NATIONAL
THE
ADMIRAL
Center
Interview
MUSEUM
Fredericksburg,
for
NIMITZ
U.S.
Pacific
with
Navy
OF
John
War
THE
HISTORIC
Texas
Mesko
Studies
PACIFIC
SITE WAR -
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
Mr.
My
Texas,
interview
Fredericksburg,
Mesko:
name
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Turkowski: Mesko:
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Turkowski:
to
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preserve
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in
support
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Mr.
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Mesko:
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Turkowski: Turkowski:
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Mesko:
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The
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camp?
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Pennsylvania.
camp,
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there,
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the the - Me.sko -
Mr. Turkowski: I understand. Did they give you any special clothing or equipment as you left boot camp?
Mr. Mesko: They gave us the whole clothing allowance, which included dress blues and khaki, mostly. The greens hadn’t come out until the war.
Mr. Turkowski: From the time you left boot camp to when the war started, where were you?
Mr. Mesko: I was stationed in Quantico for about three months, 1935. Then I was transferred aboard ship. 1 went aboard the USS Wyoming in September of 1935.
Mr. Turkowski: That was a battleship?
Mr. Mesko: That was a training ship. The Wyoming, Texas, New York, and Arkansas, those four ships were training ships that the Navy had deactivated and put out just to train troops. They took the midshipmen to Europe every year for their summer cruise, they called it, a three-month deployment onboard one of those four ships. And we went to Europe every year during June, July, August, and brought them back for the next class. For three years I was on her, and got off in ‘38. Then I was transferred back down to Perris Island, and I was out on the rifle range as a rifle range coach. I was a corporal by then.
When I left Perris Island I went to Quantico and they assigned me duties in 1940 as a drill instructor with the officer candidate class. I did that duty for almost two years. I’d been promoted to sergeant, platoon sergeant, first sergeant, and then they gave me a commission in the Reserve, second lieutenant commission, in December of 1942. When the war started, I was a
buck sergeant. During the war, after December the 7th, ‘41, 1 continued as a drill instructor until December of ‘42 when I was commissioned as a second lieutenant.
Mr. Turkowski: Where were you when the war started and what did you think about it?
Mr. Mesko: I was in Quantico at the time. I had been courting my wife since 1939, and this was ‘41. I was in Pittsburgh when the war started, I was with her, we were visiting together. I heard the news on the radio that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, so I just put my uniform on, I knew what I had to do. I got back to my duty station. I was on a 72-hour pass at the time. So I got back to my duty station, which was DI with the OCS class. It was about that time when I was promoted to platoon sergeant, which then allowed me to get Mesko - p married because I was able to get quarters. Sergeants didn’t rate quarters, but a platoon sergeant did.
Mr. Turkowski: Were you directed into combat then?
Mr. Mesko: No, I went down to Camp LeJeune in 1942. I went through the process down there—actually I was assigned to duty with the scout sniper school out at the rifle range. For some reason or other, I was a good pistol shot and a rifle shot, so they kept me moving in that direction in my duties. I was an instructor with the scout sniper school down in Camp LeJeune in 1943. This was after I was commissioned. I was transferred down there and that’s the duty I was doing when they gave me a regular commission. I qualified for a regular commission and I left the reserves and became a second lieutenant in the regular Marine Corps. Before that, had I not done that step, when the war was over I would have reverted back to my first sergeant rank.
Mr. Turkowski: What caliber gun and what kind did you use for training snipers?
Mr. Mesko: Thirty caliber. Thirty, a 1903 rifle with a scope on it. Two-man teams. But that was only a short duration, because shortly afterward they sent me down to Fort Benning as a first lieutenant. I went down to Fort Benning and spent three months going through advanced infantry school.
Mr. Turkowski: On the sniper firing, how far were the targets?
Mr. Mesko: We shooting out as far as a thousand yards. We concentrated usually on the mid ranges, 300, 6oo.
Mr. Turkowski: Did the partner use a spotting scope?
Mr. Mesko: Yes.
Mr. Turkowski: From there you went...
Mr. Mesko: I went to the school down in Fort Benning. And while I was down there I got orders to go to sea school, after I finished that schooling. Sea school in Norfolk. There I was assigned duties actually getting together the attachment for the USS Wisconsin, which was commissioned April i6, 1944, in Philadelphia. I went aboard her on that date with I think it was 102 Marines, a complete detachment, with a captain, I was the first lieutenant, and there was a second lieutenant that went aboard that ship at that time, with 102 marines. Mcsko - Mr. Turkowski: Did they have a special mission, or they were just.
Mr. Mesko: On board ship?
Mr. Turkowski: Yes.
Mr. Mesko: The Marine special mission has always been the security of the ship. We would secure the armory, that was our job, to keep sailors from breaking in and getting arms and killing the captain, so we put a Marine corporal, usually, on duty as the captain’s orderly, and he followed him around all the time with a pistol on his side. On board ship he was the captain’s orderly. The communications room had to be secured. In general, we were the policemen on the ship.
Mr. Turkowski: Who was your commanding officer at that time?
Mr. Mesko: It was Captain Eagleburger. Lieutenant Dowden was my second lieutenant. We went on board and finally got out to the Pacific in November of ‘44. We joined the Third Fleet that was commanded by Halsey. We participated in the Leyte Operation as our first operation. Leyte landing. Then we went on up to Luzon, and we went into Iwo Jima and supported that action, then Okinawa we spent 90 days trying to keep the Jap kamikazes from knocking our ships, the Seventh Fleet, out. You know, the Seventh Fleet was MacArthur’s fleet. We were protecting the Okinawa Campaign at that time.
Mr. Turkowski: So you ran the antiaircraft guns?
Mr. Mesko: Yes, all the 20 mm. guns on the port side, twin mounts. Marines manned them, I was up on top, the ninth level.
Mr. Turkowski: So you put in some long days.
Mr. Mesko: Yes, miserable days. We had to, our duties were, general quarters, in the morning one hour before sunrise we had to go to general quarters on the ship, and then in the evening one hour before the sunset we went back to general quarters, because that was the time when the kamikazes decided to hit us, if they were coming in.
Mr. Turkowski: Why did they choose those times?
Mr. Mesko: They came in with the sun, you couldn’t see them too well, but the radar picked them up all the time. Mesko - 6 Mr. Turkowski: What was the attitude toward those kamikazes?
Mr. Mesko: Well, we wanted to shoot the bastards down. They were crazy people. I watched four of our carriers burning on the horizon one day, our carriers that they had hit. This was during the Okinawa campaign.
Mr. Turkowski: Back to some of the other, back to Leyte, did you see a lot of air action there?
Mr. Mesko: Yes, just as much as anywhere.
Mr. Turkowski: Is that where they started the kamikazes?
Mr. Mesko: Actually that was when they really got after us with the kamis, but before that they’d sporadically come in on the fleet. It was during Leyte that they first used the baca bomb, with a pilot in it. They dropped them from a bomber and the guy guided it down with rockets. That was the first time that we saw that damn thing up there in the sky.
Mr. Turkowski: The Americans had another name for that, didn’t they? The baca?
Mr. Mesko: That’s what they called the bacas, the crazy bastards.
Mr. Turkowski: Had you been wounded?
Mr. Mesko: That was in April ‘45, during the Okinawa campaign. The day after General Buckner was killed, a kamikaze was coming in on our ship at sea level, right on top of the waves. They leveled the five-inch guns and I happened to be in a tub with a 40 mm. crew at the time, when I got into the five-inch blast. It burned my face, I got burned where I got new skin. Every since I’ve had trouble with cancer, too, because of that. I was wounded in action at the time.
Mr. Turkowski: You got the Purple Heart.
Mr. Mesko: Yes. I spent a couple weeks down there in sick bay. We had a sick bay aboard ship.
Mr. Turkowski: Did that hurt your sight at all?
Mr. Mesko: No, I was lucky. The doc said my eyelids closed quick enough. I was in—are you familiar with a five-inch blast? Ever see a five-inch blast at night?
Mr. Turkowski: Sort of, yes, I have seen them on ships. Mesko-
Mr. Mesko: From the muzzle out to about that wall back there, it’s one big bright ball.
Mr. Turkowski: About 30 feet, 40 feet?
Mr. Mesko: About 20 feet. I was right in the middle of that. I was sitting up above the tub because I was controlling that 40 mm. tub. I was sitting up high on that, I happened to be looking right at the goddamn muzzle at the time for some reason or other. That was it. About two weeks later I was back on duty.
Mr. Turkowsici: Did you lose any men?
Mr. Mesko: No, I didn’t lose any men during the whole war. I saw a lot of sailors die, I’ll tell you.
Mr. Turkowski: On that ship?
Mr. Mesko: No, on other ships. We brought them in to our sick bay quite often.
Mr. Turkowski: Did you have Navy corpsmen with your outfit?
Mr. Mesko: Not aboard ship. They were on the hospital ships. They had a complete dispensary down there.
Mr. Turkowski: Tell us about some of your awards and medals. You were awarded a Purple Heart, and what other ones did you receive?
Mr. Mesko: Our ship participated in five operations for which I was awarded five bronze stars to be worn on my Asiatic-Pacific Area Ribbon. I was also awarded the Philippine Liberation Campaign Ribbon, the American Defense Service Medal was awarded, the World War II Victory Medal, Purple Heart Medal, Philippine Presidential Unit Citation, Navy Occupation Medal with Asia Clasp, American Campaign Medal, and during the Korean War I got a few more.
Mr. Turkowski: During all that time, did you see land much?
Mr. Mesko: Very little. We used Ulithi Atoll as our base, the Third and Fifth Fleets pulled into it. When we first pulled into the Ulithi Atoll, when the ship joined the Third Fleet, 1 was astounded because there were over a thousand ships In that atoll, which is about 15 miles wide and 20 miles long, like a string of poles, islands. That’s where we anchored, inside there. This was not too far from Mcsko - 8 Truk Island, the Japanese best base in the Pacific, naval base. We were a couple of hundred miles from them.
Mr. Turkowski: What was the American’s first attitude when they heard about these kamikazes, with these guys coming in and committing suicide like that?
Mr. Mesko: Same as mine, I imagine, these crazy bastards. What can you do, you have to shoot them down, they won’t quit.
Mr. Turkowski: Did you learn more and more as you saw more action, were you better, did you figure out better ways to combat those kamikazes?
Mr. Mesko: We just used the same method all the time. We aimed and fired. We stopped most of them. A lot of them got through, but that was inevitable, I guess. That’s the way the war was fought.
Mr. Turkowski: Is there anything else you’d like to add to this conversation?
Mr. Mesko: How far do you want to go, through my—just the Pacific War?
Mr. Turkowski: We’d like to stay with World War II.
Mr. Mesko: Yes, I want to tell you about when the atom bomb was dropped. That was on August the sixth. We were within a couple hundred miles of Japan at the time, the fleet. We got the word that the Japanese might surrender now. So Admiral Halsey organized the Third Fleet landing party, which included all the marines on those ships. As you know, all carriers, battleships, and cruisers carry marines. So we got all these marines together and our ship and I think the Indianapolis furnished the marines for the USS Ozark. We got on the USS Ozark, which is a landing ship, I guess it’s an LSD. Anyway, it had a ramp on it. We got onboard her, we got off the Wisconsin, over the side on nets, got into the Ozark on the 14th, 1 think it was, when they’d already decided they were going to quit, they’d definitely surrendered, unconditionally, the Japanese. So we went aboard the Ozark and we organized a company of marines out of the two ships that I mentioned, the Indianapolis and the Wisconsin. One company of marines. I was platoon leader of one of the platoons.
We landed on Japan, Yokosuga Naval Base, day after my birthday, the 30th of August. We went ashore and secured the Yokosuga Naval Base along with other marines from other ships. We landed marines all throughout the naval base. My company landed and we guarded the Naval Research Center that the Mesko - Japanese had there. When we went ashore their aircraft were on the tarmac, the propellors were in front of us, they were off, all the guns were laid out, all the ammunition was laid out with the guns, and the Japanese Naval troops had lined up like two or three rows of corn, with their heads down. That’s how they greeted us, they all had their heads down and we asked them to stand at attention. When we came ashore, we expected—we were locked and loaded, ready to go, if they pulled any bull, we would have had to fire, and we could have.
We stayed there until the sixth of September, and we went back onboard our ship which at that time had pulled into Sugami Bay, or Tokyo Bay, as they called it. We were all anchored there and we went back on our ship. By that time we had prisoners of war on our ship. In fact, we had a couple of U. S. aviators who fought on Wake Island and were captured at that time. Captain Putnam was one of them that I remember real well, a Marine Corps captain. And a couple of other lieutenants, I don’t remember their names now, but because we were the Marine detachment, I was a lieutenant, and we treated them with special courtesy.
Mr. Turkowsici: Were you given instructions to look for any particular Japanese officers or anything?
Mr. Mesko: No, we just secured the base. We patrolled the area. We were shot at several times by people from a group of boats. A lot of Japanese live on boats. They were all tied together like at the marina, and we were getting shot at from that area, a couple of times. I had taken a patrol, I took my best people that I had with me, six of us went down and did a little searching for weapons. We found them.
Mr. Turkowski: Were these military weapons?
Mr. Mesko: Yes, they were regular Japanese weapons.
Mr. Turkowski: Were those civilians there, or were they military in disguise?
Mr. Mesko: They were probably military who took their uniforms off. We didn’t do anything about them, we just took their weapons away from them.
Mr. Turkowski: But there was very little of that?
Mr. Mesko: Very little, not too much. They were told not to do that. They pretty well obeyed whatever the Emperor wanted them to do. Mesko -10 Mr. Turkowski: How did the civilians react to that?
Mr. Mesko: They were very courteous, always bowing at you. You’d come near them and they’d bow. That’s about it. We didn’t know Japanese and they didn’t know English, so we had no conversations.
Mr. Turkowski: Did you see any released prisoners of war at that time?
Mr. Mesko: Yes, they were coming out of the hills down there. They were finding their way from these prison camps that they had throughout Japan. Of course, the sailors knew where to go, they went to the sea, because that’s where the ships would be. They were coming in slowly. Finally they went out and got some of them, a lot of them, who couldn’t travel on their own. But the Japanese guards just left them. When the war, when they surrendered they just abandoned ship and left them on their own. The prisoners were left to their own devices, whatever they could do they did. A lot of them just packed up and started toward the sea, and that’s when we were picking them up.
Mr. Turkowski: So your main action was aboard ship, shooting at planes, and then you went into Okinawa. Then, how long did you spend in Japan after that?
Mr. Mesko: Just the sixth. We got onboard ship, we got back to San Francisco, I think it was in October.
Mr. Turkowski: A big celebration?
Mr. Mesko: Yes. When the ship pulled into San Francisco. When a ship comes home from action the put up a streamer with one star for every officer on that ship. This long streamer had balloons on it to keep it up out of the water.
Mr. Turkowski: Did you bring any souvenirs back?
Mr. Mesko: No, we weren’t allowed to.
Mr. Turkowski: So the occupation then was pretty tight, there was no resistance, you had your orders and you just went in.
Mr. Mesko: That’s all, yes.
When the war ended they had enough points to go home, so I lost practically all my marines there. I know it was well over 50 percent of them, because we had to get that many replacements. I was a regular officer, I had to stay
Transcribed
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