From Jack Zappone

Of Spokane, from a Navy ship transporting troops

near Okinawa, April 1945

We steamed into the Rette in a blaze of glory! It was a great show and we were getting to see it and getting paid for it too!

The Japs had planes out to meet us and the anti-aircraft fire went up to meet them … Plane after plane went blazing into the sea; three being knocked down right around us. Suicide-pilots missing and hitting and when they hit flames would shoot up hundreds of yards. It was still a great show.

(Five days later, describing a kamikaze attack on his ship) I lowered my binoculars and it was right in front of us – clearing the No. 1 davit – I was so scared I couldn’t move! She hit the big 30-ton boom and after-crows nest, exploding her TNT and taking off a wing – one of my men was hit by the explosion, but kept on firing. The bomb went off right above us and the plane went over the port fan-tail. My men were caught in their slings – strapped to their guns. I was blown down between the boats in a small hole and woke up with diesel oil and water spraying on my face. Somebody helped me out and I ran around the boats counting five dead men.

Numb with fear, I didn’t realize I was hurt – blood had squirted from my thumb on my face and chest and I had some shrapnel hits in my left leg. I was OK.

… One of my men called for stretchers. Two were dying and the rest were bad off. The 30-ton boom had smashed across the boats. … Men had their heads, arms and legs blown off, were disemboweled and cut in half.

We had seven doctors aboard, the army had three. We needed every one of them. When a concentrated target gets hit, it’s really a problem to take care of the injured. The ones who were dead were left where they fell, the others brought down and sorted. I saw two men without a mark on them walk to sick bay and die in half an hour. Shock! It is bad! They used 150 pints of blood and plasma.

I slipped and fell going into the operating room – we had sheets on the deck to soak up the blood so you could stand up. … The stretchers were coming down fast and I had my hands full giving morphine, putting on compresses, etc., and then the GQ (general quarters) bell sounded again. For the first time, I was really scared – your heart stops and starts again and your stomach rams your pelvis. It isn’t nice.

… We went back to the Rette; into the harbor, discharged 50 casualties that night and 30 early the next morning. We gathered together the rest of the boys, cut the fellow out of the crow’s nest with a torch and put them in canvas – just as they were – and buried them in a newly established cemetery on Zamami. Casualties – 145, 26 dead and more to die later.

…And the papers lied! All they said was no naval units lost – not a word about personnel, but Zamami kept filling up.

(Jack Zappone graduated from Gonzaga University and died in Spokane in 2004).