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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.)
“It was a long war”
September 21st
Growing up in Idabel, Zee Howell thought it would be fun to be in the Navy. It might have been the book, Treasure Island, or the fact he had an uncle who was a Navy guy that inspired him, but mostly he wanted to help his mother and four sisters. Jobs for high schoolers were nil, so he decided to enlist in the Navy in 1940 and get positioned, rather than wait to be drafted. He also wanted to see the world.
That, he did. Howell went through training in San Diego, then was off aboard the tanker ship USS Neches to haul oil to places like Panama, Alaska and Hawaii. Howell figured the U.S. would get drawn into war, but he really wasn’t expecting the kind of sneak attack the Japanese launched at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.
Howell admitted the United States had to go to war after that attack – there wasn’t any time to think about it. He viewed the Japanese as the enemy, obviously, but didn’t have ill feelings toward the Japanese people, they were just “the enemy.” He saw the war from beginning to end, and later served in Korea. As a sailor, he went all over the South Pacific, and was comforted by the knowledge that land was always just 2 miles away. “Unfortunately,” he said, “that land was two miles straight down.”
“I was at Pearl Harbor when it started and I was in the Phillipines when it ended, so it was very educational,” Howell said. “I learned a lot.”
Howell now lives southwest of Norman. He’s retired, but at the age of 85 is quite active. He’s a big Sooner sports fan, and a frequent participant in the public discourse of his hometown. He hopes future generations and leaders will learn from the experiences of his generation.
“Our generation was pretty tough,” Howell said. “Whatever happened, you just took it, did the best you could, and survived…and went on. That generation that grew up then, they just learned to do and make do and do without. We worked hard. We learned to do a lot of things, of necessity, we had to. Tom Brokaw may have left that out. We didn’t do it particularly by choice, but because we had to do it, and we’re better for it, too. We can withstand hardships better than anybody else. We know about it, we understand it, we’ve seen it, we’ve had it, and we just need to pass some of that along to our kids.”
(above) Zee Howell points out his position in a picture of the survivors of the USS Neches, taken the morning the ship was sunk by Japanese torpedoes. Howell and his shipmates waited in their life rafts for several hours before they were rescued by the USS Jarvis.
(below) Howell and other survivors of the USS Neches at a reunion in San Diego in 1996.
Zee Howell’s story is the first of our Oklahoma World War II Stories, airing on OETA’s Oklahoma News Report preceding each episode of “The War.”
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(Zee Howell was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 21, 2007. To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)
Rave Reviews for “The War”
September 20th
“A riveting experience.” “Outstanding.” “Well-done.” “Strong.” “The war as I remembered it.” “I can’t wait to see the entire documentary.”
Those were some of the comments heard Wednesday night at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art after the screening of an hour-long preview of the Ken Burns documentary, “The War.”
Several veterans were in attendance to watch excerpts from the 7-part, 15-hour television event that begins on OETA Sunday night at 7:00. Following the screening Dr. Robert Griswold, Chair of the History Department at the University of Oklahoma, WWII Veteran Paul Wilson of the 17th Airborne Division and Roger Harris, oral historian at the Oklahoma History Center, answered questions about the film, the war, and its impact.
Wilson emphasized the sense of duty that Americans felt during the war, and how young men everywhere wanted to get involved to serve the country and their families. He, like so many soldiers who fought in the bleak winter conditions during the Battle of the Bulge, suffered from the effects of the bitterly cold temperatures. “Medics,” Wilson said, “were the real heroes of the war. And, I wouldn’t be here today without help from the man above.”
Harris said many veterans are now coming forward to talk about their experiences, ending years of trauma-induced silence. Griswold said such stories are important to help future generations understand the scope and gravity of the war. He teaches about World War II at the University of Oklahoma. Griswold is hopeful that programs such as “The War” will help students of today better appreciate the sacrifices involved in World War II and its impact on history.
SEEN and HEARD: Among those at the event on Wednesday night were OETA Station Manager Bill Thrash, Scott Horton and Paige Lessly of NewsOK (Scott designed the fabulous Oklahoma World War II Stories website), and World War II veteran Zee Howell, who will be featured on Friday night in the Oklahoma News Report. For more on the event, be sure to read the September 20th front page story in The Oklahoman.
Until next time, Dick Pryor
(above) Moderator Dick Pryor with Don Wright of Oklahoma City, a veteran of Guadalcanal who attended the screening event at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
(below) Panel member Paul Wilson, a paratrooper in the 17th Airborne Division, visits with members of the audience about his experiences in World War II following the screening event at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
(below) A crowd of more than 235 people watched the pre-screening of The War and the panel discussion at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art. Our thanks to Film Curator Brian Hearn and our friends at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art for their support of “The War”!
(below) Dr. Robert Griswold discusses the impact of World War II. Oral Historian Roger Harris of the Oklahoma History Center is on his right.
