13-074 Garand Picture of the Day

[Snafu]

Right: Len Moffatt circa 1944 at Camp Lejeune.

Information

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[Snafu]

Len finished high school in June 1941, during the outbreak of WWII in Europe. Out of high school by December of that year, he began working in a local Pennsylvania steel tubing mill taking care of his widowed mother while waiting for his draft number to come up. In November 1942 he joined the Navy and went to boot camp at Sampson, New York. Then he went on to Portsmouth, Virginia, for Hospital Corps School, followed by a brief time stationed at the Naval Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida. After a while he transferred to the Fleet Marine Force and trained with boot Marines at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, while attending Medical Field Service School. After his training he went cross-country to the west coast, sailing to Pearl Harbor and finally on to Saipan in 1944.

He was stationed on Saipan until March 1945, when he boarded yet another troop ship and went to Okinawa for the April 1st attack. His unit was held in reserve aboard ship but like all the ships in the operation, his had to contend with constant Kamikaze attacks.

Even now, 60 years later, Len still wonders why his unit was held in reserve. “When I heard about the large number of casualties suffered by the troops on Okinawa, I wondered why our unit was never ordered ashore.

“We got a battle star for being there. We survived the air and sea attacks and were taken back to Saipan. Perhaps they were saving us for the planned invasion of Japan. You didn’t have to be a genius to know that was the next order of business.

“On the day we got word that the Japanese had surrendered, we were going through a training operation away from our camp site. We assumed that they would let us go back to our camp and celebrate, but the brass kept us out there the rest of the day.

“That was the Marine Way,” sums up Len’s droll commentary on his battle experience.






Left: Nagasaki as it was before the war. Right: Nagasaki in 1945 after the atomic blast.



At the end of the war he was stationed in Nagasaki for occupation duty. Len says, “The place was a shambles from the blast. We were loaded in a truck and went to the A-bomb area. It was leveled. We were not allowed to get out of the trucks lest we touch anything as we looked around and get “contaminated.” I was there around September to October, a month after the bombs were dropped. I have some old photos of Nagasaki. Mostly I remember the injured people, because while I was there I was working as a Corpsman.

“As a Marine company corpsman,” Len continues, “I was not authorized to give medical help to civilians. But there were some who had yet to get help, probably because the official help was directed more to the really serious cases. But we did what little we could for those we met who would let us help them and who had not been hospitalized.

“The items in my Unit 3 (medical bag) were mostly for battle wounds: sulfa powder, battle dressings, morphine, scalpel kit, etc. But I did what I could with what I had and what I was able to get otherwise….”

[emmagee1917]

I have a friend whose uncle served in the PTO for most of the war . He bought a camera early on and has an album of it's photos. Great shots till the end of the war , where the shots are all washed out . "Camera must have took a dump . " he always said . My friend asked him where these last pictures were taken . He answered " Nagasaki . " My friend said the camera prob'ly was OK , the radiation damaged the film . He responed , " Nope , couldn't be , we could never leave the trucks because then the rubber tires would no longer protect us from the radiation . "
Chris

[Bill Hollinger]

Emmagee, that is probably what they were told too. Rubber tires! Wow!

[Bob Womack]

My brother's former mother-in-law lived on the outskirts of Hiroshima and was there the day the bomb dropped. Amazingly, she was rather philosophical about the whole atomic bomb deal, saying that she realized it would have been a bloodbath for both sides had the U.S. invaded Japan. She really didn't feel the U.S. had any choice. I was amazed at her rational outlook.

Bob

[Snafu]

My father was in Atsugi, Japan 1956ish
I asked if he ever went to Nagasaki
Answer was " No it was too hot there"