Anderson remembers end of WWII

SEELEY LAKE – Seaman Leon (Bud) Anderson was off duty and on liberty in San Francisco when World War II ended.

"I was on Market Street when the news broke," he said. "Everybody was talking about it and Market Street in San Francisco was wild!"

Born on a ranch near Havre in 1926, Anderson later moved with his family to Seeley Lake. When his eighteenth birthday approached, he knew he would be drafted. He chose to enlist in the Navy instead. Boot Camp was in Farragut, Idaho, at the south end of Lake Pend Oreille. He signed up for Naval Air, but it was already filled up.

"Everybody wanted to be flying," he said.

He was sent to Treasure Island in San Francisco, a reception and processing area for Pacific assignments. While he was waiting to be assigned, he saw a poster that read, "Barbers Needed."

As Anderson tells the story, he asked the man who seemed to be in charge, "'What about this barber stuff?' He said, 'You cut hair?' I said, 'I got three little brothers. I cut their hair.' 'Good,' he said, "You're a barber. Go over to the brig [the base prison] and cut hair.'"

Anderson said he worked there two or three weeks.

"Every day I was knee deep in hair," he said. "I worked in a glass cage because that was the prison, you know. I was only allowed clippers and comb. No scissors. Because they thought one of the inmates might use it on the barber." He laughed.

Anderson said he never intended to have a career as a barber. When he saw a sign that read "Be a Tin Can Sailor," he decided to check it out.

As he described his reaction: "Well, here's this country boy. Had no idea what a tin can was. So I asked someone, 'What's a tin can?' Well, he looked at me like I was crazy and he said, 'It's a destroyer.' And I said, 'Could a guy get on one?' He said, 'They've got a new one in Bremerton [Washington] and they're putting a crew together.'"

The new destroyer was the USS Douglas H. Fox, the biggest destroyer made at the time. Anderson became a member of its first crew and as such became a proud "plank owner" with a certificate to prove it. Symbolically, that means he owns one small portion of the ship. At one time, such a certificate entitled its owner to claim an actual wood plank when the ship was decommissioned.

During his wait at Treasure Island, Anderson received gunnery training, so he was surprised to find himself listed on the ship's register as a barber. He served as a barber the whole time he was on the ship. But he said when the gunner's mate saw his record he said, "Well, you've got more schooling than I have."

Anderson said about 80 percent of the time he served as gun captain on the quad-40, a 40mm machine gun with four guns on the mount. Such a setup requires an 11-man crew: a "pointer" and a "trainer" who work together to aim the barrels, eight loaders (two for each barrel) and a gun captain to coordinate the action.

Anderson added, "Even the captain knew I had all the gunners mate training, but they didn't want to take me off of being a barber because barbers were scarce."

Initially, the Douglas H. Fox joined in Naval exercises in the Hawaiian Islands. Less than a month later it was sent to Okinawa to participate in Operation Iceberg, later acknowledged as the last major battle of World War II and one of the bloodiest.

Fighting was already underway when the Douglas H. Fox arrived. The Fox's job was to detect incoming kamikaze aircraft by radar and prevent them from reaching the fleet's carriers and battleships. Japanese kamikaze pilots deliberately accepted death. Their sole mission was to crash their bomb-laden craft into the designated enemy ship.

History records that after sunset on May 17, 1945, the Fox's radar picked up multiple signals as approximately 10 Japanese planes advanced in a coordinated manner. The Douglas H. Fox commenced firing and shot down one plane within the first five minutes and then four others before being slammed into by a kamikaze and its bomb.

Anderson's memory is that three kamikaze planes flew in at one time.

"They hit us," he said, "and blew one mount – a five-inch 38 twin mount – clear off of the ship. And the other one blew the magazine [ammunition storage area], so there was only one mount left of the five-inch guns. We were dead in the water. It blew enough of the engine down so we couldn't move. We were just sitting there." Other destroyers in the fleet shot down the remaining planes.

According to Anderson, 125 men were killed. Internet accounts of the battle list only seven dead and 35 wounded. Confronted with that report, Anderson said, "Oh no, it was a lot more than that. Seven! My goodness no."

He explained that the mount blown off the ship had a crew of eight or ten, none of whom were ever found. The number two mount had a similar crew and he recalls all too vividly that the gunner's mate was beheaded in the attack and his head was never found. Anderson said the crew later received a written report from the captain that said in part, "the crew was pretty well trimmed out because of the loss of men."

When the immediate danger was over, Anderson said, "We got going with one engine and we went to what they call the boneyard and they started repairing the ship because it was pretty badly damaged."

Only temporary repairs could be handled at the "boneyard," and the Douglas H. Fox was sent home to San Francisco for more extensive repair work, which is why Anderson found himself in San Francisco when the end of the war was declared.

Anderson said his main reaction to the news was relief. He said, "They were just going to fix our ship up enough so that we could go back into service. It was damaged so bad you didn't quite know if it was going to be fixed right or not. So I wasn't too anxious to be going back to escort duty."

When Anderson got out of the Navy, the barber who cut his hair offered him a barber's chair. However, he declined that career path. He wanted to become an engineer.

Anderson attended Montana State University using the GI Bill for a year and a half until that money was used up. He said, "There was no place to live. No job because of the influx of servicemen getting out of the service. Seemed like jillions of servicemen. You had to go to Bozeman to get the subjects you wanted to study. The schools were full. The apartments were full. There was just an overflow of students. So I gave it up. Stayed in the grocery business."

Anderson had worked at the Stop-N-Shop in Missoula since he was a bag boy, in his high school days. He ended up store manager for 10 years. Then he moved to California and worked for a grocery chain store for 14 years. He stayed there until his three daughters graduated from high school.

When the Seeley Lake Mercantile was listed for sale, Anderson bought it and moved back to Montana. After six years he said he was offered a good price, so he sold the Mercantile and bought "a little ice cream place for his wife because she wanted something to do." The Mercantile is now the Grizzly Claw Trading Co. and the Ice Cream Place is still serving ice cream along with other foods.

During his 94 years, Anderson also worked as Manager for the Water District in Seeley Lake, for a Bob Marshall outfitter and with the Seeley Lake Real Estate Investors Inc. Retired now, he still lives in the same log cabin house off Boy Scout Road. His family has multiplied to include 11 grandchildren and 11 great grandchildren, scattered around the world.