On V-J Day 65 years ago, 20-year-old Robert Yancey -- an officers cook aboard the Patrol Craft 1600 submarine chaser -- was somewhere in the Pacific.
Yancey, now 85, isn't sure of his exact location; most likely it was near the Yap Islands east of the Philippines.
But in the heated, waning days of World War II, after the Allies had taken back the Philippines from Japan and were aggressively delivering a knockout punch, there wasn't time to get back to the journal he'd been keeping.
A typhoon during the Battle of Okinawa didn't help either.
From February 1945, as his ship was moving away from the Philippines and preparing to invade the island at the southern tip of Japan, to September -- when it was all over but the coming home -- there's a big gap in Yancey's yellowing journal.
But it's still an amazing chronicle of the life of a sailor in the Pacific -- especially a black sailor at a time when American armed forces remained segregated.
There were the famed Tuskegee Airmen and other highly decorated black combat units, but few opportunities were available for blacks at sea.
"At that time, an African-American in the Navy could only be a cook or a steward," Yancey recalled.
But he and other blacks -- Yancey was one of two on board PC 1600 -- were also trained to do battle during an ocean attack. His battle station was in the front of the ship, passing up ammo from the bilges.
Born and raised in Philadelphia as one of 16 siblings, 18-year-old Yancey had dropped out of high school and was delivering fuel and coal when he was drafted in October 1943.
"I didn't go to boot camp," Yancey remembered. "I got all my training on the ship."
Ironically, he couldn't swim then -- and still can't.
His first assignment was on the USS Atlantida, operating in the cold Atlantic off the coast of Maine. Sailors on board were being trained to use gear that was supposed to blow up torpedoes before they could hit their target. After six months on the Atlantida, Yancey left it on April 26, 1944, and headed to Norfolk, Va. He boarded PC 1600 on June 8.
A newly converted minesweeper, PC 1600 was more than 173 feet long but only 23 feet wide, with a 3"/50 dual purpose mount, one 40mm and five 20mm guns, two depth-charge projectors, two depth-charge tracks and two rocket launchers.
PC 1600 left Norfolk on June 9, with a stopover in New Orleans and a trip through the Panama Canal on the way to San Diego and Pearl Harbor. After spending August 1944 at Pearl Harbor, the ship set out on the Pacific to places unknown to Yancey.
The stops turned out to include Eniwetok in the Marshall Islands; Palau in the Carolines, east of the Philippines; and nearby Yap, another of the Carolines in the western Pacific.
The ship became part of Admiral William "Bull" Halsey's Fast Carrier Task Force as the vessels made their way to the Philippines. After 10 days at sea, the task force reached Leyte on Oct. 20.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf -- considered the largest naval battle of the war and perhaps the largest in history -- began on Oct. 23.
"The USS Missouri was as far from us as if you were crossing the street," Yancey said. "When they ran (Gen. Douglas) MacArthur out of the Philippines (in 1942), he vowed he would return. Well, he took me back with him."
Leyte was also the first battle in which Japanese aircraft were seen in organized kamikaze attacks.
"The Japanese would make suicide dives onto the ships," Yancey remembered. "During the invasion, they would come down between the ships so you couldn't shoot at them."
Next, the task force headed toward Luzon in advance of the next invasion, on Jan. 9, 1945. Going ashore on Luzon, the sailors traded food, books, clothing and candy to the natives in exchange for Japanese money, chickens and coconuts.
One of PC 1600's duties was to "mop up" -- meaning rounding up Japanese prisoners in the water and on the islands and transferring them to a larger ship. As the long Battle of Luzon continued on land, Yancey's ship and others also went on maneuvers preparing to invade Okinawa. It was during that battle -- from April to mid-June -- that word came of Allied victory in Europe.
"We were overjoyed, knowing right well they would shift guys in Europe over to the Pacific, and pretty soon the war would be over," Yancey said.
The Okinawa campaign was especially rough because there were two enemies -- the Japanese and nature.
"We had a typhoon," Yancey said. "It capsized three destroyers that were low on fuel and flipped over, and we couldn't rescue those guys who went overboard.
"The waves would carry you 50 to 60 feet in the air."
Sailors were strapped to lifelines to stay afloat.
In mid-August, the PC 1600 crew was at sea when an announcement came over the public address system. The Japanese had surrendered.
"Everyone went wild," Yancey said.
More mopping up of Japanese stragglers ensued. Even after the formal surrender was signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on Sept. 2, PC 1600 stayed with the task force at sea, mainly searching for submarines.
"A lot of Japanese didn't know the war was over," Yancey explained. "We stayed on patrol and never let our guard down."
Finally, the ship got orders to head back to the states. Following stops at Palau, Guam, Eniwetok and Pearl Harbor -- after Yancey got to Oahu on Nov. 22, he wrote, "Baby! What a long trip!" -- PC 1600 arrived in San Francisco on Dec. 1.
"When we got into San Francisco, we saw a huge sign that said, "Job well done. Welcome home,' " Yancey said. "The guys went wild again."
Yancey said he had no problems to speak of with white troops on his ship. He chalks it up to advice his father gave him: "Treat people the way you want to be treated."
After active duty, he stayed in the Navy Reserve from 1947 to 1950. When the Korean conflict broke out, Yancey joined the Army and was in Korea by September 1950.
Although President Harry Truman had signed the executive order to integrate the armed services in 1948, implementation was slow. The Army maintained segregated units until 1951, and Yancey became one of the last "Buffalo soldiers," a member of the Army's all-black 24th Infantry Regiment. By the time he came home in 1953, however, his unit had been disbanded and its members integrated.
Yancey moved to Florence, where he and his late wife, Grace, raised five children. He served in the Vietnam War before retiring from the Army in 1971, earned a high school diploma and went on to get degrees in history and school administration. He spent his education career with the New Jersey Department of Corrections.
Now retired, he remains active in veterans affairs and enjoys reliving his war experiences and poring over his World War II journal and other accounts he kept of later campaigns.
When Yancey finally had time to get back to his journal 65 years ago, it was Sept. 2 -- the day the Japanese formally surrendered in Tokyo Bay. This time, MacArthur didn't take Yancey, who was still at sea.
He had no idea he would fight in more wars, and that other young men would still be at war today.
On Sept. 2, Yancey was feeling all the optimism of youth. He'd survived, and he was going home.
"The war is over, over there, and thank God for that," he wrote.
"Now we have peace and I hope and pray that it won't be nothing but peace. I had enough of war, and I guess everyone else has, too."
from: http://ebs.gmnews.com/News/2002/0307/Bulletin_Board/013.html
War stories tell of progress
blacks have made since WWII
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SPOTSWOOD — Seeing Colin Powell holding high office may make some Americans forget, but there was a time when black soldiers could not even fight alongside whites, let alone represent the American people.
During a Feb. 28 presentation at Spotswood High School, students from the History Club got a firsthand account of the internal military war African-Americans once had to fight. The event was hosted by the club in honor of "Black History Month" and featured both black and white soldiers who fought during the Korean War, which was America’s first desegregated war.
About 35 students listened to the veterans, who came dressed in their military uniforms.
"We fought a two-pronged war," said Robert Yancey, an African American who spent his career in the military. "One war was for American freedom, and one for our own freedom."
Yancey also spent time in World War II and Vietnam, and thus saw firsthand the progress blacks made in the military from the 1930s through the 1970s. During World War II, blacks were confined to their own regiments and were not allowed to fight alongside whites.
"With every war we fought in, things got a little better," he said.
"Our whole objective today was to carry on our legacy and remember the contributions that blacks have made to this great country," he said after his presentation. "Freedom is not free. Freedom comes with a price. The people we had here today are the people who paid that price."
Yancey said he started his military career when he was drafted at age 18 to fight in World War II. A Navy man during World War II, he fought as part of the Army’s 24th Regiment during the Korean War.
"I’m a Buffalo Soldier; it was an all-black regiment," he said. "It had black troops but white officers until 1951."
During the Korean War, President Harry Truman desegregated the military, and the 24th infantry became part of the 14th, which had been all-white. By that time, however, Yancey’s term was up, and he had headed back to the States.
Frank Yusko, a Spotswood High School history teacher and adviser to the History Club, said Truman’s desegregation of the military was very progressive for the time.
"In many respects, the military was ahead of the loop," he said. "In 1947, Truman desegregated it, but that took a while to implement."
He said the decision to desegregate was not a humanitarian move so much as it was an attempt to improve the American fighting machine.
During World War II, the performance level of some all-black units was poor because they got the worst equipment and leaders, he said.
"The only way to avoid that was to desegregate," Yusko said.
He said the military’s main concern was simply winning wars, and its chances improved with desegregation.
In addition, there was pressure from public figures like Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as the civil rights movement, which had been building for years even though many ignored it.
"There was also pressure from certain politicians, particularly Northern ones," he said.
Ironically, while the playing field was getting more level in the war zones, things at home were as repressive as always, Yancey said. That realization struck him as soon as he left Korea and was stationed in Georgia.
"Thank God, you survived the war, but you came home to the prejudice," he said. "I experienced the old Southern mentality, which I wasn’t used to because I was born and raised in Philadelphia."
"So when he stepped on the base, the stripes didn’t matter," Yusko said.
Yancey said the bases in Georgia still had dual facilities so that blacks and whites would not be together, despite Truman’s edict. He said the extra facilities were expensive to keep though, which is what led to their finally becoming desegregated in the 1960s.
Black soldiers made progress in the military because they showed they had as much fighting ability and responsibility as whites, he said.
"They were great fighters, carried responsibility and proved themselves," Yancey said. "Therefore, they could not be denied."
— Vince Todaro