Decades later, World War II memories still fresh

POST FALLS – Bob Dukart was 18 when, as he confesses, “I killed a man.”

Actually, he killed seven when he aimed a 40mm anti-aircraft gun that downed a “Betty,” a Japanese navy bomber that had just dropped a depth charge to the stern of his ship, the destroyer USS The Sullivans.

“I felt terrible about it,” says the Post Falls man, now 81. “Even though we were at war, human life – even an enemy’s – is precious. It bothered me for some time.”

The teenage sailor was one of some 329 youngsters and a handful of “old men” in their 20s and 30s aboard The Sullivans, named for five brothers from Waterloo, Iowa, who went down with their ship, the USS Juneau, in November 1942.

To honor the sacrifice by one family during World War II, the Navy named the destroyer for the brothers.

Dukart says that after he shot down the Japanese bomber, The Sullivans searched for survivors – but to no avail.

“I had a hard time sleeping,” he recounts. “But an old chief petty officer talked to me. He reminded me that the men in the plane were trying to kill us. That helped some, but I still was bothered.”

Despite his feelings, Dukart was treated like a hero by the Navy and his shipmates, he says. “I got a marksman’s badge and a pay raise of $5 a month.”

But more important, Dukart says, he was given a second dish of ice cream when it was available.

That was a precious luxury for youngsters on a ship without ice-cream-making equipment in the steamy South Pacific.

“We got our ice cream from aircraft carriers mostly,” Dukart recalls. “We were on picket duty quite a bit, protecting the larger ships in the 7th Fleet under Adm. ‘Bull’ Halsey.

“Whenever we’d pick up a downed American pilot, the aircraft carrier he’d flown from would send over a few gallons.”

Dukart volunteered to help rescue Japanese sailors from a cruiser that his destroyer and two others sank later in that action-filled year of 1944.

“The battle was at night, and the next day, we went looking for survivors. I remember that the Japanese ship’s captain was in a lifeboat with some other officers. He pointed a pistol at our ship, and our captain said, ‘Take him.’

“So the fellows on our deck guns blew him away.”

But other survivors weren’t so warlike, Dukart recounts. “There was no death before dishonor among the crewmen. They all wanted to be saved.

“I remember grabbing a Japanese sailor’s arm. It came off in my hands, and I threw up.”

Dukart kept trying to rescue the floating men, pulling at least three more survivors from the sea. Once they were aboard The Sullivans, the prisoners were stripped naked and placed on the foredeck until they could be transferred to a larger vessel.

“We got to like a couple of the boys,” he says. “They were friendly, even joking some, but they died from their wounds and gangrene.”

Dukart was living in Yakima when he received his father’s permission to enlist in the Navy at age 17. He took his boot camp training at Farragut Naval Station on Lake Pend Oreille and then was shipped to Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay, where he was taught to be a gun layer.

After his combat tour, Dukart returned to Treasure Island in 1945, then was sent to Seattle, where he was discharged at war’s end.

Dukart returned to his civilian job as a cannery worker in Yakima and later was transferred to similar plants, including one in Walla Walla and finally to Bettendorf, Iowa, where he retired at age 55 as plant manager for the Bird’s Eye Division of General Foods.

His wife, Alice, is a Sandpoint native, so to be near her family, the Dukarts moved to Spokane after his retirement. After seven years there, they built a home at Priest Lake, where they lived 11 years before moving to a home at the edge of Prairie Falls Golf Course.

The compassion that surfaced during Dukart’s Navy tour serves him well now. He’s the caretaker for his wife, a Hospice patient with Alzheimer’s disease.

Military service is a Dukart trait. His recently retired son, Mike, was wounded by artillery fire during his Army tour of duty in Vietnam.

The Dukarts also have two daughters, Christine Coverly, who manages Priest Lake Golf Course, and Debbie Hackworthy, a registered nurse at Kootenai Medical Center.

As for his own service, Dukart says World War II was a war in which he is proud to have served. “We had to fight that one.”

But he says he isn’t convinced that every war in which Americans engage is righteous. “We shouldn’t be in Iraq. That war is a big mistake,” the combat veteran says.