Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War

Center for Pacific War Studies

Fredericksburg, Texas

Interview with

Mr. Arnold Spielberg (World War II - U.S. Army) Date of Interview: September 19, 2003

Admiral Nimitz Historic Site National Museum of the Pacific War Fredericksburg, Texas

Interview with Mr. Arnold Spielberg (WW II - U.S. Army)

This is Eddie Graham. Today is September 19, 2003. I am interviewing Mr. Arnold Spielberg. This is taking place in the George Bush Gallery, Fredericksburg, Texas. The interview is in support of the National Museum of the Pacific War, Center for War Studies, for the preservation of historical information relating to World War II. Mr. Graham: Mr. Spielberg, thank you very much for taking time to talk with us about your World War II experiences. To begin with, I would like to ask you where and when you were born? Mr. Spielberg: I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, on February 6, 1917. I grew up there and went to public school through high school. I had a good time growing up there. Lived on a wonderful street. The street was steep and during the winter they closed it off so we could do sled riding down it. At the bottom of the street was a park and there was a small baseball field there. Further around the park were tennis courts. A kid couldn’t have been raised on a better street than I was in Cincinnati. Mr. Graham: What were your parents’ names and where were they born? Mr. Spielberg: My father was named Samuel Spielberg, and he was born in the Ukraine in Russia. My Mother was born in a town near where he was born, also in the Ukraine in a town called Sudilkov. Her maiden was Rebecca Chechik. My Father came to this country in 1904. He had served in the Russian Army for six years and had left the Army. He was raised as an orphan by his uncle on a ranch and he became a cow-puncher. He would get on horses and herd cattle. Later he became a cattle buyer for the Russian Army operating in Siberia and up in Manchuria. When the Russia/Japanese war

Παγε 2 οφ 23 started he said, “I’m getting out of here.” That is when he came to America. Three years later he brought my Mother over and they were married here in the States. Mr. Graham: Do you have any siblings, and what are their names and ages? Mr. Spielberg: I have a brother, Irvin Spielberg. He is two years younger than I am. I had a sister, Natalie. She was the youngest and passed away about ten years ago. Mr. Graham: Do you have any children and what are their names? Mr. Spielberg: I have four children. My oldest is Steven Allen Spielberg. He was born in Cincinnati in 1946. My next daughter was Anne Spielberg Opatushu, and she lives in the Los Angeles area. Her husband’s father was a screen actor and he acted in the movie Exodus. Then I have a middle daughter, Sue. She lives in Silver Springs, Maryland. She is about 44 years old now. My goodness, my kids are getting old. Then I have a youngest daughter, Nancy, who lives in Riverdale, New York. My two youngest kids have children. Sue has a boy and a girl. Her son, Phillip, is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania in Civil Engineering; her daughter, Rachel, is just entering the University of Pittsburgh. My youngest daughter, Nancy, has two girls, Jessica and Melissa, and they are respectively 15 and 11. Mr. Graham: You have quite a family. Mr. Spielberg: I have a nice family. Mr. Graham: I would like to ask you one question – Where were you and what were you doing on December 7, 1941? Mr. Spielberg: That is an interesting question because a number of people have asked me. I do remember – I had gone to a symphony orchestra concert in Cincinnati at Music Hall and when I came out there was an “Extra” saying that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor. I had just come out of the concert at that time.

Παγε 3 οφ 23 Mr. Graham: When did you enter the military? Mr. Spielberg: I had a low draft number and I was working in Kentucky at that time as a manager of a department store. I knew they were getting close to my low draft number and I decided to enlist. I dropped my work, quit, went back to Cincinnati to be with my parents for a while. I walked into the Navy and said, “I would like to enlist.” They looked at my glasses, gave me an eye test, and said, “Not good enough.” I saw 20-20 with my glasses on and 20-30 without them. That wasn’t good enough for the Navy at that time. I walked next door and joined the Signal Corps. Mr. Graham: That branch of service would have you. Mr. Spielberg: Yes, the Army Signal Corps. I went across the river to Fort Thomas, Kentucky, got my uniforms, etc. I was in Fort Thomas for about 1 ½ weeks, had one pass to go home, then went on to Louisville. I spent five days there and then right down to New Orleans. I was stationed at the New Orleans Army/Air Corps Base on Lake Pontchartrain with the 422nd Signal Company attached to an A-20 Bomb Squadron. I had been a ham radio operator before going into the military, even in high school, and I ended up teaching code to the recruits. They made me an acting Corporal so we would march around and then practice code. I couldn’t get those guys to learn the code, so what I did was to send “dirty” stories. Mr. Graham: That got their attention. Mr. Spielberg: It got their attention. I spent from mid-January of ‘42 til mid-April of ‘42 in New Orleans. I was in the Signal Company and transferred to the Air Corps and was sent to Jefferson Barracks for two weeks of training where they beat the heck out of you. You know, up at all kinds of hours. I was worn out. Then I shipped to Charleston, South Carolina, where I boarded the Santa Paula to go to India, although I didn’t know at that time that we were headed to

Παγε 4 οφ 23 India. Mr. Graham: Let’s back up a little to your training. Was this infantry training...? Mr. Spielberg: Well, I was in a Signal Company. We were taught communication, code, and since I knew code they had me teaching code. We started to learn a little about signal equipment, but things were so disorganized at that time in the service that I spent most of my time drilling ----- useless drilling? Mr. Graham: Just to keep you busy? Mr. Spielberg: Yes, keep you busy. Since I was the Acting Corporal, I would march the guys down to Lake Pontchartrain. I would say, “Fellows, let’s take a break here, get out your gas masks in case the officer comes, and then sit there and shoot the bull, but if an officer shows up put the masks on.” I figured I was wasting my time there so I applied for Officers’ Candidate School. I passed all of the tests there, but then I had received orders to be shipped overseas. I was sent to Jefferson Barracks in St. Louis and there we had bayonet drill. That was infantry training. After two weeks there they shipped us by train to Charleston, South Carolina. I spent about two days there and sometime – 10 or 11 o’clock at night, long lines, we boarded the banana boat, the Santa Paula, and headed out in the ocean to who knows where. That was a Grace Line Banana Boat that used to take tourists down to the Caribbean and bring back bananas in the hold, so we ended up in the hold of the boat. That sucked. I want to tell you a story about that. As we marched onboard the ship, we climbed up the gangplank up to the top deck. The cabins were all pretty much occupied with groups of people that looked like they were in organized groups. We went down the hall and I saw one empty cabin there. So, two of us left our bags in the cabin. I stayed in the cabin and locked the door, he went down and

Παγε 5 οφ 23 got ten other guys and we filled up the cabin. So, for the rest of the trip we had a cabin. Mr. Graham: How were you fed? Did you eat in a military line? Mr. Spielberg: We had to eat in line. We had mush, SOS, wormy breads, and mutton. We were fed twice a day. Mr. Graham: What times did you eat? Mr. Spielberg: About ten o’clock in the morning and about six or seven at night. Mr. Graham: Where did you end up on that ship? Mr. Spielberg: We started across the ocean in May of ‘42, which was the height of the worst sinkings of World War II. We were in a large convoy. There were two battleships that escorted us through. The Battleships were British The Nelson and Rodney. We also had six destroyers, and there must have been a hundred cargo vessels. There were two troop ships, the Santa Paula, the one that we were on, and the Mariposa, which was a large ship with quite a number of troops on that ship. We stopped for a day in Bermuda and from there headed across the ocean and ended up in Freetown, Central Africa. At that time one of the guys got sick and died on the ship. Also at that time, they had a minor mutiny on the boat because there were about ten women on the boat they were both nurses and wives of the oil workers that were working in Saudi Arabia. They were going to join their husbands. They were having a dance at the same time as they had this funeral. So the guys broke up the dance and the head of the troops, a Colonel, there came out and said, “You men will be shot for this.” Arguments went back and forth and finally the Chaplain came out spoke with the troops and told them to “Calm down, calm down.” The complaints were heard about two meals a day, the rotten food, molded bread, etc. So for three days after the Mutiny we had somewhat better food, three times a day, and on one Sunday we had ice cream. That didn’t last long. When

Παγε 6 οφ 23 the row settled down we went back to two meals a day and the same Mutton and slop from steam trays. From Freetown we sailed on down to the Cape and stopped in Durban, South Africa. I got shore leave there. We were warned to stay away from the docks as there was a threat of burglary. We went along the Boardwalk (a-la-Atlantic city) and stopped at a restaurant that offered all you can eat. I went down the menu, picked every entre, and started over after desert, and made out half way down the menu again. From there we on through the Straits of Madagascar and then on to Karachi. That was the first time that we knew we were going to India. Mr. Graham: What did you do in Karachi? Mr. Spielberg: It is a terrible town. Did you find it on the map? It is on the west coast of India, right below Afghanistan. We were assigned various places. There were some guys that were on the same ship with me who were in ordnance. They were already trained ordnance men. Since I was Air Corps unassigned, not even associated with the Signal Corps, they sent us to downtown Karachi and we went to the Karachi Classification Depot where the job I had was to open up great wooden boxes, take out the aircraft parts, try to figure out what they were, assign them a part number, and pack them up for shipment to China. I didn’t know aircraft parts one from the other. Mr. Graham: You had been moved from the U.S. Army to the U.S. Army Air Corps? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. Actually, first the Signal Corps and then the Air Corps. I was sorting parts and I don’t know how many parts I mislabeled. I finally couldn’t stand it any more so I went to the CO and said, “Sir, I’m a qualified radio operator, I know how to send code, receive code, I’m sure I can do much better in the service than sitting here opening boxes.” I knew there was a squadron starting up out in

Παγε 7 οφ 23 Malir Cantonment, which is out in the desert about ten miles from Karachi where there was an old British cantonment. There was also an Air Base there. I said that I would like to go out and interview and see if they could use me. He said, “Well, if you want to leave this cushy job, go ahead.” I went out to Malir. At that time there were only two radiomen in the squadron, and when they heard that I could copy code, they said, “We want you.” So I went back to the CO and said, “Sir, they will accept me if you will transfer me.” He said, “Sure.” So when the papers came through I was transferred to a fighter squadron. I didn’t want to go to a fighter squadron, I wanted to be transferred to a bomb squadron so I could fly combat and go home. I said, “Sir, they transferred me to a fighter squadron.” He said, “Well, if they won’t transfer you to a bomb squadron, I’m not letting you go.” So the papers were switched and I ended up in the 490th Bomb Squadron. Mr. Graham: Now, this was the U.S. Army/Air Corps? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. That is how I got started in the 490th. At the time that I came there they had just received a couple of planes. The squadron had just formed. The 341st Bomb Group, of which our squadron was one of four in that bomb group, had just recently been formed. There were two radiomen, a Staff Sergeant and a Sergeant, there were a couple of recruits there who had come on the Santa Paula, and me. We set up a tower, you know to guide the planes in. We had some old radio equipment stuck up in the tower. There was not much else that we could do other than go with the planes when they were doing practice runs. I asked to fly as a Radio-Gunner, learn the procedures, and to man the 50 Caliber waist guns. Mr. Graham: What kind of bombers were these? Mr. Spielberg: B-25's, Mitchell. They were the early version of B-25C’s. That is the one that had a plexiglass nose, one machine gun up front, and the

Παγε 8 οφ 23 bombardier sat up there with the Norden bombsight, and then at the pilot’s area there was the pilot, co-pilot, navigator and flight engineer, and back in the back was the radioman and a tail gunner with a 30 caliber gun pointed straight back. If somebody was coming on you, then you could fire the machine gun and scare them off. The squadron practiced flying low level flights over the desert and then we would go out to at an island out in the ocean outside of Karachi. That was interesting, but that lasted just a short while because they found out that I knew how to fix radios and I got grounded. Mr. Graham: You knew too much. Mr. Spielberg: Yes, I knew too much. So there went the vision of getting my combat time and coming home. It probably saved my life. As the squadron built up, pretty soon we had 16 planes and they had to move into combat. They transferred from Karachi to a town called Ondal, which is about 150 miles straight west of Calcutta. At that time I was a Corporal. A bunch of recruits had come in and needed training and practice in code. We learned a little about how to maintain the communications equipment in the planes. You almost found out for yourself because there was no trained guy that really knew how to fix the radio equipment in our squadron. Besides, the squadron’s maintenance plan was to remove and replace equipment. You weren’t supposed to fix anything; you were supposed to take out the bad part and put in a new part and go on from there. That was OK. As luck had it two more hams appeared in my group so the three of us constituted the technical brains in the outfit. Mr. Graham: But you had an established base at this time? Mr. Spielberg: Yes, we had an established base, the squadron went on missions. Since we were pretty far removed from the Burma area where we were bombing, the squadron would fly out every morning, bomb

Παγε 9 οφ 23 some close-in targets in Burma, and then land at Chittagong, refuel, reload the bombs, go another mission and then fly back to our base. So it was a mission with a stop at a British base, which was Chittagong, back on another bomb run and then back to our base. The squadron would be out for a day and a half. At that time, us rookies didn’t know what we were to do, so we would head into Calcutta and go on R&R. Mr. Graham: Let me ask you, did you have very many losses of planes on these raids? Mr. Spielberg: Early on, not too many, but we actually had more accidents initially than we had enemy losses. In one instance a rookie co-pilot pulled the wheels up rather than pull the flaps and the plane crashed into a revetment. About half of those guys on that plane were killed because it was loaded with bombs. One guy was thrown clear, he ran back and helped pull another guy out. One guy fell behind a rice paddy and was protected, and he just got a blast injury from it. The pilot and co-pilot were killed. That was the first accident we had, at least that I can recall. Later on the squadron got better. They never did tackle bridges. They just went on high altitude bombing missions on encampments, or whatever targets that were sent to us. We had a communications group and we received our instructions from New Deli, which was the 10th Air Force Headquarters. We received all our operational messages and reported all Mission messages to the 10th Air Force, as well as our Bomb Group in New Delhi. We would decode them and then give them to the operations people. They were our mission directives. After five or six months we again moved closer and we moved to a town called Kurmitola. That was about ten miles north of Dahka. That was a big city in what is now Bangladesh. At that time India was not divided into Pakistan and India, it was entirely India.

Παγε 10 οφ 23 There were many instances of Indian resentment of the British occupation of India, and we would see graffiti which would spell out “British Quit India.” After a few months it was “America and British Quit India.” Nobody wanted anybody there. If you will recall, the Indians wanted their independence. But we got along well. Mr. Graham: Was India under British control at that time? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. At Kurmitola the base became very well organized and operational. Our bomb group was the 341st Bomb Group. It had four squadrons – the 490th (ours), the 491st, the 11th and the 22nd. When the 341st was formed, the 11th Bomb Squadron flew immediately to China. The 22nd and the 491st moved to a little town called Chakulia and we were the lone squadron at Kurmitola. Mr. Graham: Were you still using mostly B-25 bombers at this time? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. First the B-25C; we got a D and then we got an E, and then an H. As the Mitchell bombers got better and better and more modernized, we got the later versions. The communications equipment there was primitive. We had very little radar. We had IFF’s in the planes. I took them all out because we never used them as there was no ground equipment to support those. China, Burma, India was like the forgotten theater. Events occurred in my own career there when the B-29's were going to come to India and fly long range missions into China to bomb the Japanese operations there. The Squadron was asked to send a communications team to an advanced base, Bishnapur, to provide communications for an Ordinance detachment who were charged with preparing Bomb stockpiles and support. After several days there was no radio communications with either our base in Kurmitola or with Headquarters in New Delhi. They couldn’t get the radio to operate so the communications officer came to me one time and said, “Do

Παγε 11 οφ 23 you think that you can get it to work?” I said, “I’ll try.” So I went up to Bishnapur and I walked into the shack. The sergeant was there and he said, “What are you looking at?” I said, “Well, can I see if I can fix it?” He said, “If I can’t fix it, you can’t.” I said, “Let me look.” I turned on power and the tubes would come on, but it didn’t seem to work. I turned the power off, opened up the door to the power supply, and I saw that one of the caps had come off the rectifier tube. I put the cap on the tube, closed the door, turned on the switch and we were on the air. As a result, he got busted and I was made communications chief. At that time my rank started going up. Every month I got another promotion until I was a Master Sergeant and I ran the communications group. Mr. Graham: How many people were in your group that you ran, approximately? Mr. Spielberg: Of the ground crew there were about 40, divided equally in three ways; the cryptography group, the radio operators, and the maintenance guys. Mr. Graham: What would have been your main duties day-to-day in handling this group of people? Mr. Spielberg: Mainly making sure that everyone was well supervised; that people were at roll call; that the radio operators were well trained on their jobs; that the mission messages were sent out and received properly; that I selected the best radio operators for significant times on duty. We had one guy who was a high speed operator and he could send like lightening. He could keep the guys in New Deli humping. Whenever we had really significant stuff I would put him on. Mr. Graham: Now you never did brief the pilots for a mission on anything like that? Mr. Spielberg: No. Mr. Graham: You just ran communications? Mr. Spielberg: My job, well the team’s job, was to make sure that we sent the

Παγε 12 οφ 23 messages out, that we received incoming encoded orders, decode them properly on the classified machines, typed them up, and got them to the S-2 operations group in time for the mission to happen. During the monsoon weather we had difficulty getting good signal communications from New Deli. Being a “ham” I knew about antenna design so I designed an antenna that was highly directional. We were surrounded by a bamboo forest. We cut down great big bamboo trees and made a huge mast in the form of a Rhombee. We designed a Rhombee antenna that we could point right a New Deli and that put a signal in there that was really like “next door.” Mr. Graham: Were you involved in intercepting Japanese messages? Mr. Spielberg: No, that was Intelligence. We had two jobs: Squadron communications – Setting up the whole telephone system for the squadron. We had a 48 drop switchboard to service the whole squadron. Not only the squadron, but also the tower and some of the other bases that were there. We acted like a base group as well. Mr. Graham: So, actually, if any airplanes had problems with their radio, you didn’t get involved with them? Mr. Spielberg: Oh yes. Mr. Graham: You did with them too? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. We set up a maintenance shack on the line where we did service the main transmitters and receivers that the radio operators used in the planes. Also the command receivers and transmitters that the pilots used to talk intra-plane, plane-to-plane. We maintained those and my guys got pretty good at learning to fix things. We did things that were not in the squadron’s table of organization. We would try to repair some equipment when we couldn’t get spares. We were always hunting for spare parts, and every time a plane would crash we would salvage everything that we could. We would cannibalize everything.

Παγε 13 οφ 23 Mr. Graham: We know that you send things in morse code, but in time of war don’t you have another code, a secret code, that you would use? Mr. Spielberg: We would transmit in morse code, we would send encoded information. Most of the times we sent things by the international morse code, but the messages were encrypted. Mr. Graham: I see. Even if the messages were intercepted they wouldn’t understand the language? Mr. Spielberg: That’s right. They would have to have a decoding machine. We had several levels of encryption at our base. One was for all operational messages, which were always secret, and that machine was like that enigma machine that you heard about. You would select a random code group on it and it would come up with some gibberish that no one could decode. Mr. Graham: That is what the Germans used? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. The Americans had a version of it too. It was almost like a standard system. When you set up your initial code it would spin the wheels in such a way that the message that came out could only be decoded if you knew the key to begin with. The key was changed almost every day. That was what we might call the strategic messages that we sent. Mr. Graham: That is what kept the Japanese from breaking our code. Mr. Spielberg: That’s right. Mr. Graham: We broke their code though. Mr. Spielberg: That’s right. We also had another level of code. When the pilot wanted to send a message about a successful mission, he had a strip code that was changed every day, but we were issued packets of that code. We would hand them out for each mission and then it would be changed after that mission. So even if they would break the code, with the next code was another one to be broken. It was pretty neat. The planes mostly maintained radio silence. The only

Παγε 14 οφ 23 time that they opened up was in a bomb run or something like that, such as telling – “go this way; go that way,” or occasionally they would report a successful mission back to the base in code. Very seldom in wartime would they report in clear text of any trouble. Mr. Graham: Was there any time that you recall that the Japanese were able to pinpoint their position when they did break radio silence? Mr. Spielberg: No, not that I know of. I don’t think there was that intelligence capability there. The real problem we had was making sure that our planes didn’t get lost. Besides the communication of messages, operational messages, our contact with the planes was only when they called us. We would seldom originate a message to a plane to ask them to break radio silence unless there was a change of the mission. Very seldom was there a change in the target. You talk about the groups we had – the maintenance group, the encryption group, the radio operator group. The radio operators were on duty 24 hours a day. It was a three shift operation. Mr. Graham: You oversaw all of that? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. Then on top of that, technically all of the combat radio operators reported to me, but really they didn’t because they stuck with their crew. Each pilot had a crew, and so they became buddies, and that was the operational unit that worked together. When a new combat radio operator came in, I would try to brush him up on his code. A typical radio gunner went to Scott Field for 3-4 months and they came out barely knowing the code and a little bit about how to use a radio code book, and how to shoot a machine gun. They were considered ready to fly combat. Mr. Graham: They didn’t know about rockets, missiles, etc.? Mr. Spielberg: We didn’t have rockets and missiles. I would try to give them about a week’s worth of training when they came in. I encouraged them to use their telegraph key in sending code because it was much

Παγε 15 οφ 23 easier to receive. It was difficult to receive a voice message over a weak system, with the interference of thunderstorms, etc. You have a hard time getting through. But, if you send code, there is a better chance. I would say that we had a few radio operators that wouldn’t use code because they never bothered to learn it well enough. We would have occasions where a crew would get into trouble and our radio operators would do their best to help them out. At that time we would use voice because they were too nervous to use code. We would try to help them find their way back. I tried one time to fix up a radio compass in our radio shack. I took a compass from a plane and set it up. It ran off of a battery, and I would tell the guy on the plane if he was lost to lower his trailing wire antenna, go on a low frequency channel in your transmitter and send a series of long dashes. I would try to see if I could find him on the compass and try to give him an orientation on how to find their way back. During the monsoons a lot of planes got lost. As a matter of fact, I went on a couple of flights where we got lost and I tried to track home. Finally, the pilot said, “There’s a hole in the clouds.” He would dive into the hole and then could spot the runway. Mr. Graham: How long were you on this assignment? Mr. Spielberg: Two and a half years. It was exciting. Every month we got a ration of beer. The beer was down in Calcutta. The squadron would send one or two planes down to Calcutta and pick up cigarettes, beer, PX supplies, etc. They would have a whole ration of American beer in cans that had come over. We sent two planes down there and they built a rack to go in the bomb bay to hold the supplies. They overloaded that plane, but as they came home the pilot was so enthused he got permission to buzz the field. He buzzed the field. The shackles broke and the whole load fell

Παγε 16 οφ 23 through the bomb bay doors and spilled beer all over the field. Mr. Graham: I guess that he wasn’t too popular of a fellow Mr. Spielberg: No. Everybody went out and grabbed the stuff. They said that we couldn’t drink the beer unless it was opened. It was opened, so...... It was a funny thing. I didn’t care for beer very much. I liked whiskey. I was raised in Kentucky for a while, so I used to like to drink Kentucky bourbon. The officers would get the whiskey and we would get the beer. I would trade with the officers. I would swap a case of beer for a quart of whiskey. Mr. Graham: That was a good swap. Mr. Spielberg: That’s how we would swap around. I used to love classical music. I still do. Every place that I could find some records, I would buy the records. The needle that came with the old Victrola that the Red Cross had given us was dull and so I decided I was going to build an audio amplifier. I used to do that at home. So I went looking for parts. I had just resistors and capacitors, small parts in the kits – the maintenance kits that came with our radio equipment, so I went to Calcutta one time and I found a cartridge, for a phono, so I bought two of them. I couldn’t find any power or audio transformers, so I wrote to my brother, who was an aeronautical engineer working at Wright Field. I said, “Bud, here is what I want you to buy.” I gave him the specifications for the audio and power transformer. I said, “Go down to United Radio in Cincinnati and buy two of everything and send it to me.” He did that. He had to take the transformers apart and put the cores in one part and the windings in another. You were only allowed to send packages of a certain size. About 3/4 of the parts got to me after about 2-3 months. I put it together and built a public address system for the squadron. I used to pipe music through that to the barracks. Every time a plane would crash, we would grab ear phones. I went

Παγε 17 οφ 23 to Calcutta and bought a speaker and we would wire it all up and I was piping music in. The only thing was that I would pipe in classical music and they would raise Cain with me. Mr. Graham: Where did you get your records? Mr. Spielberg: In Calcutta, in Karachi, wherever I could. Mr. Graham: Were those the 33 rpm? Mr. Spielberg: No, they were 78's. Mr. Graham: Oh, 78's. That’s right. Mr. Spielberg: They were breakable. When the squadron would move, I would pack them in with the communications gear. Since I was the Communications Chief, I had control of the packing. Mr. Graham: These records that you bought, were these local songs? Mr. Spielberg: You could go to a music store and find classical music, especially in a big town like Karachi, or Calcutta. The interesting thing is other things we had to do. The whole squadron ran on gasoline driven generators. There were two l0 kilowatt generators. They were driven by four cylinder, Ford engines. That was our main source of power for our radio shacks. Luckily we had two of them because the squadron was only authorized one. Because we had a group function in our squadron we were authorized two generators. Mr. Graham: You had a back-up generator? Mr. Spielberg: Yes, except the darn things were always going bad. I had a three kilowatt unit that ran the lights and power in our line maintenance shack, and that was going bad. Nobody had spares. The company that manufactured them was D. W. Owen up in Minneapolis. I wrote them a letter and said that I needed four piston rings for the generator because it was going bad. I got a hundred piston rings. I would get parts without going through channels. One time when we got to Kurmitola the British had a great, big diesel generator that put out 250 volts, 50 cycles. I said that I needed 115 volts, 60

Παγε 18 οφ 23 cycle. So I requisitioned a two-to-one step down transformer. It took about three months to get it, but they sent somewhere and found it. They sent me a big 10 kilowatt step-down transformer. We connected it up to the 250 volts and got it down to 125 volts, but it was 50 cycles. Our radio equipment in those days was not designed 50/60 cycles, it was designed for 60 cycles, which meant that it got hot when you put it on 50 cycles. So I sneaked into the station. They had an Indian guard and I got one guy to distract him, and I turned up the throttle on the diesel generator so it would spin faster and I could get the cycles up to 55 cycles. We had some other interesting things. We put up a wonderful telephone network. I had two linesmen; one was a former telephone linesman, and the other was a lumberjack that could climb trees. The lumberjack could string wires like mad, but he always got drunk. I had a hell of a of a time with him so after he screwed up enough I would put him on KP. He would be on KP for a while and then he would say, “I’ll be good, I’ll be good.” I would let him back on the job again. That would last a couple of months and it would happen all over again. Those were things that I just had to contend with. Mr. Graham: I would imagine that out in a isolated area you had to do a lot of things just to relieve the tension. Mr. Spielberg: Absolutely. We had movies every week. Many of the movies were played over and over again. The projectors never worked and I used to be able to fix movie projectors. The projectionists would yell “Spielberg.” I would go out there and tap the thing and it would go on. Mr. Graham: Was this your main assignment or were you assigned anywhere else after this one? Mr. Spielberg: The whole assignment I had in India was communications. I did go

Παγε 19 οφ 23 on two missions. During the time when the Japanese were moving up into Burma, they invaded India at Imphal (It is in a corner of India bordering on Burma.. The British and the Gurkhas (from Nepal) were fighting them and were pretty well surrounded. They needed ammo and supplies. Our squadron was pressed into service of flying around the clock. We were flying in supplies and bringing out wounded. The crews got exhausted and they asked for ground volunteers. I volunteered twice and I went on two missions. It was fun, but really scary too. We flew at night. Mr. Graham: What do you think was your most scary moment that you were in the service over there? Mr. Spielberg: The scariest moment that ever happened to me, strangely enough, was one that I almost got killed. It was one night, about two o’clock in the morning, and was time to change bands. You would change frequencies based on how long the communications went on. So around 2-3 o’clock in the morning it was time to change channels, and somebody screwed up something and the transmitter wasn’t working and they had to get on the air. They woke me up and said, “Come on down and see if you can fix it.” So I went down there and I said that it was time to change bands anyway, so I will change the band. I turned off the switch. When the red light goes out, power is off. I reached in to grab the coil, and “whammo!” See that little scar right there. The thing burned through my hand. I reached in there and pulled that coil out of the socket, leaped back about six feet, and I just sat there trembling . It smelled like a hot dog cooking. So I sat there and trembled for a while and saw that I wasn’t going to die. I wasn’t going to drop dead, so I went down to the medic and he poured some sulfa on my finger, bandaged it up, and I came back. Mr. Graham: Well, did they give you a Purple Heart for that?

Παγε 20 οφ 23 Mr. Spielberg: No. What I did do is I discovered that the thing wasn’t wired right. The red light was on the wrong side of the switch. It wasn’t on the power side, it was on the control side. So I rewired that and I wrote an unsatisfactory report on the relay. Mr. Graham: After you left there, did you say that you came back to the States? Mr. Spielberg: That’s right. Mr. Graham: Then what happened? Mr. Spielberg: I went on rotation down to Florida for R&R. But before I did that I went up to Wright Field and I applied for a transfer to Wright Field because my brother had been an aeronautical engineer there. They liked him because he was a good engineer. I met with a Captain and he said, “If you are as good as your brother, we want you.” So he applied for me to transfer to Wright Field. Instead of that, my orders were sending me back to the Pacific. I called the Sergeant and said, “Hey, what happened to my orders. I was supposed to go to Wright Field.” He got on the ball in Atlantic City and at the last minute they pulled the order off for the Pacific and transferred me to Wright Field. At that point I got married. We lived off-base at Wright Field. I worked in Research & Development. My assignment there was to design a radio receiver that would go into the tail of a bomb to guide the bomb. I worked for six months designing that receiver, finished the design, they called in vendors and checked out the specifications, and the war ended. Mr. Graham: You were at Wright Field when the war ended? Mr. Spielberg: Yes. Mr. Graham: OK. One last thing. Mr. Spielberg: When they looked at my service record, they said, “Hey, you have never shot for record.” I had a Tommy submachine gun when I went over there and a 45 caliber pistol. I had a rifle, a 30-01 Springfield, I shot all of those. They said it wasn’t in my service

Παγε 21 οφ 23 record. They said I had to go shoot. I told them I had never shot the carbine. They told me to go out at the range at Wright Field and shoot. I won expert. I always was a good shot because when I lived in Kentucky my cousin and I used to go out every week. He had a Colt Woodsman 22, and I had a 22. We would go out there and shoot all the time. I had no trouble making expert. Mr. Graham: Let me ask you one final question. Of all of your experiences, is there any one experience, or person, whatever, that really stands out in your mind? Mr. Spielberg: In terms of the war experiences? Mr. Graham: Yes Mr. Spielberg: It was all so eventful. I guess I was pretty scared on those two missions because somebody said, “Hey, there is a Zero coming in.” It was dark and I couldn’t see anything. Mr. Graham: Mr. Spielberg, on behalf of the National Museum of the Pacific War I want to thank you very much for your interview. We appreciate you taking the time. Mr. Spielberg: It was fun. Mr. Graham: OK. Thank you sir.

Appendage: Military History - MSgt. Arnold Spielberg - 15088831

Tape #924 Transcribed by: Wanda Cook Hunt, Texas November 15, 2003

Final editing: June 29, 2004

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