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“I looked at it as a great adventure”
October 31st
“I think it’s very important for the public, our commanders, our leaders, to have pictures, both motion and stills, showing what is going on in a war,” said Ned Hockman, when I visited with him at his home last August. “It’s making a record, to record the happenings so that the people that are paying the bills or people that are supposed to be winning the war are doing that. That’s the contribution of combat cameramen in war.”
Hockman was one of a select group of photographers who were responsible for making a record of World War II for the U.S. War Department. Hockman grew up in Carnegie, Oklahoma and attended Cameron College in Lawton on a football and speech scholarship. His father had taught him photography, so he got a job as a photographer for the Lawton Morning Press. After a year at Cameron he received a scholarship to the University of Oklahoma, and that’s where he was when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
Hockman was drafted the next summer. He didn’t have the eyesight to become a pilot, but was chosen to serve in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He trained at Ft. Sill in Lawton, Sheppard Field in Wichita Falls, Texas, and Lowry Field in Denver, Colorado before being assigned to the First Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, California. The Adjutant was a young captain named Ronald Reagan. Hockman trained in California for a year and a half before getting orders to go to his new home for the rest of the war, the China-Burma-India theater.
(above, left) Ned Hockman, combat cameraman.
“Our assignment was to make combat coverage of all types of action of the Air Corps,” Hockman remembered. “That included flying equipment over the hump to China and later on to Burma when we pushed the Japanese out of Burma. Then, we would support the bombing missions. We would cover the Air Transport Command, the B-25’s and B-24’s. We did stories on the building of the air field, and stories on the fighters.”
It was a laborious and sometimes dangerous process. “When I’d go out on a shoot I’d have a parachute on this shoulder, in a box my 35 mm camera, a black case with a speed graphic camera, and I carried a Thompson sub-machine gun. So, I would waddle with that,” Hockman recalled. “We’d go out on assignment, with 10 100-foot rolls of film in each case. You’d take the pictures and when it was all done we’d either give it to someone who was going on the redeye or special plane that was taking film and stuff to Calcutta, or we’d call headquarters and they would pick it up. It would take another three days or so to get it over to the Pentagon to process the film.”
Hockman says much of the film was bought from the U.S. Government by newsreels, which showed the realities of war to the people back home. However, Hockman admits many of the shots were staged. “In combat, you can only shoot the backs of people, you can never see the shots being fired from the front of the gun. So, you show preparation, and you shoot to your right and shoot to your left as the troops move forward. And then, you show the aftermath - the dead, the captors, the aftermath. A lot of the film we shot wasn’t very good, because it’s very difficult.”
Danger was a constant companion for photographers, but Hockman told me there is little time to think about it. “You just do your job,” he said, “and you don’t really have time to think. You’re not paying any attention to what’s going on around you, because you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing (to get coverage). I looked at it as a great adventure.”
After World War II, Hockman returned to Oklahoma and stayed in the Air Force Reserves. He returned to combat status as a photographer during the Korean War. Hockman rose to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the Reserves, and retired from the U.S. Air Force in 1981.
In his long career at the University of Oklahoma, Hockman established the Film Department, shot film of OU football games, produced the ground-breaking Bud Wilkinson Coaches Show, hosted the National Press Photographers Association annual training for almost three decades, and photographed or produced countless other productions, including a feature film, “Stark Fear.” He was inducted into the National Television Academy of Arts and Sciences Gold Circle in October, 2006.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Ned Hockman was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 31, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
Behind the Scenes of Oklahoma World War II Stories
October 26th
He sits, alone, in a dimly-lit room for hours and hours, poring over pictures, words and music. Days, night, weekends, photojournalist Boots Kennedye is making OETA’s Oklahoma World War II Stories come alive.
Boots and I began our journey together in July - making phone calls, meeting veterans, setting up photo shoots, taping their stories, logging interviews, gathering photographs and video, previewing music and sound effects, writing the stories, and finally, editing. Once the script is finished and the voiceover is recorded, Boots heads to our new, state-of-the-art Nitris editing suite to put all the elements together. It is a tedious, time-consuming process that requires the patience and skill of a craftsman. Boots is an artist with audio and video, and the portraits he paints reflect the passion with which he works.
Boots was born in Midwest City, but considers Jones, Oklahoma his hometown. He graduated from high school in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and attended the University of Oklahoma, where he received degrees in English Literature, Native American Studies, and Film and Video in 2003. He started producing documentaries while at OU and has worked in OETA’s Documentary Unit for about two and a half years.
(above) Boots Kennedye ponders an edit before entering a command on the keyboard of our High Definition, non-linear editing computer.
He has a special appreciation for our World War II project because practically everyone in his family is military. Boots’ mother and father were in the Navy; his step-dad is a Marine who served in Vietnam. He has a brother who is a Navy doctor, an uncle who is a Marine, a grandmother who was a military nurse, and grandfathers who served in the Army and Army Air Corps.
“I’ve been interested in war stories because of my step-dad,” Boots said. “He carried himself like a drill sergeant and served four tours in Vietnam.” Clearly, family and heritage are important to Boots. And, he’s appreciated the feeling of family that he (and I) have developed with the veterans we’ve profiled.
“Hearing these stories makes you feel like part of their family,” Boots said. “We are hearing stories that a lot of these people don’t share with anyone except their immediate family. It is very personal, and that’s what I like about television. Talking to people makes it more real. You often think of World War II passively, but listening to the stories and watching the footage for weeks in preparing the stories has made World War II come alive.”
As journalism professionals, we must do our work rather dispassionately, but we have become emotionally invested in this project. Each person we’ve interviewed has touched us, and we want to do right by them in telling their story. The work, however, is not always easy. “The story involving the Holocaust and liberation of a Nazi concentration camp was the hardest visually,” Boots told me. “Watching those pictures, those emaciated faces, over and over again was hard. I needed to take a couple of days off after that one.”
(above) Boots Kennedye positions the microphone during the interview with World War II veteran Pendleton Woods.
We began shooting interviews in the searing heat of the sweaty Oklahoma summer and are still working as the leaves begin to turn colors and fall. Each story took at least a half-day to shoot. Generally it’s taken 3-4 days to research, log and write a story. Then, it takes Boots 3-4 days to do his magic in the editing suite. He connects sounds and pictures, views and reviews each shot, each word, each note, tweaking the elements over and over and over again until they fit just right.
Boots and I have worked on a tight, but well-thought out schedule. And, he has done all of this while juggling time demands and thoughts of another event - his own marriage, earlier this month.
There are still more stories to complete, but Boots and I are grateful to have the opportunity to honor “the Greatest Generation” by working on this project, and producing OETA’s second High Definition documentary, a compilation of the stories we’ve gathered. That documentary has a premiere airdate of December 6, 2007.
We’ve met so many great, new friends during our work - outstanding individuals who pulled together more than 60 autumns ago to win The War. We hope you are enjoying the Oklahoma World War II Stories that are airing on the Oklahoma News Report, and will stop for a moment to appreciate the sacrifice of the people we’ve profiled and the thousands more like them.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
“They were beginning to fear they might not win”
October 24th
Jim Norick remembers that everybody was surprised when they learned of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. He figured sooner or later the United States was going to be involved in World War II, but it still came as a shock. Norick says he and his wife, Madalynne, were watching a movie at the Criterion Theater in downtown Oklahoma City when they stopped the movie, and announced the Japanese attack. “I figured, well, I’m going to have to be going, I guess,” Norick said. “Next day, at the office, everybody was talking about it. We didn’t know what was going to happen next.”
(above) Jim Norick’s family business in downtown Oklahoma City.
Norick was working at the family’s business, Norick Brothers Printing, in Oklahoma City. He and Madalynne had a son, Ron, who was less than a year old. But, by the summer of 1942, Norick figured he was going into the military soon. So, with two Naval Bases in Norman, he entered the Navy on September 1, 1942 as a storekeeper, working in the pay office. The work was similar to what he had been doing at Norick Brothers.
“When the base first opened on the first of September,” Norick told me recently, “they didn’t have uniforms for us for a month - we just wore civilian clothes. They didn’t have a place for us to sleep, so I rode the Interurban back and forth from Oklahoma City to Norman. When they finally got housing down there, then of course I had to stay on-base.”
The Naval Air Technical Training Center was built in record time - four and a half months. It was a city of more than 19,000 with enlisted men, marines, WAVES with a ship’s company of about 2,000, and was divided into two bases, North and South. Three separate schools fell under one command, providing training for Aviation Machinists, Metalsmiths, and Ordnancemen. Pilots received training at the North Base.
In addition to his work in the payroll office, Jim Norick played alto saxophone and clarinet in one of the two base bands. He recalls that it was a special thrill to play under the base’s famous band director, Tex Beneke, saxophonist and conductor in the Glenn Miller Band. Norick says Beneke had a hearing problem, so he stayed stateside during the war, providing entertainment for those on-base and their dates from surrrounding communities.
(above) Jim Norick is second from left in front row in this picture of one of the bands at the Norman Naval Air Training Technical Center.
Norick says the bands played at the Naval hospital and, every Sunday afternoon, in Building 92, the base’s large auditorium. “It was a morale builder,” Norick said, “yes, very much.”
(above) Dancing was a popular pasttime at the Norman Naval Air Training Technical Center’s Building 92.
Jim Norick was at the South Base for 16 months, but left his wife and son on December 1, 1944, to go to Charleston, South Carolina for the pre-commissioning of a sea-going tug. By April, he was aboard the tug, with floating drydock attached, heading to the South Pacific.
It took 18 days to go from the Panama Canal to Hawaii, then it was on to Enewitok, where they dropped off the floating drydock. Norick and his shipmates thought they were going back to Hawaii, but instead they were sent to join the invasion forces at Guam and Saipan. He remembers that the fighting was intense. “They (the Japanese) were beginning to fear that they might not win,” Norick told me, “the guys having to go on the beach, you’d just pray for them, because so many of them did not come back.”
Norick went on to serve in the invasions of the Leyte Gulf and the Lingayen Gulf. During invasions, he says everyone played a part. It was during the fighting in the Leyte Gulf that he had a chance to turn hero, by shooting down a Japanese Betty bomber. ”First, I was the loader, putting the bullets on that needed to be fired,” he said. “But, the guy that was on the gun was a little trigger-happy, so they shifted me and put me on a gun and put him on the loader. So, that’s how I became a shooter.” Norick was on a 20-millimeter gun when he spotted the Japanese bomber, traced it down and blasted it from the sky. He had never been trained on the 20-millimeter, but he knew how to shoot. “Prior to that I had done a little shooting, hunting quail with my dad,” he said, “but that was a little different.”
(above) Madalynne Norick with son, Ron.
While Jim was away, Madalynne kept in touch through “V-Mails” and did her part by working in the Executive Lobby at the Douglas Aircraft Plant in Oklahoma City. “You couldn’t survive without mail,” she said. “You needed to know that your husband was still over there, and he was working for our country and you were trying to help the little way that you could. It was a serious time.” 
Norick was part of the invasion force waiting about a hundred miles away from the Japanese mainland when the war ended. He thinks the invasion would have started within a week, had the United States not dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Norick returned to his family in Oklahoma in early December, 1945. He went back to the printing business and became involved in community and public service. He served on the City Council and was elected Oklahoma City Mayor in 1959. He served two terms as mayor, winning a second term in 1967. Son Ron followed him as mayor in 1987 and held the position for 11 years.
(above) Madalynne and Jim Norick today.
Jim Norick remains involved in family business and still plays the clarinet. He plays each week in the Nichols Hills Concert Band and has a 6-piece combo that plays at nursing homes in the Oklahoma City area.
He also tries to remain in touch with his friends who proudly stepped up and served in what he calls, WW-Deuce. “I think the biggest majority of the American people were mad,” Norick said, “and (said) let’s get this over with, and they did what they had to do…willingly.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Jim Norick was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 24, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
Tulsa WWII Veteran Dale Luton Dies
October 23rd
When we began our Oklahoma World War II Stories project last summer we were prompted to act by Ken Burns’ documentary, The War, and the realization that veterans of the war years are dying at an alarming rate. So, our ambitious and worthwhile project began. We were ready to interview Oklahoma veterans and produce stories about their experiences. What we weren’t ready for was losing one of the veterans we profiled quite so soon.
Sad to say, Dale Luton, USMC, died early Monday morning in his hometown of Tulsa after a short illness. He was 83. We learned about Mr. Luton in July when his daughter, Linda Luton Jackson, contacted us about a photograph that Ken Burns was using in the promotion of his documentary. Linda saw the picture of a solitary soldier in the promotional materials and realized she had seen it before. More accurately, she had seen the bigger picture that showed five Americans: one dead on a stretcher and four carrying his body. The person in the front of picture was her father. The photograph was in her father’s scrapbook and also in a frame at her parents’ home. 
(above) Dale Luton, left-foreground, carrying a stretcher with a dead American at Saipan in 1944. Luton died on October 22, 2007.
We arranged to meet Linda’s father, and interviewed him on August 10, 2007 at his home in south Tulsa. Photojournalist Boots Kennedye and I spent most of the day with Mr. Luton and his wife, Betty. He told us about his experiences at Tarawa, Guadalcanal, and Saipan, where the now-famous picture was taken. We visited over lunch and found out that Dale Luton was quite the star in the retirement village where he lived; even more so after word got out about his new fame.
(above) OETA photojournalist Boots Kennedye photographs Dale Luton looking through his scrapbook on August 10, 2007.
Mr. Luton explained that he was likely the only ambulance driver depicted in the picture who survived the war. The others, he believed, were killed in a Japanese attack soon after the picture was taken in Saipan in 1944. Mr. Luton returned to Tulsa by the fall of 1944, got married and launched his career with the Tulsa Fire Department early in 1946. He spent 32 years at the TFD before retiring in 1978.
We let Ken Burns know about discovering Mr. Luton and word got back to us that Burns wanted to talk to Mr. Luton sometime. Last week that happened. With Mr. Luton’s health failing, time was of the essence and we let Ken Burns know. Just a few days ago, Ken Burns reached Dale Luton, by telephone, and they visited for a few minutes. Linda tells us they visited about Mr. Luton’s service and sacrifice, and Ken expressed his appreciation. We were honored to get to know Mr. Luton, as well, and grateful for the opportunity to tell his story. We will miss him.
Mr. Luton’s death is another reminder that the men and women of the “greatest generation” will not be with us much longer. We invite persons with a World War II story to tell to share it through this website, by phone, by mail or by e-mail. 
Dale Luton (June 13, 1924-October 22, 2007)
A memorial service for Dale Luton will be held on Thursday, October 25, at 1:00 p.m. at the 10th and Rockford Church of Christ in Tulsa.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
“It was rather hazardous duty”
October 17th
Harry Furr wanted to be a pilot. With World War II expanding across the globe, the graduate of Central High School in Oklahoma City tried to join the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was disappointed by the response - his eyesight was not good enough. He was told only those with 20-20 vision need apply, and Harry Furr could only see that well with glasses.
But, Harry Furr persevered, and in a rather ironic twist, he got his chance to fly thanks to Adolph Hitler. You see, Hitler created a glider program when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and used engineless aircraft for the German invasion of Belgium in 1940. Despite heavy casualties suffered by Nazi glider infantry and paratroopers during invasions of Greece and Crete in 1941, gliders had been established as an affordable means of delivering troops and supplies in a war zone. The United States countered the Nazis by establishing its own glider program, reaching out to volunteer aviators like Harry Furr.
The American glider program relaxed the usual vision requirements. Harry Furr eagerly applied, and was quickly accepted. “I was able to get in, and I was very happy about it,” he told me. “I had no idea what I was going to fly, or when or where, but I would be flying,” Furr proudly said.
Furr enlisted in July of 1942 and began two years of pilot training. He learned to fly at the old Wiley Post Airport in Oklahoma City on the corner of May Avenue and Britton Road. He trained on gliders in Vinita, Oklahoma and Spencer, Iowa and Louisville, Kentucky and Dalhart, Texas before heading to Europe in January, 1944.
The beauty of gliders was their low cost - less than $25,000 - and their ability to fly, quietly and undetected, into enemy territory. Made of plywood and canvas, American gliders were towed to altitude by a C-47. Once near the target the gliders cut free from their towing cable and let gravity and the pilot’s skill do the rest. Furr remembered, “they were clumsy, difficult to land, came down pretty fast. They were difficult to manage and weren’t a lot of fun to fly.” Many gliders, quite simply, crashed. The gliders, and their pilots, were important to the Allied war effort, but they clearly were expendable.
Gliders were usually cut free at around 5,000 feet, leaving the pilots little time to seek a landing spot. Pilots were not briefed in advance about where to land, or what they might encounter. Without an engine, lights, parachutes, radio communication or armaments, the gliders had one chance to land, in the dark. Once on the ground, the pilots used the glider’s brakes or skidded into something to stop and unloaded its cargo of men and supplies. The men aboard, and the pilots, then turned-infantry soldier, forced to fend for themselves behind enemy lines.
The first major American glider mission came during Operation Husky, the more than a month-long battle for Sicily in 1943. Harry Furr saw his first combat action in an even bigger invasion: Operation Overlord, at Normandy, on D-Day.
Early in the evening of June 6, 1944, Harry Furr flew a heavy British Horsa across the English Channel to Utah Beach. With 15 men, a Jeep, trailer, medical supplies and co-pilot on-board, Furr’s glider was cut loose at 500 feet. The Horsa brushed the tops of trees as it made its landing in a field. “I smashed the whole front end of that glider out, landing,” Furr said, “but no one was hurt, we got down safe, got the load out OK and we made it out OK. We had to go through maching gun nests to get out of the field. The Germans were throwing in mortars on this field, so it was very intense until we got out of that field.”
Harry Furr flew two more missions in the glider program - Operation Market Garden (Holland) and Operation Varsity (Rhine River Crossing). Market Garden was the single largest glider operation of the war; Varsity was the deadliest, with more than 70 paradrop and gliding towing planes shot down. Seventy glider pilots were killed during Varsity, and another 114 were wounded or injured, but Harry Furr escaped unscathed. “The Germans were expecting us, the enemy fire was horrific at Varsity,” Furr recalled.
(above) Harry Furr, center, and friends pose in front of a captured Nazi flag.
Late in the war, Furr returned to the United States to train for the impending invasion of Japan, when the war came to an abrupt, and welcome, end. Furr was not looking forward to invading Japan, but he wishes the war had ended in a different way than it did. He has reservations about the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “Truman had a chance to take some of those officials out to an atoll in the Pacific and show them what we had, and see whether they wanted to continue,” Furr said. “But he didn’t do that. They could have dropped the bomb out in the Pacific and showed them what a horrific bomb it was and maybe the war would have ended then. I’m not proud of our doing that. We destroyed hundreds of thousands of people, which we might not have had to do, but that was the way to end it, so that’s what we did.”
Harry Furr thinks World War II was necessary because “we were tired of what the Germans were doing to the world - they did a lot of things they should not have done.” But, his experience in World War II leads Furr to provide sobering advice to future generations contemplating war. ”Think very carefully about what you are about to do, resolve every available issue before you go to war,” he warned. “Try everything before you pull the trigger. Something might just work.”
(above) Harry Furr with Dick Pryor at Furr’s Oklahoma City home on August 14, 2007.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Harry Furr was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 17, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)
“The Japanese had no mercy on us”
October 10th
Just meeting Alexander Mathews, you might not guess his “story.” Slight of build, soft-spoken, and unpretentious, it is only after listening to him talk for a few minutes that you begin to understand what makes his story so compelling. Listen carefully, and look into his eyes, as the words and emotions spill out, and you will begin to touch the horror, heartbreak and heroism of war.
Alexander Mathews was born in Pawnee, Oklahoma on May 11, 1919. A full-blood Pawnee, he graduated from high school in Glencoe, Oklahoma. After high school, Mathews attended the Haskell Institute in Kansas, and spent a year in the First Cavalry. In March of 1941 he entered the Army in Santa Fe, New Mexico. From there he went to Fort Bliss, Texas for basic and individual training in artillery. His unit left the United States on September 12, 1941 and arrived in the Phillipines nine days later.
Just a few hours after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Imperial war planes were heading toward Clark Field in the Phillipines. American planes were scrambled, then returned to refuel. While they were on the ground, the Japanese attacked, destroying more than 100 American planes and launching the Japanese offensive in the Phillipines.
Mathews had heard about the attack at Pearl Harbor, and remembers seeing the high-flying bombers coming toward Clark Field, but he says American officers thought the planes were American. It wasn’t until after they released their bombs and the strafers followed behind them that the reality was known: the United States was at war.
Soon, Mathews and other Americans were moved to Nichols Field to await the Japanese advance. Within three weeks, the Japanese invasion forces were nearing Manila. General Douglas MacArthur declared it an open city and pulled the American and Filipino troops back to Bataan, where, with dwindling supplies and aging guns and equipment, they would fight the Japanese as best they could. By March, MacArthur had gathered up his family and left for Australia. That left the Americans under the command of General Jonathan Wainwright, with Edward P. King serving as the Commanding General of the American and Phillipine forces in Bataan.
Mathews says the fighting became increasingly hopeless as medical and food supplies “became nonexistent” and it became obvious the remaining American and Filipino forces might have to surrender. “We didn’t know what we were going to do,” Mathews recalls, “until a little jeep came by with General King, with a white flag on it.” General King agreed to surrender on April 9, 1942, after receiving assurances from the Japanese command that the nearly 80,000 American and Filipino troops would be treated well. “I just said, well, I guess that’s it,” Mathews told me, “because we realized we didn’t have enough food supply, we didn’t have enough ammunition.”
Mathews says the soldiers were instructed to destroy their guns so the Japanese could not use them. “We began dismantling what we could of our rifles,” he said, “took the firing pins out and the bolt and buried them, until the Japanese came. They told us to form a column of fours. We didn’t know what it was, but it was the death march.”
And so began Sgt. Alexander Mathews’ journey into hell and history. During the Bataan Death March, American and Filipino prisoners were marched almost 80 miles to Camp O’Donnell. Starving soldiers were forced to march through the searing heat with little food, water or medical treatment. “Those that were too weak, if they fell by the wayside,” Mathews remembered, “were either bayonetted, clubbed to death or even shot.” Thousands died on the Bataan Death March, and many thousands more died at Camp O’Donnell. The Japanese viewed the prisoners as cowards, and showed them no mercy.
The Americans were used as slave labor, in violation of the rules of war. Mathews was placed on burial detail, digging graves for his fellow prisoners at Camp O’Donnell. He remembers going to the infamous prison camp at Cabanatuan, where he cut down tall grass so the Japanese guards could better watch their prisoners. It was there that Mathews received an indication of the treatment to follow. “We heard yelling in the back, behind the fence, and some shooting,” he said. “We heard singing as the Japanese came marching in with the head of this Filipino on a bamboo pole, marching down the middle where everyone could see it. As we began to get in formation they put us in groups of ten and said ‘if one escapes, the rest of you die.’ That was their way of telling us we were going to be there for a while.”
Mathews, and other American prisoners, were shuttled from camp to camp. They walked, or were herded onto railroad boxcars, or were stacked into the cargo hold on “Hell Ships” to reach their next destination. Life on those ships, he says, was the worst part. “That was the most gruesome experience,” he said. “You had to stay in that one position and wonder whether you were going to get any water.”
The dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki ended the war, and Mathews was finally released in August, 1945. He had spent 42 months as a prisoner of war.
After the war, Sgt. Alexander Mathews completed college and worked for the Bureau of Indian Affairs for 33 years. He later served as President of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma. Today, he is 88 and lives in Cache, Oklahoma with his wife, Joyce.
(above) Alexander Mathews, former President of the Pawnee Tribe of Oklahoma.
(below) Alexander Mathews with OETA photojournalist Boots Kennedye.
One of the promises made by the men of Bataan and Corregidor to their families, communties and each other is “Always Remember Us, Never Forget Us.” Mr. Mathews is thankful to have survived, and he is now sharing his memories of World War II with school children in Oregon, Washington, and Oklahoma.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Alexander Mathews was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 10, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
“I knew it was war”
October 3rd
The day started like any other Sunday morning in Hawaii - sunny and beautiful. All of the battleships in the U.S. Pacific fleet were moored on Battleship Row, near Ford Island. Sailors who had come in from liberty the night before were finishing their breakfasts, cleaning up the mess hall and getting their ship ready for inspection the next day. Much of the work had already been done - sailors were expecting a relaxed day in paradise.
(above) The USS Oklahoma.
But, December 7, 1941 was not like any other day at Pearl Harbor. Signalman 1st Class Paul Goodyear was preparing for the 8:00-12:00 watch, locating the ships in the harbor so he would know which way to use the signal lights or semaphores to address them. That is when Goodyear and some of his strikers looked up and saw a line of planes, a half-dozen or more, flying from the starboard to the port side of the USS Oklahoma. Goodyear remembers the first plane dropped a bomb and the second plane dropped a bomb, but that really wasn’t unusual.
“At that time, Ford Island was a naval base, a naval air station where the planes from the carriers would land while getting in some flying time with their ship in port,” Goodyear told me when we met in August. “If for some reason they had gone out for bombing practice and hadn’t expended the bombs they carried, rather than landing with weight under the wings or fuselage, they would just drop it on that little spit of land that stuck out there between west block and Pearl Harbor,” Goodyear said.
Goodyear’s interest intensified when a third plane dropped a bomb. “We knew something was going on,” Goodyear said. “I had a pair of 750 binoculars, and I put them to my eyes and that (Japanese) meatball hit me right in the eye. Right then we all knew it was the Japanese.”
Thus, began Paul Goodyear’s story of tragedy and survival. Goodyear jumped ship, swam to the USS Maryland and later made it to the safety of Ford Island, but 429 of his crew mates were not so fortunate. The “Okie” had the second-highest number of casualties of any battleship at Pearl Harbor, behind the USS Arizona.
Goodyear says the Oklahoma was being cleaned up for Admiral’s inspection on Monday morning, so it was not compartmentalized, and counter-flooding was not possible, like it was on the USS California and USS West Virginia. “By counter-flooding,” Goodyear said, “they were able to sink the ship straight down and that saved hundreds of lives on those ships. Our kids were trapped on that revolving ship (the USS Oklahoma) and they didn’t even know where they were.”
It took 11 and a half minutes for the Oklahoma to roll over into the water. It took a week for the survivors to get out of their wet, oily clothes; two weeks for the survivors to be allowed back in the mess hall. Goodyear says he and the other survivors had to make do the best they could until just before Christmas.
Paul Goodyear continued to serve in the Navy in the South Pacific until the war was over. He was preparing to be part of the U.S. force that would invade Japan when the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “I was happy when they dropped the atomic bomb,” he said, “because then I knew we could begin to live our lives as a normal human being again.”
The operation to right the USS Oklahoma began on March 8, 1943. It was completed more than three months later. Divers had to wear gas masks while removing the remains of those who died and other decomposed materials from the Oklahoma’s compartments. The ship came afloat in November and by late December it was in drydock. It was stripped of guns and sold for scrap (for $46,000) two years later. On May 10, 1947 two tug boats departed Pearl Harbor to take the Oklahoma to San Francisco. About 540 miles out, during a storm at sea, the Oklahoma started to list and broke the tow line, sinking to the bottom of the Pacific for the final time.
Paul Goodyear is one of the leading proponents of building a USS Oklahoma Memorial at Pearl Harbor. He is looking forward to attending the ceremonies dedicating Pearl Harbor’s newest memorial on December 7, 2007. More information about the USS Oklahoma Memorial can be found at www.ussoklahoma.com.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Paul Goodyear was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 3, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
“You do what must be done”
October 2nd
Ministers cannot be drafted into the military, but Charles Richmond knew, when the United States entered World War II, that he was destined to serve. “You remember the picture of Uncle Sam pointing right at you - we want you? As a minister I looked at that picture,” Richmond said, “and looking over the shoulder of Uncle Sam was God himself, looking at me and saying,’I want you’.”
Richmond had been married about three years, but he decided he would rather pray with the the soldiers in the theater of war, rather than stay home and pray for them. “I just thought I needed to get in the Army,” Richmond told me, “because they needed chaplains and our men needed guidance during that time and I just felt that’s what God wanted me to do.”
Richmond went to Harvard University for a one-month orientation for chaplains and 30 days later received his military orders. He not only had to leave his wife, but the Baptist church in Oklahoma County, just west of Edmond, that he had pastored for two years. Richmond went to Rothschilds in Oklahoma City to buy a uniform, and reported to Will Rogers Field to get sworn in. He remembers that he avoided seeing any enlisted men because he did not know how to salute. 
Richmond boarded a ship in California and sailed across the Pacific, stopping in New Zealand and Australia before reaching his final destination, India. Richmond got to know his men on the long ship ride. He remembers that the ship was crowded and there was hardly any room for the men to sleep. With 7,000 on-board they could only get on deck for a couple of hours each day to get some fresh air. He stayed with those same men for two and a half years. “The men,” he said, ” may have gotten bored, but I was busy all the time, conducting church services. And, if the men had a problem, they took it to the chaplain.”
Richmond served in the China-Burma-India Theater, where American troops were busy helping supply their Chinese allies, either by flying “over the hump” (the Himalaya Mountains) or by constructing and using the Burma Road. He recalls that many casualties in Burma were from health hazards. In fact, the first casualty was from malaria, caused by a mosquito bite. 
The chaplain had many duties: delivering death messages from home, Dear John letters, helping the troops deal with loss and the anxiety of war. Richmond drove to the frontlines every two weeks to minister to his troops and conduct funerals and memorial services (he received permission to drive to the front day or night, but was prohibited from carrying a weapon) . He also had the solemn task of writing to the parents of the soldiers who had been killed and explaining the kind of service he performed for their child.
Two of the death messages were delivered to Richmond himself. Both of Richmond’s parents died while he was in Asia. It was a tough time, but his faith got him through. He dealt with his loss through prayer. “Somebody would say,” Richmond said, “everybody takes their problems to the chaplain. Who does the chaplain take his problems to? And, invariably they would say, he takes his problems to God.”
After the war, Richmond received a doctorate in education and became a professor of education and Dean of Students at Central State University (now the University of Central Oklahoma). He also pastored a church and returned to combat duty during the Korean War. Dr. Richmond served in the National Guard for more than twenty years and rose to the rank of Colonel. Even now, in retirement, at the age of 89, Dr. Richmond stays active by holding worship services once a month. 
He says the war was bound to have changed him, perhaps by instilling “a deeper faith, a deeper love, a deeper confidence.” Richmond adds, “there’s not much good about war, but it brings out the best, sometimes the worst, but mostly the best in a man. When you’re in a position that we were in, you just stand tall, throw your shoulders back, depend on the Lord and do what must be done.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Charles Richmond was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 2, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
By late 1944, the end was nearing for the Nazi army. The best Luftwaffe pilots were mostly gone; men and equipment were diminishing as Hitler and the Axis fought on the eastern and western fronts. The Battle of the Bulge, in the winter of 1944-45, was the turning point in Europe.
During those final months, Stanley F.H. Newman was a fighter pilot, patrolling the skies over western Europe. By the time he finished his sophomore year at the University of Illniois, the Army Air Corps dropped its requirement of two years of college, so Newman signed up in November, 1942. After two years of intensive training, he was off to Europe.
Newman flew the P-51 Mustang, doing reconnaisance, visual intelligence, flying support for bombers like the P-47’s and leading them to their targets. Newman flew 57 missions in Europe, sometimes two in one day, piloting a plane he said was truly “a wild horse.” Newman said, “you had to treat it with respect.”
Newman’s plane was equipped with a camera, yet the pilot could not see very well. “The P-51 had these long noses,” Newman said, “and in landing or taking off, when you taxied, it was hard to see out. In the air, you couldn’t see under anything. You did have that blind spot directly underneath the wing and, of course, behind you. That’s why we always flew in pairs…each to protect the others.”
Newman and other pilots were prohibited by the rules of engagement from shooting on German planes except in self-defense. So, the American saying was, “to go out and get attacked,” he said. “We wanted to get attacked, so we could shoot back.”
On the final day of the war in Europe, Newman forced down two German planes and fired on another one, forcing it into a crash landing. His actions achieved great notoriety, including front page treatment in the Chicago newspapers. He was grateful for the press coverage, because that is how his parents learned he was still alive. It was not until many years later that Newman learned that two more German planes were shot down around sundown that same day.
Newman’s flying career was far from over. He received his degree in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Illinois, but returned to the skies as a fighter pilot during the Korean War. He flew more than 100 missions. Newman also flew cargo missions into Southeast Asia during the war in Vietnam. Stanley Newman worked for NASA and rose to Major General in the Oklahoma Air National Guard. He was inducted into the Oklahoma Aviation and Space Hall of Fame in 2003.
Newman admits the war had a generally positive impact on him. “I grew up a lot,” he told me. “I went in as a 19-year old student and came out as a 22-year old. After the war I knew exactly what I wanted to do. The G.I. Bill enabled us to build our first home. I was always patriotic, from cub scouts on up, but the war made you even more appreciative of what we have in this country. I’ve gotten to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and that’s more than my friends got to do,” he said.
(above) Major General Stanley F.H. Newman looks over his scrapbook from World War II.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Stanley F.H. Newman was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on October 1, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’S Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)