JOSEPH MICELI
MoMM 1/c

WWII Memoirs of Joseph John Miceli

I was at Yankee Stadium watching the Giants play football on December 7th, 1941 when they made an announcement that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and we were at war. They announced, “Colonel Donovan head of OSS report to your headquarters.” I wanted to enlist in the Navy right away. I didn't want to be drafted into the Army.

I signed up for the Navy in June of 1942 and I left on October 21 at the age of 19. To satisfy my mother, I first tried to enlist in the Coast Guard. I went to New York and I'll never forget it. There was a very long line of men standing inside a dark hallway waiting to be examined. When I got to the doctor he said, open your moth. You've got cavities - Goodbye.” So I then enlisted in the Navy, which is what I wanted to do. The reason I didn't leave until October was because my mother said, “Wait until Nikki has her baby.” Tommy Martin was born in September.

I got on the train in New London and went to New Haven where I was sworn in, and then got back on the train with all the other recruits and passed through New London and bound for Newport, Rhode Island for three weeks of Basic Training. (Didn't know anyone else there.)

What sticks in my mind about that is one of the first things we had to have was a physical and dental exam. I had gone to the dentist after the Coast Guard incident so I was okay there, but a boy named Mitch was told he had 16 cavities and four teeth to be pulled. And they did it all then and there. He came back to the barracks crying that night. He was a nice kid too.

To find out what we were best suited for, we took aptitude tests and my Number 1 choice was Aviation Machinist Mate and Number 2 was Motor Machinist Mate. I got Motor Machinist Mate. So I was Apprentice Seaman Number 6427125. Basic training consisted of marching, firing guns, fighting fires, swimming test, tying knots and rowing a boat - basic seamanship. We got up to revelry at 5:30 a.m., went out for exercise calisthenics and running, then had breakfast. Then we'd have classes, military discipline, etc. The big thing was meeting people. That was the first time being away from home in my life. After three weeks of training, they shipped me out to Diesel Engine School in Richmond, Virginia, really pushing us through. Two years later, my brother's Basic Training was three months.

At Diesel School, I thought I was going to get to work on engines, but all we got was theory instruction. Much to my disappointment, I never held a wrench in my hand the whole time. I also found out how devious some of the guys were. Rather than get up and go for calisthenics they would hide under the building and come out in time for breakfast. It was also the first time I witnessed poverty - people sitting on their steps in little one room shacks in Richmond where we were allowed to go on liberty. That was a big treat - going there and having southern fried chicken in the basket, fries, and honey dipped rolls. Besides my high school graduation, it was the only time I'd ever dined in a restaurant. After we ate we would go roller skating.

We came out of Diesel school two months later as Firemen First Class.

Then we got shipped out to the USS Harry Lee at Norfolk, Virginia. The big thing there is we got on a bus and went down to the pier, which was the biggest base on the East Coast. It was enormously busy 24 hours a day - guns, materials, troops getting ready to be shipped to Europe. We drove up to a brand new ship and I got pretty excited - but it was not mine. Mine was the older one on the other side of the pier.

We went aboard ship and were assigned to “D” division - all engineers for landing boats. The USS Harry Lee was a passenger ship built in 1932, converted to an attack transport (APA-10). The numbers later in the war went up at least to APA-365. We commenced practicing landing in Chesapeake Bay where I had a frigid and memorable experience.

We had left the ship at midnight for a practice landing on the beach. After we dropped the troops off, we were returning to the ship at day break. We were told to tie up back aft and come aboard for breakfast. We were tied up about three landing craft boats behind, and I was jumping from one boat to another. It was in February and it was icy conditions and I slipped and fell into the water but I had one hand on the Jacob's Ladder and I pulled myself up to the ship. By the time I got to the top, I was literally covered with a sheet of ice. To show how inexperienced we were, one boat was picked up by a civilian tug boat. The motor had conked out and they didn't have any tools or any experience to fix it. They later changed to diesel engines from gasoline. We didn't know it at the time, but we were being prepared to make the landing in Sicily.

On June 8th, 1943, we left Norfolk, passed through the Straight of Gibraltar on June 21st, 1943. We had no idea where we were headed when we left. We arrived in Oran, North Africa on June 22nd. We left Oran on July 5th and put our troops on shore in Scoletti, Sicily, on July 10 th , which was the first action the United States took against Europe with ground soldiers. There were over 100 ships, with 1,500 soldiers aboard, and we had 17 landing craft. I was the engineer on one of the bigger landing crafts, which carried 55 soldiers. We went along side of the ship, soldiers climbed down a net into the craft, and in a line we made for the beach. In the meantime, the Germans were bombing us with their fighter bombers. Our ship got hit by our own gunfire from one of the other ships that was firing at the German planes. We took the guys in, we dropped the ramp, they ran up the beach, and we went back for another load. Then we brought the supplies. Because of a storm we lost many landing craft, including ours. So I spent the first night on the beach in a fox hole. I picked up some Italian bullets for a souvenir, which I still have today. A major had called out to us to watch out for land mines. We left Sicily on the 12th and arrived back in Oran on the 16 th . Sicily was my first war experience.

We headed back to Norfolk on July 23rd and arrived on August 3rd. The Chief Petty Officer liked me and took me under his wing and wanted to teach me a lot of things, but I was afraid the other guys resented it, so I didn't cooperate and ended up being like “Beetle Bailey,” given the lousy jobs. When we got there I got a five day leave and I went home for the first time.

We left Norfolk on August 24th, 1943 headed for San Francisco, by way of the Panama Canal, arriving on September 10th. It took so long because we had to zigzag to avoid submarines. We loaded up with soldiers and materials and headed for Honolulu on September 26th. We left on the 29th again not knowing our destination and arrived in Wellington, New Zealand on October 12 th , without escort. Our mission was to pick up Marines to go to Tawara, part of the Gilbert Islands.

We had liberty and a grand time in Wellington. We went horseback riding where the horse did what he wanted and I was just hanging on for dear life and I almost got run over by a trolley car when the horse stopped dead on the tracks. The bell went, “Ding, Ding, Ding,” and the horse just stood there. The trolley stopped and I finally was able to pull the horse off. We ate steak and eggs for 50 cents. Milk was 10 cents a quart; cookies 20 cents a pound. It was a beautiful harbor ringed by mountains all around it.

We left New Zealand and arrived at the New Hebrides on November 7th, 1943. We left there for the invasion of Tawara, which occurred on November 20th, 1943. This was my first landing in the Pacific Theatre and it was a difficult landing because there was coral and a lot of opposition from the Japanese soldiers. We killed over 5,000 Japanese soldiers. It was very bloody with bodies floating in the water. That was where I was in contact with the Japanese for the first time. The marines brought six prisoners aboard our craft and told us to bring them back to the flag ship for interrogation. They were stripped naked because they used to hide grenades on their bodies. We were there for seven days.

On one of the runs between ship and shore, I took off my clothes and tied them to a line and threw them overboard to wash. They came undone and as it turned out we were unable to return to our ship and I spent the next five days in my skivies. The reason we had to spend our time in the craft was because the ship would leave at dusk to avoid submarines and “Washing Machine Charlie” - air attacks.

When I climbed aboard finally and they had a muster to see who was missing, I was black from the hot sun and my hair was red, they didn't recognize me. We headed back to Pearl Harbor and arrived December 7th, 1943, exactly two years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

While we were at sea, we had different assignments to stand watch, gun watches, and to make fresh water. The ship was twice as long as a football field and weighed 10,000 tons. Some of the places we had to stand watch were scary, dark and eerie at night and sometimes you would see a rat. My friend Slim fell asleep one night while we were on gun watch, on the 20 mm gun platform where Ensign Spargo caught him. Slijm, instead of being worried about being put on report, said, “You little S.O.B. - if you ever sneak up on me again, I'll throw you overboard.” He didn't get put on report.

At Pearl Harbor we loaded up to go to the Marshall Islands. We left Honolulu January 22nd, 1944 and we arrived at Kwajelinn, Marshall Islands on January 31st for the invasion. This was one of the stepping stones of the plan to go across the Pacific to Japan creating air strips closer and closer to Japan.

This landing was uneventful because the battleships and the air strikes had preceded us successfully. There was no one waiting for us on the beaches as we unloaded our ships.

The thing that stands out in my mind about that landing is seeing one tank that fell into a shell hole in the water when it drove off the landing craft. The four men inside the tank perished. What our boat did to avoid that from occurring again was to leash three landing craft together to spread the weight of the tank and thus we were able to be above the coral, avoid shell holes, and bring the tank ashore. Upon completion of unloading, we left Kwajelinn on February 5th, 1944.

We arrived at Funi Futi in the Ellice Islands on February 9th, 1944 and we left there on February 19th and arrived in Noumea, the capital of New Caledonia, a French possession, on February 24th. This was out of the war zone and we had rest and relaxation there. It was very beautiful with a thriving town on the harbor. We went swimming, had baseball games, and the drinkers caroused. They would come back so drunk that we had to lift them aboard ship in a cargo net.

We left Noumea on March 8th and arrived at Guadacanal in the Solomon Islands on March 11th, 1944. This island had already been captured by the Americans in a very gruesome battle. We left bay there on March 27th and arrived at Empress Augusta Bougainville on March 28th.

I realized later that we were doing a lot of zigzagging to confuse the enemy. We left that same day and arrived at Milne Bay, New Guinea on March 31st. We left there on April 4th and arrived in Buna, New Guinea on April 5th. We left there on April 15th and arrived at Finchaven, New Guinea on April 16th. We left there on April 19th, moving again up the coast and arrived for the invasion of Aitape, New Guinea on April 23rd.

This landing too was uneventful, the least hazardous of them all. The Japanese had taken off again, a game of cat and mouse. We unloaded, left the Army soldiers there, and went back up to Buna on April 28th. We left Buna that same day and arrived at Saidor, New Guinea on April 29th. We left Saidor on May 1st and arrived back at Aitape on May 3rd and we left there that same day continuing to zigzag up and down the coast of New Guinea.

During the month of May, we left Buna and went to the New Hebrides then Guadacanal.

In June we arrived back in Kwajelinn. We left there on June 12th, 1944, arrived off of Saipan in the Marianna Islands on June 16th, 1944.

The intent was for the U.S. Forces to attack simultaneously Saipan, Guam, and Tininan in the Mariannes Group. The Japanese opposition on Saipan was so great that this plan had to be abandoned. This battle was one of the worst in the Pacific. The USS Henry Lee was a backup force and we circled off the coast of Saipan for ten days waiting to see what would happen.

During that time, we used up all of our food supplies and we ended up eating New Zealand Mutton for breakfast, lunch, and supper. It was fatty and bad and we had it cooked, fried, baked, broiled…you name it. When victory was assured on Saipan, we were forced to return to resupply the ships at Eniwetok, Marshall Islands. That was June 30th, 1944.

After re-supplying the ship, we left for Guam on July 7th, 1944 for another invasion, arriving July 21st. This was the third invasion that I actually was in the line of fire. In landing, beside the enemy gunfire, we encountered coral reefs, and we were unable to get up close to the beach. We were forced to drop the Marines off in deep water up to their necks and they had to wade into shore. The coral also tore up the bottom of our boats and when we returned to our ship, we were taking on water, and we were forced to make emergency repairs. The bottoms - the gashes in the steel - were welded and we went back out again with the 55 gallon gasoline drums which the Marines had to float ashore because of the coral.

This battle, along with Ima Jima (which occurs later) and Tawara (which was my first), was one of the most heavily defended by the enemy and consequently one of the most dangerous for me. As we headed for the beach with our load of 55 marines, in line with the other 150 landing craft from the 17 attack transports, the force of the enemy's machine guns and mortar was so heady that we shielded ourselves behind the coxain's enclosure. It was the only protection. The Marines were in the well of the boat. I saw one mortar hit the water. Then another. The third landed right inside the control boat, which was about 100 feet from us, blowing it up and killing all of the men aboard.

Four days later on July 25 th , we left for Pearl Harbor arriving on August 7th, 1944. We left Pearl Harbor on August 10th, and arrived back in the States on the 18th of August, 1944 at San Piedro, California, the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, for ship overhaul and sailor's leave. I went home by train, which took five days each way, leaving me a total of only four days in New London. During this leave, my friend Corky married his sweetheart, Jackie. It had been 18 months since I had seen my family and, of course, they were happy to see me.

On October 15th, 1944, we left San Piedro, California and arrive at Port Heuimeni, above Venice, California and loaded up there with food, ammunition, and supplies. We also loaded 600 black men who were a labor battalion. (There were 15 million people who served in the Armed Forces for World War II - hard to visualize.) We left there on October 21st, two years after I had joined the Navy. We crossed the International Date Line on November 1st through 3rd, 1944. I would be turning 22 that month. We also crossed the equator going south on November 8th.

We arrived at Manus Islands in the Admiralty Group on November 9th, 1944. On November 10th we left there and went to Hollania on November 11th. We were again leapfrogging from island to island. The crew was in the dark as to what or why or where we were going.

We arrived at Wiendeo Islands in the Schouten Group on the 13th of November. We left that island on the 19th, arrived back at Manus on the 21st. Left there on the 24th and arrived in Bougainville on the 26th. This is where we left off the Labor Battalion troops.

During this time, I got a terrible case of lice, the product of living in close, cramped quarters. I went to the sick bay and got Campho Phenic, which did not kill the lice. I had it on every inch of my body except my head. It was so hot and I itched like crazy - everyone avoided me like the plague. Finally a chief said, “The only way you're going to get rid of it is to wash yourself in Diesel oil!” SO I bathed with it and it burned, but it did the job.

We left Bougainville on December 15th, 1944 and arrived at Lae in New Guinea on the 17th. Left there on the 19th and arrived in Admiralties, Manus Island on the 21st. For Christmas and other holidays, we had nice meals - turkey and all the fixings.

We left there on December 31st, 1944 and arrived for the Invasion of the Island of Luzon in the Philippines on January 9, 1945. This is where, on Lingayen Gulf, General MacArthur landed up the beach from us and made his famous speech, “I Have Returned.”

This landing was uneventful too because the Japanese forces had withdrawn and retreated into the jungle. However, we did have difficulty unloading the soldiers due to the high surf which drove our landing craft up on the beach. We were left high and dry waiting for each wave to come in so we could inch ourselves back off the beach. This is where I earned my First Class rating, Motor Machinist Mate 1/C. What happened was the coxain failed to get the boat off. My efforts to keep the engine heat exchangers clear of sand by running down to the engine room and changing the strainers, enabled us to keep the engines running and not clogged, allowing me to patiently maneuver the boat off the beach.

We left Lingayen Gulf on January 11th, 1945 and arrive at Leyte Islands in the Philippines on January 14th. That was where I had running boat duty, which was to take officers ashore or to the flag ship where they would have their operations meetings. It was here, while we were standing by waiting for our ship's officers that we decided to cool off and take a swim. The guys on the ship hollered, “Shark!” We thought they were just trying to scare us because they were jealous and then we saw the fin! We got out quickly! Also, during that same day, we saw this P-42 Lightening plane, the only two engine fighter plane we had, doing beautiful loops in the sky. Suddenly, for no apparent reason, we saw it fall and crash into the sea.

We left Leyte on January 19th and went to Ulithi, Caroline Islands and arrived on January 23rd. The whole fleet was there in that lagoon - battleships, air craft carriers, destroyers, transports, and supply ships from the U.S., with all the hardships. I do remember some pleasures. One was when we were there we furnished our landing craft to carry suppliers to the ships that didn't have them. So four of us would go in our boat over to the supply ship from the U.S. and pick up fresh food. They would say, “Did you eat yet?” So we would go aboard and eat a beautiful meal compared to our normal fare. Then we'd take supplies to the destroyers. Someone suggested we put a few goodies under our deckboard for ourselves. Then we'd deliver the food. They also invited us to come aboard and eat, which we would. And after we returned to our ship and got hoisted aboard, we snuck up to our boats in the evening and enjoyed our stash. I can remember I ate at least a dozen delicious oranges - a highlight of being in the boat crew. Each rating - boiler tender, firemen, seamen, yeomen, laundry workers, boat crews, radar men, etc. - had its little perks.

We left Ulithi on February 6th, 1945 and arrived in Guam on February 8th, the Marianna Islands and we loaded up with Marines for the invasion of Iwa Jima. We left Guam on February 17th for what was to be my worst experience of the war. We arrived at Iwa Jima on February 21st. We were there until the 7th of March. It was pretty bad the whole time. We were in about the third wave to hit the beach. There were at least twenty transports all loaded with Marines, probably 25,000 hit the beach. Over 6,000 were killed. The Japanese lost over 25,000 men. Iwo Jima was a volcanic island and the famous picture was taken on Mt. Surabachi. When we hit the beach, the swift slope of that mountain made a landing and footing difficult and we took water on every time we dropped the ramp. On each return trip to the ship we would bring back wounded. We had over 600 wounded Marines aboard. Our two doctors aboard the ship were operating continuously during our entire time there. There were arms and legs that had been amputated thrown in the passage way from out of the operating room.

During this period we made many landings with supplies and ammunition, returning to the ship at sunset. On one occasion, we didn't beat the darkness and were unable to return to the ship. During that night, we ran into difficulties when one of our boat crew of four stepped on a fuel line, disabling one of the engines. To make a repair, I was going to go aboard an LST, which was beached and unloading supplies. We were tied up to it and I was about to go aboard when it was hit by enemy mortar and set afire. We were ordered to cast off. We went from there to an oil tanker that was in the area. There I was able to get a fitting to repair the fuel line. Also during this time at Iwo Jima, we went in once with a load of ammunition and there was no one on the beach with a bulldozer to help us unload, so our boat crew had to unload it by ourselves with shooting going on around us.

On another trip to the beach, we had this 25-ton bulldozer to take ashore. When we dropped the ramp, we discover the bulldozer blade was too wide to get through the ramp opening. So we were forced to return it to the ship to have the blade taken off and then bring the bulldozer ashore.

Talk about fireworks, before we had landed, the sky was lit up with explosions from the ships and planes bombarding the island trying to soften up the enemy defenses prior to the invasion. But the Japanese had honeycombed the island creating tunnels and were safe below ground.

We left on March 7th, 1945 and arrived in Saipan on March 10th where our boat crews transported the wounded. I didn't know it then, but that was to be my last battle.

From this time until July 19th, we again crisscrossed between the Philippines and New Guinea and had another rest and relaxation time in California. On the island of Leyte, we saw a USO show, Oklahoma.

We returned to San Francisco on August 8th, 1945 for overhaul. During this period, the U.S. dropped the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima, Japan.

I was in San Francisco on V-J Day, amidst its huge celebration. And that was the first and only time I ever got drunk. We bought a bottle of Three Feathers Whiskey and I ended up in a hotel passed out while my more experienced buddies continued to celebrate.

The next day we sailed for Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands.

We left San Francisco on August 24th, 1945 and went to Eniwetok, Marshall Island on September 1st, and then we were shuffling back and forth between New Guinea and Leyte in the Philippine Islands.

On October 4th, 1945, we loaded up in Luzon with a unit of the First Calvary Division of the U.S. Army, 1.500 soldiers. We sailed to Yokonowa, Japan. We arrived there on October 12th, 1945, the first ship to arrive in Tokyo Bay for the occupation of Japan. The first Calvary Division erected a big billboard which said, ‘First Calvary Division, First in Manila and First in Tokyo aboard the USS Harry Lee.' I have a picture of this.

While we were there, we were given liberty at 12:00 noon and told to be back at 6:00. I was back on the ship by 3:00. The city was a mass of bombed out ruins and burned tin shacks. There were no people around that I saw. We were offered a Japanese rifle that had the bolt action removed as a souvenir. The a few days later, on October 17th, we sailed for home, landing in San Francisco on November 4, 1945 as part of the “Golden Carpet Fleet” - being home soldiers who had accumulated enough points for discharge.

So ending my war experience on the USS Harry Lee. It turns out that aboard that ship we were among the first U.S. ships to land in Europe at Sicily, the first to land in Manila, as well as the first to arrive for the occupation of Japan. So my experience encompasses three and a half years of the four years in a period and in both the Europe and Asiatic Theatres.

When we arrived back in the States, I had enough points to discharge. I was offered a promotion to Chief Petty Officer if I would stay, but I opted to go home. I left for New York and was discharged from Lido Beach, Long Island on New Year's Eve 1946.

One week after I was home, they called me from Coca-Cola and I went back to work driving a Coke truck, just as before the war. I didn't join the 52-20 Club, a Government program which gave veterans $20 a week for a year if they didn't have a job. As always, I wanted to be doing something. I did, as many others, experience depression for at least a year after.

The Manager of Coca-Cola, Mr. Hoffner, had a pretty daughter, who was Valedictorian of her high school. She had a short time crush on me and she encouraged me to go to college. Because of this, I did, changing my life. One day at work, while I was delivering at the Fort Trumbull UCONN Branch in January 1947, I stopped in at the Administration Building. I took the entrance exam and was admitted.

I started college that semester changing the course of my life.