About four o'clock I stood on a hill overlooking the entire gulf, where a vast armada of ships formed a weird silhouette against the setting sun. Suddenly thick, black clouds began to cover the convoy; a sound like distant thunder reached our ears. The clouds were the smoke of antiaircraft guns. Several speck-like things dashed into the clouds of smoke from every point of the sky--Our Suicide Planes!
"It's our kamikaze attacks!" I shouted to some passing soldiers. They came running. A black speck flew into the smoke, then another, and another. The attack lasted about ten minutes. Gradually the smoke cleared, and I could see in the gathering haze some ships ablaze in the distance.
Was this mission necessary? I wondered. Was it worth the lives of young people to sink a few ships out of such an armada? Volunteers or not, both they and their parents were victims of this reckless type of warfare.
"That's the damnedest, silliest thing the top brass could think of!" said a soldier indignantly.
-- Tetsuro Ogawa
A Japanese Officer.. 1944 The Philippines
This WebPage will certainly bring back memories to those LSM Veterans of the Philippine Campaigns of World War II...And who better to tell it than a Radio Operator. The Ship's Radio Operators were the source of News or Scuttlebutt to the crew. They were the "Ship's News Anchors" at that Time and Place in History.
Submitted by
Reed Kennard, RM 3/C
