>> Rolling cameras.
Legacy series. Cadenhead. Take 1.
This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Alton Cadenhead on Wednesday,
May 20th, 2015,
in the Social Sciences Building
at Kennesaw State University.
And Mr. Cadenhead,
do you agree to this interview?
>> Yes, sir.
>> Thank you. So let's start at the beginning.
I'd like to find out when and where you were born.
>> I was born on a farm.
Route to Chipley Georgia for identification,
and Chipley Georgia at that time,
was Chipley now it is Pine Mountain.
I was born about 5 miles north of there in Troup County.
I was born on a farm.
My people were farmers.
I am the oldest of
six children that came into that family.
>> And what's your full name?
>> My full name is Roy Alton Cadenhead Senior.
I have a junior.
>> So tell me your parents name.
>> My father's name was Roy Erastus Cadenhead.
No, I never heard of it either.
My mother's name is Amy Uvilia Catenhead.
Her maiden name was Bishop,
B-I-S-H-O-P. And they two were farmers.
And you understand that
all of this came about during
the Great Depression. You understand.
And so you'll find no doubt
that my life in that period of
time is centuries old
because it's hard for people
in the modern day that we live in.
It's hard for them to understand
what the Great Depression was and
how it did wear and
tear the human mind and the human physical body.
But it was true.
And I came up in the middle of all of this.
>> Was it something you were conscious of at the time?
>> No. I did not know any better because I had not been
into the world to know that there was a better world.
And everybody around me was in the same category.
So yes, you were poor.
But the gangs became who is the
poorest of all because everybody was poor.
It's hard for students to understand
today that there was no money,
no money available, period.
What little money you could gather and
collect had to be saved for medical reasons,
doctor bills, and so forth,
that every family was bound.
You all have always had a broken arm,
a hole in the head or it was
something wrong with you constantly,
and it would take medical advice to correct it.
There was no money, and
it's hard for students today to understand this when
there are loans on
every corner at a very low interest rate, sometimes.
Sometimes they're crooked, sometimes they're honest.
But it's hard for students to say,
well, why didn't you go to a loan and borrow some money.
Credentials, you didn't have it.
And so that added to the rigidity.
It added to all that was
necessary in that period of life.
And I'm not trying to be facetious, sir, either.
I'm telling you as it was.
And there's not many of us remaining
that came through that period.
So it will soon be history and the sooner,
the better because it was no way.
I apologize for this. I've gotten too
far away from you. You go ahead, please. [LAUGHTER]
>> No, that was a wonderful introduction.
I think that's what we're going for.
So talk to me a little bit about life
on the farm there in Troup County.
>> Well, the farm it
was not a money crop that you were thinking about.
It was thinking about food.
That what you could bring out of the Earth itself.
What you could bring out of
the animals that were around you,
was what you had for food.
And it was so difficult.
It was not just short distance.
It was not short time.
You were constantly, you would come in at night,
you were dead tired.
But tomorrow would start a brand
new day just like the one you completed.
So it was hard to find joy anywhere.
You only prayer and your hope prayer
was somehow I can find my way out of here.
There was not much that you could wanted to be.
You could be predestined that you were going to be here.
You're going to be a farmer.
The community would predestined you.
You're going to be there.
But it was a very, very difficult life.
I don't know if you've ever read
the book Grapes of Wrath, have you?
It tells you a little bit about what was taking place.
>> Well, can you describe the house
that you lived in as a child?
>> Yes, sir. There was four rooms.
There was a hallway right through the middle of
the house and two rooms on either side.
One room was, of course, was a kitchen,
where that was a family conference room
that was study hall,
that everything you needed to do.
The other one was your parents' bedroom.
And then on the other side of the hallway
was it was filled with children.
There would be three beds in each room
and you would have
a table in each room and you would study in that room.
Each one had a lamp,
please bear in mind,
there were no electricity.
When you finish studying, you
blow out your lamp and you go to bed.
No harassing, no tumbling,
no tearing, no pillow battles or
anything like that that you see today.
Because you knew you were going to need every ounce of
strength tomorrow that you had to shed today.
And you can't understand this.
I know I don't expect you to understand it,
but in those days,
you became adult at Age 10.
You work like adult.
You do everything as an adult.
You behave as an adult.
And so adulthood came on very
early and you abandon the teenage years,
which was formative years for you or for any person.
Those teenage years of where
you come to realize that you live with other people,
you need other people, other people need you
and you form what we call a community.
But when you go to work in
the morning like an adult
and you work till night like an adult,
there are no teenage years.
That doesn't make sense, does it? [LAUGHTER]
>> It's probably a
little less familiar to young people today.
Can you tell me about your early education?
>> Yes. In those days,
we could start school at Age 5.
And we were able,
if you could smart enough,
you could skip grades.
For instance, I made the
third and fourth grade in one year.
And there were only 11 grades, if you remember that.
You don't remember that, but there were just 11 grades,
which meant that you finished
high school at a very early age,
15 years, 16 years of age.
And which put you into the market.
As a former worker a
lot earlier in life than you would like for it to do.
But the educational years were good.
They were sound.
We had good teachers.
We had some of
the best math teachers that I've ever known.
I found in my school years.
The school principal normally was your math director and
I enjoyed him because he was
just a brilliant math teacher.
>> What was his name?
>> Patrick.
We would come into class and the room
had four walls and on each wall was a long Blackboard.
But before the class was over,
every blackboard was filled up.
It was that interesting calling
students to the board and
asking them to work this problem out.
And so I feel like that educational was sound.
We missed an awful lot.
When I go into a high school today and listen to
the students talking about certain subjects.
It's foreign to me.
We did not have a foreign language.
Our basic was science,
math, and communications.
If you could read,
if you could study,
if you had a good math aptitude,
somehow, you're going to find a place in life.
And so we worked on those. We knew that.
We had to work on it.
And there were no advisors to help you.
There were no counselors.
Sometimes you would could con a teacher and beg,
I do not understand.
And if you had a tear in your eye,
they might stop and listen to you,
and about three or four words,
they could clear up your matter,
and you were on your own again.
But I really, really
appreciate the early years of my education.
>> What was your best subject?
>> My best subject was math.
History was my second-best subject.
I loved it like a storybook.
But one subject that I really enjoyed was engineering,
what little branch of engineering that we had.
It planted in my mind that I
wanted to become an engineer.
I wanted to become a civil engineer.
Because I felt like there was so much wasted energy
on these farms,
it could be capitulated
and utilized to make life more pleasant for them.
>> And you said little inventions and projects,
which suggest well, be a civil engineer.
>> I had all kinds of quick get-rich schemes.
I mean, but because I was so interested in
civil engineering and the integer that was
in all the little streams
that was going across the farms,
I built a paddle wheel.
And I had that to bring to you today
that paddle wheel had five blades on it.
And each blade had one ounce steel ball attached to it.
And I would plant that in
the little stream and count the RPM.
Then I worked out a formula and I can't give you my head.
I had it written out for you.
But in the final summer
that was a square root of all this,
you did back here plus time 0.375.
And that gave me the energy
that was wasted in every stream that I was testing.
And then I was going to channel all of those into
one stream that went across our farm.
It was called Turkey Creek.
I would put back into Turkey Creek the dam
that the Civil War destroyed,
and I was going to sell energy to the community.
I didn't have a diamond in my pocket,
how would you going to do it at Z I had other dreams.
I got interested in perpetual motion.
And I built a unit that
would drop seven balls into a pocket.
And it would turn that wheel.
And as it turned, it would pull the ball back up.
I never was able to get the eight ball.
And when discussing this in class,
I was told again,
a unit will not produce as much energy as it uses.
And so I put that away as history.
But then I came up with an idea of how
the pharmas could use a lot of
the waste materials that are now being piled and burned.
I created charcoal I
created from that what we would call raw was a substance.
And there's just so much here at
waste that could be handled and so.
And so those were my dreams and my ideas that I
spent as a teenager,
as a young fellow growing up on a farm.
>> So when you were in high school,
I believe you transferred to the school at Pine Mountain?
Is that correct? And why did you do that?
>> It was simple. The school system
in Troup County went broke.
And when it went broke,
there was nothing to forward to
the teachers to compensate them.
So they all retired, resigned.
Schools shut down.
Well, Harris County was
where Chipley was in Harris County,
Pine Mountain was in Harris County.
And we went to Harris County to see
if it's possible for us to get
into school in Harris County.
And they said we'd be happy to have you,
but we cannot furnish transportation.
So we found an A model that we
could put together have
four wheels on it and a steering wheel.
That's about that's the limit.
And we could get transportation out of
that to Chip, and that's what we did.
We went to high school in Chip, Georgia.
>> And this is you and some of your siblings?
>> Yes. In fact, all the siblings.
We never went back to Troup County School System.
All the siblings graduated from
Chip High School because of that.
And it was a good move because
that school was so far ahead of what we were.
>> And you're in the area near Warm Springs?
>> I'm sorry.
>> You're in the area near Warm Springs.
>> That's correct. Yeah.
>> So were you aware that
President Roosevelt was visiting there?
>> Yes. Quick story.
As I say, I was studying civics in high school and Chip.
And the word came out that
President Roosevelt was at Warm Springs and he was coming
across Pine Mountain to Highway
27 and was going to Fort Benning.
So we turned out school and they
busted up to the top of the mountain.
And then President Roosevelt came along and
his old Ford car driving it himself.
And stopped the car,
talked with us as students.
>> I'm sorry.
>> And I became a Roosevelt follower from that day on.
That guy is going to lead us.
>> What was it about him that was so captivating?
>> Simplicity. He seemingly interest in in students.
And he was an invalid. Excuse me.
>> You need a Kleenex.
>> We'll redo this one day if you want to.
>> That's me.
>> There was so much about him that motivated you.
He was invalid, of course.
He was driving his car.
And he took time to talk to students.
And his language was for students.
It wasn't for the educators.
It wasn't for the businessman.
It was students. He would ask you about grades.
>> What's your favorite subject?
Why are you having problems.
>> Want to take a breath?
Let's take a break.
Just one second. You have to set it back up.
And then once they edit this,
they'll edit all that coughing out.
>> I hope you do.
>> You want to start the question again?
>> Whatever you want to do.
>> Let me start real quick.
>> I think we'll start back at
Roosevelt. You want to do that?
>> Fine. I'm sorry.
>> Good. Legacy Series,
[inaudible] hit Take 2.
>> So what was it that was so
captivating about President Roosevelt?
>> Well, first of all, was just simplicity.
And I thought I was talking to a man that
was deeply interested in me.
Not for what he could exert from it,
but somehow he could instill into
a person a certain energy that you didn't have.
And so I was moved with him and I was
a great follower of his even until his death.
But that was a great movement,
and it changed my life
because I went back and
I sat on the bank of my Turkey Creek.
And you'll have to forgive me for this silliness,
but Turkey Creek was our swimming hole.
It was our fishing lake.
It was a playground.
And I went back to study Turkey Creek and found
that Turkey Creek was named by the Indians
because of the turkeys
that were gathered around the stream of water.
And when the British came in and settled that area,
they continued with the name.
But I used to sit on the bank of
the creek to laugh, if you wish.
And I dropped things into the water.
And I'd watch it flow away.
And I would ask that water,
where will you be a year from now?
How did you get there?
Would you be at your beautiful sea
a year from now on some lavish beach enjoying life?
And Turkey Creek, you are my inspiration.
If the creator of the world can create
a balance and a gravity,
whereby you throw all the torsome crooks
of your schedule,
you can find your way and
find your way to your beautiful sea.
I can find mine.
Laugh if you like. But when you're
sitting alone, step forward.
My life has been wonderful.
Every year, I go back to Turkey Creek.
I sit where I sat 80 years ago,
and I talked to that same creek.
And I say to you,
we will rejoice together.
I too found my beautiful sea.
And so Roosevelt drop some seed somewhere.
And from that seed,
all of this began and I thought,
there's a way out of here that I know I can
find and be led out of here and
be meaningful for my life.
>> Wow. Well, thank you. That's really powerful.
So when you graduated,
you proceeded to college in LaGrange?
>> Yeah. I received
a scholarship from the Callaway Foundation.
You're not familiar with it.
We call them work scholarships.
If you qualified for
the scholarship and received the scholarship,
not only would you receive the scholarship,
but you would also receive a job,
so that when you were not in school,
you could work three months for money that
would carry you through the next three months in school.
Okay. And what a blessing that was.
And so I received that scholarship,
and I had a choice of schools I could go to.
I could have gone to Clemson,
I could go to Auburn.
But then the Callaway Foundation built a university.
It is part of the University of Georgia today.
It built the university.
And we could go there to school,
live much more economically
than we could at a university level.
So I decided I'd try that my first year.
Well, my first year went fine.
Everything was good.
But you know what happened
on December 7th when Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor,
the world stood still for a moment.
What are we going to do?
And I thought,
everybody is supposed to be doing something.
And so I decided I'm going to
analyze the major armed forces,
Army, Navy, Air Corps, and the Marines.
Of course, the Air Corps, if you remember,
was a part of the Army, at that time.
It was not the Air Force.
It was called Army Air Corps.
And so I studied and I found out
that the masses that you were in.
I may not be able to find my place in that mass.
And when I looked at the Marine Corps,
I thought the units are very small, very efficient.
This has to be my way.
And so I tried to join
the Marine Corps and I was turned down.
During all the farm work and sawmill work, and so forth,
I had injured this right foot and this calf of this leg.
It was about half strength of what it should be.
So they turned me down and I was quite disappointed.
So my Sunday school teacher was a doctor.
So I went to visit him and he said,
"Let me check a clinic that might be able to hip you."
And so he did and he aligned me
up with a clinic in Atlanta
that I would attend
Friday afternoon, Saturday and Sunday.
It would take a year
for it to redevelop all of these muscles.
And I would work on my work scholarship for four days.
And that went on for almost a year
and my right leg and foot was as strong as my left one,
and I thought everything was just fine.
So in 1943, I volunteered again,
and I was accepted into the Marine Corps at that time.
>> Were you traveling back and
forth between LaGrange and Atlanta?
>> No. I would check in.
I had an uncle that lived in Atlanta.
And he said,
you can live with us on weekends
and you just come and go to
your school or go to your clinic.
And so I was able to accomplish that.
>> Can you talk to me about
the general mood in the country?
We've spoken about this before.
I think when we look back on the war,
we think it's a good war,
and everyone feels that they're doing a good thing,
but was there great fear in those early years?
>> Yes. Can I explain some of it?
>> Please.
>> I think those of us who were old enough
to understand the word fear soon be able.
There was no television. You understand that.
All the news you had was was a radio
and you could pick up a newspaper someplace.
But we were losing cargo vessels up and down
our East Coast and the Gulf of Mexico.
There's 600 of them went down to the bottom of
the ocean from the German submarines.
I still have that story
where vacationers stood on the beach at Jacksonville,
Florida, and watched this German submarine
sink a cargo vessel just off of the beach of Florida.
So then on
the other side of the globe ocean for us was
the Japanese who were going to control the Pacific Ocean.
It was going to be fortified by
them and they would be controlled by them.
In January 1st, 1942,
The Rose Bowl game was transferred from Pasadena to
Duke University for fear that
the Japanese submarines would
shield the stadium from the ocean.
So what was transferred?
Am making sense, all of this adds up to what?
Fear, unsafe worrying conditions.
What on Earth are we going to do?
We're bottled up here.
And then we soon read the third right came into being,
as you well know and there were
three members, Germany, Italy,
and then Japan came on and signed in as part of
the third right and they were controlling the world.
Germany was going unstopped
through Europe even into North Africa.
And so it looked as if we were
doomed but here's what Hitler asked Japan to do.
I want you to keep America busy until I conquer England,
and he would have conquered
England had he not invaded Russia.
When after we've conquered England,
you and I are together will destroy America.
Now, if you say there's not fear in all of that,
the tactics were bad enough,
but conversation somehow put
icing on what they were trying to say.
And so it was that fear
and a teenage boy, what can you do?
Well, 11 million of us came
together to try to do something.
And one other thing that I pointed out to you
is there was a sense of guilt.
If you didn't do anything, you felt guilty.
Your neighbor, why is he still here?
Your neighbor looking at you,
students looking at you.
Why can't he find something he can do? That was not true.
They were not feeling that way,
that was me reading their minds,
I thought and I went even further.
This could even go down to
my children who were yet unborn.
And so I had to do
something and about 11 to 12 million others
felt felt the same way.
Is this making sense to you?
>> Oh, yeah. Definitely. So at that time,
you said you were initially turned down,
and so you began to build muscle mass and
you met your future wife in here.
Can you tell me about that?
>> On my work scholarship,
I would be assigned to
certain areas that I was to work in,
and mechanical drawings was
one of the big things that I had trouble with,
but I finally mastered it and I became good at that.
And so that's where I would work.
They would send me somewhere to make
drawings of certain things.
And I was going through one day
and I looked up to the office window
and an angel had sat right there by the window.
That was the most beautiful girl
I'd ever seen in my life.
A fellow named Will Hurston from
Troup County was on the same program I was on.
And I stopped Will and I said, Will,
have you seen that girl in the back office?
Yes. And let me clue you in.
Her father is one of the managers and look at you.
And I looked at me and I said, okay.
And I blew out the candle.
But somehow, I'll pass with cross,
I'd be carrying messages or doing something and I'll
pass would cross and she stopped me one day and she said,
are you still in school?
and I said yes.
What's your plans? I said I'm like everyone else.
I have no plans.
Everything is hanging in
the balance on whatever
happens to me in the military forces.
And we talked and talked and we
became friends and her parents
didn't necessarily like it.
And I can understand that.
I certainly do but somehow,
I found another Roosevelt.
I found another inspiration.
So I've got to get out of
here and get going with my life.
And so we became close friends
and we all understood her family,
my family, everybody understood
that I was going into the military.
I talked to her father about it and I said,
let me tell you this I
pulled everything out of my pocket,
laid on his desk and I said,
everything I've got in the world is right there.
On the other thing I have
is that old Ford automobile
out there that I use going to and
from school but I'm going to tell
you someday that will not be the end.
I'll see that that happens.
He said, well, you may not make it back here.
I said, well, that's very
true but I have asked her the same.
I posed this question for her,
what will you do if I do not make it back?
And she says, I'll be like
the other thousands of young ladies
who husbands also failed to make it back.
I said I'd rather you ask
her the question and let her answer.
So everything was in limbo and we were back and forth
and when things were going just
right for me physically and in school.
We married and we had six months
together before I again volunteered for the Marine Corps.
>> How old were you and how old was she when you married?
>> Eighteen.
>> So that was about 1942?
>> Yeah.
>> And you're still married today?
>> Still married today, 72 years.
And she's just as beautiful today as she was then.
I'm talking too much, you go.
>> [LAUGHTER] No. So you said
you tried again with
the Marine Corps and then you were accepted?
And so you transferred to Parris Island?
>> Yes. See, the Marine Corps at
that time was part of the Navy.
I went to the Navy building in Atlanta to be sworn in.
And there was 10 hours from
Georgia who were sworn in the same day.
We were loaded on a Navy bus
and transferred to Parris Island, South Carolina.
And from the distance of Atlanta to Parris Island,
we all became friends
and we were from different parts of the state.
And I thought this is not going to be that bad.
We've got a wonderful fellowship here.
And it will surpass a lot of
the problems that I know I'm going to have.
But we pulled into Parris Island.
The bus door opened,
and a big old sergeant crawled in the bus
and went all the way to the back without saying a word.
And then you said, get off of this bus,
you could have heard him in North Carolina.
Well, then we had a problem.
It was a jam at the door.
Nobody could get out of.
And it was four days later
before I realized I was married.
I tell you, that was rough.
But if you are physically fit and you take
mentally alert, you can make it.
Otherwise, you can't make it.
>> But what were you going through in those four days?
>> Well, there was no walk and I was running.
They [inaudible]. Somehow, they
forgot that man was made to walk.
And everywhere you went,
you ran at full speed.
The first thing Monday morning,
all this happened on Sunday and first day
at Parris Island was on
Monday and there was no rest,
no sleep, but we thought tomorrow will be a new day
and we'll be a part
of the Marine Corps and things will be different.
Shower was to be at six o'clock.
And so instead of six o'clock,
they came in and everybody up four blowing the whistle.
They had swagger sticks in
those days and beating on the furniture, out of here.
Well, some of us wound up
with a wrong shoe on the wrong foot,
all those things, but we made it out of there.
Then we had to go get our haircut.
And it was just a slick of that tabletop.
And then there was another thing you had to go into.
You run through this shallow branch, you would call it.
And in that, it would kill all diseases,
remove all half from your body.
I mean, it was that strong.
And and invariably, you're going to fall.
And they want you to fall and you want to fall
into this water and you come up spitting and spurting.
You don't know whether you can breathe or not,
but whatever the chemical was in it.
Then we mowed over they gave us clothes.
It was only two sizes too small or too big.
And so we got the uniform,
but the uniforms on and then we had to
run and pick up a rifle.
And so everything we did was in motion.
And humanity, carrying, helping,
I was not in the language.
But it took me a long time
to really understand why all this was going on.
And so when I did understand it,
and they don't want you to reason it out yourself.
But they've got to flush out of you.
We joined the Marine Corps.
We saw the blues, dressed blues.
We saw the parades,
we saw the marching bands.
Oh, what an elite crowd.
But that was not the Marine Corps we joined.
And so we had to get rid of all of that,
wipe out all of that from
us and let them build us from bottom up.
The first thing you've got to learn to do
is not question a command.
If it said fly, try to fly.
And that's what you had to learn to do.
And you could not do that if you had
some of this other stuff and it was compound altogether.
But we made it.
The first last three weeks of
the [inaudible] 12 weeks long.
The last three weeks it's spent on the rifle range,
and you have to qualify 45 Smith submachines,
you had to automatic.
And your primary rifle was what we call on M1.
And you had to qualify with all of these and
M1 was a real major factor.
You had to qualify at 500 yards, 300 yards,
200 yards, prone position,
kneeling position, and standing.
The last day that you were there,
all of the qualification went
through and there was no second chance,
no trial, you can't try again.
And they were frighten the heck out of us
because if you don't qualify,
you wind up on guard duty
somewhere or you wind up on mess duty.
Those days, every branch of service had its own cooks,
its own mess duty.
And so who wanted to do
that until the war ended and we didn't know how long.
So everybody was trying their best to qualify.
To qualify, you had to shoot what we call a 280.
Expert then was 290.
287 was sharp shooter.
Now, that sharp shooter you would get $10
a month extra for one year.
For expert, you would get $15 extra.
To heck with all of that,
all I want to do is qualify.
But I had a good day
and I like two points shooting an expert.
But I was glad I qualified.
And so at graduation,
you receive your grades,
you receive the Marine Corps emblem,
and you will no longer a recruit, you're a Marine.
And then, of course,
you were headed up to Camp Lejeune for advanced training.
>> So you headed to Camp Lejeune.
And how far is that from Parris Island?
>> It's in North Carolina.
It's not very far.
Well, Camp Lejeune is in
the upper part of North Carolina.
>> It's right there on the coast.
>> Because you have beach landings there.
And you had a 10 day furlough.
Well, 10 days you spend one day getting home.
Then you got to spend Day 10 getting to Camp Lejeune.
So you only had eight days.
And by the time I spent time with my parents and with
her parents and there was no time left.
And they took me to catch a train to Camp Lejeune.
And I said goodbye to my beautiful wife.
And it dawned on me, I may never see her again.
So it was all night traveling to
Camp Lejeune on the train
and there was no sleep, no rest.
And then I blame myself for it
all because I didn't have to do it.
I had been refused.
Why were you so anxious to get in?
I didn't have the answers for myself.
But anyway, we got to Camp Lejeune and I met
my friend named
Roland Bin from [inaudible] Massachusetts.
And he was the best friend that I ever had in this world.
Just so quiet, so intelligent.
I just enjoyed being with him.
And we were like brothers
until we were both wounded on the same day.
And he took me under his leave
and guided me because he had had ROTC in high school,
and he knew a lot more about things than I did.
And so it was Camp June,
of course, you were human beings.
You were treated as humans.
But you had to understand
you were in the killing business.
And what you're going to take here,
is to make you qualify,
to make you resistance,
and you're going to be able to conquer
the enemy rather than have the enemy conquer you,
but you're going to have to listen
to every word that's given to you.
Make sure you understand every bit of
your training because when you leave here,
the enemy will not be
a fellow Marine enemy is going to be the enemy itself.
Camp June was a different training.
You would hand-to-hand combat
you were wrestling with someone, the enemy.
You had a knife, he had a knife
and you had to work
because until you felt his body go limp.
And when you felt his body go limp,
you knew that you were the winner.
I know that's ugly training.
I know that's dirty training,
but that was necessary.
Same thing with bandit training.
Sticking a bandit in a man and
a human would not be an easy task.
But you had to put all of
that rest and make
sure that the other burner didn't come into you.
So that's the training that we had.
We had you had to go
out at night on what we call a three legged asthma.
You had acas and you had to accomplish all three asthmas.
Was it easy though?
Did people get lost? Yes. We get
lost and we'd find some of them the next day.
But it was not an easy task.
But Camp June made
the difference and they had an understanding with you.
If you don't think you're
qualified for the killing business,
now's the time to drop out.
But no one dropped out.
>> So they gave you that option.
>> They gave you the option.
But I remember one
of the captains making a statement how true it was.
He says, "You training is going to be so so strict,
your training is going to be so
filled with everything that it
needs that one day without thinking,
you're going to be able to accomplish
a mission and you ask yourself,
why did I select that weapon?
All because of your training."
And could we take a break just a moment?
>> Sure. Cameras like series, head take three.
>> San Diego was just a temporary place for us.
It took us four days to go across
the nation because we went up and down, up and down.
It was hard to realize where we were.
But we reached San Diego
and they had put a temporary camp up for
us on the side of
a mountain and it rained every day and every night.
And you had to tie your shoes to
your bunk because if you didn't,
they had to wash away and you had to go to
the bottom of the hill to get your
shoes the next morning.
But we were only for four days,
a nd they woke us up at 4:00 one morning and said,
get dressed, bring all of your equipment.
And they trucked us to the harbor and we went aboard
a ship to went up to San Francisco,
and there we joined
the convoy that would be headed to the South Pacific.
>> So you were in the third Marine Division?
>> That's correct. Ninth Marines, which is a regiment.
>> Can you describe that organization of divisions?
>> In World War 2,
the Marine Corps assignment was quite
different from what it is today.
There was six divisions in the Marine Corps.
Every one of them was a separate entity.
They had the total equipment ever need
they had was pill for them to fight alone.
Each division had a home-base somewhere in the Pacific.
Now, our beginning base was in New Zealand.
The two of the divisions
had home off of the Hawaiian Islands.
It was just that and you would you go out on a mission,
whatever your mission might be.
And once you have fulfilled
that mission had secured the mission,
you'd come back to your home base.
Replacements would come in from
the states and you start training again as a unit.
>> And in that way, it's different
from the European theater?
>> That's correct. Totally different
and It worked well
because what we had to do was to,
you know, we lost everything in Pacific Ocean.
The Japanese got down to almost on
the shores of Australia and
they had to be stopped because
President Roosevelt made the statement
if we don't stop them,
they take Australia and New Zealand,
I don't know how much longer the war will last,
what the course might be.
>> So your division was based in New Zealand originally?
>> Right.
>> And can you tell me about the mission to retake Guam?
>> We lost Guam, as you're aware,
that we lost Guam during 1940, earlier 1942.
And there were three islands in the Marianas,
Guam, Saipan and Tinian.
All were huge islands.
And all would become future basis for the B29.
And so those islands had to be retaken.
And so we came
from the states to join the third division.
We would become the third Battalion,
and we would land on Guam as part of the third division.
Can I go through a mechanic?
This is a routine.
The night before you land,
you always have services in the galley of the ship.
You listen to the chaplains.
And then after the service is over,
you find your friends,
you shake hands with them and wish them well.
Hope everybody will make it it.
And then you go back to your bunk on the ship.
And you make sure the equipment is right again.
Everything is up to Paul.
You've got five bandoliers of
ammunition and you've got eight hand grenades.
All of that's got going in with you.
And then you're supposed to sleep.
But before you go to sleep,
you're supposed to write a letter to home.
The letter would be written as if you didn't
make it. I know it.
I'll explain it, but you would write the letter.
You couldn't say, I'm going
into combat again and I know
I'm not going to That's not it.
I understand that we're heading into combat again
and this could be difficult.
But I want you to know if I don't make it,
this is what I want you to do with your life.
You give the letter to the chaplain.
If you make it, he gives you a letter back.
If you don't make it,
he mails that letter so that the family gets
it before they get the document from the war.
And that mother and that father and that wife,
whoever the case may be,
will simply say he knew he was not going to make it.
That's the reason he wrote this letter,
and it softens them.
It's a terrible thing when you get that telegram,
we regret to announce to you that your husband,
so and so, or your son,
so and so was killed in action.
And that's about as cold as it can be.
But they get this letter first,
and that's a Marine Corps theory that they
would survive the blunt
a lot better if they had a letter from you.
So you write the letter, and of course,
you're supposed to sleep,
and you're not going to sleep.
You're going to be back up on deck
at 5:00 the next morning.
And they tell me we had breakfast. I don't remember.
Somebody said they had steak and eggs,
but I didn't say.
But anyway, at 8:00,
we're supposed to be in the landing craft.
And you go down the cargo net into the landing craft,
and the landing craft will circle
there until all the crafts are loaded.
Then they form the waves and you go in.
There's an awful lot of sea sickness
because in those small landing crafts,
they are tossed about in
the ocean and you can become seasick very easily.
And people say, look,
boy, he's scared to death.
He's about vomiting his head off.
It wasn't fear.
He was seasick.
And I've corrected so many people making that statement.
I said, no, I've been where he is.
I know what caused it.
But then you go in by waves and you land. Bear in mind.
This is the first landing with your friends.
Ten of us were from Georgia.
One did not hardly make it out of the water.
When the ramp came down on
the landing craft and
the machine guns opened up on the shore,
you were there before guiding everybody.
And one man fell,
and then another fell to fan fell before you got.
We had a water tower to our right.
We were supposed to make it to
that water tower and reassemble.
Reassemble is a word
because these fellows who dropped out here,
you were in teams.
Each team had a part to play.
Each member of that team had a part to play.
If he was missing,
the team was missing.
And you wind up
sometimes only two members of your team there.
Somebody else has to come together and reform your unit.
And so that's what we were to do at the water tower.
When we got to the water tower,
it was is expected.
So many were missing.
And at that point, we were to
trap a village called a gamble.
We were told it was the most beautiful village
in the Central Pacific.
All old buildings from years ago,
the streets would be narrow.
Some of them would be cobblestone,
and they did not want to destroy that.
So we entrapped what we
thought was a gala and what we entrapped
was a group of Japanese Marines,
which is the finest fighting unit they had.
And that village was infested with them.
Well, here we are.
We're going to try to save the village.
But then to our rear was a mountain.
At the base of that mountain,
they had dug cavities.
And in those cavities were mortars and machine guns.
So here we were between the two of them.
And we were falling.
And the tanks had not landed,
so they could not help us.
We called for the ships to help us if they could shell
to our rear and they did what they could,
but the accuracy was not that good.
And then we got permission to
use flame throwers on a gala.
And we luckily let us use flame flows,
but we burned that city down.
The only thing left standing
was the front of the Catholic Church.
Everything else was rubbish.
Then we had to turn
the night courts before
we could get this mountain here quieted.
And so we dug in,
knowing that they were going to make a counterattack,
and we would try to hold what we had salvaged that day.
And certainly, help would be on its way tomorrow.
So we did, we dug in,
we fought off the attack they had that night.
We were able to use we had browning
automatic rifles and machine guns and they
were very effective and stopping the enemy.
And so Dawn came for
the second day and
we were told that the tanks were on the way.
The tanks came in and we used the tanks
to help us clean out the mountain cavities.
And that made that gave us room to maneuver,
I gave us room really to re-establish and then on,
it was a different battle for the Island of War. Okay.
>> One where you had the advantage?
> We had the advantage.
Guam was a very large island,
as I said previously,
and we were able to make additional landings,
which would come in behind them.
They had the heavy artillery that they had recessed
into the sides of
mountains periodically throughout the island.
And those things were deadly.
And so we had to break up into units.
Forget about the machine guns.
We got to knock out those heavy artillery guns.
And so we went to work on that.
Tune was scheduled to take on
a heavy artillery that was far to our right.
And we circled it, we thought.
But then we heard the most unusual whistling.
What are we listening.
And everybody knew it was a trap,
so he just fell.
The whistling continued Dayton commander,
Caitlyn and take your two squads
and find that whistling and see what it is.
So we did we pulled ourself up
to edge of the cliff looking over that cliff.
It was a little Guamanian boy.
I looked like he was 67 years old.
Up in the top of one of those coconut farms,
chopping away the cabbage.
That was part of their diet from that tree.
And he was whistling.
I don't want to set the world on fire.
I just want to start a flame in your heart.
You never heard it, but it was very popular in my day.
And for 20 seconds, I was back home.
And we're not going to disturb that young fella
because the war is 10,000 miles away from him,
but he didn't know it it's right at the root of his tree.
So we backed away,
continued our circle until we found
this heavy artillery and
we took mortars and knocked it out.
So that was from day 1,
that's the type of battle that we had to
fight on the island of Guam.
Every inch of it had to be
circled and taken circled and taken.
And it took 30 days to do it.
>> And once you taken Guam,
then did you return?
>> No, let me go further.
We were told the night before we landed that we will
not return to New Zealand.
Guam will come the home base
for the third Marine Division.
Administ is going to move his headquarters
from New Zealand to a Guam.
Guam would become part of the Navy.
We would have nothing to do with it.
We would be given a home base,
and a new base would be built for us.
And so we understood that.
And that's exactly what happened.
The CVs came in and what's your home base.
It's just a bunch of tents with dirt floors.
That was your home.
And so Guam became our home base.
And when we leave Guam,
go out from the mission,
we come back to Guam.
But it was a beautiful is home.
Oh, it was beautiful.
It filled with coconut palms,
banana groves, pineapple orchards.
I remember one afternoon,
we were moving up to take a banana farm.
And the machine guns opened up on us and
the most wonderful odor you can imagine,
we all of course you fall
to the ground when that happened.
We silence the machine guns and come to find we
went to pineapple and old machine gun bullets that
just sawed up the pineapples
and that's what we were experiencing.
But Guam became my home base and it was a beautiful.
>> Well, let's proceed to the next invasion.
Iojima, can you talk to me about,
the lead up to that and
the details in the same way
that you've talked about Guam?
>> Well, first of all,
you had replacements coming in from
the states to replace all the people.
Three of my friends from Georgia were buried on Guam.
We had to reorganize
and then go back through training again.
But the training this time was
so different and that it was such a man to
man hand to hand,
you would be graded so many feet yards from you,
there would be a circle.
And you had to time your grenades.
If you wanted them to explode when they hit
the Earth or if you wanted to
explode a yard above the earth,
you had to count when you release the spoon.
And you did count a little fast sometimes,
[LAUGHTER] but all of that was new training for us.
And we had these new people coming in from the states
and they have 1,000 questions and rightly so.
But we enjoy enjoyed them
and we went back through training again
this time to be what we thought would be
some island where it would
be fighting the Japanese themselves.
And so the message came down one day,
take all your personal items and return them home.
There'll be a tent set up above your company,
take them up there, they'll handle them
for you and return everything home.
Well, by then I did that.
We gathered everything it was
personal photographs, anything.
And we returned sent up there and returned them home.
And as we came out of the tent,
we saw a jeep coming up the trail it was not a road.
And on the front of that jeep was a piece of plywood,
had five stars on it.
So finally, I stopped.
This is something important,
and it was a moms. And he came up.
He just stopped a jeep momentarily and said,
Good luck, Marines and he drove off.
The only time I ever saw him, but was there.
And so we went back and the next day,
pack your see bag and leave it.
Somebody will take care of it for you.
And trucks are going to pick you up,
and this is what you're to carry with you,
so on. And that happened.
We went aboard trucks and then went
aboard ships from Guam.
And there's another 1,000 questions,
where we're going this time.
Nobody knew. Every sailor
wanted to ask you the same question.
Do you know where you're going?
No. But we would
see two days and we were told what our mission would be.
It would be a small island called Iojima.
And up on the top deck, there's a rough cop.
And three hours each day,
we had to go up and study that.
Each one of us had a minute to
map of the island was given to us.
And then we would show
us where we would land on the island,
what our first mission would be,
where you would be at the end of the first hour
at the end of the first day.
It was to be a three day mission.
So we went through that schooling,
and then they came back and said,
there's going to be three divisions,
third, fourth, and fifth.
The fourth and fifth will land on the 19th,
you will be held in reserves.
So that was okay with us.
So when 19th came and the night before we went through
the same ordeal that we went through
with before we landed at Guam,
that was a procedure that was followed.
And then before the 19th
was over the middle of the afternoon,
they made the announcement on the ship that
the 19th Marines will
land tomorrow morning at eight o'clock.
Well, it must have been a rough day.
And it turned out it was a rough day.
And so next morning,
we want to aboard the landing craft,
and we thought was the ship was so new, so different.
The landing craft would be pulled up to the deck.
You'd get on landing craft would be let no cargo nets.
Well, it didn't work.
So over the cargo nets, we had to go.
The sea was extremely rough.
And the cargo landing craft would come way up,
the Cargo net would drop between
the landing craft about that time it would slam against
[NOISE] the ship and
anybody caught in that it was dangerous for them
and two or three men were
lost at that particular time for that.
And so when we all got landed and we went in,
we were forced to land on Red Beach.
But the landing areas on that island was so limited.
Until the Japanese knew it.
They knew what our problems would be,
and they were so accurate with the weaponry.
Until they just kept that beach pounded.
Go in the next morning at eight o'clock,
landing craft would blow up.
Shield would hit it.
And this is going to be rough.
And what we were supposed to do we were to land and
we were supposed to head to the first airstrip.
First of the three.
And we would land before we got to the airstrip,
we would have stop at a so called wall,
which is nothing but volcano ash.
And when we reached it, we
didn't have near all of our people.
First man to fall,
he didn't make it in.
It was my platoon commander.
I thought the world of him.
He was a young fellow from State of Virginia.
And the night before, he said,
now I want everybody to give me
a note of somebody at your home that I can contact.
You are going to make it fine.
But I want to be able to contact them for you.
Not one dumb skull
thought about getting his home phone, home address.
And he was the first man to fall.
If you've ever seen a man cut into,
it's a horrible sight.
If you've ever seen a body lay in
one place and a head lay in somewhere else,
it too is a horrible sight.
And when you had one of your friends to fall,
and you wanted to stop him and help him but you
couldn't stop for anything you had to keep moving.
And I know that some of those men
maybe we could have helped, but we couldn't.
We were so thin that night.
Because of the losses had been so great.
Sometime during the night,
I began to swell up around my stomach.
Oh my God. I've been hit.
How am I going to get hit this time of the night?
And I reached down and I still had my life belt on.
We had these waistbands,
had a little cylinders in you,
all you do you mash it and it would inflate it for you.
We were supported off on the beach.
That was the first time I thought about it
but somehow I had ruptured those cylinders in
that beach and I
wonder how many people looked at that life belt
and said why did
that nut wear that life belt all way up here?
But I did. But there's no way to
explain the drudgery that was adjusting.
You come to the point that you
understand and you begin
to believe nobody's going to get off this island alive.
Why is this real estate so important?
Just to give you an example,
6,800 Marine died on that island.
Another 22,000 were wounded.
Now, you put the math to it.
And you'll find out in
the 33 days it took to quiet that island.
With those losses, you were losing 1,000 Marines a day.
And so who could consider
himself to be fortunate enough to live through it?
You just gave up the thought.
I'm going to do all I can before my day comes.
>> And you were one of those Marines to sustain injuries?
>> Yeah.
>> Correct. And what were those injuries?
>> This right here. I had two injuries.
I was wounded in this arm at
the second air strip. The frat arm.
And the corpsman said,
you know how short we are.
I can send you back.
But if I can bandage that arm for you
and I look at it every day, can you stay on?
I said I'll do my best.
So I did. That was the second a strip.
We finished the second a strip,
moving toward the third a strip,
which was under construction.
And we thought everything behind us was clean,
but the machine guns opened up on us.
There we were out in front being fired on by two fronts.
And my platoon commander said,
can't add you and Byron, work yourself back.
And if that is a machine gun, silence it.
If it's coming from a cave blow it. So we did.
We worked our way back.
I had a brown and automatic rifle and Byron
said now fine in that cave,
as long as you can, let me throw this charge in.
So we got pretty close to the cave
and I was fine with all my ability.
He threw in the compositions.
C2 is what we were using.
It was called a satchel charge.
It looked almost like an old bookcase you wear on
your shoulder and use that strap for velocity.
And we had been taught
to either put him down at low altitude or high.
If you go in midway,
they'll catch him and bring him back out.
Well, Byron was doing all he could.
The fire was so heavy until he threw it
in and it hit a rubber band right back out,
it came, we couldn't get out of the way.
When the corpsman was working with me,
and I asked him about Byron and he said Byron is dead.
I was stunned yes,
because he was the best friend I had.
And the corpsman said,
I'm going to pack your head in oil.
And if I can pack it in oil
and I can change the oil daily,
can you stay in here for a while?
And I knew we didn't have
a third of the men that we needed.
I said, yes I'll try it. So we did.
And I fought the rest of
the battle knowing that Byron was gone.
But that happened not to be true.
But we fought and we fought and we fought,
we took every foot of the island.
Of the 10 of us from Georgia there
was only two of us remaining.
The others are buried on Tinian Guam.
And so it was a battle that just utterly destroyed you.
Mentally, physically, you were defeated because you were
so tired and so
weary and fatigue had really taken its toll.
And I had my own little prayer service every night.
I call it my silent prayer.
And that night, I would pray for
every one of my buddies who I saw
fall that day because I
knew their parents would soon be getting letters.
And life must start anew,
regardless of who you are,
there were some plans for you,
and those plans are no longer there.
Something else has to work.
And I would close my prayer with Ara,
my wife named Ara.
If tomorrow will be my day,
I pray that the Lord will be with her,
help her to turn life around,
turn a page,
and start over again.
There were several things that happened that I remember.
The Japanese were fortunate enough to
slip through the fifth division,
work their way all the way back
to the beach that we landed on.
And the Air Force had brought in P-51 pilots.
The P-51 was a new plane.
They had brought in 50 pilots for these planes.
They were to accompany the 29s from the islands of Guam,
Tinian to Japan, protect them and then drop off,
let them go back to their base.
Well, the Marine Corps tried to get
those men to sleep in fox holes, they didn't want that.
No. Can't you put us up a tent?
So the CBS put up tents for them.
And the Japanese came in and they
slipped a tent. They could hear talking.
They slit a tent inside a grenade.
They killed 21 pilots that night in those tents.
Well, that changed the schedule some.
And then from then on, every night,
the battalion would select two people,
and you had to work your way into animal territory.
Call in every 10 minutes to somebody in your base
and tell them if you recognize
or hear the movement of the enemy.
The Japanese were loud
warriors.They had so much tin on them
until they rattled a lot.
And so we would call in.
I called in one time and this fellow said, who is this?
This is Kate Ned.
Listen to this.
And I listened. You don't know anything about this,
either before your day.
But singing Sam who advertised for
the Coca-Cola was singing.
And Lord, I just said, here I'm.
10,000 miles from home.
I'll never make it home,
and I'm listening to my favorite singers.
And he said, don't mention this.
So the next day, I knew who it was
and his name was Osaski.
He was head of the machine gun platoon,
and I said, lieutenant, how
on earth did you do that last night?
Now, before daylight, you had to leave the enemy,
come across to your land.
And if you got caught in either place,
you could be wiped out.
But he said,
I was contacting the ship
that was going to help us today.
And this came in.
And I had to listen to some of it.
I said, don't ever mention this.
That's our secret, fella.
Someone will ever know it.
>> So when you had completed the mission on Evo Jima,
where did you go from there? Is it back to Guam?
>> Back to Guam.
>> So did that complete this active service for you?
>> Yes. We didn't know it at that time.
But we went back to Guam.
I had some photographs I wanted to bring to
you that the chaplain had given me.
Morale, can you imagine how low it was?
Everybody was on a crutches.
I had a bandage of some kind.
And everybody had to go to the hospital which was
just a halfway tent
to have your wounds treated and so on.
And I was in there one morning and Corman
said Kate Ned, Benard is here.
I said, no, Benard is dead.
No, I talked to him this morning
and he wanted to know if I'd heard from you.
I told the doctor about it and he said,
well, come on, let me take you to him.
So he took me to Benard.
He was bandaged up. He had two eyes.
That's all you could see.
And he was still burnt.
And he said, I can't wait.
They're going to put instruments in my head,
and I'm coming back to you in it.
I said, Benard,
you've made my day, buddy.
You've made my day,
but it didn't work.
I talked to his wife.
We corresponded for a long time after the war,
but then schooling,
families pushed everything to the back bottom.
And we failed to communicate for a few years,
but four years ago,
when the Internet came on,
you can find out anything.
And I was trying to find his home address,
home phone number or something
where I could make contact.
And my daughter was able to secure that.
I called his home and I talked to his wife.
And she said, Benard has been dead 10 years.
I said, did he ever get any relief from his head?
She said, he was in misery until he died.
He was such a brilliant young man.
So that was just sad.
But we reformed again.
People came in from the states
to beef up our units again,
put us back to maximum strength.
I was sitting in my tent one night,
and who should come walking in
my tent but my DI from Parris Island.
I looked up I said fella,
how many times have I said,
if I ever got the opportunity,
I was going to shoot you?
[LAUGHTER] He said, you wouldn't do that.
I said, boy, there were
times when I'd just be happy to do it.
But we became friends.
And he helped me through this inhumanity that was going
on Parris Island and
I better understood what I had endured.
We became friends. He came in
my tent one night grinning like
the cat that caught canary and I said,
why are you so full of smiles?
He said, I'm going back to the States.
I said, you just got here.
Yeah, but I'm going back to OCS.
He said, give me your wife's letter and
address and let me write her.
I can tell her some things about you, that you can't.
Sensors were cut out everything you write.
So I did and he wrote her
a nice letter and it's still in the father home.
But we had
been out on a training mission one afternoon.
This was in August.
We went back to Guam on April.
By the way, to get back to Guam,
we had to go out landing craft again
five miles out to sea drop over a cargo net.
I know I'm boring these people to death.
>> You're good.
>> And you grab onto
that cargo net and they swing up on the deck.
In mid-air we had an air.
And everybody just dropped to the deck of
the ship and try to find something to get beneath.
And one of these huge hoods for moving the air,
I called on it.
There was a young man under
there from headquarters company.
He said, "Kelly, did you hear about the
president?" I said, no.
He said he died this morning.
That was my friend Roosevelt.
But we came in late one afternoon from training tired,
yes, I was tired.
I took a shower and I hit the sack.
Boy in my tent running into the tent.
Kate head, get up, get up.
I come to the radio shack.
It was a tent where the radio was.
I said for what?
We've got a bum that's stronger than a truck load of TNT.
That was his way of comparing.
And I said, "Are you already in a raising Jack?"
I knew where the barrel was back here.
But he had gotten in a little bit early.
But anyway, I got up,
put a towel around and went to the tent
and in front of the tent the captain's tent,
we had coconut logs.
That was our seats for conferences we
sat down and I could make a thing
out of what was going on in the radio tent.
The captain came to the door.
He said, "Boss it may be over."
We just learned a new word atomic bombs.
We have dropped two,
and the Japanese are trying to reach
us through a third nation.
So what could be over.
You know what my first remark was, I'm going home.
>> So when did you return home?
>> I returned home the following week,
the third division was dissolved.
We had to take exams again.
That's the Marine Corps.
Some went to Japan for guard duty,
some went to Japan,
I mean, to China for service.
I was transferred to the engineers.
And I had a picture to give you show you what that was,
but it was a pleasant time.
I went to work at 8:00 o'clock and got
off at five and had my own tent,
had a wood floor, had a light bub up here.
Life couldn't be in theta.
But that was two months.
And then that was in August, November,
the company commander came in
and said one week from the day,
Kate you will be on the boat going home, and I was.
>> How did it feel to return.
And what did you do with your family once you got back?
>> I was hoping you weren't ask that.
No. We went aboard the ship.
There was 11,000 service
men from all over the Pacific on that ship.
And the Captain put
a huge map down in the mess on every day,
he would tell us where the ship was.
And we begin to think he had made a wrong turn somewhere.
We were not getting that fast there.
And we were riding him hard.
Pull the throttle back and let this thing go.
But we finally made it to San Francisco.
They pulled us into the harbor.
I have to tell you this.
I had for over two years,
I had seen nothing but Marine green in the Pacific.
The most beautiful colors I've ever seen in my life.
We went on the golden gate.
It was hanging with flags and banners and colors.
And the banks of the harbor were just messed with
people and the most beautiful colors
you've ever seen in your life.
We had a short service there for us, they did.
And they loaded on ferries and took us
over to Treasure Island.
And he told us there are
three outside phones on Treasure Island.
You can only talk three minutes
because there was about several thousand
of you wanting to use those phones.
Sure enough, the lines were a mile long
but time we got there.
I finally got the phone and
I called home and I answered the phone.
And I said I can only talk three minutes.
I can't tell you anything if I'm in the states.
I will be discharged at count the June,
and I'll have to call you from there.
But I heard a voice
that I hadn't heard in over two years.
And so I was happy.
We left there, of course,
and went to camp in June by
train when we were going across everybody stopped for us,
but this time we're stopping for everybody.
We got to camp in June and I was not happy because they
wanted me to go to the hospital
and I just can't go to the hospital.
I got to go home.
So it took about 10 days for them to
finally get to them that I wanted to go home.
And so the doctor came in and says,
I can send you home if you'll sign this piece of paper.
We are not responsible for any of your problems.
I hand it here.
So I signed it, was a mistake.
But the next moment,
I called Atlanta that night and
I said, "Tomorrow morning."
Sunday morning again now.
I'm going to be on the Greyhound
bus heading for the Grange.
She says, "Well,
mom and dad is going to take me to
Atlanta to meet you and then we're going to pick you up,
and we're going to come home in
the car rather than you ride the bus."
Then I had another problem.
I hadn't seen her for over two years.
What if I didn't recognize.
That would be grounds for divorce,
that would be problems.
All the way to count to Atlanta,
I worried about that,
but when the bus pulled in,
I saw this girl propped against the building.
No way I could have missed that.
So they loaded me in the car,
and we rolled back to to LaGrange.
I had to make certain visits.
I had to be certain reunions.
Her father had planned to take us all to
deep sea fishing when I returned home.
Go and board ship going to
sea was the furthest from my desire.
But anyway, to fulfill his dream,
I did and we went
deep sea fishing for two days
and got sunburned and all of that.
I came home after all the reunions,
I opened the door to
my real world and I saw a tremendous mountain.
I had no money. My education
and my life had been put on a shelf.
I had to reclaim all of that.
And when I looked at that mountain is
five years before I can support a wife.
Five years before we can start a family.
It just didn't fair.
Everybody I knew was well ahead of me.
I don't know, it wasn't easy.
And Buster Hart, she went through an awful lot.
Before I was discharged,
Marine Corps wrote her a letter
and told her that I had trained in violence,
I had participated in violence,
and I may have problems reactivating
myself to civilian life.
And they wanted to recommend
three institutions that could
help me: the home,
the church and the community.
Well, I was getting back into school, going to school.
Things were not right at all.
Nothing I was touching
was developing into what I wanted it to be.
So I was studying one night and she came in and she said,
"I wish we could become more involved in the church."
And that set me off.
And my response was,
if the church can add one more hour to my day,
I'm glad to do it.
But she left the room crying.
I knew I hurt her.
And next morning, I asked, I said,
"What do you want me to do about the church?"
She said, "Let's talk to the pastor."
So we did. He said in three days,
I'll come back to you, and he did.
"I have a job for your."
A job. I didn't need a job.
I had more than I could do.
He said, "I want you to to teach 12-year-old girls."
That blew me away.
And I said, well,
I'll tell you what, I'll go for the ride. I'll do it.
But I got involved and I found myself.
I learned, I left to read the research.
I left to research the matters of the topics.
I just enjoyed drawing
conclusions for the class and so on.
And I became involved in
that and my mountain became a hill.
>> And you eventually finished engineering school?
And you're the owner of was it
over 10 patents, is that correct?
And so how long did you work as an engineer?
>> Let's see. Fifty-two years.
>> So you didn't retire too long ago?
>> 2004. I was 80-years-old when I retired.
>> Just moving the mic a bit.
>> I'm sorry.
>> No, you're good.
>> But it has been a wonderful life.
It really has.
It's everything.
I did not make it through civil engineering.
The company that I started with came to me and said,
we started your education, we want to finish it.
But we want to get you to change from civil engineering.
I said, what do you want me to change to?
Said, we'd like for you to change
the structural and mechanical engineering.
And I says, can I think
about a couple of days and he said, "Sure."
And he said, "When you finish,
you belong to us."
Well, when I told all she says, that's wonderful.
You know you've got a job when you finish,
you won't have to look for a job.
You won't move anywhere and start over.
You're here. So I agreed,
and it wasn't a mistake.
It was not a mistake.
>> Tell me about your children.
>> El was born first.
Instead of five years,
we were able to bring him
in in a little over three years.
El was just an extra intelligent child.
And just did work,
did wonderful in school.
He was a good athlete.
He played football, basketball, and baseball.
It was just everything that you could ask for.
But this is never a minutes problem.
So after two-and-a-half years,
we decided we'd bring in
a second child and he was born dead.
And we almost lost all.
And I said, no, that's it.
We're not going to take this chance anymore.
But anyway, we did because I wanted a little girl so bad.
But I wrote an epitaph
for young fellow that was born dead.
And I told him, I know that you
would brought so much to the equation of my family.
You would have brought joy,
you would have been so wonderful in this family,
and you would have added so much.
We just great.
I'm sorry that we did not make it together.
That's on record. I felt like I needed to do that.
>> What's your daughter's name?
>> Susan. So Susan
came four years after all this because I was stubborn,
and I was not going to give in.
When she came in and Lord,
I couldn't ask for anybody.
She great musician.
As I told you, she received a PhD,
and she's an Alban graduate from [inaudible] .
Lord, she believes Christ walked there
somewhere during Alvin.
But I couldn't ask for better children.
Never could I ask for one.
>> Well, Mr. Cadenhead,
so you talk regularly about
your experiences during the war and you're
sharing your story here.
So why is it important to you to
preserve this history to share your story?
>> Because there's not many of us left.
World War II veterans are falling very fast.
And when we are gone, the story will stop.
It'll fall from history,
and we will not be heard of anymore.
And that's why I talked to students every year.
I have students visit in my home and I help them.
One student that I'm working with
right now from University of Georgia.
By the way, I didn't get a scholarship from
University of Georgia, and I didn't take it.
And I've worked two years ago.
I worked with a student from University of Georgia
and his thesis was on the war in the Pacific,
and they sent me the book,
a book that they made up of his thesis.
And the commandant of the Marine Corps in Washington
invited [inaudible] to come to his office and we did,
and I have that picture I was going to show you.
But I sent him a copy of
that book because I
felt like it would be meaningful for him.
I got a nice letter back from him about it.
He appreciated that thought.
This will go in my collection, he says.
But I'm busy.
I told you I have two appointments on Monday.
I enjoy going to history classes,
have an open table with students,
and listen to them,
and talk to them.
And I feel like that somehow,
someway we will be remembered.
Now, I have written a 150 page handwritten memoir
to my great grandchildren
because I got a lot of Marine Corps
wanting me to do just what you did.
They wanted me to discuss training,
fit combat, all of that.
And I agreed to do it and I did.
But my wife, Allison,
Listen, if you're going that way,
I want you to start from the beginning,
and I want you to go to today.
I want our great grandchildren to get to know you.
And this is the way they'll do it.
And so I'm winding that up right now 50 pages of it.
Somebody mentions a name, they'll get to know him.
That's not a good answer to your question, I know that.
>> It is. No, it is. That's what I'm interested in,
finding out what motivates you to
speak so regularly and so often.
So I appreciate it,
Mr. Cadenhead and we will stop there.
>> And I apologize.