COMPANY E

In July of 1940 President Roosevelt was given power to call National Guard units to duty in the Western Hemisphere.  Washington State National Guard was not a new entity.  It dated back to 1855 when Washington was a Territory and a militia was formed to protect newly arriving settlers. The modern day Rifle Company was started by some returning WW I veterans in the early 1920s.  It was then called C Company, likely becoming E Company in the early 1930s.  In September 1940 the newest version of the militia, Company E of the 161^st Regiment, came into existence.

In late September of 1940 twelve thousand men descended upon Camp Murray, built next to Fort Lewis near Tacoma, Washington.  They were issued World War I field uniforms, complete with flat brimmed campaign hats, World War I helmets, bootees, wrap leggings and riding pants, plus a fatigue uniform of blue cotton.  That same uniform later was used for prison uniforms, including P.O.W.s.  At Camp Murray they started what was to be one year of active Federal duty, their total enlistment in the National Guard being three years.

The biggest enemy they faced was a combination of climate and weather.  Referred to as the wettest camp in the United States, Camp Murray attracted rain that soaked the camp, winds that whipped their tents, and fog that settled in nightly, seeping through everything it touched.  And it was cold. 

Extreme cold weather brought about the use of the Sibley Stove, a relic of the Civil War.  The Sibley was a metal fixture with no bottom.  There was a six inch dirt-filled frame inside it on which soggy cord wood was coaxed into burning.  The men had to remain alert for tent fires at all times, keeping two water buckets next to the stove in case sparks ignited their tent.  They had to get the stove red hot in order to heat a tent, and then often the flooring caught fire and the stove would collapse and the tent again would go up in flames. 

The men lived in those flammable tents, which were only improved as piles of lumber were freighted into Camp Murray and they could build the tent walls up with wood.  Finally in  April of 1941 they moved five miles through mud to new barracks.  When those new buildings were painted, no one bothered to mask the windows, so the men of Company E were assigned hours upon hours of paint scraping duty.

In spite of flu epidemics through the winter of 1941, from which there was no respite except rest in one of those flammable tents, the men engaged in a rigorous training program which included a ten mile full-pack march each Monday morning and a Review each Wednesday.  By May 25, the 161^st was ready to try out their infantry skills.  They were loaded onto twenty-six rail cars and sent to Hunter Liggett, California for maneuvers.   There they had no rain but camped among tarantulas and scorpions.  The maneuvers were over the end of June, coinciding with pay day, which meant thirty dollars for each man in Company E.  That was nine dollars more than they received the first three months of their enlistment.

That same month Congress passed an amendment to their authorization to call up the Guard.  They wanted all National Guard members to remain for one more year from that date, extending the Federal enlistment duty of Company E another six months.

After the Battle of California, as their maneuvers were called, they had a furlough, then engaged in the Battle of Washington in August of 1941.  The idea was an invading fleet had landed and the 161^st was charged with defending the coast.  That training accomplished, they returned to Camp Murray and in November joined other trained infantrymen of the 41^st Division on a eighty thousand-man truck ride to Seattle for a massive parade.  The line of trucks was so long that the first ones reached the parade site while the last men were still in Tacoma.

Later in November, the 161^st Regiment was cut out of the 41^st to be sent to the Philippines as replacements for American troops stationed there who were ready to rotate home.  On Saturday, December 6, 1941  the three thousand men of the 161^st were again on board a train, headed for San Francisco.  The next day, as they rolled through Dunsmuir, they heard a news bulletin over the radio about a "date which will live in infamy."  Suddenly their plans changed radically.  On December 14 they loaded onto the Lurline and two days later set sail from San Francisco toward Hawaii, knowing nine long-range Japanese submarines were positioned off the west coast lying in wait to attack American ships.  By zig-zagging their course, they safely completed a five day voyage to Hawaii.  The 161^st  Regiment thus became the first military unit to arrive at an overseas destination in World War II.

Over the next year the Washington National Guard men of Company E moved around on Oahu several times, mostly performing guard duty in the city of Honolulu and at transmitter sites, docks, fuel storage tanks, wherever they were needed.  In October of 1942 the 161^st Regiment was released from guard duty, but assigned to the 25^th Infantry, a regular Army unit under the command of General J. Lawton Collins, who was Army Chief of Staff in the 1950s.  They moved to the Kailua Race Track and started training, which appeared useless to the men of Company E because they expected to be home by Christmas.  Then General Collins called them to the race track grandstand and announced, "We shall seek and destroy the enemy."

On December 6, 1942, the  2^nd Battalion of the 161^st boarded the Republic, the rest of the Regiment shipping on other vessels.  The Army rarely put a whole Regiment on the same ship, so that in case of a sinking there would be a skeleton unit to start over.  They set sail, headed for the Solomon Islands, target: Guadalcanal.  They were told they were to land and unload supplies in the daylight hours because the Japanese mounted night raids.  The Marines had captured the Japanese air field on Guadalcanal, renaming it Henderson Field.  Due to land, sea, and air attacks they had been barely able to hang on.  On the other hand, the Japanese were too weak to fight an offensive attack, so a stalemate formed.  The 25^th Infantry Division, of which Company E was now an active part, was thrown into the fray to shift the balance of power.

The final offensive to end the fight for Guadalcanal began on January 10, 1943.  E Company took up positions near Hill 52.  They advanced quickly against light opposition until they reached Hill 95.  At that point the 2^nd Battalion, including E Company, were pulled back into the perimeter to guard against a seeming threat of renewed Japanese effort to land more troops and try again to retake Henderson Air Field.  Actually the Japanese were engaged in what turned out to be a successful effort to rescue their remaining troops left on the Canal.  They were able to rescue about eleven thousand men.

After about five days in that position, the 2^nd Battalion was returned to the hills to act as security for the left flank of the Regiment as it moved along the north shore of the island.  This put Company E and some other elements of the 2^nd Battalion way up in the hills, hills which were very similar to the Snake River breaks.  They trudged along up in those hills for several days with inadequate food and no knowledge of where they were going or what they were doing.  Somebody in the group had a radio and so they eventually knew when they were to go down to the ocean. 

The area into which they were directed was the area used by the Japanese as a staging area to bring troops to the island and also to take them off the island.  The Navy was aware of that concentration of Japanese troops and had repeatedly shelled the area.  The result was hundreds of dead Japanese in an advanced state of decay.  While camped there the Americans had to constantly shoo flies off their food, and, when they didn't succeed, they could easily get a fly in their mouth.  Knowing the point of origin of those flys caused many to upchuck their meal of canned salmon served by the field kitchen.  They spent the next couple of days burying bodies. 

They were then moved by water to an area about fifteen miles east of Henderson Field, known as Koli Point which is located between the Nalimbu River on the west and the Metapona River on the east.  They sent two patrols up the Nalimbu River, but the patrols never saw any Japanese stragglers.  However, the last Japanese soldier in the area gave himself up sometime in 1947

By February 9, 1943 the island was secured by the U.S. and all Japanese resistance on the island ceased.  But, there were more American men sick than well on Guadalcanal and they had encountered stronger enemy resistance than expected.  In addition, their rifles were rusting, their clothes were in tatters, their shoes were rotted and falling off their feet, they had little food or water, and malaria ran rampant.  However, Henderson Field, built by the Japanese, was now secure in American hands.

By April they had unloaded a convoy that arrived with supplies, but the effort of that work, the heat, malaria, dysentery, mosquitoes, and jungle life, plus constant surveillance for snipers and stragglers had taken its toll.  In May a typhoon hit, driving them out of their tents and seriously disrupting their camp.  But what they did on that island went down in history as a resounding defense against the last Japanese attempt to win the war in the air.  In their first major defeat the Japanese saw seventy-seven of their planes go down in one battle, as opposed to the U.S. losing only six.  The Japanese had made many tactical errors mostly due to their holding on to misconceptions about the Americans ability to tenaciously turn defensive duty into an active offense.  The tide of the war in the Pacific had turned. 

July 20, 1943 found Company E leaving Guadalcanal for New Georgia, the whole 25^th Infantry being far below combat strength.  However, orders had been issued to put them back in battle in the massive attack planned to take Munda Air Field.  Conditions were difficult.  The only bright spot in the lives of those men was mail call, and even that was dimmed by a startling frequency of "Dear John" letters. 

Bairoka, at the end of a river of mud weaving through sucking swamps, was their next target.  Again, keeping supplies delivered as they moved along was an on-going problem.  Attempts to air drop food and ammo were aborted when those supplies landed in tree tops that were inaccessible to the men who were sliding one step forward, two back through the jungle muck.  But take New Georgia they did, at a great price in terms of lives. 

General Collins, who had been transferred to the European war, was asked when he had been there for some time to define the difference between the Pacific and European Theaters of Operations.  He said they were bombed much more often in the Pacific, but the Japanese were lousy bombers, unlike the precision airmen of Germany.  When the Japanese aimed at an airfield, they often would miss and hit camps.  The physical war was much worse in the Pacific, according to Collins, especially worse on the private soldier who had to deal with mud and jungle terrain daily.  The Pacific combat zone was not civilized in the sense of there being towns, villages, or even communities where the men might find some respite from jungle life, such as the European troops found as they moved toward Berlin.  His final comment was the Japanese were not skillful fighters, but they did not know when to quit, and so had to be methodically found and executed, often one at a time.  There were no mass surrenders, no prisoners to take.

Company E went back to Guadalcanal after a year on New Georgia, then in November, 1943 shipped out to New Zealand for well earned R & R.  When they arrived they found a place of rest in two-man wooden shacks built for them and discovered they could order beer from a town a few miles away.  One of the voices on the video told of the "heart-felt, warm reception, great kindness, and hospitality" they received from the New Zealanders, people who to this day show appreciation to "Yanks" for what the men of the 25^th Division did for them during the war.

Again hearing the call to battle, the 161^st sailed in February 1944 finally docking on New Caledonia, then moving seventy miles inland to their camp which was characterized by rain and mosquitoes.  At that point, February 24, the 161^st Regiment, having received replacements in New Zealand, was rebuilt up to one hundred and fifty men, only fifty of those remaining having been among those who had sailed on the Lurline in December 1941.  Only nine of the original Company E were still among its ranks.  The rest had rotated home or lay buried on an island in the Pacific.  The rotation system sent one-half of one percent of the Division combat strength home each month.  The names of eligible men were put in a drawing.  The fortunate ones whose names were drawn could turn their faces homeward, otherwise the only opportunity to go home alive lay in serious illness or being critically wounded.

New Caledonia was known as a fine training ground where new replacements could "play war in the weeds."  The men there were called to Parade on Sundays, drills that required them to march two miles to and from the reviewing stands.

Around Christmas of 1944, the 25^th was again on the march heading for Luzon in great strength, landing along with one hundred and fifty thousand American troops.  The 25^th Division was assigned to defend the left flank of the invasion against entrenched Japanese who had set up a tank and artillery defense which they intended to man to the death.  The 25^th succeeded in taking out the tanks, one by one, then proceeded to San Manuel where they struck a counter-blow leaving seven hundred eighty-nine enemy dead and forty-nine enemy tanks destroyed.  Company E of the 161st Infantry Regiment, 25^th Division was under constant assault for three days at San Manuel, suffering thirty-four casualties in one day, fifty-nine in that three-day battle.  All their platoons were led by sergeants, yet they went on under Banzai attacks from both tanks and infantry, engaging in hand to hand combat.  By January 28, 1945, they had taken down eleven more tanks and the Japanese had sustained one of the heaviest blows of the war. 

The Luzon Japanese force was smashed, a feat that caused General Douglas MacArthur to appear and offer his personal congratulations to the men of Whitman County and the rest of Company E, 25^th Infantry.  Company E was also awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, it being the smallest sized unit to be so honored in the Pacific Theater.  The Citation closed as follows: "The courageous stand of E Company met and turned back the first Japanese tank counterattack in the Luzon Campaign.  The valor and skill of E Company, 161^st Infantry Regiment, and it attachments, and the superb courage displayed by each man, reflect the highest tradition of the armed forces of the United States."

The next target was Balete Pass that took another three months of daily, hourly fighting against an enemy hidden in impregnable caves along cliffs that stood between the Americans and triumph.  The Japanese had again pronounced "victory or death, deserters will be decapitated."  There were fourteen miles of rivers and hills over which American troops had to move in a chase that seemed likely to end on a litter or in a grave.  And indeed there were eight hundred and five casualties recorded on that assault.  A diary from that time noted "You can't stay awake when you must.  Can't sleep when you should.   Don't want to make new friends.   Start down the trail.  Will this be the day you get it?  Is this the last thought I'll have?"

After Company E spent seven hours securing a small plot of hilltop land called Norton's Knob on March 18, they continued on through Balete Pass on the final seven miles to Santa Fe.  On May 13 the Pass was officially pronounced free of enemy troops and open.  The cost was ten thousand Japanese and American lives.  The 25^th Division had sustained more deaths than any other United States Division on Luzon, some of those dead being Whitman County men.

At the end of June, the 25^th Division was relieved from active duty to train for the invasion of the mainland of Japan, scheduled for November 1945.  The 25^th was to land at Miyezaki and Oyodo.  They knew resistance would be high and there would be no negotiated peace.  The operation would call for one last battle on the beaches.  They would face artillery fire which would destroy them on the water, five thousand aircraft, and ground forces that would include women and children in an inevitable suicidal attack.  The Japanese had prepared their people to believe their military training would go up well against the numbers of Americans attacking, and they were willing to put their flesh against invading steel to defend the Empire.

One United States bomber, the Enola Gay, set aside both the tactics of the 25^th Infantry and the suicidal resolve of the Japanese.  A bombing run that released one bomb at 9:15 am prevented the 25^th from landing.  The co-Pilot on the Enola Gay wrote a short entry in his diary that day: "My God."

President Truman said, "The world will note… the atomic bomb was used to shorten the agony of war… (we) will continue to destroy Japan's power to make war."  And then there was peace. 

Instead of invading Japan, the 25^th moved in as an occupation force.  The people hid from them for a time until they realized the Americans were not there to harm them, and they had money to spend. 

Voices on the video discussed what might have happened had the landing taken place.  "We would have been murdered," said General Mullins, Division Commander.  There were eight hundred yards of machine guns and other artillery pieces, hundreds and hundreds of them, set in the hills facing the beach the 25^th would have come ashore upon.  There were nine Divisions of Japanese troops concentrated along that vulnerable part of Japan's shores fortified in caves overlooking the landing site.  And there were airplanes by the hundreds held in reserve to attack the incoming forces.  Mullins said, "It would have been one of the bloodiest battles of World War II."

On November 1, 1945 the 161^st Regiment, including Company E, was deactivated, its colors retired and sent home.  There were two men left from the original Company E still on active duty.  They went home to Whitman County.