Lee asks Ray to talk about his experiences in the South Pacific, and of the experience of having white officers in charge of black troops
LH: Can you talk a little bit about your time in the South Pacific?
RE: Well, my job in the South Pacific was to survey in preparation for laying air strips in the different islands in the Pacific. And so, we did this with instruments, and then when there was just bush area, we did it with what they call a table survey. We just have a table, we use a straight edge to…to [can’t make out the word] with, and we’d make maps of the area, to prepare for troops advancement or laying airstrips. So we did this, and the experiences we…then they used our group, our regiment was also used for all kind of war type operations such as in the Quonset huts…they used to store dynamite, because in order to build airstrips, they had to dynamite out stumps of trees and things like that, and different areas, and land…movement of land. And what they had us doing, which was scary, every so often, after a few months, the dynamite had to be turned over, because it was settled. And then…we’d have to go into these Quonset huts and hold our breath that every time we turned the box over, that it was not unstable. That was scary. Things like that we had to do …we had to …let’s see what…many other things… then, whenever there was…we were fired on quite a bit, from the hillsides, especially in Okinawa …because the Japanese had dug into the hillsides and built small little villages into the mountainsides and o the hills. And they had done this prior to the war, and so they had large storages of food and everything. And at night, they would fire on our encampments from a distance… from these hills and caves, and what we would do is just call the Marines to go in and they would go up to the hill…to the caves, and they would fire flame shooters into the caves and smoke’em out. That was the closest I ever got to being…having fire…gunfire in our direction. When we were in Okinawa, we went…well, before we got to Okinawa, we were hop skipping from one island to another, building airstrips and then move to the next one. We finally go to Okinawa…it was just before they had…dropped the…the A…atomic bomb, and, after they dropped the atomic bomb, they dropped the atomic bomb…just before they dropped the atomic bomb, we were being prepared to invade the mainland of Japan. So they got us all prepared, ready to invade the mainland. So we were used as foot troops to fire …along with the infantry as well, as in building the airstrips. So, just before…and so that was one time that I was very relieved that we didn’t have to kill another human being, you know …if we had invaded the island, the main island, we would’ve been…there would’ve been a lot of casualties. And so that one of the things that I thank the heavens for is that I never had to kill another human being. In the islands, also, we used to have to do training, when we weren’t surveying a strip. I was in headquarters company, so we didn’t do much training, but the other companies, A, B, ad C, other parts of the regiment, they would have to figure out how much dynamite would take the…to create…a crevice…a hole–size hole…or to move a certain amount of earth…how much dynamite they needed. I know one other, one company, which was about a hundred and ten men, they were practicing, and they had one of these young officers, one young officer, he was a ninety–day wonder and he’d only had three years…three months of training as an officer, and he commanded…he was in command at the time…and they put in forty pounds of dynamite in the hole, and…they went back…they lit it and they went back, and they waited. Now, the book says you wait a certain period of time, and you have other precautions you take before you go advance. He ignored all of the precautions that were supposed to be taken. He called the man to go forward to explore why it didn’t go off, and when he got right on top of it, it went off. And I remember, the reports coming back to headquarters, ’cause I was in headquarters…they said there were many parts that… body parts everywhere. And all because of this young officer, white officer, who was inexperienced…that didn’t take…follow orders properly. What was so typical of so many of the white officers we had…some of them were from the south, and during different….uh times I…different places I was at…and uh…they…w….we…I think we felt they were deliberately assigned to black troops by the government, because they felt…we think that…southern white officers knew how to handle black folks. They knew how to put’em in their place, they knew how to beat’em down, and…have control over them… better than northern officers who’d be too compassionate or too just in their ways, or something. And…this played out in many cases …the officers were not properly trained. And that was another thing that really was a bitter experience to have, when you’re fighting for this country. And so…I think that the movement…I think that the movement for social justice, I think, started in the Army because that’s when we said, “No more”…take no more. And they…we became united…and then working towards fighting injustice.