JOHN MITCHAM

By Melanie Potter

John Mitcham has lived in Whitman County for about ten years now.  He grew up in Spokane and graduated from High School in 1942.  We proceeded to discuss what he did after the war.  After John was in the Coast Guard, he went on to Gonzaga University and got a degree in Journalism.  He got married in 1946 and he and his wife had four children, one son and three daughters.  He moved around a lot writing for various newspapers, but his most memorable job was writing for the Skagit Valley Herald in Mt. Vernon, Washington.

When he and his wife first moved to Mt. Vernon there were about nine thousand residents there and now it has grown to over thirty thousand.  After they left Mt. Vernon they moved to Whitman County and have lived in Endicott ever since.   John has a little shop in his basement where he makes things out of wood and he plays golf with some buddies in the summer months.  He has eight grandchildren, five boys and three girls.  John is seventy-eight years old.  His father was a railroader.  John said his wife does all the gardening around the place but he does the lawn mowing.

John Mitcham became involved in World War II shortly after High School.  He worked on his uncle's farm before going off to Coast Guard Boot Camp in Port Townsend, Washington.  After spending six months there he was then transferred to New York City to Manhattan Beach.  There were about ten thousand men there and they were taught everything you could learn about boats.  After Manhattan Beach he was transferred to Seattle for about another six months.  After that he moved on to Attu, Alaska, the last island of the Aleutian Island chain.  Attu, which is the farthest west away from the United States, is only about six hundred miles from Japanese territory.

The closest he ever really came to war action was when he saw a Japanese bombing run at Massacre Bay, Attu.  He saw three bombers come up over the high ridge of the mountains.  One bomb landed on the beach and several landed in the water where they exploded without causing any damage or injuries.  John was a member of the Coast Guard at a Loran station in Attu.  Loran was a highly secretive electronic advancement at that time.  However, John said he didn't deal with any of the electronics, all he did was clean the guns and wash the dishes.

On D-Day he was stationed in Astoria, Oregon at a Coast Guard repair base.  There he helped to repair small boats.  He was still a senior in High School serving as president of his class when Pearl Harbor was bombed.  He has been back to Astoria where he had been on the Coast Guard repair base, but has not returned to any of the other places he had been.  He also added he didn't think he would want to return to Attu in the Aleutian Islands.

I asked what thoughts went through his mind before the war and what he thought were the lasting lessons learned from it.  His thoughts revolved around knowing that war is now a worldwide battlefield.

"It was no longer a little war.  It was a big war."  That is how John worded it.  He also told me about how he couldn't tell his parents where he was stationed and how the war became the whole life of most families.

John hopes that the lasting lesson learned from the war was that the U.S. should stay out of wars and not be involved unless it directly affects our county.  "However," he said, "I would say we learned no such thing."