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“We had a good hospital”
November 14th
As stories are told about World War II one group is sometimes forgotten, but according to many veterans, they were the real heroes of the war: the medical units. Doctors, surgeons, dentists, nurses, all risked their own lives to save the lives of others. The survival rate during World War I was about 8%; during World War II it dropped to 4%; and one unit did even better - the 21st Evacuation Hospital from the University of Oklahoma.
Dr. Daniel Pearson was one of those doctors, having graduated from the University of Oklahoma Medical School in June, 1941. I met Dr. Pearson on August 24, 2007 at his office in south Dallas. Pearson told me that he had always planned on joining the Army if the U.S. went into war, but his draft board said they were going to take him as soon as he got through his internship (because of his low draft number), so he joined the 21st Evacuation Hospital.
“The Army had asked most medical schools to organize an affiliated hospital that could serve in the war and treat casualties,” said Dr. Pearson, ” so Oklahoma organized their’s as the 21st Evac Hospital. It probably started out with a dozen or more doctors from Oklahoma City, then it gradually grew from there.”
Dr. Pearson trained in the desert of California, expecting to go to North Africa, where General George Patton and his tank corps were operating, but the 21st was sent to the South Pacific, instead. Dr. Pearson set up a medical unit at Guadalcanal, several months after the invasion. “We took care of casualties that came in from the field,” said the soft-spoken Pearson. “About 2,000-3,000 patients. We were there (Guadalcanal) about 40 days. By that time we had finally pretty well filled up our quota and I think we rose to 46 doctors and about 60 administrators.”
Despite their training, the members of the 21st were not totally prepared for what they saw. “Everything we saw was trauma. Gunshots wounds and fragment wounds. In civilian life you don’t see too many casualties like that. When we got to Bougainville, especially, we had more destructive trauma.”
The 21st worked in tents, with 3 general surgical teams of 3 men to a team. In Bougainville, they worked on 12 tables, doing surgery underground to stay out of the line of fire. The operating room wasn’t actually dug into the ground, but was built up with walls, logs laid across and covered up with soil to make an “underground” room.
Dr. Pearson describes the conditions at Bougainville with one word: wet. “At Bougainville, on the side of the island where we were, average rainfall was 274 inches a year, so it rained every day. It would get up to 90, but not bad. We would sweat a lot, humid, and there were mosquitoes, lots of them, so we slept under nets,” Pearson said.
The unit was only 200-400 yards from the front lines at Bougainville, so the 21st got fresh battle casualties. Pearson remembers that the casualties came in so heavy that the surgical teams worked day and night for about three weeks, operating on all 12 tables.
After a little more than a year, the 21st went to Luzon, in the Phillipines. Once in the Phillipines, Pearson was sent to a small town named San Carlos, about 15 miles inland. There, he set up a hospital in a Catholic cathedral that was built in 1585, but not before giving the cathedral a thorough cleaning. “It was in good condition, and it looked like people had been kneeling on a ground floor, but actually it was bat manure (on the floor). There were bats all over the ceiling, live bats, so we drove about 7 vehicles, trucks and other vehicles, in there and left them running until they burned out all of their gas, hoping the fumes would drive the bats out. We scooped up the bat manure, raked it up and put in the trucks. We got seven truck tons of that bat manure out and hauled it off. Under the manure we found a beautiful tile floor,” Pearson said.
In San Carlos, there were about 400 cots in the cathedral and another 400-500 beds outside in tents. The 21st stayed in San Carlos for about 40 days before heading to the New Bilibid Prison, where they cared for survivors of Bataan. Pearson figures if he hadn’t joined the 21st he would have been among the Army soldiers sent to Bataan. He says many in his advanced officer training class at OU wound up there. “Close call. Yeah, close call,” Pearson told me.
Pearson stayed in touch with his family through mail and pictures. He left one daughter (Maureen) and his wife behind when he left for the South Pacific. Another daughter (Diana) was born while he was gone. He didn’t see her until she was nearly 3 years old.
Pearson says those sacrifices were just part of the job. “You have to accept it - just like life. You may not like it, but there is nothing you can do about it, so you just have to accept it. It’s an adjustment you make in your life.”
After the war, Pearson went into general practice in Perryton, Texas and later began practicing psychiatry, with an office in Dallas. Now, at the age of 93, Dr. Pearson still practices psychiatry 3 days a week. He says the worst part of war was being away from home for three years. The best part was taking care of people. “The best part,” Pearson recalled, “was that we could be a doctor.”
(above) Dr. Daniel B. Pearson with three of his children in his Dallas, Texas office. (l-r) Maureen, Daniel, Diana.
Thanks to Judy Kelley of the University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center and Editor of OU Medicine for her invaluable assistance in the preparation of the story of Dr. Pearson and the “Fighting 21st.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Dr. Daniel B. Pearson was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on November 14, 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
War in the Pacific
September 24th
“You couldn’t go anywhere without stepping over a dead man.” That’s how Dale Luton of Tulsa remembers the battle at Tarawa (above), which is featured prominently in Ken Burns’ documentary, “The War,” airing tonight on OETA.
Luton joined the Marines late in 1941. He had planned on enlisting in the Navy, but his mother did not want him to be on the ocean, so he became a Marine. Luton was one week away from completing his 7 weeks of training in San Diego when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Luton never got that seventh week of training. He did not know much about Pearl Harbor before the attack, but he knew war was coming. By the third week of January, 1942 he was on a luxury liner, headed for Pacific with the 1st Marine Brigade. He was 17 years old.
Luton drove trucks and hauled gasoline in Samoa, where he sustained burns when, because of a mislabeled can, he poured gasoline on the sand (instead of kerosene) and hot metal underneath ignited the gasoline, causing a flash fire. He returned to his unit after 21 days in the hospital, and wound up on the front line at Guadalcanal. The conditions there were awful.
“Well, there’s mosquitoes that could lift a mosquito net off of you, and when you woke up your entire arm was a welt, so I had malaria,” said Luton. “We were glad when the Army relieved us, because they had stacks of food and supplies. Before then we were eating Japanese rice, C-rations, and didn’t have much of anything.”
On the atoll of Tarawa, Luton saw some of the fiercest fighting of the war. “Tarawa was a 72-hour battle,” he said. “Where the airstrip was, there was high places on this atoll, and it was two miles long and 800 yards wide, at the widest place. It was a 72-hour battle, and when we got back on board ship there were 1,026 Marines killed and 3,000 wounded, and we had killed over 3,000 Japanese. It was over the equivalent of one square mile, and there was that many people killed. ”
Luton was an ambulance driver in Saipan, where he was captured in a photograph that is featured prominently in the promotion of ”The War.” Normally, Luton carried the living to the hospital, but in that picture from 1944, he is the Marine in the foreground, carrying a dead American soldier to the cemetery. 
Luton’s daughter, Linda Luton Jackson, saw ”The War” promo and told us about the picture that also resides in her father’s scrapbook and in a frame on a shelf in her parent’s apartment in Tulsa. We have now learned that Ken Burns hopes to meet with Mr. Luton, to discuss the circumstances surrounding that now well-known photograph.
Dale Luton married Betty Ritter after he returned home to Tulsa from the south Pacific. They celebrated their 63rd wedding anniversary on September 23, 2007. 
(above) Betty and Dale Luton in 1944. (below) Betty and Dale Luton today.
Dale Luton’s story is the second of our Oklahoma World War II Stories, airing Monday, September 24th at 6:30 p.m. on the Oklahoma News Report.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Dale Luton was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 24, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)