Voices from the Korean War - Douglas Rice [34]
Our division, along with eight others, was scheduled to take part in the invasion of Japan planned for November 1, 1945. However, the end of the war allowed us to enter Japan peacefully—as occupation troops.
We set foot on Japan on the 7th of September, with the 186th encamped in an old warehouse in Kaidaichi. The warehouse, which was crawling with fleas, took several days of dousing with DDT. It was located about four miles from the edge of the main drop zone—Hiroshima.
My platoon and I traveled through the rubble of Hiroshima each day to reach our assigned work area; we where in charge of destroying ammunition. As we walked around the city, we picked up debris. Its a wonder any of us lived for we did not wear any protective gear, nor did we have any. We were not aware that any was needed. You could use your fist to knock a hole through what concrete buildings were still standing.
We left Japan on the 13th of October, arriving in Portland, Oregon on the 11th of November.
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While stationed at Fort Lewis, before I shipped out to Korea, I went down to Scappoose, Oregon to visit the Hallock family. They were friends of my parents and had left Montana before I was born. They had a daughter, Betty, who I began to date and proposed to before shipping out. We decided to wait until I returned home to get married. We gathered both families, and on December 16, 1945 we were married. We chose this date because I wanted to be in the service when we married, and I was scheduled to leave the Army on the 18th of December. However, that was pushed back to the 24th due to spending six days in the hospital with malaria.
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On January 7, 1946, I re-enlisted and served with an engineering unit that processed and shipped soldiers to Europe. Then after doing stints in Fort Jackson, South Carolina and Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, I put in for a transfer with the Washington National Guard Instructor Group; which I received. I remained with them until I was reassigned to the 2nd Infantry Division—at Fort Lewis—when it was put on alert for shipment to Korea. War had broken out there on the 25th of June.
I was the Operations Sergeant for the 1st BN, 38th Infantry Regiment. We arrived in Korea on the 19th of August, and on the twentieth, we were being shot at; we were part of the Pusan Perimeter.
Korea was an unprepared mess, both in equipment and officers and soldiers. We lacked most everything in supplies, equipment, and ammo. Soldiers were ill-trained; some were using weapons they had never been trained with, and some had not fired a weapon in years. Most of the officers were self-serving, lacking the know-how and willingness to get the job done—unless they could do it from a foxhole. This was not the case with the units I served with during the Second World War.
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During the fighting along the Pusan Perimeter, North Korean soldiers dressed as refugees crossed our lines. Once they were behind us, they assembled into small units attacking our rear areas such as hospitals, ammo dumps, and even our headquarters.1
On the 18th of September, the 1st BN crossed the Naktong River heading north. The rest of the 2nd Division passed through us on the 19th and 20th of September.
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After being in constant contact—forty-eight straight days—with the enemy, the division went into reserve at Chonju, North Korea, on the 8th of October.2 However, by the 2nd of November the 2nd Division found itself in the area of Kunu-ri and Sunchon, North Korea.3
By this time the weather had turned bitterly cold with temperatures dropping to ten below zero, and falling. We had no winter clothes, nor arctic type sleeping bags; our canteens and C-rations froze. On November 23rd, they tried to feed us a home style Thanksgiving Dinner. At this point the men’s morale was low, because MacArthur had said troops would be eating Christmas Dinner at home; we knew this wasn’t going to happen. During interrogation of some prisoners, it was learned that Chinese forces