The Wedding

June 3rd worked out very well because it was between spring and summer quarters of school. Our wedding was a medium sized church wedding in the chapel of the old LDS church on highway 30. The ceremony was performed by Bishop Lee S. Nebeker and there were quite a few people there to see Mazie's father give her away. As I looked at her coming down the aisle on her father's arm, I was sure I wanted her very much but wasn't sure from the look on her father's face whether or not he would give her away. She wore a white satin dress which was made by her mother and carried the bouquet which I had gotten for her. I don't recall the bouquet too well but do remember that it cost thirty dollars. Mazie's father took the wedding party over to the Park Hotel Cafe for a wedding supper which was very good. Her folks held a wedding reception at their home and I don't recall much except Mazie's mother dragged me around by the sleeve for a few hours meeting people, cutting cake, doing errand work. By the time the reception was over, I was thoroughly glad to get away from her. Originally we had anticipated staying the first night of our honeymoon at Little America but they were no vacancy by the time we got there and we had to go on to Kemmerer for the night. Looking in retrospect I should have planned better and things would have worked out much better for Mazie because the hotel we stayed in at Kemmerer wasn't very nice and far from a bridal suite. The next morning we went to Murtaugh Idaho and spend two or three days with My aunt Geneva and Uncle Dave and they treated us very well except there wasn't much to do and did nothing very exciting. They were exceptionally considerate to us though and seemed pleased to have had us accept their invitiation to sepnd part of our honeymoon with them. After Idaho, we went to Yellowstone Park for two days and then back to Green River for for a day and then on to school for the summer quarter. In the park the roads were full of chuckholes and were not in good condition. I drove a little too fast and hit several of them too hard and became irritated and did not show the better side of my personality. Looking back, I'll bet the poor girl wondered what kind of marriage she had gotten into and what kind of an eccentric she had married. All in all I behaved very badly and planned my honeymoon very poorly. If I could only jump into a time machine and do it all over again I could give my lovely new wife the tenderness and sweetness that a honeymoon deserves.

Gramps Proposes! Or Was It the Other Way Around?

Mazie worked for a local attorney Lee. Nebeker during my first school year and I came home nearly every week end to see her and then would rush back to Laramie on Sunday night. Near the end of the freshman year, I asked my Mom during one of my week end visits what she thought about my getting married and she told me that she had known that this was coming for a long time and thought it was a very good idea and that Mazie would make a good wife. I guess it must have shown on my face because I didn't think anyone knew that I had been contemplating marriage. (Gramps wrote in a sidenote here that says, "Insert her Pa's dislike." but I couldn't find any more on the subject.) I don't remember just how I asked Mazie. In fact, I am not sure if I asked her, if she asked me, or just how it came about but we decided to get married June 3 which was her mother's desire since her parents had been married on that same day. Mazie's mother told me that the Eskridge men didn't give their fiancees engagement rings and I thought maybe that was a pretty good idea which I would follow. When Mom heard of this she took me by the ear and told me If I thought enough of the girl to marry her, she certainly deserved an engagement ring. I went to Rock Springs and picked out a small keepsake diamond which fit Mazie's hand beautifully. I hadn't realized before what tiny hands she had and how delicately they were shaped. So tiny, they were almost childlike, but yet had the slender taper of a woman's hand.

Family History: Gramps Meets Grammies

While sitting in back of her at the Christmas contata, I thought to myself what beautiful long shiny blonde hair and lovely white skin. This was my first impression of Mazie. I had just been discharged from the Navy and made it home just in time for Christmas 1945. Having a keen military eye for a trim ankle, I soon noticed that her five feet three inch frame was filled out very nicely with about 35 23 35 dimensions. She was dressed in a black dress which was sheer at the arms and neck. Her tiny nose appeared to have a slight bump just below the nose-piece of her glasses and she had clear bluish-green eyes and a mouth with full nicely shaped lips. Most of the audience enjoyed the Contata but I can't remember much about it, but I do remember the first impression of Mazie was very pleasant and enjoyable. About a week later I saw her on the corner of where the town hall now stands. She was standing with a group of girls and was wearing a bright green knee length dress. She seemed to be quite lively and I notice that she had exceptionally pretty legs. A Short time after that I saw her up in the balcony of the gym at a basketball game between Green River and Rock Springs. I don't remember how she was dressed but I got a good look at her face and found it to be wholesome refined and very pretty. For the next few months I didn't see her very often and then Orlo came home from the Navy and dated Lita and one night asked me to double date with them. From then on Mazie and I went different places together for the balance of the year until I went to the University of Wyoming in September. The thing I remember about those few intervening months were that Mazie and I would get into discussions about Orlo and Lita. I thought Lita was a silly flippity little girl and Mazie thought that Orlo was a spoiled brat. We were both right but while we were having small heated discussions about Lita and Orlo, they were out in my car having a good time dancing and going to movies and doing the things the majority of young people did in those days.

The End of the War

Our ship was the first ship to enter Nakagasuku Wan Bay on the north end of the island. As we came around through the narrow channel, a torpedoe went slipping by. Our officers had seen it in time and made a sharp turn and the fish went full length of our ship and on out to sea. This was quite a thriller and many times we saw big old ugly octopus looking sea mines go by as we were looking over the side. Every night the Japanese sent suicider swimmers and boats out amongst the fleet and it was a pretty sight to see all the guns cut loose and every once in a while a large explosion from a suicide boat that was hit. A suicide swimmer swam out to our ship one night and set off a charge a blew a hold in the stern of the ship. It just flooded one compartment though and didn't put us out of action or even slow us up.

Around the month of May, our fleet was reassembled and we were to escort several transport ships on an invasion of the Japanese Mainland. At this same time we heard that atom bombshad been dropped on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki and that the war was over. Everyone certainly breathed a sigh of relief when this news was heard.

We were ordered to go to Nagasaki with a hospital ship and evacuate many of the prisoners the Japanese had held in the interior of Japan. These engineers were mostly from Wake Island and other places the Japanese had taken over. The trip into Nagasaki was a pretty scary one. The Japanese sent out a guide in a small boat who led us in through the mine fields and every minute I could just feel the ship striking one and all of us going sky high. The channel wound around the high mountains and I thought that if ever we were trapped it was now. We encountered no difficulty and made the trip fine. The water gave us a bad time and we had 800 cases of dysntery aboard. Out in the harbor little Japanese kids were swimming in the same water we were having the trouble from.

We were given a liberty and tour of Nagasaki and then herded into the courtyard of the former American Embassy. Foreign kids catch on so fast. While sitting up on the fence we saw Japanese children going by and they would say Cigaretto Sailor Chocalatto Sailor. One of our wise guys holler down to one boy about 12 and said you little slant eyed so and so and the little Japanese kid looked up and said go to hell you son of a bitch. The wise guy was so taken back he nearly fell off the fence. The army had been in a short time ahead of us and taught them well I guess. The destruction at Nagasaki from the bomb was terrible. All one could find was a mess of twisted steel more like a giant fire had swept the whole area rather than a bomb. The heat there must have really been terrific. Ships were turned bottomside up from previous conventional bombings and the whole city was a mass of ruins.

Our ship was then sent to Sasebo where we saw many ships overturned here including what looked like an aircraft carrier and a battleship. This whole bay was covered with jellyfish and covered the lake like lily pads back home on some of our lakes. We went ashore at Sasebo and were allowed to mingle with the natives. This was quite interesting and enjoyable. After living aboard a noisy ship for so long it was really peaceful on the Japanese countryside. It was so quite it made my ears hurt.

For the next several weeks we made runs from Sasebo to Nagasaki and back with supplies and occupation forces. Finally we were ordered back to the states and were to take the northern route past Tokyo. I saw Mt Fujiama but it was through a porthole because I caught dysntery also and was in sick bay for a week.

One thing I shall never forget about the Okinawa campaign was the typhoon we got caught in. we were taking spray in the stacks which were eight feet high. Not large waves but just spray. they tied ropes all over the ship and if you went anywhere it was by hanging on to a rope. Looking over the side, you could touch the water one minute and the next minute the water was fifty feet down it seemed. Many small ships were washed ashore and several were lost at sea. Our ship was so large that we were told to ride it out which was the best descision.

WWII Continued

Our ship had one of the best gun crews in the navy which was demonstrated when we first sailed into Okinawa. We were on early morning patrol and a Japanese Betty (Medium Bomber) made a bombing run on us and our crew shot it down before it got to us. Part of the wing fell on our ship so it was pretty close. Our ship must have had a charmed life because during the Okinawa campaign we were under 576 Japanese suicide raids and never got hit once. On one raid a suicider flew right between our stacks and hit a battleship on the other side. It was fascinating to hear the radio say enemey aircraft approaching bearing 265 and closing. First one could hear the heavy five inchers cut loose and then the 40MM's would chime in and then when really close the 50 calibres would start. We sailed around Okinawa for a week bombarding shore installations before the landing parties went in. The day was a beautiful blue sunshiny day at the start and by noon the sky was so full of smoke that it looked like an overcast stormy day. Watching the army and marines go in was quite a sight. Their little craft would go between the long line of ships right up to the beach and then they would jump out and rush ashore firing their rifles. We laid down the most terrible barrage of rockets and heavy fire that I have ever seen and places that were beautifully green with foliage were left bare as the desert. I wondered how on earth people could live through that kind of torture but they did and always put up quite a lot of resistance when anyone tried to land.

The suiciders continued and I saw ships come back with holes in them big enough for a greyhound bus to drive though. Every night we lost one or two small ships. The Japanese never seemed to have any coordination on their raids. First they would have a surface raid, then an air raid, and then a submarine raid. With the U.S. Forces they would hit with everything all at once and that is what made our forces so devastating. The Japanese were clever and I received a call on the radio one morning to lay down a barrage in a such and such sector. The sender could not authenticate the message by the system in use at that time and so we did not act on the request. We later found out that it was a Japanese who had ordered the barrage in the area where our front line marines were at the time.

Our coordination was further demonstrated when the marines called for fire support because the Japanese had saved all their tanks for one last thrust and were coming down from the hills to force our marines into the sea if they weren't killed first and our fleet laid down a wicked broadside and knocked out all the tanks before they could get to the marines. Our firepower was so heavy that the ship would ease over just a little bit to one side from the firepower.

We listened to Tokyo Rose on the radio and she reported several times that a Wichita type cruiser was destroyed by the Imperial Japanese Navy that day, but we knew she was lying because our ship was the only one of its kind in the fleet.

Account of WWII by Robert John Walker Sr.

I enlisted in the U.S. Naval Reserve in August 1942 and went to Salt Lake and then on to San Diego for boot training. After boots, I was sent to College Station Texas to radio operators school. In the winter of 1943 I was sent to Pearl Harbor and was stationed there for two years. It was a terrible sight to look across the bay and see the old Arizona and the Pennsylvania bottom side up and knowing that there were hundreds of men still trapped and dead down in the ships. There was still a total blackout in effect and everyone kept gas masks handy at all times. Our outfit was the head communications for all the cruisers and destroyers in the Pacific and messages were copied around the clock continuously. Messages came in five letter word code groups and had to be run through a coding machine to make them readable. It was quite interesting work and I got to see a lot of the island of Oahu. We played lots of tennis and did a lot of swimming. The only bad thing which happened was that I caught double penumonia and had to stay in a naval hospital for six weeks.

Cecil came to the island with an army engineers outfit for a training period before going on to Saipan for airfield construction. I ran down his outfit and ate dinner with them and had a really good visit. I went to seem him another time and his outfit had pulled out so I went all over the navy yards and ran on to the LST he was aboard. I got to have a short visit with him and then his outfit pulled out and I never saw him again until the war was over. During the Okinawa campaign it was interesting to find out later that our outfit tore up the airfields and his outfit built them back up again.

Three other sailors and I were given the task of painting a signal tower at Pearl and we weren't overly fond of this so we weren't putting our hearts into it. The Lt. came around and gave us a shellacing and my little buddy (Tom Scanlan) from Boston said "Well if we had been truck drivers before we came into the service we would be good painters too." The Lieutenant said that we could be sent to sea you know and this little guy said yeah we know that so two days later we were at sea aboard the Columbia head for Frisco. We thought it was for a 30 day leave, but when we got to the west coast they stuck us aboard the heavy cruiser Wichita and that is where I spent the rest of the war. This same little Scanlan was quite a character. One liberty we would go ashore and have a steak and go to a move or live musical if we could find one, and the next liberty we would go ashore and he would get drunk and I would see that he got back aboard okay. It worked out pretty well. He could be a real gem or a S.O.B. An English aircraft carrier was in town, I can't remember where and we were ashore and little English sailors irritated my friend to no end. One little fellow came up and said "I say there old matey can you direct me to the Cinema." My freind told him to get to hell out of there before he batted him in the mouth. Other times he would find two sailors fighting and he would jump right in the middle of them and talk them out of the fight and have them walking away arm in arm before they left.