War Baby

On Oct. 13, 1942, one of the fiercest battles of World War II occurred in the Pacific. The Japanese Navy, seeking to retake a military airfield from U.S. Marine and Army forces, heavily bombarded Henderson Field on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. That same day at 6:12 p.m., I was born at Suburban Hospital in South Gate, California. Weighing in at 6 pounds, 14 ounces, I was officially a “war baby,” as described by historian and author Richard Pells.

War babies, Pells contends, constitute a unique generation not only because they were born during World War II, but because their experiences differ from their elders who endured the Great Depression and from the postwar Baby Boomers. In his book, "War Babies: The Generation That Changed America," Pells demonstrates how war babies helped transform culture, music, movies, and politics during the 1960s and 1970s.

My early childhood memories of World War II are sparse. I remember walking a few blocks with my grandmother Libby to a neighborhood grocery store on the corner of Otis Street and Southern Avenue in South Gate. We carefully handed cans of bacon fat and other grease to the butcher, thereby performing a patriotic act. At that time, the American Fat Salvage Committee urged housewives and others to strain all the excess fat rendered from cooking, save it and donate it to the Army to produce explosives. Fat was used to make glycerin, and one pound of fat reportedly contained enough glycerin to make one pound of explosives.

Mom had to use ration cards and multicolored stamps to obtain household staples including sugar, canned milk, coffee, meat, butter and processed foods. These restrictions were to prevent hoarding and insure equitable distribution of scarce items.

Then there were the three photographs of my father in uniform around our home. My mother laughed when I announced to bemused neighbors that I had three daddies.

The December 7th bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 had propelled my parents into life-altering decisions. Since they had been married for three years, my mother told my dad that they should either try to have a baby or she would consider joining the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (WAAC), whose formation was being proposed in Congress. They opted for trying to have a baby, a decision for which I am most grateful.

Mom later told me, “I thought I would finish pharmacy school before I got pregnant, but I didn’t.”

In her last semester at the University of Southern California’s School of Pharmacy, she was not only carrying me in utero but also 19 units of college credit and caring for my dad who had contracted pneumonia during her college finals.

As World War II intensified, my mother found her own way to help with the war effort. After graduation, she went to work as a pharmacist at Firestone Drugs in South Gate, thereby replacing a male pharmacist who had entered the military. She brought relatives from Canada and Cuba to our family’s two-bedroom home to care for me.

My dad enlisted on Sept. 27, 1943, for “the duration of the War or other emergency, plus six months, subject to the discretion of the President or otherwise according to law.”

Pvt. Bernard Kaplan served with the 1876th Engineer Aviation Battalion (EAB) of the Army Air Forces (USAAF). EABs were self-contained units capable of independently constructing advanced airfields and airbases. Gen. Douglas MacArthur, commander of the Southwest Pacific Theater during the war, once explained that because the Pacific theater was an air and amphibious war, it was "distinctly an engineer’s war.”

After basic training at March Field in Riverside, California, dad’s battalion went through several battles in the Pacific seeing action in New Guinea; Morotai, a small island in the then Netherlands East Indies (now part of Indonesia); and Luzon, the largest and most populous island of the Philippines and home to Manila, the country’s capital.

During his military service, dad suffered some minor injuries and one serious illness. He had just climbed a palm tree when a Japanese fighter plane began strafing the area. During his hyper-speed descent from the tree, he tore mounds of flesh from his arms. When he later mailed home a photo showing him standing with his bandage-wrapped lower arms behind his back, my mom panicked, thinking he had lost part of his arms and hands and was concealing his injuries. Dad also became infected with malaria, deemed by many as one of the greatest enemies in the war. He was among 60 to 65 percent of soldiers serving in the South Pacific Theater who reported contracting malaria during their wartime service. After the war, I remember him experiencing a recurrence. He had a fever, chills, difficulty breathing, chest pains and a bad cough. My mother and I found him curled up in agonizing pain on the bathroom floor.

During the postwar years, dad rarely mentioned his time in the service. He shared only that he had helped build and repair airfields, small airports, bridges, roads and dock areas. He never revealed the depths of violence and bloodshed he had witnessed and experienced. He was very loving to his family, involved in starting his own equipment rental business, upbeat and friendly to everyone. Perhaps his reticence to discuss the war stemmed from combat fatigue or exhaustion, survivor's guilt, trauma or what later became known in 1980 as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It took some 35 years before he reconnected with men he served with. In 1990, some of his Army Air Force buddies and their widows formed a nonprofit organization, the 1876th EAB Reunion Association, and they began holding gatherings. Dad attended several and delighted in the renewal of friendships.

Occasionally, glimpses of dad’s wartime experiences emerged in family conversations. In 2001, my son Rob was recounting his experiences on 9/11 when U.S. air space was closed and his plane, along with 37 other planes, landed in Newfoundland. Rob mentioned that he slept on an uncomfortable military cot in a firehouse for several days.

Dad minimized Rob's grousing by responding, “Hey, I slept on a military cot for two years, but I put a rubber mat on it.”

The cots, he added, were covered with "skeeter" (mosquito) nets made from khaki cotton. The thick jungle, high temperatures, heavy rainfall, swamps and excessive mud on the islands enabled malaria- and dengue-carrying mosquitos to thrive.

A few other peeks came at my dad’s memorial service in 2006. Dad had served as the battalion’s Company B electrician, a logical job for him since he had worked for an electrical products company prior to enlisting. In the memorial book, one of dad’s buddies, John E. Miner Sr., wrote that he and dad became good friends after they shipped out and landed in Finschhafen, New Guinea. Miner was B Company’s weapons sergeant, and he and dad shared a tent. In a battlefield environment where even small items could become luxuries, Miner mentioned their comfort in having an extra light and flooring.

“My tent was where all the armaments were kept, and there was room for two cots. Bernie occupied the second cot. Therefore, when it came time that Bernie would supply lights to the tents, our tent was the first to get lights, one on the center pole and one over my workbench. All of the other tents had only one light on the center pole,” he wrote. “Likewise, because of the weapons, the tent also had an elevated floor to keep the weapons from getting wet.”

My dad's humanity and long-time love of stamp collecting was reflected in a wartime anecdote shared by my brother at the memorial.

“I used to ask dad about World War II,” my brother said, “but he didn’t talk much about it. He did tell the story of when he was in Manila and wandered into a burned-out post office looking for stamps for his collection. Lo-and-behold, he came face to face with a Japanese soldier…Dad picked up some stamps, turned and looked over his shoulder. The Japanese soldier was doing the same thing.”

Surprisingly, because these two enemy combatants shared the same hobby, they put the war aside for a moment, and each left the post office alive.

Some years after my dad’s death from cancer and Alzheimer's disease in 2006, I finally obtained a detailed, graphic and intimate picture of what he experienced during his wartime service. That picture was pieced together from a letter he wrote to my mother and toddler me during World War II and from a very rare book, which I acquired after months of searching for it. (I later donated the book to the March Field Air Museum in Riverside.)

Titled, "The 1876th Engineers in World War II: A History of the 1876th Engineer Aviation Battalion From Its Activation at March Field, California on March 1943 Until Its Deactivation in Japan in March 1946," the book was edited by Maj. Robert H. Paddock, battalion commander, with photographs by Pvt. Robert L. Moxley and sketches by Pvt. James M. Wright. Because it was published in May of 1947, there was immediacy to the shared experiences.

Most of the battalion’s formation training occurred in California at March Field near Riverside; Camp Stoneman north of San Francisco; Gavilan Hills in Riverside County; and Trona, a desert area north of Barstow. During the battalion’s four-month training phase at March Field, Maj. Paddock noted that the men participated in the erection of hangers and other buildings as well as fighting a nearby forest fire.The actual unit preparation included frequent 8- to 14-mile marches on California’s hard roads while sometimes wearing gas masks; retreat parades; a three-day motor march from Camp Comfort near Ventura to March Field; landing net drills; obstacle course exercises; trench digging; bridge, airfield and road construction trainings; firing practice and small weapons trainings; camouflage practices; lectures on censorship; instruction on specialized duties; and packing for overseas shipments.

Maj. Paddock described how in mid-October the battalion's extensive motor march involved simulation of combat conditions, including a strafing attack by an airplane. The men bivouacked at Gavilan Hills and during the ensuing days, they experienced a series of tests devised by the EAB training center.

Even before the battalion was sent overseas, the men confronted death. In one exercise, two men were on their way to a water point when the weapons carrier in which they were riding overturned. One of the men was killed.

The battalion returned to March Field from Gavilan on Oct. 26, only to be roused the next morning at 4 a.m. for a practice alert being conducted along the entire Pacific Coast, according to Maj. Paddock, who added, "With the departure of other units from the base, we became the basic defense unit and additional training was now required…."

In late November, the battalion returned to Gavilan Hills for more operational training followed immediately thereafter by construction activities, including building a hanger.

To qualify to go overseas, every man in the battalion had to pass a physical exam, as well as undergo dental work and numerous immunizations.

There were “shots, shots, shots to be taken—typhoid, smallpox, typhus, cholera, yellow fever,” Maj. Paddock recounted.

The battalion left March Field at 1400 hours on Feb. 25, 1944, and travelled by train to Northern California. During the train trip, the men ate K rations (boxed breakfast, lunch and dinner meals) and drank Coca Colas. They arrived at Camp Stoneman, a U.S. Army military facility located in Pittsburg, Calif., which served as a major staging area for the Army during the war. Their training continued there as they waited to ship out. There were sessions with the landing nets, with and without full combat uniforms and equipment, Maj. Paddock reported, along with more obstacle courses, long and short hikes and equipment inspections. Lectures on censorship increased in importance, Maj. Paddock explained, "because from now on everything we did, wrote or saw was subjected to the strictest censorship."

Despite "latrine rumors" that the battalion's overseas departure would be within a week or at most 10 days, the departure didn't occur until about three weeks later, enabling the battalion to secure more construction equipment and for some men to receive emergency furloughs. Finally, word came on March 18 that departure would be within a few days. On March 21, 1944, according to Maj. Paddock, everybody was up early, if they went to bed at all.

"Everybody had a number chalked on his helmet, everybody was responsible for his bulging, weighty duffle bag and his equipment," he wrote, "but even at that, there were many last minute necessary disposals of treasured items that could not be carried aboard."

After a march to the river pier at Camp Stoneman and a ride aboard the "S.S. Catalina," a former cruise ship, my dad and some 2,000 other soldiers arrived in Oakland. They began boarding the “S.S. Hawaiian Shipper,” a cargo ship converted to a troopship.which was moored at Oakland Pier.

“There was a band on hand at the pier to salute us and the customary coffee and doughnuts from the Red Cross to fortify us as we stumbled up the gangplank with those ‘leaden’ bags and personal equipment,” Maj. Paddock wrote,

At 1500 hours the next day, the ship sailed out of San Francisco Bay, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. For a short time, it was escorted by the blimp K-7. A few days out, some of the men saw their first pods of dolphins escorting the ship. Shortly thereafter, schools of flying fish appeared as well.

Generally it was a rough trip, according to dad.

“We left San Francisco bound for God knows where,” he wrote. Besides all the cargo, “the troops were crammed into the hot, stinking holds of the ship.… We travelled for one solid month ‘sardine-style’ through submarine-infested waters, without a convoy. It was just us, tossing alone on the Pacific. We had four or five submarine scares, and fired on one and outran the others. Thank God that although we were cramped, we had a fast ship.”

The ship, dad added, took a very “roundabout course,” dropping below the Equator and passing within about 100 miles of New Zealand and then following Australia’s coastline.

The soldiers whiled away the days playing cards, reading, standing in mess lines twice a day, climbing up and down ladders for alerts and drills and performing other duties. Occasionally, the musicians in the battalion provided impromptu performances on the ship’s top deck. Then there were the line-crossing ceremonies, initiation rites commemorating an individual's first crossing of the Equator.

"Davy Jones himself appeared to hold court on the forward deck at 1030 hours the morning of March 29, and then at 1330 hours the ceremonies started," Maj. Paddock reported. "A few laggard officers hid out or claimed, but could not prove, a prior crossing of the line, but most went through and took everything that was dished out—or paddled on.”

There were, of course, some residual effects. Dye was used as part of the ceremonies, and according to Maj. Paddock, some of the men "didn't get the red dye out of their hair till long after our arrival in New Guinea."

To provide shipboard news, a one-sheet newsletter called the “Heave Ho News” was printed on a mimeograph (duplicating machine) and distributed almost every day.

After about one month at sea, the ship docked in Milne Bay on the southeastern tip of the island of New Guinea. The battalion stayed there about a week, enjoying as Maj. Paddock recalled, “fresh air even if it was the warm humid air of the tropics” and receiving mail from home From there, it was on to Finschhafen wharf, New Guinea, where the men disembarked and off-loaded equipment and supplies.

“God what a hole,” my dad groused in his letter. “The first week we slept in pup tents on the ground, or I should say in water. The first night it poured buckets of rain, and we awoke in the morning with water over our legs and half our bodies. How we slept through it all, I will never understand. I guess we were so tired, we could have slept on a bonfire. The whole week was a repetition of the first night. Finally, we moved to higher ground and into squad tents. What a relief.”

Maj. Paddock reported that assignments for the men included constructing an Air Base Depot in a swamp-like area, completing the building of the 237th station hospital in an area that had been a native garden, erecting 104 buildings, and repairing and maintaining roads.

The four months “consisted of nothing but work, rain and mud,” dad wrote. “The first month was the toughest for me as we were on a hospital job, and I had to lug heavy wire through 10 inches of mud, over my knees….After that, I got the job of generator operator. It was long hours, but I was my own boss and could keep fairly dry.”

“In spite of 24-hour working schedules, seven days a week, and in spite of heavy rains and trying to get our clothes cleaned and ourselves dried,” Maj. Paddock wrote that some of the men did find time to explore scenic waterfalls near the base and to visit native camps supervised by the Aussies.

From photographs of New Guinea natives that my dad mailed home, I’m certain he was among the adventurers who visited the native camps.

The only other recreational activities available to the men, Maj. Paddock said, were periodic movies, ping pong and a show by entertainer/comedian Jack Benny and his troupe.

A few men with skills in making handicrafts used their meager spare time to create bracelets, necklaces and other ornaments from sea shells. Others fashioned picture frames and candlestick holders from shell casings and plexiglass pieces from wrecked airplanes.

My mechanically adept dad built his own washing machine and everyone, he bragged, including the battalion’s captain, came to use it.

Toward the latter part of their time at Finschhafen, the battalion worked closely with the 822nd Battalion, an African-American unit with several months experience overseas, according to Maj. Paddock. He added that both units "worked together well" under the direction of the area engineer," and that "by July the ground plans for the Air Base Depot began to assume better shape despite continual rains."

That same month, the 1876th Battalion received word that it was being attached to the Sixth Army and moving to an undisclosed location.

In August, the battalion, equipment and supplies were moved aboard three ships to Aitape, located on the north coast of Papua, New Guinea. Aitape, according to Maj. Paddock, was a “small beachhead of Allied property surrounded by jungle and Japs.”

Arriving on Aug. 15, the battalion had been “informed that we would have a month or more for staging, and we went to work to set up camp on that basis,” Maj. Paddock wrote. “Our bivouac was in row after row of tall coconut palms. Underneath, we had sand not mud, and our front door was a long, wide beach looking out over the Pacific. At night with the palms arching over the beach and the moon shining through, it was easy to forget for a time that we had a combat mission.”

But the camp also extended to the south into dense jungle and a mangrove swamp, and the proximity of the Japanese triggered the men’s anxiety.

“We were shitting in our pants every night as there were some 60,000 Japanese troops not too far away from us,” dad wrote. “Guard duty was a terrible ordeal; the men would fire at the slightest movement.” So as to reduce the “wild firing,” Maj. Paddock reported that sentry posts around the camp’s perimeter were subsequently “manned without ammunition but with fixed bayonets as experience of other troops indicated that for night defense, cold steel was much safer and surer than wildly aimed rifle fire in the darkness and thickness of the jungle.”

On Sept. 1, part of the battalion, my dad among them, left Aitape on what they were told was an invasion task force.

Central to Gen. MacArthur's strategy to liberate the Philippines was his island assault plan. It required establishing a new air and naval support base halfway between the existing Allied bases in New Guinea and the Philippines. Two choices about 300 miles from the northwest tip of New Guinea were carefully considered: Halmahera Island and Morotai Island. On Halmahera, the larger of the two islands, there existed a strongly defended Japanese base and some 37,000 troops. MacArthur decided in favor of Morotai, since it was defended by just a small garrison of 1,000 Japanese troops. Morotai was only 12 miles away from the northern tip of Halmahera.

So the 1876th Battalion became part of the Tradewind Task Force with the goal of seizing Morotai Island. The task force involved 40,000 men from the 31st Dixie Infantry Division, the 126th Regimental Combat Team of the 32nd Infantry Division and other supporting troops. It took days to gather the convoy of 150 vessels. The Naval component of the assault force, described in a 32nd Infantry Division report, consisted of some 105 warships, ranging in size from escort carriers to LCIs (landing craft, infantry). While landing craft comprised half the force, there were also six escort carriers, six cruisers, 22 destroyers and eight destroyer escorts.

Despite rumors, dad said he never knew until D-day (start date of the military operation) that the invasion site was Morotai Island. Two beaches on the south-western coast of the island were selected via reconnaissance photographs as suitable landing sites and designated as Red and White beaches. The photos, however, misidentified the beaches as having white sand when they were actually surfaced with gray mud three feet deep. And because coastal water was so shallow, landing craft had to unload far from shore.

On D-day, Sept. 15, 1944, some 300 members of the 1876th Battalion on three LSTs (landing ship, tanks) reached the coast of Morotai Island.

“We were awakened at 5 a.m. as big guns started firing,” my dad wrote. From the ship’s railing, my dad and other battalion members watched for three hours as planes strafed and bombed and warships shelled whatever Japanese installations there were on the island. At 8:30 a.m., the infantry headed for the shore in assault boats.

“The officers then told us to get our gear as we were to beach and follow the infantry by one hour,” dad wrote.

After the landing of the assault troops, Maj. Paddock wrote that the three LSTs carrying part of the battalion approached Red Beach about noon. Shoals and/or beach conditions made landing operations extremely difficult. The first LST was able to get some equipment ashore, but the second encountered problems after a tractor on the landing ramp nosed down on the silty beach and became mired for days. At Red Beach, about 12 pieces of equipment and vehicles were taken off the ships by dark.

The LST carrying my dad and others was directed to White Beach. It had a somewhat easier time debarking supplies and equipment. Still, by the afternoon when the tide came in, operations had to be concluded through neck-deep water between the ship and beach.

“We went right to work as we had to build a crash airstrip in one day for the B-24s that were bombing Borneo and the Philippines. We did the job and saved quite a few big bombers,” dad recalled.

Work on the emergency or crash landing strip was hazardous. “We slept in foxholes that first night and bingo, early next morning, I got my first taste of being bombed,” dad wrote. “We had our foxholes next to the crash strip we had just cleared, and the Japs came over and tried to mess it up. One bomb landed about 100 yards from my foxhole. You should have seen this red-headed shrimp of yours dig and hug the ground…ugh, what a feeling."

By Sept. 20th, nearly all members of the battalion had arrived on Morotai, and work was started on three runways ordered by MacArthur. During the three and a half months there, the battalion participated in the construction of the Wama airstrip; the construction and extension of the South Pitoe airstrip; building of access roads for a bomb dump; development of three coral pits; construction of a sawmill; and the erection of nearly 100 prefabricated structures.

The Wama Drome, as it was called, was the 1876's primary responsibility. To accomplish this project, the engineers had to clear a jungle with heavy underbrush and deep tree roots, remove 5,000 coconut trees, install a drainage system and construct a 5,000-foot runway (later expanded to 6,500 feet) with a six-inch layer of coral base and steel landing mat. The fighter strip was operational by the beginning of October.

The Wama strip, according to Maj. Paddock, received its first planes on Oct. 1. But those planes, which were returning from a strike made against Borneo, were forced to make crash landings. Even though the planes were damaged in the landings, all the personnel on board escaped injury, according Maj. Paddock.

As men from the battalion constructed airstrips, they did so while under the constant threat of bombing raids and death. Japanese air attacks occurred daily.

“We were dug in very well, and none of us got hurt, though seven bombs landed among our tents,” dad wrote. “One morning really early after a raid, I walked back to my tent to go back to sleep on my cot. My eyes popped out of my head when I spotted a three-inch piece of shrapnel on my cot right where my head would have been.” The piece had pierced both the tent and the mosquito net surrounding dad's cot.

While on the island, the battalion subsisted primarily on K-rations and reconstituted dehydrated food.

“During their entire stay on Morotai, the battalion had fresh meat only four times, other than turkey for Thanksgiving and Christmas,” Maj. Paddock said. Company B, my father’s company, was more fortunate, since one of their ranks killed a wild boar and shared the meat.

New Year’s Day, 1945, my dad and the rest of the battalion found themselves on a ship as part of another task force and invasion. This time, the destination was the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

“Late in the afternoon of Jan. 1, the ships of our convoy, weighed anchor and moved eastward toward Biak, where a rendezvous with 22 more ships was made on Jan. 4,” Maj. Paddock wrote. Other ships later joined the convoy and on Jan. 12 came into the lee of Luzon. That afternoon as the convoy passed near the opening of Manila Bay, several Japanese planes attacked it.

“We saw at least three, probably four planes shot down, but one crashed into a Liberty [cargo ship] and caused the death of most of the men of one company of aviation engineers in the ship’s hold,” Maj. Paddock wrote. “Another struck the after part of an LST, causing several casualties. Several men on one of our LSTs were injured by flak…”

On Jan. 13 and 14, three LSTs carrying part of the 1876th Battalion beached in the Lingayen Gulf area, and equipment and men were offloaded.

Once on Luzon, the battalion’s many assignments included repairing and constructing bridges, roads, highways and airstrips, along with repairing and operating an ice plant and building and operating a sawmill.

The companies in the battalion were assigned separate projects in different areas. Company B, for instance, set up a bivouac not far from White Beach and began its assignment of building a 310-foot pile bridge across a waterway north of San Fabian. Meanwhile, according to Maj. Paddock, the rest of the battalion established a bivouac some 20 miles distant near Mangaldan.

After building a couple of bridges and airstrips in San Fabian, Company B moved to Santa Barbara, where "we rebuilt the longest bridge in the Philippines,” dad wrote.

From late January to the beginning of February , the battalion and the 1913th EAB helped rebuild the 13-span Carmen Bridge across the Agno River. Each bridge span was 165 feet long. The reopening of that bridge was considered vital to the Manila operation, according to Maj. Paddock.

In early February, Company B went to Tarlac for a few days to assist with construction of a water pumping system to supply water for the troops and the local railroad and to build a “Cub” (light airplane) landing strip. The company then proceeded to Marilao to assist in the reconstruction of the Marilao Bridge.

Maj. Paddock wrote that the retreating Japanese had blown up sections of a reinforced concrete bridge across the Marilao River, so a destroyed section was replaced with a timber structure. Reconstruction of the bridge was completed by Feb. 16 and eliminated the need for a 3-mile long bypass road.

Still, enemy activity in the vicinity of the bridges caused considerable interruption of the Marilao Bridge reconstruction and the construction of a treadway bridge over the Meycauayan River, according to Maj. Paddock. He explained that Japanese troops escaping from the Intramuros (walled city within Manila) and other nearby areas were attempting to reach the mountains to the east, and many encountered and attacked U.S. troops. Numerous patrols were dispatched to protect working parties on the bridges. The battalion suffered three casualties during that period.

In dad's account of the Marilao experience, he said, “we killed so many Japs, and some of our boys were killed or hurt as well."

Once Company B reached Manila in late February from Marilao, dad said, the men started constructing two Bailey (portable, prefabricated, truss) bridges across the Pasig River in the heart of the city. The bridges were to replace the William A. Jones Memorial Bridge. During the Battle of Manila, which raged from Feb. 3 to March 3, the Japanese Army bombed the Jones Bridge to slow the movement of the incoming American troops aided by Filipino forces. The month-long battle resulted in the death of some 100,000 Filipino civilians and devastation of the city.

Work on the bridges, according to Maj. Paddock and dad, was carried out amid blackout conditions and enemy fire."

Dad wrote that while he was working on the Jones Bridge, he witnessed his first full-scale battle. There was fighting in Intramuros, the historic walled area within Manila. The perimeter in Intramuros, built during the Spanish Colonial Period, started only 100 yards from the bridge area where dad was working. "What horrors I saw here," dad confided to mom.

For its work on bridges and docks in Manila and its support of the Sixth Army, the battalion later received a meritorious service award.

While in Manila, Company B also built "numerous smaller bridges, did dock work and all sorts of road rebuilding, along with other odd jobs," dad wrote.

For most of March, Company B moved to Canlubang where it was instructed to repair and make operational a water plant system and to complete an airstrip at the Canlubang Sugar Estate. Dad described the estate as a beautiful place that “tragically bore witness to Japanese atrocities.”

From there, the company moved to Batangas, located on the southernmost coast of Luzon where, according to dad, they “found no building left standing,” but reportedly where some Japanese soldiers had found refuge in the caves. Dad's company rebuilt a one-lane bridge on the road to the Batangas into a two-lane bridge and worked on the building and reconstruction of several installations in the area.

From Batangas, Company B was moved in late April to San Jose City where it stayed for about a month and a half. Maj. Paddock observed that while the company attempted to carry out its engineering assignments, it was “subject to much interruption by scattered Japanese groups working their way eastward and attempting to consolidate with others of their own forces to the north and east. In one of these operations, men from Company B attempted to rout Japanese soldiers firing from a nearby wooded area.” One of the company’s men was hit during the patrol action and died.

In his version of what happened, dad wrote that the company lived in a huge church in San Jose while doing the work; had a few small fights with the Japanese soldiers, killing some; and “lost a fine man.”

Once the San Jose assignments were completed, Company B joined the rest of the battalion and began the trek back to the northern side of Luzon. The convoy made its way toward the Cagayan Valley via Balete Pass (also known as Dalton Pass). The zigzag and mountain pass was the only access between central Luzon and the Cagayan Valley and was the scene of much fighting during the Battle of Luzon, which occurred during the war’s final stages.

The battalion made its crossing through what dad aptly called, the "bloody Balete Pass."

From mid-June to early July, Company B was reconstructing two timber bridges near Solano. While working on one of the bridges, one of the company's truck drivers brought in seven Japanese prisoners, "two of whom proved to have especially valuable intelligence information when turned over to the 6th Division, according to Maj. Paddock.

Upon completion of the bridge, Company B moved to a campsite east of the Magat River and took over the maintenance of a road north to Santiago. Subsequently, the company moved to just north of the Cagayan River near Naguilian and had as its principal assignment the rebuilding of the low-level bridge across the river. The rebuilding continued through mid-August.

On Aug. 7, the battalion heard the announcement of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6. A few days later, came news of a second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki. On the night of Aug. 10, while few of the men were listening to the radio, word came that Japan had accepted the Potsdam Declaration, an ultimatum issued by the United States, Great Britain, and China calling for Japan's unconditional surrender.

The announcement was so unexpected and unbelievable in view of former Japanese policies, according to Maj. Paddock, "many men refused at first to believe it and were sure it was a trick."

Dad's Aug. 8th letter home revealed his confusion:

"We don't know what's coming off right now, as according to pre V-J [Victory Over Japan] Day plans, we were to congregate here and get all new equipment in readiness for our invasion of Japan," dad wrote. "Everything is still going according to plans that were made long before….Now, we have just about all the new equipment and are supposed to leave for Honshu in Japan by the end of this month. But we just don't know whether headquarters is going to change orders or what. So I guess we will just have to sweat it out. However it won't make any difference as to when our turn comes to go home. If I am going to have to stay overseas for three to five more months, I'd just as soon go to Japan as it would at least be new and interesting and the time, therefore, would go much faster." (In actuality, he and my mother did visit Japan but it was many decades later.)

Thankfully, World War II officially ended with Japan’s unconditional surrender on Sept. 2, 1945.

While some men of the 1876th Battalion were sent to Kyushu, Japan's third largest island, in October, my dad was not among them. He and many other "high point" men were sent back to the U.S. with other battalions. The point system, called the Adjusted Service Rating (ASR) score, was designed to return troops back to the U.S. based on the length of time served, family status and honors received in battle.

Our family’s Christmas present was when dad returned to the U.S. on Dec. 18, 1945. He was honorably discharged as a U.S.. Army Technician Fifth Grade (T/5) on Dec. 28, 1945, at Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California. His final pay was $152.17.