Proof The Bible Is True

Okinawa. A shiver passed through me when we were told it was there our troop transport was headed. The men in my 713th Tank Flamethrowers Battalion stared at one another.

The island was the last stepping stone prior to invading the Japanese mainland. We knew it was going to be bloody. I was a 21-year-old Army private. I had no expectation of coming out alive.

We entered Nakagusuku Bay—later called Buckner Bay in honor of our commanding general, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr.—late morning in early April 1945. Almost immediately the Japanese opened fire.

I was below deck with the rest of my battalion when the battle-stations siren sounded. This is it, I thought. Above, we could hear the whine of a squadron of approaching Japanese Zeros, the long-range fighter planes flown by kamikaze crews.

We were part of a convoy. There were several other troop transports —I can’t remember how many—as well as a destroyer, a cruiser and a hospital ship. There was no mistaking why the hospital ship was there.

And then our ship’s twin, 90-mm antiaircraft guns opened fire. So did the guns on every other US ship. The noise, the power—I’d never heard anything like it. Never had imagined anything like it. It sounded like the world was exploding.

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