Radar man Earl W. McKeever discusses his duty on the USS California and going to war in the largest naval battle of WWII, the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Philippines on October 23-26, 1944. Recorded for California Reads: War Comes Home, a program of Cal Humanities in partnership with the California Center for the Book.
Transcript
My name is Earl W. McKeever and I was aboard the battleship, U.S.S. California and then my twin brother was on the same ship and he was in maintenance where I was in radar. HOW WERE YOU INFORMED ABOUT YOUR SPECIAL TRAINING? See, they came to me in the gunnery school and told me to report to the battleship that was being repaired and on the battleship they told me I was gonna fly down with six others to California and we were going to go to radar school. We were told it was top secret. Nobody was to discuss it. It was something new. HOW DID YOU FEEL BEFORE YOU WENT INTO BATTLE? Probably radar men had more of a fear knowing where we were going. We were going into a large concentration of planes and ships that we knew were gonna be in the area and we had a lot more information than anybody else on the ship and we probably would have a little more fear knowing what we were gonna get into and where we were going as we were going to the targets. WHAT BATTLE WERE YOU IN? Battle was Leyte Gulf. The largest naval battle in the history of the world. Never before had there been a battle like that. HOW DID YOU FEEL DURING THE BATTLE OF LEYTE GULF? When you were entering the target area, firing at the ships and they were firing at you, there was a lot of fear. You always had fear if you were continuously working, but once you got off, you were just continuously in fear wondering what's gonna happen next because they'd be bombing you and you'd be bombing them and any target - any island target - they'd be firing at you from the tanks and from guns and you'd be firing at them and the aircraft would be continually coming down firing with torpedoes and bombs. And so, in radar, you'd know exactly where they were coming because you'd have to notify the other people - the gunneries and all that... what's coming up and what we're facing there. WHAT KIND OF RELATIONSHIP DID YOU HAVE WITH YOUR BROTHER ON THE SHIP? If he was on the big guns, I'd have pretty close contact with him. And the forty millimeter guns and twenty, they were all around the ship so I knew he was on the big machine guns, but didn't have close contact where I knew what was happening, except if I was down in the main radar station, we'd inform them that planes were coming in or something like that so they'd be able to fire at them. WHAT DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THE BATTLE IN THE SURIGAO STRAIT? We found another fleet of battleships coming up the coast in the ocean. They were reported to be coming into our entrance and they started firing at the aircraft carriers. And this new concentration of battleships - this new concentration of battleships started going to the troops and they were firing at the troops. And we had to back up and fire in both directions - fire at the ones coming in and fire at the new fleet because we had two fleets and shells coming from both directions. It was pretty scary. Many times you thought you may die doing it because you'd sit there going through night and day and it was pretty horrible. WHAT WAS YOUR MOST MEMORABLE EXPERIENCE IN BATTLE? We had a kamikaze - that was the planes that were set to - full of powder and they just bombed - rammed into your ship and gave up their life. This kamikaze was coming into our ship and the twenty-four millimeter guns hit the pilot and killed him. And the pilot went on and I was at the radar station at the top of the ship and the kamikaze pilot hit our radar station and bounced off the bridge where the Captain and the Lieutenants were, then went on and hit the aft radar station, it was a duplicate of mine, and killed my radar officer. And also, the plane bounced and hit the mast and killed a lot of men in there and it was about three radar men that I knew of that were killed there. But the plane bounced down from that and then killed a lot of men down in that area. And one, see, I remember looking down and seeing the Post Master. He had both legs off and was bleeding all over. I had the one Ernie and my best friends that worked under Ernie. He was burned from head to foot and they were trying to tape him to get him to the meds. But the dead and the wounded were laying all over. It was awful. But in the meantime, Ernie went through an incident where the big guns were coming back and one of his men working under him, about five men, one of them got up on there behind the gun and froze as the gun was coming back and Ernie jumped up and pushed him off and as the gun came back, it hit Ernie and we thought he died. And also in the radar tower, when it hit that, everybody reported that I was dead up there, so we both thought we were dead but it turned out that we were okay. But that was one of the greatest experiences that I personally went through on the ship. HOW DID YOU FEEL ABOUT THE JAPANESE AFTER THE WAR? When I came home, I didn't hate the Japanese. I felt, in my own mind, I knew the history of the Japanese and why they started the war. The leaders built up this plan of attacking the United States, Pearl Harbor and I never had any hate for them.
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