Frank A. Manson: Lt jg


Each soldier, sailor, airman and marine has his own eye witness memories of "what happened to me" during World War II. My story started when my destroyer skipper, Commander F. Julian Becton, called me to Laffey's bridge to ask if I had read a dispatch which he held in his hand. It was what the Navy called an ALNAV, meaning it had been sent to all the Navy's ships and stations around the world.

I quickly glanced at the ALNAV and confirmed I had read it. In fact I had almost memorized it. When it first arrived in the radio shack where all our radio traffic was received, I realized PR had become important to Navy high command.

The ALNAV ordered each ship and station to designate one officer as its Public Relations Officer. That officer would be responsible for providing information to the Navy Department concerning noteworthy events.

The captain scanned the skies with his binoculars, looking for bogies -- incoming Japanese aircraft. Our ship was operating off the coast of Japan, serving as an early warning radar picket.
"You understand what they want?" he asked.
"Yes, sir, I do," I said.
Momentarily lowering his binoculars, he said, "Well, you're it. Do the best you can." As I left the bridge to go below to my stateroom, I fully realized there was not one person aboard the Laffey with whom I could exchange ideas about my new assignment. So I went to the executive officer, LCDR Charles Holovak, to ask for a part-time typist, someone who could help me canvas the crew for human interest stories and type up whatever we found.

The exec chuckled when he read the ALNAV. "What do they think we're running out here?" he asked. "Some sort of publicity show?"
"Beats me," I said. "But I must get a brief bio of each crew member. I must know each person's hometown and the name of his local newspaper."
"Good luck," Holovak said. "But don't conduct interviews when we're at General Quarters." He thought the order was a dumb idea because it added paperwork for the overworked destroyer crews. Our ship's office was already stretched to the limit trying to keep up with ship's logs and other paperwork required by squadron commander, the type commander, the fleet commander and the Navy Department. Beyond that, the Laffey had to send in action reports after each engagement, plus dozens of other reports with deadlines, deadlines, deadlines.

Holovak also knew the Navy Department wasn't kidding, and that we had to make an effort -- however feeble it might be. "You can use Herb Rick, but don't take him away from the important stuff," he said.

I, however, was secretly pleased. I thought the public needed to know more about our ships were doing in far away places. I had requested PR duty when I first applied for commissioned service.

In fact, public relations was the one thing I knew how to do. In college I had worked as a sports reporter, and had been editor-in-chief of my law school paper. I had done radio announcing, entered radio and speech contests. I had coached and taught others how to write editorials, speeches, news reports and radio scripts. So I felt comfortable with my new assignment, much more so than when I was on Laffey's bridge as officer-of-the-deck and received orders to change stations in the destroyer protection screen.

Most of my duties on Laffey's bridge made me nervous. I never knew how the ship's rudders were responding to my orders. It was the same with changing speed. Maneuvering a destroyer wasn't all like running a motor boat back home in Oklahoma on the Illinois River.

Herbert Rick, a yeoman second class, turned out to be an ideal assistant in public relations. He was intelligent and sensitive to our circumstances. We both knew PR was not exactly essential to our circumstances. It would not man the guns or dropdepth charges.

In our three-foot by four-foot office, we struggled with the contradiction: The Navy Department wanted news, but all our combat experiences were secret. There were stories we could have told.

For example, if we could have written up how Laffey saved the battle damaged destroyer Hughes (DD410) from certain grounding and destruction on the shore of Mindinao, we could have made news. This drama would have been of national interest, especially since Mindinao still had its share of cannibals and headhunters.

We couldn't report rescuing about 20 crewmen who had been scalded when a kamikaze plane hit the Hughes and exploded the ship's boiler room. They were brought aboard the Laffey to die. No one in the U.S. even knew the Japanese were using the kamikaze to attack our ships. Nor did anyone know the effectiveness of the suicide pilots, not even the Japanese.

If I could have written about the Japanese bomber pilot that Laffey crew members rescued off the east coast of Luzon, it would have been newsworthy. While our doctor, Matthew Darnell, sewed up his numerous wounds, the pilot told me something that would have put the Laffey's name in the spotlight.

The pilot revealed that his aircraft carrier, the Shokaku, had been sunk, as had the three remaining carriers in the Japanese navy. The Japanese knew they had lost all their carriers, but American citizens did not know. I have never agreed with WWII policies of keeping our good news away from the American public.

Herb and I decided the best we could do was write up vague summaries of Laffey operations and forward them to the crew's hometown newspapers, along with a photo of each crew member. We didn't realize that the Navy already had a hometown news service, so we worked in the sub-tropical heat, setting up files on each of 300 crew members and 22 officers. Since we only worked at public relations when we weren't at General Quarters, which was most of the time, or doing our primary jobs, it was slow going.

The Laffey was sent as a radar picket destroyer to protect the fast carriers striking the Japanese homeland, bombing military targets, fleet anchorages, airfields and navy yards. At times, Laffey steamed less than 100 miles off the Japanese coastline.The fleet's job was to isolate Iwo Jima while the U.S. Marines conquered the island.

My special assignment was to report incoming Japanese aircraft picked up by radar. I would give the range and bearing of all bogies so our pilots could intercept them in time to protect the carriers, battle ships and cruisers.

There was little time for public relations, but finally Herb and I had 322 stories ready except for the photos.

The ship's photographer, Ensign Jim Fravel, was too busy to take individual photos. The Laffey was in combat or preparing for combat about 90 percent of the time. What little time there was left over, Herb, Jim and I wanted to go with our shipmates to one of the Ulithi Islands for rest and recreation (R and R). We surely did not want to spend precious free time in our non-ventilated PR office, especially since there wasn't much we could write about.

I wanted to write a profile on our skipper, Commander Becton. He had fought all over the South Pacific. He was a true hero, and yet in his hometown of Hot Springs, Arkansas, I doubted if many knew his name. The citizens would have been proud ofhim if they knew what he had done in combat.

But the skipper preferred to reminisce about our trips to the horse track in Boston or tell jokes. Sometimes he would tell me about a letter from one of his girlfriends. He never seemed interested in talking about his part in the battles of Guadalcanal or Savo Island -- or "Iron Bottom Bay" where so many U.S. ships and shipmates were buried, including the first Laffey
(DD459).

That was our PR situation the day Laffey received orders to proceed to Okinawa as part of the U.S. invasion armada.

So much was happening at Okinawa that Herb and I never went near our PR office. One day Laffey was exploding mines off Okinawa's east coast. The next day she was shooting at enemy tanks dug in near the front lines of our troops. Next, we were in formation as the number two destroyer to make a torpedo attack on Japan's one remaining battleship, the Yamato. Now,
that one chilled our blood. Fortunately, nearly 400 Navy flyers reached Yamato before we did, and our torpedo attack could be cancelled.

Kamikaze pilots were sinking and damaging U.S. destroyer-type ships, sometimes four or five a day. It was plain to me thatU.S. surface ships were no match for Japan's kamikaze. The fleet commander, Admiral Raymond Spruance, later told methat, in his judgment, the Japanese could have wiped out our fleet and sent our invasion forces packing if they had struck enmasse at dusk.

But I've jumped ahead of my story

On April 12, 1945, Laffey received orders to proceed to Roger Peter one, or radar picket one. We would be part of a ring of 16 destroyers surrounding Okinawa to report incoming Japanese suicide aircraft. Our ship was in the flight path between Japan's southernmost island of Kyushu and Okinawa. Our job was to send out fighter planes to intercept the attackers.

None of the five destroyers sent to Roger Peter one since April 1 had survived. All had been sunk or so badly damaged that they could not be used in combat.

The kamikazes made it clear on the morning of April 16 that they had the Laffey targeted for what Tokyo Rose called the "graveyard." At 7:44 a.m., the first VAL dive bomber flew toward us. By 8:20, a large formation of 50 or more was headed our way. U.S. fighter planes and Laffey's guns tangled with the suicide armada. Twenty-two kamikazes attacked. Eight were
shot down. Seven missed the ship. Seven hit us, killing 32 and wounding about 60 -- nearly one-third of our complement`mend. Photographer Jim Fravel was among the men killed in action. Five of the seven kamikazes that hit the ship caused damage, putting holes in the hull and keel.

As the damaged Laffey was being towed stern-first to Okinawa, the skipper called me to the bridge. "Son, do you have a pretty good idea of what happened this morning?" Commander Becton asked. He wanted me to go to Admiral Richard Kelly Turner's flagship and tell his staff what had happened to us. Before I went to the flagship, I met with the skipper and Lt. Bob Storm to talk about what we had seen.

"You will remember," the captain said, "the first four came in from the bow and two split off -- our five-inchers pounded
away."
"Yes, and the very first one veered off," said Bob Storm. "Then four flew directly toward us. They strafed us a few times."

I said, "Then we took our first hits from two planes coming from the stern. We took our first casualties then, also. They systematically wiped out many of our guns, our firepower and superstructure, including our PR office."

As we talked, the skipper had taken a piece of paper and a pencil and sketched the flight path of each attacking aircraft. After an hour, I stuffed his sketch in my pocket and was off to the flagship.

When I arrived at the Eldorado about 16:30 on April 17, I went directly to the PR office. A red-headed, freckle-facedcommander by the name of Paul Smith welcomed me. In civilian life, Commander Smith was editor and general manager of the San Francisco Chronicle.

"We heard you had a little excitement on the picket line," Smith said in understatement. "We heard you guys on our voice radio. You put up quite a fight."

He called a press conference within an hour. "They (reporters) want to hear the story -- as do the admirals and generals, as well as our staff," he said.

I felt relaxed and safe on the flag ship, more so than aboard the Laffey. After all our picket line terror, our ship now was anchored close to an ammunition ship. If hit, an exploding ammo ship could blow every ship out of the harbor, including the Eldorado. But the flagship was anchored farther away. I never considered what the crew of the ammo ship might be thinking.Perhaps they had become accustomed to their danger.

I kept thinking of all the tragic and heroic scenes I had witnessed. I knew this was my one moment as a PR officer to put my ship into the history books. I did not know that the Laffey crew had fought off the most intensive and concentrated kamikaze attack against a single ship during World War II. Nor that one day Laffey would be enshrined as a National Historical
Monument at Patriot's Point. I only knew what I had seen and what the skipper and Bob Storm had told me.

The dimly-lit officers wardroom was filled with 100 to 150 people, half press and half staff, including Admiral Turner.

I told them about what was going on every day at Roger Peter one. We had been out there four days, and we had been under attack every day. We had pulled the bodies of kamikaze pilots out of the water, and I had recovered a code book.

Ironically, before my briefing was half finished, air raid sirens went off. We were in the midst of another kamikaze attack. A few Japanese pilots flow low over the masts, but smoke permeated the flagship so they could not see us. They made no suicide dives in our area.

I told the Laffey's story as best I could remember. The wire services, the networks, many large city newspapers and the top flag officers at Okinawa, all listened, all at once. I had nothing to read from, no script, but I needed no notes. I talked about the attacks, the seven hits, our gunners' accuracy, the U.S. Marine Corsair pilots who helped us, our damages, and our
casualties

I recalled a brief conversation I had with the captain, between just the two of us. At that point, the stern had sunk beneath the water about two feet or so, and the bow was riding high in the air. I said it looked as if we might be forced to abandon ship.

The captain replied firmly, "I would never abandon ship as long as a gun will fire."

I thought, Well, that sure sounds like our skipper, alright. I never thought his words would become legend along side of the immortal words of Navy greats such as John Paul Jones, "I have not begun to fight"; or David Farragut's "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."

I returned to the Laffey, where the ship was being repaired with soft patches. We had not buried the dead and we were still searching for bodies. The atmosphere was somber. When a few reporters visited briefly and talked with the captain and crew members, they did not ask many questions. It just wasn't appropriate to ask questions under the circumstances.

It was seven weeks after we left Okinawa that we learned the impact my briefing at the flagship had on the press. When we got back to Seattle to go into dry dock for permanent repairs, we found out that the Navy Department had decided to open the Laffey to full press coverage. The department also invited the public aboard to see what the kamikaze war was all about.

The Laffey was swamped by the national and local press for a few days. Most all of my shipmates were asked to give their accounts of what happened: Where they were during the action, what did they see, how did they react. The Laffey story was featured in Life and Time magazines, in books and in newsreels. We were page one nationwide.

I had achieved my secret wish. I had wanted to be a PR officer, and thanks to the actions of my ship and brave shipmates, I was given a boost in that direction. I was asked to co-author a history of World War II, plus I was given PR assignments I could never imagine.