Oral History Interview with Samuel Holly

Philpot: It is…10:20 on June 10th, my name is Clinton Shurtz. I am in Fulton, Kentucky, interviewing Samuel Holly, and he was a World War II veteran, and Sam, thanks for letting me talk to you today, and… Holly: Happy to do so.

Shurtz: And…I guess to start off and tell me a little bit about your, yourself before you went into the military… Holly: Oh, all… Shurtz: …and the way you was raised and… Holly: All right. I was raised on a farm and the ( ), it’s about all I knew. I didn’t really want to farm, but…that’s all I, that’s all I grew up with, and I graduated from high school in nineteen and ’33 and married a beautiful young lady…about thirty days after I graduated from high school, and…we have been together seventy-five years. 1:00We celebrated our 75th wedding anniversary this past week, married June the 3rd, nineteen and ‘33. She was from a farm family, a large family, and I was an only boy in my family. But I had a sister older and a sister younger, and…I worked with the department of agriculture, in addition to my farming and…I went in the service April Fool Day, nineteen and ’44, and the navy grabbed me up, had boot, and when I went back from boot 2:00they said, young man you’re in, now in the Seabees. Do you know what the Seabees are?

Shurtz: No.

Holly: No. The Seabees is, is a, is an arm, or a branch of the navy for the navy is…everybody thinks it’s, it’s about water, but this, the Seabees are, are a construction type of, and they—Seabees are generally older than, than the regular navy, seagoing navy so to speak. And I had…some mighty good training, and when I got back from navy boot, they said, well boys, you’re in the Seabees now and you’ve got to take the 3:00marine boot, because we were attached to the marines. And that is the beginning of my m…military. I, I went to, as I said, I, I went in the…navy and was sworn in, in April Fool Day, 1944 and I went from Great Lakes, up to Davisville, Rhodes Island, to the marine base, and there I got the same training as a…as fighting men got, but I didn’t, I was not trained as a fighting man. I was trained as supplying the marines behind the lines. And that’s mainly about 4:00what I will talk to you about from, from the book that I have. I was attached to the 95th Seabee Battalion in Pearl Harbor, until I boarded ship to go to the shores of Iwo Jima, and we will talk more about that later. Okay?

Shurtz: Sounds good!

Holly: Now…if you don’t want—would you want to stop it a minute? Or can you, or… Shurtz: You can keep on talking about it, as we… Holly: Oh, okay.

Shurtz: …( ).

Holly: I, I will show you a little bit about this book (Paper shuffling sounds) Now…show you my involvement. Here we are, 5:00here is some of my pictures and activities. This is, this is me. I was the official for the basketball team, here I am playing volleyball, here we are in a bull session there, there is my picture and here is my name, and this in our barracks, you might say a bull session. And…I boarded ship to go to Iwo Jima and joined the convoy of six ships and we, we arrived at, on the March of morning, that’s March 13th, and here is the picture of Iwo Jima flag raising. 6:00I’m going to give you a little story there about each of the men who raised the flag, if you want it.

Shurtz: Sure.

Holly: You’re welcome to it. You want…I see there is two copies there.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: And you can have that one or this Kentucky boy right here. Got a nice little story there. Do you want to read about him? Here he is, Frank (Howsley?) Shurtz: Yeah.

Holly: Okay. And I have a, here, here is a picture of Iwo Jima that I made.

Shurtz: And on the back of this picture it says ‘birds eye view of Iwo Jima from top of Mount… Holly: Suribachi. 7:00Shurtz: …Suribachi taken from near spot… Holly: Where the flag was raised.

Shurtz: …raised. See free hand sketch for more detail.’ Holly: And there, right down there, over, over here yonder on the year paper is a, is a free hand sketch.

Shurtz: I see!

Holly: Right there, it, pull one of them out.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: Here, you can add it to your group if you, if you like.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: I got plenty of them. Now… Shurtz: Thank you.

Holly: And I got a picture, I can show you a picture of us going to shore.

Shurtz: Right.

Holly: That’s, that’s Suribachi—bachi right there.

Shurtz: Hum!

Holly: And here’s, here is where we dropped anchor. We came right over here and wen…then we went down and we, we bivouacked right there, and I have pictures of, of that, I’ve, can show you 8:00later. We…when we, when we dropped anchor, about eleven o’clock, on the morning of the 13th, and we had lunch on the m…aboard ship and following lunch, the captain came over in a loud speaker and said, “Attention! All 95th Seabee Battalion, prepare to go ashore, all except Company C-2.” That was me, and the Company C-2 was…forty men in, in that company and this told us where to appear by two or three o’clock 9:00to get further orders, as to what we’d, we would be doing, and that was we, we were told and he opened up this hold in his ship, big as a gymnasium, it contained mail you never saw the like of mail, the sixty thousand men had already been a…put ashore there, and we were to unload that mail starting at six o’clock, we worked until six o’clock the next morning, go to, and go to bed, to rest, and prepare to go to shore that afternoon and that’s, that’s what we did, we unloaded mail all night and automobile tires. Then we…(Paper shuffling sound) there we are, going ashore. 10:00This is where we bivouacked, right there.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: And we, we w…had to dig in. We lived in foxholes for about three weeks. The navy was shooting over us, knocking out pillboxes all across behind us, and… Shurtz: How, how big were the foxholes? How many, how many… Holly: N…how big a, however big you, you wanted to dig it. My buddy was…we had pup tents, and my buddy was from Greenfield, Iowa, Albert (Hoffman?). Everything went alphabetical. He was older than I was. I was at twenty-nine and I think it was twenty-nine, he was about thirty-seven, 11:00and…I began there supplying…the marines or who were in, who were in battle and I’ll show you some pictures of, of that later on. And…I mainly operated heavy equipment. The, the…beaches were sandy, see they had named by colors, and I drew this in my, but I didn’t finish it though. The war had ended, and I had to have this because what I did, I, I n…I (needed?) to go to a ship somewhere, pickup something that, that marines or anybody needed and deliver it 12:00to these places. The first load I got, was a load of cigarettes. We had a forty-thousand pound lowboy, of every cigarettes you could get on it, and…sometimes it was food, sometimes it was steel, sometimes it was b…bombs and such as that. And…when we…the day I went ashore, I went by the cemetery there, and I judged—this is an estimate—that there were three hundred boys or men laying by the cemetery to be, to be buried, and, 13:00but I, I was given a rifle and ammunition, but I was never to fire until, unless I was fired upon, because I did not know the position of our men and it was, and…sad to say that we did kill some of our own men that got between, and they so, but I did try to fi—follow orders and do whatever my officer asked me to do, and my officer w…got on a land mine with a jeep, at noon one day. He told me to…said, “Holly get in the jeep and I’ll show you where to go pick up some tires this afternoon,” 14:00and…I sat in the jeep while he is talking to some other boys, and then he got to me I, I said, “Lieutenant (Howar?), I…I drove this truck to bring these men out here, you better designate somebody to drive them back.” He said, “Holly, don’t you know, no, no, you go, you do, you finish that job and we’ll s…we will get this story, get to where to, for you to get those tires later.” And we were going to lunch, and it, and while in the mess hall, the order came that he had gotten on a land mine and was blown up. It didn’t kill him, but made him deaf and I’m, I never did see him anymore 15:00and he is listed among the wounded in, in, in this book, I’ll show you later. And…to end…to end this story, the la…the…Japanese got enough men together to make a last attack and they made that upon us, and…that was June the twenty—not June…I forgot right now—it was March 26th, and I’ll show and tell you more about that. Now…I don’t know hardly what to say about this unless you want to read this…little 16:00paragraph right there?

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: Read it aloud.

Shurtz: ‘In the early morning hours of March 26th, a large band of Japs suddenly made an appearance and overran one of the airfields, infiltrating through US lines and to marine and army flight officers biovac camps…’ Holly: Bivou…bivouac.

Shurtz: Bivouac camps.

Holly: That’s a, that’s a military term.

Shurtz: Oh! ‘This was the last of the bonsai type attacks and the next day two-hundred-fifty dead Japs were counted on the scene of their suicide attack. The Japs were armed with hand grenades, swords, pistols, and some marine M-1 rifles. We were awaken by the furry of the fighting and quite a number of the 95th entered the battle, and it said accounted for some of the enemy dead. Many of our tents were riddled with bullet holes and flying shrapnel and it was altogether too close for comfort.’ Holly: Now, you want to continue this right here, because that involved my officer.

Shurtz: ‘As soon as we came ashore, 17:00large details of stevedores started the endless task of unloading supplies and equipment from the ships, and other work details went into operation. One of our first and most continuous jobs was the engineering salvage detail, a group assigned to comb the island for all salvageable materials, anything and everything that could be used to augment new supplies for building this base. It was while he was on duty with the detail, that Lieutenant…’ Holly: (Howar?).

Shurtz: ‘(Howar?) suffered wounds when the jeep he was driving struck a landmine, hospitalizing him to a rear base. An important job was the grading and filling at ground beach and stabilization at yellow, brown, and other beaches, to speedup the unloading of the ships and movement of materials to the various compounds.’ Holly: Okay. Now, here is some of the pictures that I made of—I carried eight rolls of film and…a, ashore with me 18:00and I made a lots of pictures. Here, here are, now here is a picture of flame throw…thrower got some boys.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Holly: Here is, here is a bombs that didn’t det…det…detonate, and…had, had a, we were in our ar, area, I, they, we dropped the bombs that didn’t, duds, and now here is a picture of Mount Suribachi and this picture was on cemeteries.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Holly: Now these, these are pictures that were…these, these are Japs, that two, that two hundred and fifty. And…if the next day, they, they picked 19:00up in a dump truck, the Japanese, and dumped them in a bomb hole, and covered them with a bulldozer. We couldn’t do otherwise because they were in our, they were in our camp. There is a one picture that, where they’re picking them up. I didn’t, I wa’n’t on this detail now. But that’s our camp, right there. And this is, they didn’t get to us, as you read there. Okay. And from then, I went into heavy equipment, we were building airports and hospital grounds and such as that. I was a heavy equipment operator, bulldozer, and I’ll show you some pictures of that later. Okay?

Shurtz: Mm-mm. Okay.

Holly: Now 20:00if you would want any of these pictures of, you can, welcome.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: You’re welcome to them later. I think…how I ne…only made one picture of Americans. This is a field hospital, and this—these are boys that wouldn’t, that didn’t make it.

Shurtz: Whoa!

Holly: And I, it’s the only picture I have of, of that. I just didn’t, just didn’t want to make anymore. Well, and I stayed on Iwo Jima until…Japan surrendered. Of course, we paid a terrible price for the little 21:00island of Iwo Jima, but we had to have it because the B-29s couldn’t carry enough fuel to go to the, the main islands of Japan and get back to their home base, and we had to, we had to build airports. That’s, that’s what’s you have right, right there, there, we built airports that would handle B-29s, hundreds of them, and the b…the planes that dropped the atomic bomb returned to…Iwo Jima for refueling and I’ll show you. Is that, that’s your copy I gave you?

Shurtz: Mm-mm—no, that’s a… Holly: No-no-no, that’s… Shurtz: The…the map?

Shurtz: Uh-huh, yeah. Now, see, we moved, we moved 22:00from this, right on the seashore there, to here. This is 95th Battalion, and these are the airports we built and the p…the plane that dropped the atomic bomb came back and landed and parked right there for… Shurtz: Oh!

Holly: …a few days. Okay. Now I stayed there until the treaty was made…after the first atomic bomb was dropped and on Iwo Jima, and…we…sent planes and dropped leaflets that said, if they did not surrender, Japan didn’t surrender, there would be another one following, and just a few days later, it was in August, they dropped the second one on…what 23:00was the name of that town? Let’s see…Hiroshima… Shurtz: Nagasaki.

Holly: …Nagasa…Nagasaki, uh-hum, yeah. And then I went on in to Japan, spent three weeks, and l…was awaiting orders to come home. And finally they came through, and I took me one month to the day from the time I boarded ship to come home to get discharged at Great Lakes, to the place where I took boot. And here I am…about sixty some odd years later [Chuckling]. Thank you very much. It’s about the story in a nutshell.

Shurtz: Did you interact with, when you were in Japan, with the Japanese people at all, 24:00or how, how did they… Holly: Okay. Get, get, right, right over there, I’m going to give you the story.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: I wrote, I went to Tokyo (paper shuffling sounds) and (hit?), there it is… Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: You, you, you may…use it… Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: …however you like.

Shurtz: All right, thank you.

Holly: Okay?

Shurtz: And also, you were, you were m…you were married before you went and… Holly: Oh yes!

Shurtz: …and didn’t, did your wife do anything in the war effort or how… Holly: No, she had, we have a handicapped son. He has cerebral palsy, never walked in this life. Doris?

Third Party: Uh-huh.

Holly: Would you come here? No she, she took care 25:00of our three children. We had, we had three. See I went in, in ’44 and…our, my, our first son was born…in ’35, my, our second daughter, our second child was a daughter, and she was born in ’38, and, and my third child was born in 1942. See I didn’t go in until ’44, was discharged in ’45. And she, she took care of the family. I’ll be glad to show you. Doris, let’s have that book right there.

Third Party: I’m getting it.

Holly: Now she, she is ninety…two, she is one year…younger than me—just 26:00the top one. Now he, he, he, he wanted to know, he wanted to put in this story who took care of the…our children. Did you work at somewhere? No, she didn’t work anywhere.

Third Party: I, I was at home.

Holly: She took care of them. That’s…that’s us and… Shurtz: ( ) Holly: …down, down to here.

Shurtz: Hum.

Holly: I don’t know whether you can handle all of that or not [Chuckles – Shurtz and Holly], but you’re welcome to any of it.

Shurtz: Okay.

Holly: This is our son. He is not in the house, is he?

Third Party: Oh he was a few minutes ago and she is taking him. 27:00Holly: Well…let’s see…whether you can pick this out. Doris you can tell him what, what you did, while I was gone. For one thing, she bought eighty acres of land and our home and… Third Party: I had a cow, and I had, a sow and pigs we had, and… Holly: Her parents did… Third Party: I took care of the kids.

Holly: Her parents gave h…, as a wedding present I guess you call it, gave her half a calf and we kept that cow until she died and my parents gave me a sow and pigs, 28:00it’s somewhere in this, in this right here.

Third Party: They intended for us to be farmers [Chuckles – Doris and Shurtz].

Holly: And, and, here, here we are some of the three of there, Doris and I and these are, this is our son Wendell, and our daughter Roberta, and our daughter Diane.

Third Party: Roberta was about…she was… Holly: She was born in ’38.

Third Party: She was eight… Holly: No.

Third Party: …I guess.

Holly: Huh? No, Roberta would have been about…six years old. Diana would have been… Third Party: Wendell was… Holly: …about two.

Third Party: Yeah.

Holly: And Wendell was born in ’35.

Third Party: Our Diana was only eighteen months when you got home.

Holly: Ah!

Third Party: We had some hard times and some good times, we were on 29:00the, everything was rationed and kind of, I think it was three pounds of sugar a week, maybe five or ten gallon of gas a week, and we only got one pair of shoes for each one of the kids in the year.

Holly: Now here, here is the, see we just celebrated our 75th wedding anniversary.

Shurtz: Oh!

Holly: That’s… Shurtz: This is from the Paducah Sun?

Holly: Uh-huh, yeah, mm-mm.

Shurtz: It was done this last week.

Holly: And here we—huh? Yeah, uh-huh. And this is us, right in the room inside there. And I, health-wise, our, our son is a total handicap. He, he is invalid, 30:00and has never been able to feed or dress and take care of himself, but we have people helping us…in the home here now.

Third Party: He was injured at birth.

Holly: He was, he was, uh-huh, and…you didn’t, if you like you include part of that.

Shurtz: Sure, would you like me to read it?

Holly: We would like for you to.

Shurtz: Yeah. ‘Through devotion and hard times couples still together nearly seventy-five years.’ This is by Angie (McKenzie?) of ‘The Paducah Sun.’ It says, ‘Sam and Doris Holly not only have, have a nearly seventy-five year marriage to their credit, they also have taken care of their disabled son Wendell, seventy-two his entire life. Wendell was the firstborn and his birth was complicated, leaving him with several disabilities including cerebral palsy. 31:00“They told us he probably wouldn’t live to twenty or twenty-five and here he is at seventy-two” says Sam, ’93. “He’s never walked, he’s never buttoned or unbuttoned or he’s never fed himself.” The couple built a handicapped accessible house near Fulton, after Sam retired in 1976. Sam says Wendell has been the secret of their marriage’s longevity. “We had to take care of him,” he said, “we’ve checked out nursing homes,” says Doris, ninety-two. “They would take Sam and I, but they wouldn’t take Wendell. We’ve always been the three musketeers. Most of our friends are gone.” Holly: Now the, it continued (paper shuffling sounds). There’s our marriage license… Shurtz: Oh!

Holly: …right there, a copy of the, that’s the original copy ( ). Okay. It continues right on.

Shurtz: One, one second paragraph reading at the end. ‘Sam says the three of them plan to stay put for the time being. “It’s been our plan 32:00to stay right here in our own house, as long as we can manage it,” he says, “not many folks make it to seventy-five years.” “Seventy-five years takes a lot of, a lot of give and take,” Doris says, “and the marriage started with a dare when Sam moved to Casey in 1931 from nearby Silo, in Hickman County. We were going to have a weenie roast,” Doris recalls, “he was new in school and they dared me to ask him to the weenie roast. We had to walk three miles to the weenie roast, and three miles home.” “I was looking for some good-looking girl and I found one,” says Sam. Sam continued to walk or ride a horse to Doris’ house for occasional dates. Doris doesn’t remember Sam ever proposing. “I think he just came over and stayed,” she said [Chuckles – Doris and Shurtz]. They married on June 3rd, 1933 in the parsonage of Casey United Methodist Church where they are still members. They will celebrate their seventy-fifth wedding anniversary with a reception from two to four p.m., June 7th, at the Senior Center in Hickman. “Her parents gave her 33:00a, a half a calf, and my parents gave me a sow and pigs, but we didn’t have any place to put them,” said Sam. “This was during depression times, times were hard. I worked wherever I could for a day’s work.” The couple moved in with Doris’s parents so she could help take care of her brother and sisters. Soon after, Sam and Doris had their first child, Wendell and later had two daughters. ( ) of Memphis, Tennessee, and Diane (Neeren?) of Hickman. Sam was drafted during World War II and served in the navy when the children were small. A photo of Doris that Sam carried in his wallet throughout the war and in the Battle of Iwo Jima remains in his wallet today. “We wrote each other just about every day,” Doris said. “We met the train every day when he was coming home, because we didn’t know which day it would be.” Sam retired as the U. S. Department of Agriculture manager in Fulton County. Doris quilted and did needlepoint until she had a stroke a few years ago. She has also had a heart attack and a broken hip. The couple now has three people who help with Wendell. Wendell 34:00has his own shop, ‘Holly’s Hobby’ in the front yard where he sells merchandise, such as brooms, cards, honey and sorghum.’ Holly: And…that’s the story of our life. People have been mighty gracious to us. I retired from the Department of Agriculture the last working day, nineteen and ’76, in nineteen and ’94 I had a five-heart bypass and, but I came through it well and never had any problems to this day. That’s, that’s 35:00about all I can say about our life, except to say how gracious our friends and our neighbors have been to us…throughout this. We never lived any, any other place other than Fulton County, never, never, never had another address. I think that’s more than you can get [Chuckles – Shurtz and Holly] you can cut out some of it [Chuckles – Shurtz]. Now this is, it’s still running, you want, want… Shurtz: Yeah, do you want me ( ).

Holly: Well… Shurtz: Okay, I’ll turn it off.

“END OF INTERVIEW”