Published June 18, 2001
Hendersonville Times-News

Dual Service: Navy prepares Army man for Japan invasion

By Jennie Jones Giles
An Army veteran of New Guinea and Philippines campaigns in World War II suddenly found himself practicing hand-to-hand combat, running day and night, and swimming for miles in a harbor at Hawaii under the command of the Navy.
It was the summer of 1945 and he was training in under water demolition in preparation for the invasion of Japan.
“You would think you couldn’t make one more stroke (while swimming) and you’d have to swim two or three more miles, rest and run a mile down the beach,” Ray Anderson, 78, said.
Anderson, the youngest of seven sons and a daughter, had grown up in southern Henderson County on Terry’s Creek road near the South Carolina state line. After graduation from the former Flat Rock High School in 1940, he worked in carpentry and construction until he was drafted by the Army in 1943.
He was sent to Camp Croft in Spartanburg County, S. C., which he had helped to build. After completing basic training and technical training at Fort Lee, Va., he was assigned to the 533rd Engineer Boat and Shore Regiment, Company E.
The Army formed these new boat and shore regiments for amphibious landings.
“We did partly what the Navy and Marines do,” Anderson said. “We had boats and landing craft and took the infantry in on the boats.”
At Fort Ord in Monterey, Calif., he learned how to get men and the basic supplies ashore, and on Nov. 24, 1943, the regiment set sail on the West Point.
Before leaving California, the men were given winter clothing.
“They issued us Arctic clothes – big, heavy clothes and parkas,” he said. “We thought we were going to Alaska.
“They went to all that trouble to throw them (the Japanese) off where we were going.” he said. “When we got to Milne Bay, we piled all that stuff up on the beach.”

New Guinea

The West Point arrived in Milne Bay on the island of New Guinea on Dec. 10, 1943, and began a series of landings and battles up the coast of New Guinea toward the Philippines. They fought at Cape Cretin, Goodenough, Linga Linga, Seleo Island – unfamiliar places on an island covered with jungle that was still largely unexplored.
“I worked with the reconnaissance squad,” Anderson said. “We generally went on the first wave of a landing.”
“We were responsible for getting the basic supplies needed to run a war – food, ammunition and gasoline – ashore.” he said. “We were constantly under fire and trying to locate the best places for trucks to leave the supplies and make notes of any enemy activity we saw as we went along.”
“Under heavy fire, we would look the situation over, mark where the trucks were to go and tried to get them out of the main line of fire,” he said. “As the infantry moved on inland, we stayed on the beach directing trucks.”
As they moved along the coast of New Guinea, the Army, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur bypassed Wewok, where it was estimated 90,000 Japanese were stationed, Anderson says. The Navy and air Force had cut Wewok off from obtaining supplies and the Australians were bombing it twice a day.
“Finally, these surviving Japanese walked through terrible jungle and along the beach and attacked us across a little river,” he said. “As they crossed the river they screamed and hollered to make your blood curdle.”
“The Army had artillery and mortars set up and they (the Japanese) were just annihilated,” he said. “As far as we could tell some didn’t even have weapons.
“I was always scared,” Anderson said. “I would pray, ‘Lord, just let me be able to do what I’m supposed to do. I don’t want to be so scared I’ll freeze or run or be a disgrace to the United States, my family or my friends. Just give me enough courage to get my job done like a man.'”

The Philippines

On October 1, 1944, Anderson’s company was assigned to the 43rd Infantry Division for the landing on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.
“Where we were in that convoy I could look back as far as I could see and see ships,” he said. “We came in on a Higgins boat under heavy fire and jumped out in very deep water, the surf was rough.”
The Japanese had captured a 12-inch gun in Singapore, brought it to Luzon, and set it up behind a steep ridge, Anderson said.
When the gun fired, it did a lot of damage, sinking boats and killing many men. The Air Force would try to find it, but all that was seen in the vicinity was a large straw Filipino house.
“We all had very strict orders to be careful to save all the Filipinos we could and not to destroy buildings at all if we could help it,” Anderson said.
Eventually, the infantry did get to the straw house and there was the gun.
“They had that thing on a railroad track,” he said. “It would get dark and they would push the house aside and there was the gun.
“Before we left we went up to look at it, to see what had been giving us so much trouble,” Anderson said.
While in the Philippines, Anderson wanted to visit Manila. An officer arranged for him to go with a truck convoy as a driver.
“The heck of it was they were fighting there,” he said. “The docks were about the only thing I saw.”
In May 1945, after the last landing in the Philippines, Anderson was asked if he would volunteer for secret training.

 Hawaii to Hiroshima

Anderson spent eight weeks training in Hawaii for what “everybody thought would be a suicide mission,” he said.
Today’s SEAL (sea, air, land) teams trace their history to these groups of World War II volunteers in the Navy’s Combat Demolition Units.
“This is the reason I was eligible as a SEAL,” Anderson said.
He recently visited the SEAL museum at Fort Pierce, Fla.
Before Anderson could use his training, the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
Anderson was reassigned to the 24th Division and was in Hiroshima six weeks after the bomb was dropped.
He could see buildings leveled for several miles, except for a few twisted steel frames. Streets were littered with twisted and burned vehicles and sidewalks were lined by burned and charred tree stubs. He took pictures on a roll of film, but only five photos developed. He believes the radiation affected the film.
The radiation also affected him. Anderson has been battling cancer for 24 years, caused, his doctors say, by his exposure to the radiation at Hiroshima.
Despite this, he says the dropping of the atomic bomb was necessary.
“The Japanese wouldn’t quit,” he said. “I’ve been there, I saw them. I saw them kill. They fought until death and I never saw any prisoners.”
If the United States had attempted to invade Japan, “just think of the millions on both sides who would have been killed,” he said.

Life’s battles

Four of Anderson’s brothers also were in the military during World War II. One brother, George, died during the war under “mysterious circumstances” at Fort Benning, Ga.
On the day Anderson returned home to Henderson County, at the age of 23, his mother died.
“She said she wanted to stay alive until her youngest son came home,” he said. “I came home that morning and she died that night.”
In 1977, Anderson was diagnosed with cancer, which he is still battling to the present. He was afraid, just as he had been afraid during the war. He felt as if he was living a nightmare and Anderson was familiar with nightmares, having experienced them at least once a week since the end of the war.
He remembered that during the war he was scared, “but somehow I did whatever I was supposed to do and got citations for doing it,” he said.
He has applied this same reasoning to his battles with cancer.
“Many times it seemed hopeless, but I kept on going and made it through the rough times,” he said. “I realized my body had served me extremely well through some of the most trying times a human could endure, so I decided to fight this cancer.”

After the war, Anderson worked in construction until 1961, when he became the Route 1, Zirconia letter carrier. He retired in 1985.
He married Lula Belle Wood in 1948, and they still live on his family’s home place. They have one daughter, Vicky Pittillo of Edneyville.
He is a member of Double Springs Baptist Church, where he has taught Sunday school for 35 years, and a member of the Henderson County Genealogical Society, serving as a volunteer for 12 years.