CHANDLER MAURICE BEASLEY, SR.

I was in Milledgeville, Georgia having lunch in a small cafe'‚ on Main Street on Sunday morning, December 7, 1941 when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. I remember it very well. I was working with Snow's Laundry in Milledgeville at that time. I was eighteen years old the day before.

I joined the Marine Corps in September 1942 in Macon, GA. Normally, I would have gone to Paris Island, South Carolina for boot camp but they had a spinal meningitis epidemic at Paris Island at that time. They sent two of us, I don't know why just two of us, but it was a boy named Giddens from McRae and me to San Diego. The Marine Corp only had two boot camp sites, the one at Paris Island and San Diego. We were in the same recruit platoon but Giddens was having trouble physically, emotionally and all the way round. After the third week, he was recycled. They took him out and let him think it over a little bit and started him all over again. I never saw him again. That was the beginning of my career in the Marine Corp in World War II.

I had thought earlier in high school about joining the Guard. The Guard was mobilized in September 1940 and I had graduated in 1940. Several members of my class in the National Guard were called up at that time and I had really considered going in the National Guard. I didn't. I don't know why I chose the Marine Corp but I did and I'm glad of it.

Basically every Marine is trained as a basic Infantryman regardless of whether you go into radio, radar or whatever; you are trained as an infantryman. They accelerated the program at that time and it was seven weeks. It was a crammed pack seven weeks!

I recall breaking up boots in early December and I celebrated my nineteenth birthday on December 6, 1942 on the train going to Chicago to Navy Pier. I was a member of the Marine Guard attachment at Navy Pier for a while. Then I entered the Aviation Maintenance School there in Chicago. I stayed in Chicago until October 1943. I left after finishing school and went to Cherry Point, North Carolina and reported in to the 3rd Marine Air Wing. I was a member of Headquarters Service Squadron and from this in March 1944 we formed four new squadrons. This was a real new group to the Marine Corp. It was Marine night fighting.

The Squadron I later affiliated with was VMF(n) 542. I guess it was an advantage, the old commandant Captain Kyle liked me. We hunted and fished together sometimes. That was good in ways, but it was also bad at times. All my friends that I had been real close to was going into those new squadrons. I guess the Captain didn't want to loose a good boat paddler. He wouldn't let me go. We had quite a setto and I had the world made there but I wanted to get out of Cherry Point. These guys were going overseas and I knew it and it got to be a real battle between the Captain and myself. Me trying to go around him but I didn't have much luck. But, finally he let me go.

I went into 542 because most of my friends that I had made at Cherry Point were in 542. We left Cherry Point in October 1944 and went to Fort Hueneme California. In talking to people from this area, several from Dublin, Georgia went through Ft. Hueneme. Dr. J. W. Zetterower was a dentist there. Dr. Bob Oliver was there. We got in there in August or September and then broke down and went back into basic training, you might say. That's all we did day in and day out waiting to board ship and we finally boarded ship and arrived in the Caroline Islands group in the Pacific in mid October 1944.

We took a little island named Ulithi Atoll that was not much bigger than two city blocks. It was a strictly a jungle all the way. From this point we had to go in and carve out an airstrip and set up headquarters. This was the most advanced fleet anchorage at that time in the Pacific. Our mission was to protect the fleet anchorage at night. My unit was a night fighter unit. We used the F6F Hell Cats. The missions with the aircraft were at night and of course, the ground personnel worked twenty-four hours around the clock. Life at Ulithi was not all that exciting. We didn't see any rough action or anything of that sort. I think the biggest excitement the Japanese came up with these five suicidal mini submarines and they tried to send them into the fleet anchorage there at the end. They did sink a tanker there and that was all. They were destroyed by the Navy Surface Craft and the other fighter aircraft in the area. It really was not a big deal. In February of 1945, they split the unit into two groups. One was the assault group and we boarded ship at that time headed for Okinawa. We did not know we were going to Okinawa. But that's where we wound up. We left the aircraft and the rest of the squadron back in the Carolines and we went down to the Philippines and lay around there for a while before taking off for Okinawa. We had no idea where we were going.

About that time the Iwo Jima conflict was still going on and we had that on our minds. We really just didn't know where we were going. They didn't tell everybody their secrets.

I woke up one morning and went out on the deck and every ship in the world was there! This was just before D-Day in April. We were in a convoy the day before; it was really not that large. During the night everything rendezvoused there at Okinawa. Somebody got the word out! I had never seen so many ships in all my life!

A mail boat pulled up along the side. We had been gone sixty days or more with no mail or anything. I was anxious to hear from home because my father was at the point of death. I wanted to see what I could find out about his condition. I remember sitting down and sorting my mail by dates, etc. We were in the quarters right under the focsle that is the front of the ship right off the boat deck. When I came out, all hell broke loose. We were hit by a surprise kamikaze attack. I'm telling you that was quite an experience! The ship on the left side of us took a bomb. The ship on the immediate right side of us had a kamikaze plane crash into it. So we were right in the middle of it and it was no fun! Plus it was completely a new experience for us. I guess through about a day and half, we went through that with the kamikaze and then the morning of Easter Sunday, we went in and made the invasion on Okinawa.

If you have read the account of the Battle of Okinawa, the real invasion, well, we just outsmarted the Japanese. We made a showing with all our ships on one end of the island. The Japanese moved their equipment to that end and we invaded the other end of the island.

We didn't exactly go in unopposed but it was not like some of the other landings. We went right in off Butner Bay and set up on Yontan Airstrip. Our planes came in the next morning from the carriers and we started operating.

I guess thirty to forty days later; the rest of our unit that we left in the Carolines came to us. It was pretty hectic during the entire month of April. We were hit pretty heavy most every night. We suffered the most casualties at night.

On into May, it began to settle down and the night of May 24th, the Japanese sent in thirteen stripped down Betty Bombers loaded with approximately thirty troops in each bomber. They were suicide troops. On their approach to the airstrip to Yontan, ten or eleven of the Betty bombers were shot down by night fighters and by ack ack around the field and one crashed. One plane made it and I'm telling you, they created more hell around that strip. We had people from the unit that were down there that night right in the middle of it. The boy I shared a bunker with was on duty that night and he was down there. I knew he was in the middle of it and I knew he didn't have a weapon. I went and got some help from the Ordinance Officer and we went down to try to bail them out. He and I ran into a beehive and we really had a big time. This plane crash-landed on the strip.

These troops just bailed out of it and they knew what they were doing. The first crack out of the box they went to the tower and blew it up.

They were evidently well informed and they knew where the ammo dumps and fuel dumps were and started blowing them up. You just didn't dare stick your head above the ground. It was that rough! This Lt. and I were able to get in there and get our people out. We had one hurt. He's the one referred to in this book, "Operation Iceberg" by: Gerald Astor. I didn't know anything about the book until a good friend of mine, Curtis Beall gave it to me. It's a book about the Battle of Okinawa. They interviewed the boy that was hurt that night and he tells the story in this book. It was quite a night! We had several casualties that night from the outfit.

Things began to settle down and it was the normal routine. Then thank God for the Atom bomb. I say that because we were packing up getting ready to invade Japan. Only God knows what that would have been. After the war was over, we got word that we would go to Japan as part of the Occupational Force.

We went to Japan and went to Yokosuka Naval Air Station on Tokyo Bay. I stayed there until I came up with enough points to come home. I don't remember how many points it took to come home, but I do remember when I got them. Early November I had the points and said, "Oh, boy I'll be home for Christmas!" We left Japan with the impression that we are going to fly all the way to the States. We flew right back to Okinawa and got off the plane! The brass came along and bumped us all! We stayed around there for three weeks trying to get out! We finally got out in early December. We caught a small aircraft carrier, the USS Altamaha coming back to the States! Oh, Boy! We took that carrier into Hawaii and bless pat; they changed the orders for the carrier dumped us off and it took off somewhere else! They didn't care whether we got home or not!

We hit the States about three days before Christmas! They couldn't process us over the Christmas Holidays so I was discharged the day after Christmas 1945. That was a nice Christmas gift, but I was expecting to be home for Christmas. I didn't quite make it! I'm just real thankful that I could do these things.

I waited about three years and went back into the Marine Reserves and stayed in it for two years and got out. I don't know, once I started it, I wanted to keep my hand in it. The only reason I had chosen the Marine Reserves, I couldn't get into any active Reserve unit. You were more or less on a list and that was it.

In 1954, they wanted to reorganize a National Guard unit here in Dublin that was here prior to the war. I joined this unit and retired after thirty-three years. All in all, it was a great ride.

I have a lot of fun with this book here. I have a painting on the wall of my old CO right off Buckner Bay over Okinawa right off Yontan Airstrip. He wrote this book "Ace". One of my best buddies and myself, old Lou Sweezy from Flint, Michigan were down on the line one-day. We knew we were getting a new CO and we didn't know when he was coming and who he was or nothing about it. This truck went by the line and stopped and this character got off. He was the cruddiest looking individual I had seen in quite some time. He got within twelve or fifteen feet of us. There was no rank, no insignia, no nothing; he hadn't shaved in a week. He was awful looking. I stopped him and asked if he had a problem. He said, "No, I don't have a problem." I proceeded to tell him how cruddy I thought he looked and that I thought he might want to go and address that situation. He took it and was good natured and then he proceeded to let me know that he was Major Bruce Porter and that he was the new boss. I said, "Yes, sir." He tells about that encounter in his book. Of course, he improves on it a little bit and makes it a little hilarious. He was quite a character. He had flown with Ole Pappy Boyington, with the Black Sheep Squadron. He was sort of a complete opposite of the man he replaced. The original C.O. Kellum was spit and polished and dotted every "I" and crossed every "T". Old Bruce was real loose and let everything take its course. The first night he flew with us, he shot down two planes so that really cemented him with us. He was quite a guy!

I see these people that's left every year. Originally there were two hundred seventy-five of us. In 1970, I put together the first reunion for this group to be held in St. Louis. I spent two years contacting all these people. We had a tremendous reunion and started having one every two years. After so many started getting older and dying out, we have one every year. From one hundred thirty-five or forty people at the first reunion, we are down to thirty or thirty-five people making the reunions. Some of them are dead and some are not able to travel. I'll be seventy-seven in December and I was one of the youngest in the outfit.

Like I said, it was a riot. It's something you wouldn't want to go through twice.

My father was Fred Beasley. He ran a barbershop in the Old New Dublin Hotel on South Jefferson Street. It has been demolished now. It was big time in the 30's and 40's!

My mother was Lillie Herrin Beasley from Perrin, Texas. My father was out in Texas for some reason or other and fooled her into coming back with him!

My wife, Bettye Scott is from Quitman, Georgia. Her parents were Fannie and Alex Scott,

We have four sons:

Fred Scott, Chandler, Jr. "Chan", Daniel Moody "Danny", and William Charles "Willie".

Scott and Chan live here in Dublin, Danny lives in Atlanta and Willie is Pastor of the First United Methodist Church, Tifton, Georgia.

We have eight grandchildren, one great-granddaughter and expecting another great-grandchild later this year.

Notes:

Chandler was Tech Sgt. when he was discharged after World War II and later retired as Command Sgt. Major with the Reserves. He retired from the US Postal Service in 1979 after thirty-two years as rural mail carrier, Dexter, Georgia.

Chandler Maurice Beasley

246 Wells Circle
Dublin, GA 31021
World War II Interview
21 September 2000









By: Kimsey M. "Mac" Fowler









Typed By: Jimmie B. Fowler