Bobby Lee Pettit Oral History Monologue Bobby Pettit: This
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Bobby Lee Pettit Oral History Monologue Bobby Pettit: This recording was begun on May the 28th, the year 2001. It’s made exclusively for the use of Bruce Pettit in the preparation of a book concerning the war in the Pacific. The recording will be divided into several different parts, the first part will be some basic data, the second will be the pre-war years in Houston leading up to my enlistment in the Navy in 1942, the next section will concern boot camp in San Diego, and the following section will be experiences aboard the USS Tallulah AO-50, and that will be followed by experiences aboard the LCIL-750 and a section will be an effort on my part to obtain an honorable discharge. Basic data, I was born in Houston, Texas on December the 31st, 1928. However, my ID card in the Navy reads December the 31st, 1924. I enlisted in the Navy as an apprentice seaman in Houston, Texas on December the 22nd, 1942 at the age of enlistment, I was thirteen years old and I was discharged on November the 7th, 1945. My rating upon discharge was First Class Petty Officer, Electrician’s Mate First Class. My physical size at the time I enlisted, according to my identification card, I was five feet, eight and a half inches tall and weight one 1 hundred and forty-three pounds. During the period of my enlistment from ’42 to ’45, I was awarded the following decorations, the American Campaign Medal, the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with one silver star -- silver star is equal to five bronze stars each, representing a major combat mission -- a World War II Victory Medal, and the Philippine Liberation Ribbon with one bronze star. The Philippines never issued a medal on the ribbon. I served on the USS Tallulah, which was the AO-50. (break in audio) From the 9th of April, 1943 until March the 16th 1944. (break in audio) I was transferred from the LCIL-750 on October the 29th, 1945. And I was transferred to the [receiving?] barracks at Treasure Island, California. I went aboard the LCI on June the 1st, 1944 and left the LCI on October the 29th, 1945. The LCI-750 was in division forty-five, squadron twenty-three, flotilla eight of the Pacific fleet, and it was commissioned in April 17th, 1944 in Astoria, Oregon. 2 (break in audio) My pre-war days in Houston was pretty much like anyone in any other city, I suppose. Houston was a relatively small city at the time and its main course of business was with, then, oil, cotton, and cattle. In the late ’30s, early ’40s, we were still in the Depression, things were kind of tight there and it was kind of difficult to get along. My dad was a Methodist minister, but he died when I was ten months old so he left me and two older sisters, along with my mother. My older sister had to drop out of school and take a job to help support the family. She got married after a few years and then the burden sort of fell on my second sister who had to do a similar kind of thing, drop out of school and help support the family. In the meantime, I was doing all sorts of menial jobs that I could find. I mowed grass, shined shoes in a barber shop, sacked groceries down at a grocery store, and had an early morning paper route. I was twelve years old when I heard about the Japanese bombing Pearl Harbor, but frankly, they say that when you hear something like that you never forget where you were when you heard it. But in my case, at twelve years old, I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, I guess, to what was going on because I don’t remember specifically where I was and what I was doing when I heard the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I know 3 for sure that I didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was, as most people didn’t know where Pearl Harbor was. But it didn’t take us long to find out. And almost immediately, the climate changed in Houston. The business started hiring everybody and anybody they could, and along the Gulf coast there were shipbuilding firms that were hiring people and so the Depression rapidly disappeared. And I was in junior high school at George Washington Junior High School in Houston, Texas at the time, and I was in the -- what we call -- the low eighth grade. I was sort of an average student, I didn’t spend a lot of time studying, I was more interested in basketball and football and things of that nature and girls than I was into studying. And the war took immediate effect on our school. All the intermural activities and sports competitions between the various junior high schools came to a halt because of the shortage of rubber and gasoline and so forth. So we were knocked out of playing interscholastic football and basketball and all the other sports because we didn’t have the means to be transported from one school to the other for the games. But we had a good school and we endured those early years. We had scrap drives where all the kids were let out of school to scour the neighborhood for metal objects of various kinds and other types of materials, I guess, for the war 4 effort. And that was a lot of fun; we enjoyed that. About that time, I had an uncle who owned a dairy farm and he took me up to Texas A&M one day to take a look at a bull or a stallion, I’m not sure which at this time, but I was very impressed at Texas A&M. At that time, it was a small college known as the Agricultural and Mechanical College of Texas, and it was an all- male all-military school and I was extremely impressed when I saw the cadets bounding across the prairie and the caissons drawn by horses in a cloud of dust, I never forgot that and it planted the seed the bore fruit to later, after I got out of the service. Houston was pretty much completely void of civilian men who were old enough to be in the service. They were replaced by cadets from Ellington Field who, I believe, they were cadets for bombardiers and navigation and [not?] pilots. They were stationed at Ellington Field nearby Houston and it was common to see them in downtown Houston because there were no shopping malls in the outskirts in those days, all there was was a simple core of the city and that’s where everything happened. (break in audio) 5 Houston was a real gung-ho town; everybody that was old enough to enlist in the service was doing so. And this sentiment was emphasized even more when, on the March 1st of 1942, the Japanese sank the cruiser USS Houston and this resulted in a flood of recruits for the Navy, and one large swearing in ceremony was held on Main Street in Houston and the Navy billed the recruiting drive as “Avenge the Houston.” And that brought in a lot of sailors. Part of that, in about 1938 or ’39, I had an uncle, his name was [Doc?] Pettit, he was a veteran of World War I. He took me down to the Houston ship channel, which leads down to Galveston Bay, and the cruiser Houston was in port back at that time and we went aboard the cruiser and was escorted around and I was thoroughly impressed by what I saw and I thought that this would be a good experience, to be in the Navy, and that seed was planted at that time. And with the sinking of the Houston, I started thinking more and more about that, even though I was, at the time in December of, let’s see, ’42, I was still in junior high school that a friend of mine, Richard [Jinky?], he was fifteen years old and he and I got the idea that we would like to enlist. And we tried to figure out how to do that. Richard, being a little bit older and a little bit bolder, he went down to the post office in downtown Houston and enlisted somewhere along about October, and it was about, I guess, early December or the latter part of November, he 6 enlisted and was shipped off to San Diego. So I got to thinking, Well, if Richard could do, I certainly could do it. Because I was bigger than he was by a long shot. And on the 22nd of December, 1942, I went down to the Navy office to enlist -- it was the same enlistment and recruiting office that Richard had gone to and also the same recruiting office that Calvin [Graham?] enlisted in, and he enlisted when he was twelve years old. He inspired the television movie “Too Young the Hero.” But Calvin, someone gave away his age and he was put out of the Navy without any benefits after having served aboard the battleship North Dakota or South Dakota, I forget which, but the battleships were operating around Guadalcanal at that time and he encouraged some severe injuries after that battleship was hit. But the Navy couldn’t put him ashore because there was no place to put him so he stayed throughout those battles and then was sent back to the states and put into the big for lying about his age and no one knew where he was until one of his prison mates got out and informed his sister where he was.