Posted: 6/27/07
The stories behind the WWII memorial
 Tom Warneke (left) spent his time in WWII aboard the USS Wesson, which was hit by a kamikaze on April 7, 1944, injuring Warneke and almost sending the Wesson to the bottom of the ocean. He received a Purple Heart as a result. Michas Ohnstad (right), wearing the medal he received at the memorial dedication, was the only Minnesotan to serve on the Atomic Bomb Commission, and had the unique experience of seeing Hiroshima shortly after it was bombed. |
By Patrick Tepoorten
The younger you are, the more likely it is you consider World War II something that happened a long time ago in far away places. That period in history is marked by grainy black-and-white television footage of German president Adolf Hitler delivering fiery speeches on nationalism, Lucky Strike cigarettes, and a priceless photograph of a sailor delivering a smooch in Times Square.
World War II has been in the news again lately with the dedication of Minnesota's recently completed memorial to the roughly 326,000 hometown soldiers who served. But the very word "memorial" implies a record of something, someone, no longer present.
And, while it is certainly true that hundreds of thousands of soldiers lost their lives fighting the fascism of the mid-20th century, including 6,000 Minnesotans, and many others have died since, there remains about 47,000 veterans of the "great war" in our state.
In reality, WWII was not so long ago. It ended in 1945, just 62 years ago; barely long enough for someone to have been born and lived long enough to reach retirement age. And, if you're privileged enough to hear tales of the war from the soldiers who fought it, it suddenly seems like just yesterday. Such was the case when local WWII veterans Michas Ohnstad, 81, of North Branch, and Tom Warneke, 82, of Harris, agreed to share their experiences with The Post Review.
The two men share many common experiences from the war. Both entered the military as teenagers; Ohnstad was drafted, but allowed to choose his branch of service, while Warneke volunteered for the Navy. Both served in the Pacific Theater in the latter stages of WWII and fought the Japanese. Both returned safely. But the routes the two men took to end up seated together at a table in North Branch, could not have been more diverse.
"I wanted to get my shoes on"
Warneke remembers entering boot camp in December of 1942 and later being assigned to the USS Wesson, a destroyer escort. He sailed out of New York for the Southwest Pacific in January of 1944, as part of the escort for Admiral William Halsey's Third Fleet.
"On the way to Okinawa, there were ships as far as the eye could see," said Warneke. "It was the whole ball of wax."
As an escort, the Wesson's job was to detect enemy submarines and protect the destroyers, aircraft carriers, and other vital ships from enemy attack.
In the South Pacific, the fleet was often harassed by Japanese fighters, especially after dark. "They flew planes overhead at night to keep you awake," said Warneke.
Such had been the case on April 7, 1944, when Warneke remembers he had been awake for about three days straight. He had crawled into his bunk after general quarters that morning, an attack already underway, kicked off his shoes without bothering to untie them, used his life jacket as a pillow, and tried to catch a short nap.
He was rudely awakened by a general alarm, which sends all sailors to battle stations, at around 8:40 a.m.
"I wanted to get my shoes on," said Warneke. "I don't know why."
As he had neglected to untie his shoes earlier, getting them on took about one extra minute than it would have. "Instead of one minute to get to battle station, it took me two minutes."
Because of that extra minute, Warneke was not in the torpedo room when a kamikaze pilot steered his fighter plane right into it. Warneke saw it happen though.
"I was on my way there when I saw the plane coming. When it hit it blew me across the main deck." Warneke, who took a piece of shrapnel in the head as a result of the explosion, emotionally recalled laying on the deck next to another sailor who had died in the explosion. His fellow torpedo room soldiers were dead as well, as a result of the kamikaze's direct hit. But there wasn't much time to think about that at the time. The Wesson had two flooded engine rooms and was going down.
Luckily, just as the main deck was about to be submerged, two tugs appeared and started pumping water out of the ship. It was just enough to keep the deck above the surface of the Pacific and allowed the Wesson to be towed to a nearby port for repairs. Those repairs only took about a day, and the Wesson was on its way back to California.
Warneke was home in time to be married on May 23, 1944, and served at San Diego fleet school for the duration of the war.
"I never encountered hostility in Hiroshima"
On that very same day in May, Michas Ohnstad was graduating from high school in Hinckley. By January of the next year he had been drafted and chose to serve in the Army. Following basic training he was assigned to the South Pacific as well, and shipped out from Fort Ord to Manilla on July 6, 1945. The trip took 21 days, not because the distance was so long, but because of the route. "We zig-zagged all the way there," said Ohnstad, referring to a tactic used to prevent the ship being hit by enemy fire.
He arrived in Manilla, and ultimately an island called Cabanatuan Luzon, just in time to see the end of the war.
The Germans had already surrendered in May of that year, and the Japanese were about to, but not before an American show of force that would change the course of warfare, and the world, forever.
In an attempt to avoid a ground invasion of the Japanese mainland, president Harry Truman authorized the use of the first atomic bomb. It was detonated above Hiroshima, Japan, on Aug. 6.
The Japanese did not surrender. Hearing nothing from them for three days, American forces dropped a second atomic bomb, on Nagasaki, on Aug. 9.
Even after that, Japan remained quiet. "We were told in the field to prepare to invade Japan. We knew that was the next step," said Ohnstad. Luckily, that step never came to pass, and the Japanese surrendered on Ohnstad's 19th birthday, Aug. 14. But, while hostilities had ceased between the two nations, Ohnstad did not escape the horrors of war.
"On September 30, 1945, I received orders from General MacArthur and was transferred to Hiroshima and Nagasaki for a "éwar-time mission,'" explained Ohnstad.
That mission, as it turned out, was to be a part of the American occupying force, and more specifically, Ohnstad was assigned to the "Atomic Bomb Commission" and spent the next couple of months assisting with an on-site study of roughly 10,000 Japanese people injured in the two atomic blasts.
"It ranged all the way from the dead to the minimally injured," said Ohnstad, who worked alongside Japanese doctors and nurses, who in turn worked alongside American medical personnel. "I remember a Japanese girl. She was young and ordinary, but when she removed her scarf she had lost all of her hair. Others were burned to death and the doctors did autopsies. I was just a 19-year-old kid helping out under the crudest of circumstances."
Ohnstad also recalled a Japanese man who cooked for the Atomic Bomb Commission. "He had lost a wife and at least one daughter in the bombing. He could have poisoned all of us if he had wanted to." He didn't though, and while Ohnstad did hear stories about hostility towards Americans in Japan, he never personally experienced any despite being in close contact with citizens of Hiroshima on a daily basis.
One of Ohnstad's most vivid memories is seeing what he called "Footprint Bridge" in Hiroshima, where the shadow of a man and a donkey were plainly visible on the concrete. "The explosion bleached the concrete, except where that man had been standing."
Ohnstad would serve in Tokyo as well, as part of the Typhus Commission, before being sent stateside. He was discharged on Jan. 11, 1847.
cIt's not why we went"
Both Warneke and Ohnstad were present at the dedication of Minnesota's WWII war memorial, June 9, and had mixed feelings. "I'm glad there is one," said Ohnstad, who referred to the experience as emotional. "A lot of history passes before your eyes. "It's not a glorification, it's a recognition of the depth of commitment," he said.
"It's nice for the younger generation to hear about what all Americans went through to get the job done," added Warneke. But neither of the aging soldiers wanted to put too much emphasis on the memorial, and instead desired to highlight the service behind the memorial.
"I don't think the vast majority of us served for a memorial," said Ohnstad. "It's nice yes, but it's not why we went," offered Warneke.
As the two men prepared to return home, Warneke to his garden and Ohnstad to his computer, they contemplated not just their own stories but the hundreds of thousands of other stories just like theirs. And, while some find their way into the history books, many others will never be known. "There were a lot of heroes out there that are totally unsung," said Ohnstad. "A lot of those stories are going to the grave."
And as they departed, they spent a moment - two men who knew each other, and lived nearby each other for years - thanking each other for sharing their story, which had been heard by the other for the first time.
Clarification In the story titled "The stories behind the WWII memorial" in last week's edition, Tom Warneke's service in the Southwest Pacific was actually contained within the year 1945, not 1944. Correction Michas Ohnstad was discharged on Jan. 11, 1947, not 1847.
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