Oklahoma WWII

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 

Posted in Guadalcanal, The War, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Tarawa, Saipan, World War II, Marines, South Pacific, The Oklahoman | 3 Comments »

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.”)

Posted in The War, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Normandy Invasion, War in Europe, World War II, Army Air Corps, Adolf Hitler, The Oklahoman | 1 Comment »

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.)

Posted in The War, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Bataan, Army, World War II, South Pacific, The Oklahoman | 5 Comments »

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.)

Posted in OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Oklahoma History Center, USS Oklahoma, The War, Hawaii, World War II, Pearl Harbor, South Pacific, Navy, The Oklahoman | No Comments »

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.) 

Posted in OETA, Oklahoma News Report, The War, Army, World War II, China-Burma-India, The Oklahoman | No Comments »

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.)

Posted in The War, Concentration Camps, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, War in Europe, Army, World War II, Army Air Corps, Adolf Hitler, The Oklahoman | No Comments »

Emmett Steeds entered the National Guard in 1936, served for a year, and got out.  He was working for a hardware store and remembers he was eating lunch when he heard that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, and President Franklin D. Roosevelt had declared war.

I recently visited with Steeds at the 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City.  He told me, “We had no choice.  They jumped on us without provacation, so when they bombed Pearl Harbor there was no question about going into war.” 

Steeds’ unit was still in Abilene, Texas, so he went home, told his wife, packed up his things and got on the bus to Fort Barkley, Texas to rejoin his outfit.  “Within a few days,” he said, “practically everybody that had gotten out had come back to the unit.”

So began World War II for U.S. Army Platoon Sergeant Emmett Steeds.  Steeds spent more than a year in training before sailing out of New York, across the North Atlantic, to North Africa, which was already under American control.  After landing at Oran, Steeds and the others in the 45th Division, 179th Infantry headed to Sicily, then Italy, where they landed at Salerno.  He received his commission as a 2nd Lieutenant from General George S. Patton for his service in the Italian campaign. 

The 45th marched across western Europe and Steeds reached the Dachau concentration camp within hours after it had been liberated.   He remembers the dead he found there, bodies stacked in boxcars, and finding a lot of people barely alive.  It was an experience that haunted him for months.  

The 45th continued on to Munich, to become part of the occupation force.  The regiment’s headquarters was set up in a rather unlikely place:  an apartment where Adolph Hitler had lived.  Steeds remembers it was a big house in Munich, and some of the officers from the U.S. Headquarters of the 179th stayed in the building.   A famous picture at the 45th Infantry Division Museum shows another Oklahoma soldier from the 45th, Sgt. Arthur E. Peters, reclining on Hitler’s bed, reading a copy of Mein Kampf.   The picture made it onto the cover of the May 14, 1945 edition of Life magazine, with the caption, “Get your feet off my bed.”

Steeds stayed in the military after World War II and served in Korea, where he rose to the rank of Captain.  The Blair, Oklahoma native worked for the postal service in Oklahoma City for 30 years.  He’s long since retired, but at the age of 90, still volunteers at the 45th Infantry Division Museum on weekends. 

You can see two of his prized possessions at the museum:  a Nazi medallion and personal stationery of Adolph Hitler that Steeds “liberated” from the Fuehrer’s Munich Apartment.  

If you have a chance to visit the museum, I encourage you to go - but plan to spend some time.  There is a lot to take in, and you might get to visit with Emmett Steeds.  If you see him, tell him, “Thanks.”

Until next time,  Dick Pryor 

(Emmett Steeds was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 29, 2007.   To see the story, click on the “Videos” link on this website and go to “OETA’S Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.”)

Posted in Concentration Camps, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Oklahoma History Center, The War, War in Europe, World War II, Adolf Hitler, 45th Infantry Division, Army, The Oklahoman | 1 Comment »

Anybody who knows Fred Norman will tell you he is a “character.”  Quick with a quip, with a warm and easy smile, Fred Norman is someone you will never forget.

I attended Norman High School with his daughter, Nancy, so of course I proudly watched Fred as he presented the weather on KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City.  Fred would tell it to you straight, with that mischievous grin, and a lot more often than not he was right about the weather.   As we all know, that’s saying something in Oklahoma.

But he’s a lot more than Fred Norman, TV meteorologist.  Fred Norman is a real hero; he didn’t just play one on TV.  Long before he stood in front of the camera, Fred was a navigator on heavy bombers that flew into enemy territory on more than 35 missions during World War II.

It was inevitable that Fred Norman would serve during the war.  Norman’s father fought against the Germans in World War I.   He had lived in Hawaii for a while, so he was familiar with Pearl Harbor.  His grandparents and parents were from England, so he knew about the war of aggression being fought in Europe.  He was attracted to flying by reading “Flying Aces” magazine.   Only one problem: Fred was born in Canada.

“Well, it did present a little problem,” said Fred.  “As you know, we didn’t have the Air Force, we had the Army Air Corps.  But, I took all the tests and got selected, and then they called me up and said I couldn’t get into the flying cadet program because I wasn’t a citizen, although my parents were naturalized.  Fortunately, they got it all straightened out before I joined the Canadian RAF.”

After less than six months of training, Norman was on his way to England.  He enjoyed the time he spent there, especially the nights at Piccadilly Circus, where young Americans would enjoy the social life and get to know the young women (much to the chagrin of British guys).  

Flying at 30,000 feet, he saw a different war than did those on the ground, although he admits the weather in Europe sometimes made work difficult.  Not to mention the Nazi flak.  The flak hit him once, but the flak jacket he wore saved him.  After that, Norman became one of the Army Air Corps’ biggest proponents of flak jackets.

Norman says pilots had to swerve to the target to keep from getting hit, but the B-17 could take it.  “We brought one plane home with 400 holes in it,” he said.  “No other plane could take that punishment and keep going, but the B-17 did.”

“Air power,” Norman said, “is what won the war. ” Norman added, “He who does not have air power domination is going to lose.  We had the power, and we used it.  How could it have come out any other way?  We were unbeatable.”

After the war ended, Norman returned to the United States and became an instructor.  He is especially pleased that he was able to help train the famed black fliers, the Tuskegee Airmen.  Norman said, “I was very impressed.  They were more disciplined.  We were kind of cocky.  They were courageous and willing and rearing to go, but the group I taught never got into battle, because the war abruptly ended, and within a week I was on my way home.”

Fred Norman used the G.I. Bill to get his college degree, went to work for the National Weather Bureau and never looked back.  After stints as a TV meteorologist in Tampa, Amarillo and Denver, he settled in Oklahoma City. 

Norman spent 16 years at KOCO.  That’s where I got to know him, for real.  By the mid-1980’s I was anchoring and reporting sports at KOCO, and Fred and I worked together on the weekend news, weather and sports team for a couple of years.   Now, about twenty years later, it’s been a real honor to tell “the rest of the story” of Fred Norman, the aviator.

(above) Dick Pryor with Fred Norman at his Duncan home.  Norman worked with Dick, Gerry Bonds and Ross Dixon at KOCO-TV in Oklahoma City.  

Until next time, Dick Pryor

(Fred Norman was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 26, 2007.  To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)

Posted in OETA, Oklahoma News Report, The War, Normandy Invasion, Army Air Corps, War in Europe, World War II | No Comments »

When June Buckley says everybody was together - for the troops and against the enemy, she really means it.  Like most Americans, she feared the enemy and the consequences for the Allies should the Axis win World War II.   The war, for June Buckley, was also personal.  Her husband and her brother were involved in the fighting.

Buckley graduated from high school in Abilene, Texas, where she worked at Camp Barkley as a photographer and receptionist.  She remembers dancing with servicemen at USO clubs “because they were all so young, and we wanted to do all we could for the servicemen.”  Buckley said, “we also played checkers with the soldiers, and sold war bonds.  Not only were we entertaining them, but we were having a good time.” 

When her husband Andy went overseas, she moved to Oklahoma to be with her parents.  She said it was terrible watching your husband leave.  “It was terrible,” she said, “because you didn’t  know if they were going to come back.   Of course you didn’t think of that, but in the back of your mind it was there.”

She worked at the Air Force Base in Ardmore for a short time, but she heard about a new aircraft assembly plant in Oklahoma City that needed workers, so Buckley went to work at the Douglas Aircraft Plant as a riveter.

“The work was easy,” Buckley said.  “You just had to know where to rivet and get those wings on the plane.”  The Douglas Aircraft Plant produced thousands of C-47’s and provided maintenance on other aircraft during the war. 

Buckley worked in Building 3001, which later became a key part of Tinker Air Force Base.  The atmosphere in Oklahoma was good.  She remembers many women being pen pals who wrote letters to the servicemen to cheer them up.  She says it was an atmosphere of helping each other.

“Everyone pulled together because they cared,” Buckley said.  “They were all angry that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor and killed our servicemen, so they just wanted to take care of the enemy and our servicemen and win the war as quickly as possible, and bring them home.”

(above)  June Buckley, who was chosen in 2002 as “Rosie the Riveter” for the Douglas Aircraft Plant.

(below)  After the war, June Buckley earned her private pilot’s license.  She wanted to be a commercial pilot, but found that women were not being hired for those positions, so she made her career working at Tinker Air Force Base and for the Federal Bureau of  Investigation.

Until next time, Dick Pryor

(June Buckley was profiled on the Oklahoma News Report on September 25, 2007.  To see the story, click on “Videos” on this website and go to “OETA’s Dick Pryor interviews Oklahoma WWII veterans.)

Posted in Oklahoma History Center, Douglas Aircraft Plant, Oklahoma News Report, OETA, Army Air Corps, Rosie the Riveter, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

“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.)

Posted in The War, OETA, Oklahoma News Report, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Marines, South Pacific, Saipan, World War II | No Comments »