The An O R A L H I S T O R Y As Told By JOHN BOSIER 1 U.S.S. N A S H V L L E A World War II Oral History Experience As Told By John W. Bosier Chief Machinist Mate, Fire-Room Repair U.S.S. Nashville Recorded November 27, 2007 At Richland Public Library Richland, Michigan By Kenneth Baker i 2 Transcription by: Kenneth Baker Richland, Michigan Copies and permission to quote available from: State Archives of Michigan State of Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries 717 West Allegan P.O. Box 30740 Lansing, Michigan 48909-8240 www.michigan.gov Recording may be heard at seekingmichigan.org ii 3 Table of Contents Transcription pages 5 – 14 Ship History Pages 15 - 17 Bibliography Page 17 Oregonian Article Page 18 Note: The first bold numerals ( 00:57 ) are the elapsed time of the recording. The two bold letters following the bold numerals are the initials of the speaker. KB Kenneth Baker JB John Bosier iii 4 KB For the record what is your name? JB John Bosier, John W. Bosier. KB We are here to present an oral history of his time on the U.S.S. Nashville during World War II. I am especially interested in the time that they were engaged in the New Guinea War, especially in Los Negros Island. John can you tell me when you joined the Navy? 00:57JB January 1941. And I went to boot camp up to Great Lakes. After boot camp I went aboard the USS Anteries that was a transport and target repair ship for transportation to Pearl Harbor. Got out to Pearl Harbor and I was assigned to the U.S.S. Nashville but the Nashville was at sea at the time so I went aboard the Brookyn for four days then the Nashville came in and I went aboard the U.S.S. Nashville on May of 1941. About the 5th of May we left Pearl Harbor to escort three of those old battle ships to the east coast. Then in June of 1941 we escorted a convoy to Iceland when we took the first U.S. Marines up to Iceland and the destroyer Ruben James had been sunk up there by German submarines, in the North Atlantic and also they hit another destroyer the Kearney but that made it back into Iceland and while there we took on the firebrick and refactory off to use on our ship. 02:40KB Those were United States ships then prior to us entering the war? 02:42JB Yes. Right and Roosevelt give that order to shoot on sight any foreign ships. Then when we came back from Iceland we went around to the west coast and made up the task force that went to bombard when Doolittle went to bombard Tokyo. Well they, the Japanese patrol boat, spotted us early so they had to launch the planes earlier than they thought. We, the Nashville, sank two of the Japanese patrol boats and we picked up five survivors out there off those two boats. 03:43KB Japanese Survivors? 03:44JB Yeah. 03:44KB So this is now? 03:45JB 1942. 03:45KB When we entered the war. 03:49JB April of 42. 03:52KB Ok. What happened when war was declared? What happened to the Nashville? Start there then go around. 03:56JB Ok. We were in Bermuda when the war was. 04:01KB Ok. You weren’t anywhere near. 04:09JB No we was over on the east coast. 04:10KB Oh; lucky. 04:10JB Yes and took that second batch of Marines to Iceland. And then we come around to the west coast through the Panama Canal the second time we had been through the Panama Canal. 5 04:21KB Tell me about the canal. So you were going from the West side err the East side to the West side of the Peninsula there through the Panama. I didn’t realize it was that big you could take a ship that size back then. 04:42JB Oh yeah. So we went from the Pacific back to the East Coast the first time and then when we went back after the war started we came around to the West Coast and went into San Francisco and they were making up this task force to go out and bombard Tokyo. 05:04KB Right away then. 05:10JB We thought we were just escorting those carriers. They didn’t tell us where we were going until we were way out to sea. And, they said we would be fueling ships before we made our (unintelligible), on in, and if anybody didn’t have ten thousand dollars life insurance that you could carry that you could increase it because mail would leave the ship when we were fueling at sea. So! 05:42KB How did that make you feel? 05:44JB I upped mine to the maximum. Cause when I went in I only took out four-thousand dollars. 05:53KB OH OK. 05:54JB When we sank those two patrol boats they were wooden boats and our shells – we shot nine thousand rounds of six inch ammunition cause they were going right through em and there wasn’t very big pieces of wreckage left. And we picked up them five survivors and kept em on board. Then when we got back to Pearl Harbor they sent a Marine Higgins boat over with Marines to take the prisoners off and take them to – I don’t know where they ended up. But then we went back out and we were in on the capture and defense of Guadalcanal. 06:55KB Ok. When was that? (18 April 1942 added for clarity.) 07:00JB I can’t remember what dates it was. 07:02KB That first voyage, or you know, when you were first deployed you never went to the Japanese Islands, did you. That was. 07:14JB No. They was about six hundred miles off Tokyo. They wanted to get in closer but they wasn’t sure whether those boats got a message off or not. 07:30KB I see. 07:31JB That’s why they shot nine thousand rounds to sink em in a hurry. 07:38KB I guess I am amazed. I didn’t realize that we went after the Japanese right away with-in a matter of weeks and got with-in six hundred miles of the island. 07:50JB It was in April of 1942 and it was mostly a, to get the morale of the people. 08:01KB Go ahead I am sorry to interrupt. 6 08:01JB So then when we came back from there after we let off the prisoners then we went back out and started island hopping supporting island bombardment. 08:16KB In the South Pacific? 08:18JB Yes. Then we went up that one slot. We had a miss-fire in our one turret. See, we had a forty man Marine detachment on the ship. At that time the Marines all manned one turret from the powder room the shell room on up. Well they had a hang fire and it went off. 09:00KB What’s a hang fire? 09:02JB It didn’t fire and they opened the breech and then the darned thing fired and we lost our whole Marine detachment, was killed in that explosion. So they decided they wouldn’t put them all in the same place again. So they put the Marine detachment on the automatic weapons, one point one and forty millimeter guns along both sides of the ship. 09:37KB OK 09:39JB But when the Kamikaze hit us the plane came in and he was coming in and his wings were up and down and one wing hit one of the gun mounts and that jarred the bomb off the upper wing and it flew over on the port side of the ship and the plane and the other bomb lit on the starboard side. So. 10:07KB Is that a picture there of the. 10:09JB Yeah. 10:10KB OK. So one bomb, did I hear you right that one bomb on one of the wings went right over the top of the ship and that didn’t impact but the lower wing did eh? 10:17JB Both bombs... 10:24KB Both did. OK. What was the damage that did? 10:27JB We lost 138 men or something. 10:41KB Where were you when this happened? 10:42JB I was in the fire room and when that, we felt a hit and immediately water started pouring in from up above from out blowers and I reached out and tasted it and it was salt. I thought man this thing is going down and I thought nah it couldn’t happen that fast. What happened shrapnel had ruptured the fire main line above us. The concussions knocked our fires out. Because our fire rooms are under pressure to keep the fire in the boiler. We had to go through an airlock to get in and out of the fire room. Well the concussion knocked the fires out. The ship was dead in the water for about two minutes. Well then there was all kinds of stuff coming out of the blowers so I had to go topside with another fella and check and clear our blower intake. 11:54KB OK 7 11:55JB And air came down. Well got that cleared and I went back to the fire room.