Oral History Interview with Edward Shadburne

Diakov: It is Monday, February 18th, 2008. This is Leanne Ketril Diakov interviewing Edward Francis Shadburne who was born November 21st, 1925. He served in World War II in the U. S. Navy, achieving the f…rank of pharmacist Third Class. He served in the arena of the Asiatic Pacific. We are interviewing here at two-thirty-two Saint Clair Street, Frankfort, Kentucky, my law office, to talk about Mr. Shadburne’s…World War II service. So, and… Shadburne: Sure.

Diakov: [Chuckles – Diakov] I let you start off by telling us where and when you were born.

Shadburne: I was born in Louisville, Kentucky, on November 21st, 1925 on East (Road?) Street…grew up…around south, south and central parts in Louisville through grade school, and then I went to high school at Louisville Male High. 1:00And then…left before I graduated because, like so many young people, I had a real urge to be involved in World War II. So at (clears throat) seventeen I went down to the U. S…actually Coast Guard office and tried to enlist in the coast guard because a friend of mine had gone in the coast guard and said what a great place it was and it sounded good to me, and…got down there and enlistments were close, so I couldn’t belong—join the…coast guard. But there was a fellow standing there who had the…he looked to me like the same uniform, and he said, “well, let’s go up and talk.” It turned out he was U. S. Navy and…so I enlisted in the Navy…that day, I think it was about October 15th…I was not called up until…November 2:0015th which was about a week before my eighteenth birthday.

Diakov: Now this was before you had graduated high school?

Shadburne: Yes…I dropped out, I had completed my major requirements and I was just not…interested in anymore school at that time, so Mother agreed and took me down to the school principal, and he said, “let him go.” [Chuckles – Diakov]. So, we…got all the paper signed and she okayed them so, it worked out. I c…when I got back out of the service in ’46, I went back and they didn’t call them G.E.D.s in those days, they have—I went back to school for, I think it was six weeks and I got my diploma, and actually graduated in the upper one third of my class which I would never have done if I had stayed in school, and…of course you can’t be in the navy almost three years and not grow up a little bit, so I, I began to realize of that. 3:00Diakov: Well tell me about, tell me about your mother.

Shadburne: Well…we grew up, I grew up and lived in a family that was a—we were depression kids and we never had less than two families living with us at one time during those, those years. Mother always worked…and she was a very industrious loving person and, and we, you know, when you live in big families like that, you, you gain an awful lot of support from one another, and boy you sure needed it then, but we always had food on the table and…my father (clears throat) and mother were separated (clears throat) off and on…for, until they finally got a divorce while I was overseas—excuse me (clears throat). And she…continued to work all of her life until she finally retired a little bit. The…other members of the family, as I say, were very cooperative and we had to deliver papers and all kinds of things to earn a little buck—few bucks on the side. 4:00But it was a tough time for a lot of people in those days, and large families gave, as I said, gave you that support that a lot of people didn’t have.

Diakov: How many brothers and sisters did you have.

Shadburne: I had one brother, Bill, and…he went into the service…I think it was 1950 he went in, he was five years younger than I and…he did very well. He graduated from Indiana University as an all-American swimmer, and…has, s…spent his career in that field in the swimming coaching and teaching. We had a lot of cousins that lived with us, and we had fun, we really did. I remember particularly the flood of 1937 we were—they were at least four families of us living in a…two-bedroom apartment 5:00on Everett Avenue, and we had the time of our lives, we really [Chuckling] did, because you, you really—they turned the water out, I don’t think that’s the story about the flood, but they turned the s…turned the water on every other day at, I think it was four o’clock in the afternoon, for you to fill up your bathtub. And then you had to boil all that water before you could drink it clears throat). But it also enabled you to, to…wash your dishes and things like that. Anyway, it was a, a, a lot of fun growing up in that…era. So, but…I… Diakov: Was that Everett Avenue in The Highlands?

Shadburne: Yes, mm-mm.

Diakov: Oh okay.

Shadburne: …yeah, it sure was. The house we were in on Everett…we actually lived down on Highland Avenue, and…and we’d go home every night. 6:00We lived in an apartment that was over an old s…I want to say A&P Store, up on the third floor. I remember having to take my bicycle up [Chuckling] three floors every night. Anyway, that’s…it was a fun time and a hard time.

Diakov: Well, and, and was that where you were living when you went down and enlisted?

Shadburne: No, we… Diakov: …with the Navy?

Shadburne: …you know, it seemed like we moved every time the rent came due, I, I don’t know that that’s factual or not, but…we were living on Highland Avenue and while I was in the service, they moved up onto Bardstown Road, always in the lower Highlands…and…I wasn’t, as I say, I wasn’t around when they moved from Highland Avenue (clears throat) to Bardstown Road.

Diakov: What was your mother’s reaction when you enlisted in the Navy?

Shadburne: Well sh… Diakov: Did you tell her you were going to do it?

Shadburne: I couldn’t do it without her permission, so she knew it, and I, we discussed it and I told her that I really wanted to go and she understood that, plus I wasn’t the best student in the world 7:00and she knew that [Chuckles – Diakov] so…she got, she did the right thing by letting me go, I’m sure. But it, you know, any parent, I am in that position today and it would be, break my heart if I had one of, one of my boys went in the service. But those were different times, and…the patriotism in the country at that time was just…tremendous and, there wasn’t the division within society that there is today. But it, it was what I wanted to do and really I felt like what I needed to do. So it was…it was okay.

Diakov: Do you remember what you were thinking when you enlisted? Did, were you, did you have any kind of…reservations about it, or did you just think you were going on this grand adventure?

Shadburne: Well, let me tell you something. In the other tapes that you’ll 8:00hear…that I brought along of friends of mine, it’s, it’s so funny that all said kind of the same thing. When you’re seventeen/eighteen years old, you, oh my goodness, that’s a great adventure. I’m not going to die, I’m not going to get wounded, I am going to go out there and win the war and come back and be a hero. I think that’s why the draft had [Chuckles - Diakov] started at eighteen years old. You just felt like that…this was a great adventure, as I say, and to, to be out there helping was a, was a monumental task, because you, at that age, you had so little time to help at home, by that I mean you weren’t old enough to enter the work force, but you and a lot of us were in the workforce in various ways. It was just a, a big adventure, I guess 9:00is the best way to describe it.

Diakov: So you…enlisted and then you said there was about a month before you were called up?

Shadburne: Yeah, and, and, I think they gave you thirty days to…get your affairs in order, and then I, I reported in at the Naval…recruiting station there in Louisville, and….

Diakov: Where was that located?

Shadburne: It was located in the post office down on Broadway.

Diakov: Okay.

Shadburne: They gave you a physical…there, I think they did, I can’t remember. Anyway we headed out for Great Lakes, the Great Lakes Naval Training Station where I was in book camp.

Diakov: Did you know any of the, the boys with you?

Shadburne: Not one of them, not a single one. Now I met some fellows after we got there that…had come from Louisville, but not on the draft, not on the…group that we went to, that I was with.

Diakov: So you ended up in the, in the Great Lakes for training? 10:00Shadburne: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Diakov: Tell me about that.

Shadburne: Boot camp, well it’s just like anything, like basic…you did a lot of…oh I don’t know, the usual things, we had to [Chuckling] sandpaper our floor every night…they taught you to stand up and put the sandpaper on your feet and kind of shuffle back [Chuckling] and forth on the wooden floor, that was one of the…things, and the basic military procedures. They had a…what they called that darned thing? It was the ‘Blue Jackets Handbook’ I believe that was about five inches thick and, and…certain parts of that you weren’t required to memorize all of them, but how to tie knots and how to stand watch and identify aircraft and…all sorts of things that were necessary to your life aboard ship. It was interesting, it was kind of…fun. I had…at Male High, I had, I had a year at (clears throat) of ROTC training so, much of that to me was kind of old hat, 11:00because I knew how to break down a rifle and some other things that you were taught. There were a lot of things that I didn’t know too. But it was a…it was interesting and at the same time a little boring. I had done some competitive swimming, so I thought well, they had what they called the work week and most of the guys went on KP, and I thought well maybe I can help teach swimming, and…we had a chief in charge and he put my name up to go over there, and I did that during the workweek. I went over and worked at the pool and…but I didn’t, they didn’t keep me. I thought they might keep me there, but for that, but they didn’t. And I don’t know why, how in the world I got in the hospital corps, I just have no idea [Chuckles – Diakov]. They gave you a, a classification test, and of all things (clears throat) I came out…for an electrician, I scored highest in that category. Gosh, I didn’t know how to plug in a lamp, much less electrician. But they looked at my resume and saw that I had been, worked for, as a lifeguard at Lakeside, and they said, well that, did you have your first aid 12:00(department?)? Did you have your…Red Cross license? And I said yes and…they said that’s industrial first aid, so you’re going in the hospital corps. So right, I was rated right on the spot, hospital apprentice second class, so, that was that. But that was, that pretty well took care of boot camp and then after boot camp, I got a f…thirty, I think it was a thirty day leave, and went home and had a big time, and when I came back I was assigned to what they called outgoing units, still in Great Lakes, and that was interesting. You were assigned to various work details, and for a while, I, I was a working at the…(Fay?) Hospital there at (clears throat) on 13:00the base, and spent a lot of time shoveling snow off the admiral’s walk that was good training for pharmacist mate. But all that, you know, work together and, anyway I take so…they gave us some classes at the hospital there, which were helpful.

Diakov: What kind of classes did they give you?

Shadburne: Oh nursing, basic nursing, that’s what it was. But the interesting thing was that…there was a real shortage of manpower in Chicago. So certain days that you were off, why you could sign up and go in and work at the Wilson Meat Packing Company or the, the…Campbell Soup Company. So I signed up, and, and you got paid five dollars for doing that…and you got a twelve-hour pass, which meant [Chuckling] you got off base, so you were glad to do it, so anyway…I 14:00volunteered and went in there and I was assigned to the…chicken conveyor belt, which meant that I had a pair of tongues [Chuckling] and when the, when the chickens came down the conveyor belt, they hadn’t been dipped in boiling water and had had the feathers plucked by hand, and I took the chickens and held them over a gas jet and singed the pinfeathers off the chicken. So [Chuckling] when I got through that night, I had no eyebrows, I had no hair on my arms [Laughing] and I, I looked pretty bad. So I didn’t volunteer for that anymore. I told them I’d go back, which I did, but I said, I’m not going to get on the conveyor belt again and so…they had me on the carrot department, I think. It was, it was all part of that. Then we finally got orders out there to go to the west coast, to Shoemaker, California where I think I was there two or three weeks waiting for a shipment overseas and then we got on the ship…I 15:00can’t remember exactly the time, but it was the, but I got it in here somewhere. It was or a…trip ship, and…started overseas.

Diakov: And you knew where you were going.

Shadburne: No, Diakov: No?

Shadburne: I had no idea.

Diakov: No.

Shadburne: No. This was on the USS George O. Squires and we, we left San Francisco on April 7th, 1944.

Diakov: And didn’t know where you heading?

Shadburne: Mm-mm. Well we got about, I guess we were out maybe ten days and they told us we were going to New Caledonia first, that’s where we got in, Nouméa. But we didn’t even get off the ship there. We were still passengers, which is about the lowest caste you can possible have in the US Navy, because you just, you have no status whatsoever 16:00except all the lousy details that they can assign you. So we just stopped in New Caledonia. There were some of them that got off, and I think we got some new passengers too there. Then we went to…New Guinea…to…Melanie Bay which was kind of a stopping off place I think in…a navy base called Da…Gama do do and we debarked there and…were there I think maybe a week or ten days.

Diakov: What did you think, when this was obviously your first time out of the United States in a completely… Shadburne: Well… Diakov: …different environment, what was your fist impression? 17:00Shadburne: I, I can’t remember a lot about it except that it was, wasn’t…it wasn’t bad. They had [Chuckling] movies at night, I remember in the jungle there, in Gama do do. I guess what I was most concerned about was where we were going to end up. And I really wanted to be assigned to a ship, but was never the whole time I was in the navy, I was never assigned to a ship. Anyway, about ten days, I think we were there ten days two weeks, we were sent down to a…Brisbane, Australia, to…as part of the ship’s company for…mobile hospital number one-o-nine, in Brisbane, and I was, boy you talk about good duty, goodness gracious, I was down there for about nine months, I believe, eight or nine months. Anyway, 18:00it…I, it’s amazing, I have, at first how little I did that actually resembled being a pharmacist mate [Chuckling]. I was put on, what they call outside detail, which is nothing more than garbage collection and ground maintenance, and…of course, you know, I’m eighteen years old, I’m glad to be outdoors and, and I’ve always enjoyed sports and things like that. The…I was working, we call it the honey wagon, the garbage truck, and that would go off base every day for to unload, it’d go down to a dump in Brisbane, and over time I learned to drive the truck, because the truck was…right hand drive and, that was kind of fun to do, and we always stopped in a little Aussie grocery store down there and got fresh milk and whatever else we wanted, so that was pretty good duty. Eventually I was assigned to a ward duty, which was good, I picked up a lot of knowledge there. 19:00We treated primarily…on the ward I was on, there were a…oh gee, I guess…sixty beds on that ward, and we made bed six, we made sixty beds every day, which was all right, they were cots primarily, and…the…shift that you were on made a lot of difference. At first, the new person always took the night shift and I was on there, which was much quieter and…but, you know, it was nighttime too. So…everything kind of fell into place after that, in that I became…I had a lot more confidence in what my rating called for. The…I 20:00don’t know how, but somehow, somewhere in there, I ended in the office typing records, and that was an experience in learning how to read a doctor’s handwriting, if you’ve ever seen [Chuckling] prescriptions or, well the records were just the same way, it took two of us to figure it out [Chuckles – Diakov]. But anyway…I rem…that was a g…it was a good duty, no question about that, we had good liberty and town’s people were very nice to us and it was re…just a real good experience for a kid, really was.

Diakov: Now when you were on the ward, on the ward duty, were these primarily men who had been injured… Shadburne: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …in the south Pacific arena?

Shadburne: Right, right.

Diakov: And then they were…were they brought to Brisbane when they were stabilized or… Shadburne: Mm-mm. We were on, we were, we were on the, what they call a medical ward. 21:00We didn’t have any surgical cases. These were guys mostly with malaria and with…other internal diseases that…needed to be treated, and…it was pleasant duty, it was not, you didn’t have any…fellows yelling at you, or anything, I w…I remember, remember, we went…I visited the psycho ward that they had there and I l…that was so pathetic, these were young men, they were my age…that had been under fire and, a lot of marines were in there too, because we, the navy served the marine corps. And it was just really pathetic to see how they were torn up, had no idea where they were, these were the extreme cases that we had there. So for—and here again, for a young fellow that was good education. I did some extracurricular things too. 22:00I got on the staff of the…as a reporter for the…newspaper they put out once a month, and that was fun. We had…two extraordinary athletes that were assigned to the hospital, one was Phil Rizzuto he was a, an outstanding baseball player for the New York Yankees, the other was a fellow named Antoine Christopher (Reeders?) who was a light heavyweight boxing champion, and I got to know them very well, and…it was fun, it really was, we had a good baseball team, I didn’t play on it [Chuckles – Diakov], but they had a good one.

Diakov: I should say so, if you had a professional ( ) [Chuckles – Diakov] Shadburne: Yeah, we did.

Diakov: What else did you do in your free time?

Shadburne: Oh, we went to the movies and…learned how to sing the British National Anthem [Laughter – Shadburne and Diakov], because they would, they’d play it before every picture. And you know we had dates and the USO, 23:00and all that stuff, it was a, it was a lot of fun, it really was, certainly in, it was a piece of cake compared to what other, other men were undergoing.

Diakov: And you were…I’m sorry, did you say you were in Brisbane for about nine months?

Shadburne: Mm-mm.

Diakov: You were there nine months?

Shadburne: Mm-mm, yeah. Yeah. I don’t think there was anything else that we…that sticks out in my mind. Not really, I think it was just a, as I say, pretty well rounded, pretty well rounded experience for me. And I made some friends, I had some good friends that I made, I tried to keep up with throughout the war. After ( ) were re-assigned, but eventually lost track of them and… Diakov: Yeah. When did you leave Brisbane? 24:00Shadburne: Well let’s see, I am trying to think. I was there, let me think here just one second, and look at my notes. (Paper shuffling sound). I didn’t get any dates. I want to say we left there…we arrived in…well anyway, about February or March of nineteen-forty-y-y five, I guess it was, and…from there we just kind of highland hopped for, on various ships for about three or four months…we went from… Diakov: Was that your unit went from ship to ship, or… Shadburne: Yeah, well, we weren’t even a unit. We were just, what they called a draft, or, or group of men 25:00that were just put where they were needed, primarily, and we went back up to Melanie Bay. This time we stayed at a place called Ora Bay, and it’s in New Guinea, and then to Finch Haven, New Guinea, to Olandia, New Guinea, and finally up to (Huati?) in the Philippine Islands and Sumara in the Philippines Islands, and…all the time this was going on, we were in, technically in transit, we couldn’t get paid, we didn’t get a…they lost our clothes about five different times, and so it wasn’t…a very…morale building time [Chuckling] definitely. But I think as a youngster, the thing that you really learn in the U. S. Navy is patience, because there is so much hurry up and wait to begin with, and, and that pretty well follows your career. Now those who were in combat on the cruisers and battleships and destroyers, and things like that, why you know, they, 26:00they worked hard, different lives than ours, completely. But anyway, we…we were assigned then, eventually from…the Philippines to go aboard a ship, the…USS Rocky Mountain, which was a communication ship, and they had an admiral on board, and they had for a while a General Eichelberger of the Army in it. Well, they had…this was a c…a group communication ship, and it was just loaded with all kinds of radar and sonar and all the other stuff, and we went down to Morotai in the East Indies, Deutsch East Indies, where we staged—I mean got ready for…an invasion of Borneo with the Australian troops, and…so we…as 27:00I may have told you earlier, there was a draft of twenty of us that went aboard the…Rocky Mountain, (clears throat) and I was the only one that could type, and so they separated me out and…the other guys were assigned to surgical teams and to beach parties, which were…really…combat units. As I say, the bulk of this was done by the Australians, but the, they still we had to do the backup medical form. And so we were there, I don’t know we were staging there for almost a month before we went down to Borneo and made those landings. I had to sit in the office 28:00and do all the paperwork, but I did get over to, to the…beach a couple of times, beachheads, and deliver O blood which they needed at the time, and we, we kind of acted as a supply ship for the Australians. They didn’t have a lot, and so we were supplying them, as well as the LSTs, and the other support ships we, we…down, our US Navy was supplying them for that operation, as the best I can remember. So we were there, I guess…no longer than a week, if that long, and…the fellows that I had known that were the first twenty, came back, nobody was injured or anything and, but they had some long nights on the beach, the Japanese…there is one…well 29:00there were a couple of big faux pas, but the worst one was they, they beached the LSTs like they always do, and they figured the tides wrong. And so they had these LSTs that were beached because the water just went out from under them, and when the tides went out, there they were stuck on the beach, and at night the Japanese just had mortar fires and they were just sitting ducks. So they, we had some casualties there and then, the…to get them off the beach, they sent destroyers and [Chuckling] PT boats as close in as they could get to make waves to wash them off and they eventually did it, they eventually got them off of there. But somebody really messed in that planning that ordeal. Then we went back to Morotai and about a month later we en…we made landings with the aus…Australians again at Brunei Bay which was on the other side of Borneo. 30:00Now let me say this about Borneo. It’s probably one of the most unpleasant places [Chuckling] I have ever been [Laughter – Diakov]. You’re right on the equator and it’s just hotter than Hades all the time, and very…moist, very, ( ) and I broke out with something, I don’t know what it was, but I could not get rid of it, anyway…it just wasn’t a very pleasant place to be. Morotai wasn’t much better as far as the weather went, but at least you had some recreational islands down there where you could go. They gave you a beer ration every now and then so you could go over and sit under a palm tree and drink some beer and play ball, or whatever you wanted to do, so that was good. (whispers) Do you have any… Diakov: So did you…so you were mostly on this communication ship, which was kind off… Shadburne: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …off some shore while these…landings 31:00were going on?

Shadburne: Yeah.

Diakov: And then occa…and then you said occasionally you would go and… Shadburne: Yeah.

Diakov: …deliver supply?

Shadburne: Yeah, mm-mm.

Diakov: …as needed?

Shadburne: Right. They… Diakov: What, what about casualties, did they bring those back to your ship, or how did they… Shadburne: No, they didn’t have many. We had a few. About, I don’t know, maybe, I’d say ten or twelve, but they had…one ship that was hit by a Japanese shore fire that…they lost a lot of people on there, they just killed them, and from that I think we had maybe ten survivors, but as usual, in most of those operations, the, the civilian population were the ones that really caught it, and I never saw it, but…some of the guys that went in swore that the Japanese 32:00had…taken some civilian laborers and shot them through the foot so they wouldn’t be able to work for us, and I did not see that, I did not…to my knowledge, we, we didn’t treat any of them, they were treated…on the beach, ashore, and…but there were, there were, there were casualties, but they were, they were pretty light. We had excellent area cover, we had cruisers that bombarded the shore before we got in there, and then…B-twenty-f…(clears throat) see, B-24s and…the…B…usual bombardier, they would set through one of those things where you can just almost follow the script of what was going to happen once you’ve seen one of them, and they did a good job of mopping 33:00that up. That, those Tarakan Island…just as an aside, was rich with oil, and that was one of the reasons the allies wanted to get a hold of it (clears throat). And it, they did pretty well, they, they set the oil on fire, the Japanese did, the wells over on, near the water, but they weren’t around anymore and they didn’t have any problems, I don’t think they did, to my knowledge.

Diakov: Well, when you were…compared to when you were in Brisbane when you were on the ship, closer to at what we con…would consider the front line, do you remember having what you felt then? Did you have any reservations, any trepidations, or, wonder what you’d had gotten yourself into, or… Shadburne: No. Here again, I think it goes back to that eighteen-year 34:00old mentality. You just absolutely feel, well, I’ll see Mom next month maybe or whatever, I had no idea of getting wounded or killed, or anything like that, and…now if I were to go over there today, you better believe it [Chuckling], but I think…I think the confidence that you had when you were eighteen years old of, and we were so indoctrinated with being in the best navy in the world, you know, and I don’t think we were, but we became the best navy in the world, but when it all started, and of course by the time we got over there things were pretty, a lot easier than when the first guys went out. The marines, especially in the Guadalcanal area and all of that, they were just, amazing what they did with what they had. I lost…good friends that were in the marines and one of them, oddly enough was a corpsman, because…the, the navy supp…I told you supplied the medical…care for the marines, and they were…corpsmen that were assigned to what they called the fleet marines and were in on every landing marines ever made, they were always some corpsmen there to help. Now had I gotten assigned 35:00to that, I’m not sure how I would have felt, because I knew the casualty rate was pretty high. But I was never called on to do that.

Diakov: How were you able to communicate with home, or with friends during this time?

Shadburne: Huh…mail (clears throat) but it was…it was pretty, you know, hit and miss, because we were on the move so much you couldn’t…but, but the first thing they always tried to do was if we were, if we were in any kind of a port was go ashore and see if the ship, anybody on the ship had any mail. Could we…take… Diakov: Oh yes Shadburne: …just turn around a second.

Diakov: ( ) just a moment.

Shadburne: Uh-huh. [Pause] Diakov: All right Ed, while, while we had the recording paused here, you were looking through some of your notes and pulled out a, I guess like a diary or a personal log from your thirty days on this ship, 36:00while assisting the Australians and…this is a nine-page log that has entries for each day as to what you were doing and impressions that you had at that time, and I understand you will donate a copy of that along with this recording. Is there anything, looking over that that you want to, that you want to share from any of those entries?

Shadburne: I think we pretty well covered them. I think what this does as well as anything else is give you pretty, pretty good idea of life aboard ship, highlight of the day were if we had movies [Chuckling] at night…getting a brief…five or six hour shore leave 37:00to go over on the beach and get a beer ration and that type of thing. And there’s, there are few…notes about the operations itself, the operation itself.

Diakov: Okay. Well we’ll, we’ll…attach the manuscript log on that and, and give a copy with this recording (coughs). So, I’m just trying to get a time line about when this operation ended. Would that have been about March or April of ’45?

Shadburne: Huh, I’ll tell you exactly in just a minute. There were two operations. I did not keep a log on the second, the second operation, just a…(noise), yeah, this, after the invasion this I, I quit this on the tenth of May 1945. 38:00And then when we landed in…Brunei Bay, which is the second of these two operations; that was on the 10th of June; and I think that was even easier than the first one, as far as the re…resistance was concerned.

Diakov: Now, to put this in a historical perspective, by this time, things were pretty much secure on the European front…what—did you all get news of that?

Shadburne: Yeah, sure, we, we’d get it on the communication ship, they had a, a daily…newspaper, I guess you’d could call it; it wasn’t much. And of course, like any other…instrument at that time, it was [Chuckling] subject to change the next day, because they, they really didn’t know ( ) so it was good, the, the big news like the president dying and President Truman taking over were big items emotionally, because I’d had grown up with Roosevelt 39:00and the only president that I had ever known, and…we all felt like it was sad, because you didn’t get to see the end of the war. But, yeah, we had some communications, and of course, when we got mail it was…always a special treat.

Diakov: Do you remember…what the mood was, or some of the thoughts that people had when the European front was secured? I think that was in April or May of ’45?

Shadburne: I, I really didn’t hear too much about it, because we were so involved in other things. Of course everyone said, boy I hope they send some people over here, and there was a lot of doubt that they would, because the navy was carrying the brunt—the navy and Marine Corps were carrying the brunt of that war. So we began to get, 40:00I—and I say we…the country began to send more army personnel over, and…we were, at that time we were back at…off the Rocky Mountain and be assigned to…a dispensary in Subic Bay in the Philippine Islands, and I think the time…yeah, that would have been about right, we were there in June I guess, June and July, and there was some mountains around Subic Bay, we, all we did was to…well, let me…I’m getting ahead of myself. The…dispensary at Subic Bay was a secure area, but to the w…to the south of us, they were still fighting the Japanese, the army units were, and…so we were, we were lucky to be out of the combat zone. But about this time, a bunch 41:00of army…what they call JASCO outfits, Joint Assault and Signal Companies came in and began training exercises up in the mountains around Subic Bay. Well, scuttlebutt was flying left and right, you know, you didn’t know what, what’s the army doing here, this is navy base and, well it, the best information would could gather was that they were training for the invasion of Japan. And…here again, I’m getting ahead of myself a little bit, but…and a, then the scuttlebutt went on down to us and we were going with them [Chuckling] and so we, we didn’t know whether, what to believe, and I don’t think our officers even knew, I’m sure they didn’t know what was going on, and…so these guys came charging out, in town one day, early one morning, I think it was, in their jeeps 42:00and blowing their horns and shooting guns up in the air, and they said, “we just picked up a message, from Japan to Switzerland offering to surrender.” And this was…I guess after they’d dropped the atomic bomb. We had no idea what the bomb was, none whatsoever, or didn’t even drop it, or anything. So…everybody said, oh, they are drunk, don’t pay any attention to them, you know, and…so [Chuckling] about two days later, we, you know, the announcement came through so that was great, and everybody had a big sigh of relief and when the point system was announced, at…when you get out, after the war, I won’t be in here until I’m forty because [Chuckling] I was so young when I went in, and priority obviously, rightly so was given…was, priority was given to married men with children 43:00who needed to get home. And here I was, twenty-years old by this time. So…I thought well, they’ll, they’ll…wait on me a little while. But anyway, what I hadn’t counted on that was good, was that all this time I had accumulated some leave time, because I hadn’t had any leave since Australia, and this was going on, twenty-eight, twenty-ni…twenty-eight, twenty-seven/twenty-eight months that I had been in. So, sure enough I got orders to go back to the United States, and…that—I’ll get to that in a minute if you have anything else before I come back.

Diakov: No, I mean I guess once you got the announcement that Japan had surrendered, did your duties change at all, or… Shadburne: Oh no.

Diakov: No.

Shadburne: No, we stayed…I was working in the lab then at that, at the…dispensary, 44:00and really enjoying it, I, I had great guy there, a first class lab tech who had…from Louisiana, and he was just a great teacher, and I really got into that, I liked it very much. I thought when I came back to the states, I’d like to maybe look at med school, my lord I couldn’t even work ageb…algebra problems, much less think of med school, but anyway, I really enjoyed doing that type of work until we did, they taught us—excuse I’m trying to jump around here—they taught us to do what they needed us to, to provide information they needed. We did blood counts and we did…oh…first, but of course we all did first aid, but other things in the lab that were pretty routine by today’s standards, but we didn’t have all the equipment they got today. 45:00And then, I tell you, one of the thing that was very interesting…to me…when the, the war was over, the government put out a, a directive that said any, any enlisted or officer that wants to have his tonsils out or be circumcised, can do at government expense, they were glad to do it [Chuckles – Diakov and Shadburne]. So we set up a, a circumcision team in the morning and a…I think tonsils were included in that too. Anyway, we had two or three teams working and I was assigned in the circumcision team, and I tell you…it’s a, it’s a humorous subject to begin with, but once you get into it, it get to working on it, it’s pretty, it can be a pretty serious for a grown man. Anyway, that kept a lot of us busy, ( ) kept all of us busy, 46:00as a matter of fact. The…and that was after the war was over, we did, started to do more civilian work. They…the Filipinos would fish with dynamite caps, and they’d throw the caps or a stick of dynamite into the ocean and let the thing go off and the fish would come up the bottom the concussion would kill them, and we got one or two of those that had blown off a wrist or blown off an arm at the elbow and so that kept us busy. But it, it was a pleasant time because you didn’t have that pressure on you that you knew was going to, you, you’re going to…Lord we thought we were going to Japan and, now that did concern me, ( ) we were so close, the other part of the war was over, I really wanted to get home by then.

Diakov: Yeah. So how did you go home?

Shadburne: Got orders, I had picked up a…a bug, and they diagnosed it as yellow jaundice, which is the most debilitating thing I had ever had in my life, and 47:00I got orders to come through and go on leave, and I talk the doctor into discharging me from the, I was on the downhill side of that, and I was so weak I couldn’t even carry my sea bag aboard ship, so I got a buddy to [Chuckling] carry it for me. And once I got on the ship, they had fresh food, they had…fruit and things like that, and my, I got better pretty quick. So we came back on a converted…Kaiser aircraft carrier. Now…they were called baby…carriers or some such names, I can’t recall, but Kaiser was a big ship builder and they made mostly big tankers and the type of things like that, they took these tankers and converted them into short…landing and take off aircraft carriers, which were very effective during the war, they, they weren’t as good as the ones 48:00that we ha…that the big regular carriers, but at least they, they worked. And this one had been hit by a kamikaze plane and didn’t sink, but [Chuckling] it had, about a four or five degree list so it couldn’t be use to land and take off planes, so they used them as troop ships, and so we came back to [Chuckling] Pearl Harbor first, and then to the United States. When I got off that ship, I, one leg was shorter than the other [Laughing] I’ll tell you, but it was…you know, it could have brought me home standing on my head I wouldn’t have cared just to get out of there [Laughter – Diakov].

Diakov: How long was that journey, from the…from the Philippines to… Shadburne: I think it was about three weeks.

Diakov: Three weeks?

Shadburne: Yeah, I want to say that… Diakov: On a listing ship [Laughter – Diakov]?

Shadburne: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right.

Diakov: That’s not ( ).

Shadburne: But what was so…sad to me when we got home, there was a big, 49:00back to the United States I should say to…San Francisco, the…government had set up this big campaign of ‘bring the boys home for Christmas,’ and they had brought all these soldiers aboard the transports and so forth, and when they got to San Francisco Bay, they had no place to put them.

Diakov: Oh-oh.

Shadburne: So these poor guys were sitting out in San Francisco Bay aboard ship and couldn’t get off, and seeing all this around them, I know they were going nuts out there, but they were doing the best they could. They were sending…USO troop people out there to entertain them and keep them happy and, but we were lucky, we landed at, and were discharged, or…disembarked at Treasure Island, I think is where we ended up. But here again, we had no clothes that we could 50:00wear downtown, so they issued us a…all a uniforms, and…dog gone if they didn’t charge us for one [Laughter – Diakov and Shadburne], and we hadn’t been paid Lord knows when so it didn’t matter and (coughs). And so, we had, I think it was…I know what, when we, the orientation officer made all these presentations, we drew our, we drew our new uniforms and they had no place to put us so they gave us a seventy-two hour pass and put us out in San Francisco and said you are on your own. So, four or five of us, got together and finally found a hotel room somewhere, and we took turns sleeping and wondering around San Francisco, in all kinds of devilment I guess and, but really glad to be home. People were so nice and so accepting that even if, after all the sailors they had seen during that war, they were still very proud of you, and, and…it 51:00was good to be home, everybody was nice.

Diakov: Were you able to make contact with your family back to Kentucky… Shadburne: Yeah.

Diakov: …and let them know that you had… Shadburne: Yeah, I called them…as soon as we got in town, I got there, and we weren’t there too long. We, we came back after seventy-two hours, and I think we spent one, maybe two nights at Treasure Island, and then they put us on trains back east, and…it’s a matter of fact, I think I spent New Years eve on the train. Anyway, we didn’t get sidetracked, so we, we got back in pretty, pretty good time, two or three days, and…when I got off the train down at the Seventh Street Station in Louisville, why, this big guy came running up toward me and “Hey Ed!” I didn’t know who he was, it was my brother, and while I was gone, he’d, he’d grown from…a, 52:00I guess a twelve year old into fourteen year old, and he’d, six-foot-two, or something like that, why, and, it was just a great time, we had a lot of fun [Chuckles – Diakov], we sure did.

Diakov: What kind of a reception did you get at home?

Shadburne: Oh great!

Diakov: ( ) women.

Shadburne: Just great. I beg your pardon, I’m telling that story wrong. That coming on the train was, when I was on leave, he’d grown that much, but anyway… Diakov: Yeah.

Shadburne: I’m confused. When we were discharged, we were…from my leave, they had taken, I was reassigned out to Shoemaker, California again, and when I got out there, they said, well you’re going back overseas, and I said, you’re crazy, because I had been on leave, not discharged.

Diakov: Yeah. 53:00Shadburne: And so I saw… Diakov: And how long was your leave? What… Shadburne: Thirty days.

Diakov: Thirty days?

Shadburne: Mm-mm. And…plus travel time. And then when I got out there…I ran across a yeoman that I had known down in Australia, and I’d, I said, I, “scuttlebutt is that I’m probably going to go back overseas.” He said, “well you probably will.” I said, “Can’t you help me?” [Laughter – Diakov and Shadburne] And he s…he said, “let me see what I can do,” and he, he got the…he got the, he had the responsibility, I started saying that the wrong way, was assigning these different drafts of men to go back overseas, and he said, “your name is on the list but I’m getting you off of it.” So he took me off of that list and sent me back for duty at Great Lakes, and I said, “Amen, I owe you big time.” I said, “just call me some time and I’ll, whatever.” So, I went back to Great Lakes, and 54:00they had…this big long line, and I thought we were just checking in to…be assigned to whatever, I thought they’d give me a dispensary of something like that, and there was this old chief there, he was a, had been in, I guess career man for most of his life, and, in front of me was this real cocky coxswain and he…got to the chief and he just start, “I, I’ve been in the service and done this and been shot at, and got these medals and all that stuff.” And he didn’t impress that chief at all, he was, the chief got kind of worn out with him, I think, and he just assigned him some place else. I just kept my mouth shut, because I was tickled to death to be there, and he looked at my record 55:00and he said, “Okay,” and then, and then he put DISP on there, DIS on the, on the paper, and I thought dispensary, that’s great! I’ll be right here, and go home again on the weekends if I need to and all that. And it didn’t mean dispensary, it meant discharge. So he had the power to do that. So then, you know, three days I was on the way home. So I was processed out, I got my final pay, the navy, armed services always paid you in cash which I always thought was kind of bad, but, [Chuckling] anyway…I was scheduled on the train. The train didn’t leave until nine o’clock that night, and they’d already bought my train ticket and all of that, and I hadn’t called the folks at all to tell them. So I went down to the bus station in Chicago and said, “have you got a bus to Louisville,” they did, so I just got on the bus, paid for it, 56:00because I could turn my ticket back in and get the money back and so I got home about…I don’t know, it was seven or eight o’clock the next morning, something like that, train, the train would have taken another whole day. Anyway, I got on the city bus with my sea bag down at Fourth and Broadway, the old Greyhound Station was located on Broadway in between Fourth and Sixth, somewhere along in there, and…got off up on Bardstown road, and went up, rang the buzzard, [Chuckling] and Mother was very glad to see me, and we had a big reunion right there. That was about it.

Diakov: Being discharged with your rank and stuff, did you have any…did you get any benefits, or… Shadburne: Well… Diakov: …any education….

Shadburne: Oh sure!

Diakov: …credit, or anything like that? 57:00Shadburne: The GI Bill.

Diakov: yeah.

Shadburne: Everybody got that, and that was marvelous. So I went to Centre College and got in there. The… Diakov: Did you go straight away, or what did you… Shadburne: Well, I… Diakov: …after you returned?

Shadburne: … I got out…when was it? It was in March, I think, somewhere, and…I tried, tried to get into Indiana of all places, just because I had friends up there and they said, oh, come on, go to Indiana, so I went up one weekend, and of course Indiana then was not taking any out of state students, they were full up, and they wanted to take care of the guys from their state, and I understood that, so I couldn’t get in. And I was lucky to get in any college, because in that period I had to go back and get my high school time cleared up, and…which I did, and…but then I went down to Centre, almost as an afterthought. I had a cousin [Chuckling] down there who was a registrar and he got me in, otherwise I, I never would have gotten in Centre College, for heavens sake. (Male?) High, had 58:00traditionally for years, and years, and years, had a two lines of study you could take, one was pre-college and the other was a business course. Well I had no conception of ever going to college and so I took the business course. Well I hadn’t had, I think I had taken Spanish but I had no algebra and stuff like that. But anyway, he got me in I played some basketball so…he…I, I made the basketball team, so I guess that helped some, or, and then, you know, Centre at that time had only about, at that time, probably seven hundred students, maybe eight hundred. With all money flowing in from the GI Bill they expended, so they took about, I think they got up to eight or nine hundred, whatever, and today only have about twelve hundred, I think. But anyway it was a great experience for me, and…the GI Bill certainly was a, marvelous, marvelous thing for this country. 59:00Diakov: Now did you have any…I wouldn’t say problems but, how was that re-adjusting to civilian life?

Shadburne: Huh…let’s put it this way, I adjusted faster than anybody I know [Laughter – Diakov and Shadburne]. I don’t think there was any problem whatsoever. Old buddies were there and we had a great beer parties telling stories and all that kind—no harm done with any of that stuff, but…it was so great to see everybody, and there were a lot of people weren’t there that, that we’d know and lost. But I really…had a big time and, it was great looking up old friends. Now they w…let me tell you one story that was funny, that I, had kept up with this guy named Chuck Sacrey, s-a-c-r-e-y, and 60:00he, when we…I think he was in boot camp with me. He was from Louisville, and he’d gone to Male High. Well I remembered him not for, I had never met him face to face, but he for a while, he was the most…I guess…what’s the word I want, he was the most infamous student at Male High. There was a car dealer in Louisville called B. B. Cook Chevrolet, and his slogan was, “Cook will trust you, if you will trust Cook.” And Sacrey went out and bought this old Junker and put a big sign on it and said, “I trusted Cook.” And Cook was chasing him all over town trying to get that—now Louisville is not the size… Diakov: Yeah.

Shadburne: …then that it is now, and everybody heard about this car and when I was in the navy I said, you aren’t the guy that drove—yes I am [Chuckling]. So he and I stuck together pretty much down through Australia, and then I lost track of him and when I got back, I tried to call him, I couldn’t find him in the phone book. 61:00I found out later that he had moved over to New Albany, and still when I was working for WHAS, I, I…tried to get a hold of him, but when he—I did get a hold of him, but he wasn’t very receptive and I don’t…he may have been sick, I just don’t know. But we had a lot of fun over that. He was a fine fellow.

Diakov: Now, when you went to Centre, did you pursue any studies related to your…your…service training in the medical…corps?

Shadburne: No, I, I tried to. I thought about pre med, and I did some of the dumbest decisions I ever made in my life, I went, I think I, the first quarter I was carrying things like chemistry and algebra and physics and I, you know, I almost flunked out. Thank goodness they were on the quarterly system, and at the end of the first quarter…I [Chuckling] changed to a history major 62:00and got rid of all that stuff, because I couldn’t, I couldn’t do it, I just didn’t have a background for it. But I tell you, when you’re married and have kids, that really helps. I remember every scratch and stitch and butterfly bandage my kids ever had, I handled, you know, as a result of that training that I received, so I’m very grateful for that.

Diakov: So what did you end up studying? History and then you went out… Shadburne: History, and then…I got a part time job at the radio station in Danville, and radio stations then were just beginning to blossom in small towns, and so I went out and got a job as a part time announcer and…I credit my wife, she wasn’t then, we were dating, for helping me get that job, because she, she planned a good program there for me, 63:00and, I was just a nuisance out there. I had another of this friend that I had he had gotten into broadcasting, he said it’s a good lazy way to make a living [Chuckling] and so I went…I went out there and made a pest of myself. So finally, the program director came out and he says, “do you want to do this next program?” And I said, “sure, what is it?” I had no idea. He said, “well, it’s a Tommy Dorsey Show, now the station had no network, and…so he, he was an independent and they had to do everything locally, and so I called Betty right quick, and I said, “ hey, they’re going to put me on the radio. Be sure to listen.” Well she ran around the dorm and got all her buddies to listen, and all that, and they began this letter writing, writing campaign that said, “who was that on at five o’clock, gosh he was good, play him back on there.” And so that she literally…got me that job, part time job, 64:00and I think they were paying something like thirty-five cents an hour, I don’t know, pretty ridiculous [Chuckles – Diakov]. Then, what really launched that career, [Chuckling] I didn’t finish at Centre either…my sophomore year, this good friend of mine got me in the business to begin with, called me from Mobile, Alabama, and said…”they need announcers down here, and they’ll start you off at sixty-eight fifty a week.” I said, “there is not that much money in the world.” So I, I dropped out and went on down there, and then built a pretty good career after that. Betty and I were married that June of ’48 and…been at it every since, until I retired.

Diakov: Well that’s great. Well what did…what did your…your war time service mean for you? What kind of meaning did that carry on 65:00for, the, for the rest of your life? What kind of life lessons?

Shadburne: Well, I really hadn’t thought about that. There’re so many things you look back on that influenced your life, there is no question about that. I think it gave me a real…for a kid that was…for a kid that was…not [Chuckling] educationally oriented…a real respect for education and learning because I r…I realized how far behind I was after I, my patriotism had overridden my good sense of finishing high school. I think another thing you took from that is most of us are pretty, pretty much alike, that the guys that I met from northern Michigan, 66:00they talked a lot louder than we do, and the same thing from guys from New Jersey, but they’re basically the same folks we are and, and have the same values and the same, I hate to use that term ‘values’ because everybody thinks differently, but…they knew right from wrong, and they were good friends and good buddies and you could rely on them. A better respect for people I guess that’s what it was, and appreciation of what I had versus what others didn’t have. The Islands…that we were in, and visited, why the, the people were, in most cases pretty desperate, that they had no, compared to our lives, you know, as broke as we were, that was nothing compared to what they had to put up with. That’s a good question, it really…to sit down and reflect on that, I really haven’t done that before, 67:00but it also gave me a, a good feeling about the friends that I made in the war. A guy, a very good friend from Wisconsin that I had, Murphy and I were pretty close, and I’ve tried, and tried, and tried to find him, but I can’t, he was from Wisconsin and I’ve gone on line for most every large area in Wisconsin, of course he could, could have been dead by now, I don’t know. But Ed was a good friend and we…he eventually, he was assigned to LST duty, and I am assuming he survived that. We, we met once while he was aboard…we met up in Morotai and he came over to the ship one day to get a…but, I’d like to find him, I’d like to find some of those fellows that were really great, see how their lives have gone since then. But anyway, 68:00of my experiences, I’ve generally came away from everything very positive and…I think, in retrospect, it was good for me, at that age, it was really good for me to do that.

Diakov: Well, thank you for sharing your experiences with us.

“END OF INTERVIEW”