My recollection of events related to my participation in the AMERICAL DIVISION. The only army division without a number (so I’ve heard).

My name is Karl F Kennedy Jr. I currently live in Houston, TX. I got a degree in geology from Fresno State College in 1939. I am 91 years old so have a problem recalling events that occurred over fifty years ago.

I first heard of the Americal Division when I was called into the office of the Lieutenant Colonel battalion commander of the 2^nd battalion (?), 184^th Infantry Regiment, 40th Division who asked me if I was having a good time on the guarding the beach at Waikiki, Hawaii. I replied that I had no problems. He said we were losing Second Lieutenants on Guadalcanal and that I report in one hour to a LST docked at Pearl Harbor to join (with 143 other Second Lieutenants) the 132nd Infantry Regiment of the AMERICAL DIVISION.

I had acquired a commission through the Citizens Military Training Camps, CMTC. As a high school student for four years I went through military training each summer. Then I took the Army’s "ten series" correspondent’s course, after passing the exams, I was commissioned.

On Pearl Harbor day I got a telegram, saying; "You will report immediately to the facility at San Luis Obispo, California, for active duty". I spent about two months in training in Griffith Park in the Los Angeles area. I took the Cruise ship Lurline III (stripped down to carry troops) to the Big Island of Hawaii, then to Waikiki Beach to construct a concertina fence barrier on the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel to Diamond Head

I found the Landing Ship Tank (LST), which was to take us to Guadalcanal, docked opposite the Pearl Harbor Officers Club. The navy boys were pumping out the bilge before departure. They left the bilge pump running after the bilge was dry and they burned up the pump. For two weeks the navy removed the deck plates trying to repair the pump. In the mean time all 143-Second Lieutenants walked over to the officer’s club at 11am in the morning and stagger back to the ship at midnight.

Before the two weeks were up one of the officers was so looped he decided to take a swim between the ships and dove into the water. We through a life jacket to him and wouldn’t grab it and requiring a naval hand to go down and pull him out. The LST captain was so amused he confined all of us to the ship and ended our daily visits to the officer’s club. We finally got under way heading for Guadalcanal. We had another LST and a light destroyer escort with us.

After about a week rolling over the ground swells the other LST broke in half. The LST was carrying a Landing Craft Infantry (LCI) on the deck, which went into the water. The personnel on the stricken ship got on the LCI, some came to us the rest went to the destroyer. The destroyer sank the two halves of the stricken LST. There is no record of this sinking today in Internet based records.

We had to line up along the port side of the ship at chow time. The diesel fumes from the ship blew in our faces so we weren’t hungry when we got to the galley. We learned that since we had taken so long to get under way we were going to the Fiji Islands instead of Guadalcanal.

The 132nd infantry was sent to Fiji to allow the 30% of the personnel to recover from Malaria, acquired at the "Canal". I was assigned to an infantry company in command of a platoon. We went through simulated jungle combat training using the Fiji natives who two generations before were headhunters. We trained at night using the Fijians as the enemy.

One night we set up a perimeter to keep the Fijians out. After a few hours I had a Fijian tap me on the shoulder and said "Hi Joe" and all I could see the whites of his eyes and teeth since the Fijian natives are very black.

We had a Brigadier General was in charge of training for the division. He was gray haired, appeared to be 60 years older or more. He had a walking stick, which was ornate and intimidating. He insisted on every man know the five F’s (Find, Fix, Fend, Fight.) The General would come to the company street and have the company fall out for inspection. The general would go up the dumbest looking private and have him recite the five F’s. If the private couldn’t recite the five F’s the general would chew on the officer in charge.

The general’s philosophy was to have each GI know the five F’s and intimidate the officer enough to see how he would act under duress. The Brigadier General (name I don’t recall) took command of our regiment some time later, on Bougainville Island; when the regimental commander was relived of command because he couldn’t handle the pressure.

A noncom from our regiment and I were sent to Guadalcanal to Coast Watcher’s school after I was on Fiji for six months. The school was set up to teach us how to go to an enemy held island and report by hand held radios to headquarters the obstacles present that would affect a hostile landing. We flew in a C-47 (DC3) to New Caledonia passing over the Hebrides.

We were supposed to refuel on the Hebrides, but did not because the Japanese were bombing. We dropped to the ocean level and turned off one engine to save gas. We landed at the Guadalcanal on the Marston Mat runway with about 7 inches of water.

The school was very interesting, conduced by coast watchers who were paid by National Geographic Magazine in peacetime. The idea was to learn the lessons well so we could flunk. We couldn’t see much future in going to an enemy held island with Native baggage carriers who were not friends of the natives of that island.

While we were at school we had a few visits from ‘Washing-Machine Charlie’ in nightly raids which causing little or no damage. We forced into wet foxholes during these nightly raids.

During our stay on the "Canal", we were invited to a ‘Luau’ on the island of Tulaghi. The island was across the bay from Henderson Airfield. The natives had cooked some pigs in hot coals and then covered the hot coals with leaves and sand one day before. I believe that the Coast Watcher instructors were responsible for the arrangements for the party. The islanders put on their native dances. Tulaghi Island was very interesting because a volcano dominated it. The only livable land was limited to a narrow beach.

On the "Canal", whenever a patrol went out they carried rolls of telephone wire for sound powered phone. As a result wires covered the ground like spider webs. Our Jeeps traveling down the roads would pick up the wire, which would wrap around the axel tight enough to stop the vehicle.

Not having kept a diary, I don’t remember how much time we spent at the ‘Canal’, the noncom and I returned to our regiment in Fiji.

The AMERICAL DIVISION boarded transport ships for Bougainville Island. We were to relieve the Marines who made the initial landing. We were supplied with all new equipment jeeps, artillery, etc. which remained on board for the Marines to use in their island hopping going north.

The Marines had secured the west coast from the Torokina River, to the north end of the island. Our regiment was installed next to an aircraft runway. The 132nd and the 164^th infantry regiments set up a perimeter around the airport. The 182nd infantry was in reserve (?). We had the Seabees Detachment plus other airport supply troops.

Our mission was to protect the airport. Our initial assignment was to take over the Marine defenses pillboxes. The pillboxes were made of logs and dug in about four feet deep in a swamp. We had sleeping bags that would float, which came in hazardous when the swamp water rose during the night. Japanese snipers fire at the floating sleeping bag made it more practical to get a little wet than getting shot.

One day during this duty I got a telegram asking me if I would like to come to Florida to attend Weather School. I sent a message back "Yes" but I never heard more about this subject.

We were relocated to a new company campsite that we were tasked to set up. The assigned location of the tents was in a heavy jungle hence we had to set up the tents between the trees. The solution to this was to contribute my bottle of scotch whiskey to a Seabee dozer operator who helped us clear the site.

I got Scotch whisky from the "Officers Club" rations; on the basis of rank has its privileges. Since I was a junior officer I got what the upper brass did not want. I developed a taste for Scotch whisky, which persists to this day.

We were involved in keeping the Japanese from taking over the airport. We went on daily patrols involving walking through the swamps south of the Torokina River. We developed a routine of watching the man in front of us so that when he sank below the swamp water we would pull him out by rifle held above his head as he started to sink.

After two weeks of patrols our clothes became moldy and we started to get ‘Jungle Rot’ with infected soars on our feet. The solution to this was to put our valuables in a rubberized bag, through our cloths in a pre-dug pit then took a rare shower. We got a new set of clothes on the other side of the shower. A healthy portion of sulfa powder took care of the foot jungle rot.

We enjoyed the news from Tokyo Rose that we were "lousy" jungle fighters because we eliminated the jungle by cutting the trees down with our half-track mounted 105mm howitzers. We shot metal scraps and cleaned out sniper-infested treetops.

I had occasion to fly in an artillery observation plane (Taylor Craft) to contact patrols outside of radio range. Before takeoff we would arm 60mm mortar shells and carry them on our laps. If we saw a Japanese patrol, I would be the bombardier and the pilot would tell me when to drop the shell out of the window. When the Japanese realized they had been spotted they would fire at our plane.

We had established outposts along the shore of Torokona Bay. On day a regular army sergeant was digging a foxhole with a GI shovel. All that was in his hands was the folded head shovel when a Japanese soldier suddenly appeared wielding a samurai sword. Luckily he killed the Japanese and sat down and mumbled "I spent my life training for combat and end up killing my first Jap with a GI shovel."

We patrolled through many acres of tall grass along the banks of the Torokina River. The only way you could get through the grass was to follow the established paths. We could cut your way threw the grass with a machete but that was exhausting. As a result, when using an established path we put out a fearless scout. He was in front of the patrol and hope the scout had quick enough reflexes to get off the first shot from his automatic pistol when a met a Japanese. We had a few fearless men who were from the streets of south side of Chicago.

One our famous soldiers (soon to be officer) in the 132^nd was a Staff Sergeant (Freddie Caps) who would lead patrols outside the perimeter. When he was leading a squad patrol and encountered a Japanese camp he would pull back to a safe distance and draw a map of the Japanese deployment on in the dirt. He would then attack the position with each man knowing his assignment. This technique resulted in total Japanese casualties and no casualties to us. Freddie Caps was given an officer battlefield promotion. Freddie was promoted to the rank of Major before he returned to the states.

One of the major problems during this time was a Hill 260, which was high enough to allow the Japanese to fire down on the airport. Repeated attempts to take the hill resulted in unacceptable casualties. The solution was to have the Seabees bring in huge pumps and pump a large amount of gasoline on and over the hill, and ignite the gasoline with a flamethrower.

We continued to get Japanese artillery fire on the airport from artillery positions on the west face of the volcano some distance east of our position. We set up observation posts in the tall trees. We noted, the elapse time between the flash of the Japanese artillery and when we heard the sound of the round. We were able to call our artillery with the azimuth of the enemy and its distance from our location. We had one unfortunate incident where our artillery hit a friendly plane taking off from the airport.

We were fortunate to have native Fijians that came with us as scouts because they were used to the jungle. We used them as lead man on patrols and occasionally to get Japanese prisoners. The Fijians intimated the Japanese captured prisoners so much they decided to talk when they were turned over to our control.

I was assigned to be liaison, between our battalion and the battalion making the initial landing. We had a full complement of battleships firing on the shore installations before we climbed down the nets to the landing craft. The landing craft circled to form up in waves to approach the beach on the main island of Cebu. It was a spectacular sight to see a destroyer escort come in as close to the shore as he dared and fire a broadside of rocket fire into the beach.

I was in the first wave of landing craft to land on the beach. I followed the GI ahead of me, carfully stepping exactly where he stepped because we knew the beach was heavily mined from the appearance of the sand.

I was to give the best location for our unit to land on the beach. A GI on my right as I approached the tree line had both of his legs blown off. He was yelling for me to shoot him. When I got to the tree line, I came to a road with a dazed looking donkey that had miraculously survived the bombardment. I do not remember being under rifle fire in conditioned to incoming rifle fire, from a year duty on Bougainville.

We spent a day in house to house fighting with a moderate amount of resistance. The Japanese retreated to the hills behind the Lahug Airfield* north of Cebu City. We lost a few or our troops running across the airfield while receiving fire from the many cave mouths. I was with the troops running across the airfield and had people on both sides of me hit which made me run faster.

We asked for and received two 155mm antiaircraft guns. We made a range card of the hill giving a number for each cave mouth. We gave a copy of the range card to the gun operators and the spotters in the foxholes. The Japanese guns were on narrow gauge tracks that showed at each cave mouth. They would roll out a cart with an antiaircraft gun to effective fire against us. A spotter would call in a cave number, when he saw a cart appear, at a cave mouth and the 155mms the artillery would eliminate that cave mouth.

A "sport" developed to chase Japanese soldier as he ran from one cave to another motivated with a 155mm shot just behind. Just before he got to the next cave the gunners would vaporize him with a shot.

The Japanese had a lot of ammunition stored in the in the caves we were attacking. We had bulldozers cover up the cave mouths in an attempt to have the Japanese surrender to no avail. The Japanese finally blew up the ammunition stored in the caves as well as themselves, as a last desperate act. Unfortunately troops from the 182^nd * were on the top of the hill and were killed.

We proceeded up the north coast of the island meeting resistance and losing men and officers. On the north end of the island we met a large number of natives who had been hiding or were guerillas fighting with whatever they could find to kill Japanese. The natives stored the sugar from the sugar cane fields in caves. When we arrived they brought the sugar out of the hills and loaded it on sampans to sell in Manila when they could get there.

August 28, 1945 the Americal Division commander accepted the surrender of the remaining Japanese on Cebu*

Our next assignment after the finish of hostilities on Cebu was to board amphibious 2-1/2 ton trucks DKWT (better known as Ducks) and proceeds to the islands of Burias and Ticao Island that was south of the main island of Luzon. The mission was to stop the rifle fire at ships passing through the Burias Pass and Ticao Pass.

I was S2 (Battalion Intelligence Officer) at the time, so had access to maps and plans to invade Japan. As I recall our battalion accompanied by other units were to make a landing on a southern end Japan and hold the beachhead for the main landing force that would follow. We were on troop ships with combat packs ready to make the landing when the bomb went off and Japan surrendered.

Instead of landing on the southern end of Japan we pulled into Tokyo Bay on Sept.2, 1945* and landed at Yokohama and were billeted at a Japanese Air force school facility. The facility was on a hill above Yokohama with an airport runway about as long as an aircraft carrier. Under the runway were caves that served as classrooms for Japanese air force students.

Our first job on arrival at the airport was to pull US aircraft off the runway that were disabled. Many of the planes (1^st Cavalry Airborne) had to ground loop (make a right turn) at the end of the runway to avoid going over the cliff.

The Japanese had been ordered to place all artillery, rifles, and Samurai swords in the schoolyards to be picked up by US forces and dumped in Tokyo Bay. When we arrived at the children school they hide until one brave child came out and gave her some candy. Whereupon all the kids came out to get candy, which they had not seen for years.

I had enough "points" to go home, having been over for forty-eight months so I was able to fly back to the states.

-------------------------------------------------------------------

*Because I kept no diary of events during my activity in WW2 I had to refer to the computer accounts, for example for Bouganville I referred to http.www diggerhistory.info/ww2/bouganville.htm

Where I wrote, plus or minus, it was my best guess.

None of the data I wrote is pure fabrication.