Kamikaze attack was no false alarm
When the klaxon sounded and the call to go below deck came across the loudspeakers, Laurence E. Michaels thought it was going to be another false alarm.
The last one to go under the steel deck, Michaels sat on the bottom step when suddenly his calm was shattered and explosions rang out from above the U.S.S. Callaway. Then came the calls, first for fire crews, then for the cleanup of bodies.
Michaels climbed the steps and reached the deck.
“The first thing I saw was an airplane wing sticking out of the bridge, with a red circle on it,” he said. The hatch where Michaels had been lounging in the sun minutes before the surprise attack had been shredded by machine guns.
The Callaway had faced a Japanese bombing and kamikaze attack, and Michaels set about the task of finding the dead.
“I know we buried 23 at sea that day,” he said. “It was a very disturbing experience for a 19-year-old.”
In 1945, Michaels was a sergeant in charge of a team that operated a 155 mm howitzer, fighting in the island of Luzon in the South Pacific during the last months of the war.
The soldiers on occasion would receive shipments of beer, which had to be buried underground to keep cold, Michaels said. Many kept a stash to drink when the war finally ended.
Michaels’ squad had drawn a 6 a.m. patrol on the night before the surrender. He and his team were firing rounds to try to harass the Japanese soldiers and keep them awake when a call came across the field radio: “Cease all fire, surrender is imminent.”
The beer was dug up, the guns were packed down, and Michaels was ready to go home.
Back in his hometown of Spokane, Michaels became a fire battalion chief for the Spokane Fire Department and retired in 1976 after 30 years. Now, living by the side of Loon Lake, he spends his days gardening hostas and dahlias and keeping the house he built himself in shape.
He said his service – and his duties – in the war were never something to brag about, and only now, at age 80, does he feel like he can tell his own sons stories from the past.
“I don’t know how many guys I killed by artillery fire, but I don’t like to think about it,” he said. “It’s not that I’m afraid to tell anyone, but why would you want to brag about it? It was your duty, and you had to do it. When they said fire, I had to pull that gun.”
But time away from the horrors of war gave him a chance to enjoy his life.
“You have a different mentality when you’re 18 or 19 than you do when you’re 80,” he said. “At my age, I’ve mellowed from the whole thing.”