Page 2 - Veterans.2017

2 – Saturday, November 11, 2017 – El Dorado NEWS-TIMES
WWII veteran aided in rebuilding Japan after the war
By Kaitlyn Rigdon
Staff Writer
Claude Calahan Jr. served in World War II during the time after the atom- ic bomb was dropped and Japan was rebuilding. Calahan, who turned 91 on Oct. 27, was drafted in March 1945. Though he never saw combat, he was stationed in Japan in December 1945.
When Calahan was drafted, he was training to be in the Army Air Corp, now called the Air Force.
He trained in Wichita Falls, Texas, and also was in Denver, Colorado, for nearly six months.
When he finished basic training, he was informed that Army Air Corp had been discontinued. “So then we had to do whatever they wanted us to do,” Calahan said.
First night in Japan
It was a cold and snowy night for Calahan when he arrived off the boat in Japan. “They put us in an airplane hanger that had been bombed and half the roof was missing,” he said.
They stayed warm by burning old rifles, of which they had an abundant supply. The smoke got too heavy and the men were forced to sleep outside where the wind was blocked. “I had a canvas cot and put six blankets on top of me and six blankets below me. I crawled in there and went to sleep,” Calahan said. “When I woke up, there was about a foot of snow on top of my blankets, but I wasn’t cold.”
The first thing the men did the next day was try to sort through the mail because they had not received any while traveling. Everyone had a num- ber, not a name, and all of their mail came in tin cans their families had shipped. They had to sort through all of the mail themselves, but were very anxious as it was near Christmas.
After getting the mail sorted, they noticed a number of broken down trucks sitting around. Calahan asked if he could drive one if he got it started
and was told yes.
“We got enough gasoline to fill up
the tanks on the truck,” he said. “We had a few other cans to take with us and we drove all day long. We didn’t know where we were going, but we kept up with it enough to know how to get back.”
Southern Japan
The men were stationed all over Japan and Calahan considered him- self lucky because he was stationed in southern Japan. He was first told to work as a motor pool mechanic, but was soon switched to work on gen- erators. Everywhere on the base that had a generator had to have a backup. Calahan’s job was to make sure all of the generators and backup generators were working once a week.
There were different stations on the base that did different jobs. One installed radio towers and wanted to put one on top of a mountain that was near the base where Calahan was sta- tioned. “There weren’t any roads to the top of the mountain, so they had to blast out a road all the way to the top,” he said. “The army was in charge of building it, but the Japanese did all the work.”
At one point they had to build a bridge to cross a river, which had a 100- foot fall, Calahan said. The bridge was built to get small trucks across. When it came time to get the radio tower across, the inside dual tires fit on the bridge, but the outside dual tires hung off. They had to have someone on the ground motioning to the driver to get the truck across.
“When we looked at where the pole came from, it said it came from Shreveport Louisiana,” Calahan said. “We thought that was something from home.”
Another job they had was getting their own electricity instead of using Japan’s. They had to cut wires, and while doing
See WWII, Page 3
Kaitlyn Rigdon/News-Times
From the past: Claude Calahan Jr. holds a photo of himself from when he served in World War II. Calahan was based in Japan four months after the war ended and was there to help rebuild Japan.
Sharon Taylor recalls service as Navy yeoman
By Brittany Williams
Staff Writer
Sharon Kay Taylor rode the wave and served in the United States Naval Reserve in the 1960s for three years before honorably discharging from the military branch.
Taylor grew up as Sharon Mitchell in Minnesota and after she lost her mother at 9 years old, she “was kind of shifted from pillar to post.” Before enlisting in the Navy, she worked as a live-in nanny to pay her way through high school and picked up another job as a telephone operator.
In addition to serving her country, her service was prompted out of necessity, she said.
“When I got out of high school, I said ‘I want to change my way of life.’ I just wanted do something different,” the veteran said. “I was making good money, but every time I would try to think ‘I want an apartment. I want to leave this house where I was baby sitting,’ I couldn’t afford it ... I thought I could go into the Navy and they could supply my room, food and clothes and I wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”
Taylor said that she enlisted and boarded a bus en route to the U.S. Naval Academy Training Center (USNTC) in Bainbridge, Maryland, for basic train- ing.
“It was really hard to do, but I enjoyed it. It was something that I was on my own and could do. We did a lot of marching. We went to parades,” she said. “It was mainly going to school. We had to learn how to swim. We had to jump off this 30-foot div- ing board into the water with our clothes on, take our clothes off, make a float out of (them) and then swim back to the side of the pool. So, that was how you passed and most people can’t do that. It scares them.”
Seventy-five women were on the bus with her for the 10-week training, but about 40 percent of them got through it, she said.
In a scrapbook detailing her service she wrote, “They didn’t do a group picture of my boot camp buddies ... Only 30 graduated from boot camp. There were girls that we were so homesick they couldn’t stand it and there were girls that couldn’t do anything they do as a WAVE (Woman Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service).”
While training in Maryland, Taylor was tested to see what job she could do best, from which she was classified as a clerical worker, or yeoman. On gradu- ation day, they asked her to carry the American flag, which she was honored to do, she said.
of, taking down notes for him and we’d ride around the base in a Jeep and I’d take notes. He’d say, ‘That needs fixing. We need to do something about that,’ and I’d make notes,” she said. “I met a man. There was 10,000 sailors on the base and 200 women, so you can imagine ... He was from this area.”
The man was W. Alvin Taylor, a young sentry from Arkansas. Alvin was “kind of like a police man,” standing duty at the main gate when she was going to her duty station and even offered to carry her bag, according to her scrapbook.
“WAVES were to carry their own bags. With both of us working for security, it wasn’t long until we started talking,” Taylor wrote. “He would pick up
See TAYLOR, Page 4
Sharon Taylor
After basic training, she headed to the Yeoman “A” School at Naval Base San Diego, where she would train to become a secretary.
“I think that was the most fun I have had in a class- room. Those guys were a lot of fun and I was never the best typist until I typed in a competition with these guys,” she wrote.
She stayed at the San Diego base to work as an executive assistant in the security office.
“I was the yeoman for the base security officer and I would be like a typical secretary that you know
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U.S. Air Force 1951-1955 Korean Conflict
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