we were a long ways from
Okinawa, but believe me, I understand there was like fifteen thousand freighters going in there with supplies for that invasion.
Mr. Misenhimer:
This was the invasion you’re talking about.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes. Yes. We saw Okinawa with a lot of sparks, believe me.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How about Iwo Jima, were you around Iwo Jima?
Mr. Masinick:
We never got to Iwo Jima.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you get home with any souvenirs from World War II?
Mr. Masinick:
It’s strange you say that. We, on Saipan when it was first taken, there was a big… we had to go ashore there because we had to get a stud fixed on one of the heads of our engines, and we pulled into Saipan, and we got like a few hours liberty, three sections. We went in, and there was a big
Japanese ammunition dump there, just loaded. In fact, they had a lot of six-hundred pound depth
40 charges, which I noticed were by American company named Atlas, because I recognized this guy with a big club on his shoulder and the logo that was on the boxes of the dynamite in
Pennsylvania when I lived there as a kid. These depth charges also had this logo on there. So, there seemed to be a wicked exchange here somewhere. But, anyway, this ammunition dump, guys were going in and taking guns and machine guns. I said, “How can I carry all that stuff?” I took a gas mask, just the face part about it, not even the charcoal container. You know, we had nowhere to put that stuff aboard ship. In fact, the first day one guy was saying to another guy, “I got nowhere to keep that machine gun.” He said, “You want it?” The guy said, “Yeah, I’ll take it.” So, the next day he’s complaining. I said, “Give me that thing, I’ll take care of it.” I threw it over the side that night. We had no room for a machine gun for crying out loud. That’s the story of souvenirs. We didn’t get many. Like I say, I still have that gas mask.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you ever see any USO shows anywhere?
Mr. Masinick:
I saw Claude Thornhill on Guam, I think it was. Jackie Cooper was his drummer. Jackie Cooper was a sailor at the time. He played drums, so he played with Claude Thornhill that night. That was the only USO show I ever did see over there.
Mr. Misenhimer:
You were just on Guam the one time, right?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, yes.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you have any experience with the Red Cross?
Mr. Masinick:
Not really. I think… never overseas. We ran into them up in Portland, Oregon once when we were up there for a Navy Day, but I had nothing to do with them really.
41 Mr. Misenhimer:
When did you get discharged then?
Mr. Masinick:
April of ’46. I took my discharge on the west coast, ‘cause I told a white lie: told them I had a job out there. So, I got discharged at Treasure Island, but prior to my discharge, I bought my civilian clothes. First I bought two Samsonite luggage suitcases, and then I went around like in
Frisco, these are after the war of course, and Hollywood. I had a suit tailor-made in Hollywood.
I had all kinds… I remember going to Capper & Capper, I think, was the store in Frisco, and I asked if they had any white shirts. Well, white shirts were kind of short, on the short side, because so many of them had to go into the military, but anyway, so I went down the other end and there were some cufflinks there and some tie tacks. I said to the guy, and I’m pointing at pretty good stuff, you know, and it cost a lot. And all at once this guy with the white shirts said,
“Hey, I got some white shirts for you.” I said, “Yeah, sure.” But anyway, I had won a lot of money at the Royal Hawaiian at crap games. In fact, I didn’t draw a paycheck the rest of the time
I was in the Navy after Pearl Harbor, after the Royal Hawaiian, but I did have money. I did have money.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What was the highest rank you got to?
Mr. Masinick:
I was Yeoman Second Class.
Mr. Misenhimer:
When you got out, did you have any trouble adjusting to civilian life?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh no. Because you know, I had baseball in my craw. I started playing ball for one of the local sandlot teams, and it was a pretty good team. I got into baseball right away, and I was having a good year, and the Giants signed me the next year, so I was… you know, the Navy was gone. In
42 fact, I never talked Navy or never told anyone. Like when I was… I played pro ball for five years. If I told anyone I was a submarine story, boy wouldn’t those sports writers have something to do with that? You know, here’s this ball player that spent five patrol runs in the Pacific in a submarine. That’d make a good story, but I never told anyone.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Who did you play your pro ball for?
Mr. Masinick:
The Giants signed me and in ’49 the Tigers bought me. I finished my career at Toledo with the
Tigers and I hurt my arm there and that was… it was all over.
Mr. Misenhimer:
I see, okay. You’ve had reunions, right?
Mr. Masinick:
Oh yes. Icefish reunion, yes we have had five or six. The first one we only had about, out of sixty-five possible, guys I had gotten names of, I was sending these things out. Thirty-five guys we heard from, and we had only about thirty guys at the first reunion. Ever since then, it’s dwindled down to… you can hardly call them reunions. Four or five guys show up now and we just have lunch and dinner together and stuff like that.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did you use your GI Bill for anything?
Mr. Masinick:
I did. I went to the College of Advanced Traffic, and my original intent was, it had to do with freight, you know, the freight business, and I wanted to become a Class B lawyer because that was shorter than a Class A lawyer. A Class B lawyer would take on cases with freight involved, shipping and the like. I started this school and they canceled, they did away with Class B lawyers. Class A lawyers were going to take over all that work. So, I said to the instructor, who also owned the school, I said, “Bill, what do you want me to do now?” He said, “Become a
43 traffic manager.” Which I did. I graduated as a traffic manager, which was okay. I went to work for a company Reichold Chemical out in Ferndale, Michigan, and it was one of thirty-two plants in the nation. I spent thirty-two years there and retired.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, what ribbons and medals did you get?
Mr. Masinick:
The Asiatic with… I don’t know, there’s two or three stars in it; Submarine Combat pin,
Philippine, whatever they were giving…
Mr. Misenhimer:
Philippine Liberation, I think they called it.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, yes. That’s all I can recall now. There was five, I think I had five ribbons.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Probably American Defense.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, that was one.
Mr. Misenhimer:
That’s one of the common ones.
Mr. Masinick:
Not Good Conduct, they never gave me a Good Conduct. (laughing)
Mr. Misenhimer:
What else do you recall from your time in World War II?
Mr. Masinick:
I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it, that’s all I know. I enjoyed the camaraderie of it; I had a lot of good friends and buddies. I probably would have stayed in had I not wanted to come out and play baseball.
44 Mr. Misenhimer:
I understand the submariners are pretty close people.
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, yes we are.
Mr. Misenhimer:
You’re in tight quarters down there in all.
Mr. Masinick:
Well, the thing is, we never had a fight aboard our ship, let’s put it that way. I mean, there was a couple of quarrels as you may see, but there was never anything rash. It was a pretty friendly bunch.
Mr. Misenhimer:
What did you think of Peterson, your commanding officer?
Mr. Masinick:
I thought he was great. A, number one, five patrols runs and he brought me back. He was nice to me, really. He was nice to me. But, then again, in my old age, I was thinking one time: here he’s got this nineteen-year-old kid, this guy jumping over out in the water for aviators, he’s on a boarding party where he’s jumping aboard strange ships, and he’s a first loader on the five-inch, he’s a gun captain on a 40mm, I think you’ve got to have a feeling for a person like that. You know, ‘cause that’s all volunteer stuff. You don’t get many volunteers, I’ll tell you that.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How about the other people in your group, how were they, what did you think of them?
Mr. Masinick:
They were good guys. I was a pretty good psychologist, you know, I’d get along with the portion
I could get along with, and if there was something that rattled their cage, I just let it go the other way. We did have a good crew by and large.
Mr. Misenhimer:
45 It was basically the same crew on all five patrols or did you get…?
Mr. Masinick:
For the most part. We’d lose about fifteen percent after each run.
In Yeoman’s school, we shared a barracks with the quartermaster school, and there was a young, little guy in the quartermaster school, his name was Bill Buckles, he was from – he’d gone to
Ohio State. When the Icefish pulled in to Pearl Harbor before the first run, he came running down to the boat, he saw me, and he said, “Oh, look at you, Buddy, you got a boat, you got a…,” you know, getting a new construction submarine out of school, it was good, that was a plum. He said, “Look at... you got a boat, oh boy.” Two days later, he came down, he says, “Bud, I was assigned to the Shark, I’m going out on the Shark.” Now, that all sounds ordinary; when I got out of the Navy and joined the Submarines Veterans of World War II, one of the officers, he was national commander for a while then he was commander of the state of Michigan chapter. His name was Nelson and he was from Flint. In talking back and forth, it turns out, Nelson got off at
Pearl Harbor because of some ailment and Buckles was his replacement. Isn’t that something?
Knowing both of them like that and then, you know, putting the story together sixty years apart.
Mr. Misenhimer:
How about the other nine officers on your ship, what did you think of them?
Mr. Masinick:
Well, they were good guys, really. We had none of them that I didn’t like. It just… they were just ordinary. The junior officers acted like junior officers, and the senior officers… our Exec, a guy name of Wallace Small, he retired as a Rear Admiral, he was ComSubPac at Pearl Harbor after the war, of course. We did have pretty astute bunch of officers; I thought they were pretty smart.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Did Peterson stay in?
46 Mr. Masinick:
No, I don’t know how long he stayed in after the war, but it wasn’t too long after because he was a movie nut. In fact, at our commissioning week at Manitowoc, he brought one of his good friends, Spencer Tracy to the ceremonies with him. Spencer Tracy spent about a week with us.
At every showing of a movie aboard, Captain Peterson would take it in with whatever duty section was watching, he’d be there also. He never missed one because he wanted to get into the movies after the war. So, then later one, I was at a movie theater one night, and there was a… the movie was It Came From Beneath the Sea about this big monster sea-whatever it might have been. Anyway, this room was filled with Navy brass, it was like a think tank, and they were all sitting around – standing around – discussing this whole situation. All at once, the phone rings.
There’s this Ensign picked up the phone, and here it was Captain Peterson. He handed it to an
Admiral, he said, “It’s for you.” That’s the last I saw of him. He died a couple of years ago. He was in nineties though when he died.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Was he a Naval Academy graduate?
Mr. Masinick:
Yes, oh yes. Very.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Now, you were born in Pennsylvania, when did you move to Michigan?
Mr. Masinick:
’36. ’36. John L. Lewis got the coal miners too good a contract, so they shut down a lot of coal mines, which… my dad became a victim. I had an aunt and uncles who lived in Detroit, they says, “Come on to Detroit, we can get you… we can find you jobs.” They did come here and go to work.
47 All the war talk and, you know, we were talking about isolationism, and it was determined that that was not the thing to do. You know, in my old age, I’ve wondered. (laughing). To be an isolationist wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Well Bud, anything else you’ve thought of?
Mr. Masinick:
No, that’s about it. A very compact Navy career.
Mr. Misenhimer:
Well, thanks again for your time today and for your service to our country in World War II.
Mr. Masinick:
You’re quite welcome.
Transcribed by: Oral History by:
Kara Thorpe Richard Misenhimer
Houston, TX P.O. Box 3453
December 20, 2010 Alice, TX 78333
Home: (361) 664-4071
Cell: (361) 701-5848
48