| Merle has been a member of Joseph P. Chaisson Post 41 for sixty years and shares some of his memories of World War II involving the Japanese Theater.
In 1943, age 19 and married, Merle was drafted into the United States Army Air Corp. Basic training started at Fort Devens, MA, after which he moved on to Fort Bend in Alabama, where he trained as a combat engineer and heavy equipment operator and was assigned to the 836th Engineer Aviation Battalion-Replacement.
Boarding an Italian liner they sailed around Australia to the Maffin Bay on the north side of New Guinea. The overall mission of the 41st Division under
General MacArthur was to capture and rebuild airfields on the islands as the Allied forces cleared and advanced toward Japan.
The 163rd Regimental Combat Team (RCT) was assigned to take Wake Island and Sarmi airfield. Merle’s unit entered the bay with Japanese 93 mm cannons firing at the ships. They loaded their equipment and men on LSDs and came ashore in daylight after the infantry secured the landing on Wake Island. It was not known how many of the Japanese Eighteenth Army were on the island. The Engineer officers were called “Ninety-day wonders” having little leadership training and most including the men had little combat experience. “The second lieutenant told us to stack our arms together and we formed a circle around a fire to have tea”. A mortar landed in the center of the group but was a dud! “That was the first of several close calls during my tour of duty”. They all quickly learned that it was not a tea party. Even threats of friendly fire became a serious problem when they would be caught between friendly fire from ships and aircraft shooting at the enemy.
It took two days of nasty squad-size fighting by the infantry to pry almost 800 Japanese defenders from spider holes, coconut log bunkers and coral caves. The large 6 ton trucks were parked in a row like they were trained to do during training. Merle’s unit lost all of their trucks, paperwork and clothing stored in the trucks on the second day. “Everything was burned up”. After the infantry cleared up the island, there were 759 Japanese corpses, 4 prisoners of war and 40 American soldiers killed. Merle’s unit continued to move through the Moluccas Islands and Philippines working on airfields and eventually ended up in a large staging area in northern Japan.
After the Japanese surrendered, Merle came back to the United States in a Liberty Ship to Seattle, WA and was discharged from Fort Devens, MA.
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- MERLE F. PHILBROOK
