GEORGE ANDERSON MILLER

World War II Interview


By: Kimsey M. "Mac" Fowler

Typed By: Jimmie B. Fowler



George Anderson Miller

Highland Avenue

Dublin, GA 31021

October 10, 2000



I was working in Douglas, GA and wanted to get in the Navy when I was twenty-one. I went to Macon to sign up and they wanted me to stay in six years. The Marines required four years. So I signed up with the Marines but I backed out.



One day the recruiting officer from Valdosta came in the drugstore where I worked. He said, "I got you today, you can sign up for the duration." I pulled off my apron, my boss paid me and I asked where do we go?



I went back to Macon to be sworned in and was sent to Norfolk, Virginia for basic training. I went in and took those shots and it made me sick. They sent me to the sick bay. Then they put me in another platoon and gave me the shots all over again. That made me sick again and I was back in the sick bay. I had the hardest chills! I was sent to the hospital the next day. Before releasing me, they removed my ingrown toenails.



They were ready to discharge me because of my sickness but then the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. They sent me back for training for only three days then shipped me out. That was the only training I had.



They put me on an old freighter. I looked at that thing and wondered what in the world do I have. I didn't know I had the best duty in the Navy.







I got sick again that night and ended up in the sick bay until we got to Cuba. I had lost about forty pounds.



We went to Jamaica, Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, St. Lucia, Trinidad, and then back to Puerto Rico and returned to New York.



We had liberty there for about ten days. We went back to Norfolk and then to Charleston Naval Yard. We did a lot of repair to the ships, then back to Norfolk and went the same route back to the Caribbean. They loaded us up with ten thousand tons of sugar in Puerto Rico. In the afternoon before we left, three freighters pulled out and you could see all three burning, they had been hit by a submarine. Our Captain went out of the way to make sure we bypassed that submarine and ended up about two hundred miles from North Carolina and returned to the Jack Frost Sugar Refinery in New York.



I had Easter Sunday 1942 in New York City. That was the prettiest sight I had ever seen all the women in those beautiful hats!



We left New York and returned to Norfolk for a few days and then back to Charleston. We had orders to run the coast. The Captain was very quiet and nervous and he chewed his neckties as he walked the deck. The subs were so thick out there.



I became Quartermaster after I was known for making good coffee and got to know some of them pretty well.



I was steering the ship and the Captain come over and told me to change the course ninety degrees. We went out and came into Charleston. In less than thirty minutes, the ship we were traveling with got hit. Coming into Charleston, we came into Cooper River they had the net tender to keep the submarines out and we had to open that to get through. As we were going in this coast guard cutter came in and started dropping depth chargers and a German sub shot up out of the water. They boarded and then pulled the German sub to dock and marched sixty German Sailors the sub.



We formed a convoy and went down through the Panama Canal. The Captain had orders to be opened about five days out. We went to New Zealand.



A Japanese Task Force bombarded a small island off New Zealand but no fire was returned. So the Japanese left thinking no one was on the island. After returning to Dublin I found that Manning Pope who ran a clothing store here in Dublin was on the island at that time.



We went to Wellington, New Zealand and had liberty for about three days and then we anchored off the coast for about four days.







About half our crew left to go to Guadalcanal and we were left in the Harbor. We then went ashore and had five days liberty. I met Miss New Zealand and had a ball!! All the other guys were envious and hollered, "Miller, where did you find that?"



We went to New Caledonia right after the Coral Sea Battle. The sailors were wearing the soldier's uniforms and soldiers were wearing the sailor's uniforms, they didn't have any clothes.



We put off a few provisions and left for Espiritu Santo, which was unoccupied. It was about ninety miles below Guadalcanal. We had five hundred drums of gasoline aboard and it was taking too long so they threw it overboard. They learned then not to stack it. In other words they might blow up one drum but they wouldn't blow up all of them.



We went to Sidney, Australia for two days. Half the crew took liberty one day and the other half the next. I only took $50.00 with me. I blew my $45.00 and then they changed our plans and I had four more liberties with only $5.00 in my pocket. We couldn't borrow, steal or get any cash anywhere.



We stopped by Honolulu on our way to San Diego, California where we unloaded the lead that we brought back from Australia.



We went to San Francisco and Mary Island. We stayed here a pretty good while. I had several liberties and went to Sacramento, and other California cities. I had a ball!!



We left San Francisco and went to San Diego for a brief stay and then to Gilbert Islands for the invasion. My brother was a few miles across at Tarawa, below the equator and I was above the equator. They were having so much trouble they called for us to come down and help them but that was cancelled. We had already taken our island.



We came back to San Francisco and then to San Diego, I got transferred off the ship. I had gotten one stripe. I was the only person aboard a LST#130 that had a rating and I was only 3rd Class.

You know for me to come in and be the boss of a division didn't go very well. I think I had three friends when I left that ship after two years.



The Captain sent for me to have liberty three different times. I received my second stripe.



We went to Saipan and put twenty-four Amtrak's and two of them came back for second loads. We had some of the same marines on that ship that we had when we went to New Zealand, we went back to Honolulu and loaded up supplies and then to Leyte then to Guam.



When we arrived at Guam, one of the soldiers had polio and they quarantined us for three weeks. They couldn't come and pick up our garbage, we had to go out to sea and dump it. They finally let up put the troops over and the first night one of the guys got polio. Thank God we got away from there and went back to Honolulu for more supplies and then to Okinawa. We were in two convoys with about three hundred crafts. We had four or five LST's like I was on and the others were smaller.

We unloaded artillery and stayed six days before the invasion force came in. The first night we lost two of the destroyers. They put us in there as a decoy but the Japanese didn't take the island.



We went to sea for a few days during the invasion just circling around and came back to Okinawa and delivered more ammunition.



We pulled up to Ie Shima the day that Ernie Pyle got killed. The next few days we picked up things like water from the larger ships and delivered it to the smaller ships. They sent us a signalman aboard, his name was Packard. He had been wet four times; he was a signalman on merchant freighters. We had an air raid; it was a hot one! He ran in and told me that he didn't have a helmet. I gave him mine; he went out for a few minutes and came back in. A small piece of shrapnel had hit his helmet and took a streak of paint off. If he hadn't had the helmet, he would have known it.



We left Okinawa after the Island had been secured. Shortly after leaving we hit coral and messed up the screws on our boat. They wouldn't fix us in Honolulu and decided to send us to the States.



Another boat pulled our boat plus another damaged one all the way to San Francisco. There was not a ripple on the water for seventeen days. A sea going tug had to come out and pull us on into shore.



I came home by train from Oakland, California to Atlanta and by bus to Fitzgerald, Georgia for thirty days. I had to return to Sacramento and while going through Cheyenne, Wyoming the train had to stop for service. When we started up again and got to the next little town, the whole town was celebrating, everyone was shouting, horns were blowing and the conductor came through and told us Japan had surrendered. Then we went to Stockton, California from Sacramento.



Most of my time was spent in the Caribbean and the Pacific. I did make one trip to Europe to Sicily.



I had four years, twenty-five days and two hours in service and I had a ball! I estimate that I traveled 145,000 sea miles during my tour of duty.

My parents were John B. Miller, Sr. and Rebecca Jane Noble from Pulaski County. I had a brother, John B. Miller, Jr. and one sister, Mary Ellen. My brother is deceased and my sister lives in New Jersey.



I am married to Nan Thompson Miller, daughter of John W. and Estelle Still Thompson from Montgomery County.



Nan and I have four children Monica Miller Nix, Dublin; Marilyn Miller Avant, Macon; Donald George Miller, Dublin; and David John Miller, Gracewood, GA.



We have five grandchildren Cody Miler Avant, Benjamin Kyle Miller, Brooke Kaitlin Miller, and twins, Taylor Anderson and Tara Leigh Nix.