Hero December 11, 2008

(an article about my grandfather; featured in this post from December 2008)

“Meet the Neighbors,” The News Courier

From Woolworth’s to Saipan, Ezra Whaley Answered the Call

by Jerry Barksdale, guest writer

Sunday, December 7, 1941, like most winter days in Birmingham, was cold and bleak. A pall of smog hung over the Magic City, belched from steel mills that operated around the clock. Ezra Whaley paid no attention. He was 18, knocking down $14 a week working in the warehouse at Woolworth’s 5&10 and newly married to Inez Donohoo, a pretty brown-eyed brunette. Having married five months earlier, they were temporarily living with her parents before moving to a $12-a-month basement apartment in a private home.

They were enjoying the day, unaware that the world teetered on a cataclysmic brink. Five thousand miles away on the beautiful Hawwaiian island of Oahu, 184 Japanese planes were roaring out of a rising sun and swooping down on the American fleet anchored in the blue waters of Pearl Harbor.

When the attack ended later that morning, eight US battleships were in flames. The Arizona went down, entombing its crew. The Oklahoma was turtled up and the California, Nevada, and West Virginia were sinking. Three cruisers and three destroyers were sunk and 188 aircraft lay in shambles. Some 3,400 Americans were wounded or killed.

When Ezra heard the news on the radio that afternoon of the sneak attack, he knew he would be joining the fight. A cry went up across America, “Remember Pearl Harbor!”

“Everyone was rushing down to join the service,” says Ezra, a small man, now 85. “But I didn’t join right then, it was later.”

He and Inez were walking in downtown Birmingham when he saw some guys wearing dress blue uniforms. “What branch of service is that?” he asked her.

“They’re Marines.”

“I’m going to join the Marine Corps,” he said. “I’d love to have a pair of those dress blues.” But Ezra had a problem. The Marines required recruits to weigh a minimum of 125 pounds. Ezra was two pounds lacking.

“I went to a drugstore downtown and had two or three malted milks and a big breakfast,” remembers Ezra. “I didn’t go to the restroom until I weighed in, which was 125 pounds. It was real close.”

He joined the Marines in 1942, but because of two deferments, he wasn’t inducted until October 1943. He went by train to San Diego, Calif. for 13 weeks of boot camp.

As the train rumbled westward, Ezra had plenty of time to ponder. Had he known that 50 million people would eventually lose their lives in the war, it wouldn’t have made any difference to him. America’s back was against the wall and the survival of democracy hung in the balance. His thoughts turned to more pleasant things, such as the first time he saw Inez.

He was playing tennis when he saw her riding her bike through Wahauma Park on a Saturday afternoon. She was pretty. He couldn’t get her off his mind and knew he had to meet her. He was working at the Polar Bear, a drive-in that served 27 different flavors of malted milk. A few days later, Inez showed up there with two guys that Ezra had known for a long time. He was working inside.

“I told the boys waiting on them that I would deliver their order. It was a struggle, but I managed to get her phone number and called her that night.” Later he told her, “You rode through the park and then you came to where I was working. Then we rode a streetcar and I sat behind your mother. That was the third meeting. It was an omen and I knew that you were the girl I wanted to spend my life with.”

They married 8 a.m. Saturday, June 14, 1941, and promptly boarded a train for Atlanta, where they honeymooned for one night at the Robert Fulton Hotel. The room cost $2.50. “I had $20 and a round-trip ticket back to Birmingham,” says Ezra. “We enjoyed a nice dinner, had our picture taken and rented a car on Sunday morning that cost 10-cents-a-mile and went sightseeing, then returned to Birmingham that afternoon.”

He returned to work at Woolworth’s and in a few weeks was promoted to the flower and plant department and given a raise to $19 a week.

The family normally met at Ezra’s grandmother’s home on Sunday for lunch. His uncle James Whaley, who owned Whaley Plumbing Company, was present. “Let’s go outside because I want to talk to you,” he told Ezra. He offered him a job.

“I’ll have to talk to Inez because I’d be gone five days a week.”
“Tell her I’ll pay you $100 and expenses.”
“I won’t have to talk to her because you just hired me by giving me a $81-a-week raise.”

Later, Whaley’s company had a large job at the arsenal in Huntsville. “I was in charge of all equipment plus keeping the payroll for 37 men,” says Ezra. When the job was completed he was sent to Pascagoula, Miss. “Inez couldn’t go because there was no place to live and I was living in our company trailer. People were living in barges and tents working at Ingall’s, building Liberty ships. It was a madhouse and no place for her to come to. Finally, I found a small place up the coast at Ocean Springs, and Inez came down.”

Unknown to Ezra, Uncle James had gotten him two deferments. He said he could get another one, but Ezra didn’t want that. All of his buddies were already gone to war and he was ready to get in the fight. “Seventeen of us left Birmingham for San Diego,” says Ezra. “They put the biggest man in charge. He got drunk on the train and took al of our meal tickets. I left the group and the next four days I didn’t miss any meals. I had met the head chef and he took care of me.”

At San Diego, boot camp was tough for Ezra, especially since he was small. After completion, he was trucked north from San Diego to Camp Matthews for rifle training. The DIs (drill instructors) wagered bets among themselves on who would have the most expert riflemen and the most marksmen and who would have the least. “They pumped us full of it and wanted us to do real good,” says Ezra. “I’ll never forget the instructor we had. He said, ‘anybody that makes expert will be guaranteed the branch of the Marines they want. I’ll guarantee that.’” Ezra believed him. “I wanted to go in the Marine Air Force. Out of 60 men, there were 13 of us that made expert. We all went in the infantry. The ones that didn’t qualify on the rifle range went to headquarters, motor transport, post office–all of the good, non-combat jobs.”

He was transferred to Camp Pendleton to be immediately followed by a 30-day furlough. It didn’t happen. “If you lived east of the Mississippi River, you got no furlough. You were too far away for transportation. I just sat around there for 30 days, doing MP work and waiting for all the guys to get back.”

In March 1944, he sailed for Honolulu. It was there, while on work detail doing odd jobs, that he met Frank Halper, a 6-foot-1 Marine of German ancestry from Chicago. They would become lifelong friends.

While waiting for assignment to the 4th Marine Division, Ezra landed a job at the officer’s club. Three weeks later, after some of the guys shipped out, Ezra was made manager. “All we served was sandwiches and beer, and it wasn’t hard duty,” says Ezra. He got Halper a job there also. “We got it made for the duration of the war,” he told Halper.

After one month of easy duty at the officer’s club, Halper approached Ezra. “Hey Whaley, I was checking the bulletin board and my name’s on there to leave in the morning at 6 a.m. for Maui.”
“That’s a mistake, Frank,” said Ezra. “I’ll get this straightened out.”

He went down and talked to the Captain. “Captain, they’ve got Frank’s name on the board to go to Maui in the morning.”
“That’s right, and your name is going to be on there too. And so is mine. We’re all going to Maui in the morning at 6 a.m.”
And they did.

After training on Maui, Ezra and Halper shipped out with the 4th Marine  division for the invasion of Saipan and Tinian. The weather was cool and clear, much like an early fall morning in Birmingham, when Ezra and fellow Marines scrambled down rope nets into landing crafts that pitched and bobbed in the sea. The 2nd and 4th Marine divisions began landing in force on June 15, 1944 at 8:43 a.m. Fighting was savage. The Japanese knew that if they lost Saipan it would become an airbase to launch bombing raids on Tokyo.

Ezra and Halper hit the beach with a mortar section. They operated just behind the front line, lobbing mortar shells that exploded, spraying shrapnel 50 yards in front of advancing Marine riflemen. “When we hit Saipan we had 240 people in our regiment and when we got relieved the first time, recruits came in to bring us to full fighting force.”

At night the Marines dug in and set up a defense perimeter that consisted of several 50-caliber machine guns with interlocking fire. Halper was big and tall. Ezra was 5-foot-7 and small. After digging on the foxhole ahile, Ezra said, “This is deep enough.”
“It’s not deep enough for me,” said Halper. “Let’s keep digging.”

Three men were assigned to a foxhole. One slept while the other two remained awake. “Every night was an experience,” says Ezra. “It rained every day right before dark. You’d get a little drizzle just to get you wet and cold and you were scared and you would sit there and just shake because you couldn’t dry out. We’d bunk down at night and the Japanese would do the same. They would jabber and talk all night, hollering ‘MALINES GIVE UP!’ They would crawl in your foxhole if they could and blow themselves up.

The battle for Saipan lasted three and a half weeks. The human losses were horrendous with 3,426 Americans dead and 13,099 wounded. More than 32,800 Japanese were killed. It was termed the “decisive battle of the Pacific offensive.”

The Marines’ next target was Tinian.

Part II: 21-Year-Old Marine Survives South Pacific Slaughters

Ezra Whaley, a 21-year-old Marine from Birmingham, had survived the human slaugter on Saipan, which had ended only days earlier. Maybe he wouldn’t be so lucky this time, he thought as his landing craft approached the beach at Tinian. The small island was 12 miles long and 5 miles wide, located only 3 miles across the channel from Saipan. Approximately 9,000 Japanese troops were dug in prepared to die for their emperor. The Japanese had built an airfield on the island that would accommodate large bombers. And that’s what the Marines intended to take.

Ezra hit the beach on July 24 with his mortar section. “There was a lot of fierce fighting,” he says. “I can tell you that.” The 4th Division lost 212 killed and 897 wounded. Approximately 5,000 Japanese were killed.

Ezra’s good friend, Frank Halper was eventually sent back to Saipan and assigned to the 6th Marine Regiment, 2nd Division. A week or so later, Ezra also returned to Saipan and was assigned to the same regiment. “This is where fate really comes in play,” he says. “I went to headquarters and asked where they wanted me to bunk down.” There were approximately 200,000 troops on the island. “There is a man down there in a pup tent,” said a headquarters official, pointing, “Go down there and bunk with him.” Ezra smiles. “It was my buddy, Halper.”

Ezra fell ill with dengue fever, caused by a virus carried by mosquitoes. High fever, chills, headache and extreme weakness are among the symptoms. “I turned yellow, got weak and lost 30 pounds,” says Ezra. “They sent me to a hospital which was nothing but a big tent on a dirt floor.”

Halper came to visit. The doctor was going through the ward selecting which men were to be flown to Honolulu for medical treatment. He bypassed Ezra. “How ’bout Whaley?” asked Halper. “He’s s sick as anyone in this tent.”

“Yeah, but he’s a Marine,” said the doctor. “They won’t allow any Marines to be shipped off the island unless he needs surgery.” That was by order of the Marine commandant. When Ezra was released from the hospital six weeks later, he weighed only 129 pounds–a 30-pound loss.

“A little Jewish doctor, a really fine man, sent me a case of Pet Milk and told me to drink three cans a day to help me regain my weight,” says Ezra.

The Marines were island hopping and each one brought them closer to Japan. On Saipan, Ezra trained for the next invasion. “We trained for Iwo Jima and Okinawa. We didn’t know where we would be going, but we knew those islands were going to be taken.”

Then fate intervened a second time.

“The 8th Marine Regiment went on a food strike and the Marine commandant said, ‘if they can strike, they can fight,’ so he sent them to Iwo Jima instead of us. We later went to Okinawa.” Marine casualties at Iwo were 5,931 killed and 17,372 wounded. All of the 23,000 Japanese were annihilated, except for a few.

The last great battle of the war was on Okinawa. Troops began landing there on April Fools’ day and fought for 82 days. More than 548,000 Americans were engaged. When they arrived at Okinawa, kamikazes were unleashed on any ship they could find. “They were close, but didn’t hit our ship. One hit the ship next to us,” says Ezra. “I could see the pilot sitting right there when he flew over and hit the ship past us and just blew up.”

Ezra and the 6th Marine Regiment loaded onto Higgins boats and were to make a fake landing in order to draw some Japanese troops away from here the main invasion force was going ashore. Ezra’s unit didn’t go ashore and headed back to their ship. “I heard fireworks all night and we thought they were shelling the island. Unbeknownst to us our ship had started back to Saipan. We were in the middle of the last naval battle with Japan. The captain of our ship told us the next morning our Navy had almost annihilated their fleet.”

While sailing back to Saipan he learned that President Roosevelt had died on April 12.

“They brought that big B-29 in at Tinian and had a guard on it 24 hours a day. That’s the one that carried the atomic bomb. They let us go over there and look inside the plane. I’d never seen a plane that big in my life. I didn’t see how it could possibly fly. It took off at 4 a.m. from Tinian and later they announced over the loud speaker that it was loaded with an atomic bomb and had more fire power than 500 B-24’s loaded to full capacity. It was beyond my comprehension.”

The bomber was the Enola Gay and its destination was Hiroshima where Ezra would have gone if the war had continued.

Japan surrendered on August 15. Ezra’s unit was shipped to Nagasaki in December and those getting discharged went to Sasabo and from there to San Diego. The trip was perilous. A typhoon hit. “The ship didn’t make many miles in four or five days. It was fighting to stay afloat,” says Ezra. “Everybody got sick, even the Navy guys.”

Ezra was excited as his ship approached the California coastline. Approximately 50 million people had died in the war, yet somehow he survived. “A lot of us sat up half the night waiting to see a little light on that shore.”

He hadn’t spoken to Inez since he left on October 29, 1943. He went to the PX, gave her name and number to the operator and purchased ice cream. “I was sitting on my bunk eating ice cream, something I hadn’t had in several years. It was nine o’clock at night when they called my name and they had Inez on the line. It felt great to hear her voice. It was a very emotional conversation.”

Ezra went by a slow train to Quantico, Va. On arrival, he called Inez, and they agreed to meet in Atlanta. “It was difficult to find a room at the end of the war. I had written the people at the Robert Fulton hotel where we stayed when we first married and said I was a Marine and that I would like a reservation.” He lucked out and got a room. Inez’s father drove her to Atlanta, left his car and caught a train back to Birmingham.

After being discharged on January 8, 1946, Ezra went into the Marine Corps Active Reserve in Birmingham. He recruited Dick Godwin, a former classmate and World War II Marine. Godwin had recently received his law degree and opened a law office in Birmingham. “I told Dick that he could get a lieutenant’s commission, so he joined.”

The commission never came through, but orders did. The Korean War broke out a few weeks after Godwin had joined and he and Ezra were ordered to report to Camp Pendleton in California within 10 days to train Marines headed for Korea. Godwin closed his law office.

They headed for the West Coast, Ezra and Inez in their 1950 “Rocket 88″ Olds. Godwin and his wife, Margie, followed in a 1939 Packard. “There was a flash flood and we had to detour off the highway in Texas and go nine miles on a dirt road,” says Ezra. “It was wet and Godwin’s car finally drowned out. I had to push him six miles back to the highway and all that gravel messed up the whole front of my car. We had a good time anyway.”

The Corps needed Marines in Korea, and quickly. Ezra instructed on the use of rifles and hand grenades. “We’d have sixty guys and keep them for six weeks and they’d be gone to Korea.”

After spending approximately a year at Camp Pendleton, he decided not to re-enlist and was discharged with the rank of staff sergeant. “We had two babies at the time and it just wasn’t the place to raise kids.” They returned to Birmingham and Ezra went to work for his Uncle James Whaley in one of his companies called Big Four Lumber Company selling building materials. At night, he attended Wheeler Business College.

One day a Cadillac pulled up and a guy stepped out. “He had on brown and white, two-toned shoes and solid brown slacks and a checkered brown jacket and a hat with a feather in it,” remembers Ezra. He was a sales manager for Marlite, a company that made a plastic tile product for bathrooms and kitchens. He wanted to convince Ezra to carry his product. He said he would when he got rid of the inventory they had in stock.

“But to be honest with you,” said Ezra, “Anybody that can drive a Cadillac and dress like you’re dressed, I’d like to have a job with ‘em.”
“Are you serious?”
“Sure, I’m serious.”

Ezra filled out an application and a few weeks later was hired. He remained with the company for almost 50 years, retiring when he was 78 years old.

He and Inez have four children. Johnny lives in Corinth, Texas and works for the post office. Frank lives in Madison and works for a car dealership in Decatur. Steve lived in California until his death. Their daughter, Lauren Cox lives in Athens. In 2001, Ezra and Inez moved to Athens to be near Lauren and her family.

Ezra and Inez live on Winslow Drive and attend First Baptist Church where they sing in the senior adult choir. They have made many new friends and are very happy living in Athens.