Where in the World Was Dad?

I’ve found my Dad’s declassified muster records online on the National Archives site. They cover 2 or so years he was in China. (note: these records have appeared to have changed since I first seen them, about 2 years ago. Back then there were a few more going back to 1942-now only the ‘43 and ‘44 musters are listed. Curious.)

Locations listed are as follows:

SACO Camp 1

SACO Camp 2

Chunking

Kunming

Kweilin

U.S. Naval Unit 1

Now the place names, like Chunking, are easy to figure out. But where were Camps 1 and 2 located? Are either of these the Camp Happy Valley I have read about in my research? Also what was the significance of Naval Unit 1?

If anyone can help with these, it’s most appreciated.

(Just a personal aside: Whenever we would drive cross country on vacation, we would drive through Arizona and just outside of Phoenix was a place named “Happy Valley”. Dad always seemed to make a point about the highway sign that indicated that place and then would chuckle, like it was some inside joke. I always thought that it was because he thought the name was hokey. Now…???)

My Dad, the Spy

Ok, so that title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek and misleading. In fact I was never 100% sure just what Dad had done during his time in the Navy.

It bugs me that I don’t know anything about what my Dad did in the Navy. It bugs me that he never would elaborate, never volunteer information, never give any memories. It bugs me that I never really ever asked.

But even if I had, I really don’t think he would have told me. That’s just the way he was. He would have probably found some way to change the subject, blow me off with a “Ah, you don’t wanna hear all that, it’s the past anyway.” and then asking if I had seen that boxing match on ESPN the other night or did Ma tell me about what happened at their last doctor’s appointment? Dad was a master at playing close to the vest, keeping secrets, being discreet, keeping alot in. Maybe that’s why he was so drawn to and custom wired for the outfit that he spent a chunk of his Naval career in. That outfit was SACO. The acronym for the Sino-American Cooperative Organization.

The ship pennant above has a most curious history. While trying to figure out just what in the world my old man did in the Navy before and during WW2, I came across this site, delsjourney, where he has this story. Being a good little blogger, I swiped it, but at least I’ll give his site credit. The story is as follows:

“The American SACO commander during WWII, Milton Miles, created the pennant in 1934 when he was a junior officer on the destroyer U.S.S. Wickes in the Pacific Ocean. Occasionally during tight maneuvers, one of the ships in the fleet would do something unexpected and, during such instances, Miles wanted to send a pennant up the mast saying “What the Hell?” Miles asked his wife “Billy” (Wilma) to create such a pennant without using obscenities. Billy suggested using characters like exclamation points, saying that when newspaper writers wanted to use an obscenity, they did the same. Soon afterwards, Billy created a pennant that included question marks and exclamation points.

Miles enjoyed using the pennant for the next several years in light-hearted situations. However, in 1939, two years before the U.S. entered World War II, the pennant proved to be useful in a potentially serious situation with the Japanese Navy. Miles was skipper of the destroyer John D. Edwards that August and was ordered to Hainan Island, off the coast of China, where the Japanese Navy was threatening a coastal village, including American missionaries. When Miles arrived at Hainan, he saw several large Japanese naval ships bombarding the village. The Japanese flagship hoisted a flag warning the American destroyer to leave, which put Miles in a quandary, since his orders were to protect the American missionaries in the village. After considering the situation, Miles decided to ignore the Japanese threats and hoisted a pennant of his own — his “What-the-Hell?” pennant.

Upon seeing the American destroyer hoisting a pennant, the Japanese halted their bombardment, giving Miles time to nestle his destroyer between the Japanese Navy and the village. The Japanese commander was puzzled about the pennant, though, since it wasn’t in any of the Japanese code books, but he decided to err on the side of caution and backed the Japanese fleet away from the village. Milton Miles went ashore that afternoon, gathered up the missionaries, and departed the following morning. The Japanese Navy, meanwhile, sat offshore, still wondering about the meaning of the curious pennant.

Throughout World War II, Milton Miles’ “What-the-Hell?” pennant was the unofficial emblem of SACO and was often found flying at SACO camps throughout China.”

What a great story! And the flag is funny. Heck, even if I didn’t know the history of it, I’d want one just hoist on the flagpole here. Seeing the times we’re in now, this ‘what the hell?!’ flag would be appropriate.
Alright, I’m veering off course, like I always do.

Anyway, here’s some more backstory from delsjourney :

“One of the most interesting stories about the Chinese theatre in World War II involves the Sino-American Cooperative Organization, also known as SACO. SACO (pronounced “socko”) ( ed. note: my Dad always pronounced it “sack-o”) was a unique and unprecedented joint military effort between the U.S. and the Chinese Nationalist forces during World War II. It consisted of about 2,500 Americans, mostly from the U.S. Navy, who lived, led, trained and fought with tens of thousands of Chinese Nationalist troops in China. Often stationed behind enemy lines and hundreds of miles from supplies, they were not only amazingly brave, but they were incredibly resourceful, as well.

American SACO soldiers totally immersed themselves in Chinese culture: they lived in Chinese huts, spoke Chinese, ate Chinese food, and began to think “the Chinese way.” Together, the American and Chinese military forces effectively battled the Japanese in China from 1943 until 1945. This was the first and only time in U.S. history that an American military unit had been completely integrated into a foreign military force and placed under the command of a foreign leader. SACO was an amazing and unique military unit — and it was also one of the most effective combat forces in World War II.”

Wow…so how come we never hear anything about this operation? Probably because it was covert. Special Ops before such a phrase became mainstream. Probably because they were a bunch of guys in it just like my Dad, tight lipped, keep-a-lid-on-it types, who were sworn to never speak of their involvement with SACO for at least 25 years after the fact. Maybe because the government seeing China fall to the Commies shortly afterwards figured it best not to really mention the subject that they had our guys there blowing crap up and creating all manner of mayhem as we tried to stave off the Japanese. Who knows. But there’s not a lot out there on them. A few books, at least one out of print now. A couple of websites. Google or Yahoo the phrases SACO or Sino-American Cooperative Organization and you won’t get a lot of true hits, but you will get a gob of pages for cities and towns name Saco -especially Saco, Maine. It’s as if as the servicemen who were in SACO die off, so does the history.

(In the next post, I’ll explain as to why, as a child, I thought my Dad just had to be a spy and what all I have been able, as an adult now, to piece together about the old man’s past.)

My Dad, the Spy (part 2)

At one time, as a young child of about 6 or 8, I gave serious thought to my Dad being a spy for the Navy. I had no real proof, just old, creased and sepia photos from a long ago time before I was born of Dad, looking very much unlike the Dad I knew. Like this one (above). This was from who knows where, he was obviously on a ship, looking quite sharp in his full Navy officer garb, it must have been chilly or at least cold enough to be wearing that wool coat. The mustache is what threw me. This photo was of a series that me and my brother referred to as the “Stalin photos”, simply because in our minds Dad looked like a ringer for Stalin with that big bushy ’stache. Mustaches in the Navy, at that time we thought was rather unusual, so we thought Dad must have been up to no goodnik. There’s only a few photos of him looking like this.

Nevermind that the ‘real’ Stalin was a sawed-off, pockmarked squint of a psycho and my Dad would have towered over him at 5′ 10″, to my little kid eyes he looked “just like him”-further fueling the imagination. Why did Dad grow a mustache? What was going on here? The little Asian boy in this photo that my Dad has a fatherly arm around was a mystery, too. Why was he there and what was the connection? Dad had mentioned once in passing that sometimes ‘locals’-the Chinese villagers would hire themselves out to do menial jobs for the American swabies while in port. Was that it? Was this kid my Dad’s shoeshine boy? There’s no date or anything on the back of this photo, as is the case with many of his Navy era photos. Further proof that something fishy was going on, to me anyway.

Yes, I know- Russia and China are 2 separate countries. Why would a Stalin stand-in be galavantin’ about China? But as a kid I knew they were both Communist countries and therefore linked like peanut butter and jelly. But what I didn’t know was back then, in Dad’s time that wasn’t the case…yet. China hadn’t always been red. And it was during that ever so brief time in history when China was trying to fight off 2 threats-the Japanese invasion and the growing disgruntled hoardes that would eventually form Communist China that my Dad played a crucial role in. The thing is, it’s took almost 60 years after the fact to find out!

Dad never talked much about his time in the Navy, aside from a handful of humorous
little stories that could have taken place anywhere in the world, since no real details were given -no names of the Navy buddies involved, not even nicknames. It was always “this guy I was with” or “this feller from the ship”. Locations were vague, too. Often just said as “overseas” or “stateside”. Well, that certainly narrows it down! Dad was a storyteller and a big practical joker. He could weave the most funniest tales of his pre-Navy past of exploits and pranks he pulled, going into great detail. But ask about his Navy times and you’d get the heavily censored, Reader’s Digest version. So, it became a subject you just didn’t bring up in family conversations. Dad had been in the Navy in the 30’s and 40’s, got out in the 50’s, got a job as a mailman, put 10 bucks down on this cute little crackerbox of a house that we live in and that’s all you needed to know. Naturally, for us kids this ban on the subject made us just want to know more…and caused us to fill in the gaps with our own wild fantasies.
Hence the theory that Dad was a Stalin double or on some other covert mission for our government. His recurrent bouts with malaria just added to the mystery.
Boy, I never knew that our imaginings would be so close to the truth.

Dad graduated from high school in Kentucky around 1938 or so. Shortly after that was when he joined the Navy. He was one of 4 brothers who would go on to serve in the military in that family. The 4 brothers all picked different branches: Navy, Engineer, Air Corps., and Medic Corps. Only 2 would see the end of WW2 and live to old age.

Anyway, I don’t know exactly what year it was when Dad enlisted. I don’t know where he did his basic, or where he was stationed. He had in the past mentioned ships by name, but some were so damn peculiar that it was tough to recall them, other than that one which was especially odd sounding became his password when ATM’s finally came into being in the late 70’s- the USS Gurke. Researching that name, I learned that this destroyer was deployed mostly after the war. As was the case with all the other destroyers he had mentioned in the past-these were ships he had served on after the war, in the 50’s. Again…here we go with the ‘top secret’ crap! What ship was he on that took him to India, which was the staging site for the trip into China ? I’ve never been able to find out.

Finally, in the mid 70’s Dad began to loosen up some. And it was then I began to see clues to his past. He had takened to wearing a white ballcap with a curious Naval patch on it, wore it everywhere, except church, of course. This ballcap had been a souvenir from a recent Navy reunion thing he and Mom had attended. Dad began to go to these things every year. They planned their regular annual trips back to Kentucky around this event. About this time a new little decal appeared above the D.O.D. sticker in the lower lefthand corner of the windshield of the family car. It was the same as the patch that was on his hat.

Dad was coming out.
It was time.
Dad had been a SACO guy.
At the time this wasn’t a huge revelation to me-I had hit my teens and I had other way more important things to concern myself with. The mysterious hero that my childs’ mind had created as my Dad became just my crabby and way too strict father who didn’t know diddly. SACO-Schmacko…who gives a frig? I just want to know why I can’t stay out on a Friday ’til past midnight, like all my friends?! Hey, I had my priorities then.

Luckily with age comes maturity and appreciation. But the childhood unspoken ban about asking Dad about his time in the Navy created a bad habit-even after it seemed ok to talk about it, I never did. Now that Dad has been 2 years gone I’ve been feeling this drive to find out. I knew now that this had been a top secret covert operation, but that was all I knew. I wanted to learn more…I wanted to know Dad’s part in it all.
But I can see if I really want to try and discover the whole deal, it’s gonna take a lot of time and effort-as in applying to the National Archives for docs that have just recently been declassified and getting my hands on what few books are out there on the subject-the best known was a book entitled “The Rice Paddy Navy”, but it is no longer in print-however, my extremely helpful uncle says he has a copy and will send it to me.
This trail has led me to finding out about the OSS, the China Naval Group and the precursor to the Navy SEALS-the group known as the Scouts & Raiders. I can’t say for a certainty that Dad was part of that group. Their history states that the first newly trained men in that organization arrived in China for SACO in 1944. Dad’s Naval Intelligence muster records show that he was already in China as early as 1942. The dates closely jibe with when SACO first began operations there. So, as near as I can figure, Dad was there for the entire 3 years plus that SACO operated in China! (The official story is that they were there for 40 months.) But yet, Dad is named in that post-war article as being part of the “Yangtze Raiders” and they are attributed as being a branch of the Scouts & Raiders. So this leaves some questions-if the S & R’s didn’t get there until 1944, then were the Yangtze boys a prototype to the precursor? From what I’ve been able to find out, the Yangtze Raiders were well under way before the S & R boys got there. Dad’s looking like quite a trailblazer!

So, just what did my old man do in China?
The official cover story for SACO was that they were there to assist the Flying Tigers via establishing weather stations so they could have accurate and timely weather reports for their flights. And they did do that; but when they weren’t setting up weather gizmos, the boys were busy in their off time blowing crap up! Like the unofficial slogan for NORAD-”Peace is our mission(…war is our hobby.)” SACO’s true mission was to make things as difficult as possible for the Japanese to gain a foothold in China under the auspices of the Nationalist China military. This meant sinking Japanese ships in Chinese ports and on the Yangtze River, blowing up bridges on known military transport routes, cutting communication lines, laying land and water mines, intercepting Japanese transmissions and just generally creating mayhem to mess with the Japanese heads. And it also meant training the Chinese civilians in the art of guerella warfare. The Americans fought side by side with the Chinese they helped train. In retrospect, I can’t help but think of how many of those Chinese later went on to hone the skills that we taught them in the Red Army. I’m sure my Dad pondered that too…and I bet it really chapped his butt.

Dad once (and only once) told a story about what he did there. I was about 15 or so, this was after it had become officially ok to talk about SACO. He had been one of those guys training the civilians. In this particular case a large group had been assembled from far and wide from the little rural villages. This created a problem, because in China the language and dialects vary wildly in the remote rural areas, so Dad had a quartet of translators. The day’s class would be on proper firearm handling, how to break down the rifle, how to load and aim, etc.
So Dad begins, the translators are lined up alongside him. He would say a sentence or two, hold up the rifle to demonstrate whatever point he was making and then wait as the translations worked their way down the line. As you can see, it was becoming one huge game of Telephone!
As Dad said, by the time he was done, for all he knew they could have thought he was telling them how to fry chicken!
But it must have worked, because SACO was credited with being a huge success in that area.
So Dad was a guerella tactics instructor. Cool. But thanks to that newspaper article my uncle sent me, I learned he did much more and I’m sure these missions appealed to his inner practical joker. That of cleverly laying mines that took the Japanese completely by surprize and confounded them as to how they were pulling it off.

I’ll excerpt some of the article here. The article is so old that online archives don’t exist, so I’m having to type this down word for word. It’s from an AP article dated Dec. ?, 1945-just a few months after the war. SACO is not named, since it didn’t officially exist,
but there are enough clues there. The story is by Richard Johnston.
“Yanks Laid Innocent Looking Mines to Sink Jap Shipping“

‘ An innocent looking Chinese sampan nosed out from the bank of the middle of the Yangtze and began edging across the course of a 1,000 ton Japanese river freighter, moving slowly upstream against the current.

Two innocent looking pieces of driftwood eddied away from the sampan, one to port of the freighter, the other to starboard. The sampan inched into the reeds and willows on the opposite bank. The sharp prow of the Japanese freighter cut between the chunks of driftwood and they mysteriously arched in against the ship’s sides.

Thirty minutes passed. The freighter neared a bend in the river and suddenly there was a muffled explosion and debris flew high. The ship careened crazily in the rushing muddy waters, rolled over and sank.
A day later, by secret transmitter, Joe Champe got word that his “boys” had sunk another enemy ship, using exactly 7 pounds of high explosive to do it.’

This Joe Champe was the commander of the Yanzte Raiders the article goes on to explain. I’ve tried to research him and have come up empty handed. The reporter calls him “the Navy’s top saboteur”. After recounting some other ambushes he planned and giving a brief background on him and the region where in China they operated (all valuable information, for me), Mr. Johnston goes on to explain how that ship got sunk
mid-way through the article. (Did you figure it out?) This is where I got a big ol’ goofy smile on my face when reading this.

‘It was there, in the late summer and fall of 1944, that Champe really got rolling.
With two of his men, Chief Electrician’s Mate Charles Roberts of Hopkinsville, Ky. and Chief Torpedoman Joseph Bradley, another Kentuckian, they devised the “light charge” mine. It was simplicity itself.

The innocent sampan was the minelayer, of course. Each of the pieces of driftwood had a 3 1/2 lb. charge suspended by a slim wire beneath it, six feet under the water. The two floating chunks were in turn, linked together by a couple of hundred feet of invisible cable.
When the target ship hit the connecting cable the driftwood was pulled in against the sides of the ship. The charges then were detonated by a chemical timing device.
The Japanese, usually, never knew what hit them. And the fact the explosives were directly against the thin hull plates made them just as effective as huge mines.’

I can just see Dad with that big ol’toothy grin that I knew so well, laughing to himself when the ships blew: “Heh! That’ll fix ‘em!”

These things had to be the ultimate practical joke for him, no doubt. It must have really pained him not to be able to brag about them. But I respect and admire that he did keep his word to his country and never said a thing, until the 25 year ban had passed. But even then he hardly would say much. He wouldn’t even give up any info about the reunions of SACO guys he attended-like he shifted back into stealth mode when it came to those things. That old AP article alone has given me so much information to go on to continue my research. There’s still alot I need to hunt up and will continue to try and find out more about Dad’s service and what he did in SACO. But what I have been able to unearth for now is quite satisfying. SACO is one of those greatist stories never told type things, and in my own tiny way I want to try and document as much as I can, so the story doesn’t disapear from history. Dad was very fond of the SACO boys and he was proud to have served with them. It’s the least I can do to preserve and honor their memory by learning and documenting all that I can about the organization.

The newspaper article goes on to recount all the victories this unit achieved with using this clever ruse and other ‘homemade’ explosives and gives the enemy kill count for their raids which totalled into the thousands. It ends with this:

‘…and when the war ended this August, Champe’s boys had made the Yangtze a trickling brook and the railroads an ox cart trail as far as the Japanese were concerned.’